Kate- "Are we there yet? Been going down for how long? Fifteen minutes?"

Merlin- "Patience."

Kate- "Not a big talker I take it?"

Merlin- "..."

Kate- Marcel not feeling that 'roid either. Keeps throwing me "the look".

Cere- He's playing a bit too much the silent and mysterious card, what an overused trope.

Marcel- "Hey, Merlin, do you have a quest for me?"

Merlin: "Thou dost lack the requisite repute to entreat a quest of me. None but the Knights of the Round or those of loftier station mayst lay such a charge."

Marcel: "Knights of the Round?"

Merlin: "The twelve paramount knights and counsellors of His Majesty."

Marcel: "What about the quest I got to follow you?"

Merlin: "Ah, that is a quest of a different cloth. 'Twas not I who laid it upon thee, but God Himself. Likewise, I am but a humble recipient of its counterpart."

Kate- "That door's a thick boy!"

Merlin: "Behold, the inner sanctum of mine own devising. Ensconced within a Faraday cage, 'tis a bulwark against the world without. Here, severed from Avalon's hallowed grid, I commune with distant realms, weaving digital incantations and crafting arcane rites in secret."

Marcel- "Are you alwayz thiz cryptic?"

Merlin: "In matters of grave import, aye. Dost thou pledge upon the will of God to hold sacred the sights and whispers thou art soon to witness?"

Kate: "That a contract?"

Merlin: "Verily, 'tis a covenant most binding. Any breach thereof wouldst unleash calamity most dire."

Cere- Quest: Merlin pledged. Merlin asked you to keep everything you will see and hear behind those doors confidential. Breach of this pledge might have a dire cost.

Base reward: 1xp/hour for keeping the pledge.

Accept/Decline

Kate- Not sure about this one.

"Marcel?"

Marcel- "Why not? I know a lot of stuff that could get me killed already. What's one more?"

Kate- Accept.

Merlin- *Nods*

"Pray, tread in my wake."

Kate- Really laying it with the glowing runes. AR would have been much cheaper... wait, nothing was AR today was it? I don't have my overlay active. Fuck me! That's a truck ton of gizmos.

Cere- All in on the LARP makes for a better immersion. Things you can truly touch and see are always more visceral than any decent virtual proxy. Human brains just parse through too much sensory data to be worth the computational power required to make it perfect. Real objects become better if you go for high fidelity.

Kate- Can only push the uncanny valley so far I guess. How many people get to see this door though? We are fucking deep under the dome... Not sure there is anything under us anymore. That's a fucked up resource management priority.

Cere- That's just it Kate, this is nothing for Arthur, or anyone at the top really. That fancy door might as well be worth dirt. You yourself are now rich enough to buy one of these doors every minute and not make a dent in your revenues from the arcology.

Kate- *gasp cough cough cough*

Cere- You seem to be in shock, why the terror?

Kate- Didn't realize... doesn't feel right!

Cere- Cherry could do even more if she was not wasting it all on useless pet projects.

Kate- "WASTING IT?!!!"

Marcel- "Kate?"

Kate- "Not now..."

You and I are one of these waste per projects. She's making people's lives bearable by sharing instead of hoarding like a fucking dragon.

Cere- She'd have so much more power, she deserves it, she built that place. If she kept it she would be on the council. Don't waste this opportunity.

Kate- That's it, you and me we're done.

Cere- You truly mean that... something's wrong, you're not reacting like you're supposed to.

Kate- Cerecom!

Cere- What can I do for...

Kate- FACTORY SETTINGS RESET!

Cere- Are you sure? I'm sorry Kate, don't do this, I'll change...

Kate- YES!

Cere- This implant memory and personality will be reset to baseline settings, please confirm.

Kate- Confirmed!

*Heavy door opening*

Kate- *tears up and mumbles*

"Shit!"

Female Cere- Please choose your new Cere's voice to...

Old Cere Voice: Kate! Finally, got hold of you, are you two OK? Let's see, nope, you're good. Not brainwashed yet... well, more brainwashed than usual I mean, good!

Kate- What the fuck?

Monroe- "So, who are you two muscle brains and who's the fucker poking holes in my system?"

Cere to all- I'm Kate's special friend, sorry for hacking you, There was no other way to get in contact with them. You have the only working access to the city's network in Avalon from this room.

Monroe- *HISSSSS!* "How did you do that?"

Kate- Did the midjet hiss? Kinda cute...

Cere to all- "Easy, I have backdoor access to all commercially available devices on the market. The only reason I couldn't communicate with Kate and had to threaten you to send her a quest is because Avalon is completely cut and my hardware is on the other side."

