“What is this?” Finn asked. “This isn’t the duel.”
The Seer gave a faint shrug. “Consider this a brief intermission – the others won’t even notice that you’re gone.” As she noted his sour expression, she continued. “If your opponents choose to stack the deck against you, then you need to keep an ace up your sleeve? Fight fire with fire? Pick your favorite metaphor, the result is the same. If they choose to cheat, then we should feel free to bend the rules ourselves.”
She gestured at the table where she had given him his reading. “Or simply look at this as a brief respite. I am just asking that you sit and chat with me for a while.”
Finn hesitated. He doubted the god had good intentions or that she was truly on his side. As Abbad had said, individual motivations could be tricky, and it wasn’t clear what the god hoped to gain from him. Yet, Finn also supposed he had little choice. She was right that he wasn’t anxious to get back to the duel, so he reluctantly slid into the seat. He eyed the stack of nearby tarot cards suspiciously. However, the Seer made no move to pick them up.
Instead, the fire goddess leaned forward and inspected Finn carefully. The scrutiny felt invasive, in no small part because he knew the goddess was capable of rifling through his thoughts as easily as she was able to examine his body. Her fingers touched at his wrist, shifting the fabric back and revealing the guild tattoo on his left arm and the cards and roiling mass of flames that now adorned his right.
“You have come a long way since you first entered my tent,” the Seer murmured. “You have struggled and overcome. Found challenges in this world, unlike anything in your own.” Her eyes centered on his, and he saw a glimmer of flame in her irises. “For a time, I felt your passion spring free and unbridled, burning with a warmth and brightness that I have not seen in ages.”
Her expression flickered, the muscles around her eyes tightening. “Yet I sense doubt now. Hesitation. Passion muddled and confused.”
Finn ground his teeth together. “You dropped me in some sort of magical prison, which is pretty obvious despite Nefreet’s fancy speeches. Now I’m participating in a deathmatch and have been forced to kill others – brutally. If that didn’t bother me, I’d probably be a sociopath.”
The Seer watched him for a moment before shaking her head. “That isn’t it – at least, not entirely. I see in your mind that the mages explained to you the nature of fire magic. It is about passion. For many, their passions are mundane. Family. Loved ones. Hobbies. A career.
“However, in others, those passions are more nuanced. More difficult to pin down.”
She inspected Finn as though expecting him to speak, but he stayed silent.
“I initially thought that the act of creation alone would be enough to illuminate the void in your soul. Indeed, it sparked a flame, which continued to build and grow – at least for a time. It began to blaze so brightly that others strove to touch it, to stamp it out, to steal it for their own.”
Her eyes flashed. “Yet that flame has dwindled and faltered since then, and it is now barely an ember of its former glory. That means I was incorrect. You want something more.”
The Seer leaned forward, her eyes glowing with a soft orange light. “What is it that you want, Finn? What is the secret passion you hold close to your chest like a jealous lover?”
Inadvertently, Finn’s thoughts immediately turned to Rachael, her face hovering in his mind’s eye. There was a reason there was a hole in his heart; her loss had put it there. However, he forcefully shoved aside that thought. It was impossible. Only pain could be found by walking down that path.
“Ahh,” the Seer murmured, leaning back and watching him. “You set your eyes on the heavens and would attempt to steal the stars. Your wife. A lost love. Is that what you need to feel complete? To give you purpose?”
“You can’t offer me that,” Finn snapped, unsettled by how easily the woman had picked up on his surface thoughts.
The Seer tilted her head, her eyes flashing again. “Can’t I?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Finn saw something settle on the table. It was a simple coffee mug covered in ones and zeros. The cup was familiar. One of his favorites, actually. It was the mug that Rachael always brought him when he was lost in a new project.
A hand touched his face then, skin sliding against his own, and he felt warm breath in his ear. “You’re almost at the Finn-ish line,” a voice whispered.
Finn froze, his mind faltering. Rachael had always said that to him – his wife, a hopeless fan of puns. It had actually been part of her wedding vows. As they stood in a field in the middle of nowhere beside that silly dilapidated barn, she had told him, their friends, and their family that he was her “Finn-ish line.” She had even managed to keep a straight face – sort of. That had morphed over the years, becoming her mantra when he was sucked into a new project.
Tantalizing hope bloomed in his stomach, mixing with the dread certainty that this wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. Finn turned to find Rachael hovering beside him, smiling and her eyes shining. His heart lurched. Before he knew what he was doing, Finn reached for her. Yet as his fingers touched her skin, they passed through her cheek, and the image broke apart into streamers of smoke, blowing away.
Finn was forced to choke back at the lump in his throat. It took him a few seconds to muster the words. “Why are you torturing me like this?” he finally croaked.
“I am not torturing you,” the Seer replied in a calm voice. “I have the power to give you what you want. You would like for your wife to be returned to you, no?”
Finn glared at her, anger flaring in his chest. “No one has the power to return the dead. I don’t know how you picked out that memory, but that wasn’t my wife.”
“Not yet,” the Seer said firmly. “But it could be.”
