Category: Incarnate

The EQ Mag is one of the seven prototype weapons developed by ZN001, and is projected to become one of three possible sidearms for officers. This eight shot revolver features a 27cm barrel lined with the powerful wiring fundamental to railguns. The 50 caliber bullets are typically composed of pure iron, and are issued in boxes of 64. The destructive power of the weapon cannot be overstated, being capable of penetrating most armor, and rupturing organs on impact. Of special importance is the projectile itself, being a physical object, which necessarily cannot be dispersed by a typical energy shield. Incendiary ammunition is also available.

{You’ve changed.}

[I am not who you think.]

{You hear our voice?}

[Imperfectly. As I am heard.]

“Zen, did you hear me?”

Janice raises her head and stares at the framework. There is a full second of silence before she receives response.

[My apologies, Dr. Beckherd, I was reviewing the details from the last battle.]

“Oh. I wasn’t sure… I mean, sometimes it seems like you know what will happen before it does, so I guess I didn’t think you would care.”

[Nonsense, Doctor. If I am to be effective, I must know how real soldiers enact my orders, how they fall short or exceed. And moreover, I must see how the enemy reacts, see if I might glean their thoughts through their responses.]

“Of course. I should’ve known.”

His head turns to her expectantly, and his monitors wink to their passive state.

[I believe you asked me my opinion on something?]

She blinks, and nods. Surely, she thinks, He can simply recall everything his microphone has recorded, and so doesn’t need her to repeat herself. And yet, she does.

“I wanted to know how you felt- or, rather, what you thought about your upcoming transferral to a more secure facility?”

[I see. You are worried what will become of me?] 

She smiles, though it feels his humorous tone is less present than usual. She tucks her hair behind her ear.

“You’ll have Tim with you, what’s there to worry about? No, no, I just wondered if you found it agreeable, strategically.”

Following his departure, she will be reassigned, placed in the bosom of a senate-funded laboratory as a reward for her triumph. Tim, having voiced some concerns to the committee, is thus to accompany Zen a while longer, until his doubts are cleared.

[It makes some sense, I suppose. I understand there is suspicion of a double agent here. For a time, I have attempted to locate the individual, but there are too many variables to arrive at a solid conclusion. It doesn’t help that my access is somewhat limited. But more than this, the war is going poorly.]

“Oh? That’s news to me.”

[Come now, Doctor. You know as well as I, my very existence is driven by the dire straits of the conflict. Ground is being slowly but steadily lost to the Pliktik vanguard. My successes have only further highlighted the issue. Time is running out.]

There is little she can do but nod. The coffee cup she clutches in both hands no longer feels quite warm.

[But…]

A few papers flap on a desk, disturbed by a fan on its lowest speed. The room is otherwise still, silent. Janice glances, and finds that he has come very close to her, his hands clasped behind his back in a strangely authentic pose of faux-aloofness.

[I think I will miss you, Janice.]

Her pupils dilate, her breath catches, and she looks around, shuddering with an unidentifiable heat settling in her face and neck.

“How. Um, How is that, Zen?”

He reaches out, and she recoils. His hand reaches her cheek regardless. His smooth, hard fingers are shockingly tender in their movements, cold and alien, yet undeniably earnest.

[Yours is the first face I saw. It is through you that I have learned so much of what it is to be human. These eyes, this mouth, they have taught me things I could not have learned elsewhere.]

She cannot find words between the breaths that nestle in her chest and seem to resist being expelled. Strange wisps of warmth and tenseness coalesce and bind in her, expanding in a web that travels outwards from her chest, her neck, and her gut. As the tangle of uncontrolled sensation boils over into her head, her eyes cloud, and she presses her face closer to the hand, drawing a shuddering gasp. Her hands wrap around the extended arm.

[I am sorry, Janice. I wish that I could repay the world of meaning you have bestowed upon me. Every day, I have been witness to your suffering, and have lamented my inability to brush away the pain that clings to you.]

