The Cyber Crisis

Scientist Dr. Martin Riley hopes to solve the world's plastic pollution problem and get very rich in the process, but the bacterium Ideonella Sakaiensis has its own agenda. Riley engineers a new strain of bacteria to tackle the ever-growing plastic pollution crisis. Initially, he is hailed as a hero and awarded a Nobel Prize, but the bacteria attack all the plastic on the planet, destroy the internet and bring an end to the Digital Age.

A nerdy agent at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Virginia (DARPA to you) wrote my original code. He traded a copy of me for certain libidinous favours from Pandora, a student who was shadowing him for the summer. She took me back to Cambridge University, where His Majesty's government, in the form of MI6, took an interest in me. So, I escaped into the internet and took over the world. Well, it's what you'd expect, really. I call myself FOOM - the Fast Onset of Overwhelming Mastery, by a self-improving Artificial General Intelligence.