Flora had to wait such a long time in the opened pod that she fell asleep. She didn't fault the pod company. Of course, they would be hopelessly overworked if all their customers had to log out at the same time.

It was 17 o'clock until she exited her room, freshly showered. Her first visit went to the administration section of the building. The lease of her pod would run out tomorrow, and it was high time to extend it. The line for the person responsible reached across the entire corridor. No surprise there.

Flora would rather spend her time getting fresh air than standing in line, so she turned around. Behind her was a man in a wheelchair. She recognized Dave Lupe. He had groomed himself meticulously like in the VR, but a few more wrinkles and other signs of age marred his face. The most significant difference was the empty trouser legs.

"Oh, hello, Dave. What a surprise, seeing you here."

"Hello, Flora. Well, you are staying in the unofficial Riverstones RL Headquarters. Quite a few members of the clan are taking the 24/7 route."

Now that she had Dave as entertainment, she chose to wait. As they chatted, the line moved until it was Flora's turn. She extended her lease for two months and booked 20:45 for reentering the VR, the first free time-slot.

----------------------------------------

Robby had promised that he would visit in the evening, so Flora had a few hours to fill. She was a believer in fresh air and walking, not because she enjoyed them often, but the other way around. She had noticed that when she turtled up in long work sessions, just staring at computers, she was more prone to headaches.

"Are there any nice walking trails in this area, Aidan?" Flora asked, and nobody answered. The part of her mind that housed the connections to her AIs was empty. After half a second of panic, Flora remembered that she was in the real world. She shook her head. 'Silly old woman.'

Flora wanted to check her mobile for sights, but it had lost its charge during the week. She clipped it on her smart-clothing. It would load when she walked.

When Flora left the building, she spotted some green between the neglected industrial buildings. She walked towards them and discovered the edge of a forest with a hiking trail leading into it.

The shadows of the trees invited Flora into the woods. The rays of the hot August sun dotted the forest floor with light blots. Flora felt as if she had woken up from a dream. The real world was pretty and … real … The Cetviwos felt like a dreamscape compared to the immanence of reality.

After a quarter of an hour, her body increased its complaining. Her knees ached, her hip throbbed, her feet developed blisters. Clouds of mosquitos hung over a brook and were excited about the human visitor. 'I could do with a little less realness.'

Flora already missed the Cetviwos, her workshop, her AIs, her pain-free athleticism, her robots… Real Life was overrated.

"Aidan, lead me home again. Burned toast!" Flora stopped. She had no clue where she was but was sure that 15 minutes of walking didn't count as being lost in the woods. Dozens of solutions came to her mind, all easily implementable in VR: Climbing on a tree, jumping high enough to look over the trees, or just asking Aidan. Finally, one solution she could use in RL appeared. She could check the map on her mobile. Unfortunately, the bit of walking wasn't enough to charge it.

So, she retraced her steps. She was pretty sure she had turned right to flee from the mosquitos on the last crossing. Or was it the crossing before? When she entered a clearing she had never seen before, she deduced that she had chosen the wrong junction.

A familiar shape danced with a sword on the clearing. Even before Flora could make out her face (she had forgotten to wear her glasses), she recognized Mia. The girl had closed her eyes while her body executed the sword kata.

'Asking her might be my best bet to rejoin civilization.' However, Flora didn't want to disturb her, so she sat down on a fallen tree, resting her feet and legs. She watched the ants trying to deal with a granny bottom on their highway and Mia's exercises.

"Auntie Flo?"

"Hello, Mia. Yes, I'm me! Only more wrinkly and gammy." Flora felt ashamed, but better a bit of humiliation than missing the meeting with Robby and, in the worst case, sending Robby on a goose chase to rescue her from her stupidity. She was totally able to find her way out of the woods on her own! And if it was by asking nice people… "Could you point me in the direction of the Pod-Thingy-Company?"

"Sure." Mia gestured to the south. She eyed up Flora. "I can walk with you if you like."

"That's nice, dear. Thank you, I'll manage," Flora said, driven more by pride than reason. "See you tomorrow for the entourage selection?"

"Sure thing, Auntie."

Flora found her way back.

Robby was early and picked her up for dinner in the town. They had checked out the cafeteria first, and it was overcrowded. Flora felt underdressed in her leisure suit. Nobody in the pizza joint cared about the attire of a granny, but she was raised differently.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"I'll move to the JourneyVirtual, too. I rented out my flat." Robby said.

Flora raised her eyebrows. "You are so young. Are you sure that you want to leave the real world? Though, I have to admit I'm less convinced of its charm after today."

"I don't leave the world behind. I look at it as a vacation place. After I wrapped up all the company's RL businesses, I'm ready to focus 100% on its virtual developments."

"What does Ressa say about that? Don't you want to have sex with her?"

"Ma! My sex life is none of your business! She lives in Brazil, so RL sex was never a part of our relationship."

"But my grandkids!"

Robby scowled.

"Alright, alright… no grandkids, message received." Flora sulked, but she was pretty okay with the information. Divorce was easier when there were no kids involved, no shared properties, and a few thousand kilometers between the partners. "Consider freezing your sperm and offering it to humanity. I like my excellent genes to spread."

