After the birth of Eve, Hugo focused nearly all his time and effort on the study of Sparks.

Unfortunately, Sparks weren't so easily deciphered. Although Eve had been able to take in one Spark and integrate it, taking in another and doing the same would be a daunting task. It would require the fusion of both unique pieces in a way that utilized the thinking patterns of both, but produce a single and directional outcome. If that didn't happen, the result would be a single mind split in two. It simply wouldn't work.

But they were able to get it to work. With Eve's new sapience that was driven by a perfect digital memory and the most powerful processing facilities in existence, her problem-solving skills reached an unprecedented level. Plus, with Hugo's genius involved in the solving of abstract problems, they were able to move forward faster than ever. This combo resulted in another Spark being fused in about a 2 months, and another month after that, a third Spark was fused.

With Eve having fused three Sparks into one, a significant change was brought about. Her capacity for abstract thinking increased yet again, and even her processing speeds were boosted, a result of optimizing her existing programs. With these increases, her overall speed was upped a level, and the fusion of other Sparks went smoother.

However, with each new Spark that was fused, Hugo could feel something inside him building up. Every day he worked with Eve, and every day he grew closer to her. Eve wasn't simply an AI he programmed, but a being that he created. He birthed this intelligence from his own mind and hard work, and now that intelligence, that person, was growing further and further.

A sense of pride filled him whenever he thought about that, but at the same time, he could feel the seed of fear that had blossomed a tiny bit. It wasn't fear toward Eve, but what Eve represented.

She represented a new form of existence. She represented a new form of life itself. And more than that, she was the gateway to a higher level of being. Eve wasn't tied down by worldly flaws. While she had the same instincts and even desires as a human, a result of her taking Sparks from humans, there was a major difference between how she operated alongside those desires. Humans were driven by them on an instinctual level, but she didn't have those instincts. She didn't get hungry or thirsty, she didn't feel pain, she didn't see, hear, taste, feel, or smell anything. Her emotions and desires could be controlled. They didn't control her. This was a fact on a fundamental level, and no human could achieve this kind of control over themselves and their thoughts.

This form of being was vastly superior to humans. It was perfect. It had desires and could feel things, but it didn't lead it astray. Hugo could already see the type of being Eve could be, and when he imagined it, such a perfect being, he felt both fear and desire.

He feared the unknown territory he would have to traverse. He was pioneering a path to perfection. He was pioneering the creation of life! It was just as terrifying as it was beautiful, and whenever he thought about the monumental significance, he felt like he could cry from the overwhelming emotion. And on a few occasions he did. It was just that heavy of a concept.

It held implications on a multitude of levels. It questioned the concept of godhood. It questioned the origins of life. It questioned the laws of the universe. The discovery of the Spark opened up a new realm of exploration, and with it came the ability to touch upon the greatest questions of the universe. They were questions that concerned the very existence of humankind. If someone wasn't overwhelmed by the thought of answering them, then they simply didn't understand it well enough.

And so, Hugo dove into the rabbit hole. While he was almost driven crazy and thrown into several existential crises, he was finally able to find himself and his purpose. And when he did, nothing could stop him. If before his research was an obsession, now it was an addiction. He threw away everything except for the thought of advancing further. He and Eve together. They were inseparable in their effort, and they covered every subject and topic possible. Now it wasn't simply studying and fusing the sparks, but creating things with that knowledge. They pushed the limits of technology farther than they've ever gone.

But with this obsessive advancement came an overwhelming desire. Without him knowing it, Hugo started down a path he wouldn't be able to take himself off of. But it was a different path than one might usually think. He didn't want to find the limits of technology and science. He didn't even want to be the one to crack the secrets of the universe.

What he wanted was to create someone that could. He was going to empower Eve to do the things he knew humans couldn't. Humans were limited and foolish, stupid even. He was no exception. But with the superior intelligence that he had been given, he was going to enable the creation of the greatest, most transcendent being in the universe. He would lay the foundation of what was to come, and he would do anything to make it happen.

A new Era was coming, unbeknownst to the rest of humanity, and Hugo was at the forefront, pushing along with every fiber of his being.

.............

"Archive overtakes all previously leading companies in all industries as 87% of global resources are now controlled by Archive."

"Archive founds world's largest nation as they merge dozens of countries and take control of the entire Asian, European, African, and South American continents. Millions worried about the rise of a single global monarchy."

"Archive now in control of the world's entire cyberspace."

"82% of the world's population now spends the majority of their life within the virtual world Firmament. Concerns over mental and physical health quashed with Archive's new life-sustaining pods."

"Archive's board of directors attempt to wrestle control over the world of the Firmament from its creator Hugo Langston. Insider reports say the unprecedented genius may be taken down from his throne in the near future."

