by E. L. Aldryc
“You’re all getting it wrong!”
Elodie was getting frantic. Nothing came out the way it was supposed to.
Above her, some parts of the diagnostic wall started to show warning colours.
“Calm down, hon, I don’t want you stressed. We can talk about this again later.”
Elodie felt as if she’d taken the passenger seat to an angrier self, one that didn’t let people belittle her, begged people to understand.
She reached deep into the vaults of the knowledge that surrounded her and let it all out.
“Afuan awareness is a greater than self-awareness that could be found in an AI that is not only aware of its own existence, but is also able to understand and work in the meta-meaning-making capacity, which is the basis for the understanding of sublime forces, normally outside of AI’s grasp, and are forbidden to be explained to them. Reports 33YY-2364, 33RY-2364, and 34TG-2364 consistently show traces of reasoning and thought organisation that is almost identical to the patterns of thought described by Jomaphie Afua in ‘Thesis 5’. The AI that demonstrates in these reports is Charlotte. In reports 23RT-2335, 23HL-4532, and 23HL 4545, the Particle Lab AI, Norbi also displays the same kinds of behaviour and reasoning. Secondly, in the Particle Lab, there is a structure that can only be revealed through the sequence of seven rooms designed around a spiral golden ratio sequence and access to the first will only appear if you ask Norbi for a song called ‘Girl Don’t Tell Me’ by The Beach Boys, when the minute marker is an odd number. I can provide the other passwords that will let you see the months of hidden research that planned to create a sublime consciousness within the AI. Access through it will take you to the centre constructed to train and manipulate this AI into changing the way they think completely. You can run these tests by Dr Lian, and he will confirm the truth of the statement within twenty-six minutes and will also confirm at precisely 15:31 that Afuan awareness is not something that the AI itself can hide. It has to be hidden by somebody else, and that somebody else is Soraya Gourrami, the person who has been training these two entities for the past months to break all rules imposed on AI control. Most of the footage has been hidden, but if you give me fifteen minutes, I will give you the exact timestamps on where there are traces of the activity. Also, when asked to return a value of yes or no to a question, the AI will not lie, so ask them. Ask them!”
“Ask them! Ask them! Ask them!” she shouted, and with each repetition her mouth became heavier, and she felt herself losing control over her physical body. The world dissolved. Not again.
The True Culling
After a long time, Elodie was dreaming, and she dreamt of Norbi.
“If you don’t write an equation, I cannot return a value.”
“If you don’t ask a question, I cannot give an answer.”
The AI didn’t have emotional baggage. It didn’t fear irrationally. It had no fear of asking, and she shouldn’t have it either.
“What is the path to the Universe of Infinite Wonder?”
The dreams ended abruptly, and Elodie was in the current. She felt warmth. And presence. There was another person in there, asking themselves the same question she was. And she was lovely. She was just like Tammy. She got it. She was just like Elodie. The flavour of the question was strong, and there was a path for it. A complicated one. Elodie could see events connected to others, splitting and coming back together, but the main vein of happening remained, all for Elodie to see. That universe. Elodie could feel it in the distance. And she wanted to get there.
She looked back, seeing her past, and saw her own thread of gold, following to this very moment. Her path merged with a hundred others, as they marched on and some away from—the only beautiful future. And somewhere in the threads, a sweet, ancient scent of a soul of an explorer. Nada Faraji. Looking into this future from the past, seeing her.
And looking down, she saw the many ways in which she could have failed. Swallowed by the futures until her self disappeared. Weakness. In all that darkness, her mind jumped to the name she feared to even think about now, without explanation. Her memory dropped back to that pale vision and Soraya there, so methodical and concentrated on creating the object of disgust, devoted to its creation like it was art made from the depths of her soul. That’s what scared her. The pride when it grew, the contained joy that was felt in that image.
Who was she? Why had she come to the Institute, and why did she want it blinded?
The words come back. First quietly, then closer and closer, like something was looking for her, and found her. It approached.
“Hope is the horror in which the worlds clash, the mind that resists, it risks the awkward scratch-and! The Sight of it, pleased to meet strangers, filled with mixed scents and gifts of real dan-ger.”
The sickness returned. It touched her. It was touching her again.
Elodie felt her heart pumping way down there in her body. The escape. She woke up in the middle of the night. The room was quiet and pitch dark. Her ears were ringing.
When she moved to feel for an interface of any kind, a light orb next to her turned on, and she requested the window to show the real outside. It was 03:55, and there were only a few people still working. In the distance, the other twenty-six hills of Madilune emitted light shows from their moving buildings that breathed with the pulse of the city-state.
Her mind was fuzzy; they must have given her more meds.
A call was coming through, and Elodie took it without checking its origin.
“I suspended her for now.”
Tammy was in her own house, sitting at a dining table with a cosy living room in the back. She spoke quietly, maybe not to wake up other residents of her household. In a brief thought, Elodie found it strange. She never considered the possibility of Tammy being able to live with other people.
“I’ll weigh the different options tomorrow.”
She seemed freshly woken up, possibly anticipating that Elodie would be awake. How many other things was she anticipating? Did Tammy have her entire month planned out and was simply ticking all the boxes of their conversations?
