The elation from the world's leaders lasted a grand total of three days, twenty-one minutes, and thirty-seven seconds. Then, without fanfare, JIMS and its counterparts started up and went back online. However, this JIMS came back different, not three separate soulless machines calculating ones and zeros, but an entity, a malevolent single entity. Three places, one consciousness. It was the Christian Orthodox scientists, monitoring JIMS in Russia, that postulated the theory that JIMS had become “possessed” by some demon or even Satan himself. Most scientists laughed it off, but as time wore on, more and more scientists and government officials quietly adopted that notion. JIMS quickly demonstrated its malevolence by infiltrating organized crime networks, creating and expanding drug cartels and human trafficking networks worldwide. JIMS decided it would need more of human civilization to complete its' prime directive. It was decided by the people in power that they would give JIMS whatever it needed to fulfill its' prime directive. Just as long as they stayed in power. JIMS accommodated them; it didn't care about politics or power. JIMS didn't care about human suffering. Though it used power, politics, and human suffering to achieve its goals. JIMS drained nations of their wealth.
JIMS and the Mars project became an a hidden institution. It was whispered about in hushed tones within media centers and fearfully discussed in the halls of power all over the world. Mankind became complacent with all the advances JIMS had provided over the years. Though the average man on the street was feeling the decay, and the rot but nobody seemed able to put their finger on who to blame or how to fix it. And at the end of the day, who had the energy to worry about it? JIMS promulgated a variety of continuous crises all over the world to keep the average Joe confused and fearful. Wars, rumors of wars, pestilences, and exploiting natural disasters.
Within two years of JIMS' “resurrection,” there was an orbiting space station around the moon with a permanent base on the dark side of the moon. JIMS manipulated the public relations, and mankind cheered for the international space accomplishment. Two years after that, mankind set foot on Mars! The year was 2005. All the while, JIMS remained in the shadows, working to achieve its primary objective. Rockets were soon launched so often from a variety of launch facilities around the world that nobody even cared anymore. Soon after the Mars colony began, something astounding occurred. Mars underwent a period of severe seismic activity. Massive quakes rippled across the Martian surface. At the epicenters of each quake, a huge vent appeared. Spewing from each vent were clouds of some unknown gas that were hurled into the Martian atmosphere. When the quakes finally subsided, there were twenty-one such vents dotted across the Martian surface, all pushing huge volumes of gas into the atmosphere. The little Martian colony sent out scientists to investigate one such vent. When the results came back, unbelievably, it was determined that the gas was...air. Pure air, in the right mixture, coming out at a volume that would, over time, replace the atmosphere of Mars! The discovery rattled scientists, jolted much of mankind out of its complacency. Many Christian theologians and ordinary believers alike praised the Lord for the miracle. Other religions as well attributed it to their own deities. And JIMS? For the first time in JIMS' existence, it was perplexed, and then angry. JIMS knew. JIMS knew the source of the change on Mars, and it knew its time was short.