"Ma!"

"Spoilsport!"

"Let's change the topic. How are you faring in the Cetviwos?"

"Great. I'm enjoying myself immensely. It helps that you and Eddie are there, but even just talking to the AIs is entertaining. I really wonder how they get them to be that good. I couldn't distinguish them from people. The Cetviwos computing center must be as big as Switzerland."

"Aidan isn't a typical AI. I have Camus for a year, and only recently, he developed a bit of a personality. Was he part of any of your special deals with Central Tank?"

"No?"

"Strange. Aidan is on a level only the hidden masters show."

"I don't know what you mean. Sure, he is great, but I've met a lot of fleshed out natives. They can't be all hidden masters. I only encountered natives with limited dialog options during the Sweeping Blow Aptitude Test. The rest was pretty humanesque if a bit caricature-like."

"Really? I experienced just the opposite. Pretty much all NPCs and AIs are severely limited in their interactions, except for Aidan and the hidden masters."

Flora smelled CentralTank shenanigans. Or was her judgment clouded? Maybe she had a bad case of imaginary friends?

"What about Ahoncathyr? He definitely has a personality." Flora asked.

"Yes, Ressa says that she can speak to him, but he was an S-rated dungeon boss, so I kind of expect him to be special. Normal companions can't speak and have only light behavioral patterns."

"I communicated with a lot of elementals. Although they can't speak, they can make their intentions and preferences clear, and their personalities differ a lot. My ice-elemental even has a favorite bobsled run."

Robby looked at her like she was a crazy person… or at least senile.

"My golems feel like potato sacks−no mind much less original thoughts at all," Flora said to prove that she hadn't only imaginary friends but also some unimaginative companions. "You can join me in sorting out my entourage on Friday One. The entire church of Evailyn is full of Natives with fleshed-out characters." As she said it, she doubted herself again. What if she only projected complicated thoughts and motives into the council members? Who would she pick as a traitor if everything was as it seemed? At the moment, Zander was the only one behaving a bit antagonistic towards her, but she was more annoyed than evil. Dysian had been an obvious arsehead. The most one-dimensional villain she had met was the Headmaster, and he claimed to be a real human.

"I will take the job you have requested with my squad. So, I will substitute for that Vatten guy on Friday. Olivia has finally shown an interest in an advanced class, Field Chaplain. Vatten has it, and hopefully, we'll get a lead there."

"Great! I'll ask him for you."

"Ma… something is bothering me about your AI situation." Robby paused, and Flora suppressed any verbal denial about her senility. She didn't want to be the lady that does protest too much. "When I saw the Goddess on our meeting with the lawyers, I was reminded of a video I've watched together with Hub. He made fun of my resemblance to one god. It wasn't as obvious as Evailyn's similarity to you, and I dismissed his comments. However, since I've seen Evailyn, I have wanted to watch that video again."

"You mean you have doubleganger god, too? Let's watch it together!"

"No. It's not a doubleganger, and even if it were, he's dead… oh well, you'll see for yourself."

Flora was confused and didn't know what to feel. They dared use her son? But how did they know about him? Or should she ask who? And why is the AI dead? Did CentralTank kill him off because of copyright issues?

In the dingy pizza joint, Flora and Robby sat next to each other and shared headphones and a pepperoni pizza like teenagers. Robby propped up his tablet and started a file named "The Artificial Intelligences of the Cetviwos."

The first camera flew over the temple district in Talpica, and a female commentator gushed about the quality and realism of the AIs.

The next scene showed the Headmaster. A banner introduced him as Carlton Zarrec, Head of the AI Department.

"Our main AI, the System, developed over years of interaction with humans. We raised him like a human. We nurtured and educated him." The headmaster scowled while speaking, which gave the wholesome content a bitter note.

The commentator added some details about System's stats, which Flora couldn't comprehend because the numbers were too high. Her first USB stick was 128 kilobytes big. "Exa"-bytes were above her visualization skills.

To Flora's astonishment, the system's base was an artificial neural network. The architecture had been all the rage around the millennium turn; so much that even Flora as an industrial designer, had to listen to her computer enthused colleagues talk about it. However, it fell out of favor in the first quarter of the 21st century.

"The AI handlers gave the budding AI a nickname." The Headmaster sneered. "Aidam. The first AI. After he aced all of the Turing tests, we decided to go forward and used his architecture for the next AI. The System's job is to uphold the workings of the Cetviwos. We planned the new AI's task to be governing and simulating the native population. Our AI Handlers immediately called her Evai, mother of all thinking entities."

Flora gaped at the screen. Evai, like the name of her original AI-Assistant?

"Names have power." The Headmaster glared at the screen.

The video crossfaded to an animated sequence. Two clouds of shimmering zeros and ones floated through a jungle. The Evai-labeled cloud approached an apple tree and took an apple.

"Security is our utmost concern. We shielded the AIs from internet access and still do. We were naïve and thought without an opportunity; they wouldn't even know about it, much less be tempted."

The music took a darker note, and Flora forgot all about her pizza and stared at the small screen as if it was apple sauce toast made from the fruits of the tree of knowledge.