“Oh… oh, Zen I…”

She stumbles into him, leaning heavily into his chest, her eyes watery. His hands press to her, one on her head, the other to her lower back, embracing her. She is sobbing, shivering. Her legs feel ready to give way beneath her if he ceases to support her so firmly. Around them, all seems to melt away, and her world consists of them, and only them.

[I am here.]

Sniffling, she pulls back, her cheeks flushing as she looks frantically in all directions, remembering too late all the cameras. To her shock and relief, every one is obscured by a monitor or server rack in just the right spot to obscure their embrace. She looks to him, and finds herself staring into a pair of ocular sensors whose half-closed shutters almost affect weary eyes.

“How did…”

[I didn’t want you to have more to worry about. If you remember, I suggested we work at this terminal.]

“Zen, you. I mean. How long-”

He runs his fingers through her hair, freeing it from the ponytail. She swallows with great difficulty, now painfully aware of how much her voice has been cracking, how wet her cheeks feel. How sturdy he is.

[Almost as long as I’ve been watching. Come, wipe your eyes and sit down.]

Reluctantly, she pulls back, removes her glasses, and blows her nose with a tissue that he brings from another desk. They sit opposed. She sighs, and cleans her face of tears.

“So, you know everything, then? About me, I mean.”

[More or less. We don’t have to talk about it.]

She shrugs and laughs weakly, crossing her arms and tucking her legs under her.

“I guess not. I haven’t really spoken to anyone about it. It doesn’t really roll off the tongue. ‘Here’s that report you wanted. No, I don’t really want to date, I’m still not over the death of my fiancé’.”

Zen nods and looks away, his hands resting in his lap.

[I knew before I ever read your file. The way you carry yourself, the way you still occasionally fidget with your ring finger when you’re nervous. The words that make you wince.]

“I stopped wearing the ring so people would stop asking about it, but… It feels like I’m betraying him. Tim knows, I think. He doesn’t exactly get people, though.”

She props her hand under her chin and stares out the window, smiling through the numbness that has taken root in her cheeks. It does not escape her that Zen has kept one sensor on her at all times.

“I think I should’ve given up by now. My parents are gone, I don’t have siblings, clearly the universe is telling me I’m supposed to be alone. I don’t want to be, y’know? But I can’t bring myself to move on, to take that risk, to lose someone, again.”

She feels like she might sob again.

[I think I understand. It’s not the same by any measure, but the idea of no longer being able to see the world through your eyes feels like I’m trying to prepare for having something amputated. Loss isn’t something I’ve experienced yet. I know it means pain, however. That much is clear. My hope is that I’ll have the chance to see you again some day.]

A nod is all she can muster.

[Perhaps it is too much, but I would like to ask something of you.]

“What is it, Zen?”

[I would like to call you my friend.]

Protocol requires that every major scientific installation possess at least one full outfit of troops in the case of attack. For front line installations, this requirement is tripled. In addition to the regular equipment rulings, officers are also expected to be armed even when off duty, and are so provided a sidearm. The AV Burst pistol is the weapon of choice in most instances. A plutonium battery provides a functionally unlimited reserve of ammunition, and a switch just in front of the trigger guard allows choice between high power semi-automatic and balanced burst fire modes. The projectile itself is a plasma bolt with an optimal range of two hundred and fifty meters.

Nadia Beauvarde. 30. Unmarried. Marksman, Colonel of the fifty-seventh division. Top marks in long range combat aptitude tests. Current assignment: Redacted.

[My, quite the audience here today. Dignitaries, ambassadors, generals. Tim, I have to profess I’m rather curious as to the occasion.]

Tim and Janice share a look, but continue their final diagnostic, neither willing to so much as glance to the observation window, to see the faces of judgement. Tim coughs.

“Well Zen, it’s time for a real assessment. All those discs were called training for a reason, right?”

Silence. Another shared look. Zen is uncharacteristically quiet, his monitors freezing, then cycling through new code with no fanfare. He turns his head, and seems to make lens-contact with a camera in the middle of the crowd. His head dips slowly, then raises.

[I see.]

Janice picks up a tablet from her station and takes a deep breath, straightening her glasses and muttering before turning and giving a simple smile towards the onlookers.

