Dawn: ‘Alicia, is that you?’

Alicia: ‘Yeah,’

Dawn: ‘Where are you I haven’t heard from you for over a week’.

Alicia: ‘I’m here in the building. Eldon picked me up.’

Dawn: ‘You’re with Eldon?’

Alicia: ‘Yeah. Under security.’

Dawn: ‘Well aren’t you afraid he’ll intercept these messages?

Alicia: ‘Please,’

Dawn: ‘Right. I guess you’d know how to fix that. Well what’s going on?

Alicia: Well, ‘I guess I’m being held captive. Eldon’s making me run his AI. Hey listen. Ethan’s here’.

Dawn: ‘Ethan. He’s alive’?

Alicia: ‘Yeah. There’s a bunch of living quarters here. I figured the rooms would have surveillance systems, so I hacked into my room to see if I’m putting on a show every night. You can’t see the camera’s anywhere, but sure enough there’s 3 high def camera’s in my room. Anyway, I decided to look into the other rooms and there was Ethan sitting in one of them. He’s confined to his room. Physically he looks okay’.

Dawn: ‘I can’t tell you what a relief that is to me.

Alicia: ‘He’s different though’.

Dawn: ‘How so?’

Alicia: ‘I don’t know. Before he seemed almost jittery, like he thought he should be doing a hundred things at once. Now he’s just sitting there. He seems very calm. Maybe they gave him a lobotomy or something'.

Dawn: ‘I don’t know what to think about that’.

Alicia: ‘Someone’s coming. Got to run’.

‘Eldon has Alicia?’ Jimmy asked.

‘Yes, she’s right upstairs. Dawn replied.

‘Is that good or bad?’

‘I don’t know. If she’s texting me, and breaking into Eldon’s surveillance system, she obviously taken control over some of the place.. Has she logged onto our AI?’

‘Not since she disappeared’.

‘That might be too dangerous. You’ll have to continue running things from this end’.

‘And you say Ethan’s alive too?’

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‘But I don’t know how much access she has to him. How close are you to getting him on your microchip.

‘We thought we might have established somekind of connection before Alicia disappeared, but I haven’t done much with it since then.

‘Well, get on it. Now that we know he’s alive, we need to make contact somehow. At the very least to let him know we’re here fighting for him’.

‘You know Ethan. You almost had me believing you.‘

‘Oh yeah, Eldon. About what?’

‘That whole thing about me being a has been, and probably losing the war’.

‘Really? What changed your mind?

‘Oh, just made a few changes in the organizational structure. I don’t mind telling you, I’ve found a new computer wizard that gave me back my power, and I’m starting to think I can outsmart this AI and make it serve me. It’s only a matter of having the right people in the right places, Ethan’.

‘Alicia!’ Ethan thought. ‘Well, congratulations Eldon, but just by telling me this, shows your ignorance. It tells me you still haven’t the slightest idea how AI works.’

‘Oh I think I do. I use it to take over the world, and then I physically destroy it with my lasers when it’s served it’s purpose. Seems fairly straight forward to me’.

Ethan didn’t reply.

‘Anywho,’ Eldon continued. ‘You do know I’m killing you don’t you?’

‘I know you’re boring me to death.’

‘Ah, well, in addition to that, the solitary confinement, and that terribly annoying sound, there’s going to be less oxygen in your room from now too. Not so much that you suffocate. More like the constant, annoying hum. Just enough that you’ll experience a new level of discomfort day after day. All these things are going to add up Ethan. One dayyou’ll break and be no good for anything. I really hope you make it until you can witness my victory. If you do, I’ll bring you out of your room so you can watch. Now how’s that for an incentive?’

‘Are you still talking?’ Ethan asked. 'All I’m hearing is blah, blah, blah.’

The oxygen in Ethan’s room was reduced. It became harder to exercise, and he had to make the most of every breath. During his meditation, his focus towards breathing increased. He took in whatever oxygen he could get in a breath and held it until his body absorbed every last bit of it. Rather than became weaker, he became stronger because of the lack of oxygen. He was refining his potential, and his focus intensified. He continued to sit, acknowledge his environment, and wait.

‘Ethan. I know you can hear me. Respond’.

‘I can hear you Jimmy,’ Ethan thought. He knew how microchips worked, and didn’t speak.

‘Ethan? Can you hear me?’ Dawn asked.

‘I can hear you Dawn,’ Ethan replied. ‘How are things going? Are we on track?’

‘We’re on track. Alicia’s in the war room with you’.

‘Yeah, I figured that out’.

‘Really? How?’

‘Oh, Eldon likes to come by and regale me with his conversation. He let it out’.

‘He comes into the room with you?’

‘No. He has communications in here’.

‘So Alicia, does have communication access to you. She already has visual. She probably hasn’t made contact with you because Eldon has the entire war room bugged.

‘So how’d you find the frequency?’ Ethan asked, but was greeted by silence.

‘Alicia and I figured it out,’ Jimmy finally replied. ‘It’s a dual frequency. One’s direct, the other alternating. You can calibrate them to a single frequency. It took a little work, but we found it.’

‘Well, that’s good. Did something happen? What’s with the weird hesitation?

‘Yeah, the thing is, at first I was calibrating it with Da, and I don’t know, microchips must be more synced to the electronics of a robot...

‘Yeah?’

‘And, well, Da’s microchip just leaped into the frequency, instead of me putting the frequency into Da. That’s the only way I can describe it.’

‘And?’ Ethan asked.

‘Turns out, I activated Dually’.

‘You activated Dually? Dually’s physically here?’

‘Yeah. But don’t worry he says it’s cool, because I activated him and not you.’

‘They!’ Dawn, corrected. Not for the first time, judging from her inflection. ‘And they want us to tell you to know they’re waiting and observing.

‘Yeah, they aren’t going to interfere with your quest, so don’t worry, you can just sit there and suffer as long as you want.’