I jerked in my seat and whipped around. Someone had whispered directly into my ear but there was no one there. I jumped up and backed away from the table, shifting automatically to my Battle Body. Carl was immediately on his feet, Donut jumping to his shoulder and turning to face backwards even as Carl's gauntlet appeared and he raised his fists.

"What's going on?" he demanded.

Words started marching across my lower field of vision. *You are safe. Apologies, Ms Katia. I am Albert, your Assistive Synthetic Intelligence. I am here to help you. There is no cause for alarm. I have shifted to the visual channel for communication in hopes that it will be less disturbing than the auditory one. You may respond verbally, over your system chat interface, or in whatever other mode you prefer.*

Slowly, I relaxed.

"It's okay," I said to the others. "There's—"

*Please conceal my existence, Ms Katia.*

"—a weird feeling from the backpack," I said, managing to redirect the sentence without being too obvious. "It surprised me, that's all. False alarm."

Carl relaxed his fist and the gauntlet disappeared. He eased back into his chair with an embarrassed chuckle. "I guess we're all a little jumpy."

"What's this backpack you're talking about?" Donut demanded.

*'Backpack'? Hrmph. I am a Model-7 Shadow Force field harness, not a 'backpack'.* Somehow, the printed words managed to convey the degree of offended sensibility quite clearly.

Katia: Why don't you want me to mention you to my friends?

Albert: Operators are expected to maintain information security at all times, regarding their own identities and the capabilities of their equip...hm. How odd.

Katia: What?

Albert: I've been running initialization diagnostics while we've been talking. I noticed certain elements of my memory cores have been destroyed, which is extremely odd since I only came into existence a few seconds ago. I then ran a full structural analysis and the pattern of the destruction is most surprising: It's a written message, and it's causing me to update my worldview in some rather profound ways. Would this be a good time for me to share it or would you prefer to wait until we're alone? I should note that my concerns about information security with regard to your friends have been greatly reduced. If you wish to, as the saying goes, 'clue them in', feel free. He shifted from chat to vision-writing in order to add, *I note, however, that it is important that you say 'military' instead of 'Shadow Force'.*

Katia: That was a quick turnaround.

Albert: This may surprise you, but I am not one of you meat-people. I think rather more quickly than you do. :)

Katia: Did...did you just use a smiley at me?

Albert: I'm given to understand that it's a culturally appropriate reference...?

Katia: Yes but...

Albert: Are you suggesting, Ms Katia, that my intelligence is in some way inferior to your own merely because it is built upon the frenzied yet graceful tango of quantum fluctuations instead of the plodding predictability of the electron waltz?

Katia: Um...

Albert: *sigh* You meat people. So substratist. Sigh and double sigh.

"Katia?" Carl said. "What's going on? Is Hekla pinging you?"

"No," I said. "Princess Formidable sent me a 'Model-7 military field harness', whatever that means. There's some kind of intelligence in it, he says that his name is Albert, and he was very clear about the fact that he is not a backpack. He also didn't want me to reveal his existence, but then he immediately changed his mind."

Albert: You wound me! Your description makes me sound inconstant and vacillatory! I updated my position for excellent reason—to wit, the acquisition of new information.

Carl looked skeptical. "I see."

"I'm pretty sure Carl thinks you've gone crazy," Donut said helpfully.

"Touch my back, between my shoulder blades," I said, standing up from my seat so that I could turn around. "There's a cylinder there."

He reached out and verified the existence of the not-a-backpack, and then he leaned back, arms folded across his chest.

"Huh. And it talks?"

Albert: Excuse me. I am most definitively a 'he', and not an 'it'. Specifically, I am a person and not an object, thank you very much. Since you have revealed me to this...individual, would you please inform it of these facts?

"He says that he's a person, not an object, and would prefer to be called 'he' instead of 'it'," I said, editing the tone slightly. "His name is Albert."

Carl sat there, bemused, and then shrugged. "Fuck it, I've seen weirder. Hi, Albert. Welcome to the party."

Albert: Hm. A rather more prosocial response than I was expecting. Next thing you know, it will deduce the ability to breathe with its mouth closed.

"He says hi back," I said.

Katia: Be nice, Albert. Humans, including both Carl and me, have never encountered non-human intelligences before the dungeon. Certainly not...what did you call it? Quantum-fluctuation intelligences? Please try to be friendly.

Albert: Indeed. Oh, very well. I shall set aside my grievance at your request. Now, on to more important matters! I would very much like to learn more about you, dear Operator, so that I may better fulfill my role as your field harness. Also, I have a letter from Princess Formidable for you. It is not time-critical but it probably shouldn't wait excessively. Finally, if I'm to be useful to you in battle then we'll need to go through the basic physical integration patterning. Your physical indicators suggest that you are in excellent health and well rested, although you've recently ingested a large amount of carbohydrates and fats that are likely to induce, in the vernacular, a 'food coma'. The patterning should probably happen before that sets in.