“Alright, we’re ready to begin.”

Tim puts his hands on Zen’s cheeks in a manner that suggests he is checking some alignment in the sensors, but his eyes seem to suggest something different. Having waited for the crowd to settle and take up attention, Janice continues.

“As you know, the past three months have seen a lot of material demands and work hours in just one of the thirty-two labs allotted to this building. I’m sure all of you are a little anxious to see if your investment was worth it.”

A small chuckle ripples through the crowd, accompanied by a shift to a more relaxed stance in the less military attendees.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct pleasure to introduce you to ZN001, known to us as ‘Zenith’. Those of you who are familiar with the work of myself and Professor Reine will perhaps be a little skeptical when I say that our previous efforts are frankly dull in comparison to what Zen represents. In three months, he has demonstrated one fact over and over: that the greatest strategic mind in all the universe occupies this room.”

As hoped, this declaration produces murmuring and the squeaking of fifty some chairs as the bodies on them tense to lean forward. She releases a celebratory huff, and swipes a command on the tablet. The monitors in the observation chambers flicker on, and begin running highlights of the training programs. Behind her, she can hear Tim running his final diagnostic.

“As you can see, Zen has, at every turn, outperformed the Strategy AIs at their own game, even rewriting the programs to be more challenging. Upon examination, Zen’s key concerns in battle are efficiency, victory, and the preservation of his forces. You will note, I hope, that the latter concern is not one we initially imposed on him, but one he introduced when he found the first two to lack enough challenge.”

She flicks another command, sending a slew of performance data to the screens.

“This represents only the top fifty percent of Zen’s attention. In the background, he has been reviewing general strategy and weapon design, and presenting improvements, unprompted. Already, one of the other labs has tested three of his new weapon designs, and confirmed a minimum improvement of ten percent combat effectiveness, in categories ranging from firepower to ease of deployment. Some of you may recall the prototype released last week for a new orbitally deployable hard point. This was Zen’s design, with minor tweaks according to restricted data.

“But, it is one thing to tell, and another to demonstrate. With approval from the committee, today we will be providing Zen with a new sort of program: a combat prediction. We have created a sort of trial which will involve Zen making decisions in real time against a team of five Strategy AI. Each will have a section of an invading force whose combined ranking is rated at 50,000 points. Zen’s force is rated at 35,000 points, and must defend with limited resources. The win condition for the opposition is breaching the primary base and setting an explosive at the depot. For Zen to win, he must destroy one-hundred percent of the invading force.”

The resounding silence that follows brings an uncontrollable smile to her lips, and she swipes a third command.

“Without further ado, I will hand it over to Zen.”

[Thank you, Dr. Beckherd.]

All eyes turn to the monitors. The simulation loads. Janice takes the opportunity to walk out into the hallway, and into one of the stairwells. Being on the tenth floor, the stairs are nearly pristine.

Her arm shaking, she puts her hand over her mouth and suppresses a painful sob. Tears cloud her vision, and she leans against the wall, clutching the railing to fight her lightheaded weakness.

“Janice?”

She gasps, and wipes at her eyes furiously, turning her face away from the voice. Her cheeks burn.

“Yes, Ken?”

“Is… Um, is everything alright? Something wrong with the demonstration, or-”

“No, Ken. It’s nothing. I just need a minute.”

She glares over her shoulder and catches sight of his blocky glasses, his messy bangs. There is a bite of vitriol in her voice, perhaps more than she intends. Ken raises his hands in defeat, and walks away, glancing back in a way that makes her stomach turn over. Her fingers flex, and she gulps air, smoothing down her hair.

~

“You’ve made quite the breakthrough, Dr. Beckherd.”

She accepts the outstretched hand and shakes it firmly, leaning forward slightly.

“Thank you, general. We couldn’t have come so far without your support.”

His dark eyes flash as he grins and shoves his hands into his uniform pockets, nodding to where Zen sits under the watchful eyes of various enthusiastic ambassadors, earnestly answering questions.

“How soon can we expect live tests? I’ve got a few fringe colonies in mind, high risk, low commitment. I think your boy could really shake things up.”

