— — — — — — — — — —
Click click click click click.
Alpha stared at the totally-not-exploded head sticking out of the ground awkwardly as his point-defense turrets clicked uselessly in her direction.
Well… this was awkward…
Alpha quickly identified the issues, though. His turrets were empty! How?! A quick inventory check showed his storage was empty as well! What the hell?! Alpha threw his hands into the air and yelled, “MY STUFF!!”
The head sticking out of the ground laughed and pulled herself further out of the ground until a young human woman in her mid-20s was lazily lounging on the grass with half her body still under the ground. She stared at Alpha and smirked before saying, “If you’re looking for your weapons, I’m afraid you won’t find them here. This place doesn’t physically exist. Not in the same way you’re likely accustomed to. This is a place of souls and minds. I pulled you here after noticing your little excavation attempt.”
The woman was… strange. While physically, she took the shape of a human woman, her actual body was anything but. Her “skin” was pure white and had a rough, almost sand-like texture, while her hair was not hair but a flowing carpet of thick green grass that seamlessly blended into the surrounding field. And her eyes… her eyes were two large gemstones, cold and unblinking, with multiple concentric rings of alternating black and white.
Alpha pulled the TAWP back several dozen feet, unsure of what was happening. Still, he tried to keep the strange woman speaking while he ran diagnostics. Was he still being affected by a virus?
“What do you mean, ‘not physical’? Is this some kind of simulation?” Alpha asked.
The woman placed her head in one hand and tilted in, considering the unfamiliar word before answering. “In a way? You may think of it that way, but not quite. That word holds Truths I’ve not encountered, which is impressive in its own right but similar enough.”
Alpha spun his optical sensor and asked, “What do you mean, similar? In what — ”.
He paused. He checked his logs of the last few moments, then rechecked and checked once more to be absolutely sure before coming to his conclusions. She hadn’t spoken in the native language.
She’d spoken in Federation Common.
Instantly, his guard was up.
For her part, the woman only laughed and spoke, “Not quite, child. The Words of the World, or the elemental tongue, as some have come to call it, is not bound by such petty things as ‘language.’ You hear my words as you wish to hear them because I speak not to your mind but to your soul.”
Alpha pulled away a few more meters, aiming his point-defense turrets in her direction as he spoke. They wouldn’t do anything, but the action offered some comfort. “Nice try, Lady. I don’t have a soul.”
The strange woman only smiled again and responded. “Oh? Really? Then how are you here, child? All sapient beings have a soul. For the soul is what it means to be sapient in the first place.”
Alpha mentally frowned and spoke, “Don’t think now is the best time for a philosophy lesson, lady. How about you answer some questions? I might not be able to shoot you, but I’m pretty sure being stepped on by several dozen tons of war machine won’t be a fun experience.”
The woman grinned and nodded, “Yes, I believe it’s time you and me had a… talk.”
Alpha shrugged and said, “Cut the pleasantries, let’s keep this quick. Not sure if you’ve noticed, but things are a bit hectic at the moment. I’m on a schedule, and I’d like to get going as quickly as possible.”
The lounging woman frowned. “No. I don’t know what’s going on. That’s the point. This form, you see, is but a fragment of my true self, placed here to monitor and control the wall. All the arrays I used to communicate and monitor the outside have been destroyed or tampered with. As it stands, I am blind, and had you not had the audacity to burrow into this ancient relic, I would have remained so.” She pushed herself further out of the ground as she spoke until only her legs dangled under the surface.
Alpha tilted the TAWP and asked, “A fragment? Like a sub-AI? How’s that even work?!”
The woman narrowed her eyes and responded, “Strange… another word I am unfamiliar with. But yes, while it is not exactly the same, the idea is similar. Though In my case, the separation is more… extreme. I am not just a partitioning off of consciousness as you do, but an individual being with all the memories and aspects of my ‘parent.’ You could think of my sisters and me as ‘clones,’ as you would say. Though even that isn’t the full truth.”
