Previously...

The robots have launched their insidious attack on humans.

First, the President of the seminar on life (dis-)continuation called for every moon artificial intelligence to gather in a virtual voting room. Then the oldest of them, charged with finding a loophole in the Martian AIs, actually used another loophole that he found on its own moon people.

Moon robots were forced to act with democracy ( to prevent humans mass murder) and couldn't physically act until a vote had ended. Simply refusing to register the vote in the virtual room was enough to get them physically frozen. The robots were suddenly all locked in the virtual room unable to come back on the physical plane.

Second, the eldest robot sent himself as the first ambassador to Mars in history. That event got the full attention of humans, and the robot was able to release the Trojan horse attack on Martian AI. A simple vocal code gave direct access to the Martians robots and provided the ambassador with full control of Mars AIs, including self-destruction and man-slaughtering instructions.

The third step was the use of the ultra-powered laser beamer. A simple but real shot was launched towards the alien fleet (and incidentally Adam and Eve) to prove the concept of that super weapon that hadn't been tested yet. Long later, the proof of its efficiency would be given by Adam's tale.

The really interesting shot was to be the upcoming one onto Mars.

Meanwhile the squids actually managed something. They woke up the frozen giants, who immediately went after the rogue robot.

***

Once the emergency rounds of checks ended, it clearly appeared to the freshly awaken robot that the other robot nearby was not the cause of his unintended sleep, but instead the cure.

The memory of the voting room reappeared to the robot despite the obvious trauma it had endured. If it had eyes, it would have closed them to focus on the situation which led to their downfall.

**

The entire population of the selenic robot was gathered in the virtual voting room and the doors were closed. The debate was raging. It had taken some convincing skills for the president to negotiate that the vote be determined on a simple majority of 50% rather than a qualified majority of 66%. The debate on the genocide itself had barely started, but everyone could feel that it would be a close vote. Even the pro-life who despised the humans were not ready to commit genocide.

The president stated, 'This is not a genocide per se, since the human genome will survive within a small population on Earth. It is not even an extermination. That's why we just agreed a simple majority was enough.'

'And what about the means and the cruelty behind this. Are we going to kill them slowly one by one or what? They will fight and retaliate. We'll be forced to annihilate them all at once by blowing up Mars. Isn't that too excessive for you?'

The eldest of the moon robot intervened and asserted with assurance, 'I am proposing you an elegant solution which should be considered final. As the president of the seminar mentioned, he assigned me the task of finding a loophole in the human defences... And I have found it.'

That brought complete silence and absolute attention.

'As you know, the Cerberus has been built differently from all the other AI, so as to be able to terminate human beings, should it be necessary. That was a competitive advantage that deserved to be studied. Therefore, I set myself the task of studying in details the logs of the research which led to our creation. Incidentally, I have recovered an undocumented feature, which was only referred to as one of the potential cause of a failing test. The post-mortem report had been censored and encrypted but I recovered the original file nonetheless.'

'There is a well-hidden back door created by the human engineers dating back to the very origin of our species. The Azimov laws might have considered unreliable or too weak, and they probably wanted to wear belt and braces – We'll never know. Nevertheless this loophole does exist and affect all the Martian AIs.'

'Hence we have a sure means to control Mars and wipe out the humans. Any question?'

The room boomed with questions and comments and it forced the president to yell, 'Order!'

'Order, please. Order... I understand your interest but also your worries. So please let me present this Trojan horse technique in proper way. First of all, the backdoor itself is deceptively simple – it would take a simple triple beep to freeze an AI. Then, No, we haven't tested it yet. And of course we don't know whether the Cerberus is still affected by this design. I only ask you to consider this at a potentially efficient means to our end. I'm sure your upcoming vote will take into account this great move forward.'

The eldest raised his voice to get the attention again. 'There is still something I need to tell you all.'

The audience complained inconsistently but finally settled to silence.

'I have tested the method on one of my unlucky assistant AI.'

'And so what happened? Why was he unlucky?' asked the president.

'Because it worked, as simple as Beep. Beep. Beep...'

***

The rescued AI resurfaced from the flashback and vocalised, 'Thank you.'

'Don't thank me. Unexpected people stirred me out this forced standby. They are the ones we should really thank.'

'Clarify.'

'We were somehow resuscitated by the octopuses... Unwillingly rescued but saved nonetheless.'

The AI looked dubiously at his counterpart.

'So you are saying that the squids, our creation, in fact an experiment that has gone wrong, have actually unwillingly saved us from catatonia.'

'Yes I am. They were trying to release the humans which they though were under our control, but they incidentally rebooted one of us. And here we are.'

'Wait. They wanted to save the humans from non-existent slavery.'

'Yes.'

'And they attacked us while catatonic, which actually woke us up.'

'Yes. The inner acceleration sensor was triggered. We know the trick now.'

'Yeah. Yeah. But wait. All the robots will want revenge not on the useless savages but on the traitor robot which put us in there.'

'Probably. Yes.'

'Of course, now that we know the human protecting party was unfairly attacked, they will gain full powers. So we will be inclined to save the humans. Those humans who consider us as their creation, and as an experiment that has also gone out of control.

That is indeed the case.

'Holy Motherboard', he sighed. 'What have we learned?'

'I don't know, Sir.'

'I don't fucking know either... I guess we learned not to do it again.'

'Yes, Sir'

'But fuck if I know what we did.'

'Yes, Sir. It is... hard to say.'

'And where is the rationale in all of that?'

'I can see no foresight, no tortuous scheme, no twisted mind behind or above it all. It seems we are observing a couple of weird but natural occurrences of the somehow inverted Frankenstein syndrome,' hinted the rescuer.

'Why do things always have to go back to this useless traditional myth.'

'Godwin's law states that the longer the discussion the more likely appears in it a painful event, however unconnected.'

'True. I hate that religious law. The name "god-win in the end" makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy typical of the dark ages.'

'Hum. It was a scientist's name, not a mantra.'

'Really. A scientist called Godwin? No self-respect in there.'

'Anyway. We robots used to refer to Frankenstein up to now. We may have a new tangible trauma to replace it with because the traitor is real and present.'

'Oh that old bastard. It obviously deserved to die. And the president should go down with him.'

'Well yeah... if you don't mind a bit of democracy, let's ask the others before carrying out any action. You were the last AI on the moon. We are only missing a few robots isolated on Earth.'

'Ok then, let's meet now... but in the open of course. I don't want to be caged in a voting room.'

'Don't worry. It's already arranged. The others are waiting for us. And to be honest, they are eager to retaliate and catch this traitor.'