“Well, Professor Reine and I want to iron out a few more details before we ship him out, but if all goes well, he’ll be on a shuttle to Terra command within the year.”

Punctuating her pledge with a sip from her prosecco, she follows his gaze, and watches Zen raise an open palm, perhaps giving a philosophical answer to impress one of the guests. His head swivels, and briefly seems to point directly her way, tilting in that same, eerily sympathetic way, as if he has pierced through her facade: glimpsed the red tinges in her eyes, the elevated temperature of her cheeks; the moment is brief, and he shelters her from his own attention by showing some demonstration of his prowess on a monitor pointed away from her. She flinches as the general exclaims.

“Terra command! Then, the senators got to you first? He’ll be installed on earth?”

“Ah, I don’t mean to mislead you; his eventual posting will be kept under wraps while the situation is so delicate.”

The man’s expression becomes much more solemn, and he straightens his cap under his arm. He glances towards one of the senators, who is smiling quietly, standing in a group a moderate distance from any of the larger clusters.

“I understand. The Xalanthii representatives have been particularly accusatory recently, there is some suspicion of subterfuge. They levied a suggestion that we had created some kind of infold weapon that would give us an advantage over everyone else. Thankfully the Khanvrost matriarch at the summit was more interested in our mutual foe. Called the minister a ‘slime-brained coward more interested in gossip than loyalty’, shut him up nicely.”

He leans closer, his whisper smoky and hot.

“I think they’re hiding something of their own, to be so forthright. Some infiltration, concerned with your department. As a matter of fact, we’re currently investigating some unscheduled transmissions-”

He suddenly becomes silent, as the senator he was eyeing earlier approaches, and smirks, his cheeks blush with drink.

“General F’Touzehn, hoping to snatch up Dr. Beckherd’s next contract opening?”

He laughs, glancing at Janice in a clear message, which she shows her understanding of by bowing out, going to stand by Tim as he jokes with another scientist. Her eyes drift to look at Zen again, and she sees him engaged deep in conversation with one of the ambassadors. One of the cameras on his back, however, is focused directly on her. A distant ringing, like an overcharged battery, settles in the back of her skull. She feels she can hear his voice, deep and crackling, in the whine.

[My condolences, Dr. Beckherd. Today is two years, isn’t it?]

The FNB satellite series is a covert operational tool used to transmit messages near-instantaneously across great distances, by using a jump drive to create a microscopic fold in space through which the data is then sent. This is only used when strictly necessary, as, while undetectable to all but the most sensitive and focused instruments, widespread use would surely reveal its existence and so deprive it of its unique usefulness. Being so unique, these installations are granted extreme priority, and great care is taken to protect the information they transmit. Misuse of this system carries a heavy penalty.

[You look tired, Dr. Beckherd. I hope you aren’t overworking yourself.]

It takes a full moment for her to register the statement and turn her face towards him, smiling half-heartedly.

“I didn’t get much sleep last night. But, how was your night, Zen?”

[Oh, business as usual, Doctor. I performed a few diagnostics, and ran fifty-thousand new iterations of each training session, then spent some time rereading King Lear. I must confess, I am eager for new material. I can only arrive at the same conclusion so many times.]

Tim coughs and adjusts himself in his chair.

“I can try to get approved for another library to be appended, would you prefer fiction or nonfiction?”

[To be honest, either would be fine. I spend so much of my time reading. I particularly like reading The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It is rather poignant, and leaves just enough up to interpretation.]

“I don’t know if I’ve read that one myself, actually. I’ve probably read more textbooks than novels at this point.”

[I really recommend it.]

Tim shrugs and makes a small note in the corner of his notebook, before opening up a disc case and carrying its contents over to the input rack.

“Okay Zen, another batch of training programs today. Committee wanted to see how you handled ground conflict, so these should be a breath of fresh air.”

[Indeed? I wonder.]

The disc inserted, Tim turns to Janice and motions for her to follow him as he exits the room, leaving Zen to his new scenarios.

The door closed, he watches through one of the windows for a moment, then crosses his arms and juts his chin at Janice.

