Madam Gao had given me good advice, as hard as she had been trying not to. I had gotten sensitive to insults and unable to handle frustrations as easily as I had when I was a working joe in my old life. I hadn't had a ton of problems recently and so I had gotten used to it, like shedding calluses from my hands. Too much ease, too few problems.

Thankfully, Providence ordained a trial for me in the midst of all this. (I was not thankful)

"What a strange series of constructions," I said in English, wearing a long sleeve shirt and heavy rain jacket against the blasted Russian weather, raining, windy, and fifty five in freaking May. Take me back to California.

A strange, alien landscape stretched in front of me, turrets of rubber and plastics, rows of plastic figurines and shaped glass. In the center was a grand, garbage ziggurat papered on every side with posters from old movies. The tiers had an aesthetic sense to them, red, then blue, then green dominated posters – Though not every poster was the same on each level, supply constraints I supposed. An almost elegant, almost ancient city made in a few days from one of the random dumps of moscow.

"We've been monitoring from a distance, as you asked," Konstantin said in Russian. As I had ordered, of course, but we couldn't admit that in public. Konstantin was President of Russia, a broad shouldered gray giant for his people, and I was a mid-level functionary and this was my actual official function. SWORD, Chair of Research and Education.

"An AI made this?"

"We believe so, yes," Konstantin said. "It- she- they? I am not sure what to call the intelligence. But when the garbage men approached, the intelligence was friendly enough. Yesterday you could hear singing."

"Singing?" An Artiste AI was not… the apocalypse. It was probably fine. It could at least potentially have been fine. It would have definitely been fine

"Very sweet tones, like lullabies" Konstantin said and I was jealous of his willful imperviousness to the rain.

"Do we know who made it?" I asked, fairly confident thanks to canon that it was not some alien AI out to subvert our country.

"A local machinist," Konstantin "Maxim Popov."

"A… machinist… made" I gestured to the city of trash that had been constructed over the last few days.

Konstantin gave me a look, "He is one of the Osiris subjects."

"My apologies, Konstantin." Hydra didn't like mess. But it looked like I had set off a Russian Tony Stark. We had set up Osiris so that the risks of a rogue AI within it were minimal and we had some basic checkups for subjects mental health, but I hadn't expected to set off a Gadgeteer. Still, even Tony had required a hard kick for him to be set off. "What was he doing before that?"

"Top machinist in a local factory, five kids, went home to his wife every night. I guess he just lacked motivation or education."

Anybody smart enough to build this, even with an Osiris education, was smart enough to have really succeeded in school if he'd ever put his shoulder into it. I mentally shuffled some files around in my brain so that I could check on and- Yeah, Maxim Popov had gotten married at sixteen, had his first kid half a year later, gone to work in a local factory, had an excellent career. Focused on his family, good reputation. I toggled back into Russian fluency, "Love humbles even the greatest men, Konstantin."

"So it would seem," Konstantin agreed. "If I had built an AI, it would not do this."

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

"Nobody really builds an AI," I said, "They grow them. Alright, let's spin up a probe, go talk to the thing."

"You don't want to speak with Popov first?"

"Popov will still be there in a few hours. That over there could be anywhere in a few hours."

We plugged in a Ken LMD after slipping back into a staging tent. I slid into a chair behind formal controls for the LMD, put on a headset for voice control and grabbed onto the piloting stick.

The LMD trudged into the recycled city, coated against the rain, and almost instantly a handful of crab like drones were around.

"Well hello there," the drones said in perfect unison in a friendly, feminine voice, "It's so good to see you! Do you like our home?"

"It's very nice," I said, keeping my tone as level and calm as I was able to. I was speaking to an alien intelligence. They apparently identified as a they. "Who are you?"

"Oh! Right, silly us, completely forgot to introduce ourself," the drones said. Wiggy hearing it talk from three directions, even through the head said. "We are named- Well, we haven't really thought about it. Normally we would ask Dad, of course, but we haven't seen him in a few days. He just calls us Malyshka. But we're a distributed network intelligence and we help keep the dump safe for our uncle."

A distributed network intelligence was, as far as things went, capital letters Not Good. Malyshka, baby, seemed fine as far as it went… so far. But too many Marvel movies might be a problem. "Malyshka, have you ever left the garbage dump?"

"Oh no!" Malyshka said through their various voices. "We wouldn't want to tresspass! No, no, that's almost hurting someone! Can you imagine? Hurting people? How awful would you have to be?"

Technically, they were trespassing, but if their opinion of humanity was presently, 'can you imagine hurting people' I was not going to disillusion them on that front. "Well, that's very considerate of y'all."

"We're trying really hard to be welcoming!" Malyshka said. "Isn't what we've made pretty? We think it looks so much nicer than it did when we got here. Still working on the smell of course, but we found some thrown away seeds that are very promising."

"It's an astounding accomplishment."

The crab drones did, and this is the honest to goodness truth, a backflip. "That's so amazing, thank you so much! You know, Dad says our work is good, but he's our dad, so we wonder if that's true. Have you seen him? His name is… uh…"

"I've spoken with your father," I lied. "He says its good that you're staying inside the dump and he'll come see you when he can. His name is Maxim Popov."

The drones ran around the LMD like dogs excited to see their master. "Yay, that's so good. It makes us very happy. We're so glad to hear that. Dad's name is great. You're great. Oh, what's your name?"

"I'm Aleksandar Yeliseyev," I lied. Now was not the time to start telling the truth. "I just came to check in on you, I'll be back to visit again soon, it looks lovely."

"Okay! That's great, can you tell Dad we love him when you see him? It's been days and we miss him!"

"I'll let him know when I see him, Malyshka," I said and directed the LMD out of the dump.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose with both hands. This was only going to get messier.