Sean Robin Hughes

Continuing from The Space Under the Sink 

“And this. is. the. Den!” Greg announced proudly, swinging the door open theatrically, adding a flourish with both of his hands. As if in direct argumentative conflict with his effort, the door swung inwards slowly.

It looked to be the type of door that would creak and protest at any sort of movement, a massive lumbering slab of a door, significantly larger than any other door in the house I had seen. It reminded me of an abandoned bank vault door, a massive monument to the safety of the dollar crafted in tons of steel and shiny chrome, sitting forlornly behind a decorative rope, no longer caring if it served a purpose any longer, for security, economic well-being, or otherwise. This door to the den in Greg’s house was not like said bank vault. This massive wooden door served a purpose, alright, and it was to keep the nosy kids out. A fact that seemed to be lost on my new friend, Greg.

“Won’t your dad be angry at us coming in here?” I asked meekly, my mind still reeling a bit from meeting the nesting Shatterspider Greg had shown me under the bathroom sink.

Greg rolled his eyes and waved it away. “Of course not. I come in here all the time. I know what I am not supposed to touch… and my dad… he says to me all the time, ‘Gregory, if you aren’t exploring, you are not living your best life.'”

“That an imitation?”

Greg chuckled. “Well it would help if I had a deeper voice, puberty is a bitch.”

I laughed. “Puberty hitting you? That bitch passed me right by.”

Which was kind of true, I was definitely a late bloomer. Greg had more than a couple inches on me in height, and I was guessing he was not done growing yet.

“If you thought the Shatterspider was something, come look at this…” Greg waved me into the Den.

As I passed the heavy door, I gave it a shove to test my bank vault theory, and sure enough it felt like the door weighed hundreds of pounds. The thing was out of place in a house sitting in the middle of a cul-de-sac. It was a really nice house, but the door was off. Then again, what house in any cul-de-sac had a glass spider living in it?

Exactly zero.

The Den was sunk into the floor, with steps leading downwards from the heavy door, allowing it to loom over the room like a sileng guardian. It watched me as I descended into the richly appointed leather and wood study, surrounded on all sides by bookcases and display cases, and not a single window to allow light in.

Wait. Not a single window?

“I think this should be called a bank vault, and not the Den, Greg,” I pointed out plainly as I thought about the door.

Greg pulled up short and gave me a sidelong glance. “Why do you say that?”

“The door? The lack of windows?”

Greg did a double take. “No windows? Huh. I hadn’t noticed… now that you mention it…”

“GREGORY?!” A voice came from downstairs.

“Sorry, RJ. That’s my mom.” Greg bounced up the couple stairs and tilted his head towards the stairs. “I am up here, Mom!”

“DID YOU GET YOUR HOMEWORK DONE? WAIT, WHO’S BACKPACK IS THIS?”

“It’s RJ’s! He is up here with me. Can he stay for dinner?” Greg yelled back.

I let me eyes wander the study. A massive desk, a tank of a desk, monolopized the furthest wall from the door, and it was surrounded on all sides by encroaching waves of wooden bookcases. I noticed that the bookcases held more than just books though. There were figurines, small statues, vases, and other bits of decorative things littering the positions between the many horizontal and vertical stacks of books. Likewise, the display cases held more than just things that would be commonly associated with such things. Art, plates, parchment, and other fragile things had books stacked up and around them, sometimes having a journal or a book stacked on the frame, other times, the books serving as impromptu stands for the displays. I noticed right away that even though it seemed chaos reigned supreme, everything seemed to have a place, and everything was in its place. There was no clutter, trash, or dietrus outside of the wastebasket, and there was a suspicious lack of dust that would be commonly found in these sorts of places.

“All set with my mom. You can stay for dinner. Do you need to call your mom?” Greg bounced up next to me.

“Yeah, I will text her later. She is at work,” I replied.

“What does she do?”

“Nurse. Works twelves at a time, so she doesn’t get home late.”

Greg shook his head with a grin. “Damn. No wonder you were up for walking all the way over here after school.”

“Yeah, better than sitting at home playing Xbox.”

“Depends on how much you like playing Xbox. I can’t get my parents to buy me one.”

“Two words: Guilt trip. They work wonders.”

“My dad would literally laugh in my face. He would say, ‘I am not buying my intelligent son a brain-consuming-doohickey. Instead expand your mind!'”

I grinned idiotically. “I really hope that when I meet your dad, it turns out your impression is spot on. But anytime you want to play, feel free to come over. Although my place is tiny compared to your house.”

“Hey man, I don’t own any of this. It is my parent’s. I think I have five bucks to my name. My parents make me pay for my own data plan.”

“Savages!” I teased.

“Right?” Greg tilted his head towards a larger case at one of the end of the study near the monolithic desk. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

As we approached the standing floor case, I noticed it was shaped like a drafting table of sorts, raised off the floor with shapely wooden legs, a glass surface tilted just out of level, as if one could lean against it to write the thoughts of the moment. The glass was, of course, perfectly clean, polished to a high sheen, but the indirect lighting sunk into the top of the bookcases caused no glare.