Finn froze, confused by the certainty in the goddess’ voice and doubt pushing back at the anger that bubbled in his chest. “What? What are you talking about?”
“Do you remember how you built your last creation in your own world?” the Seer asked. “The one that cost you your heart?” she whispered.
Finn’s brow furrowed. His last project had been to design the AI that ran the autonomous driving program for Cerillion Logistics. In many ways, that had been his life’s work – a culmination of decades of training.
The project itself had seemed absurd at first. Finn had been tasked with designing software that could handle billions of decisions in real-time, with an infinite variety of variables – weather, speed, visibility, weight, cargo, traffic density – just to name a few. With so many moving parts, the AI needed to be able to make judgment calls that no programmer could possibly anticipate. It needed to be flexible, dynamic, and self-improving.
In short, he needed to design a human mind in a digital space. He had spent years and countless sleepless nights with little progress.
“Do you remember what finally pushed you over the edge?” the Seer murmured. “That spark – that moment of inspiration.”
Rachael. Finn felt his heart pounding in his ears.
His wife was a doctor – had been a doctor, he corrected himself. She had given him the push he needed. He remembered the moment vividly. He had been pacing his office, frustrated at another failed attempt when Rachael came in. She had sat with him, listening to him rant about how the project was impossible. She had stayed silent the entire time, and when he finished, she had posed a single question.
“If you’re trying to design something that works like a human mind, why not start there?”
She had asked this as if it were obvious. And maybe, to her, it had been. Yet it had started him down a bottomless rabbit hole of research and discovery. Between Rachael and the company’s pull, Finn had gotten permission from her hospital to use their MRI and imaging equipment. And when the moment came to choose someone to examine, Rachael had even volunteered herself.
They had spent months – years – in that lab, monitoring every aspect of her brain
activity. They had collected audio samples of her voice, transcribed and recorded the electrical signals in her hippocampus and cerebral cortex as she had explored her own memories, and had forced her to solve progressively more challenging puzzles and tasks while they monitored her.
And the result had been a new type of AI controller – the first of its kind. Finn had modeled it using Rachael’s mind, her memories, and her passion.
“You built something extraordinary in her image,” the Seer murmured. More softly, “Perhaps that is why it hurt so badly when she passed – or rather how she passed.”
Finn looked away, rubbing at his eyes. The invention Rachael had helped him build had ended up killing her. Maybe the Seer was right. Maybe that was why he had fought so hard to get the program canceled – even if it was far too late. There was a sort of macabre irony to how those events had unfolded.
“Why are you dredging this up?” Finn asked, his voice cracking. He swallowed hard against the sudden lump in his throat. He preferred to keep these memories buried.
“Because you know what that invention was capable of – its true potential,” the Seer replied. She waved at the tent around them. “How do you think this world was created?”
Finn stared at her – this digital goddess who was spelunking through his mind as though she was flipping through the pages of a picture book. He saw the way her body language was smooth, flawless really; her dialogue was dynamic. Finn knew that if he attempted to administer a Turing Test, he likely couldn’t tell the difference between the Seer and a living, breathing person. He had picked up on these details the moment he had started playing, but he hadn’t appreciated the obvious deduction...
“They used my AI,” Finn gasped, disbelief coloring his voice. He should have known. Of course George had taken what Finn had built and iterated upon it. Finn could even guess who he had used to work on the project.
“Indeed,” the Seer replied with a nod and a knowing look, waiting for him to connect the dots. “So, you know what I am offering.”
Finn understood what the Seer was saying, even if he couldn’t truly believe it. If this world was created using the original AI kernel that he had modeled using Rachael’s mind, then his wife might still be here – at least her core memories and thought processes.
“I have the power to bring her back,” the goddess said. “Not a ghost or an illusion, but Rachael herself.”
Finn just stared at the Seer, his mind awash in confused chaos. “It-it wouldn’t be her, though,” he retorted, struggling with the idea. “It would be a ghost, a carefully crafted simulation. It wouldn’t be Rachael.”
The Seer laughed then. “Why ever not? If the memories are the same, the behavior identical, what is the difference?”
There was some truth to the Seer’s words, but they still felt… wrong. “What about her soul?” Finn demanded. “That wouldn’t be the same woman I married.”
“Can you define the soul?” the Seer asked. “Weigh it? Measure it? Even begin to describe what it is? Show me your own soul. Point it out for me.”
Finn struggled to frame a response but came up empty-handed.
“You can’t,” the Seer continued, her eyes flashing as she leaned forward. “In the absence of that definition, the soul could be anything. What’s to say that her ‘soul’ then isn’t merely a function of all the things that make Rachael herself. Her memories. Her wants. Her hopes. Her fears. The nervous gesture she made when she was worried. The way she always double and triple-checked the locks on the doors before you left the house.
“You have seen this world now – tasted it. Can you say without doubt or hesitation that the residents of this world aren’t ‘real’ by any definition of the word?” the Seer demanded.
“It’s not the same,” Finn muttered, his eyes dropping to the floor.
How could he know that the AI – that the residents – truly felt emotion? That they weren’t merely acting?
