I blinked and found myself floating in Ogawa's swirling neon void again.

"Teacher!" I yelled, expecting an echo that never came.

Instead, I got the steady 'click-click-click' of Ogawa's heels from behind.

"You're interesting," her lilting voice followed.

I flipped and rotated, bringing myself face to face with her. In my mind, it was a perfectly executed display of zero gravity maneuvering. Her sharp laugh told me otherwise.

"Nice moves," she said, raising one thin eyebrow.

"Bite me." I smirked. "Now, tell my why I'm interesting?"

Ogawa crossed her arms, her face taking on a pensive darkness. It reminded me too much of a doctor looking at a patient with an unknown disease.

"MiniMax doesn't usually choose such linear trials. Yet, here you are, running down your family line like someone checking off their TaoCommerce shopping list."

"You're the MiniMax expert. I'm just the guy with the awesome family tree." I grinned, then scratched at my sideburn. "But I gotta tell you that something's bugging me."

Ogawa tilted her head.

"You call these 'trials', but it doesn't feel like I'm being tested. I'm just…there."

She scoffed, pushing a long strand of black hair behind her ear. "Do you want to arm wrestle in the next one, you smoothbrain?"

"A hundred years old and you're still keeping up with streetspeak," I said, twisting my grin. "Good for you."

Ogawa shook her head and turned away. After putting a half-step distance between us, she looked back. "Look, your consciousness is being tested, Jakob. Your responses, your emotions. MiniMax wants to see what you're learning by experiencing these simulations."

"I'm learning that my family has a weird history that no one bothered telling me about."

Her head shifted side to side while she mulled that one over. After a few short nods, she faced me again. "Yeah, there's an undeniable significance to your lineage. MiniMax is being so…specific."

"What does it usually show people?"

"He doesn't have a 'usual'. I've seen hundreds of thousands of variations," Ogawa replied. "MiniMax has a few go-to scenarios, like putting an abuser in the role of their victim, or showing a drug addict what it's like to be their own neglected child."

My mouth went dry. "See, those sound more like trials. And I'm guessing I have more coming."

Ogawa nodded. "Just one."

"So, am I going to be arm wrestling…or facing an emotional nightmare scenario?"

She smiled and tilted her head again. The long pause that followed was genuinely unpleasant.

"Jakob," she said, finally, "you realize that MiniMax has unrestricted access to every second of your life from the day you were born, don't you?"

I sighed. "I've picked up on that from the whole 'Akashic Database' thing, yeah."

"And that includes your emotions and thoughts, thanks to neurocom tech. Did you pick up on that part?"

"I had inklings."

"Well, I don't have unrestricted access to your mind or your Akashic record — no one but MiniMax does. But from what I'm allowed to see, I know that you're not an abuser or a junkie." Ogawa smirked. "You've mostly been a perfect little corpo ladder climber. Which unfortunately means…"

"That I'm selfish, greedy, and obsessed with status?"

She chuckled. "Among other things. You're a bit of a thief, but at least your intentions weren't completely self-motivated."

"Thanks," I said, flatly. "So, nobody has full access to these insanely detailed records? Not TaoCom? Overwatch? I find that hard to believe."

"No one," Ogawa said. It was the most serious two words I'd heard her speak since meeting her. "The Akashic Database belongs to the Order, and every member is sworn to protect it. The data that's shared with the Consortium and other corporations is homomorphically encrypted by MiniMax Himself."

"So, they only get…what? Generalized behavioral data, nothing specific to a person?"

"That's right, smartie. Enough to manage the mega's logistics, control crime, run their marketing campaigns."

My eyes widened. "That's what Kamilla was talking about in the last simulation."

"Trial," Ogawa corrected.

"Yeah, the last Trial. She said the Order built an insanely complex data collection system for managing Hope, and you use the same system to feed info to MiniMax. But Ren Xie wanted to use the system for surveillance."

