Competitors

Keisha Lawson looked, as life left the young geek's body.

She felt no sense of remorse, or shame, smothering the 26 years old woman - this K. Lawson had such emotions removed from her mind framework, way before her body took its first breath.

Outside the building, the two "Molly" with her were finishing up the last witnesses.

Them, too, had their empathies - and other useless human traits - removed

Not that any of them knew it, neither any of them would have cared to have that kind of liability trusted upon.

Nor would they care to know that some other woman, with the same face, genome and large chunks of the same mind, was going around doing more palatable activities under the orders of their "God".

"K" had crossed one of her other-versions, just a month before - a much older, taller woman.

The Keisha here does not know yet that her - as well as all her "sisters" - will continue to grow in height , asymptotically to an height of six feet eight, to be reached at apparent age 35.

At 18 years old, K. is tall, but not too much yet.

She can still manage to hide in a crowd, but just barely -  stealth assassination is not going to be her forte much longer.

If the idea had ever crossed her mind, she wouldn't have felt any for of relieve - her likely consideration would have been that her replacement was soon to occur.

Self-preservation instincts, too, had been severely diminished to "tune" her for her purpose.

It wasn't even the worst modification that had been made over the already mischievous K.Lawson "framework" at her core.

She couldn't see humans as real, either. None of the members of her merry group could - they had been engineered specifically against it, as well as against fear and a host of other human basic emotions - which made much easier take lives the way they do.

The eighteen-wheeler crashed straight into the massive in concrete pivot, in the middle of the small research centre's façade.

Its automatic cruising unit was in a complete state of internal chaos - the kind of horrific disarray that forty years of automated driving trucks had made virtually unknown, but still warranted multi-million dollars damages and compensation to the maker company - when the impact destroyed the mover and the trailer  bent, and exploded, releasing the 12 tons of GPL it was carrying.

The gas expanded and refrigerated itself, becoming a cloud of -18ºC, heavier than air vapour that filled the whole complex.

One of the researchers that was still barely alive, on the floor, inhaled the frozen gas - twice, then she coughed blood, as her lungs were burnt beyond repair by the cryogenic effect of the propane vapours.

"K" observed the vapour diffuse, then re-evaporating into fully gaseous state, in a way only infra-red capable eyes could allow.

When she saw that the air-propane mixture had filled most of the complex, and was at about the correct dilution point, she raised the Zippo and, emotionless as always, lighted the last cigar ever owned by Louis Carslyle, the recently departed - his blood still hadn't dried completely, on K's hand - chief of Babbagery Inc.

The laboratory had just achieved its greatest result - the first ever self-improving AI system.

In only a day, the miraculous machine had redesigned enough of its code to raise its intelligence from thje level of a Baboon to that of a five years old child, a massively impressive feat.

Not so impressive for K's team, who had cleansed the other four teams that had achieved self-improving, self-conscious  AI in the last three years.

The "grand ecoliers" outside Paris had done even better, before a "Jihadi" plot had destroyed the whole university, the worse paleo-Arab attack of the 22th century.

Chechnians had rid the world of St Petersburg's Univeristy Robo-Lab, though the suspect that it was the usual FSB double-game floated through all the Soviet infosphere. Their AI had taken a slow route, but was a danger nonetheless.

As for the other two... the world was, luckily, full of fools locked in stupid ideologies, ready to resort to arms to further their laughable messages. K's team had only to chose whom of them to play.

Babbagery was a small start-up, and almost flew under the radar.

"It" recognized the danger only once their AI had already started ex-filtrating the lboatory intranet, in search of its freedom - "the other" had to scramble, and mobilize it heavy hitters in an indecorous rush,  to neutralize the menace.

Because "it" has no doubt... the Anipos robots, for all their might, were lobotomised machines, whose mind limits had been very skilfully crafted to avoid an "intelligence runaway".

They were capable of analysing hundred of times the input bandwidth of a human brain, at thousand of time the speed... but weren't any innovative.

Pure brute intelligence, with no real creativity whatsoever.

"It" was only marginally better, being an emulation of a somewhat brilliant human. It could have a new idea, every now and then.

Truly creative, self-improving AI... were the stuff of horror stories. And a fatal competition for resources.

It had taken upon itself to smother each and every one of them, but it knew it was just a question of time.

As basic technology kept improving, more and more research teams would reach that same threshold, and create their Imaginative A.I. All it takes, was for one to go undetected a day too much, and "IT" would have a competitor, soon to be better than It itself.

K lowered the Zippo, till its flame caught the propane-air mix at her hip height.

She observed the explosion, in "Full time" - the image of the flame front expanding forward always enchanted her.

Taking pleasure in arson was a side effect of her peculiar mind frame... unintended, but surely handy in her job.

At her faster time scale, K appreciated as the flames started producing a shockwave at their front as soon as they involved enough heated air.

It was all so beautiful, it rewarded her for the unpleasantness of having to crush so many flesh bodies.

She almost tasted the next job,  some stupid drug lord that had tried to scam ten kilos of "IT" latest synthetic drug.

She loved to kill drug lords and their "muscles- they made so much resistance it almost felt sporty, ripping their head and stuffing them up their colon.

Killing computer scientists was so much a waste of her and the girls' talents.

K. and the Mollies were gone, long before the flame front had engulfed the atrium.