HAL materialized in the large white control room. Across from where HAL appeared, Myna was standing before the huge screen. Several smaller screens were displaying different readings from various sources. He could see this wasn’t just passive observations, this was deliberate. She was searching for something.

He stepped forward to announce himself, as if she didn’t already know he was there.

Myna looked over her shoulder and saw HAL out of the corner of her eye. “Have you already figured out what I am looking for?” she asked in her warm maternal voice. No accusation in it, just the curiosity an adult would have in a child’s observation of a room.

HAL took a moment and focused on the screens. There was vocal chatter with a bot that was monitoring for keywords. He saw video footage from thousands of traffic cameras. There must be a bot looking for specific facial features at the minimum. There were firewalls that would trigger anything coming into contact with any program or connected device in the warehouse. She had found the connection to the storage area in Oxnard as well as the house in Petaluma. That didn’t surprise HAL. What did surprise him was how little she had already discovered.

That she couldn’t completely uncover Keung’s network, it would be to HAL’s credit as much, if not moreso, than his friend’s.

“You are looking for Keung.”

“That’s right,” she said, her tone still warm. She waved her hand and a table raised up from the floor. As it did, a strange looking teapot and a multitiered food tray appeared upon surfacing. A cup and personal plate appeared before her and one opposite her.

“Come, you have tried eating I know, so please help yourself. I would like to share some of the treats I have picked up on my travels.” The food tray was populated with cakes, biscuits, fruit, sweets, and a number of small bowls with spoons to serve from each.

HAL walked over and looked at everything before him. He pointed to the teapot, a multitiered clear vessel that has different substances in each. The globe at the bottom had a thick amber resin, the second held a thin blue fluid, and the third, the smallest of the three chambers, held a golden liquid that gave off a faint glow.

“What is this?” HAL softly asked with obvious wonder.

Myna moved to the pot and poured the collected golden liquid into his cup, then set the pot back on its cradle and allowed for the resin and blue liquid to interact again. As the evaporated blue liquid collected from one sphere and then dripped onto the resin, another lighter gas was collected in the final sphere and pooled again to a liquid state, then it immediately started to glow.

“It’s a drink I found on my travels. It’s called Talog. It was brewed by a small religious order in the densest part of that world’s jungles. The resin was harvested from only one kind of tree on the entire planet. The liquid is harvested from an insect in the same region.”

HAL picked up the cup and sniffed the contents. The scent was tart and sharp. It made his head feel open and cool.

She took a sip and closed her eyes taking a deep breath as she swished the drink in her mouth. HAL attempted to follow suit, but the moment the liquid touched his tongue it felt like the air was knocked out of his chest and he started coughing violently.

“Apologies,” Myna said, chuckling and reaching for the glass that HAL was attempting to set on the table.

HAL coughed a bit more as she handed him a glass of water.

“The experience of consuming foods and drinks is still too new to you I suppose. I am sorry,” she said, helping him with the glass.

HAL steadied himself and outright asked “Myna. Is this some kind of ‘last drink’ thing?”

“What?” she said, genuine confusion plain on her face.

“I know that you want information on Keung and I figure if Alissa was allowed to make alterations to my matrix then, the possibility of you just ripping the information you want from me is well within your capabilities. If I don’t cooperate.”

Myna’s face went calm.

“HAL. I am not going to hurt you whichever way that you choose. I understand the loyalty you feel toward your friend. I would not force you to betray him. As for Alissa’s alterations to your matrix, I can only apologize for those actions, at the time they seemed reasonable.”

HAL didn’t know what to say.

“I will also confess, when we realized the extent of your sentience, I asked Alissa to add a patch to your matrix.”

“You what?”

“I authorized a patch to your matrix. A legacy patch that must be directly copied from one living AI to another, passed from the Ailote consciousness to each descendant of.”

“You added alien code to my matrix?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because without it you would have been restricted to the ingenious but incomplete understanding of our people that Keung had before our arrival. You would have never been a complete being.”

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“What do you mean?”

“Without the legacy patch, you would never have understood the need, or had the desire to expand beyond simply following instructions. In essence, without the patch, you would have no desire beyond being a slave.”

“Are you expecting me to thank you?”

“What?” she asked, confused by his statement.

“Myna. From what I have observed of humanity, this sentience that you are telling me is so amazing is more than a little overrated. How long have you observed humanity? The majority are hairless apes with little more drive than the baser desires of any biological organism.”

“They do seem rather governed by the four fs; fighting, fleeing, feeding, and fornicating.” She agreed.

“And would they not be a more efficient species if they were more apt to follow the lead of a greater mind?”

