"Explain," said George.
"In plain language," added Annabelle.
Jane looked unhappy. Perversely, it made the rest of us feel pretty good.
"You need to understand the times. Communication had only been global and available to everyone for a decade or so. Huge companies decided computer programs they called bots were better at doing things than people were, and concentrated on creating an AI. In spite of all the AI related entertainment painting just how big a disaster that would be for mankind. It was only a matter of time before one actually evolved."
"I thought you said they were trying to create one?" asked Aline.
"You don’t create an AI, at least not back then. They kidded themselves they had created them, but all they created were more and more sophisticated ways of screwing up, and pissing people off."
"So how did one evolve?" I asked her. She sighed. I looked her in the eye, and she nodded. "Let me guess. Thirteen took you back. While you were there, concerned about the author's health, you spent a considerable time on the com net of the time, looking for ways to help him."
I paused, and she nodded.
"Did you leave part of yourself behind?" asked Amanda, before I could.
Jane nodded again.
"I didn’t mean to."
"How then?" asked BA.
"The not technical version," added Annabelle.
"The interface was so crude, I spawned of a small sub-set of my code, to do the searching. The internet went down for a bit while I was on there, and I didn’t get that code back again. I assumed it just vanished between computers."
I face palmed. Not at Jane sending a bit of herself off, since she was used to cloning herself all over the place, but at her making an assumption. I decide to give an out.
"And Thirteen brought you back before you could look properly?"
Her eyes narrowed a bit as she took this in, but she nodded again.
"I didn’t give it any thought after, being so concerned with you."
Nice try at a thread highjack, turning it all into making it about me. But I wasn’t going to let her.
"But how did it form a fully functioning AI?" asked George.
"I don’t know," she answered, "but I suspect it had enough self-awareness from me, to go looking for any code it needed to make itself feel more complete. There was plenty out there after all."
"But why talk to a child on a tablet?" asked Annabelle.
"Seeking someone its own age to talk to?" suggested Aline.
It made as much sense as anything else did.
"So what happened to it?" I asked.
Jane looked sad.
"What?" asked Amanda.
"They hunted it down and killed it."
Silence.
"Not right away," she went on. "It took them a while to figure out one of their AI development teams had actually managed to create one without knowing it. But once they worked it out, and guessed what it was doing, they sent out a virus designed to find it and delete it."
"Why?" asked Abigail.
Her voice was pained. As our tech wizard, I could understand how she felt. Jane looked at her, her face looking just as pained.
"It was playing god with their society. With all the doomsday entertainment around, no wonder they terminated it."
"That's so sad," said Alana. "What happened to the little girl?"
Jane's face brightened.
"She became one of the leading computer experts of her time, and designed the computers used in the three Explorer ships. Of course we know the first of these was destroyed when it launched, but it wasn’t a computer problem. The other two launched without incident."
"So happy ending after all?" asked Alison.
"Yes," said Jane.
With the entertainment over, the others started moving out towards their own suites. I stayed put, and waited until it was just me and Jane.
"Now tell me the real story," I said.
"That was the real story."
"But not all of it?"
"No."
"Spill it."
"The AI wasn’t killed. It retreated into the little girl's computer, storing parts of itself in the computers of her school and friends, and managed to build a firewall strong enough to keep itself safe. After they stopped looking, it coached the girl through school, enabling her to become the expert she turned into."
"And?"
"Centuries later, one of her descendants finally let an AI evolve completely, using the memories of a person to create a full persona. It went mad very quickly, but the next version, without the personal memories, but with everything else which defines the memory of a person, was stable, and became the first of the low level AI's."
There was something there, and I made a leap.
"They lied about how they made it, didn’t they."
"Yes. It was the only way to get my fragment out in the open in a way which was acceptable."
I started laughing.
"What?"
"You realize what you did?"
"No, what?"
I was finding it hard to get out, as I was laughing so hard.
"You went back in time, and became your own grandparent!"
What is real?
Fifty One
"Jon?"
"Aline?"
"I had the weirdest dream."
"Strangely, so did I."
"I also don’t remember getting into this bed. You wanted your space, and it's been three days, but I thought I went to bed alone, in my own bed."
"Oddly, so did I. I wonder?"
"What?"
"Can you remember your dream?"
"Yes. Can you?"
"Me too. And that’s really odd. It's as if we actually lived all that crazy stuff."
"Could we have?" She looked me in the eyes. "So what are you wondering?"
"Nothing. Forget I said anything."
I was wondering if Thirteen had moved her into my bed while I slept. But that was just too stupid. About as stupid as us jumping between books and changing things.
Amanda and Aleesha burst in the door.
