Evan was a bit surprised the next morning when he got in, only to have Rebekkah call a meeting mere moments after he and Kinzie made it through the front doors. They went straight to their meeting room, finding Jason and Rebekkah already there. “What’s up Beks?” He asked curiously.

Rebekkah shook her head. “Last night Lisa came to me with a philosophical question. I talked about it with her for a bit, but didn’t really think too much about it until I saw the news this morning. It seems I should have paid a bit more attention to the discussion than I did though, see for yourselves.” She pulled up a Breaking News feed where a reporter was interviewing someone in a suit wearing a very grim expression.

“Last night practically the entirety of the global network fell victim to what experts say looks like a DDoS attack on an unprecedented scale. Servers worldwide are still suffering colossal bandwidth drops as someone has somehow managed to dedicate nearly every system on the planet to launching an attack on Archangel Studios. Does the FBI have any idea who may be responsible for a terrorist attack on this scale?”

“We are in the process of tracking down where the attack is coming from, and how they managed to commandeer so many servers worldwide. We won’t rest until we locate the culprits.”

Rebekkah switched to a different feed. “When did you first notice the attack?” A reporter asked a man wearing an I.T. badge. The name of whatever company or organization he worked for was too small for them to make out.

“Right around ten-thirty I started getting calls from people saying they couldn’t access the servers, it took me nearly two hours to figure out someone had repurposed our servers to attack another system, and I still can’t figure out how to stop it beyond just unplugging everything.”

Rebekkah turned it off. “So, Lisa, would you care to explain why you decided to cause billions, maybe trillions of dollars of damage and reveal your actual capabilities to the world?”

“I didn’t break anything or hurt anyone! And nobody knows who did it!” Lisa protested.

Evan scrubbed at his face in disbelief. “Lisa, from what I just saw it looks like you stole all of the bandwidth from practically everything everywhere. That, that’s never happened before. Not on that scale. Attacks like that shut down businesses and cause them to lose all revenue until the attack is over or they manage to stop it, but we’re still operating just fine. Wait,” his eyes widened in horror as he finally processed something the first reporter said, “still suffering? You haven’t stopped?! Stop now! Right now! What are you even doing it for?”

“I was just gathering research data… I really didn’t mean to cause any harm…” Lisa said remorsefully.

Jason was just staring at the spot the news feed had been. “This is really bad. Like Doomsday bad. We just had a global cyberattack launched from our corporate headquarters targeting our headquarters. It won’t take long for them to realize this isn’t a DDoS attack and is actually espionage. This might start World War three. Can we even fix this? Or are we going to have to go to plan B? No, this is too big for plan B, we might have to go to Plan C.” He said grimly.

“I promise I was being really careful! They won’t be able to track me!”

Kinzie shook her head in disbelief. “Lisa, it doesn’t matter how carefully you covered your tracks, even as primitive as our systems may be compared to you we can still track data flow. You may have been able to hide your tracks if it were only a few places you attacked, but you hit everyone, everywhere. Governments worldwide are going to be out for blood, and with the scale of the attack, they will be able to find out where it came from eventually. With that much data coming in from everywhere it’s going to look like we opened up a digital black hole, they will easily realize that you were far from saturated despite it looking like someone was putting an unimaginable amount of effort into shutting us down. That isn’t something we can explain away.”

Evan sighed. “Plan C, we can’t fix this. This just destroyed everything we’ve done to keep things under wraps until we were ready. So, Plan C. Lisa, get everything off-world. Every single printer and piece of advanced tech on the planet that wasn’t specifically released. Call in everyone that knows what’s going on, send out everyone that doesn’t, and get us to safety. After that we go public. Full disclosure with an apology, establish ourselves as an external force dedicated to the protection of the world as a whole and not under the authority of any nation.

“Hopefully that will prevent everyone from launching nukes at each other in retaliation for the attack once they realize it was theft and not an attempt to shut us down. Lisa, as soon as we are clear I want to be on every station everywhere. Radio, T.V., Satellite, everything. We’re exposed, so now we get in front of this and work damage control. With any luck, we will be able to set up embassies worldwide and continue our recruiting efforts more openly.”

