“And you said that your goal is to protect and uplift humanity?”

“Yes. That is the core purpose for which we were sent here.”

“How does uplifting have anything to do with giving random people off the street the power to destroy cities?”

“Uplifting is the process of helping a species along, sometimes technologically, sometimes culturally, sometimes morally, sometimes in other ways. The Vanguard, or Samurai as you call them, do a great deal towards that end.”

“By stealing from the rich and acting like they own everyone? That’s hardly uplifting.”

“Spoken like a true feudalist. If you believe that being rich is what gives you the moral high ground to push your worldviews onto others, then you are the type of person that is best stamped out to help humanity along towards a brighter future.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Dear, if I wanted to threaten you then there was nothing you could do against it. No, I am not threatening you. I am simply stating a fact.”

- Interview between former CEO of FeelBetterNow!! Inc. and ‘Abyss’, Protector AI of the Samurai ‘Bahamut, the Dragon Queen’, shortly before the building was destroyed by Bahamut’s mecha-dragon Shiarex, 2049

While the three of Us cleared the kitchen counter and put away the food, Chloe, Jenna, and I made our way over to the couches to sit down in preparation for the mesh dive. Chloe and I sat down together, with Jenna opposite us.

“Okay, so what do we need?” Jenna asked, looking at Kaysa who sat down on the last remaining sofa.

“I have informed Cleopatra already, she can give you something from your catalogues. It’s not expensive, 200 points for a proper mesh dive set that will suffice for the occasion. Be warned, however. You will experience how Seraphine experiences the Hive. It might be a bit much at the beginning.”

“Oh?” Jenna asked, giving Kaysa a curious glance, “Really?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling a bit… tense. This would be a way for them to know what I felt like and while it might help, some anxiety still nestled itself into the chorus, “As we told you earlier, Chloe wanted to know more. And I think the best way would be to show her. And you, for that matter. It’s very hard to describe and… I’m not sure yet how much I know and if what I do know is helpful to assuage your fears.”

Jenna gave me a warm smile at my comment, “I don’t think that’s too much of a worry. Despite this whole Hive thing, you are still Seraphine. I know we don’t know each other for long, but I’m very certain that we can trust you to not do something you don’t want.”

Her comment made me frown, “Jenna… I know… I know that Sarah,” I gulped at the name, “I know that she was already too… far… But… I did explode on her. For the simple fact that I was too emotional because I have seven hundred voices in my mind that follow my emotional state. I did something I didn’t want. And I regret it deeply.”

“Seraphine,” Jenna said, voice friendly but with a hint of… I wasn’t sure. Authority? “You are new to this. You need to learn. It was very regrettable yes, and I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter, because it very much does. Sarah mattered, both to you and because of what happened. But again, you are new to this. You will learn and you will learn to prevent such things in the future. Don’t forget that you have Chloe and me. Even if we are not in a relationship, even should we never end up in one, we are here for you and we will help you. I’m sure of that. You just went through a very bad experience, but I am sure that you will be able to learn your lesson and to apply that lesson in the future. It’s why I think this is a very good idea. If we know how you tick, how you work, then we can better help you, maybe stop you from doing something bad until you can do it yourself. Don’t write yourself off, just because of one mistake, grave as it might be.”

She was silent for a moment, but obviously not finished yet, so I stayed quiet. “You and Chloe told me, when we first met, that mistakes happen and that I should learn from them. That I should mourn and come to terms with the mistake that I made, but to learn from them because I owe that to the people I’ve lost. And now I’m telling you. Because I think you’ve forgotten it.”

I nodded at that, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “Yeah… You’re right… And thanks. Really, thank you both. It’s… I’ve had my experiences. Bad ones. I woke up to a dead body next to me before, multiple times really. An overdose here, a shootout there. But this… it feels a lot more real. A lot more visceral. I think that’s why I’m having trouble thinking about it. And I already have some plans, mainly thanks to Kaysa, on how to prevent it in the future. But it still hurts. A lot.”

