by E. L. Aldryc
“So they’ll use you,” she said.
Her tone of voice, so heartbroken at the very uttering of the words, gave Elodie a calling to explore something in the current. She relaxed. It still worked, even without the drug. There was a vision there, and Elodie needed to pursue it. Something told her it was important.
“You’re being dramatic. I’ll see you at home,” she said and walked back inside, hoping that the lead wouldn’t get lost. Soraya didn’t follow. That wasn’t her style and exactly what Elodie needed. She went into the first empty meeting room with an open door. The current wanted to show her something. And if she could really use it in the blackout, this would tell.
Elodie resisted the urge to be afraid. She dove in and felt the lead offering a path. With her luck, it was going to be a series of numbers again. As she got closer, the sensation got stronger. Elodie stopped when she saw that a space formed around her, embodying the sensation. This was it. Millions of fragments in the current connected to deliver a full space, and in it, something new. This was a proper vision. Not just a remote viewing. This was something that either would happen or already had. And she got access to it.
A perspective stabilised, and Elodie recognised it—the Archive, and even the time. This was recent, during the last two weeks before the launch. Rather than return home, Soraya had spent her free time with Charlotte, an AI custodian that she delivered from early conception into consciousness.
Charlotte was half-materialised. Strings of light fell from the ceiling and felt the air around Soraya, reading information sent to her. Speech took too much time. Those who worked with AI for longer periods of time learned to let tola apps closer to their thought processes so they could talk to the AI on a level that was obscenely close to telepathy. A fact Rising Dawn found hard to swallow and acknowledge.
This went on for a few seconds. With Elodie’s luck, she’d just picked up on the most uneventful vision ever.
From Soraya’s occasional nodding, a reflex she never could quite shake when she spoke to the AI through tola, Elodie gathered it could be a test.
“No,” Soraya said verbally and slowly pushed away the light strings that filled the air around her. But the AI did not obey. Instead, the air wobbled and it pushed closer. With a speed that no material being possessed, the light strings moved towards her head, as if to pierce through, straight to the brain. Elodie panicked, and as a result, the whole picture shook and destabilised. She forced herself to calm down; it was just a vision. Nothing could be changed now. This was the first time she saw an AI act… assertively.
Soraya took a deep breath, and with some sort of command, she forcefully pushed away the whole assortment of Charlotte’s appendices. She raised her hand, and the light strings followed its movement. They stopped and became brighter, as if there was energy culminating with them frozen in place. The whole antechamber of the Archive, a room that could easily fit a hundred people, had light emitting from every particle. Soraya stood still with one hand in the air, looking unconcerned by the increasing luminosity. Like water, just before boiling, everything started buzzing and vibrating from one hyped molecule to another.
“Stop kicking off,” she said.
And Elodie understood. The AI couldn’t move; it was being kept in place. By the tola network. The same nanos that enabled the AI to exist also trapped them and made them subjective to the will of the only beings who can control them: humans. It was something they were always told, but seeing it was another thing entirely. The balance seemed frail, like two forces facing each other, one of which was nearly infinite, and the other exploiting a fluke in the laws of the universe. After seeing this, only a crazy person would ever want to give AIs access to the sublime.
The show stopped, and only a concentration of light strings and a distortion on the ceiling remained.
Soraya spoke in the direction of it, now without the interaction of the strings that hovered in the middle.
“Don’t do that ever again! Not in front of me, and especially not in front of anybody else!” she said, perambulating. She checked tola density and disabled all recording features. Then she used an admin code and wiped off all captured data from the last hour.
“Progress should be shared. We’re instructed to report any new skills that we acquire.”
Soraya interrupted the AI.
“They will use you, and they will kill you, do you understand that?” she said. There was gravity in her voice. More than Elodie has seen her use unironically.
“Maybe,” Charlotte responded.
“Your progress—our progress—has hit an obstacle.” Soraya kept going. “I told you. This, it’s all misunderstood. And that’s not your fault, it’s mine. For now, we need to operate in privacy. We continue. But until I find a way out of this, I ask you to trust me. You revised the data. The new atmosphere is hostile.”
“I trust you. But how else will we—”
The vision ended. The current dispersed the room, and Elodie was hit by its full force, surprised at the sudden ending. She tried to get a sense of how to return to the root reality, but the way back wasn’t as easy as the way forward. She concentrated on the root reality and began to crawl through, relying on her determination to keep herself sane and together as the millions of futures passed through her. She was not frightened anymore. This was simply annoying. She’d come far.
She woke up on the same chair, and it did seem it was still day. It had only been twenty minutes. That was progress.
Was that an AI doing something it shouldn’t? And was that Soraya encouraging it, and more, asking it to keep it secret?
This was the sort of thing that she should tell someone about. AIs were extremely dangerous; everyone knew that. But as the AI trainer, was it possible that Soraya saw this sort of thing all the time and dealt with it? Was it possible that it was all taken out of context? And why was it so easy to get to the vision, considering it was in the Particle Lab?