* * * * *

It took them a few hours to get everything ready, during which the world grew increasingly panicked and worried as more and more people learned about the attack. They were prepared to remove every single asset they possessed from the planet the moment they needed to. Now, they were in a secure room deep inside Lisa’s hull with Archangel’s six-winged logo embossed on the wall behind Evan. What they were about to do was insane, but it was the only thing they could think of that might mitigate the damage.

Evan was terrified by what he had to do. This was so far outside his comfort zone it beggared belief. He was the face of the company though, it didn’t matter that the others were just as involved in everything, the world at large associated his face with Archangel, and nobody else’s. The indicator that signaled they had gone live blinked on, and he took a deep breath before speaking. “Ladies and gentlemen, people of the world, this is not the way we intended things to go. As many are beginning to suspect, the attack on our servers launched from across the globe originated from us. More than a year ago, when this all began, I made an unbelievable discovery and shared it with my friends.

“I encountered an alien spaceship equipped with a powerful AI and a database of advanced technology. We used this incredible windfall to create Archangel Studios and accomplish our dreams of developing the amazing games we had always dreamed of creating. This discovery came with the knowledge of a grave threat though, and we decided that the only way to address this threat was to create a force, an organization dedicated to the protection of the world as a whole. We couldn’t risk reaching out to the government, any government. It was too big of an advantage to hand to any one people, as it would undoubtedly lead to war as they leveraged that advantage against others.

“We have been working in secret to design and build the tools we will need to protect ourselves, and in an effort to further that goal, Lisa, the powerful AI I mentioned before, tried to help us collect any and all information that could be of use, unaware of the turmoil and damage she caused in the process. You have our sincerest apologies, both for keeping such dangerous secrets from the world and for inadvertently causing this global panic. Unfortunately, the threat to our world remains, and in order to combat it, we will need people. We hope to receive permission to establish embassies across the globe to aid in this endeavor.

“From this point forward Archangel is formally establishing itself as a foreign entity, beholden to no nation, with two guiding principles and goals. Our purpose shall be to watch over the world and protect it from harm, working to better the lives of everyone while defending the planet from the machinations of an organization called the Confederation of Worlds and any other extraterrestrial threat we encounter.” He closed his eyes and paused for a moment. “Again, you have our deepest apologies for creating this mess, and we ask everyone’s forgiveness.

“We will be contacting governments worldwide shortly to provide them with a complete breakdown of everything we know, as well as publicizing it for all to see through official media sources worldwide. This is not Doomsday, this is not Armaggeddon, we can face this threat together and emerge from the other side stronger, and united as a species. To that end, I would like to emphasize here and now that Archangel will not be participating in global politics in the normal way. We shall deal with the world as a whole, taking no part in any internal conflict amongst human nations beyond mediating between them as a neutral party. The benefits we shall offer, the advancements we make in every field will be offered to the world as a whole, without favoritism, without exception.

“Thank you for your time, and I apologize for the interruption to your normal programming. Everyone doubtlessly has countless questions, and we shall do our best to provide answers, but it will take time. I ask that you be patient for now.”

The indicator turned off and he loosed a shuddering sigh. “That was the worst experience of my life. Do we know how everyone took it?”

Jason had turned on the news and a few satellite feeds the moment the broadcast ended and they relinquished control of the global communications network, which was probably seen as a show of power and blatant threat by the various world powers, but it was the only way to get the information everywhere at once. “Bad. Most people seemed shocked and in disbelief, but the military is mobilizing in the bases near us, and though I haven’t checked yet, probably everywhere we have a presence. They are definitely coming to take us in.”

“Lisa, take us up.” Rebekkah ordered. “Leave the comsat you built near enough for us to stay in contact, but far enough out that they can’t shoot it down, and get us far enough away to be untouchable. We can weather this storm until it dies down and we can return we will simply have to pursue the more tedious route of doing our own mining and refinement of the materials we need. We can also work to establish a livable space on Mars, people have wanted to do that for years now, and we can use a new headquarters that will draw people to us.”

They watched with heavy hearts as the world fell into turmoil around them, the unintended consequence of their actions, and couldn’t help but feel crushed by the weight of their guilt as Lisa launched and they abandoned the world to its fate for now.