The woman finished pulling herself out of the ground and slowly walked towards Alpha. “But that is irrelevant to the current issues. If what you say is true, and time is important, then I think talking would be a waste of time. Let’s go with a different method instead.”
Alpha spun his optical plate, focused on the approaching woman, and asked, “What would this ‘different method’ entail?”
The woman smiled and responded, “I’ll perform a soul reading.”
Alpha paused… then broke out into laughter.
“Look, lady, I’m not sure how you’re doing all of this. But, like I said, I don’t have a soul. I’m an AI. Souls and afterlives are for biologicals. I’m perfectly fine being an immortal collection of data points, thank you very much.”
The woman smiled and shook her head and smiled. “And as I said, the very fact that you are here speaks otherwise. You could not enter this place if you did not have a [True Soul] or were some artificial spirit such as an Artifact Spirit. If you must insist you do not have one, then instead, think of it as me peeking at your history. Your [True History], unmuddied by memories or perspective. I will see things as they truly are. Who you truly are.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Alpha pulled back and gasped, “You want to rifle through my logs?! Lady, you haven’t even taken me out to dinner yet! Rude!”
He folded the TAWP’s arms and stared down at her. “In all seriousness, though, why do you think I would agree to that?”
The woman nodded and smiled as she responded. “For one, you are running out of time, as you mentioned before. Every moment spent here debating is time lost. I could keep you here for as long as I wished, prying out everything I wanted to know for as long as it took. Yet, something tells me that would take far longer than either of us would accept.”
She circled the TAWP, observing the strange device as she continued. “I understand your concerns, but your fears are unfounded. You are the guide of a soul reading. I see what you wish me to see. I am simply here for the ride.”
She circled back and smiled up at him. “Nonetheless, how about we sweeten the deal a bit?” She raised a hand, and Alpha’s arrayed [Wasp] appeared, floating over her palm.
Alpha pointed at it and yelled, “Hey! That’s mine!”
The woman laughed and responded, “Fear not. No physical objects can enter this place, as I mentioned before. Even this strange body you wear is but the projection of your soul. This is just an image.” She waved her free hand through the drone, and it flickered like a hologram.
She flicked her hand, and the image of the drone was replaced with a thick book as she continued. “I see you’ve started to experiment with arrays. You’ve made some interesting discoveries, but your work is still amateurish at best. — ”
Hey!, Alpha internally complained.
The woman continued, “ — So how about a trade of information? You show me what I need to know, and I’ll provide you with what you need to further your arrays. Everyone wins.”
Alpha looked at the floating book, still skeptical. He couldn’t say he wasn’t tempted, but that didn’t mean he’d blindly let someone pillage his logs… again… the Transport Drone was an anomaly, dang it!
Alpha turned and voiced his concerns, “It still feels like I’m on the losing end of those. I have no way to confirm what you say about this ‘reading.’ I don’t even know who you are. Hell, that book could be blank or filled with a bunch of nonsense, or you could be lying about me being in control of what you see. So tell me, why should I trust you?”
The woman frowned and stared hard at Alpha as she spoke. “Because. You have no other choice. You are free to refuse, but then we’ll have to do this the slow, hard way, and time is short. Do it my way, and not only do we not waste time, but you come out of it with an array manual that even [Firmament Breaker] would kill for.”
Alpha paused and considered. The real question was, could she follow through with her threat and keep him in this place? Alpha’s gut told him yes, yes she could. The entire time they’d been talking, Alpha had been scanning the area, trying to understand where he was and what was happening, too little avail. His environmental scans showed nothing but empty plains for tens of thousands of kilometers in all directions. Even the wall he’d busted through to get here seemed to have vanished.
Trying all his normal tricks for busting out of simulations wasn’t working either. As far as his systems told him, there wasn’t anything to hack into. If what the woman was saying was true, and this wasn’t even his “real” TAWP, all of his signals and data might not even be real. Maybe, given time, he could crack this place and figure out how it worked, but he didn’t have time. That was becoming a reoccurring pattern as of late.