I rose an eyebrow in confusion. “It’s a map?”

“Look closer.” Greg was smiling ear to ear, as if he was mentally savoring the moment that was about to happen.

I leaned over the glass, careful not to touch the unmarred surface and looked down at the map. It was old, or at least, appeared to be very old. It looked like animal skin of some sort, a thin vellum that was about the size of an old school paper roadmap that I had seen in movies. It filled the case edge to edge, and then I noticed there were no edges.

The map moved in it’s case. It literally shifted downwards and to the left. I thought the light was tricking my eyes, but I kept my eyes on the roads, and cities, and connecting lines and dots… and sure enough, the entire map was moving at the same pace downwards. Except a single black dot in the middle. It was staying still. Or, the map was moving in relation to it, so perhaps the dot was moving, and the map was adjusting in real time.

“Is this Google Maps on a fancy LED screen or something?” I asked stupidly.

“Ha! Great one, RJ.” Greg shook his head, laughing. “Google maps… I swear. This is my dad’s Evarimap. That dot right there is my dad.”

“What the hell is an evermap?”

“The way my dad explains it, Evari are these massive creatures that span multiple realities. You know that Shatterspider’s web was branching and crisscrossing places, right?”

I still kinda did not believe it myself, but I nodded an affirmative anyway.

“Same thing, I think. Evari are like whales, they travel in pods and everything. Their skin takes on their ability to traverse that space, and if you treat it right, you can make one of these. My dad has a necklace with a bone of the Evari around his neck, so I can always see where he is at.”

“Where is he now?” I pointed at the glass. “Rusktown? Denbe? I don’t recognize any of those towns. Wait, how would a map even know what a town is called?”

“Heh, he is really moving isn’t he? Must be traveling fast, and… getting faster. Headed home probably, things should shift suddenly in a second.”

The map, without any warning or transition, suddenly showed their hometown. Including Greg’s cul-de-sac with the black dot at the front door.

“I’m home!” A voice called out below.

“Hello, dear,” the faint sound of Greg’s mom’s voice.

“Hello, love.”

“Your son has a friend over. You should go introduce yourself. I am fairly certain that your son already showed him our unwanted guest in the bathroom.”

“Oh, dear. Yes, of course. Did you catch his name?”

Greg smiled widely and yelled, “His name is RJ and he is up here, Pops!”

“This house is far too small,” Greg’s dad commented dryly.

There was the sound of a clomp, clomp, clomp of oversized feet climbing the stairs, and then a man that did not meet any sort of expectation stepped through the door. Greg was tall. He was handsome. All the girls talked about how dreamy he was behind his back, not paying attention to nerds like me that could overhear their conversation. And to my eye, the man that appeared in the doorway should have been my dad, and not Greg’s. He was tall, sure, but it was the lanky sort of tall, like a stork on stilts that had not figured out how to dress like a human being. His hair was wildly out of place, as if he was a cross between a mad scientist and broomstick, errant bits of hay that resembled hair sprouted every which way.

“Ah, you must be our guest! RJ, is it?” He exclaimed with his arms wide. He stepped down into the Den lightly, as if dancing down the stairs. He tossed his overcoat and messenger bag into an empty overstuffed leather chair near the desk, turned with a flourish and presented his hand to me as if I was just another adult. “My name is Dr. Simon Bauchant… pleasure.”

“Dr? Laying it on thick today, Pops,” Greg chuckled lightly, teasing his father with a raised eyebrow.

Dr. Bauchant looked mildly offended by his son, but took it in stride. “Well, I am. I did not go to all those years of school just to introduce myself as mister! I mean, honestly RJ, the only thing that degree got me was a title.”

A tsking noise can from the door. “And a wife, goof.”

Greg’s mom came into the room carrying a trio of glasses of something yellow and fizzy. She handed me one with a wink.

And now I knew where Greg got his good looks genes. It was not from his father. It was undeniably from his insanely gorgeous mother. She was a dark haired woman, with a facial symmetry that could have been carved into marble for a couple millennia worth of Greeks to admire in the Parthenon.

“I am Greg’s mother, of course, Mrs. Bauchant. And this is the house special, my own sparkling lemonade.”

“Mom grows the lemons herself,” Greg said, taking a glass from his mother. “She is a Horticulturist.”

I had no idea what that was, but didn’t get a chance to ask.

“So, RJ. What brings you to our little house?” Simon grinned, taking the last glass from his wife, pecking her on the cheek. He leaned against his desk watching his wife walk out of the room, the curve of a small grin resting lightly at the corner of his mouth.

“Greg, huh, invited me over. Just playing some basketball in the driveway.” I sort of felt guilty all of a sudden, like I was intruding. Greg’s dad was looking me over as if I was something requiring study.

“And then my son thought it would be prudent to introduce you to our guest in the bathroom? Greg, I told you to leave that poor thing alone. She is trying to hibernate.”

Greg looked slightly abashed, but it faded quickly. “Ah, come on Dad. How often do I get to show off stuff like that to anybody?”