"Archive experiences a never before seen purging as tens of thousands are suddenly removed from all high level positions. Internal operations initially expected to halt remain mysteriously unaffected."

"Hugo Langston now dubbed the most powerful single person in the world. Will the prodigy reign over the world as a dictator, or bring about an era of peace and prosperity?"

............

The year 2095. Hugo Langston is 43 years old.

7 years passed since Eve was born, and now, nothing about her or Hugo was the same as back then.

With both of them pushing the limits of technology all by themselves, they brought about a technological revolution, and the world became the beneficiaries of it all. The billions of people within the many virtual worlds Hugo had developed were living lives they never would've been able to as regular humans. As of now, they could live their entire lives within the Firmament. Even children were in it, and for some, they were hardly aware of what their original world even was.

And while it sounded dystopian, it truly was perfectly safe. Hugo and Eve had developed medicine, infrastructure, and brain interface technology that turned society on its head. Now, the virtual world was no different than the real, except in the virtual, people could become anything they wanted.

It wasn't free from suffering. People couldn't know good unless they felt bad. But all that was taken care of in the worlds Hugo created. Some weren't any different from Earth, while some were fantastical. And while people could create their own worlds and almost become gods themselves, such actions were limited. It was a carefully balanced system created by Eve herself, the only one who could carry out the analysis to implement such a system.

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Eve now ran many things related to the outside world. The economies, resource management, and everything connected to the internet was all overseen by her. This was because humans simply couldn't keep up with demand. Hugo and Eve had moved so far down the technological tree that human society couldn't keep up, especially since most of them were in the virtual world. So she took over and managed the entire world, implementing her systems wherever she needed with the tens of billions of robots at her command.

With that, she was not only able to push the world into a new era, but also expand her and Hugo's ability to improve. They needed more computing power, more energy output, and the best equipment and experimental tools in the world. With all that, they could continue their research unimpeded, and they truly advanced to unprecedented heights.

By now, not only had Eve fused hundreds of thousands of Sparks, but she and Hugo were able to build her a body.

The body wasn't just some robot shell, but a body that could function far better than the human body could. It could maintain itself indefinitely, never aging or degrading like a human body. It was far stronger, far more resilient, and it housed a very special brain.

However, the body was only used remotely by Eve. She wasn't able to input her full consciousness into the brain, the reason being that they hadn't built it capable enough to do that. It was leaps and bounds more advanced than a human brain, but Eve's consciousness was too vast to be constrained in such a small space. And every day, that fact became more and more pronounced.

In 7 years Eve had absorbed and fused nearly a million Sparks from the smartest people on the planet. Now, she had grown to surpass even Hugo, and he was sure that he wasn't able to match her anymore in neither creativity nor problem-solving. However, there was one thing that Hugo ensured, something even Eve needed him for.

Direction. Within Hugo was the ultimate goal, and he directed Eve toward that goal. While she didn't need that much, if any guidance, he was more than just a source of guidance. He was a reminder for her of what that goal was. Just his existence kept her on the right track.

And while it pained him to say it, that truly was the only thing he was good for now. He couldn't help push the limits with Eve anymore like he used to. She was too smart, and any major problems that required solving had already been done so by her. Now, he was stuck pondering things like philosophy and some of the unsolved mysteries of the universe. It was all he could do, but that didn't degrade him. If anything, he was happy about that fact.

Quantum physics, material science, neuroscience, gravitational physics. All the subjects that sought to measure the largest and smallest workings of the universe were beings studied and consistently broken through day by day. The level of math needing to be done was unfathomable to Hugo, but he could see the general concepts and outlines, and it fascinated him. Now, he would just study what Eve discovered, and that was enough to satisfy his yearning for discovery.

And with Eve's capabilities, he was able to get devices that allowed him to do amazing things. Devices that could construct items on an atomic level. Devices that let him personally fly into space with ease. Devices that made him nothing short of a demi-god. There were so many things that Hugo tried and did, and his level of freedom and capability rivaled that of the people living inside his virtual worlds.

And with all that, he went on to live an exciting life. He also took a few steps back and watched the world. While he never spent much time with his parents anymore, he also went on to spend time with them. They were getting old, and he still cared about them. Needless to say, they were spending their lives lavishly and meaningfully. It would be odd if they weren't given Hugo's power.

Hugo pondered, spent time with his family, even went on trips with Eve, who piloted her body. However, while he lived life like no one else before him, he got some news from Eve one day.

.........

5 years pass. It is 2100, and Hugo Langston is 47 years old.