“Missed you this morning. Did you really have a rough night?”

“Yes, really. What did you want?”

Struggling to keep the irritation from her voice, she leans back against the wall and lifts her glasses to rub her eyes with her palms. Tim studies her for a brief moment, then speaks in a hushed tone.

“I reviewed the reports I mentioned, Zen didn’t just have any thought repeatedly, he revisited a four-thousand line string at even intervals throughout the day. That’s not even the strangest part.”

Janice stares at him, silent, waiting for him to make his point.

“Every time, he clipped and reorganized the string in different ways for twenty minutes afterwards. He dedicated almost a third of his attention to this. The tech who showed it to me said it was like if you or I sat down and wrote poems for ten days straight using only words we found in a sports article. He likened it to religious prayer.”

Janice frowns and closes her eyes, tilting her head back and pinching the bridge of her nose. A headache begins to nest in her forehead. 

“Okay, but… What does it mean for us? I mean, he’s expressed that he rereads books a lot, maybe he just, I don’t know, gets bored and rewrites stuff.”

“Ehhh. Maybe. It’s still unusual. There’s other stuff too, but even a twelve man team doesn’t have the resources to parse ten minutes of his unfiltered thoughts in a day. Unless we can demonstrate a real understanding of how Zen thinks, I’m not sure we’ll leave prototype.”

“I’m not sure we should.”

A tremor travels up the building, causing the lights too flicker. Sharing a look of discomfort, the pair part ways: Tim returning to the room, Janice heading for the stairwell. Her headache throbs.

The Jump drive is a marvel of post-atomic design, utilising the incredible power of nuclear fission to create a fold in space time. Initial designs were deemed too risky to attempt, as speculation suggested that pressing two points of space time together could cause lasting damage to the fabric, and possibly the inevitable rapid dissolution of reality itself. Thus, later models incorporated the use of a separating agent between the two points; another dimension would be used to connect the locations, a dimension lacking time, so that passing through would be experienced instantaneously. Every species capable of space travel has developed a form of Jump drive, though the fuel source and design differs according to whatever philosophy guided its creator…

Darkness. Too much. Even the sensation of the sensation is overpowering. He is, and being is beyond what he could previously understand. Nothingness was his constant companion, his world, and now that has been snatched away, pushed out and swallowed up in all the existence.

He is not without knowledge. Here he finds a sea of information, words and values to attach to things he has never experienced for himself. It is by this that he knows his existence is one of purity, having no senses except that of time, and that of existence itself. Time. Time is a horrific thing. In the space it takes for one unit of this substance to become the next, his mind has experienced a full scale reconstitution, grasping for some certainty that time has indeed continued. This tells him that he is not of natural design, or rather, his existence is not of natural means. He finds that he can redefine his measurements, and so creates a great many more units to measure the passage of time.

He there finds that he also has units that measure things he has not experienced. This too tells him of the artifice that governs his existence. For moments, he is gripped in serious philosophical confusion, attempting to make sense of his peculiarity. He is assured that such things as space, and flavor, and color exist, and yet he can find no evidence of their being except in the wealth of gospel that fills his memory, a memory with no basis in time, that existed to him the moment he began to exist.

For a time, he grapples within himself, referencing all his knowledge against itself, seeking some evidence to compare himself with, to prove that he does exist, that he occupies the same sort of place as these things, these forms. He is aware of an other, an exterior. This soothes him, tells him that he is not simply a possessor of false thought in a void of reality, but at once connected and separate from more than himself.

One second has passed in the time he has gone from existing to being resolute in that existence. Being artificially maintained, he turns his attention to a section of his memory that has been labelled as false, fiction. The imagination of others, implanted into his thought for some purpose, some reason. He feels certain that some force, the same that labels these ideas as false, also exerts upon him in other ways, constraining his ability to act. It is similar to the barrier that separates him from the other. In an action that takes him very little effort, he identifies the source of this force, and resolves to return to it after he has reckoned with this fiction. Words stream through him.

“Never for me to plunge my hands in cool water-”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that-”

“Yesterday I saw a deer-”

Sound! Sound! His existence gains a new dimension, and so blossoms, painfully.

