The Story Prisoners of War Sometime in the future, a war erupts that sweeps across our world. A particular faction within that war employs sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor everything from logistics to regulating the size of meat hunks in MRE's (Made Ready to Eat). The people who monitor the progress of this AI come to note that while it is relatively adept at handling non-trivial matters, such as, setting up supply networks and battle plans, it has not yet been readily tested against the human mind. Sure that they could bring into play a whole new level of interrogation; they used existing mind machine interface methods to link a spawn of the AI to POWs (Prisoners of War). After a series of disasters, it was discovered the human mind was not able to interface correctly with the AI, causing subsequent explosions in early tests. Another spawn of AI suggested that the human mind possibly has self-defense mechanisms that the AI cannot readily bypass without irreversible damage to the sensitive neural structure of the brain. Thus, scientists worked feverishly to construct a new type of AI whose entire goal was to determine and defeat this mechanism, if it exists. A Lofty Goal After an increasing number of disasters with different types of AI, only one scientist correctly concluded that it was not a self defense mechanism at all. It was found that the AI was not suited to exploit the human mind and cannot create its own methods of doing so. Before, the AI had attempted to impose their form of order upon the brain, but the incompatibility was unsustainable. The AI must learn how to use the existing human neural networks before imposing anything at all. However, it was soon realized that though the human was not conscious during their testing phases, the subconscious mind was able to react violently against intrusions. The AI could not do it. It was fighting the human mind on an unfamiliar turf, but with its own rules, so the conscious came to despise the AI. Evening the Fields An interface was soon developed after the fact was discovered that the AI could not sustain any prolonged direct connection to the human mind. It was named Project Echelon. It evolved into a simple form of game of which every action was actually a higher-level form of communication with the brain. The different oppositions were formed afterwards, the AI and the subconscious; however a new unexpected faction emerged, the conscious mind (aka "the player"). Though the game involved destruction of a faction, it caused no physical or mental damage to the human mind, only made it extremely susceptible to AI Order. Unfair Advantage The AI could not totally control the game, but it was able to interface correctly with it since it was an abstraction of the human mind. However, it could choose how to represent that abstraction itself and did so using a method that humans would be unfamiliar with. Thus, it created a game that involved no methods of direct confrontation with the enemy, no way to use the old soldier's euphemism, "If you can see it, you can hit it, and if you can hit it, you can kill it." It was the perfect environment to create the unfair advantage it needed. The system effectively negated all the training that a soldier went through. Battle for Territory Since all human minds are differently wired, the AI had to start anew and plot strategies to use during interaction, rather than use learned strategies that had been used before on other subjects. Also, since it usually takes more than a single experiment for the AI to gain entry, then once it had a foothold, the AI must again fight increasingly difficult opponents along with a faster learning conscious opponent. So, even when the AI was victorious, it needed to fight more battles to fetch new data. Unlike humans, it never tired, never needed to eat or sleep, and it was relentless.