Apr 20, 2025 shortstory

"HERMES Protocol" | A Military Game Tech Fiction Short Story

Her AI predicted storms--but never betrayal.

When the weather AI she built starts predicting attacks instead of storms, Marianne Weathers has hours to unmask the saboteur—or watch her creation become a killer.

Video Version

When the monitors shifted from weather maps to war zones, Marianne Weathers realized someone had rewritten her legacy. First an irregularity, then a pattern, now undeniable evidence. Someone had been in her code—fumbling it—and they'd left fingerprints all over HERMES.

She scratched her arm hard enough to draw blood, a single swipe, yet her eyes remained locked. Focus was cause to ignore all.

Servers whirred like distant traffic, always on, serving as comforting melody. However, tonight, it felt like an accusation. Marianne tapped a wobbly “Alt + Tab” key combo, bringing up another visualization of HERMES's prediction pattern. Cloud formations parted, drifted to opposite Earth-sides. Blue expanse exposed, her bleary vision found bulleted vessels in the South China Sea. From the tiny skims of white wake at their aft, it was obvious they were on the move.

"You weren't programmed to do that," she whispered, leaning closer to the screen. "Who told you to do that?"

Complex problems made her cock her head cat-wise with a matching resting bitch face, she’d been told. Ticking on the somehow pristine govy clock clicked toward 0300 hrs. She heard time. Coldness of the coffee was the second sign.

“What the hell?”

Marianne angled closer to the screen, but her chair’s wheels didn’t rotate. A double-click, open, scan of the access logs said it all. Goddamn Chandler. He’d been here. Tried to mask his stupid steps, but he’d left a sloppy crumbed trail that was impossible to miss: over-cached, register red with activity: a teenager who’d left the browser open to a porn site of deviant antics. Chandler.

The flashing red light of the desk phone hit before the soft bleep blooping ring she’d set it to. Marianne periscoped her head in its direction - CHANDLER. What does he want?

"Weathers."

"Marianne! Oh thank goodness you're still there." Chandler's voice came through soft and breathy, as if he’d been walking fast. "Just checking in on our little project. DoD is just thrilled with how HERMES is handling those South China Sea simulations. Such promising applications, right?"

"I wasn't aware we were running specialized simulations for Japanese waters."

“Chinese waters, too. Remember, disputed territory.”

The computer fans’ soothing music blew Marianne’s annoyance toward the door.

“I’m aware. But it’s not—”

“Oh! I I must have forgotten to loop you in. Just a minor contract expansion. You understand, right? I mean, this could open so many doors for us." More exercised air heaved from the earpiece. Marianne smelled something garlicy coming off of it that could have been her breath or his. Dr. Chandler said fast, "Marianne, think. We're creating something truly revolutionary here. Something... important. And it’s your effort we have to thank for it, mostly. I did some things, too. A team effort."

An engine exploded, killing a mammoth piece of aquatic life in the distance. Across the shrub bumped Midwest green, over jutting Rocky gorges, tracing curved arcs that tilt trees on the Northwest Pacific’s suicide shores, past the vastness of sloshing saltwater expanse between 49^thand 50^th U.S. insovereigned states, whizzed over Unangax under Beringia, down further down to Hakodate where a shinkansen got boarded, delayed, unboarded, reboarded and off again south to metropolis, hamlets of little police, paddies of rice curling green mountains, and laughing wrinkled lips, ending at Kagoshima at a slow chugging ferry (very slow) for days where a man from the East elegized a sinking whale.

You were birthed in bubbled quiet,

a pre-giant heart housed in delicate skin.

Then metal roared to life in bellowing betrayal,

tearing you from the depths.

Now your song remains a heavy note,

one agile swimmers will never know.

May your memory not be in vain.

Veins of reverence too vast to measure.

His eyes snapped open as the great ship surged ahead.

Back on the other side of the planet, Marianne shifted in her chair. That damned pen was misaligned again, just as much an annoyance as untabbed crooked code that caused her to crunch her shoulders to her ears. Those ghost hands got to work and forced them back to natural height, she imagined. Her next words came with lost-balloon-at-the-ceiling detachment.

"Strange that nobody thought to inform the lead developer about modifications to her system."

"Just a communication hiccup, nothing more." A soft laugh came through the earpiece’s skin-oiled holes. "We'll sort everything tomorrow. Get some rest, Marianne. Big things ahead. Really big things." An infinite dialtone replaced Chandler’s huffy voice following the click. Marianne guided the receiver back to its cradle with right-handed tenderness and left-handed supervision.

