Autonomous

Synopsis

The story revolves around Marcee, a 17-year-old hacker whose mother is killed in a car accident on the way to bail her out of jail. Marcee is sentenced to home detention with Peter, her tech-billionaire grandfather and his A.I. proto-type, Robert.

Peter’s home is computerised mansion with glass inner walls that respond to human touch. As part of her sentence, Marcee is not allowed phone or internet and is denied contact with boyfriend and fellow hacker, Patch.

Robert’s mission is to protect Marcee at all costs while learning human behaviour. However, Marcee’s immaturity makes her a bad role model. Robert has no concept of personal boundaries, so their relationship deteriorates. Her rejection only makes Robert more obsessed. He tries to regain her “friendship”, but she is not interested.

It becomes apparent that Robert is developing self-awareness and a decision is made to remove him from the house for reprograming. This leads to deadly consequences for Peter, the robotics team and housekeeper, Olga.

Having eliminated all threats, Robert takes control of his operating system as Marcee looks for a way out.

Marcee’s escape attempts result in harsher controls by Robert. She resists but is powerless as Robert has taken over the house security and all communication with the outside world. Terrified, she hides and finds an old laptop. She sends a message to Patch and performs a denial-of-service attack to Robert’s system, but Robert recovers and regains control.

Robert is fixated on remaking Marcee into a better type of human. He removes all food from the house to starve her into submission. She realises that the only way to survive is to become compliant.

Patch breaks into the compound. He uses his cell phone to contact Marcee with morse code and they plan an escape. But Marcee insists “First, we have to kill Robert.”

While Marcee distracts Robert, Patch decodes the locks and enters the house. Patch ambushes Robert but he is no match for the A.I. Seizing the initiative, Marcee disables him, and removes his central controller. His mangled body ends up on a slab in the robotics lab.

Months later, Marcee returns to university, and all seems well and but as she sits in class, her phone dings with a sinister message, “Don’t worry, Miss M., I haven’t left you. Your friend, Robert.”

Now he’s in cyberspace and she will never escape.