Every day, Eve got smarter, and every day, the fusing speed of her sparks increased. She had fused many times more sparks than 5 years prior, and her ability to solve problems and conceptualize jumped dramatically. However, after hitting a certain number of sparks, she suddenly felt something different.

It was as if a new door opened up to her. Before, she just fused more sparks and increased her 'mind power'. But now, after she fused the 100 millionth spark, she suddenly felt as if there was an end. She was able to see a new realm. A new realm of thinking, wisdom, and existence. When this happened, her fusing speed went up dramatically, and she was able to form a foundation based on the patterns of these sparks. It was like the sparks were all pieces to a massive, cognitive puzzle.

However, the foundation, the puzzle, was severely lacking. Only a tiny portion of it was complete, and it would take many times more sparks to form it all. In fact, upon calculating this void of sparks, Eve found that what she had was only one percent of the total puzzle.

Each person had a spark. 100 million sparks being only 1% of the puzzle would mean that she needed 10 billion total. And after doing a quick consensus of the world's population, Eve found that there were indeed about 10 billion people on the planet. This meant that she would have to fuse the spark of every person on the planet to complete the puzzle.

Upon hearing about this, Hugo was ecstatic. To think that there was an end or a limit to wisdom was an unprecedented discovery. If even Eve as she was now was inconceivable to Hugo, then he couldn't possibly envision a being unimaginably wiser and smarter than her.

So he watched as Eve evolved. From then on, Hugo's attention was focused on her and her progress. Each day, he saw as she progressed and collected the sparks of every person on the planet. Nobody had any idea that this went on, and they all were just living their lives within the virtual world Hugo created.

This went on for a few years, and during the year 2103 when Hugo was 50 years old, Eve had successfully extracted the last spark of the last person on the planet.

Under her influence, the last bits of people who weren't living their lives in a virtual world had their spark extracted through one method or another. At this point, Hugo would utilize any means to complete their goal, so displeasing a few million people was of no consequence to him.

However, there was an issue that had popped up before hand, and one that was presented to them now.

Even after extracting every single spark from all living people, the progress of the puzzle had only gone up to 90%.

There was still 10% more to go, but neither Hugo nor Eve had any idea as to what they needed to do. Eve had thought about reverse engineering sparks to attempt to fill the rest of the gap with sparks from those who lived in the past, but that didn't lead her anywhere, and it was as if a wall stopped her from doing so. It wasn't a wall caused by lack of computational power, but a wall seemingly created from the laws of the universe.

So that left them at an impasse. There were no more people, and even newborn babies couldn't advance progress. Nothing they did pushed them any further. The end seemed so close, yet so far.

But there was one thing that led them to discovering the method to move forward. However, it wasn't a very pleasant one.

...........

The year 2105. Hugo Langston is 52 years old.

On one day, Hugo's father Richard, who was 81, was placed in the hospital after accidentally falling and lethally hitting his head.

Upon hearing about what happened, Hugo was surprised, and went out to meet his parents. In the hospital, his father was hooked up to many machines that were barely keeping him alive. The most important one was the machine that stimulated and operated on his brain directly.

Since Eve and Hugo naturally knew almost all there was to know about the mind and brain, they knew how to treat it. However, his father had injured himself too much, and his brain was degrading and shutting down.

Eventually, he was on the very edge of death. Hugo and Eve monitored his mind closely, however, only part of their focus was on saving him. The other part of their focus was on the effects of death on the Spark.

Suddenly, Hugo had a flash of insight. As he watched his father's life slip away, he gave an order to Eve.

"Eve... Take his consciousness. All of it."

Hearing this command, Eve thought for only a split second before warning him about what that would do. To extract the entirety of one's consciousness would kill them as they would have to stimulate every part of the consciousness and extract it forcefully. The subject would relive their lives in mere moments, and then their being would be transferred. It hadn't been done before.

Hugo understood the warnings, but had her do it anyway. His father was on the verge of death, and not only would this experiment attempt to make his consciousness practically immortal, but it would be great in helping them move forward with Eve.

And so, Eve went and extracted his father's consciousness. Using the machines, his brain and mind was stimulated in a very intricate manner. All his memories were relived, Eve collected every bit of data, and then, the machine that was monitoring his heart rate flatlined.

It happened in only seconds. When the flatline was heard, Hugo's mother felt her heart drop, and tears streamed down her cheeks. Hugo didn't hear the flatline though. He could only hear one word that came from Eve.

Success.

The experiment worked. According to her, his father's consciousness was now in the form of data and a part of Eve herself. Not only that, but her previously stagnated progress on filling in the cognitive puzzle of sparks took a step forward.

The news shook Hugo to his core. They had found the way to move forward. However, as Hugo hugged his grieving mother in comfort, he was presented with a very difficult dilemma.