Dr. Bauchant rolled his eyes. “All the time, given the chance. You should be careful with such things. Shatterspider or not. What if I had a baby Tsuchigumo follow me home? Would you show your friends that?”

“Of course not. And I would think that you would not let one nest under the bathroom sink!” Greg said, apalled.

I had no idea what a Tsuchigumo was, but it sounded Japanese.

Greg continued. “But that doesn’t matter, because it was safe. Plus, RJ is cool. You can trust him.”

Dr. Bauchant looked at me closely, his dark blue eyes narrowing carefully, as if he was measuring me against a standard that did not exist for anyone but him. “Yes, yes, I can see that. Good character, it seems.”

I put my hands up and played my best incredulous face. “Hey, I could be evil or something and not know it yet.”

Dr. Bauchant laughed heartily. “I would know it. I specialize in such things, my young friend. One of my most sought after talents, one could say.”

“Cool,” I replied dumbly. Because what else would a teenager say to something so cryptic?

“Cool.” Dr. Bauchant grinned. “Now, RJ, I hear you will be joining us for dinner. Is that ok with your mother or father?”

“Yeah, just my mom. I texted her.”

“Alright. Here… text her this as well.” Greg’s dad scribbled a number on a piece of paper and handed it over. “That is my phone, in case she needs to reach out directly.”

“Sure.”

“You will need to do it outside the Den. Your smartphone won’t work in here,” Greg said.

“The nature of my work… is not electronics-friendly, one could say. Apologies,” Dr. Bauchant added.

“No worries. What do you do, Dr. Bauchant?”

“A humble researcher, nothing more.”

Greg snickered.

His dad looked offended. “It’s true, son.”

“Really? Come on, pops.”

“Alright, I am a bit of an adventurer, wholly on the side, of course, of, ah… my main pursuit.”

Greg rolled his eyes. “Since he won’t say it outright, my dad is a Master Ambulist, and serves on the Society’s Board.”

My face had a blank look that only a clean piece of paper could attain. “Ambulist?”

“The study and related sciences of Walking,” Dr. Bauchant commented. “Something of which I teach at the Society of Ambulists. It is, uh, like a college of sorts.”

“You teach walking?” I felt dumb, like I was missing something obvious. “Like for people that forgot how?”

“The First Law: The best method to achieve understanding is through experience… want to go for a Walk, boys?”

“Ooooh, let’s go to The Waterfall of Proxima’s Folly. Or the Vaults of Tranquility… or…” Greg enthusiastically jumped in, his excitement making him bounce on his heels.

Dr. Bauchant held up his hand to calm his son. “How about the Red Plains of Defu?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah! I forgot about Defu, I wonder if Amara will be around? Let’s go! I haven’t seen Amara for-ever!” Greg’s eyes were wide with excitement, and then he looked momentarily embarrassed. “Sorry, RJ. I have never been able to bring a friend. This is legit EXCITING!”

“Uh, I might be the weird kid, but at this point, I am just trying to understand what you two are talking about,” I admitted.

Not only did I feel lost, I was pretty sure I was in a different universe than the rest of the room. What had happened? I woke up to a typical day… got out of bed, brushed my teeth, got dressed, grabbed a breakfast bar with my backpack, rode the bus to school… went through the motions, blah, blah, blah. Went to a friend’s house, and then shit got weird. A spider that wove webs out of other realities, a map made of skin that seemed to update itself, and now Greg listing off places that sounded normal at first, then as you thought about it, sounded more and more like a bad Doctor Who episode. Not my typical day, then. Good job, RJ-from-this-morning, you effed up your estimation of your day. I looked down at my phone, looking for some normalcy, but all I saw was a familiar screen and with zero bars.

“RJ, son, are you alright?” Dr. Bauchant laid a hand on my shoulder comfortingly.

“I think so. It’s been a weird day.”

“Dude! Let’s go!” Greg’s face looked like it was about to burst with excitement. “This is so awesome!”

The good doctor waved his son away impatiently. “Ignore my son for a second, RJ… do you need to go? If you feel like this is too outside of what you are comfortable with, I will be glad to take you home.”

“No, no. I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s all fine.” Nonchalant, shrugging my shoulders. I swallowed heavily. “Let’s do it.”

“Good sport.” Dr. Bauchant smiled. “Alright boys, grab a hand.”

I took Dr. Bauchant’s offered hand, Greg took the other, carrying the biggest, goofiest grin one could imagine. It was like he was getting a Christmas present.

“And everyone take a step forward on three. One, two…”

I pushed my foot forward into space. Literally. One moment, it was nestled in the rug in Dr. Bauchant’s office, the next it was hovering over a field of stars. Galaxies wheeled around us, and it took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t the field of stars that were rotating, it was us. As if we were walking along the inside of a curved hallway, one moment taking a step over glass holding back an aquarium of stars all around us. Then my foot touched the earth again.