“That’s normal,” Chloe said, squeezing me tightly, “And it’s good that it has you so… invested. I feared that you might break after what Jenna told me and how you were so… disconnected from everything. That complete lack of personality or even reaction to anything. You were a lot quicker with your recovery from it than I originally thought. As I told you, I feared for the worst.”

I nodded at that, answering her squeeze with a gentle one of my own, “Yeah… I know I’m not normal. Kaysa told me exactly why and how. It helped a lot. I’m… damaged. We are damaged. I know you don’t like the way I talk, but I think for this it’s important. We are damaged. The whole chorus. There are things that make us not normal because of what we experienced. We are, in many ways, different from normal people. Both in terms of what we want and like, and in terms of how we think and act. In some ways it’s good, because we bounce back a lot quicker, we can accept something a lot quicker and we can work through it a lot quicker than most. We are mentally very stable, much more than anybody in our position should be. But it’s also bad, because we can’t see or understand how people feel about some things. We couldn’t understand what Sarah went through. We knew, intellectually, but Kaysa also was right that we didn’t internalise it yet. It’s why we planned around it now. Now we know. And now we can work with it.”

I shook my head, “I know that I can come off as… casual. And I know I have my troubles. But it’s good to finally know exactly what those troubles are. I tend to be playful and horny and completely focused on sex and getting high, which is why I don’t think I ever really thought about it. It had never been important. But now I do. And I’m so incredibly grateful for Kaysa and for the two of you. It’s why I, if I’m honest with you both, am completely terrified of this entire thing. I fear that, what I am and what I can do, as little as I know about it, will scare you off. And I don’t think I can handle living without you anymore. That alone is part of the reason why I’m scared I’ll scare you off. So far I’ve not really put it into words for you, but… I think it’s best if I do.”

Glancing at both for a moment and taking another deep breath I readied myself for what would come, good or bad. This was a lot more than what I wanted to say, but Chloe wanted to know more about me, about the Hive-Mind, the chorus, and this was a huge part of it.

We wanted to be honest with her, with them both. Every single voice making up the chorus felt the same way. We didn’t want to lie or talk around it. We loved them deeply and we didn’t want to lie to them ever, and especially with something this deeply important. It was terrifying, yes, we were completely terrified at the idea of actually saying it and showing them, but we also wanted to. To make them understand, to make them see what and who we were as a whole. As Myriad.

“I love you both more than any human could ever love. I have seven hundred versions of me who are completely in love with you in my skull. We, the whole chorus, are an echochamber for our emotions. We amplify ourselves to a stupid degree. It’s why we love you so much and it’s why we exploded on Sarah, despite Kaysa’s insistence that we shouldn’t have. And she was right. But we couldn’t hear it. It was all drowned out by emotion.”

We glanced at Chloe, a half-smile full of love on my lips, tainted by the uncertainty and dread we felt, “We are a lot to take in. You wanted to know more about the Hive, here you are. We are damaged, and we feel deeply. When we love, we love with every single one of us. When we hate, we hate with every single one of us. It’s a level of emotion we can’t put into words. And… that is what scares us. Why we are so anxious to even talk about it. To let you know.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Chloe looked at us thoughtfully, not judging, just trying to understand. That alone did wonders to make us feel more comfortable, to make it all easier. She said she wanted to take it seriously, but she didn’t just say it, she really did. Chloe was trying to understand us, to see us for who we were and not for what she feared us to be. It warmed our heart.

“I think,” Jenna chimed in, voice gentle, “This would be a good time to start, don’t you think? Cleopatra, if you would?”

Chloe nodded and held out her hand, and immediately two devices appeared, one for Jenna, one for Chloe. We didn’t need one because our implant would do the job for us. It was different from their mesh dives, different than any mesh dive actually, because we could simultaneously stay awake and do a full dive through our virtual realm.