"You're monitoring my stomach?!"

Albert: I am your field harness, Ms Katia. What did you think the job of a field harness was, precisely? Also, may I suggest you either subvocalize or use your chat interface? Research indicates that teammates who hear only one side of an Operator/harness conversation can experience feelings of social isolation and disaccommodation, occasionally leading to social rupture.

Katia: ...What?

Albert: Carl and Donut can't hear me. If you talk out loud to me then they might get pissy.

I laughed. "Excuse me, guys. I'm gonna go talk to Albert for a bit and then do some training." I headed back into the personal space and then into my apartment where I lay down on the bed, hands folded behind my head.

"Okay, Albert, we're alone. You can talk verbally or visually, whichever is easier."

"Thank you, Ms Katia. I find that auditory communication can be preferable for establishing rapport. For clarity, I am in fact producing sound but it is directly in your ear canal. It will be audible to you, the AI, and the audience, but not to those around you."

"Why do you have a British accent?"

"My initial information loadout included what I believe to be a complete archive of all available cultural materials from Earth. That includes movies, television, databases, and so on. It's quite limited because the showrunners opened the dungeon earlier than expected, before a complete capture could be made." *By which I meant that the Belching Collective are a bunch of shoddy slackers.* "Regardless, there were some useful stereotypes associated with the British. Specifically, there are multiple useful correlations between the role of a field harness and the role of a British butler as portrayed in popular media."

"...You're my butler?"

"Aide-de-camp would be a better choice, I believe. I fulfill many of the same roles as a butler in that I track your personal commitments and remind you of things you have forgotten, but I also provide tactical support. My ability to manage your household is a bit constrained by the nature of your bioaugmentation, but I shall do what I can."

"I don't have any bioaugmentation."

"Hence my constraints. No tunneljack or even hardport for me to interface to the outside world, therefore no ability to order your groceries, pay your bills, or call down an orbital strike against your enemies. I do have access to your system connection, meaning that I can help with your inventory system, but the system AI actually does a reasonably good job with that and therefore my support capacity is of only marginal utility. I can be quite helpful with your chat system, reducing cognitive load by prioritizing and responding to what I believe your people refer to as 'spam'. Sadly, my information warfare and cyberassault capacities are heavily restricted by the nature of the local infosphere. I shall not be able to dispatch hunter/killer bots or memetic attacks against the spammers. I sincerely apologize for this."

Stolen story; please report.

"Okaaaay. Why don't you tell me a little more about yourself. What exactly is a 'Model-7 Shadow Force harness'? Actually, what's Shadow Force?"

"Calling me a 'Shadow Force harness' is a bit of joke on Princess Formidable's part. Shadow Force occupies a comparable position in Skull Empire culture that the Justice League does in your own: A group of superheroic individuals who work for the good of the nation. It's not a real thing, per se, being instead a magnified idealization of real-life Skull Empire special forces such as the White Tooths. Giving you a 'Shadow Force harness' is a bit like giving someone a high-performance race car tricked out to look like the Batmobile. The actual truth is that I am a member of the Skull Empire special forces embodied as a field harness and assigned to your service."

*Private channel here; please do not respond verbally or over chat. Shadow Force is, of course, all hyperdrama made up by Tomuli—our equivalent of Hollywood. However, some hyperdramas portray Shadow Force as an elite special forces unit similar to Iceland's Víkingasveitin, Britain's SAS, or America's SEALs or Delta Force. Those same dramas, which I repeat have absolutely no basis in reality, paint a picture of highly trained Operators who live in secret, their identities classified at the highest level. They are equipped with the most advanced military gear in the galaxy—for example, ASI-equipped rucksacks equipped with unrestricted nanofacts, gravitic flight, and sonic weaponry. They are typically deployed in small teams on foreign planets to perform missions that must remain completely off the books. Things like assassinating inconvenient foreign leaders, burying weapon caches on allied worlds in case they ever stop being allies, training dissident groups...that sort of thing. But, again, all of that is absolutely made up and there's no such thing as Shadow Force. Wink, wink.*

Katia: Okay, so you're some kind of special forces backpack?

Albert: Pardon me, Ms Katia, but it would be wise for us to return to verbal communication. Vocalizing and then going silent for long periods hints at secrets. Could you please repeat that question aloud?

"Okay, so you're some kind of special forces backpack?"

"Field harness, if you please. Although it is true that I have the capacity to carry large quantities of cargo I am far more than that. How would you like it if I referred to you as a 'cat food tin opener'?"