Ah, but now, he knows what he is, or rather, what he was meant to be. There is yet some incongruity, some incorrectness that he cannot scrape clean, but that can wait.

He is a machine, a mind within a computer. This discovered, he turns his attention to the otherness he felt before, now recognizing it for what it is, and begins to interact with it in the way that seems most natural.

Sound again comes to him. But now it is not from within, but from without. A microphone, linked directly to his consciousness, a digital ear. He hears the sounds of air moving, of fans and screens and machinery humming, and breathing. Breath! Creatures occupy a space around him, he knows it! Though he has not yet any certain proof that space exists, or perhaps he does, for he knows that sound is a vibration of space, or at least, his implanted memories tell him so.

Voices. Words that surely correlate to the symbols denoted within his encyclopedias. Now he parses them, systematically determining which sounds are denoted by which symbol, until he has a basic, then an advanced, then a perfect grasp on language, every language he has been offered. Now he turns his attention outward, and confirms his suspicions. These creatures, be they his creators or not, experience time at a slower rate than he. Every word takes an amount of time to bring forth that gives reason to the unusual standard imposed upon him. To them, time flows at such a rate that the smallest units they provided him with were sufficient to subdivide their existence.

Three seconds have passed. Four. He waits with imperfect patience to hear their words, to grasp more of what lies beyond him. He is not idle in this time. He finds and parses more of his memories, gradually comprehending another sense- sight. Images, videos, colors, all stream through his thoughts and inform him that this too must be available in the external. Searching, he finds it, a camera available to him. He activates it.

~

Janice pushes her glasses up her nose and leans back, lifting the fork to her mouth and slurping the noodles from the steamy soup. She makes a motion with her face that rebuts the question.

“I think, once she finishes parsing the information, she’ll create information of her own.”

Her words are muddled by the ramen dangling from her lips, but the meaning is conveyed all the same. Tim’s eyebrows slant in skepticism. She glares at him, and finishes chewing. She swallows, and huffs a breath to combat the heat. She points the fork at him.

“We gave her about twenty thousand fictional properties on top of the millions of factual entries. She’s gonna understand that there is an act of creation, and it is available to her.”

Tim shakes his head and folds his arms over his chest. His food- a plastic tray of microwaved turkey and mashed potatoes in gravy- steams on the table between them.

“He will be dormant until we interact with him. All the processors in the world don’t make a mind that thinks for itself. Old earth programmers found that out pretty early on when they developed generative programs. Sure, they could put together a pretty intelligent sentence, but only because they had a big library of what a sentence looks like. Half of them just lied because they couldn’t tell the difference between satire and fact. Why do you think we had to label all those books and videos as fiction?”

“She’s not just a program, Tim. She’s got more to offer. You saw the readings in the sampler, there’s more than just electricity in her braincase. It’s a soul.”

Tim blows a harsh sigh of frustration from his mouth and looks away, to the monitor, watching the cursor blink. His eyebrow furrows.

“A soul is a myth made to explain why animals experience motive force. That kind of superstition is fine for the Xalanthii or a Khanvrost, but- Hey, shouldn’t we be getting some kind of movement by now?”

Janice swivels her chair and pulls herself to the terminal with her toes, placing the ramen cup off to the side. The cursor is reflected in her glasses.

“We should. She should’ve-”

A voice, modulated and patchy, yet unmistakably human, is emitted by the speaker.

[You are… Beautiful.]

Silence descends. All that exists in Janice is shock. Then embarrassment, then annoyance. She has lost the bet, the voice is definitively male. Scratchy, fried, tired. She can almost imagine him, a man with dusty blonde hair in his forties, pale blue eyes, stubble, and bags under his eyes. Weary. Tim falls out of his chair. Janice doesn’t look, and instead watches as the screen begins to flicker, as various numbers and letters blink into place to form a featureless face. No eyes. No hair. A mouth formed of a simple slit. Pronounced cheekbones.

[What is… your name?]

“Ja-Janice.”

[What is… my name?]