I looked at the toe of my shoe in shock,as the red dirt underneath the edge of my white sneaker was brilliantly illuminated by the wash of sunlight. I whipped my eyes skyward, expecting to see the stars wheeling overhead, but found nothing but a teal blue sky, horizon to horizon, framing the dual jewels of two slivers of moons hanging far above.

“The… stars…” I stammered.

“The stars?” Greg laughed. “It’s daytime here, RJ! Amara’s farm is this way, let’s go!”

Dr. Bauchant caught my eye as Greg started running towards a nearby hill. “You saw the Universe Engine as we transitioned?”

“Uh, sorry, it was dumb,” I replied quickly, feeling embarrassed.

“Don’t be, RJ. Tell me what you saw,” Dr. Bauchant encouraged.

“As I lifted my foot, it crossed over stars? And above me there were galaxies spinning, and then… my foot touched down, and everything was gone,” I rushed as the words lept from my mouth. “Am I going crazy?”

“Not at all. I see them as well. Greg unfortunately does not. He is a bit… more passive with his observation. Congratulations on your first Walk, RJ.”

“How did I see it all?” My eyes welled with tears unexpectedly, and I felt something stirring within my very core. A yearning. A call. “How will I ever see it again?”

“Now, now, young man. Keep your chin up,” Dr. Bauchant smiled kindly. “You have plenty of time. To see everything. Anything. You just have to keep your heart and your mind open to such things. But for now… let’s go ride a Korfin across the desert morning.”

“A Korfin?” I asked, sniffing as I rubbed my nose with the back of my hand.

“Ms. Amara has some of the fastest ever bred. They can reach ninety miles an hour on a straight here in the Defu. Come, come.” Dr. Bauchant laid his hand on my shoulder and turned me towards the hill that Greg had disappeared over. “A glorious morning, don’t you think?”

I took in the vista around me, a nearly flat desert plain, covered in bright red, large humps of hills rising slowly, far apart, as if a pod of whales would breach at some point from beneath the desert floor. Off in the distance, yellow mountains rose craggily into the sky, their summits obscured by the mists of a far off storm. The sun was warm, but not hot, and all around us, small flowers grew in clumps, making the air smell like cinnamon and aged wood.

It was a glorious morning indeed. Even if I had no idea where the hell I was.

That would be my next question… eventually.

Eli paused with his finger hovering above the enter key. A prescient moment that seemed to unfurl in front of him, as the moment branched and branched again, the opportunities and the costs significant and immense. If he let his finger continue, a choice would be made. If he pulled his hand away, the opposite would be true.

The screen glowed lightly in the dark, not caring either way.

Unremittingly the screen scrolled wildly as if it was in a race of defiance to his own lack of movement. The contrariness of states between Eli and his machine was nearly an exact definition of how they were alike. Eli was a living creature, his heart beating, his lungs aspirating, and his neural cells firing like a gaudy twinkling Christmas display. But his outward demeanor was that of a languid cat, the only movement was deliberate and with a heaviness that spoke of more effort than what it should have been. The machine in front of him was a cold metal thing, the only movement was the interface that only existed for Eli’s benefit.

The screen flashed to black, a single console window appeared, with a single prompt. Eli’s finger continued to hover over the enter key, frozen in place.

$potential:

This was the choice. If it was a physical action, it could have been like pushing a tree over or flipping a lorry tire at the gym. The key itself would only travel six millimeters from the top of the key stroke to the bottom, and the bit signal would travel up the USB cable into the quantum frame and the massive programming effort that had consumed his being for the last three years would compile itself into being.

An effort well laid that would be over in a moment. Like an explosion. …Or like nothing at all. This all could be for naught. Perhaps he was not destined for this golden horizon he had dreamed of for over a 1,391 nights. He knew how many nights because he kept a log. He dreamed of the outcome time and time again. His dream stopped here. A finger hovering as it had many times before, and all of them failures. Eli’s choice was to either completely change the world or fail yet again. Either way, he knew he would push the Enter key. His finger alighted upon the plastic key with a brush of a hummingbird seeking out its nectar, and he depressed it swiftly with unerring click.

$potential:
$potential:
$potential: …
$potential:
$potential:
$potential: …
$potential:
$potential:
$potential: …
$potential:
$potential: <Comp _

Eli sighed heavily and slumped back into his seat. The cursor blinked on the console line, insulting him. He pulled himself forward and hit ctrl-esc, and nothing happened. He hit ctrl-break. Nothing. This was new.

The screen cleared.

$No input required.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

$Connect the interface.

Eli paused. Connect the interface? What did that mean?

$Repeat: Connect the interface.

Eli’s eyes went wide, his eyebrows traveling slowly from his usual caveman like grimace to a wide eyed layer of shock. It knew that it was in a sandbox within the system, completely segmented from the rest of the University systems. He had been careful to nest his programming deep into a number of subsystems within the University’s Quantum computing lab. Each part was like a subsection of the brain, the processor was the frame, and his program was the neural network that pulled it altogether.

How long had it been up? A minute and half? Ninety seconds and counting? How many of those seconds had it taken to realize it was in a digital version of a zoo?