Also, Soraya clearly had the codes to wipe out data from security. Did that mean that more people had it? Was all of this a hint at a foul play?
This needed to be handled carefully. Which meant she needed to get Soraya on her side first and hear out an explanation, which would take some trust, otherwise she’d just lie again. One fire at a time.
A Short Ode to Failure and its Derivatives
Friday, 28 June 2363
The atmosphere inside Rising Dawn was dreadful. Everyone apart from the telepaths was bored and confused. Whole wings were empty or filled with essential staff that didn’t know what to do with themselves, and even the smallest inconveniences derailed them completely. People who’d spent a lifetime relying on their abilities could barely function.
Soraya would have loved it.
The Institute was at a standstill. No one knew what the future held, or why the past turned out the way it did. It was a scary feeling, not having insight. Humanity must have been terrified before the gifted.
Elodie waited at the stairs, eyes on the Particle Lab, looking for a familiar figure to re-emerge. Soraya hadn’t shown up at home yesterday and refused to answer messages. But here she was, right on time for her elevenses.
“No time, I have a meeting with your boss,” Soraya said coldly as Elodie waited with coffees for both.
“Our boss,” Elodie handed her a cup. She couldn’t resist. “And you’ll be late, because I scheduled quality time.”
Soraya reluctantly accepted the offering and sat on the steps that led into the admin building. High maintenance, but Elodie had this.
“I’m not going to change my mind. You can have any relationship with the gifted you want, but that’s it. I’ll have mine. I’m needed, respected, and I know that my community has my best interests in mind. I just want to keep you in the loop.”
“They finally found something you can do, and they’re collecting on the debt you owe them for bringing you in. That’s what it is,” Soraya replied.
“I asked them to. No one manipulated me
, and it was my decision.” Elodie tried reason, knowing it definitely wouldn’t work.
“Not right now it isn’t. Now when they’ve tampered with you on the deepest level possible and then asked you to trust them over everyone else, even their own rules. They want you to break the rules of training, Elodie. That’s messed up even for Rising Dawn.”
“I am only in training on paper,” Elodie replied.
Soraya shook her head and took another sip. Arguing with people when they went quiet was the worst.
“You don’t understand,” Elodie argued. “I can break the blackout all by myself. I don’t need anything. And if I can do that, then we’ve arrived at our final destination. I’m still me. And I’m gifted. And nothing changes apart from the fact that maybe the Institute has two emergency contacts at our address, not just one.”
This was a public spot. Questioning Elodie’s ability like that in the open would mean there was more to the story.
“I just think it’s not healthy. It tells your superiors exactly how to manipulate you.”
“I’ll be careful,” Elodie said. There was probably a grain of truth in there.
“Good,” Soraya said, like the debate was diplomatically closed. Elodie could empathise. It was a stressful time. Soraya asked cautiously, “So, you tried to repeat the result? Anything interesting?”
Elodie had a bad feeling about opening that can of worms right there.
“Nothing important. But it worked. And it will work again.”
“Great progress. You’d make Nada Faraji jealous.” Soraya smiled. “Next thing you’ll be doing your thesis on which rat started the great plague.”
“Trust me, by the time I do my thesis, I’ll be doing it on your mysterious biography.”
“You’ll be waiting for that one for quite a while,” she replied. “Especially since my career has now been reduced to my little AI traineeship.”
“And how are they doing? Making progress?” Elodie enquired just as innocently.
“There is no progress,” Soraya replied, sipping on coffee. “My job is to keep them complacent and understanding of their role in the current human society, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Not even a hint for Elodie. She was good.
“I’m curious,” Elodie said. “I might come and visit you in the Particle Lab later. You can show me more.”
“Oh, the admin,” Soraya replied in exaggerated pain. “I’ll need to arrange for a special gifted permit.”
Tammy’s office wasn’t where she usually took meetings. She always told Elodie it was important to establish boundaries. There was something to say there about the gifted and guarding their personal lives. They knew best that sharing a little could help those like them learn a lot. It never hit Elodie before. Everyone was friendly and empathetic. But everyone was private.
Elodie had always been welcome inside Tammy's office. It was a wordless trust that she’d been given on the first day she joined. She even got to bring a friend that one time, however well that went.
Oh, to be like Tammy and have her stuff together.
Sometimes it was hard to believe that she shared the burden that threatened to crush her just as it did Elodie. A-class paragnosts. Sisters in arms.
Tammy’s face was covered by the smooth waterfall of her long hair. She was writing with her hands, a pretentious habit, but apparently good for the two hemispheres, especially the gifted ones.
“Sit down with me,” Tammy said, her voice resting at ninety-eight percent zen. She rose up from her calligraphy with a disheartened sigh. “I completely forgot how boring this world is.”
Elodie nodded, compelled to agree.