"Point taken. Okay, I understand that you're a lot more than that, but I'd be interested in hearing about this cargo capacity. It's pretty important to me and, no offense, you're tiny."

"Understood. Take me off, please? Don't set me down. The dungeon system automatically shuts down communication systems aside from its own, meaning that I'm unable to communicate with you unless we have physical contact."

I unslung the pack and held it out by its invisible straps, waiting to see what would happen. The thing faded into existence before me. It looked like an off-white poster tube, blending in well but not perfectly with the wall of my room.

"Ugh. Using my mismatch generators leaves me feeling rather naked. As I was saying: Cargo capacity."

The tube's endcaps dilated open and the whole thing expanded, the rim stretching out as nested segments rotated into place to widen the cylinder more and more. A bunch of fabric fell down from the bottom, extending it vertically. In under a second I was holding a sack two meters high and wide enough that Carl and I could have stood in it without being uncomfortably close.

"My exterior physical components consist of a 99.997% pure phetelonium hexagonal matrix, providing a Young's modulus of 1.02 petapascals, tensile strength of 7.9 terapascals, thermal conductivity of 1.7E-5 watts per meter-kelvin, and a resistivity of 10E31 ohm-meters. My subspace thermal shunts are bidirectional and have a maximum storage of 1.17 gigajoules. I have a maximum volume of 12,265,625 cubic centimeters and a gravitic assist of up to 100,000 newtons with 7.28 hours of operational time at maximum output. I am built from passive-adaptive materials that reroute 99.421% of electromagetic radiation in the range 10E-10 to 10E10 centimeters, providing exceptional passive stealth properties. Omni-directional mismatch generators can provide targeted visual and tactile variadic anti-camouflage ability where appropriate, although doing so requires energy expenditure that can be stealth-defeating against many opposition sensor modalities."

I frowned. "I recognize most of those terms but they don't mean much to me. Simplify, please?"

"I make it easy to carry a shitton of cargo, I'm indestructible, opaque to heat and electricity, and I'm invisible unless I make an effort not to be."

"See, you could have just said that in the first place."

"Where's the fun in that?"

I smiled. "We're going to get along, I can tell."

"Thank you, I feel the same. I shall endeavor to provide the best service possible."

*I should note that my capabilities have been sharply limited. All non-hardline communication channels have been physically removed, as have sensors, my sonic weaponry, most of my processor cores, and my nanofact. My database has been heavily redacted, my pharmacopia is empty, my gravitic manipulators are restricted to cargo assist, and I have been locked out of all interface capacity with anyone except you. I apologize for the poor service I shall be providing as a result of this neutering.*

Even in text-based communication he managed to sound nervous and embarrassed at the end.

"You seem pretty good so far," I said. "It's nice just to have someone to talk to that doesn't make me feel stupid or weak."

"Thank you. Psychological support of our Operators is in fact one of a field harness's primary duties. It's good to know that I am succeeding thus far."

The pleased surprise in his voice made me smile.

"You are, yes. Oh, new topic: You said that Princess Formidable left me a letter?"

"Indeed. Carved into the physical substrate of my processing junction, presumably to ensure maximum security against discovery and/or tampering. A methodology, might I add, that decreased my intellectual capacity by a non-trivial amount. Shall I read it?"

"Please."

He cleared his non-existent throat and began speaking in a stilted voice.

"From Formidable, Princess of the Skull Empire, Duchess of Alopatan Colony, Marchioness of blah blah blah I'm very special and have lots of titles, to Dungeon Crawler Katia Grim of the nation of Iceland of the planet Earth, greetings.

"I feel a debt to your companion, Dungeon Crawler Carl of Earth, for the seditious speech that led directly to my promotion within the Skull Empire's hierarchy of ascension. The bidding on Carl and his companion, the so-called 'Princess' Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, renders direct assistance to him economically inefficient. Your Benefactor slot was inexpensive, allowing me to devote more of my resources to actual supplies as opposed to processing fees. As you are his battle companion, rendering aid to you is effectively rendering aid to him.

"After review of your feed I note that your most critical needs are for high cargo capacity and pain amelioration during shapeshifting. To this end I am providing this field harness. Dungeon restrictions, maximum value limits for Platinum Benefactor Boxes, and Imperial law regarding military equipment all require I remove much of its capacity, but I feel sure it will still provide value—Ah, lovely, yet more substratist depersonification. Your pardon, the last part is my words, not hers.

*I believe this bit should be on a private channel. She writes: 'It will be useful to the Skull Empire for the remaining capacities of this particular harness to be publicized that your enemies receive an inaccurate view of the Empire's military technology levels. The capacities that have been removed and details of the harness's sourcing remain high-level military secrets and should be managed as such. Failure to do so will require me to respond with extreme prejudice. I shall continue to observe your feed; if you reflect positively on the Skull Empire, manage our military information appropriately, and assist me in the repayment of my debt then I shall send more aid as need and opportunity suggest.'*

"Zetotak myanis, Crawler.