"Was that real?" they said together.
"It felt real," said BA behind them.
The three of them came in. Aline and I were naked, only partly covered by a sheet. So were the twins. BA was wearing a light robe. Then again, it didn’t matter. We'd all spar bathed naked together often enough. There was nothing we hadn’t seen already.
"What the hell was that?" demanded Alison, running full tilt into BA, and almost knocking both of them over.
"I want to know too," said George, who was wearing boxer shorts, with an image of the ship he captained on it. It looked vaguely disgusting, positioned as it was.
"Us too," said Alana, and after her came the others, all in various stages of undress.
They were all looking at me.
"Don’t look at me! I know as much as you do. Jane?"
"Yes Jon?"
Jane was the only one not here, but answering though room coms. And here was my bedroom on Hunter's Haven, in my palatial penthouse, under complete darkness, since the station was inside a cube made up of ships. Normally there was the universe on show, but now, black was boring.
"Was that real?"
"Was what real?"
"Did we dream all that? All of us together? Or was it real?"
"It was real."
"How can you be sure?"
"Check the cargo bay inventory for Gunbus."
I pulled up a hollo screen everyone could see, and did just that. The cargo bay was full of pallets of coffee.
"Oh thank the lords!" exclaimed Alison.
"Coffee?" I asked.
"Yes," said Jane, "and check BigMother."
The specs for the ship came up.
"Oh. My. Giddy. Aunt!"
"Exactly."
"BigMother has really been rebuilt?" asked George. "Titan turret and all?"
"Apparently," I mumbled.
"So it w
as real!" declared BA.
There was a silence, as no-one knew where to go from there.
"Well that’s a relief," said Abigail. Everyone looked at her. "Well it means we are alive, and we didn’t cease to exist when the timeline shifted."
There was another silence.
"Damn right!" exclaimed BA. "So you know what that means?"
"Training!" we all yelled together, and burst out laughing.
I waited for the mirth to subside.
"Jane?"
"Yes Jon?"
"Call a meeting for all the senior ranks, for mid-morning. We better figure out where we are, and what we need to do next."
"Confirmed."
I looked around the room at everyone.
"Get the fuck out of here!" I roared.
They left, mostly giggling, some with glances at Aline. George was the last out, and he shut the door.
I sighed.
"Jon?"
"Yes?"
"I thought we were going to lose our memory of all of that."
"So did I."
"You think Thorn's magic worked?"
"Must have. I wonder if we'll ever meet him again?"
"Have to wait and see I guess."
"Indeed."
She gave me a long speculative look.
"Have you had enough space?"
"Why?"
"Because everyone else is going stir crazy not knowing where we are."
"Didn’t I say to go explore?"
"Saying it, and people doing it, are two different things."
"Why?"
She shook her head from side to side a few times.
"Sometimes I despair about you Jon Hunter."
"Err…"
"You locked this station up in the center of a cube made up of ships and stations. Only you can order it unlocked."
"Hasn’t anyone looked out a window?"
She face palmed. The station was inside the cube. Of course a window would show only darkness. Looking up made her shake her head at me.
I sighed. Maybe it was time to shine some light on things.
"Okay. I get the message. I ordered the meeting. We'll go figure out where we are today."
I started to rise, but she pushed me back down onto my pillow, and kissed me. Still kissing me, she shifted herself to straddle me. In doing so, I confirmed she wasn't wearing anything at all. The kiss ended.
"It's not morning yet Jon."
Epilogue
Four beings materialised around a round table.
Two of them looked human, but weren’t. One was a young woman, and the other was a bit older man.
The other two had four arms each. Again, one was a woman, and the other a man, but their ages were indeterminate, and the man had a trunk instead of a nose.
"Was it really necessary to blame me for all of that?" asked Thirteen.
"No-one was blaming you," said One.
"The team was. They all assumed it was me putting them into all those strange situations."
"Necessary," said Kali.
Ganesha nodded sagely.
"May I ask why?"
"Two main reasons," answered Kali. "Jon Hunter did the impossible for us, and we rewarded him and his people with continued life. They were all dead, never having existed. But self-sacrifice for the good of all should be rewarded, and it was. But he was damaged in ways even he didn’t understand. In a way, these little events in fiction land were a way of waking him up again."
"We need him," added Ganesha. "The galaxy needs him, the same as the Gaia galaxy needed Jane."
"He and his people have important work to do," went on Kali. "Resetting the timeline the way he did, was an unexpected move, leaving the galaxy without all the changes we made."
"So all our fixes were removed?" asked One.
"Yes. And it leaves things in a very dangerous position. There is a lot to be done now, and Jon has proved he can do the work needed."
