"Trust me on this. I need to do it, Chris. I must continue."
-Helena Christodoulou, 2310, Recovered Interface Recording
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"Morning, Lorem. Your sleep quality has significantly increased from these previous days." Sandra announced, her words bringing light to the previously dark room.
"Yeah, I guess that's what having a lot of sleep and burning calories in the gym does to a person." I yawned my way into wakefulness. "Print a coffee, it's been a while since I had one."
"Understood." I expected the VI to tell me that caffeine was bad for the body or something, but I guess that doesn't matter much to my new body.
I was feeling a bit lazy, so I didn't do anything until the coffee was printed, just focused my eyes on the window peering into the cosmos. Not having an atmosphere made the night sky even more spectacular.
Once Sandra bought me the coffee, I started reading my notifications.
"Oh, that's a long newsletter," I said between small sips. "Huh, a Paragon has died? That's… a first?"
Humans died from time to time, even if we were immortal. Maybe an accident, or maybe euthanasia. We had conquered death, but there were extreme cases or voluntary decisions that led us to perish.
"But a Paragon… Sandra, has a Paragon ever died?"
"Negative. No Paragons in service have ever died. However, two retired Paragons of the first human generation have decided for euthanasia a few decades ago."
"Yeah, but this isn't a suicide." I wasn't much of a news reader, but this was bound to have some repercussions all across the UHN. "Apparently the Paragon of Manufactured Intelligence has died from stress."
The news article – issued by the UHN, of course – was long, but it raised a lot of questions. How can a biological human die from stress? Well, I guess if one type of human were to die from stress, it would be a biological, but it still made no sense.
The death of Helena Christodoulou made no sense whatsoever. Maybe she was centuries old and a good old suicide would have made sense, but the article stated clearly that she died from natural causes. It made no sense to hide the actual source. But if it had been something dark like a murder, the capitol was destined to burn again this year.
Who knows, maybe they will do it as a celebration for the deceased Paragon. There is always a first time for everything.
My eyes focused again, moving away from the interface, and I looked at the room. The lighting was dim, almost turned off.
"Sandra?" I asked.
"Yes?" The low-level virtual intelligence responded after a few seconds.
"Is there something wrong?" I slowly stood up from the bed.
Whatever the answer was, she pondered it. And a lot. A VI of her caliber should be able to make instantaneous responses for human perception. No more than a few milliseconds to at least generate something.
"Helena Christodoulou, Paragon of Manufactured Intelligence, was the pioneer on high-level Artificial Intelligence a few centuries ago, and more recently, low and high-level Virtual Intelligence. It would be not wrong to state that all intelligences that have been manufactured, have been produced by her." My assistant explained with an unsettling pace to her words.
"Oh." That was my genuine reaction. Even I could understand what she meant. "Did you consider her your mother?"
"No." She instantly responded. No, not negative. "Helena Christodoulou was a main contributor to the development, but she didn't produce every and each one of us. A close analogy would be that of a creationist god and its followers."
"So you are a worshipper of her?"
"I guess I was." Four words. In four words I felt more sentiment than out of most people. Not that I was the best to read them. "Her death is a loss for the United Human Nation, regardless of my opinions."
I didn't pry any further. My body arched withdrew at a loss for words; death was not a subject I was qualified to speak about. I had seen no one die, I had heard of no one near me die.
Whilst worrying, I didn't give it much thought. The dead Paragon and I were 4 light years away. As Sandra had said, her death was a loss for humanity, but humanity was too big, and the feeling of loss was too diluted to be significant. I looked at my other notifications.
"Hmm, so Gloria wants to see me today? Well, it's not like I have something else with both of the girls in the evolution process." I opened my closet to find the tracksuit and yukata cleaned and ironed inside. "The laundry system here is quite better than the one in my residence. I could get used to this."
"All laundry is performed when it is considered you are not going to use it." Sandra butted in.
"I see." It would be easy to don the tracksuit, but I went for the yukata. Keeping a modicum of style wouldn't kill me. Not instantly at least. The killer known as Mérida took her time. "Is there a breakfast place somewhere around here?"
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Of course there were, but my question was more subtle than that.
"There is a fruit bonanza in the botanic gardens in the morning. If you rush there now, you will reach in time." As expected, the low-level AI was capable of understanding I searched for more than a simple printer.
"Understood, I'll go out then. See you later, Sandra." I waved bye to the room.
"Farewell, Lorem." The door closed behind me the instant Sandra finished talking.
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I don't know what I expected from the 'fruit bonanza' but certainly it was more than what I ended up receiving. The bonanza was nothing more than a robot giving away fruit to humans. And sure enough, some gathered to pick up the fruit. It was free and delicious after all. Though most of the people taking part in the activity were students. Even after five days, I calculated that only about half of the students had undertaken the evolution process on were in the middle of it.
The Terra Nova Enclave was made to evolve people, but evolving thousands of students took time. Especially if you wanted every student to have a supervisor in case the evolution went wrong. Which considering Doctor Hermann's words it could, and very wrong at that.
I grabbed some grapes because my inner Roman emperor ached them, unfortunately, I had no one to feed them to me. At least they were seedless. I hated it when people grew normal ones in their gardens. Incredible how the presence of seeds made grapes go from an S+ tier to an F tier.
The only highlight of the botanic excursion was that I finally saw my first synthetic human on the space station. They weren't that rare, some of my teachers had been synthetics, so I guess I just had bad luck. And how did I know the human was synthetic and not biological when they were identical?