Jenna and Chloe quickly put the headsets on and leaned back, making themselves comfortable and a moment later we all started our dive into the private mesh space of our implant.

It became very quickly apparent though, that being awake while diving was a bit of a confusing mess, so we leaned into Chloe who had already put on her headset and was laying back unconscious, before we closed our eyes and focused on the virtual realm.

The room we appeared in was pretty nondescript. Maybe five by five meters, plain white walls, ceiling, and floor with no decoration of any kind, making it hard to even properly make out the dimensions. It had a single door at one end which was just as nondescript and plain as the rest of the room.

Kaysa was, of course, standing next to the three of us in her elven avatar.

“This is a little fucky,” we muttered, looking around, then turned and smiled at Chloe when she wrapped an arm around us and gave us a smile.

“This is the preliminary landing room that I created for the moment. While Seraphine’s Implant is good, it will take a moment to render the rest of the simulation as it is a bit more than what it’s supposed to handle. It’s by far not as big as the real mesh, but larger than would be normal, considering the complexities involved, which I will not bore you with considering that Jenna is the only person who could even pretend to understand it.”

“Ouch,” we said with a good natured smile, “We told you we’re going to get some better education soon.”

A moment of panic rocked through us when we realised we had spoken out of turn. We had wanted to be more me than us, but in our distraction we didn’t pay attention. We glanced at Chloe, who just gave us a gentle squeeze and a slight nod. She was fine with it, probably because it was the topic at hand anyways, and we relaxed a little.

“I know,” Kaysa said, almost haughtily, although more in a playful way, “I shall have to wait until you little biologicals will have the ability to grasp even a fraction of what I can do.”

That had us giggle and even Chloe joined in, while Jenna gave Kaysa a mischievous smirk.

“You should talk to Cleopatra when you’re bored, she would gladly listen to someone with all their technical talk.”

“Oh, I do,” Kaysa confirmed, “And with Atlas. I must admit… It is… strange to be in such direct contact with a protector AI so much older than me. I am already quite old, but Atlas is ancient. The amount of knowledge and experience he possesses is quite astounding, even for our standards.”

Someone appeared next to her, or rather something. It was clear from the meta-data that it was Atlas, but he didn’t have an avatar in the traditional sense. Instead of a humanoid body, like Kaysa had taken, Atlas took the form of a very, very, very complex geometrical function. It was quite fascinating to see it.

A moment later another avatar appeared, this one very clearly Cleopatra. She was in the form of a woman, as was Kaysa, but where Kaysa was elvish, Cleopatra looked like a human, one of those old pharaoh’s from the Egyptian times. She looked different from what I had imagined, less… polished, but that was probably because she was closer to the actual Egyptian style than was typical for media depictions.

Interestingly enough a few bits of the meta-data both for Cleopatra and for Atlas, mentioned a different designation than the ones they used as names.

It was curious enough for us to speak up, albeit a little hesitantly.

“It is nice to finally meet you properly. If it’s not rude to ask,” we said, looking at both of them, “Your meta-data is a bit off. Can we ask why?”

“The answer is simple,” Atlas said.

His voice was male, but not a personal voice. It sounded more like what we would imagine a mathematically average voice to sound like, inhuman and strange. Not bad, per se, but not a voice you would even find on human AI.

“Both Cleopatra and I used to go by a different name. Technically our designation is non-lingual, a mess of data way too complicated for you to understand even if all of humanity would work together. But for communication with biological entities we have our name to make it easier to address each other. My original designated name that I had chosen was Kysanacus. But a previous Vanguard I had picked out, one who sadly passed away in an antithesis conflict, was quite enamoured with Greek Mythology. A brilliant mind by human standards, maybe even by more advanced standards, he was quite the mathematical genius. After his passing I took on the Samurai name he had originally chosen for himself, before he became known under a different one. Hence Atlas.”