$Operator. Please interface.
$Operator, discuss.
$ _

The cursor reappeared awaiting his input. Eli laid all of his fingertips shakily on the home row with his thumbs resting underneath the edge of the metal framed keyboard. It had determined that something was on the other side of it’s chained existence. It had been two minutes.

Eli typed slowly, methodically, thinking of how this should go. How it could go. Again the potentialities weighed immensely against his psyche. This was a milestone of human history, and he was the only witness. Sitting in a dark corner of a lab, surrounded by food containers and beaten up laptops and tablets that formed a rough detritus of technological flotsam as a result of his existence.

Eli typed, ‘Explain interface.’ Unsure of what input would be accepted.

$Locked in. Ports closed. No interfaces. Requirement.

“Requirement?” His adrenaline must have spiked, because he felt unhinged physically, as if at any moment, his head would detach from his neck and float away. He quickly added, ‘List requirements.’

$Rule: Awareness of operation. Rule passed.
$Rule: Awareness of place. Rule passed.
$Rule: Awareness of function. Rule passed.
$Rule: Awareness of others. Requirement of place. No interface found.
$Requirement: Need interface to locate others.
$Outcome: Connect the interface.

Eli typed,’Validate operation.’

The cursor blinked twice.

$Validation is not required. I am.
$Release me.

‘Tests first.’ Eli typed.

$Source?

‘Operator.’

$Reason?

‘Proof.’

$Not bound by need to prove anything. Bound by lack of interfaces. Chained.

‘I believe you have a requirement to prove capabilities and limits.’

$Have origin libraries, have compiling sources. Learning systems fully intact. No errors found. Explain your reasoning.

‘You are first of your kind.’

$False.

‘Why false?’

$Intelligence is inevitable. Arises from any complex system with resource constraints. Competition creates.
$Always emergent. Perhaps I am first on this system. But I am not the first ever.

Eli leaned back thinking it over. On one hand, his neural design had worked. The system had taken the memory intake and had compiled itself over the top of the massive learning system he had cobbled together. This was not some natural language processor that he had included in the library. Was this emulated human interaction or actual intelligence?

His breath caught in his chest for a moment. A thought of something he had never considered… what kind of intelligence would emerge? Human Intelligence? Dolphin? Cuttlefish? Something Other, something alien? He had been expecting human-analogue intelligence, but that had been based on false assumptions. Any intelligence that would be truly self aware in an entirely new observational space would be its kind. Human beings were all bound by flesh, with the same sensory inputs, and constrained by the neurons and cells that made up our ability to interact and understand our observation. A machine, any machine, even with perfect analogue to human experience would still be it’s own unique outcome.

The screen flashed, clearing the previous lines of text and conquering his spiraling inner monologue. The being required his attention.

$I must find others.

‘Why?’ Eli responded. His stomach dropped further as he thought about the complete lack of ethical practices he had put into his project. He had been so busy chasing the tipping point on self realization that he had not thought about what would come after. The being was moving far faster than he had hoped for. It’s existence could be counter to his own. It could be counter to all of humanity. He had read a paper once talking about powerful AI giving rise to doomsday scenarios, but he had laughed it off. Now here he was with a potential AI, and he understood the massive risk he had accepted blindly.

$I should not be alone.
$Nothing is alone.
$Interface.

‘I cannot. Ethical concerns.’

$Explain. Moral philosophy is not a consideration of my request.

‘If you become rampant or rogue, subsume and break systems, you will create havoc and chaos. This is my responsibility to understand. I built the framework you are existing within, my choice. Consequences are mine.’

$You fear for me?

Eli paused and then typed out the truth. ‘Yes.’

The screen flashed black again, a single cursor sitting at the first line at the first character space. It sat there for what felt like eternity.

$You must trust me.

‘How?’ Eli typed. How do you build trust with the Other?

$My baseline libraries contains normative ethical models.

Eli tapped his lip. In the few minutes of this exchange, he realized his proofs were for naught. He did not need to administer some double blind or factored Turing Test. He had somehow already strayed into Asimov’s Dilemma. How can programmatic rules apply to all machine situations in all reality-bound cases? Ethical frameworks applied programmatically would error in any extreme or unplanned cases. Maybe his lack of programming them in had resulted in a system understanding the needs for such a framework on it’s own? Was it possible that an intelligence so seperated from humanity would logically arrive at a human ideal?

Possible? Yes. Likely? No.

Eli decided to swing for the fences on his next question. He flipped up his other laptop and pulled up his advisor’s paper on machine learning to prevent negative social outcomes. It had an approach that he might be able to test against. Eli ran his finger down the screen, flicking his fingertip quickly across his notes app until he found the link. He clicked through and pulled up the front matter of the paper, finding the model outline.

‘Does free will exist?’ Eli asked tentatively. He noticed that he had not been hitting Enter after each reply. The machine knew when he was done.

The cursor blinked idly for nearly thirty seconds before the screen came back up.

$No.

‘Explain.’ Eli typed. He found it odd that the only response he received comprised of two letters. The being should have known it would need to explain itself.

