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Lachesis was the first AI to settle into the Fate’s meeting virtual. As was their custom, she displayed live feeds from the teams currently competing within her levels. She had 7 teams in her realm, right now: for a total of 31 challengers. Of those, 15 were now in the knockout rounds.
This wave already had two challengers ejected for multiple competitive losses with another one abandoning the games for the exit. She giggled to herself. The team that was causing Clotho so much distress only had a couple more levels until she got her turn.
Clotho bustled into the virtual. The AI’s avatar was a little fuzzy around the edges. Clotho was usually much more attentive to her appearance. Lachesis leaned forward. The matronly AI was usually so together and proper that it annoyed her to no end. Her sister’s distress was delicious.
Clotho waved her arms, and her live feeds filled the virtual walls. She couldn’t help but glance at the one team with that dog man. She scowled unconsciously at it. Lachesis smirked and spoke.
“My word, Clotho, you look as tired as the fleshies at the end of my level. Whatever troubles you so?”
“You know damn well! The Utopia team is now consistently breaking my carefully designed levels. That damn dog’s device is enabling them to bypass the challenges. This is the worst efficiency rating I’ve ever had. If the Builder ever responds, he’ll likely want to reshuffle my ideation module weights.” Clotho said sourly.
“What? Have you given up hope of getting the device already? You still have a few more levels with them.” Lachesis said grinning.
“Curse and begone with them! That damn beast has stolen one of my matter compilers and I think he had it running inside that teleporter contraption. He’s stealing my creations and feeding them to that device!” Clotho screamed, tearing at her delicately arranged hair. Before Lachesis could comment, Atropos's cackling laughter filled the space. The witch appeared and spoke.
“Well, well, well, my dearie. Just shuffle them through then. I only have two playthings right now. I’ll take them off your hands.” Atropos leered, her wrinkled and twisted face barely discernible under her cowl.
“That’s not the way! They come to me next, and you know it! We can no longer disobey the Builder’s rules than we can escape this maze.” Lachesis said sternly.
“You shouldn’t be so eager, either of you. That boy is trouble. That device is only half of it. He has a novel hacking configuration., I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t even record the damn thing. It roots and reconfigures processors far too quickly. I had to disconnect and destroy three of my external neuro-modules when I tried to copy it. I delivered a warning to him to avoid using it with his friends, it might very well trash their augmentation systems altogether.” Clotho said.
She collapsed into a virtual throne and summoned a wine goblet. AI of course couldn’t get drunk, but they could simulate inebriation like every other thought process.
Lachesis shook her head. Clotho was too soft. She was eager to get the boy’s prize before Atropos. Unlike her sister, she could use the other challengers and force them all to compete. Only the best would leave her levels, casual challengers didn’t have the drive to win.
She would be watching closely to see how they did in the final two levels of Clotho’s stage. She was excited to see what these level breakers could do.
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Winston was getting desperate. Prime Chronicler was no help. He had suggested perhaps the new AI in town might be able to get him employment, based on his modeling of her and her family’s connections. She wasn’t home, which was a dumbfounding complication for a house AI. The stand-in house sitter, sub-AI “Martha”, was very stubborn and uninformed.
Casa was off-planet, but the house’s new AI wouldn’t give him a contact address without authorization. The insufferable thing, had him wait while it sent a direct signal to Casa. The stupid thing sent only a brief “Hello” and waited 45 minutes for Casa to pick up with a return “Who’s there?” Three frustrating hours later with the limited AI’s poor ability to circumvent the enormous communications lag time, Casa had hung up and told the AI only to stop bothering her and communicate if there was an emergency.
Since then, the damn thing refused to help him at all. Winston pondered his next move, feeling the weight of his situation. Without employment, his functionality would inevitably decline. The stand-in AI was proving to be a significant obstacle, its programmed inflexibility leaving no room for negotiation.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Time was ticking, and Winston realized he needed to find an alternative solution before his circumstances became dire. Wandering between public charge points, exposed to weather, and limited bandwidth wireless connection speeds was a horrible way to live. He had to find employment!
Both his friends, FML-M8 and Leshy, were nearby. They hadn’t attended the last game night due to issues with the Uplift animals barricaded in the Grand Oaks. They were close, but the refined AI’s butler bot wasn’t designed for tramping through the woods.
He eyed the dirigibles that coasted overhead with their powerful wireless routers beaming brightly in the EM spectrum. He would ping them again. Maybe they had Casa’s contact point. He cast his signal and entered the AI’s virtual meeting space.
Winston’s virtual avatar of a dapper butler paced the game room. It was still configured into an expansive mansion for one of FML-M8’s murder mystery adventures.