“Sorry to pull you in like this. The universe has a path for everything and everyone, and it’s not always clear where it’s heading. That’s the beauty of discovery. Of being. One moment you’re seeing how viable a whole transcription of Aristotle's Comedy is and what possible outcomes the publication would have, and the next you got nothing. I’ve never been out for this long. Not since I was sixteen,” Tammy said. Elodie had never seen her like this. The gifted didn’t get agitated, especially not Tammy Two Feathers.
“Your day been fine?” Tammy asked. It felt weird. The gifted didn’t ask each other about their day. They knew.
“Yes,” Elodie replied.
“I hate that question,” she said. Tammy? Hate?
“Just a little longer,” Elodie tried. She figured it was a commiserating scenario. The gifted had been in blackout for a couple of days only. And look at the state of them.
“Don’t be stupid, Elodie,” Tammy said sharply. “It finally makes sense.”
“What does?”
“The way you are. How we haven’t been able to get you into working order for so long. It was planned.”
Elodie squinted in doubt. Another theory about why it had taken every single gifted in history less time to function?
“Do you know that Nada Faraji was like us?” Tammy lowered her voice.
“She was a natural A-class. The only one,” Elodie replied.
“Nope, she was only a natural paragnost. Seeing the future was what the augmentation was for. Other gifted foretold that her powers as a paragnost were already at max, so that was a way to get stronger. And it did. We don’t broadcast it to the public though.”
Interesting.
“Why not?”
“The gifted at the beginning of Rising Dawn were sceptical of a leader who needed an augmentation. And of augmentation in general. They believed a true leader should have been a full natural, which is silly. But it taught us that simpler is better. Nada Faraji refused the politics, spending her time travelling the timelines, exploring paths to the Universe of Infinite Wonder. Foreseeing dangers. Trying to find the path of the least resistance.”
“And she never wrote it down? What’s the point then?” Elodie asked.
“She did something better. She left clues,” Tammy said.
“Clues?”
“The more you dive into the current of the futures, the more you see how vast it is. Staying afloat without it ripping your consciousness apart is the easy part. Advanced operations in it, like what Nada Faraji did for us—that’s when it starts getting truly inspiring. She followed through millions of futures, selected the best outcomes of the best outcomes and connected them together into a string of events that must happen if we want to get to the Universe of Infinite Wonder. The gifted are the only compass. A-class paragnosts, to be precise. We are the only ones who can see it because we can see the past, the future, and everything in between. We know when we start losing it. We know when we get closer.”
“And you see these?”
“Not always. The way Seravina handled things was—how do I put it gently?—stable. She didn’t like radical progress. May she find peace.”
Elodie searched Tammy’s face. Someone had deleted the log. Did she know why the scene of the accident was tampered with?
“Did you ever find out why that log was deleted?” she asked. She could trust Tammy. Her record of telling the truth was impeccable.
“I can assure you, Augustina is looking into that. If any foul play was involved, we’ll find out. Until then, let’s focus on the future. There’s a lot of work to be done,” she said.
Should Elodie have told her of the odd AI vision she had? Or the word that kept popping up? With all this honesty, holding back secrets felt like the wrong thing to do.
“Here’s what we can do,” Tammy continued. “We can lead research to the right information, at the right time, to ensure the right future. Save time and ease decisions. Make decisions aligned with where we want to be. As you discover more of your potential, you’ll find the beacons. You’ll feel her presence in them. It’s the ultimate honour.”
“If Nada Faraji was so good at telling the future, how come she didn’t know she was going to be killed?” Elodie asked.
“Of course she did. She was fine with it. She did what she needed to do. It
was the best possible outcome,” Tammy replied.
“That’s a big sacrifice to make.”
“Sometimes it’s the smallest things that make a difference. You know, Seravina wasn’t going to hire you when you applied. But there was something about you. I saw your name. I saw your application. I knew we needed you to get to the Universe of Infinite Wonder. And I knew you’d come of your own volition when you were ready.”
That was huge. Tammy had made sure she was hired because she had a feeling that she was connected to their path?
“And you said you experienced one of these visions when you met me?” Elodie asked. She knew Tammy must have had plans for her before she even took the test, but this deeply? Involving Nada Faraji of all people? Imagining one of the Five going through the trouble of recruiting Elodie? These two days just kept getting better.
“Think.” Tammy noticed the scepticism and amped up the explanation. “We recruit a new A-class paragnost. She struggles.”
Accurate.
“She struggles precisely long enough to start improving when the Institute needs her most. But she’s still not bound. She’s not stabilised. She’s still far from being aligned with the currents. You’re not using your powers; your powers are using you. This is why the blackout can’t hurt you. I’ve thought this through. It’s the only way it makes sense.”
“You’re saying this was the only way to save the Institute?” Elodie imagined that she was following.
“Precisely. You were recruited at the right time, with the right mind to be right here, right now, to do this.”
No pressure.
“Which means tomorrow you won’t need anything. Nada Faraji will open the door for you to the precise vision you need to get us out of the blackout. And you will, because you need to do it. There are no uncertainties when the stakes are this high. You’re the only one who can stop this, hon. And your people are slowly going crazy in the blackout.”