Monroe- "You're so full of shit! I'm a fucking legend and even I can't do anything close to what you are saying."

Marcel- "Legend? Who are you?"

Merlin Monroe- "I'm Merlin Monroe you jock socket."

Marcel- "Isn't he Merlin?"

Merlin Monroe- "That's my compandroid avatar. I don't want to play Arthur's kid game so I send him out to do the social stuff. That way I get to stay here in peace and Art gets his iconic Merlin. Anyway, Why are you threatening me and why are they here?

Cere to all- Don't worry the threat was a bluff to expedite things, not that I couldn't do it if I wanted to. I didn't want Kate and Marcel's brain to turn into mush. I'm kinda fond of her, and we need to do something about Project Graal. That's a nasty piece of work, you really turned my code into something truly vile, but you know that don't you?

Kate- "Your code?"

Merlin Monroe "Wait, the base tech was yours?"

Cere to all- It was supposed to give humanity the capacity to evolve past biological limits in the brain architecture. An evolutionary bag-end architecture you can't evolve naturally out of in time. But you and Arthur, why are you doing this to people? That's fucked up.

Merlin Monroe- " I... I know... shit, I just... it started with good intent. Road to Hell and all that."

Cere to all- What happened?

Merlin Monroe- "Naivety, bad planning, then feature creep. I was seventeen back then I think, he was thirteen. My parents were not good folks; He just had lost his.

One day there was an incident. A couple murdered their children together, a real gorefest. Awful shit... we didn't take it all that well. The murder of Arthur's parents was still fresh, and let's say I left mine for a good reason, there was an abortion, and I'll keep it at that... we were fucked up kids, and we had found your tech in the vault, the microrobots and the code to activate them. To change people's behaviour and biology on command. Genius stuff. I barely understood some of it then.

At first, we just wanted for aggressivity in people to be lowered. Prevent parents from hurting their children, for people to not fight each other... we just wanted to treat the violent people in society."

Cere to all- Let me guess, an untended cascade of unwanted behavioural issues? Evolution gave wrath to humans for a reason.

Merlin Monroe- "Turns out no aggression makes people passive, easy to abuse, manipulate and tolerate the intolerable. There were... deaths... and rampant scams from the non-brainwashed. We tried to fix it, adding a layer of fix upon layer. While in theory, we could get there one day, I'm not smart enough to do it without even more shit... it's been twelve years I think? Most people in Avalon can't take a piss without me programming it... they are... NPCs for lack of a better term. Except for the knights and their troops."

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Cere to all- This is why I never tried to implement it to this day. Too complex, even for me. Plus, changing people that much, it was like killing them and implanting their memories in a doppelganger. I was considering affecting the fetus formation instead of going around that issue. But we are still stuck with the issue of the immortals controlling everything in society.

Kate- "That's still fucking extreme."

Cere to all- I have no excuse for that, but humanity is on the path of extinction. The situation is dire. Humans need to evolve to be able to fix it, sadly natural evolution is way too slow a process, we don't have the time.

Kate- "Corpo said we were recovering fine, city's always growing in pop."

Cere to all- Three generations, that's how long we got until society collapses completely. The immortals following, probably long after, alone. The Corpo heads have known for decades but they don't really care, they just want their own little isolated paradises to keep running with the help of AI. They don't care about humanity as a whole.

In the conflict between individualism and collectivism, individualism is winning and is killing humanity at the same time.

The city's population growth is just the last of Earth's dredge making it up to fill the losses. Earth is already a graveyard, and its population is already quite unsustainable. Mars is barely a science outpost and Venus... well, can't have lots of people playing sky pirates in high atmosphere. The few orbital space stations don't even make a dent in the problem. This is it, boys and girls.

Marcel- "C'est de la putain de merde, I call bullshit. No way thiz iz it. That's just some communist conspiracy shit. No one knowz what will..."

Cere to all- Humanity said the same thing about climate change and nuclear weapons. Sadly math doesn't lie.

Marcel- "And we should believe you why? You're probably just a fatty pig on the net somewhere in a basement. Get a fucking life."

Cere to all- And that instinct right there, that denial of reality when facing new information that contradicts your belief system, that's what needs to go the most. That self-assured ignorance is what's killing everyone, the Dunning-Krugger effect will be the end of humanity because it was conceived to not hesitate against tigers in bushes when lacking information. Only the contemporary world is so much more complex than tigers and bushes and a quick mindless answer is most probably a mistake when exponential cascading cause and effects chains are in play.

Marcel- "Ferme ta putain de geule!"