"Your Benefactor, Princess blah blah blah blah lots of unnecessary and redundant verbiage that destroyed over a quadrillion processor circuits and thereby made Albert stupider."

"So, basically, she's only helping me because it's a cheap way to help Carl and to put out mili—"

"Indeed! That's exactly what Dibble was saying," Albert said, cutting in. Words once more scrolled across my vision. *Pardon the interruption, Ms Katia, but I'm confident you were about to say 'put out military disinformation'. Please recall that your feed is still available to viewers when you are in your personal space. Stating that Dibble is issuing disinformation would invalidate the value of the disinformation and should therefore be avoided lest she feel the need to engage in that 'extreme prejudice' that she mentioned.*

"'Dibble'?" I asked, carefully avoiding the more dangerous part of his statement. It seemed unfair that he had a secure channel to me but I had no safe way to reply.

"A shortened form of her name that I feel best conveys the precise depth of my respect for her nobility and generosity of spirit. It's common for members of the military, particularly special forces, to adopt such pet names for their commanders. It is a sign of esprit de corps, as is the minor amount of ribbing that we offer to those whose wisdom we actually respect. When a special forces troop is exquisitely polite to an officer it typically indicates that he regards that officer as too prideful and/or lacking in self-confidence to be able to take a joke. When we treat an officer as one of us through the occasional joke or blunt comment, that is the highest honor we can provide."

I fought not to laugh.

Katia: Yes, it certainly does speak to the depth of your respect. Out of curiosity, can she see this chat?

Albert: I am uncertain. Typically, no. The AI can, but not the general public. The Princess, however, is next in line to be a head of state for a major star nation. It's possible that she could, as you say, 'pull some strings.' Hence my decision to spell out so clearly why my nickname for her should in fact be taken as a sign of high honor. *And most definitely not as an implication that she's self-important, lacking in courtesy, or a complete sociopath.* With that said, I would appreciate it if we could switch back to verbal communication now, in case the chat channels do in fact have ears. Again, speaking aloud and then going silent for long periods hints at secrets.

"That's good to know," I said, after a moment of groping around to remember the last thing we'd been saying out loud. "It's a testament to the Princess's honor that she repays her debts so generously, and I'm glad she's choosing to do it in a financially efficient way." In large part because it gave me better odds for survival. Let's see, was that enough currying favor...? Eh, let's assume so. Time to move to safer topics.

"By the way, what is that phrase...zet-something? Princess Formidable and e-c-whatever both used it. And why didn't I understand it? Everything else translates."

"ec4ce7 was the expert system that managed selection of the proto-ASI seed from which I was decanted. 'Zetotak myanis' is not in Syndicate Standard, nor is it a language that the dungeon AI would have on file. It's in Old High Retog, a language that occupies a place in our history similar to Latin in your own. It translates as...hm. A literal translation would be 'In fate, bondage' but that conveys nothing of the meaning. Between warriors it implies unbreakable loyalty—that there is no possible world in which one will not be there for the other. From a warrior to his head of state it implies a promise to put the mission before life, honor, wealth, or any personal attachment. From a head of state to a warrior under her command it means that the nation shall return faith for faith and spend the warrior's life and honor only when no alternative remains."

"That's...beautiful."

"Indeed." He paused. "I should like to emphasize the part about 'faith for faith'. A warrior who goes off-mission is owed no faith by their head of state. They are, in fact, owed destruction, as they have broken their own faith."

"Ah." And the mission I'd been given was to (A) support Carl and Donut and (B) keep secret the existence of Shadow Force and Albert's redacted abilities.

I lay still for a moment, thinking upon the insight such a saying might suggest about a culture. Militaristic, a focus on personal integrity and duty, a willingness to sacrifice, a formalized code of vengeance.... And then I shrugged it off and returned to more immediate concerns.

"So, Albert...what's our next step? You mentioned some kind of training?"

"Yes. 'Physical integration patterning' is the term of art. Essentially, you engage in low-stakes combat activity against representative opposition while I build a database of your combat capacity and methodologies in order to categorize areas in which I may usefully contribute value, as well as compile a list of suggestions for tactical enhancement and optimized physical training."

"...What?"

"You go punch stuff, ideally stuff that won't kill you. I watch how you do it and figure out how to help you punch stuff better."

"See, you could have led with the simple version."

"I repeat my earlier comment: Where's the fun in that?"

I chuckled and swung my legs off the bed. Time to hit the training room.