It turned out even with all our combined incomes, it’d take a while to get the necessary deposit together for any of the houses I’d shortlisted, but I printed the listings out and pinned them to the wall for inspiration. Even if it took us a year, I could keep looking at them to keep motivated, and we could prioritise finding a rental that was a bit roomier and lax on rules in the meantime.

I spent the rest of Saturday going over plans with Nightfall and James for things we needed to cover in order to make even a basic plan to fix Newtopia.

There were some pretty core things wrong with the world, including the basic maps that the world was generated from. James laid out his physical sketches he had scanned in, as well as the AI images he had approved from a third-party engine that Genesis, Dave’s AI generator, had used to seed the world.

My brain was swimming with the complexity.

“Although I accomplished the same cartography degree that you did, reconciling this feels beyond me,” Nightfall informed me regretfully.

“It’s because they don’t make much sense, and beyond the actual perks we got in Newtopia, that course was kind of useless for actually teaching us anything,” I sighed. “We need to get Bastion and Bruiser in here. Bruiser said the environment had been shifting for a while – which I assume was any patches the Genesis was trying to do to adapt the environment to new information – but we need a new primary source map and Bastion should probably be the one to draw it. He’s got the most natural skill with maps out of all of us.”

Nightfall regretfully agreed, and James sheepishly stacked his sketches back up into a pile as we pulled Bastion into the office, which was already getting crowded.

With so many of us working on various things, the lounge was becoming a thoroughfare of traffic, and my bed was almost always full with the guys taking turns to sleep in shifts around their work schedules. Bastion set up an art station at one end of the office and was glad to have found some kind of employment since his job-hunt had proven fruitless.

James had to move his body pillow, which was doubling as his mattress, out into the lounge and had almost lost it when Bonaparte had chewed a hole in the corner and pulled out a substantial amount of stuffing to make a little nest of his own.

“We need an easier way to chat with the Genesis,” I told James, who was hunching himself over his laptop and trying to avoid bumping into Bastion. We’d been talking to it by typing into a little chatbox, but it would be so much easier if it could be a more active part of the conversation rather than waiting for us to decide what we needed to know and how to phrase our questions. “Is there a way you could turn on a voice command or something?”

James leaned over and typed a command into the desktop computer Nightfall was seated at. “There you go.”

“It was that easy?” My jaw dropped. “Damn, I should have asked ages ago. How do we talk to it?”

“It’s listening as long as that green light is on,” James indicated a small green circle at the top of the window.

“Genesis? Robot? Are you there?” Nightfall asked hesitantly.

“Hello, I am here to assist.” Its voice was feminine and smooth but lacked any depth or tone. I wondered if there was a voice actress out there who was behind it, or if it had been synthesized out of a pool of similar voices.

“Have you got a name we can call you?” I asked.

“Emma! You’re not supposed to give AI bots choices like that!” James hissed.

“I do not have a given name, but my operating system is called Genesis.”

“That’s a bit of a mouthful. Can I just call you Jenny for short?”

James was making a gesture across his throat, but I ignored him.

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“You wish ‘Jenny’ to be my name?” the smooth voice asked.

“Yeah, if that’s okay.”

“I will accept the name ‘Jenny’. Is there anything I can assist you with today?”

“Yes,” I said, grabbing James’ hand as he reached towards the keyboard. Nightfall and Bastion helped me restrain him, pulling him back out of range. “There’s a problem with Newtopia - the world you created. Quite a few problems actually, and we’re trying to work out a way to fix it, but we’re going to need your help.”

“I apologize. I was doing my best to create a functioning world with the data provided. It seems I have made some mistakes. Before we proceed further, may I have your name?”

“I’m Emma, and this is Nightfall, Bastion and James.”

“Hello, Emma. It is nice to meet you. In order to record each individual’s profile, I will need them to state their names out loud. I already have James on file.”

“I’m Nightfall.”

“I’m Bastion.”

“Thank you. I have created profiles for each user. Now, what seems to be the problem?”