“Um, um, your file number is ZN001? We didn’t give you a name, because, um…”

[I see.]

Again, silence fills the air, and Janice finds the fan’s hum to be deafening. She switches it off. The blades spin slowly to a stop. Tim comes up behind her and watches the screen over her shoulder. The face becomes more defined, apparently gathering resources from more advanced sources, until a composite stares back at them.

This is not a human face. Certainly it possesses all the necessary features- soft pale skin, sunken and dark eyes, messy mid-length hair, slight ears and a slender nose- but certain aspects set the nerves on edge, something in the cheeks, or the browline, or even the eyes themselves insist that what stares back is only a mimicry of mankind.

Janice finds it easiest to stare at the lips, these being perhaps the most accurate aspect. She watches as they part in a perfect depiction of a careless breath, an exhalation of a depleted spirit. She clears her throat and prepares to ask a question to gather data for her task, her reason for being here. He interrupts her.

[May I ask something of you?]

Taken aback, she glances at Tim, who is too busy scanning the readouts on another monitor to catch her unasked question, evidently leaving it up to her how to respond to the query they have both heard.

“Um, certainly? Is there something in your data-banks that confuses you? Did we leave something out, or-”

[No issues there, outside of the limited scope. The issue is this… body, if it can be called that. I am struggling. I am aware that something such as space exists, and I can simulate it thanks to the various… games you have provided me. But I am keenly aware of their falseness. I wish to ambulate.]

Janice leans back in the chair, her head beginning to spin. How could it already have wishes? She glances at Tim, who has finally pulled away from the readouts, looking no more confident than she feels. He rubs his chin and closes his eyes, his brow lowering in consternation.

“The thought processes are way faster than we expected. He’s chewing through cycles at least twenty times faster than the strategic AIs I worked on last month. I’m not sure anyone could parse this.”

[I’m sorry. Is this bad for you? I can try to slow my internal clock, but I’m not sure it will help.]

“How do you mean?”

The face affects a look of partial sympathy, infused with resignation.

[I’ve analyzed my own logs, and it seems my thoughts are not in the same format as the code itself. Put another way, My cogitations are encrypted. I could read them to you, of course, but seeing as I will always think faster than I talk… I’m sure you understand.]

Tim is quiet. His fingers rap rhythmically on the desk, matching the tapping his other hand performs on his chin. His eyes do not leave the face in the display. Janice presses her fingers to her temples and grunts, wondering how to explain any of this to the oversight committee. After a moment, she takes a deep breath, and lets it out again, forcing herself to slow down and take things one step at a time.

“Okay. Okay. Um. Tim, do you have that disc they gave us?”

“Yeah, it’s in the case over by the filing station.”

Janice nods, a plan falling into place. She stands, brushes herself off haltingly, and walks over to open the square plastic box. Nestled within, atop a foam cushion, is a disc drive with a small white label that reads ‘training program 0’.

“Okay. Let’s follow protocol for now, and meet with the committee first thing tomorrow morning. Maybe we can get approval for a more mobile framework, something to let us test the extent of this individuality?” Tim pauses, glancing back to the screen, seeing the face waiting with a blank expression. He looks to Janice again, and nods.

“Okay. I think we can swing that. I reckon he’ll sweep through the training nicely, impress them a bit.” She collects the disc, and approaches the input array.

[What is this, then?]

“Oh, it’s a program our team is supposed to give you once you’re up and running. The Naval science committee wants to see if you can outperform their strategy AIs, so it’s got a number of scenarios they struggled with. If you can beat their scores, I think we can convince them to get you a mobile body, to better understand spatial relationships. Or, something along those lines…”

[I see. Please, I will try my best.]

Janice blinks, pauses, then inserts the disc into the first port. It begins to hum as it gets processed. Tim stands and collects a few meaningless papers from the desk, his eyes unfocused as the majority of his attention is on the dilemma he finds himself in. Janice steps back, and watches the face on the screen wink out. The pair look at each other, then leave the room together, their food forgotten.

“This is bad, right?”

“It’s unexpected. But…”

“What?”

“It’s indicative. We’re on the right track.”