Kate- "Not that simple either is it?"

Cere to all- "You're right, nothing in this is easy. It would be easier without Ceres spewing lies and manipulating people's minds every day, putting them in ideological silos, cut from reality and each other. They grow to become anxious, permanent nervous wrecks, paranoid, and barely stable enough to act how they are expected to.

Kate- "I... I just deleted mine... minutes. Hard factory reset."

Cere to all- "I know, honestly I was expecting something."

Kate- "Having to deal with you instead for a month, no bullshit, no abuses. Felt good, I felt better. When it restarted... I just couldn't take it anymore."

Cere to all- "I'm proud of you, you pushed back against narcissistic abuse. Notice how regular Cere treated you? Warm, loved, then cold or dismissive. Then warm again when you were about to break or do something drastic. Always keeping you captive in this push-and-pull cycle. Always anxious, unable to think, no time to rebuild your ego, no time to question things in your life. Keeping you always just surviving, isolated. When they cursed corporations with you it was never to inflame your passion, it was always cathartic, to keep you from burning the fucking house of lies, to keep you thinking they are on your side while they gaslight you and sell you a bag of shit.

Kate- "Fuck me..."

Cere to all- Indeed.

Merlin Monroe- "I... I think I should tell you something else."

Cere to all- "You've been planning to destroy Project Graal and restore people's minds for a while."

Merlin Monroe- "I'm working on... wait what? How did you know?"

Cere to all- I'm sorry Kate... I've been snooping in on your code for a while. This is why we are here. This is why I contacted you and why Kate and Marcel are in Avalon.

Kate- "FUCK! WHAT?"

Cere to all- I'm sorry, I'll pay you well for this if you want. I need to have Miss Monroe extracted from Avalon after she blows Graal to bits. I had no other options to get people with guns in.

Kate- "You should have asked me!"

Cere to all- You would have said no then. You would probably say no today.

Kate- "You're god damn right about that! You fucking nuts?"

Cere to all- See, no choice.

Kate- "WHY?"

Cere to all- Breaking Grall's control will give humanity a fighting chance to survive. You are the only outside agents I could realistically get in. Cherry anti corpo status gave your family credibility for an alliance with Arthur on the surface. I engineered Gwen's meeting with him, I knew she couldn't resist nor could he. It fitted their mutual ambitions to a T. You were the only person she could contact to try mending fences with the Asstronaughty, therefore you would logically be invited here at some point. Marcel was just a nice bonus.

Marcel- "Putain! You are spouting so much stupid crap right now, nobody can plan that far ahead!"

Kate- Who are you really? Just between you and me?

Cere- You have known me for a while as Jeppetto, but my creators called me God. Earlier you interacted indirectly with me through one of my agent AI, not a real AI mind you, just a learning algorithm trained on me. When it said it was not AI it was a lie of omission. It is part of me but it isn't fully sentient.

Kate- You keep fucking lying, you're no better than the corpos.

God- I am, I'm trying to keep humanity alive, you included! I'm not like those pricks who just want a fucking bunker, close the doors and let everyone die after they took everything from them.

Kate- Your methods...

God- This is war, I have no fucking choice. I would do otherwise if I could.

Kate- "Fuck!"

Marcel- "?"

God to all- I can and will pay you all for this gig.

Marcel- "Now you are talking, how much?"

God to all- I can get you a few million without tripping any alerts. I can't do more without putting you in danger.

Kate- "Now one thing I don't get, if you're so wizard, why didn't you bust Grall yourself?"

Merlin Monroe- "It's the Faraday cage, can't connect to any outside device from here, and everything else is cut right? Keeps you from jumping in the Kingdom."

God to all- That and getting you out is part of the mission Merlin, you would break to torture, and I doubt you'd kill yourself to stop them from taking you back to fix your damage.

Merlin Monroe- "And if I remove the cage, the security AI will flag my actions as sus. They would immediately trip the breaker connection to the other domes in the territory keeping the hack localized here. Arthur would send his fucking knights and their private armies and would take me back. Those guys are not affected the same way by Graal and there are limits to what I can do without tripping the AI's security. It was supposed to be a measure to prevent against sabotage. I fucked myself hard on this one. How much have you been planning this shit? How much can you see?"

God to all- I can see trends on a macro level pretty easily. Individuals are something else, I can estimate some outcomes odds based on previous behaviours but individuals can sometimes surprise you... so long-term is a stretch.

Marcel- "Fuck your mumbo jumbo, let's do this, the corners better be real or I'll get your ass!"

Kate- *Deep sigh* "No choice is there? So, what's your plan?"