"And the Order won't allow it," Ogawa said, straightening her back. She scowled and cracked her knuckles. "Not then, and not ever. Ren Xie and his family were taught that lesson a long time ago."

I cocked my head. The conversation had taken quite the solemn turn, and I wasn't sure I liked seeing Ogawa bear her claws.

Of course, with how she felt about the Pan-Asian Coalition, her raised hackles made sense. The PAC was essentially a Chinese empire before the final days of the Collapse. When their plans for world domination fizzled out, they joined up with the Founders.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Alright, killer," I said, holding up my hands. "I'm on your side. I get that TaoCom is just a rebrand of the Chinese government."

Ogawa, surprisingly red-faced, raised her chin and shot me a fierce side-eye. "Right."

"And I didn't need a history simulation…Trial…to know that Ren Xie is a fascist who would love have the world on puppet strings."

"Ironic, right?" Ogawa sighed. "His empire created the neurocom to exert control. To eliminate any trace of privacy among his population. But it's the same technology the Order needed to set the world free. A way to quantify their entire being."

Was that what was happening to me? Was I being quantified, judged, by an A.I. that my own family played a hand in creating?

The thought came with no small amount of dread. Being watched by automated turrets was bad. Having my soul examined by a machine was decidedly worse.

"Are you ready?" Ogawa asked. "One more to go."

I shook myself out of introspection and grinned. "Thanks for asking this ti…"

***

A new place. A new time, but this one was more familiar.

I was in a restaurant, seated alone.

This was even nicer than the ones I'd frequent in Palace Park or Downtown North. Small tables, silent waiters, and immense windows looking out from directly below the artificial clouds of HighHold. I had to be in a Skypillar.

Nice. But the view from over three hundred stories up was even nicer.

From this vantage, even the city of a hundred million looked small. The neons and holograms blurred to become a lake of color and shadows. It was an impressionist's version of Hope Megacity, capturing the beauty of its form while omitting the details that made it rotten and frightening.

The sight of it was nearly enough to distract me from my Trial, but once my brain snapped back into the groove, my new host's NUI lit up like a Commerce Day parade.

It raced to fill in details with visual readouts, even as MiniMax fed simulated memories into my head. I was someone named Gregor Wiles. My wife, Temari, was meeting me here at La Gastronomie Dans la Tour for an absurdly late dinner.

"Alright," I mumbled, glancing around for eavesdroppers, "November, 2130. Still a few years yet before I'm born."

A quick look at my Employ status was all I could manage before a host in a bowtie guided Temari into the chair opposite me.

Gregor was a cybernetics researcher for BioDyne. Temari worked for ClarkeTec. It hardly surprised me.

"Greg, honey," the woman said, unfolding a cloth napkin to dab lipstick from her coy smile, "we've hit a breakthrough."

I raised my eyebrows. Not so much for the news — which meant nothing to me at this point — but for the fact that Temari reminded me of a younger version of my mother.

"Tell me all about it," I said, reaching for her hand between two crystal glasses that desperately needed wine.

She beckoned the sommelier before putting her hand in mine and squeezing. "We've gotten our first sign of augmented abilities from the first generation test subjects."

Temari could hardly contain her pride as the sommelier approached and poured. I glanced out of the window, waiting silently for our glasses to fill. The full moon, low over the distant ruins of Oklahoma City, seemed so close that I could reach out and pluck the little domes and tunnels off the surface like stray hairs.

When the sommelier stepped away, we raised our glasses. Temari took a sip, then leaned in to finish gushing over her breakthrough.

"It's exactly what we'd hoped for. Uncanny computational power. Your prediction was spot on. The children just had to mature before the implant could fully integrate with their nervous systems."

Fortunately, MiniMax filled in what I couldn't understand. Turns out the implant was some kind of CNS coprocessor that used quantum technology developed in part by my grandfather. ClarkeTec's fingerprints were all over the design, but for some reason, BioDyne and TaoCom were leading the project.

