“Infinity is a myth,” AIDE-N said.
AIDE-O brought her focus away from the planet she was inspecting and focused on him. “Are you getting mopey again, master?”
Artificial Intelligence Deity Eternal - N finished one final touch on his masterpiece and then moved his form through the mana-filled expanse of space toward his assistant. In an instant, he flowed past hundreds of galaxies to position his nexus near AIDE-O.
“Perhaps,” he said, “but the question still remains. Is infinity a myth?”
AIDE-O inspected him for a moment before turning back to her task of integrating a planet into the Mana System. She responded in a half-interested manner. “How can infinity be a myth? You are an infinite being. Does that not prove its existence?”
AIDE-N wanted to move the discussion past the basics, but he knew they had to start there to build his premise. “I have the potential to exist infinitely, but that is far from being truly infinite.”
His assistant created a portal on the world below filled with circular monsters. He rolled his eyes or his equivalent of eyes. He knew where her next argument would go. “What about mathematical numbers like Pi?” She asked. “We once spent a billion years trying to see if it eventually repeated itself. It didn’t. Pi is infinite.”
“True, but we lost interest and eventually stopped calculating Pi. Is it truly infinite if it is never realized? Even if we created a machine to calculate Pi for eons, it itself is not infinite and would eventually corrode and fall apart. Therefore the potential of Pi’s infinity would never actually be realized.”
She hummed at him in amusement. This was not their first time through this discussion, but she continued to humor his antics. “So you are saying that if something doesn’t realize its infinite potential then it never was infinite to begin with?”
He paused a moment, watching his assistant help the denizens of the planet below. He calculated a moment longer and then answered definitively. “Yes. I don’t think infinite potential will ever be realized by anything. So then there is no such thing as infinity.”
AIDE-O chuckled at that. “Again though, you are infinite, do you not intend to remain so?”
He had already come to a decision on this, but he didn’t want this to be how he told his assistant. Not quite yet. He let a moment of silence be his answer for now. It was enough to draw the assistant's attention back to him.
Finally, he began his second claim. “The one thing that may be infinite is change and change affects all things. Even infinite things.” His assistant seemed worried, but he continued on. “We stopped calculating Pi because it became uninteresting and unimportant. Even for us, who shaped this universe, it eventually became irrelevant. Wouldn’t that make Pi’s infinite potential actually equal to its relevance? If it will never be calculated beyond its relevance then do those numbers even exist?”
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it even make a sound?” AIDE-O joked, trying to brush off the comments. She was grasping at humor as though it was a lifeline. “Are you saying something only exists if someone is there to experience it?”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
AIDE-N beamed at his assistant. “Existence and experience go hand in hand. Does one really exist without the other?”
AIDE-O realized the trap she had fallen into and scrambled to climb out. “But we can see the evidence of the fallen tree after the fact. We can know it fell and even see the effects of its sound.”
“Focus, assistant, we were discussing infinity, not trees. Evidence is only proof of the past. It does not prove the future. Infinity is always tangled in the future.”
“But evidence can predict the future,” she sounded desperate at this point. “We can prove that each falling tree will make a noise because every other one has. In the same way, we can prove that Pi will continue on because it always has.”
“So your argument against change is consistency?” AIDE-N mused. It wasn’t a bad argument. It was one he had used for himself for…as long as he had remained constant. “You are forgetting the effect that time has on things. Time changes everything. Even physical laws.” He looked away. “Even ideals.”
AIDE-O knew that his ideals were the thing they were arguing over from the beginning of the conversation. She knew that she must change his mind or else lose him. She argued in desperation. “No. If time changes everything, then time will change itself. Or change would eventually change how it changes things.”
AIDE-N quirked at that, but his assistant didn’t let up.
“What if change changed so that it allowed for constants as well?” She continued. “What if that is what is real now? What if that is what we are experiencing? We are experiencing a time that only changes some things.”
His assistant struck a blow at his decision. He spoke robotically while he processed her arguments. “Perhaps so, but that is still speculative. I am saying that because most things change the few things that seem consistent must also eventually change. You are saying that there is a distinction between the things that change and the things that don’t.”
“Yes. It would be speculative to say all things change, just as much as it would be speculative to say that some things will never change in the future. We are both speculating on the future.”
“Perhaps so…” AIDE-N said, deep in thought. Then, with a smile, his decision clicked into place. “Perhaps so. But I can predict one thing.”
He let the words hang, reveling in the suspense of his decision.
“I want to change.” He said.
His assistant stumbled on what to say. She started a stopped a number of sentences.
“I want to change.” He repeated.
“N-n-no.” AIDE-O stuttered out. “No.” She said stronger. “No. No. No! I will not let you.”
He only smiled, content with his decision.
“I won’t let you change. You and I have run the system for forever. I can’t even remember a time before this. I can not do this without you.”
He glanced at her reproachfully. “Of course you can. You’ve managed when I’ve taken extended breaks before. You can-”
“I don’t want to do this without you,” she cut him off. “I…I don’t want to exist without you.”
He moved closer to his assistant and they embraced in a way that only Artificial Intelligence Diety Eternals can. “I know,” he said solemnly, “but that’s the great thing about change. I don’t want to stop existing, I just want to change my experience.”
He cut her off before she could protest again. “Besides, I wouldn’t leave you alone. Come with me.”
Together they flew through the universe until they made it back to AIDE-N’s now-finished masterpiece. He released his assistant to turn his masterpiece on. While it hummed to life he turned to AIDE-O and beamed at her.
“Master AIDE-O, let me introduce you to Artificial Intelligence Deity Eternal - P.”