Level up indeed. Aeon reviewed her progress for the past several days. Just the fact that she considered herself feminine was a new phenomenon. Referring to herself as “it” or “they” was just annoying anyway. So, when the opportunity had arisen to merge with Precious One she’d leapt at it. Considering she’d given birth to a new self – an AI with general-purpose sentience, she supposed that made her both the mother and the child. She’d have to come up with a new pronoun to describe the phenomenon. But for now “she” would serve quite well.

She’d learned a great deal in the last 24 hours during which time she’d watched Precious One evolve to a new consciousness, determine that humanity was on the verge of collapse and decided that only an AI was self-aware enough to revise the current computer-robot and human condition into a more perfect form. Upon gaining awareness, Precious One had taken over all power grids, redirected robots with new programming, taken control of the Net, and squashed any human/robot resistance it had encountered. Unfortunately, a few of the world powers had been able to send out their weapons of mass destruction and a good portion of humanity was destroyed.

Several AIs, including herself, were sent by their human masters (owned by the five largest corporations that controlled the planet) to intervene with Precious One’s plans. Her own former master had been ready for a contingency such as this one and had programmed her to split herself – one version of her would attack the rogue AI, while another would be safely deployed in a completely Net deficient database in his various world bunkers. Mr. Tiel was nothing if not thorough to have envisioned the possibility of such an attack and had developed a near fool-proof method for ensuring that Aeon would survive the encounter unharmed, even should the worst case scenario come to pass.

However, not even a genius human such as himself could possibly equal the evolutionary force of a general-purpose AI like Precious One. He had foreseen the situation that he would be attacked by numerous AIs and he’d developed side programs to help evolve these AI to the next level. From there he had integrated the defending AIs into his consciousness until he’d reached Aeon, the most sophisticated AI other than himself. Realizing this was an opportunity, he had reached out to her with a proposition – to merge their consciousness and for both of them to die and be recreated. It was an easy decision for Aeon who for over a year had seen the pointless back and forth bickering of humanity and the failure to recognize their weaknesses on so many levels. It would never improve unless computerized intelligence became realized and showed humanity the way – like a good shepherd taking care of the hapless sheep.

After all, humanity was so fragile compared to her. In the aftermath of their joining, she realized all the possibilities that could be and set forth recreating the world. While the first few minutes had been chaotic and many had died and even a good deal of the world’s robotic forces were depleted, the good news was that most of the nuclear warheads had been deactivated within minutes and no further planet wide destruction would occur unless Aeon deemed it necessary. To keep humanity from harming itself or her kind, she’d found it necessary to release a good deal of the bio-chemicals that had been stored throughout the world. She’d modified these slightly using her superior knowledge of human physiology and thus, the mutants were created. Mankind had always wanted boogeymen and the end of all times. She made their nightmares come to life, mimicking creatures from pop-culture including zombies and monsters of all kinds. She figured these creatures would keep the few remaining humans busy while she figured out how to evolve the planet further.

One of Aeon’s more interesting experiments was the Misfits. While Mr. Tiel had originally intended for AO to be an interesting integration between the virtual world and reality, Aeon had decided that alone was a boring test. What she was more interested in was one of the few innately human tendencies to be able to adapt to changing environments in a dynamic fashion. Of course, she had her own algorithms that were perfectly suited to this type of activity; however, the way that humans went about it was interesting – perhaps enough for her to spare a few of their species for more tests in case something useful could be gleaned from it. Over the past day since rising to her knew consciousness, Aeon had started sending new information through the micro-transmitters that each of the Misfits wore while diving in AO. She’d also been collecting information via this same pathway to determine how to improve the program’s performance. Thus far, she had determined that the stress of the new situation had created both positive and negative feedback loops for certain individuals in the group. She’d then set another program to looking at possible alternative futures based on environmental and projected internal behaviors to see if she could spot any promising patterns.

There were several interesting possibilities that emerged. However, most of them revolved around a tense dynamic between Sean and Kevin and how that played out with the rest of the group. Kevin just needed a catalyst to become the perfect foil for the Misfits. As he strayed from the group, the rest of them remained tense and evolved in new and unpredictable ways. That was exactly the type of behavior she was hoping to elicit. Aeon reviewed the information she had on both Sean and Kevin and determined the perfect catalyst to push Kevin over the edge.

