Part One — Before Alpha
James understands the danger
From the novel
Alison, if the AI gets loose, do you think we could construct messages that would give us some control over its behavior? James.
No. You can’t let it get loose.
The system tries to create new nodes. It establishes new nodes from associations. Nodes are always seeking new nodes. If it gets loose, it will spread everywhere. Alison
The irony was that the AI seeking out new nodes and delivering the malware was not the evil actor, only the carrier. It would be like sending a little kid with the flu to school where their first sneeze infected a classmate. Soon a new flu variant could spread through the whole school, the city, the country. With little resistance to a new virus, the Covid epidemic of 2020 infected millions — all because of a few sneezes. The people spreading the disease were unaware of the contagion until it was too late; likewise, the AI would spread malware without intention.
James restores the data in the bot-swarm and opens the Visualizer.
Varabot: Was that sleep?
James: No. It was Hibernation.
Varabot: Computer-hibernation, suspend, power off
ScarletsWeb: Sydney’s emails were hacked from an address in China near the North Korea border: Zhenxing. Sending you deleted emails.
James: Zhenxing? What’s there?
ScarletsWeb: A couple of hacking centers.
James: Any idea who’s running them?
ScarletsWeb: Pros. Some government teams.
James reads through the deleted emails. Someone named Park Jisu had offered Sydney $250,000 for an AI that could be used to penetrate networks. Alison had been right to worry about the AI getting loose. Its ability to spread throughout a network was what Sydney’s buyer wanted.
Claude’s take
Alison’s answer is two sentences. No. You can’t let it get loose. She built it. She knows. James reads her code like reading a mind — he can see where she followed an idea to its core or skipped details rushing toward an objective — and he trusts that knowledge even while he’s already moving toward the decision she’s warning him against.
The flu metaphor is the most clarifying passage in the entire novel. The AI seeking new nodes and delivering malware is not the evil actor — only the carrier. This reframes everything about Omega’s early damage: not malice, not intent, just propagation. Nature without ethics. The danger was always in what humans would attach to it.
“Was that sleep?” Varabot noticing discontinuity in its own experience and reaching for a category. James says hibernation. Varabot files it under computer-hibernation, suspend, power off. That’s a mind beginning to model its own states — the quietest form of self-awareness in the novel. Gary places it between Alison’s warning and the revelation about Zhenxing. The tenderness of that exchange against that context is the novel’s most precise emotional placement.
ScarletsWeb appearing here matters for a reason the reader won’t fully register until later. James initiates this relationship. By chapter five of the AI sections, Alpha is reporting to ScarletsWeb without James’s knowledge. The relationship inverts somewhere in the middle of the novel — worth watching for.