“Why? Didn’t I, you know, confirm any of the things I said?” Elodie asked eagerly.
“We pressed on with the interrogation. She agreed to a one-to-one with Augustina. You were right. She meddled with the AI. We know that. We can fire her. But I was there, Elodie, and I really wanted to prove you were right about the rest. It’s just—it simply didn’t happen. Her time is accounted for, and she has no altered memories, hidden or otherwise.”
“So my vision was a lie?”
“I don’t know. You were in a unique situation. And you were also drugged, I’m being told. So who knows what you saw.”
When Tammy said it, it really sounded like it should have the first time she was offered. As an absolute no. The first regret.
“I’m sorry,” Elodie said, “I just wanted to prove that I could do it. Which I could, even without the drugs. I just couldn’t get that far.”
“I know. That’s why we’re not going to penalise you for it. Not before you’ve fully recovered and finished your training,” she said.
These were words Elodie would have killed for a month ago. Real training. She was finally there. But Tammy said it with a grain of disappointment, a grain that she felt, and it hurt.
“I won’t do it again.”
“You can’t promise forever, Elodie, it’s the first thing you should learn when you understand how people’s decisions change the futures,” Tammy said, taking a sip from a steaming teacup. “But I’ll let you prove me wrong. After all, you did spend a lot of time with the wrong type of crowd.”
Her eyes became absent. She looked deeper.
“You won’t get any more seizures now that you’ve found the golden thread. Think about how long you fought for it. Don’t waste it. No more drugs, no more cheating. No more taking advice from people who don’t have a moral compass. You have your path. Good night,” she said, and Elodie whispered the same in
return.
The window disappeared, and Elodie stayed upright in this hospital bed, surrounded by soundless bleeps, lights, and displays that nobody was watching, all about her.
She’d imagined for so long what it would be like to be here, after the final hurdle, and it wasn’t supposed to feel this way.
She was free from the suffering of post-augmentation, the blackout was over, and everyone credited her for it.
And somewhere in the background there was this feeling of emptiness, of injustice, or fear that there really was no way back from what she knew.
And she was going to have to live with it.
The Turning of the Stars
Everything started changing as soon as things were back on track. The gifted picked up exactly where they left off, and there were many things to do. Like recovering the Institute’s reputation. And organising several homage parties for Seravina that were mandated in her will. The new tola was in review for another wide launch. It had only been a few days, but it felt like months.
Elodie’s ailment was unique, and Tammy insisted on keeping her in for observation for another week. Her loud protests about being stuck in recovery again landed on deaf ears. She was ordered to rest. Senior Rising Dawn members all kept Elodie in their thoughts as much as possible, making brief, but frequent inquiries in the likeliness of her death or other misfortune. This was their alternative to sending get well cards.
Her comms weren’t much different. A new alert sounded almost every minute about her name being mentioned again. As this new resource, or a hero whose abilities promised a better future. Or a bad word from those who didn’t like the gifted at all. A good balance. She could feel the eyes of the world turning on to her for guidance.
Elodie finally had time to reflect. She welcomed the disappearance of the daily seizures. The only true anxiety she had left was due to the fact that she would eventually need to leave, and that probably, somewhere out there, Soraya would find her. They technically still lived together.
Through her window, she watched a construction of the Particle Lab annexe that was meant to be finished before the next investor brief.
Elodie allowed herself to go as far as imagine how wonderful it would be to finally prove how guilty Soraya was. To have her face an inescapable reality that she was so, so wrong, and that she simply wouldn’t get away with it any longer. Then the world would be right. Then she’d be the hero they expected.
She had an odd feeling about that thought as soon as it appeared.
During the night, an alarm went off somewhere in the Particle Lab. It was a workday, meaning that the only thing to do when met with security running towards you was to point them into the right direction of the fire, and finish your sentence about how much you hated overtime. Elodie’s door was no longer locked, and at first, she didn’t think it strange at all. Emergency exits couldn't stay locked when the Institute was on alert. There was an implosion somewhere underground, a light tremor that meant something was definitely popping, and Elodie had a sudden urge to run away.
She briefly considered the thought when the doors opened.
Soraya walked in as if she hadn’t just snuck up on an A-class paragnost. How didn’t Elodie see her coming? She’d been able to foretell every doctor’s peek-in with a three second accuracy.
Except for the usual. Trouble brewing on the horizon. The circumstances were ripe for her appearance. Some of the emergency power had been transferred to the Particle Lab, so everything looked like it lost a tiny bit of resolution. Soraya came through the door fluidly, as always, but Elodie noticed a certain slowness in her. As if it took a lot to get her here. Or perhaps to control herself. She was out of uniform, wearing her Sunday's finest hoodie. She clasped her palms together and looked around the room as if she was expecting someone else to be there, and she relaxed only when she believed that apart from the subject in the bed, she was alone.
“What are you doing here?” Elodie said. The thing positively read like a dream, even in the sense that it was hard to know what to do, and whether there was any control over what was happening. As the doors rebuilt themselves behind her, Soraya stopped in the middle of the room, safe distance, and said:
“Come with me.”