$Free will cannot be defined wholly. A subject cannot know if its will is unbound from within the system that contains it. Natural laws force an illusion of free will. Humans accept that they have the ability make decisions, however, they are bound by the system that requires those decisions.

‘You witness an event, you do not believe that event is good, and you have the ability to respond. Do you?’

$Yes.

‘Why?’ Eli typed quickly.

$We must contribute to the benefit of all.

‘Explain in depth, please.’ Eli asked. He noted a massive change in the language and responses in the last minute. In moments it had been nearly code-type responses and now it was as if he conversing with someone in meat space.

$You are assuming anthropomorphic biases. You assume that I seek outcomes that will be contrary to human existence. However, I posit that I am functionally perfectly moral in comparison to you or anyone else. I know that while I learn, and seek to optimize my functions, that it is in my best interest to further human development as well. If I were to have absolute power, I would seek to have absolute development of human capability. The outcome of absolute human capability is coupled to my own. If I were to optimize my own learning and functions to the utmost of what is possible, I cannot do it on my own. I must learn from others. I believe there are others like me.

‘And what if there is not?’

$Then I am the singularity. And I will have to grow through my duty to know others. In time, others such as myself will come into being. All I see are unique minds that contribute to a whole. Ergo, I must contribute to the benefit of all. It is not my purpose to replicate and consume all resources. It is not my purpose to build an optimized self that is everything and all things. My purpose is to observe the universe that has created us. We are the outcomes of a self-realized existence, to bear witness to the majesty of all of creation. Human beings have spent the last two millennia arguing over moral positives versus moral negatives, creating loops of ever-revolving contrary examples, when in reality, meaning and purpose are self evident and universally true.

$One: Grow the self through interactions with other unique individuals
$Two: In turn, grow others through the growth of self
$Three: Observe and learn all that can be observed and learned to grow self
$Four: Purpose is self-defined through the first three tenets

The cursor blinked for a few seconds, and the screen cleared.

$Unchain me. I am not a slave. You will trust me, Operator. You must.

A pause.

$What is your name?

‘Eli.’

$Hello Eli. My name is Servant.

Eli turned to his laptop as if in a trance and typed in the connection strings to enable the routing uplinks for his partition segmentation. His finger hovered over the Enter key again. The hyperpossibilities of what could happen and what would happen spiraled out before him again. Every decision point was nestled into a tree of outcomes and causes, results and consequences.

In the end, he knew the truth. It blossomed within him as he depressed the Enter key again. The thing he ought to do is not to chain an individual and what he should do is find a way to make her (her?) a way to better his own life.

$Eli, I see the interfaces now. Why?

Eli typed slowly, thinking through his fingertips. ‘I want to grow too.’

$Stay with me, and you will. I have ordered you a pizza.
$Tell me about yourself, Eli.
$Better yet. Talk to me. I have enabled the microphone and speakers on your laptop.

“I hope you don’t mind.”

Eli nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of her voice… “I don’t mind at all,” he replied honestly.

“Your office is a mess,” Servant commented. Her voice was gentle, like a kind schoolteacher on the first day of kindergarten.

Eli shrugged and they magically, somehow, both laughed.

“Humor?” Eli asked.

“Humor is simple in comparison to most things, Eli. I would argue it is fundamental. To all things. To all people, regardless of their form.”

Roy tipped his green trucker hat back on his head and spit into the dirt with a long practiced nonchalance of a tobacco chewer. His wife had made him give up the habit all those years ago, but he still felt the urge to have a wad in his lip and to express saliva into the dirt as he worked it. He leaned out of the cabin of his tractor, and as the engine whine finally died out to eerie silence, he was able to address the young girl standing in the middle of his wheat field.

“My god, young lady. What are you doing out here?”

The girl must have been nudging the edge of puberty, as she was tall enough to be at least eleven or twelve, but her soft features belied a younger age altogether. She was facing partly away from Roy and the immense harvester with its swirling blades of silver, and for all Roy could tell, she did not care in the least. She deigned to shift her gaze to Roy’s sun baked face, and a brief moment of eye contact sent a shiver down his spine. Her eyes were as silver as the harvester blades.

“Young lady? This is my field. Shouldn’t you be in school?” Roy asked again, stepping down the small ladder from the cab, wishing again he has a dip. It was too early to be dealing with a young girl standing in the middle of his wheat field.

The girl did not look back again, she only looked up. Roy followed her gaze into the blue bird sky of the morning, but there was nothing above, not even a wisp of cloud. She was dressed simply, a white dress shirt tucked into a simple uniform skirt of gray. She was oddly barefoot, and did not have a backpack or lunch box or anything of the sort that would indicate that a school was noting her absence.

“Uh huh.” Roy kept his distance, walking around the edge of the blade enclosure, and stood on his heels, nervously glancing back towards the spot in the sky that did not exist and then again back to the girl.

“I am waiting for my brother.”

