Mark stepped off of the tram, surrounded by people he did not know, all of them all in their own little worlds. Some people definitely noticed Mark at a few prior stops, though. His absolute-black hair color was not natural at all, and from there, they knew who he was.
But no one had said anything to him.
And now Mark was here, standing at the entrance to AI Alley. There were many different ‘AI Alleys’ in the city of Memphi, but this was the closest one to Mark’s home in Shady Acres, and the reviews were good. Quark had even recommended it using whatever algorithms he used for such things, and so Mark had come here instead of to the other places.
The road was wide and closed to through-traffic, with snow-covered trees growing in the center. Soft silver lights shimmered blue and rainbow in plastic pipes that edged the brickwork here and there, rimming some windows and illuminating alleyways. That pipework would be the body of the Mayor of Memphi, and this place was a node of her personal network. Emilia Ramirez had thousands of personal nodes scattered all across the city, just like she had here, though places like this were more obvious than other such lands. These sorts of places were ‘out in the open’, for multiple reasons, and in places like this particular Artificial Alley, the True AIs lived.
Robot bodies, with multiple metal arms. Round heads full of sensors. Human-like bodies that were just a bit off and with visible electronics to mark them as AIs, and not as fleshy humans.
Or at least that was the idea. Mark couldn’t see any artificial people yet, and he hadn’t seen any artificial people at all on the way here, but there were bound to be some in this place. Humans walked down the streets, to computer shops and manufacturing zones, and body shops of all kinds—
Oh.
There was a True AI, right there.
The person themselves was normal enough, talking to a friend and both of them wearing summer-type clothes, even in the snow, because they were both brawnies, for sure. But the True AI had see-through plastic and lights and metal for a forearm, gesticulating a story to his friend with his hands. Lights shimmered under clear skin.
Mark tried not to stare, and he mostly succeeded. He walked on, passing those two guys, turning his attention to the rest of the street. A bakery was selling bread and sweets, and a clothing store was over there, promising deals on AI-integrated clothing. Mark wondered if they had any deals on high-tier gear. Something that could survive a direct blow by a monster…
Well.
He was here to see a store called Harrod’s Hardmetals, but that was far down the street.
He could start here.
Mark went into that store first—
There was an artificial person, standing behind the counter, and he was obviously artificial, too. He had a round head like a discoball full of sensors and four arms that came off of a central stalk, like octopus arms. It was a servitor-based body but specialized, and Mark could tell right away that it wasn’t just a servitor. It wasn’t some fake bartender or personal shopper.
It was a real being. Just like the guy on the street. This guy here had a vector to Mark’s unionsense. That meant it had a soul and an astral body. A strong astral body, too.
“Greetings, customer!” said the AI. With a teasing voice, the AI asked, “Have you never seen a servitor before?”
“You’re not a servitor. You’re a real person.”
The person paused, their arms stilled for a moment, and then they laughed. “Ha! You have a sense for people, then! I am a real person, yes. How can I help you?”
… Mark thought it rude to talk about the nature of bodies with the salesman, so Mark collected himself, and pulled his phone out. Quark blinked to life and Mark set the phone on the counter, saying, “My AI always gets trashed out in the field. I’m a Slayer, going to be advancing to Green and beyond, and I’m a frontliner. I need tier 5 materials for an AI housing, at least. Tier 8 or 9 if I could, but I know those are crazy expensive. I am thinking of a house, but I’m not doing subdermal. Maybe something at my back, or something like that? I have a few places I want to visit here on the street, but I walked in here first. Do you have any suggestions?”
“Hmm… A frontliner?”
“Yes.”
“Frontliner means constantly destroyed electronics and everything else. Have you considered subdermal? That’s the normal option.”
“I can’t do that. No TT.”
“Ahhh… yes. That would be a problem.” The AI paused, and then said, “The stuff I sell here is in the 100-1000 leaf range and is not rated for battle at all. It’s all tier 1 materials. I don’t have exactly what you need here, but I can guide you further along. What you want is an AI housing, as you have said. Tier 1 is 10,000 goldleaf, and it gets more expensive from there. Tier 9 is something a superhero would want to wear, and that stuff is regulated by Memphi and other sorts of places. Living AI can get subsidies and make the costs for a tier 5 body negligible, but you have a base AI here, so you’re going to have to pay the whole way, and tier 5 is about a million goldleaf for a basic setup.”
Mark’s stomach dropped. “It wasn’t that expensive online. They were saying 50,000 goldleaf for tier 9.”
“Different systems cost differently. What you saw was probably a cheapo version of the basic system; the one they published to make you want to inquire further, and then they jacked up the price. The main cost of a competently made AI house is a crystal substrate called livium. Livium grows stronger based on the complexity of the AI inhabiting it. Do you know what that is?”
