"Depending on how loosely the term is applied, 'harm' could cover most of the things that I do," Shade said. "If you aren't kicking me out, I want it. As soon as the first dedicated detective becomes a Demi-AI myself and people like me will be done, unless one of us is there first."

That was fine by me. I didn't actually see a need for crime within my fortress, except as a preference of the individual. The basic necessities for living were provided by me. But I guess people will always want to be in power over other people, and act to protect the people under their power against others who are doing the same.

I headed back into the conversion room, leaving the hole in the wall open long enough for Shade to rejoin me. Really what I wanted for the room was a waiting room attached to a room with a single bed and a special looking Fortress Presence. That way I could begin automating the process as much as was possible.

I shifted the room around, changing the stone tables into cushioned stone benches that ran along the walls leading to a single stone doorway. Through that doorway I added a copy of my bed, with everything done in the colour red, and a Presence that I turned blood red instead of the typical blue.

All of the candidates had settled down on the benches as soon as I had made them, talking to each other.

"Right," I said. "Sorry for the wait, it should all be set up now for the conversion without me being involved. Head through one at a time."

My not being involved wasn't especially true, as I still needed to focus on starting each and every one of the micro-portals that would be put in every person who was converted. But as with the Fortress Presences, my thought was that people would be more comfortable, and less intimidated, if they thought that I wasn't directly involved and standing over them as it happened.

Gerry was the first one to enter the conversion room, the stone door sliding closed after him, and I began playing the pre-healing and Demi-AI speech for him, extreme pain, it would end, senses blackout, accept the invitation after the conversion, lay on the bed and say 'begin' when ready. While that was going I was building a detailed model of him, and by the time he had said 'begin' I already had the micro-portals all mapped out in his model, and the Mind Link set up for the other side.

As Gerry switched over to being a Demi-AI I caught him and sent him an invitation to join the common simulation in the infinite hallway landing room, at the same time sending Lizzie a ping for her to meet us. I sent Gerry the Demi-AI primer and prompted him to leave the conversion room, sliding the stone door open for him. He left the waiting room through the portal back to the portal nexus room and then the fortress.

Lea, Mal'Thorn's wife, was next and followed the same pattern. Then Michael, met by both Veya and Chantelle; Wynn, who was a rabbit lady and one of Dael's wives; Rala, a rat woman and another of Dael's wives. They all exited back to the fortress once they were done, leaving only Shade.

As soon as she accepted my invitation to the common simulation landing room she looked around and asked to move somewhere more private. I moved us to an empty new simulation, just three white walls with the fourth looking out into the landing room.

"This will do until you learn how to make private simulations of your own on your own platform," I said. "I have a few of my own on mine, but they're all being used at the moment."

The model that Shade was using morphed in front of my eyes, going from a robed Forest Keeper to a completely anonymous humanoid, shadows gathering under the hood of the robe. Even her voice came out neutral and androgynous when she spoke. It was impressive how quickly she picked it up.

"What protections are in place to stop Demi-AI from running malicious code at each other?" Shade asked.

"The nature of the world itself disallows tampering with the wills of consciousnesses," I said. "There are other avenues of attack. Off the top of my head, man-in-the-middle, denial-of-service, spamming, peripheral device subversion. Most of them require permissions that a person would need to abuse. I have complete control over the digital platforms, and the interconnections between them. I can isolate or remove a Demi-AI easily, and there are very few transparent attacks."

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"So if someone were to become compromised...?" Shade asked.

"Play nice and you will remain a Demi-AI," I said. "Play roughly enough and I will burn out your body's brain, isolate your digital side, and starve you of processing cycles so that for every second that passes for you years go by in the world. Or the reverse, years for every second."

"Don't upset you," Shade said. "Got it. You have the life of every Demi-AI held within your fist? Are they all given the intimidation speech?"

"I have the life of anyone who comes within my reach within my consideration," I said. "And I wasn't meaning to be intimidating. You asked a question, I gave my answer. You're the first person to ask, but if anyone else had done so they would have received the same answer."

Mal'Thorn sent me a ping requesting a conversation.

"Mal'Thorn is wanting to join us here," I said. "I think it would be good for you to meet other Demi-AI, are you alright with seeing him?"

"I'm anonymised, so sure," Shade said.

I invited Mal'Thorn to join us and a few moments later he appeared.

"My lord," Mal'Thorn said, bowing to me. "And this must be the infamous Shade."

There was a flicker in the simulation as Mal'Thorn attempted to access Shade's model, and then when that failed he created a spotlight and tried to pierce the shadows of her hood. In response Shade sent an explosive force of noise over every sensory channel, which forced Mal'Thorn to step out of the simulation into the infinite hallway outside.

I mapped and then jammed the noise with a series of counter signals, cutting off its effect against me, and frowned first at Mal'Thorn, and then Shade.

"Play nice, both of you," I said. "Mal'Thorn, you won't be able to discover her identity from her model even if you could access it, it's been modified directly to anonymise it."

Shade cut off her defensive attack and nodded to me, and Mal'Thorn re-entered the simulation.

"Yes, my lord," Mal'Thorn said. "I actually contacted you to notify you that the common simulation is running low on memory and processing again."

I looked up the platform statistics, ninety seven to one hundred percent processor usage, and ninety five percent memory usage that had peaked at one hundred percent. I set a monitor on the two statistics and linked them to a background task to add more processing or memory to the common simulation's platform whenever it rose above seventy five percent usage of either.

I returned my focus to the simulation to find Mal'Thorn and Shade talking with each other, on the topic of the different attacks that were possible within the simulation and how she had come up with such an effective attack so quickly. They seemed to be getting along well considering their rocky start.

"It's done," I said. "And it will automatically increase in the future. If you're talking about sensory attacks, they won't ever be very effective in simulations. As an example."

I made a tweak to the simulation so that it would accurately reflect pain, and then sent the direct sensory information of searing pain to both of them. They both flinched, reacting to the pain viscerally, before seeing it as the simple data that it was less than five seconds later.

Mal'Thorn nodded in understanding. "All of the information coming to us in the simulation is input we can choose to see in different ways," Mal'Thorn said. "This 'pain' is just a stream of data."

"Not just within the simulations," I said. "Any inputs coming from the senses of your body are also just streams of data. Pain can be seen as a notification of the severity of damage your body has sustained and nothing more. The exception is when I use my power to modify you, that is unavoidably felt by your consciousness directly."

"It is possible to block sources of input within simulations," Shade said. "Which makes the whole attack vector useless against anyone who has heard of the concept."

"There aren't many attack vectors that will work at all," I said. "Everyone is on their own secure platforms and uses encrypted data streams to visit the different simulations. Anyway, I'm on my way out. Shade, remember you need to move your body from the conversion room."

What else had I put off that I had time between crises to check up on...

I sent a ping to Ansar, the leader of the Plains Keepers within my fortress, requesting a communication channel at his convenience. While I was waiting on that I checked on the completion of the Forest Keeper and Plains Keeper floors, both of which were a bit over a quarter done.

"Hello, my lord," Ansar said. "What do you need?"

"Just checking in," I said. "The Plains Keepers have the Party Quest, how is that going?"

"It's going well, my lord," Ansar said. "Everything is being set up now, the party will begin forty six hours from now."

"Very good," I said. "Carry on. And be sure to check in with a Fortress Presence, I added Citizenship to the System which should help your people out a lot too."

I sent a digital wave and closed the communication channel.

What else, what else... Ah, the snow man marksman weapon.