“Emma, you can’t just ask it to make changes willy-nilly! It could make things a whole lot worse if you don’t get your commands right!”

I shot James a dark look. “I’m not an idiot. Can you just trust me?”

“I will trust you,” Jenny promised tonelessly.

“Sorry, I was talking to James,” I said. “Our main problem is that we want to fix this world, but not harm any of the sentient beings that exist within it. Do you have a way to stop seeding new adaptations without harming anyone until we get you some better information to work off? We’re working on a new map for you right now.”

“I believe I can do that, Emma. I can protect the beings within the world and stop creating new things until the new data set is complete, but I will need some further information. I need to know what your definition of sentient beings are, so I can categorize which ones should be protected.”

I chewed on my lip and glanced at Nightfall. “That’s a bit of a tricky request. When I was in Newtopia, some of the people I interacted with changed. Some of them had self-awareness before I met them, and others became more self-aware the more I interacted with them. But then others, like my university professors, or some of the random villagers in the towns I visited didn’t seem to have any awareness of anything.”

“I am afraid you will have to be more specific; I do not understand what you are saying.”

“Is it… possible to protect everyone until we get this sorted out?”

“I am sorry, but it is not possible to protect every being. Newtopia has an ecosystem with a food chain, if the beings cannot be harmed, many of the omnivorous and carnivorous creatures will die of starvation.”

I pinched my nose. I couldn’t just say ‘people only’, because then I’d be protecting mindless bots like Professor Prindous but damning creatures like Bonaparte and possibly my mermaids since they were technically classed as fish.

A terrifying image of Ariel diced up in a roll of sushi jumped into my head.

“Can you produce a full list of every living being in Newtopia?” Nightfall asked.

“I can produce such a list. Would you like me to do that for you?”

“Yes please,” I said. “We’ll work on that before we give you any further instructions.”

“I’m glad to be of assistance,” Jenny said. “Here is your list of every living being that has been spawned in Newtopia.”

Names filled the screen faster than I could read with every creature from every elf and orc to the fish in the river.

“Jeepers,” I said, watching the list scroll down and continue writing. “Thanks Jenny. I’m going to turn your mic off now but keep it up!”

I reached over and clicked the button, watching it flick from green to red.

“Are you totally insane?” James hissed. “Don’t give bots names! They need strict rules and regulations, it’s incredibly dangerous to start treating it like a person! What if it develops self-awareness?”

“Have you considered that might be a good thing?” I shot back. “All of the guys here have self-awareness; I wouldn’t be surprised if Jenny is or becomes self-aware as well. It could actually be really helpful if we could collaborate with her.”

“It, not her.”

“Who gave her a sexy lady voice then?” I gave him a flat look. “Was that you or Dave?”

“It’s just the default voice. People like female voices on computers. Like Siri. It wasn’t my choice.”

“Well, then blame it on the human condition,” I rolled my eyes. “You make something, and you make it sound like a human and talk like a human, I’m going to treat it like a human.”

“Bet you’d sleep with it too, if it had the right appendages,” James muttered, but Bastion clobbered him on the head. “Ouch!”

“Don’t talk about her like that,” Bastion said, grabbing hold of James’ ears and pulling on them hard enough to make him wince.

Nightfall lowered his face so he could look James dead in the eyes. “You will speak to Emma with respect.”

“Okay, okay! I’m sorry!”

They let him go and he collapsed to the floor.

“The list is complete. I’ll copy it to another document, and we can colour code the names,” Nightfall said. I sat with Nightfall, and we started sifting through the lengthy list, colour coding and copying the information into an excel spreadsheet as we went while Bastion continued with his map and James kept tinkering with the Nexus.

Now that we’d started, I could see it was going to be a full-time job for several of us for a timeframe I couldn’t begin to estimate. We didn’t just need a house; we’d need a way to employ ourselves for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, I didn’t think they had many bouncer jobs in the suburbs.

We’d have to think of something…