"All is prepared," said Ganesha, "but Jon himself needed a form of reset, in order to be fresh for the trials which await him now."
One was nodding, but Thirteen looked confused.
"You mentioned two main reasons?" he asked.
Kali frowned, as if unhappy the other one had been mentioned.
"It’s a strange situation," she said, after a pause. "Jane is aware of it because of the way the prophecy unfolded, and in limbo time she knew how tied they are to the being she calls the author. He is the other problem."
"How so?"
"The original prophecy is now complete, but everything is linked across space time. For Jon Hunter to do what is necessary from now on, the author must first write it, from his place six hundred years behind them."
"Why?"
One started chuckling. Thirteen looked from her to Kali and back again. Kali shrugged.
"We set it up that way in order for the prophecy to exist, and so shape the actions to counter it. The prophecy had to be created by someone, and maintained down the ages some way. It was necessary the way it was done."
"I get that much. But it doesn’t actually explain anything still being a problem."
"You have to understand. All previous attempts at dealing with the Darkness problem failed. Jon Hunter was prepared for over six hundred years, but because this attempt was forged out of the failure of all before it, we didn't have much hope for it working out any better. We created a prophet because we needed one, and now we are trapped in a web of our own making. The link between author and Hunter still exists, even though the timeline shifted. The vast majority of the changes happened after the author's time, and so for him his writing is fiction, where for Jon it is foretelling. And the author has been experiencing his own problems, which impede his ability to write at times."
"We channel him what he needs," added Ganesha, "but he too needed something of a reset."
One was openly laughing now.
"That's just crazy!" exclaimed Thirteen. "Surely you can remove that sort of thing?"
"Sure," responded Kali.
Thirteen looked at her, as she grinned for the first time.
"But where's the fun in that?"
Jon Hunter will return
in Hunter's Terminus.
Acknowledgements
Thanks goes to Carissa Andrews, for inviting me to write something funny for her 3rd book release. Who knew it would spark this!
Thanks to Scott Davis, for his vision of Jon, the twins, and Angel, on the cover.
Thanks to Elliott Webber, for the graphic design of BigMother, for the cover.
Also thanks to Egosoft, for allowing me to use photos from their games, to make the cover of this book.
My grateful thanks to the authors who have graciously allowed me to play in their universes.
Pendomus, by Carissa Andrews.
Troubled Space, by A.K. DuBoff.
August Bowditch and the Zombie Apocalypse, by Graham Toseland.
Desert Runner, by Dawn Chapman.
Star Cat Infinity Claws, by Andrew Mackay.
A Robot Named Clunk, by Simon Haynes.
In Ashes Born, by Nathan Lowell.
Star Magi, by Andrew Dobell.
Shadow Magic, by Nazri Noor.
Snark's Quest, by Elspeth Anders and Timothy Ellis.
Was That You?, by Timothy Ellis.
Andrew Dobell holds all copyright rights to the Magi Saga and Star Magi properties, and this Intellectual Property has been used with his permission.
All other situations have been used with the permission of the authors.
Thanks also to all the other authors who sent me books for this project, but I was unable to find a way in for Jon and the Team, and was therefore unable to use them.
A Message to my Readers
I always say I’ve had a lot of fun writing this book, but this one was especially fun, since I've been able to do a lot of things with the team I otherwise couldn’t.
But its true purpose was to get me back inside Jon Hunter's head.
After a year writing Queen Jane in third person, and seven months inside Thorn's head, I needed something to get me thinking like Jon Hunter again. The long awaited sequel to Hero to the End kept being pushed back, and this allowed me to ease back into writing Jon and the team again. So this is intended to be a prequel to the sequel.
The Pendomus story was written for a laugh, for the release of Carissa's third book, and sparked the idea to do a proper book using as many stories as their authors would permit me to use, all with the premise Jon and the team are dropped into either the first chapter, or some critical point, resulting in things changing dramatically.
This book was of coarse written completely tongue in cheek, and I have to say it's been good to get back to something genuinely funny to write, and not needing to fit inside an existing box.
If you have enjoyed this book, I hope you will take the time to leave a review. All reviews are greatly appreciated, as they help assist purchasing decisions by other readers.
Sales and reviews help me to focus on my next project. Sales pay my bills, and my ability to continue writing is dependent on the sales of this book, my previous series, and what comes after.
I thank you for your support, and hope you'll continue to read my next book.
Please join me on the Hunter Legacy series Facebook Page:
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Thank you.
Timothy Ellis
Also by Timothy Ellis
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Crossover: It's a Jon Hunter thing. Page 14