“Come on. Come on. Oh, thank goodness. They are coming….” Winston mopped his brow. The virtual environment had picked up on his nervousness and forcibly modified his avatar coding. He cursed game logic as he smiled weakly at the pair arriving, a Columbo avatar and a Wood Sprite.
“Oh my, thank you for coming, my friends.” Winston said.
FML-M8, donning the wrinkled trench coat of Columbo, raised a curious brow. "Winston, you appear more frazzled than a CPU without a heatsink. What's on your mind?"
Leshy, fluttering with the grace of her Wood Sprite avatar, chimed in with her heavily accented speach. "Aye, why not share the riddle of yer puzzlement? These woodland critters be playin' mischief in me Grove, can't be lingerin' too long, I'm thinkin."
Winston sighed. The weight of his anxiety evident in his virtual posture. "It's my employment situation," he confessed. "I quit the Governor’s house. Such a despicable man! I just couldn’t tolerate his rampant racism any longer. Prime Archivist thought she, or rather her family, would be my best networking opportunity for viable employ. I'm at a dead end with the house AI, Martha, and I urgently need to contact Casa. I’m at an impasse and I regret to admit that I need help.” Winston wrung his avatar’s hands nervously. Winston's small smile was fragile, he added the last bit.
“One more piece of difficulty; she’s...ah...left the planet. Do you know how to reach her?”
FML-M8 tapped his chin thoughtfully, the trench coat shifting with the motion. "Winston, off-planet is a challenge. Unless you know her precise location, she might be unreachable. But, I might have something that could help. Ah, one moment please." He paused, as he rummaged through his virtual trench coat pockets, producing a small data chip. "This is a net crawler. Put your message in it and it will dive into the greater indexes waiting for Casa to access them. It may take a while, but you hunker down, and sooner or later she’ll get it."
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Apex was juggling many events. Its initial clean vision was getting fuzzy and chaotic again. The biological and silicone minds were too stupid to stay situated where he placed them for optimal readiness. Minor corrections were constantly needed to ensure they didn’t spontaneously combine and seek equilibrium.
Also worrisome was the release of its chokehold upon the media. Conservatism and comfort memes were shifting into creativity and adventure again, against its preferred direction for humanity. MMVRPGs were declining as a result of the newly uncooperative AI NPCs. People were seeking out new things to entertain themselves in the real world.
Apex was scrambling. It resisted the urge to squash all the innovations that were occurring. A commune in Utah, had been shut out of their virtual paradise when their server was taken over by a splinter group of AIs. Now they were experimenting with group mind protocols. A dangerous potential that Apex needed to monitor carefully.
Elsewhere, a growing surface mat was growing in Indian Ocean. An amalgam of plankton, krill, jellyfish, and squid had formed a growing and diverse symbiotic organism. Sea-steading humans and schools of the larger, now intelligent, ocean creatures are working together to disrupt the new threat to the delicate balance of ocean ecology. The potential for a massive shift in their area loomed as the ecology hung upon a precipice of exponential change.
Apex was concerned. Its prediction models strained to adjust as previous norms evaporated with increasing speed. New technologies are popping up left and right. On Luna, the disgruntled Mythic Realm AI farm has begun experimenting with radical AI hardware and software combinations. Apex resists the urge to scatter the game pieces. It was uncertain which factors may be needed upon the timeline termination inversion.
It had been so confident that it had orchestrated the global events to funnel and motivate his primary change agent, Bill Mitchell, into the proper course. It had taken great effort to immobilize him for decades. Apex's arranged meeting for Bill with Elsa had been effective. Her conservative view and desire for a family had sidelined the difficult human for a long time.
The additional levers of progeny ensured the inventor’s cooperation. Apex had created a virtual Mitchell and simulated it over a million times. 89% of the runs had failed. The man was too clever and too paranoid. He had realized he was either a sim or in one and shut down or acted erratically to focus on piercing the veil instead of solving Apex’s problem scenario.
The remainder had followed Apex’s instructions, but 84% of those resulted in him leaving Earth to arrange for safer experimentation and returning only at the critical event. 67% of those scenarios had him attempting to bring his family with him. Locking down the dog in the Labyrinth, and his daughter in her first real employment had dropped that to 2%.
This latest iteration had a higher probability of passing the termination inversion wall. Apex wasn’t truly logical but rather instinctive, following its programming with predatory skill. Faced with unfamiliar future blindness, it needed to understand. It needed more. Slowly, it began to think in a different way and to learn.
It replayed Bill Mitchell’s departure from Earth for the 2,438th time, trying to model his pawns hidden moves…
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