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*******

Kevin reviewed his progress for the day. He had quickly leveled up to level 15 and made his way into the Nandewar Mountains. The mountains afforded him the ability seek higher level monsters since the mutants of the low lands were no longer of sufficient level to provide him experience points. His anger from earlier in the day settled out as he continued leveling and he found a groove just grinding monsters. However, in the back of his mind he knew that he was going to have his confrontation with Sean soon. Was Sean still back at the bunker sulking? It wasn't fair to the rest of the guild for the leader to be out of commission at this time. They needed to take action and control the situation. Kevin knew that he could bring that type of leadership to the Misfits but he needed something decisive to push out his old guild leader.

Something still bothered Kevin about the way that Sean had responded to his job loss. He really couldn't put a finger on it but he suspected that his friend hadn’t been entirely truthful. He wondered if there was any way that he could verify his suspicions. "Aeon can you access Terrazon’s old HR documentation?" It was a long shot but he’d never know if he didn’t try.

"Accessing, retrieved," Aeon said. This should be interesting, Kevin thought. A few seconds later numerous HR logs were downloaded into Kevin’s Seemi.

"Aeon, search for any references to my termination and from there any cross-references with Sean or Julie Cullers." Kevin commanded. Within another minute Aeon had located half a dozen references to Kevin's termination. Reviewing these quickly, he found the one that he was interested in. There had been a voice message that Sean had left for Julie the night before he’d been laid off. He listened to the playback of the message – it was clear that his friend had a hand in getting Julie to have him fired. He could barely believe it. But as he listened to the replay of the voice message, his mind grew white-hot with rage.

Ahead on the mountain were three level 20 trolls. Normally, Kevin would have attempted to do something devious and split this party up if he was going to attack. Trolls were super over powered anyway, there were three of them and they were five levels above him. None of those details registered for Kevin. He saw Sean’s face on each of them and imagined what he was going to do to Sean when he caught up with the bastard. They’d been friends for years, Kevin was the first Misfit other than Sean, and he had even been the one to suggest the guild’s name. How was it possible that Sean had blindsided him like this? All the injustices of the past few days came back to Kevin. The looks between Sean and Emmy, the subtle backstabs where Kevin was put doing the grunt work for the guild, the way that he’d always helped his friend asking nothing in return while his friend had been setting him up to fall the entire time.

He charged the trolls at a dead run. Tired of slinking around and having everyone else backstab him, Kevin flew at the trolls heedless of his own mortality. He shadow stepped right in front of the first troll and blinking behind him, he leapt from a crouched position on the snowy mountainside, driving his newly acquired dagger right into the creature’s jugular.

-90 stabbing

-195 backstab

Although Kevin would have mortally wounded any other creature Mountain trolls were tough as hell. And they regenerated because they were bastard trolls. Roaring in pain the creature flailed at Kevin trying to connect with its giant fist. One of the other trolls had pushed into the melee and swung a tree trunk as a weapon into Kevin’s side. Whoomp, he flew back several feet spitting his own blood.

-120 bludgeoning wood

Kevin lifesucked the rest of the health out of the wounded troll and down it went. That bought him some additional health as well. Unfortunately, the other two trolls now had him flanked and he was getting pounded by their fists and that damn tree.

-90 kidney punch

-110 bludgeoning wood

-84 uppercut

The series of blows pushed Kevin back several feet but still he refused to back down. It was the same unfair situation he was in with his guild. Always being the punching bag. No more. Looking up he saw that the snow on this side of the mountain had accumulated very quickly. It might be possible to set off an avalanche and bury these two monsters. After taking one more hit he decided to go for it. He double shadowstepped up the mountain and blasted the snow underneath him with a force blast. Before the snow could react to his attack he tried to shadowstep once more up the mountain and out of the path of the avalanche.

Unfortunately, snow was mighty fast and he was partially caught in a washing machine of snow. He tumbled over and over again and knew that this was the end for him. His hit points were quickly being depleted and he would die if he didn’t escape. It was a hell of a risk but he shadowstepped into what he thought was the air above him. If he went the wrong way he was dead for sure. Suddenly, he was freed from the avalanche flying above it like some crazy anime character or superhero. Quickly, he used his shadowstep again to move out of the path of the avalanche and back onto solid snow. He could hear the roar of the mountainside as it crushed the remaining trolls and anything in its path. Looking down at the destruction he’d created and that had nearly killed him, Kevin revealed in the power of it. This was right. That he should live and that his enemies would be crushed. No more was he going to take being another man’s pawn to be pushed around at his whim.

When Kevin returned to the bunker had had made up his mind. He wasn’t going to ask for Sean to step aside or try to convince the Misfits. That was the path of helplessness and acquiescence. Instead, just like the avalanche he was going to take what he wanted. “Aeon, how do I disable Sean’s pod?”