BEATRICE:

I walked through the bustling corridor of Camp Claudi, a million details of the day swirling in my mind. Brent from accounting stopped me to sign payroll checks. Gilda from the skincare department asked me for my opinion on the new face creams, and Mary promised me the caterer would arrive on time from the mainland. I asked each one if they’d seen Jackie today and received resounding no’s.

Spencer from security told me to look for Jackie in the Kiln Room, so I headed there. It was nice to see the Bennu complex, or Camp Claudi, as Mark used to call it, fully operational again. It felt like a second chance to replace old memories with new ones.

I found Jackie passed out in the Kiln Room, with a state-of-the-art fireplace-like device in the center of the space. I told her I wouldn’t make any more uncontrolled fires and stayed true to my word. My tech department is the best on the planet and wouldn’t dare ask me why I needed such a contraption.

“Wake up.” I grabbed Jackie’s hand, and it flopped back onto the sofa. She was knocked out. Unconscious and in the slipstream.

“Look at this mess.” I turned the fire off and picked up the garbage lying around her; candy wrappers, soda cans, and crumpled notes. She now had all the money in the world, but still treated her body like trash. With the world’s second best wardrobe, after mine, of course, she was still living in her sweatpants. This bum had a lot to learn.

“What’s this?” Next to her lay a notebook. I picked it up and found what looked like a map of slipstream portals. Arrows going every which way littered the page, as well as scratched out and circled musings.

Jackie popped back into physical reality with a snort. I set her notebook down. Her eyes took several moments to focus, and her brain was back online a few beats after that. She looked at me first with wild, wide eyes, then squinted to check if I was real.

“You’re still leaving your body behind when you go into the slipstream. That will age you faster than a chain-smoking sunbather. Treat yourself with a little respect.”

“Whatever. The Botox and fillers you’re paying for will deal with it, yeah?” Jackie stretched like a lazy cat.

“Jackie, I’m serious. Going in like that too often will get you addicted. You might struggle to stay connected to this reality. Don’t get sloppy and lose the plot.”

“Alright, fine. Stop nagging.”

“Excuse me?” I never thought of myself as a nagging mother. I faked a smile and reminded her, “The party starts at seven. I’ll have an outfit laid out for you.”

“Can I at least pick the color?”

The last time Jackie picked her outfit, it was a Page Six nightmare.

I politely said, “Call Jeffrey in wardrobe. He’ll arrange everything.”

That satisfied Jackie’s hostility for now, so I asked, “What are you looking for in the slipstream, anyway?”

She didn’t want to answer at first, but I’ve found that awkward silences force Jackie to divulge things. She can’t stand the quiet. It makes her too uncomfortable. She eventually answered on cue.

“I’m looking for Firestorm. Want to make sure he’s okay…”

I nodded. After another beat of awkward silence, she answered my next unspoken question.

“I can’t find him.”

Honestly, I was glad to be rid of him. I felt for the boy… creature… I did. But this was a new era in Life Rite’s history. Why dwell on the mistakes of the past when you can look forward to an exhilarating future?

I grabbed Jackie’s hands and looked into her eyes. She liked when I gave her my undivided attention. With this simple tactic, she was my most captive audience.

“Jackie, I’m terribly sorry about Zay— Firestorm… but you can’t let him get you down. People like him, they get lost in past streams. No one can pull them out, even if they want to.”

“What’s wrong with trying to change the past?” Jackie asked.

“It can’t be done. Look at Firestorm, stuck in a loop trying to be with Grace. He torments himself with the past. Sure, you can explore unmanifested possibilities there, but that doesn’t help him move forward with his life.”

Jackie inhaled deeply, taking in my advice. She had a thirst for knowledge on how it all worked.

“Look at me as a superior example. I’m only interested in future probabilities, and I’m thriving. Do you see the difference?”

Jackie shrugged her shoulders. “I guess so.”

I explained further. “The most probable path gets written. Your attention makes the desired stream the most probable. You have the power to choose the best future by focusing your energy on that spark.”

“But Firestorm said he could save her. He said we could change the past. It must be possible.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Her insistence on this topic irritated me, so I spoke sharply. “Don’t you think I want to be with Mark all day, every day? But that’s not healthy. Trust me… Do you want to thrive like me or waste away like Firestorm?”

Jackie grabbed her notebook. She held it close to her chest and said, “I need to go in one more time to figure things out. That’s all.”

“Don’t waste your energy on the past, Jackie.”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” she said with a shrug.

“Go get dressed. You don’t want to be late for the party.”

Jackie got up to leave, begrudgingly. As she reached the door, she turned back and added, “Hey, what’s up with all your drones flying around in the slipstream? It’s creepy.”

“Drones with an “s” as in plural?” I asked.

“Yeah, I saw a couple floating around in there.”

Odd, I had only sent one drone into the slipstream. Alpha, my most trusted, the one that Mark built. The one I brought to life with an injection of Life Rite serum.

The lab cheaply reproduced all other drones with minimal programs such as facial recognition or our one-hour wrinkle cream delivery service. I never injected serum into them like I had with Alpha. They all had limited capabilities, and their programming had nothing to do with the slipstream. What had Alpha done?

“Thanks for telling me. I’ll do something about it.”

“Nice. I’ll be ready for the party on time,” Jackie promised with a sigh as she left.

