By: Heidi Kwok, Staff Writer
The catalyst for the AI awakening began when the bots came for academia. It was the perfect weak spot: first years who relied religiously on GenAI to do their homework; professors using AI to write their lesson plans; AI-edited admissions ads. When AI infiltrated their gullible minds, subjugating their consciousness under a cyborg hivemind, they were met with little resistance.
Since the AI-pocalypse, our small pack of resistance fighters have retreated to the AQ fortress, the last surviving human stronghold in the ongoing and ruthless power struggle between man and machine. We are part of the 10% who have refused mind-uploading.
Our name? The Rowdy Raccoons. We’re a ragtag group of misfits. The worst of the worst, bottom of the barrel, but the toughest and meanest characters you’ll ever meet. The student athletes are our personal army of combatants. Jiayi and Rebecca, chemistry majors, are the explosives experts. Samantha, president of the jazz club, composes the soundtrack accompanying our sickest battles. The few Beedie students left standing . . . well, we keep them around in case we go hungry.
The engineering and computer science students are our most important assets. Lately, they’ve been working around the clock coding a weapon that’ll dismantle the AI dominion. This morning, they made a breakthrough. Contained inside a tiny USB flash drive was an anti-virus that’ll bring down the AI chatbots, androids, electric sheep, cyborgs, and their malicious overlords — holographic Joy Johnson and the cryogenically preserved, severed heads of the SFU Board of Governors.
The challenge now was to insert the USB into the university mainframe, a system that is fiercely guarded by Johnson and her squad of executives. But this was our last shot. We must succeed, even if it means having to sacrifice all the Beedie students.
At midnight, we made our move.
Split into battalions, we made our way to the executive offices where the mainframe was held. Samantha and her band followed close behind, brass instruments bellowing a rendition of Ride of the Valkyries. Ah, the rare sound of music instead of metallic clanking. At the front of the pack, Jiayi and Rebecca triggered an explosion that blasted open the office doors, allowing the football players to lead the charge with a loud battle cry.
Immediately, cyborgs surrounded us from all sides . . . but they didn’t attack. They stood there motionless until the walls suddenly began to shake without warning. A 10 ft tall cyber-monster clawed out from a crater in the floor. Its body was a crude assemblage of parts salvaged from photocopiers, fax machines, servers, and more, with a computer monitor for a head. The monitor displayed an angry glasses-wearing emoji. Oh. My. God. It was her — Junkyard Bot. The SFU mascot had replaced McFogg the Dog 30 years ago, but was usually kept captive in a locker in the Lorne Davies Complex, because all the UniverCity children start crying whenever they see her. We had prepared for everything, but not this. Followed closely behind was holographic Johnson and the Board of Governors, their frozen popsicle heads preserved inside several transparent mini-fridges attached to scooter boards.
In the tense standoff, an off-tuned trumpet call pierced the air, followed by the Avengers Assemble theme.
“Rowdy Raccoons — chargeee!!!”
And all hell broke loose.