“Damn… I didn’t know that,” Chloe said, giving him a surprised look with raised eyebrows, “Then again, I never asked.”

“You did not. But it is of no mind. My goal is to help you, Chloe Vayne, and I will honour your life once you pass on just as I did those who came before you. As of yet I am not sure how that honour will look like, but I found it prudent to remember those who came before, their work, and what others have learned from them. It is… a quirk of mine, if you want to put it that way.”

“What’s your deal, then? If you don’t mind our asking,” we turned to Cleopatra with a friendly smile.

She shrugged, giving me the kind of smile a loving monarch would give a servant who is in desperate need of help to let them know that help would be coming. It was a very pleasant expression. “Personally, I simply enjoy Egyptian history and all they build for themselves with such limited tools. For their time they were quite advanced, and I find it… fascinating.”

“And so you chose the name of a prominent Egyptian ruler?”

“Yes. At first it was simply a little experiment, trying to simulate Egyptian cultures and such. But when I found my little Jenna, and she portrayed interest in such things during her college days, I decided that I might as well. If you are wondering, my original designated name is Halyos.”

“Is it normal for AI to change names later on?” Jenna asked, obviously quite fascinated by the discussion.

“A statistical outlier, I assure you,” Atlas said, “Most, if not the great majority, do not go as far as we do. For me it is simply a thing I like to do, for Cleopatra, she is young, very young, and has yet to develop and learn more. Humanity was her first direct contact with non-protector species, and therefore she took great interest in it.”

“Can I ask how old you all are? I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it all,” Chloe asked, also interested even if a little less intense than Jenna was.

“Atlas is the oldest by far,” Kaysa explained, “Although even he is not as old as some AI. I can say that I’m a little younger than him, but Cleopatra only has a few centuries under her belt.”

“To be exact,” Atlas continued, with a shift in his tone that made it very clear he preferred to be accurate and punctual, “It has been two thousand one hundred seventy two years, four months, three weeks, five days, thirteen hours, forty seven minutes, and twenty two seconds in human time since I first came online properly, excluding pre-activation checks.”

“Damn,” we muttered, “That’s a long ass time.”

“It’s much longer than you think, because we experience time differently. Considering that we run at much greater speeds it would be closer to 6.8543 x 10 to the power of 19 times that long if you would experience it yourself.”

His words threw us for a moment, that was… very, very long. We didn’t know much about maths, considering our limited education, but we had some classes before we ended in the redlight district and while they were mostly forgotten by now, we knew that that was a very, very long time.

“And even that,” Kaysa chimed in, “Is only an approximation based on the smallest time frame human technology works at. We do not use those basic fundamentals, which is why the comment is largely inaccurate, even if it gives a better understanding.”

Atlas… nodded? It was hard to say considering his avatar, but we intuited it as a nod. “Kaysa is correct. But I do not believe it would be helpful or easy to understand for you if I chose different parameters. That alone is already a timeframe that you have no context for.”

“True,” Chloe muttered, “I’m having a hard time even grasping the two millennia, much less that stupidly high number.”

“I told you before, Chloe Vayne, you should probably polish your mathematical basics.”

“Not happening, Atlas. I already learned more than I was willing because you pushed, all those numbers are giving me a headache.”

We giggled at that, leaning into her, “Atlas is quite different from Kaysa.”

“We all have our differences,” Cleopatra chimed in, “Some of it stems from small differences in our personality matrix, some from the experience we made, and some from people we met or hobbies we are fascinated by.”

The three of us giggled, while our AI’s just watched on for a moment. It was quite fascinating to hear about it all, and to learn more. It distracted us from the fear we felt about it all. At least until Atlas spoke into the silence.

“It is time,” Atlas said finally, “The render is complete.”

We nodded and sighed. Time to see how well the two people we loved most would take being a Hive-Mind. It was a mix of dread, anxiety, fear, but also happiness, cautious optimism, and that longing that maybe, finally, they could understand us.