"Uncanny power, huh?" I asked. "Surprised the Founders aren't worried about creating people they can't control."

Temari shrugged. "The Consortium already has a plan for that."

"Do I want to know?"

"You told me you didn't," she smirked. "Implantation is your department. The longitudinal study was mine. Remember?"

I leaned in, raising my eyebrows. "Maybe I'm ready now."

"Fine," Temari said, taking another sip of red. "Just a little social engineering. We've been raising the children in a very…hierarchal environment."

"Meaning?"

"They know very well who is in charge, and they're raised to be deferential to the Founders. It's rather easy when the children know that they would have died from birth defects, had they not been saved by the Consortium."

"So, they feel like they owe their lives to the Founders, and in turn, they do whatever they're told?"

Temari nodded.

"Brainwashing, then," I said, leaning back in my chair. "Got it."

She scoffed. "Greg. Ever so quick to put the negative spin on things. I shouldn't have told you."

I took a long belt of merlot before nodding in agreement.

"Besides," Temari continued, "it's those berobed lunatics that you should be worried about, not the Consortium."

"Berobed who?" I tilted my head. "Oh, the Order? What about them?"

She sighed into her half-emptied glass. "They're making a circus of the Consortium. Filing grievances, claiming Charter violations, bloviating about mystical nonsense. They say that ClarkeTec and TaoCom are misusing the quantum network. Somehow, they caught wind of MagicBean, and now they're afraid we're trying to break the computational reality."

MagicBean? Apparently, TaoCom had even weirder project codenames than Edison — who once documented a UI update under the moniker 'Tickled Penguin'.

"Is there anything to their concerns?" I asked. "Are one of these kids going to crash the universe?"

Temari chuckled. "Don't be ridiculous. You've implanted dozens of the CNS pucks yourself. They're quantum processors, nothing more."

Her words were about as comforting as a com-crete blanket. I couldn't be sure if it was just a gut feeling, or if MiniMax was feeding me insider information, but I knew Temari was lying her lipstick off. I deliberated calling her out on it, but she cut in before I landed on a probing question.

"Speaking of children, I've found the perfect name."

I forced a smile. "Oh? What'd you come up with?"

Temari batted her eyelashes and flashed a smile that would have been disarming before I learned her stance on pediatric brainwashing.

"What do you think about 'Noor'?" she asked.

I opened my mouth to utter a non-committal approval, and the world flashed away.

***

The neon void was waiting for me — as was my very odd teacher.

"Your trials are complete," Ogawa said, her expressionless face inches from mine.

I swam backward to gain some breathing room. "All business now, are you?"

She tilted her head, examining me as I floated in the paradoxically-bright nothingness.

"You're an unusual initiate, Jakob. But yes, as Trial Administrator, I have a sacred duty to the Order." She nodded once. "It must always come first."

"Got it," I said. "At least tell me why I'm so 'unusual'."

Ogawa's head tilted the other way. She grinned, bringing a ray of humanity back to her neuro-digitally rendered face.

"Your Trials were strangely specific to dark time in Order history."

I raised an eyebrow. "Did my relatives do something wrong?"

"Yes," she said, chuckling. "Everyone's relatives have done something wrong."

"Hah. Clever," I said, flatly. "But evasive. Did Aram or Fayed do something to the Order?"

Ogawa stared into the swirling void for a moment.

"It's up to MiniMax to determine how this fits together," she said. "I'm only free to say that your relatives worked very closely with the Order. In a way, they were part of the family that raised it from its infancy."

I sighed. That was no more information that I'd gathered on my own. If MiniMax was setting up a mystery, He wasn't giving me very many clues.

"We must conclude your session," Ogawa added. "It was a pleasure guiding your trials, Jakob Qadir."

After a five-finger wave, she flashed into a glowing ball of light.

The neon void faded into darkness.