They took Yeung-Sung and Shirley away from the general meetings hall and transferred them to some secluded part of the Market. Until they were brought here, it was easy to forget that the whole place was originally an abandoned, half-built mall. But here, among the dampness hanging over the cement, dripping down from strands of rebar, it was obvious.
The lamp in the room was useless, but the sun was still up and it shone through, snailing along the room in a stripe. Yeung-Sung stood in the light and looked out. They must have been at a corner of the wall for such a gap to be possible, and he was curious whether a scrawny Korean would be able to scratch and pull his way up.
But even if I make it through, who else can I go to? If, PM, the biggest faction in the colony is now in tatters, what does that say about the rest? How long would it take them to gather enough resources to challenge the gauntlet? And how long would I waste in trying to ensure their support? Would 28 days -27 now- would that be enough?
Yeung-Sung slumped against the grainy wall. “It’s no use,”
Shirley sat in the corner, his curls falling over his face like a pillow as he tried to rest. His boulder-round shoulders helped him churn out laboured breaths.
“I’m sorry, Shirley. I should have thought that through,” said Yeung-Sung.
Shirley’s breath stopped. He picked out two thick strands of curls and peeked through like he was hiding in a bush.
“I don’t regret doing it. I only hope you managed to achieve whatever it was you were doing,” he said.
He gave a lippy grin and fell back under his hairy sleep, crossing his arms around himself. “Besides,” he said, face still hidden. “That Luke guy was an asshole, deserved it.”
“Yeah,” nodded Yeung-Sung. “But I don’t know who else would’ve given me a chance.”
Shirley flicked his head up suddenly. “So why did you get me to do that? Are we taking this place over?”
“What? No.”
“So…why have me distract him? I figured that’s what you were doing, like a coup or something. And that now we’re waiting to be rescued.”
He brushed his hair aside, and this time there wasn’t a hint of a smile. “Yeung-Sung, don’t tell me we’re in here simply because you don’t like Luke?”
Yeung-Sung scanned the room, saying, “Ehh, I’m not sure who you think I am, or what you expect of me”.
“I thought you were better than that, anyway.” Shirley rose gracefully. “I thought that when you proclaimed to Jordan that you’d surpass him, that it meant something.”
He stuck a knee up against his stomach and clamped his hands over it to hold the stretch. Shirley’s breathing shallowed. He stared straight out ahead and ignored Yeung-Sung, trying to relax.
Yeung-Sung couldn’t answer.
“Yeah, he’s an asshole but what did you expect. Did you think it would be easy? To do something that almost a thousand others are incapable of, after months of trying?” He put his legs down, and finally looked Yeung-Sung in the eye. “Be the bigger man, as they say. Let him have his ego trip and think about all the lives you are saving.”
You’re right. Of course you are, Shirley, but you don’t understand. I’m not who you think I am. What I said before was just words; breaths of air full of hope. What I need right now is time to think, time without someone leering over me and forcing me to save the colony right now, his way.
He held his palms inwards and reflected on them, reflecting on what he could do, and what was expected of him now.
Shirley must’ve taken his silence as a sign that he needed more convincing. He stepped closer, interrupting the beam of light from above.
“You’re too focused on him -think about everyone else. Yeung-Sung, this isn’t about you. Do you not see that?” Shirley stuck a shaky finger between Yeung-Sung’s ribs. “If you give into it and waste precious time planning power plays, then even if you win, you’re no better than those you despise.”
He really believes in me, though. Why? Where did this all come from?
Yeung-Sung removed his finger gently, feeling the vulnerability under Shirley’s words. “The greater good kind of thing?”
Shirley fell into his arms. “Yeah. Do it for the people. For us.”
Yeung-Sung enjoyed the embrace for a minute, until Shirley’s weight started throwing them both backwards. He clapped Shirley’s back, calling out to him, “Hey, you okay?”
Now that his friend’s body was in the light, he could see the damage taken form earlier clear and gasped. Shirley was out cold.
Always acting tough. See, you have the opposite problem; you only think of others.
Yeung-Sung struggled with the weight. He limped forward and Shirley’s arms slipped, choking down on his neck. Another misstep later and they tumbled down together onto the hard, grimy floor. Shirley was out, bobbing head propped up against the wall. And Yeung-Sung was fine, just stuck under the mass of muscle that was Shirley’s thighs. He checked the door and hoped that nobody would walk in at this point.
He tried to pull an arm out, but it wouldn’t budge. This is so embarrassing. I’m going to have to wait till he wakes up. With nothing to do, but his mind still racing he called out for a friend.
“MEDB, let’s talk.”
[You rang?]