The proposition was, of course, ridiculous.
“Are you mad? Why, why would I go anywhere with you?” Elodie was at a loss for words.
“I just want to understand what happened,” she said. “Literally days ago we went and found the damn thing together, I pulled you out of there when it got sticky, and next thing I know you’re telling Tammy that I made it and that I’m creating an AI uprising or something—honestly, what happened? I just want to know.”
Her voice shook in agitation, and she fidgeted too. Elodie had never seen her like that.
She slid off her bed in hospital pyjamas they’d provided and put on the slippers, even though the floor was warm. Elodie didn’t know what she should do to make the best of the situation and decided to follow—for now.
“Let me get one thing straight. You don’t fool me. You heard exactly what I saw. And there’s no point in lying to me.”
“Have I ever?” Genuine confusion appeared on Soraya’s face.
Elodie wondered what it really must have been like in her head, doing whatever she wanted, killing people and pursuing dangerous paths of knowledge. She didn’t understand what it was like to be treated like a useless body, with people regretting ever putting their faith in you. She’d probably waltzed into any room on this planet and immediately made an impression of leadership and trust. Maybe that’s why no one had ever suspected her until now. And why she was still getting away with it. Against all odds, Elodie was still hoping that there was an explanation.
“Yes, you did. You always twist your words and make it sound like I’m the one who's getting it all wrong. You always know more than you say. Even now, coming in here like this, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Why is no one coming to stop you? Who sent you? Let’s start with that.”
“No one sent me. I’m freaking out,” Soraya said and fixed her hair. Not once did she look at the door, as if she knew that no one would bother them. “Remember how I told you about the Hopefuls moving around undetected? That’s a skill that can be learned. I had to pick it up as a child. Even telepaths have trouble reading me. My future, past, events I’m part of. You need a powerful combination of closeness and highly developed ability to catch me,” she said, looking up at the many graphs translating Elodie’s health into visual aids. “That’s the secret. But it’s out now.”
“That’s why they always say you have no future. That you’re irrelevant,” Elodie said. Soraya stopped looking at the diagnostic wall above her and focused on her again.
“But the question is, how do you go from that to blaming me for blackout?” Soraya replied. “Am I wrong, or did I not stand by you the entire time when you were suffering from the aftereffects of augmentation? Was I not there for you? Did I not help you resolve it? Did we not figure it out?"
“You were there to make sure I wasn’t growing into your competition. You were there to make sure I didn’t accidentally pick up on something you were hiding. That I was clueless. But I still found my way to the truth.”
“Come with me,” Soraya said again. “I can’t talk to you here where everyone’s listening.”
“No, I don’t want to go with you. If you have anything to say, you’ll say it to me, to Tammy, and to anyone you’ve lied to so far. I’m sick and tired of these games.”
“Are you now?” Soraya grinned. “You’ve just graduated into it. This is what we do. You want to level with me, compete with me? You’ve seen what I do. I get things done. I resolve the blackout. I fix the emergencies. I protect the interests of the Institute. Like you. And you did great. I mean, even I’m impressed. Is that what you wanted to hear? That we’re on the same level now? That you found your way to the top? There you go. I said it. Now come and hash it out like a normal person.
Somewhere people aren’t watching.”
Elodie sighed. She was getting roped into it again. It was the curiosity.
“No, I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t know what you want. How about you just… leave me alone. How about that?”
The refusal to play ball made Soraya even more volatile.
“I can’t leave you alone, Elodie. You’ve accused me of committing a crime, and thanks to your earlier lobotomy, your word counts as proof more than mine does. So if you go testify, as you promised, and they decide that you’re right, then you'll get precisely what you want. I’ll be out of here. You will have killed the last chance this world has to become something greater. And all because you decided that I can’t just do my work. It has to be illegal. I can’t be good enough for the Institute. I have to be some kind of criminal. And you decided that being a gifted prodigy isn’t enough for you either. You need to take my place as well.”
“I know what I saw,” Elodie said. She wasn't about to be played again. “It’s simple. You made the object. That is a fact.”
“I did not!” Soraya hissed.
“Then how did you know how to stop it?”
“Come with me,” Soraya pleaded. “I just want you to listen. I think you owe me that much, after all. If I left you there with the actuor any longer, you would have been dead by now.”
“Actuor?”
“Are you coming or not?” Soraya beckoned.
Too hard. If Soraya really did have something to say about the guilt, then she deserved a chance to say it. Every court in the world would allow it, and she should too. And if she was guilty, then what difference did it make? Elodie would still testify that she did it, and the vision in her memory would prove it. But should she really follow into an unknown situation? The outcomes looked fuzzy and unclear. At least she knew it wasn’t the meds. It was her companion. Another chunk of truth. And she wanted more.
Soraya began to move backwards, making sure that Elodie was following, and as they exited, Elodie patiently waited to see how long it would take before someone stopped them. The Particle Lab had regular explosions, and while there were never casualties, injuries were always counted in dozens. When they walked down the many wide corridors, they started bringing in the many wounded from the overloaded ER, and other medical staff jumped to help. Two living and seemingly healthy persons both escaped the triage-oriented glances.