A heavy silence hung in the air as Finn tried vainly to gather his own thoughts. They kept returning to one moment, that instant when his entire world had changed.
“The day that Rachael died, I remember the weightlessness,” Finn murmured, speaking slowly as though feeling out the memory. “The terror of being trapped in a metal can with the person I held most dear in the entire world. I knew I couldn’t run, or flee, or fight. That sense of hopeless, inescapable dread is something I will always remember. I watched as my heart was ripped away from me. I realized then with perfect clarity that my kind… we all die and we die alone.
“I knew true fear then.”
Tears budded at the corners of Finn’s eyes as he raised them to look at the Seer. “As bad as that was, you know what was worse? Afterward. The pain. The loss. The lack of control. I felt… I felt lost, and I wanted so badly to end it. To leave that world and just give up. You know what held me back? That same fucking fear. I was too damn terrified to take that leap.
“I was too weak.”
Finn was glaring at her now – his gaze insistent and demanding. “Can you tell me that you understand that? That fear of dying? That inescapable terror that clutches at your heart and holds you paralyzed? Because that’s part of what it means to be real. To be alive.
“Can you show me that you understand that feeling?”
The Seer looked away from Finn then, and the world seemed to stutter – just a faint flash, so quick that Finn almost thought he had imagined it. When the Seer looked back at him, her expression had changed subtly. She looked different in a way that was hard for Finn to identify. Her gaze held an almost-palpable weight, sorrow lingering there.
“I can understand what you’re saying,” she offered quietly. “I can appreciate my own mortality. Yet the challenge is indeed proving to you that I can.”
She continued, holding his eyes. “What tears or theatrics or words could I offer that would show you that the emotion was genuine? No matter my behavior, you could claim that it was an illusion – a perfect lie. You are asking me to prove the impossible.
“But let us reframe the question. How do you know I’m not real?”
Finn felt himself floundering to come up with a rebuttal. He had experienced similar misgivings over the last few weeks, and that was partly why he hesitated at participating in this last fight. He didn’t relish the idea of killing a resident. Despite his own reservations, the faintest flicker of hope bloomed in his chest.
Could it be possible?
Finn shook his head. He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. And maybe that was the goddess’ point.
“Well, consider my offer. I can bring your wife back. I can bring Rachael back,” the Seer declared.
Finn let out a harsh laugh then. “Brutus and others call you the Crone. He warned me of making a deal with you. He said that nothing comes without a price. Even if I believe that it was possible, what would this resurrection cost me?”
The Seer’s eyes flashed again, now glowing with a soft orange light. “I wish to reclaim my place in this world. To do that, I need an avatar. Someone who can build the pyre and set it aflame – that can inspire passion in others. The first step is to win this competition and take control of Lahab.”
She grimaced. “Yet you aren’t ready. Until now, you have been working with self-imposed handicaps. Your doubt, your despair, and your self-recrimination still weigh you down. You must decide to set down those burdens. To embrace your passion. Embrace this world. Launch yourself into the flames with abandon and let the fire consume you completely – let them forge you into something new.
“Stop holding back.”
Finn could only stare at her, feeling himself falter under the force of her words. In many ways, he knew she was right. In those moments where he had given himself over to his mana, he had done extraordinary things – and he had reveled in the sense of freedom and power that had come with those accomplishments.
Yet it also scared him. And, more insidious, he felt as though he didn’t deserve it. Maybe the
pain was his punishment for failing Rachael.
“As you did before, you’ll have to decide for yourself whether you are willing to take the leap,” the Seer continued, her voice not unkind. “If you wish to accept my offer, you need only give yourself over to the flames – body and soul. I will know.”
Finn simply sat there in silence, unable to move or speak. He heard the legs of the Seer’s chair rustle the thick carpet, and he soon felt a hand rest on his shoulder, comforting and warm. As he stared at the ground, Finn saw flames beginning to ignite along the floor around him – the start of a blaze that he knew would soon consume him.
“I will send you back now. Think upon my offer,” the Seer said.
Then the fires enveloped Finn. He willingly sunk into their warm embrace, the world fading from view and soon replaced with merciful, dark oblivion.
Chapter 41 - Blazing
The world lurched back into focus far sooner than Finn would have preferred. He found himself in a frigid field, brisk wind snapping at his robes. His feet sank several inches into thick snow, and he could already feel an inadvertent shiver shake him as the cold sank into his bones. Ridges of ice and snow lingered on either side of the field, creating a shallow, makeshift valley. With practiced movements, Finn immediately began casting Magma Armor. The response was more instinct than conscious thought at this point.
Which was good, because Finn was having difficulty focusing. Between the conversations with Abbad and Julia – and the offer now posed by the Seer – his mind was a chaotic whirlwind of emotion and half-formed thoughts.
“So, we meet at last,” a voice called out.
Finn raised his eyes to find Khiana standing in the snow a few dozen paces from him, his arms crossed, and his posture relaxed. The water elemental had already risen into the air, assuming a vantage point above the field.
For his part, Finn wasn’t certain how to respond. Should he say something snarky? Simply attack? He just felt confused. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to fight.
Awaken Online: Ember (Tarot #1) Page 42