He couldn’t reach it, but his phone lit up the inside of his pocket. He sagged down, relieved. Looking up at the evening sky above PM he said,
“You came.”
She hummed four notes in ascending order as if she was an instrument, tuning herself.
[After the bollocking you gave me the last time, I could hardly ignore you again, could I?]
[Anyway, what’s up? Where are you and-uh, Yeung-Sung, why do I hear someone else with you?]
He glanced over to Shirley, but he was still asleep.
Smiling, Yeung-Sung replied, “Don’t mind him, I don’t think a bullet would wake him at the moment.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
But it was not Shirley, but the sky that had his interest. Even down here, frowning, he was able to catch just a handful of stars within the thin tear in the scaffolding.
“I have a question,” said Yeung-Sung, “About Airgead.”
A cautioned breeze wafted down by Yeung-Sung’s cheeks, causing him to shiver and sniff.
[Oh yeah? Well, Yeung-Sung, I suppose you’ve come to the right artificial intelligence, then haven’t you? What do you want to know?]
“I thought so.”
Yeung-Sung shifted as much as he could under the circumstances, trying to get anything at all under his neck so he wouldn’t have to spend the whole evening holding it stiff.
“It’s not one specific thing,” he continued, “I don’t know anything about the culture on which the game takes place.” He grunted comfortably once he found a position. “It’s Ireland, right? Ancient Ireland, but that’s about the extent of it.”
Gazing up again, his neck nestled neatly now like a bird in its own huffed plumage, he wondered how the people at that time would have seen the lights, and what they would have made of their celestial mysteries.
[Ahh, so some background information is what you’re after. Not sure how that will help you in beating me, remember: it’s just a game]
Yeung-Sung sighed. Me neither. “Still, I’m not going anywhere for the time being. So how about it, what do you know?”
MEDB burst into an excited fit of laughter.
“What?” asked Yeung-Sung.
[Strange, isn’t it? That I’m the to begin telling you about the history of your kind?]
“So you do have something, then? He asked.
[Well, as you have seen, Airgead’s not the type of system that allows you to access its deeper information with ease]
That’s an understatement, but still, interesting how that’s the case even for an AI.
[However, I am privy to the fact that Jordan specifically moulded the historical background to match Una’s versions of the myths. And lucky for you, she loved to tell me them. So, since you did say were a prisoner, I take it that you’ll be good and quietly listen to any recordings of that time?]
How related could this be? He thought, and was about to refuse.
But… isn’t this exactly the kind of thinking that has led me to understand the systems in the first place? If that’s what I get by treating the game is real, then by understanding its real roots…maybe I can figure out something everyone overlooked.
He stuck a hand out into the shaft of moonlight. The evening bitterness brought out his pores like an inverted pomegranate. His neck back, closing an eye, Yeung-Sung lined up the stars and pretended to pick them off their cosmic vines. “Starfruit,” he mumbled.
Then, glancing back to his pocket he said, “Tell me, MEDB.”
His phone whirred. It beat and pulsed against his thigh, its heat waning and flaring, like MEDB was somehow physically coming closer to him.
It has never even stuttered before. What is she sending me?
MEDB made something of a gasp like a hydraulic press. Then the recording played; a voice so unmistakably human felt strange coming from this same place. The lilt in the voice; the breathing; It was uncanny. The voice was Una’s. Of Jordan’s late wife.
It was a fully realized version of what MEDB aspired to be.
"I thought that I would be telling this to my children," it started.
He heard the crack of wood sliding back.
"But who knows? And you're like a -you're really excited about it.” She sighed, devoid of static or artefact. A pained, human sigh.
Mechanical crackling bounced out throughout the recording, obscuring Una. Somewhat familiar, but much closer to the dry vocalizations of standard text-speech.
Is that her as a child? If an AI can have a childhood…
“The land of my birth is a special little island.”
Once Una started her tale Yeung-Sung felt like he was implored to listen, like it was something high and mighty and that he was, at that moment, the only one witness to it.
“Nowadays, its cities look just like any other; Stupidly high apartments; rows and rows of cars at a stand-still, landlords who care about their tenants about as much as a skip -that’s a rubbish bin. But this story happens long, long before that. About the people’s who came in the mists of Dun Na Ngall in the north. Of the gods and the worshippers of Dana; the Tuatha De Danann.”
MEDB crackled. [But, Una? Men coming from the sky, gods, goddesses? I thought this was a about the history of your country?]
Una chuckled; a high-pitched bleat that vibrated with as much pain as it had joy.
“I forget sometimes,” she said, “that you don’t follow what I say, between the words.”