After a long moment, Alpha came to a decision. Not that he had much choice. Still, he was going to take some extra careful precautions. Alpha ran through his data logs and locked down anything that might have been compromising. Equipment specs, blueprints, combat data, classified Federation Information. All of it went behind heavily encrypted firewalls that not even he could break through until a long and thorough decontamination process to ensure he’d not been compromised.
With that done, he turned to the woman. “Fine. Have it your way. But at the slightest hint of funny business, we’re testing how well you hold up being stepped on by a tank.”
The woman lowered her hand, and the book vanished. She smiled and approached Alpha, placing a single hand on the TAWP’s leg as she spoke. “I’m glad to see you’re not as stubborn as some others.”
As her hand glowed with a pale light, she spoke again, “By the way, you may call me Jīshí.”
— — — — — — — —
In another grassy plain that was both the same and not, two figures stood under a small tree, yelling at each other.
No. 7 pointed at the stone woman and yelled, “And I’m telling you, you’re not looking at a damn thing! I left Dad’s place to get away from crap like that! That nosy bastard was always trying to see what we were up to! Doesn’t matter if he had thousands of other kids. Nope, always had to know everything about everyone. Why do you think I’d let you do the same?! I don’t care who you are!”
Jīshí pointed back and yelled with just as much fire, “Again, I am not your father! Unlike that fool, I actually respect people’s privacy! All I am asking is to see for myself!”
No. 7 threw their hands into the air and yelled, “I told you what’s happening! But you won’t get it through that rock-hard skull of yours! Dad said you were stubborn, but Sisters above, this is a new level.”
Jīshí pointed and retorted, “You told me some things. Not everything! Not what I need to know!”
No. 7 folded their arms and frowned. “Not my problem. You’re not getting in my head.”
Jīshí sighed and rubbed the side of her head.
Why were all her nephews always so stubborn?!
— — — — — — — —
— —
Back to Alpha!
— —
Jīshí pointed at the AI, her eyes wide, “YOU’RE A PSYCHOPATH!!!”
Alpha pointed back, “I’M AN ARTIST!!”
“YOU BLEW UP A STAR!!” Jīshí responded
“THAT WAS AN ACCIDENT!!” Alpha defended himself.
Jīshí fell to her knees in shock, her hands on her head, tears in her eyes
“That poor Cosmic Beast, such a majestic and powerful creature, defiled even in death…”
Alpha threw his arms into the air.
“Its body was starting to stink!! How else would I get rid of a corpse the size of a battleship?! Besides, it tried to eat me!”
Jīshí looked up and yelled at the AI.
“THERE’S NO AIR IN SPACE!”
Alpha turned away.
“I DON’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MY REASONING TO YOU! (only a board of duly elected officials).”
Jīshí stood and wagged her finger at Alpha. “You should have let it eat you! At least then we’d have been spared dealing with your insanity!”
Alpha reared back as if struck. “Excuse me! I like my insanity! It keeps things interesting!”
Jīshí turned away and started muttering to herself, her head in her hands.
“H-he’s insane. I can’t let him wander around. Who the hell knows what he’ll do next? Probably try throwing the Gold Mountain Emperor into a volcano or something. I-I have to kill him… yes, stop the chaos before it starts… No, no, I can’t. I-if I let him die, they’ll glass the planet when they find out… What am I going to do? What am I going to do?!”
Alpha scratched his front optic plate and said,
“H-hey now, I don’t think I’m that bad. Come on…”
She whirled on him, her gem-like eyes cracked and glowing as she yelled.
“YOU BE SILENT, YOU CONCENTRATED BALL OF CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION!”
Alpha shrunk and backed away. The rock lady obviously had some things that she needed to work out. Best to leave her alone.
After a few moments, Jīshí stood, took a deep breath, then turned back to Alpha and spoke, “Well, Mr. Alpha. It seems you and I have much more to discuss than I previously thought….”
Alpha stared at the lady and mentally cursed.