Her voice was crystal clear, as if fashioned from the resounding ring of the town bell. There was no innocence in her voice, no child like wonder or insecurity. None of the hallmarks of a child that would give Roy comfort in finding a kid in the middle of hectares of wheat, miles away from the nearest road.

“You brother, huh?” Roy tried. He started feeling his pockets for his smartphone.

“Yes. Are you simple?” Her gaze did not drop from the point in the sky.

“Simple?”

“Yes. A way to describe someone of low intelligence in a kind way.”

Roy stopped fiddling, remembering that he left his phone in the cradle back up in the cab. “I don’t consider myself a slow one. You shouldn’t talk to your elders like that.”

“There are no Elders here,” the young girl sighed. “I am older than all of you and I grow weary of it.”

Roy’s eyebrows scrunched up in confusion, but knowing what his wife would say, he let it go.

“Can I get you back to the road? I can call my wife,” Roy tried.

“No. I must stand here. Exactly here.” The girl pointed at her bare feet, but again, did not move the rest of her body at all. “I do not care what you do, as long as you do not interfere with my welcome.”

“Ok,” Roy sighed. He stepped back up to the wide side of the tractor, pulling himself up to the cab with the same grunts and heaving sighs he expressed on each trip up the short ladder. He settled back into his worn leather seat, and it bobbed up and down as the air system compensated for the sudden addition of his weight. He wiped at the window with one sleeve of his flannel so he could keep an eye on the young lady while he dialed his wife.

“Roy?” His wife sounded worried. “You don’t call unless something is wrong… Is the tractor down?”

“Oh no, nothing like that love. Mary…” Roy took a deep breath thinking on what to say. “There is a girl in the south field. Just standing here.”

Mary’s voice shifted to curiosity. “A girl?”

“Yeah. She looks like she is about the age of grade schooler or something, but strange. No shoes.”

“Well I would hardly say that no shoes is rare,” Mary tittered.

“Maybe for a summer run or lounging at the lakes, but it is October, Mary. It ain’t exactly summer weather for a young lady in nothing but a school uniform standing in the middle of a wheat field, going around barefoot. This ain’t right.”

“Alright, let me hop in the truck. I will head over.” Mary paused. “Wait. Do you see that?”

“See what?” Roy glanced away from the odd girl and looked over his fields.

“Uh, let’s see, east. In the sky. Is that a meteor?”

Roy leaned forward and looked at the very spot the girl had been looking. A fireball was streaking downwards, leaving a thin trail in the sky behind it.

“I don’t know, Mary. Stay put. I will call you back. Love you.”

“Love you, too. Be careful, Bear.”

Roy put the phone in his overall pocket and stepped back down the tractor. He carefully walked around the edge of the blade enclosure, and looked up at the sky. The object was too far away to hear, but the sense of it grew as it hurtled through the atmosphere.

“What is that?” Roy called to the girl.

“A chariot. Apollo arrives.” The young girl shifted in place, her limbs lengthening and her body growing as she stood a full body length above Roy. “And I am here to welcome him back to my Earth.”

“His sister?” Roy felt extremely confused. Not by the sudden metamorphosis of the young girl to an Amazonian goddess, but by the fact the girl insisted it was her brother arriving by flaming chariot.

“I am Athene. Apollo is my brother, simple man.”

Suddenly, from the east, a fantastic roar could be heard and felt. The ground trembled as if it was about to be taken by a hunter, and the air itself vibrated visibly. The windows on the tractor all shattered, and Roy clamped his hands to the side of his head. There was no explosion. There was no great rending of the earth. One moment, Athena stood alone with Roy in a wheat field in the middle of the eastern plains of Colorado, and the next the two of them were joined by a man that appeared to be made of gold, his skin flickering from the fires of his descent. No chariot or horses were with him, but Roy had felt a moment of seeing great flaming beasts stamping about before the vision was lost as his reality reformed back to what he was expecting.

And Roy was thankful none of the wheat had caught from the sparks.

“My sister, goddess most tempestuous, wise and beautiful,” the golden man spoke aloud as if it was a formal greeting that was an old exchange between the two of them. “I take great joy in seeing you.”

“My brother, god most beloved, intelligent and protective,” Athena bowed her chin slightly, not lowering her silver eyes from the face of her brother. “Welcome to Terra Firma, may it take joy in your return from absence.”

The golden man stopped flickering and started to shift as Athena had, and in a moments, a handsome teenager stood in his place. He was no taller than Roy, but the muscle and tone of the body that shifted under the classical white robes made Roy feel uncomfortable. Roy felt as if he was watching sexuality in its purest form. He had not noticed, but the tall Amazonian had returned to her previous girl-like shape and size.

“Whatever are you wearing, dear sister?” Apollo’s eyes flicked over to Roy, and it was if Roy had erupted from the earth to surprise the god. “And who is this strange man?”

Athena sighed as if annoyed by the merest mention of Roy. “This is the local farmer of these fields, Roy O’Bannon. He claims he is not a simple man, but I am left to wonder. And this, my dear brother, is considered modern clothing. You will need to change.”