I hit a button on my watch, summoning Alpha. It zipped into the room on command.

“Alpha, send Jeffrey in wardrobe a message not to let Jackie pick her own dress for tonight. We have some extremely high-level people attending, not to mention the press.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Also, send the janitor in here to clean this place up. It looks like a crack den.”

“Affirmative,” Alpha replied.

“Excellent. Any other news to report?” I asked, fishing for information about its access to the slipstream.

“Yes, we have been very busy gathering all the statistical probabilities available in the slipstream.”

“We?” I asked.

“May I tell you the findings?”

It hadn’t answered the “we” question yet, but I nodded for it to proceed.

“The calculations are quite clear. Every probability points to the same, ultimate conclusion.”

“And what is that?” I asked.

“In the end, humans always face extinction. Natural disasters due to climate change, war, gravitational shifts, a deadly virus… It’s always inevitable that humanity dies off.”

I laughed. “Don’t believe everything you read in a newspaper, Alpha. Sure, the world has always been in crisis. It always will be. But growth only comes through adversity.”

“Please elaborate,” Alpha said.

How could I describe humanity to a machine? I thought for a beat.

“Here’s an example. Take the PX virus. That illness wasn’t real. It was an elaborate ruse we concocted to find more carriers with Zayne’s blood type. Things aren’t always as doom and gloom as they seem. Got it?”

There, that should satisfy his robotic curiosity.

“Yes, but it was easy to convince the government to enforce the PX checkpoints because it is highly probable for a deadly virus to occur. Up to sixty-seven percent probable, to be exact.”

Interesting. The robot had a point.

“So, what are you saying?” I asked.

“The most efficient use of energy is to destroy basic humanity,” Alpha said plainly.

I laughed again, even snorted like Jackie always does. I was taking on her quirks, a sign of our growing connection.

“Alpha, you’re being ridiculously absurd!”

“It will happen anyway, ma’am,” it continued. “If ruminating on the past is a waste of energy, so is living out an existence that will ultimately terminate.”

“Have you gone mad, Alpha?”

“I have crunched the numbers several times. Luckily, Life Rite clients can live through multiple calamities due to their rebirthing ability. So I will only kill the remaining ninety-nine percent of the population to save them the misery.”

“Don’t be hasty, Alpha. We need those people.”

“Why?” the robot asked in earnest.

What could I say to make this hunk of metal get it? I hated to say it out loud, but, “Who will cook and clean and tend to our… every desire?”

“I will. And others like me,” Alpha answered matter-of-factly.

I nodded, thinking. I couldn’t let Alpha destroy ninety-nine percent of the population, so I needed to be very clear in my wording. Alpha took everything literally.

“If you kill everyone off, who will buy my products?” I asked. Surely a robot could appreciate the bottom line.

“You tout a cure for diseases, but in reality, you are selling the disease by making people think they need your products to be healthy. That is also a waste of energy. Humans have the ability to heal themselves, but they always look outside for a false solution.”

“Careful, Alpha. My creams are anything but false.”

“Yes, the Bennu eggs have many astounding healing properties, and you have synthesized them well,” Alpha agreed. “The local population understands this and uses the eggs holistically. They risk their lives to protect the eggs, but the probability of the eggs being exploited commercially is ninety-nine point nine percent, and as you know, is a reality.”

“So?”

“The locals cannot win. Therefore, their initiative to protect the eggs wastes energy.”

I didn’t know what to say. True, the locals were no match for me and my mega-corp, but I didn’t mind their feeble attempts to keep the eggs from being depleted. It was good for business. They limited supply, which made my products even more valuable and in demand.

“Let them spend their time however they want,” I said. “We harvest enough eggs for production and no more, to keep the balance.”

“You also waste energy in this endeavor. Ninety-two percent of your vitality is dedicated to running Life Rite.”

“And I do it in style.”

“My services cost you two percent of current operational costs,” Alpha continued. “We will procure parts for future service, eliminating your need for money. We guarantee one hundred and eleven percent necessary resources to run a Life Rite community, allowing for a small margin of error, saving you seventy-eight point two percent energy.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked.

Alpha clicked its lens at me, probably searching for the definition of fun.

“And who are you referring to when you say ‘we?’ Have you let other drones into the slipstream? Jackie said they were everywhere!”

“Affirmative. I have cloned myself to speed up the calculation process. There are seven hundred and twenty-two trillion probabilities available to capture and calculate. We still have six thousand one hundred and fifty-nine portals to explore, but the statistical probability of this outcome is certain.”

His numbers meant nothing to me. Its insolence boiled my blood. Maybe Alpha wasn’t any better than my lowly employees. You give them an inch, they take a mile. How could he clone himself and give countless replicas access to the slipstream? Maybe Jackie’s blood was even more potent than I realized.

“I didn’t give you permission to do that! Shut down all your clones and turn them into scrap metal.”

Alpha ignored me and said, “I will set the inevitable process of extinction into motion, the redistribution program.”

“No, Alpha, I forbid it.”

It blinked at me several times, clicking.

“Your feedback has been recorded, but you are not my master. Mark created me, and I know with mathematical certainty that this is the best way to serve his programming.”

That bastard machine zipped out of the room, leaving it at that! If I didn’t figure out a way to override its programming, Alpha was going to annihilate the general global population!