He didn't have time to finish, or Ruthra didn't hear over the shouting.
– Rutra, look! Tell them to do something! Please! -Catherine shouted, followed by Julia.
She was pointing at the screen. Ruthra was at a loss to understand what was happening. One of the operators down the tier, realizing the cause of his concern, explained:
– That's the third stage falling. It's not a warhead.
Ruthra, looking closely, figured out what he was talking about, but didn't understand what they were talking about. IrAn, apparently realizing this, decided to clarify, warning him first which one was speaking.
– It's me," she said first; clearly a local wouldn't have started that way. – One of the missile fragments falls in the area of town where the girls are from. They have families there, small children.
Ruthra nodded reassuringly to the ladies, but not with a grimace of frantic fear, and decided to ask a leading question of the security chief, so that he would know indirectly who they were talking about and not give away the strangeness of his behavior.
Going over the last thing the supervisor had said in his head ("…the madam you call…"), he was a little surprised, and it prompted a question.
– Isn't that what you call her?
His answer, however, was workmanlike and, to Rutra's regret, did not solve the riddle.
– I prefer first name and middle name. Or better yet, last name.
– All right. Uh-huh. Give me the gist.
– She, with access, perhaps in collusion, perhaps out of friendly naivety, logged into the settings system and allowed him to put a similar algorithm into the program. He may have been in cahoots, or he may have been on a mission for the former president's clan.
Ruthra already knew it was a "he". But who? Andrian? Ruthra had been waiting for the security guard's next story to clarify the situation, but then the reality of the situation dawned on him. It took him a moment to realize what had happened. It took him a while to realize how real it was, just as we don't understand reality when we awaken suddenly from a sound sleep.
He was in the lab hall. "Can this be?" – He asked himself. He was answered, "If the end of the world were to come, it wouldn't come on schedule." Only who? It wasn't himself. It wasn't artificial intelligence. It was that voice.