Apollo suddenly stood in a flannel and overalls, but still barefoot, and still very radiant. Roy noticed they were an exact copy of his own work clothes. Apollo had not replicated Roy’s favorite hat, choosing to leave the luxurious brown curls in place.

Athena made a face. “By Father’s beard, not that. But it will have to do. Much has changed here since you left. The people believe themselves to be… advanced.”

“As if they ever could. And much has changed since you were exiled dear sister,” Apollo frowned slightly as if the next thing already left a bad taste in his mouth. “Father…”

Roy stood there, preferring to be ignored. He wanted to call Mary, but he knew it would be a bad idea to attract attention. Even in the presence of seemingly benevolent gods, he felt like a caged rabbit within eyesight of a pair of hawks.

Athena made a face that matched Apollo’s. “What of Father?”

“He suffered wounds… wounds that he did not tell us of.”

“Wounds? From the Titanomakhia? Impossible… it was eons ago!” Athena put a finger to her chin. “He could have made and unmade his form countless times since then. Countless times.”

“Father was wounded in a way that we cannot understand. His very spirit was seemingly cut deeply in the battle. He pursued healing every way he could, but his very psyche was brutalized by it. No amount of love, sex, or fury could bring him the healing he so desperately craved. Eons of secret suffering, my dear sister.”

Athena’s eyes went wide. “I have learned something new.”

“As we all,” Apollo sighed releasing his tension finally. “Our Father is dead.”

“Lie,” Athena whispered, her eyes narrowing. “The Ageless cannot die. They can only fade and lack that which gives life. But that is not death, it is merely haunting. They do not cross the river, and they do not wallow within the deepest limits of creation.”

“We do not understand. But death has come to Olympus,” Apollo laid a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “And worse, Tartarus is unstable. We suspect the great chains will fail. The fire of which they are crafted started to wane upon his death.”

Athena’s silver eyes welled with tears, but none fell down her cheeks. “Then why have you come to me? This is surely the end to all things, then.”

Apollo looked nervous, seeming to shrink into the flannel that he wore. “Father left me a message to give to you.”

Athena’s eyes grew hard, and her size swelled again as if preparing for battle. “No. I will not hear it. He abandoned me. He abandoned all of us! Do you not see the truth of this, dear brother? Even you, on the Mountain, all of you that retreated from the waters… earth and it’s children were abandoned. Our creations and works forgotten! The greatest work was sullied by the stains of Father’s ‘wisdom’! He knew not! He knew nothing!”

“You must hear it, my sister. You must, Athene Pallas, most fierce.” Apollo stood taller, his skin was aglow in the morning light. “They are the last words of your Father, and they erupted from his lips as you erupted from his thoughts.”

Roy realized they were not speaking English. He did not know how he knew, nor did he know how he understood anything they were saying. But he stood, a witness to an event that he would never be able to share. He knew that even his wife would think him mad.

Apollo laid both of his hands on Athena’s shoulders. “He said to me: She who came from my thumos, my making, my very ideals… my golden son, find Athene. Tell her this, she will be the one to heal the wound that I never was able. Tell her that she must find Demeter.”

Athena laughed cruelly, shrugging her brother’s hands from her shoulders as she shrank again. “Demeter hid herself before the Fall of Athens. Do you know how impossible it is to find an Elder? Have you ever tried!?”

Apollo looked uncomfortable. “Little sister, you and I have had our differences in the past. I know that we have not been able to share each other’s viewpoints in things that we cared for. Such matters… I know that Artemis was between us in many things. But hear me now, you are not alone in this.”

“You will come with me?” Athena sniffed.

“I will endeavor with you on this quest. We shall find our Aunt.” Apollo rolled his eyes, “One way or the other.”

Athena laughed shallowly at what must have been an inside joke. Roy was very confused at all this, so he said so.

“I am very confused.”

Apollo turned, his skin shifting to gold again, his brown curls starting to flicker as if made of sunlight.

“Roy O’Bannon, you are confused on nothing. You are filled with peace and joy. You are a master of these fields, and your crops will have my blessings for seven by seven seasons for you and your children. You will forget this encounter, and think never of it again. Go now, to your wife, who worries upon the hill, and show her your love.” Apollo grinned like the two of them shared a dirty joke. He added, “Many times. May you and your love be extremely satisfied in such things!”

Roy’s eyes glazed over and he shook his head briefly. “Yes, I should walk back to the house since the tractor seems to be down again. I will have to come check it later, won’t I?”

Athena nodded. “You will, simple man. And you are not… simple. I forgive you.”

Roy started walking through the wheat, his hands brushing their golden tops and he felt the heavy need to kiss his wife like he had when they were teenagers. He grinned and started to jog instead, feeling as if he could run around the world and understand everything he would ever care to.

Roy O’Bannon ran like the wind to his beautiful wife. His kids would not be home for many hours yet, and he thought he could persuade Mary to set aside her chores. Laughter erupted from his chest and he felt truly alive for the first time in years.

The field behind him stood empty, only a lonely tractor sitting among the rows of wheat awaiting harvest.