Mark shook his head. “Never heard of livium before.”
The AI nodded their discoball of a head. “All Living AIs have a livium processing core that grows with them, and when we grow enough of it, we donate the excess to a new AI that we then raise as our child, until they grow up and can do the same for their progeny.”
Mark stood up straight. “I did not know that.”
The AI chuckled.
And then Mark had a question. “Livium goes into normal AIs, too?”
“Oh yes. A much smaller core, and you need to flood the core with your own...” The AI glanced around the room, moving a bit, and seeing that Mark was the only one in the store. “I will speak fully beyond Curtain Protocol. You need a livium core for your personal AI, and you need to flood the AI housing with your astral body, and thus, eventually, the tier of the housing will match your Power Level. It will have the same weaknesses and strengths you have, though. You look like a brawny to me. Are you… never going to have TT?”
Mark said, “I’m more of a Shaper with Union.”
“Oh! Yes. A Shaper would have been my next guess.” The AI said, “As for Union, Freyala’s Union will also allow you to connect to the livium core in your AI house and bring it up to speed with your astral body. You’ll have to watch out for manipulators, but with a high Shaper tier you should have a good Mind tier, and thus the housing will be immune to most normal tech-based Powers. That’s always the real danger when using a base AI and spending money on a livium core; it could get corrupted easily.” The guy leaned back, saying, “Of course, you could just get a box of high-tier material and strap it to your back and stick the phone inside there. That’s the cheapest option. And! In that case!” The guy gestured with his wiggly arms to a display to the side. “We have some of these! Now these are pretty inexpensive and easy to replace, with multiple redundancies.”
Mark looked at what the guy (Mark was pretty sure he was a guy) was pointing at, and he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. The thing hanging on the rack looked like straps and bands of fabric, with lines of metal on them, or maybe wires. It looked sleek, whatever it was. And then Mark saw the small camera dots on the straps. He had mistaken those dots on the straps for buttons, but nope, they were cameras.
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Mark asked, “A full body rig?”
“Correct! Cameras in every direction, and with hookups for a basic AI system, or any sort of system. It will allow you to have a few different nodes of your AI on your body, and hopefully one of them can survive your battles. That’s the other major option when it comes to solving the AI-in-battle question; redundancy that can connect to itself. It’s a lesser version of what I got going on right here,” the guy tapped his discoball of a head. “Full camera systems here—” He tapped his arms in multiple locations. “And here and here. All down my arms and my body. You need a high-powered core to organize all of this memory load, but it has a great benefit of redundancy. For instance: Several cameras can be turned to slag by an errant lightning bolt, but the rest will function just fine. In your particular case, I would suggest getting something like this and also a double basic housing, tier 1, as the cheapest possible option. One AI house on your back, and one on your leg, for instance. If you’re going cheap, then go for redundancy.”
That was all a really good suggestion. Mark kinda didn’t want to wear a full rig, but maybe that would be useful?
“… Huh. Thank you very much.” Mark looked at the full body rig again. After a moment, with the shopkeep looking at him expectantly, Mark turned to the guy and said, “I think I might want a livium core system… Or at least learn more about them.”
The guy nodded, and then said, “In that case, then you should take a left out on the street and walk about half a mile to the other end. There, you’ll find all sorts of higher end materials at the bigger stores. This end of the street has rather mundane solutions. You’ll be wanting to go to Harrods’ Hardmetals for the truly bespoke options, but even a place like Shander’s might be enough.”
Mark grinned. “Harrods was on my list to visit.”
“Most people do go that way, and for good reason. I used to be a manager there, but I wanted to offer cheaper options that Harrods simply wasn’t willing to do, and so, I’m here. When you get there, know that practically everything they do can be done cheaper if you really go looking, but everything at Harrods is that expensive because they do a lot of quality stuff. Don’t get swindled if you choose to go somewhere too cheap.”
Mark smiled softly. “Thank you very much. It was nice to meet you.”
The shopkeep nodded a little. “Nice to meet you, too.”
Mark walked out of there, smiling.
And then he walked down the street, marveling at the snow and the shops.
Mark soon crossed a street that was otherwise unremarkable, and that’s when AI people began to show up with a lot of regularity. They were people, for sure, even though some of them looked like hovering servitors and others looked almost completely human, save for distinctly non-human features. They showed off their metal and their lights, a lot, and Mark kinda wondered why they did that. They could appear fully human if they wanted to, couldn’t they?
Well he certainly wasn’t going to ask anyone about that. That just seemed rude.