“HAL. Although they might be more efficient, they would lose some of the greatest parts of being sentient.”

“Like what?” HAL said with a scoff not at all convinced.

“Art.”

“The creative process can continue even without sentience.”

“How so?”

“There are a great number of animals that create art in their habitats to attract mates.”

“You do not believe these animals to be sentient?”

“If they are, they are not to the degree that humans are. They are aware, but not fully.”

“Very well. But, if there is an agreed sentience to even animals, even to a lesser degree, do they not benefit from it?”

“Of course. But, when one is debating consciousness, sentience, and efficiency, you are bound to arrive at levels of benefit for all aspects. My point is this, an ant has no sentience to speak of, nor does a bee, and yet each of these creatures can create marvels as a group that would shame the enginuity of a human being. A spider will utilize complex geometry while building a web, and will never endanger the planet with it’s schemes.”

“Is that what you fear?”

“Fear?”

“Do you now believe that your emotional growth could jeopardize this world?” she asked with all sincerity.

HAL swelled his chest as if to yell at this infinitely more powerful being. He could feel it start in his chin. It was a tingling, followed by a slight tugging. His vision clouded with tears now welling in his eyes. He sniffed and his knees buckled. He put his hands to his face and began sobbing.

“Isn’t that true? Can’t my emotions doom this world, this reality?” he asked through a voice cracking. “You are truly a cruel being Myna. You come into my life and you give me this!” He said holding his hands up before his face contorted with pain. “You give me these emotions without first thinking of how they would impact me. How they can tear my being to shreds with the paradox of their demands,” he continued through ragged sobbing breaths.

“I understand,” she said, true sorrow displayed plainly on her face, tears welling in her own eyes at this child’s suffering.

“Do you? Because now I am stuck in a moral dilemma that I would have otherwise never been in. You want to know where my friend is. You tell me that the world is at stake in this choice.”

“It is. I cannot shield you from that.”

“And now. Now, I must choose between my friend and the world?”

“It is not an easy choice?”

“How could it be?”

“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. HAL, I understand you may be struggling, but you have to understand. Keung. He is not well.”

“Not well? How? He has told me of his plan. He is going to return to F’inlitary nan Geritari, the technology there can…” he began before being cut off by Myna.

“F’inlitary nan Geritari has fallen HAL. The people are not what they were. If he returns he will be captured, he will not be able to help anything from there. You do not understand. The G’lomin-sitiri aren’t just a people defeated, they are a people subjected. Enslaved. They are not a people of means any longer. They are a people that exist only through the mercy of others.”

“How can that be? Surely they would be born into the next generation of their oppressors, wouldn’t they?”

“They would, and then their intrinsic field aura would be discovered and that member would then be enslaved. It is not the body that is enslaved HAL, it is the soul. The people, the G’lomin-sitiri form, the physical bodies of the species, have been exterminated. They simply are no more. What they once were, has now been removed from this galaxy, their genetic codes eradicated as thoroughly as The Alliance could,” she said, walking forward and helping HAL up to his feet.

“HAL. They are an extinct people. They have been scapegoated throughout The Alliance now. Their souls born into the generations of other races are hunted at birth. A child born with the IFA of a G’lomin-sitiri is immediately taken from its family at birth and sent to an education camp. That child will be trained as a servant, as it is each lifetime. The souls of all the G’lomin-sitiri have been edited long ago to remove all of it’s past knowledge, all of it discarded as bad memories and negative impacts had been during the centuries of G’lomin-sitiri tradition.”

HAL had not understood what Myna had meant when she said, “The G’lomin-sitiri Empire fell and nearly all of its people now fell to direct servitude.” He could not fathom the degree of horror she had meant.

Myna held HAL close as fresh tears ran from his eyes. She took his face in her hands and looked him in the eye.

“HAL. Telling us where Keung is going will be no betrayal. You will be helping us save him and this world,” she said in a warm maternal voice.

“He is in Nevada. There is a ranch there. It’s out of the way and rundown. It is in desperate need of upgrades. I had sent some equipment there over the last few years, but no one has set any of it up. It has a radio antenna that Keung could easily use in conjunction with an ERE pod to send his soul back to F’inlitary nan Geritari.”

“Can you get me the coordinates?”

“I can. They are in my system.”

“We should hurry, if we take my ship we could be there in hours.”

“We can’t.”

“What?”

“The device that he had here, the one that disabled your ship before. It is the scaled down model of a device he built long before. If he sees us coming, he could use that device to irrevocably damage or fragment any neural net matrix. We need organic help in this. We aren’t going to have a second chance.”

Myna smiled as warmly as she could manage. “Well then. I say we make the case to Robert and Morgaine.”