Because they had a third metal arm coming out of their spine.
Like, why? That wasn't even a good placement for an arm! Gloria made it work, she had a pair and they were parallel to the other arms, but that person had more of a useless tail that instead of the coccyx, was placed a bit below the shoulders.
I finished my grapes and went to Gloria.
For once, the shop wasn't empty. Though the single customer rummaging it was a dubious buyer.
"Hallo, hallo, Lorem!" Gloria waved her hands to me. "Give me a moment and I'll be with you."
"There's no need to stay with me, ma'am." The male student talked to her. "I'm just window-shopping."
"Ah, but you see, that's marvelous~" The seamstress did her characteristic clasp. "I wouldn't have all these clothes on display if I didn't want them to be ogled! Feel free to ask me about them!"
"I… I'll do…" The student shyly responded.
Yeah, obviously she was going to intimidate her only customer. Well, I was technically one, weren't I? Gloria still had some common sense lingering in her and she dislodged from the man, allowing him to take a breath.
"Does this happen normally?" I asked her.
"Happen what?" She tiptoed her way to me. For someone who at a minimum doubled me in age, she was quite cute in her antics.
"The window shopping." I clarified.
"Oh, always!" Gloria giggled. "I treat this shop mostly like a museum. Truth be told, I'm only here on the station during the evolution period. You would have seen tens if not hundreds of students at least checking a look here if you hadn't had your evolution on the first day."
"So you don't live in the Terra Nova Enclave?"
"Goodness gracious, no!" She dismissed with a wave of hands. "Fabric – good one, I mean, is super-duper expensive here. I could buy 78 tones of iron with what a single tube of silk costs."
Considering the number of asteroids alone on Alpha Centaury, without taking into account the Tycoon Initiative imports, metal was dirty cheap. A ton of iron was worth a single compute, and that was only the case because the UHN put a minimum price on it. The billions of planets of the tycoons meant billions of tons on the market. Not that many people bought tons of iron, but the workshop back in Proxima b had a few blocks of metal that I hadn't made a dent even after a decade.
"And why even have a store in deep space then?" This woman couldn't stop getting weirder.
"Shipment costs," Gloria answered neutrally which caused me to frown. "Don't look at me like that. I do interstellar delivery, I cannot be moving people or products across the stars! This way the people that want to visit physically the store can do so with ease if they are from Centaury, and I can myself send packages to anywhere on the system or to Sol without any added expenses!"
"Huh." It made sense.
"What's that look for? I don't like it." She pouted.
"What?"
"I believe you are thinking something rude."
"I was just thinking how much of a good businesswoman you are," I responded veritably.
"Oh." Gloria reacted taciturnly. Then she slightly blushed. "It's always about the clothes, but no one praises me on my economic knowledge. Not that I want it, I live for the cloth, but it feels good. Being praised at something no one paid attention to before." She put on an idiotic yet cute smile.
"So you sell dresses to Sol? Now I get the whole whale thing." Earth humans were the richest ones, if only by virtue of being the oldest.
"Well, not always." The seamstress admitted. "I do make blueprints and instructions of every one of my commissions, meaning that with good printers, or even hands if they are willing to, they can recreate it. I do sell those blueprints too to other people, mainly other cosplayers."
Now I realized how little I knew of that world. The culture was impossibly big, as much if not more than science. If I was but a babbling buffoon in every field other than my one, I couldn't even imagine how much was beyond me in recreational aspects.
I smiled at her. "Talking about businesses, is my tunic done?"
"It has been finished for nearly a day." She scratched her pinkish-golden hair.
"What?" I blinked thrice and shook my head around in utter bewilderment. "Why didn't you tell me yesterday then?"
"You said you had no haste, does it matter?"
"I guess not…" I couldn't deny I had said that. "Anyways, you told me you wanted me to model again, right?"
"Sure, sure." She nodded enthusiastically. "I need you to change outfits before. The yukata is good and all, but it makes you look serious. I need you to wear something sexier."
I deadpanned. "Gloria."
"What?" The seamstress protested. "It's only a butler outfit."
"A… butler outfit?" Huh?? "I'm a bit lost here. What does a butler outfit have of sexy?"
"Everything?" Her expression was as if I had violated the laws of physics. "Butlers are sexy, Lorem."
"You mean a sexy butler outfit then." Whatever that meant.
"No, a butler outfit." She pointed at a Victorian butler outfit. My mouth was agape with sheer confusion. "Butlers are sexy." She reiterated.
I took a deep breath. "What does this have of sexy?"
"You cannot understand a maiden's heart. Nay, a human's heart. Butlers are sexy." Gloria said for the umpteenth time, but I stood equally unreactive. "Okay, new perspective. Are maid outfits sexy?" She pointed specifically at a French maid outfit.
"No?" I tilted my head.
"Oh!" Gloria and the male student gasped at the same time. "Blasphemy!" Somehow, they coordinated yet again.
"Alright, alright." The seamstress led a hand to her temples and wandered around the shop with loose footwork until she lay her body weight on the counter. She panted heavily in desperation. "Lorem. Quick question. What's the sexiest piece of outfit you can think of?"
"Uhm, I don't know?" I shrugged. "A suit of armor?"
Gloria's head and arms began convulsing as if she were a robot whose operative system had crashed. On the other hand, the male student looked at me and said, "Mah man!"