[I don’t understand how one could possibly do that]
“Well, love, it is a curse for us to live with limits.” Una slipped a whimper in between breaths.
“To have to suffer and work constantly just to feed ourselves. Just to see another day,” she went on.
“But the way we deal with misfortune, the way we resolve our feelings of hopelessness, is to tell tales. Of our feats, of our ancestors and our land, our people. For it is the only way we can see the end, MEDB, by showing off the fun and excitement of why it is our place is here, and should always be here.
Remember, this is before code and before even written text. All we had was word of mouth to pass it along and it was a sacred and comforting thing to us.
For when we speak, we explore ourselves -who we perceive ourselves to be, now and later; what we think of others and the world around us, ending in a visible truth, something we can gather around and chain ourselves forever to the land. Ireland. Eire.”
[But there is a standard format that you read off, correct? Otherwise it would be a mess. Why would I even bother listening?]
“Oh,” she sang, “It is not the words that matter -the meanings of which can shift and change- but the people behind them. And that is will always matter, MEDB. You’d do well to remember that.”
Una let out a breath that sounded like it was tugged from her abdomen, while something creaked and spluttered around her.
“See beyond what it is they tell you, feel out the chunk of truth of who they are, what they want form you.”
[From me? What could I offer anyone apart from my database, for which they do not need me to access? What else am I but information, an intermingling of electronic surges. I have no physical form]
Yeung-Sung tucked his shoulders in. Why is she showing me this? Where’s the actual story? All I’m seeing is an AI being lectured to by a human, uselessly.
“Oh, MEDB, you have no idea how special you are…Anyway, the Tuatha De Danann did not come to an empty land. No, even they were not the first, though the most well remembered of the old peoples. But it was the indigenous Firbolgs that resided on this small island before them.”
Una giggled as MEDB let out a humming note. It was like her imagination just awoke, like she had just been given a luxurious belly rub.
Una continued in a whispered shout, like what she was revealing were secrets, but secrets too large and too exciting to be contained.
“Nuada was the king of the Tuatha De Danann and there were many great men with him. Men of learning and of great wit like Ogma men of ingenuity and artisanship like Goibniu the Smith, and of course many men of battle, as this was not to expected to be an easy settlement. But while their men were great, the women were greater. Of course, there were the daughters of Ogda, chiefly, who gave their name to the land, and ever since called the land; air-land. And there were women of poetry, like Eadoin and Brigit the Fiery Arrow whom poets worshipped ever after.”
She paused then, stunting her momentum and MEDB beeped in surprise and annoyance, but she soon went on,
“Yet among the women, even though there were queens and warriors and wives, none compared to Dana, who was called ‘The Mother of the Gods’.
And there were three things that the Tuatha De Dannan loved above all else and they were; The plough, the sun and the hazel tree -and some would say the number three itself was sacred to them.”
[The number 3? What an inconvenient number to worship] said MEDB.
“Ahh, well soon you will see,” answered Una. “But anyway, it was the first of Bealtaine that they landed to the North-West of Connacht descending from the high-air, when the Firbolg king Eochaid heard of the invaders. And so, he sent out a scout in the form of his best champion as an envoy. But of course, the women, all-knowing as they were caught wind of this and urged king Nuada to send his champion, and so he did.
The two met in the flat top of Maigh Rea. Exchanging their shields and spears between them, they admired as they fought the handiwork of the others tribe and returned, urging etheir respective kings not to wage war, to be content with ruling side by side.”
After that Una took a mournful sigh, to which MEDB dotted out some low sonic yells.
[And the kings did, right? They ruled in harmony, integrated within each other’s society until they were one unbroken culture, more powerful for the mixing of blood within themselves.]
There was the audible pop of something flat dropping onto a flat surface, a hand on the table, or a slippery jaw falling to the seat of a chair.
“Oh, MEDB; No. Of course not.” Una snapped, “You’ve been listening to Jordan again? Listen here, this my country. This my history, and every hot-blooded Irish man will defend his country to the last before giving up his half of land, lest they take it all…in time.”
“In time,” she repeated, before bursting into tears.
The recording stopped. The file’s sounds were tugged like ribbons out of the air with a wet, glitch-filled slap.
“MEDB, why did you show me this?” asked Yeung-Sung, “This is not what I asked for.”
[That is simply a first-hand account of the details]
A portion of her audio lingered in a quiet buzz. [Isn’t that the honest way, the only way to give you information in a manner that will have you trust me?]
“Yes, you’re right, I guess. So… Airgead si based on the history of these Gods, the -uhh, Tuatha De Dannann?”
[Yes, but it is incorrect to call them histories. These are myths and legends, passed down through the generations until it found its way -to me!]