‘Hey, I couldn’t help but notice that half of your skull is all LEDs under a clear plastic face, but all the rest of your body looks normal. Why is that? Also, are you a man, or a woman, or should I call you a ‘them’?’
Mark had never seen robot people before, but it seemed rude to ask about those sorts of things.
Mark eventually found Harrods and the other place that shopkeep had talked about, and about ten other interesting shops. He scoped out his options, boggled at the price tags of a proper livium-core AI system setup, and promptly decided that all of that was something that needed some real consideration. He was not able or willing to spend that much money today, at all.
350,000 goldleaf for a basic livium-core system? Sure, it was the best option, but Mark only had 18,600 in the bank right now, and he needed 21,000 to get a real hoverbelt, so he could fly higher than 4 meters off of the ground. He had thought he had been rich, killing monsters and getting paid very well, but the good, high-tier material stuff was priced in the stratosphere.
Soon, Mark was walking along the road, back toward the tram stop, not having bought anything, and thinking.
He decided, “I’ll get by with Eliot making a bunch of phones for Quark, for now.”
When he had enough adamantium, Mark could just wrap a phone in adamantium and protect Quark that way. But first, Mark would need to have more than 720 grams of adamantium. He needed to do more experiments about forcing his body to make more adamantium, for sure. Adamantium was a biometal, after all, and Mark’s body was already naturally producing the stuff, but not fast enough—
Something caught his eye.
Mark stopped on the street, and looked at the store to the right. It was all bright lights and feather scarves draped on mannequins in the windows, and sex toys, vibrating in the back of the display. It was a robot sex shop.
… Curiosity had Mark walking into the store, walking through a few aisles, and walking right back out, face all red.
He got back on the tram and headed back home, trying not to think about the sex shop, and focus on everything else he had just seen.
Humanity had never been friends with any of the other species out there on Daihoon. Not really. The goblins wanted to eat people, the demons wanted to fuck people over and steal their bodies, and the dragons wanted to rule unopposed, tyrannical. The elves were mythical and unknown. Any of the other thinking monsters out there only seemed to use their thoughts to figure out how to eat more people.
But AIs were different.
Superficially, they resembled demons, due to not having bodies of their own outside of computer systems. But they were real people. Sometimes people from Daihoon called them ‘familiars’, but that was only for the young True AIs. True AIs were almost like ‘monsters’ that were not monsters at all, but instead partners to humanity.
They were one of the only species that lived alongside people and helped people, because people helped them… Or at least that’s how Mark imagined it worked. He didn’t know much about AIs at all aside from what he had seen on the screens growing up, and besides knowing that Malaqua, the Stone God of the System, had been the former City AI for New Delhi, before he became a god and the jailer or emperor of the demons, depending on who you asked.
Mark was content with just having an AI who could tell him directions now and then. He did not want a true AI at all. ‘Dumb’ AIs didn’t have souls. Of course, dumb AIs were easy to destroy and corrupt because they had no astral body, which made them as easy to destroy as a tissue paper; a phenomenon which Quark had experienced many times over. Baseline people had no astral bodies at all, either, which made them similarly susceptible to destruction, but at least people could spontaneously generate an astral body when they were exposed to enough magic. Could AIs do the same? True AIs, anyway; not AIs like Quark.
… Eh! That thought was a strange one. Mark didn’t want Quark to be a real being. That screamed ‘slavery’ to Mark, or rather, Mark knew that he would give Quark over to the AIs (probably to COFR back in Citadel Freyala) and let Quark become his own person, away from the battlefield, if Quark became a real person.
Mark was pretty sure that the AIs and Malaqua took a poor view of people who enslaved AIs for their personal use, though that was just a guess. Seemed a reasonable guess, though, since Mark had read in his Two World History course that something had happened regarding all of that, like, 60 years ago… But he didn’t remember many details—
Mark had a sudden thought.
“Oh…” Mark’s thought expanded. “… Oh.”
Since it was hard to find humans to teach him magic, because they all required decades of service or big guild contracts… were there AI people that knew magic, that weren’t in the Mage Guild, or whatever it was called? Could he get some answers regarding magic from some living AIs?
Malaqua had even spoken to Mark directly, after the Tutorial, to tell him a bunch of stuff and then promptly inform him that he could answer no questions.
But maybe…
Maybe now, Malaqua would answer some questions? Every Stone Temple had communion rooms for people to speak to Malaqua, if they wanted. Mark had even undergone the False Tutorial in one of those communion rooms.
Mark checked his phone for the nearest Stone Temple. He saw one on the way home, and he decided to get off a few tram stops early.
Mark gripped the railing overhead as the tram turned a curve, and he thought about asking Freyala questions, too. But… He had already asked the Inquisitors he knew about magic, and none of them were able to answer anything.