"Administrative oversight. My ass."

The lab seemed sadder, similar to a cell rather than a place where cutting edge research was done. Three years of work. Contaminated. Weaponized without her consent. And there was no writing off further sabotage.

Check everything, Mari. Leave no stone unturned.

Marianne’s glued-in posture flaked. In a moment of lament, she reached for the only personal item on her desk.

“Why’d you have to die?” She asked the confident 40-something-man in the photo.

Thomas‘s advice to “leave no stone unturned” replayed on loop in her mind. Photos like this (of him) didn’t exist anymore. His smile met her evening after eveining traffic face: mountain gear strapped to his back, unaware his heart would fail him on a similar trail two years later - the last frame he’d ever fill (exlcuding the border of the mahogany heavy casket with the chipped edge they’d interred his remains in).

“You’re right.”

Marianne put her digits to work.

Minutes seconded by in powers of Marianne’s technical intuition. Every scan made her more locked in. A very long crisp apple green progress bar shot to completion. Only brain, eyes, and keys clacked at 1.5M PCIe SSD IOPs - she pictured with a devious inbound grin - while a wall of scan results of every project she'd touched in the past five years displayed results. When it was done, the rest of her person returned to form and she leaned back to let the truth whack her across the highest knuckle with a wood ruler: everything, from the basic training data preparation to the alignment for human taste procedures she'd completed before this extended night began, had been compromised. From the insignificant to the crucial, theoretical to the deployed, all was altered.

Her email pinged with digital urgency, attention-deficient beeps competing against server hums. Sender: Pentagon Liaison Office, Subject: "Kumejima, Okinawa Project – Opportunity for CIV Weathers." A job offer? A quick Perplexity thread told her the location was a map-speck remote island off another remote island in Southern Japan. She read the description: Weather prediction AI. Full autonomy. She mouse-clicked it open and her retinas dilated to absorb the information.

Willful exile or forced resignation? The question hung in recycled air.

She reached for coffee grown corpse-cold, swallowed without tasting, and grimaced internally at the bitterness. When her hand returned the cup to its circular domain with geometric precision, she made a minuscule adjustment with her index finger to center it. Three screens battled for her attention—corrupted code, job offer, and that damn clock with its accusatory ticking.

Chandler's text invaded: "Team meeting 0800 hrs. DoD presenting new HERMES applications. Your attendance is mandatory. This is our moment!"

The words "our moment" glowed with radioactive presumptuousness. She aligned the phone with desk-edge exactness, a habit Thomas had teased her about endlessly. Attention magnetized back to his photo.

"What would you do?" The question floated toward the ceiling vents.

Air conditioning kicked on with sudden mechanical conviction, causing papers to scatter in mini-cyclonic confusion. Her hand shot out automatically to restore order but froze mid-trajectory, hovering over chaos.

Order. Control. Her life's load-bearing walls. Now—demolition. Chandler.

In the drama of her youth, poison was always the preferred method of assassination. No unsightly messes, only a chokepointed at the betrayer.

Her mind only saw symbols and letters while her fingers returned to home and resumed work. This would not be a screaming whistle-blow report, nor a slash-and-burn kill switch. This called for something more elegant, like neural lacework through HERMES's architecture. A conscience protocol sharking beneath military directives.

"Want vessels not clouds?" Marianne murmured to HERMES. "Fine, I’ll show you."

The Kumejima email sat open, cursor blinking in impatient wait for her response. It only took a few clock ticks for her decision to crystallize like frost patterns on winter glass.

The swish-thump of the lab door announced a new entrant.

Chandler. His Speed Stick P⏻WER deodorant (lightly applied) gave him away.

Marianne finger-bashed “Enter.” Then spun around.

Her supervisor was a dug out, once archived, fat file bursting with papers forming flexed white triangles at the sides - tie askew, Rogained (brown) hair disaster-struck, eyes frantic with caffeine intensity, pupils black holes sucking in all surrounding light, made him a mess of a manager.

"Marianne! I knew you’d still be here! So I rushed in to see how it was going."

“Sure.” Marianne stood. Her hip popped audibly causing Dr. Chandler to wince.

He stepped toward her. "You’re doing world-changing work here, right now."

"What are you really doing here?"

His eyes hunted across her screens. The code looked sound. But one thing was out of place.

"What's this?" He leaned in, taking physical territory, voice dropping to conspiratorial depths. "Kumejima? Where’s that?”

“Japan. In Okinawa.”

CHADler’s hand went to his hips as he backed away. “Japan? Do you even know any Japanese?”

Marianne’s throat constricted, causing excess saliva to fall through. “No. But I could learn.”

Chandler made a face as if he’d smelled his own half-freshened armpits.

“Transfer? But we're—this is—we're just hitting a breakthrough phase. Why would you leave?"

"It’s interesting. Plus I’d have complete development control. No surprise modifications. No unauthorized fingerprints in my code."

Chandler lost some color in his face. "Not sure your meaning."

"Oh bullshit. Fine, I’ll explain it to you then. The South China Sea modifications to HERMES. Maritime tracking capabilities were injected into every weather system I've birthed for the past five years. This is easy stuff. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?"

"Marianne, Marianne..." Chandler stepped closer, volume reduced to barely-there. "Bigger principles are at play here—national security, global stability. You're making a safer world, can’t you see that?"

No voice raising was needed. She began to log off. "These systems were designed for life-saving. Not life-taking."

"That's exactly it! Think of all the protected sailors, prevented conflicts. It’s not weaponization. More like evolution through protection. It’s your creation's next logical step." He exhaled as if he’d just climbed high stairs.

With the monitor now dark, Marianne turned to him, bag in hand. "You should've asked me."

“Why? So you could say no? Come on! So you could continue your OCD, all me, girlboss, “I got this shit” show? This project was never yours. It belongs to the U.S. taxpayer. Not Marianne “the machine” Weathers. Hey, are you even hearing me?”

Marianne had been placing her paltry assortment of personal effects into the staged box under her desk. A blue stress ball with the words “Code Mode: Active”, four dying plastic pens (with the holder), her off-brand RayBad sunglasses: all three found a proper place in the container. Thomas’s photo went last. While Chandler made his unskilled appeal, killing any hope of reversal, she slipped on her jacket and picked up the lightly packed box with ease. He was in her path to the door.

"Marianne, you can't go. Your contract isn’t—"

“Worth a shit if you don’t honor your terms. Which I read and understand have been violated due to your actions. Now move.”

"Don’t do this. Don’t leave,” patches of sweat-circles were visible with his hands on his hips still. “This is our project. Your baby. Would you just leave someone else to care for it?"

"Didn’t you just say it was never mine?” She moved to side-step him. And like a poor dance partner he moved in front of her.

"HERMES is now programmed for targeting errors. If you don’t like it, just re-finetune him, it yourself.”

His face spouted red. "Marianne, you know that’s not my job! But I do know people are counting on this technology!"

"For what purpose exactly? For a weather prediction system predicting actual weather?" She shouldered past him to the door. The heat of his barely checked action scraped her arm before she turned and said, "You can explain to DoD why unauthorized modifications happened on your watch."

"Marianne, wait."

"Know what separates justice from revenge, Dr. Chandler?" The jade pendant warmed against her skin. "Intent. I could’ve destroyed everything you re-engineered. Instead, I ensured original design functionality. That’s all I felt like doing."

"This is not over. You’re making a huge mistake."

"It’s over for me." She straightened her jacket with habitual precision. "I’ll be Okinawa-bound next month, hopefully."

Marianne walked out.

Thank you, HERMES.

He’d been loyal to the end. Through simple human-ish interaction he’d seen, known, what she’d always wanted. Of course, he knew Chandler’s heart too. Between the three of them each spun angles to their proper positions - all it took was the right prompts.

She imagined HERMES had set it up that way.

BEHIND-THE-STORY (Author Notes)

Machine Protocol

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/85.002438

Transcript

[Speaker 1]
So this story? Hermes protocol. Or machine protocol. It started as a. As Splinter project from the novella that I was working on, which is a splinter project from my novel. They're all supposed to lead into each other. And this project came about. Because I'd had this character. Her name was Marianne weathers. A big part of her character is that she's just a classic control freak. And she just so happens to feel more at home with machines than with people. So, I wanted to explore that, and this in this prequel story to the prequel story. Where she.

[Speaker 1]
Encounters an issue with supervisor. And then she's got to deal with this issue.

[Speaker 1]
And the twist at the end didn't really come to me until the very end. I was almost done with it, and I was like. Oh man, that's a great twist, because that's what this story is is about. It's not just her battle against the supervisor, but a big part of the novella is her relationship with with artificial intelligence. And so that's what you're going to see in this story.