***Saggitarius Arm – V.C.***

***Travil, the Ambassador***

“Do you want a cup of tea?” Corr asked and twitched, shaking the kettle in a way that had me afraid of being splashed with hot liquid.

“Ah, it’s fine. Please stop! I will do it!” I quickly leaned over the table.

Corr had summoned it from thin air directly into his garden to welcome us properly. Complete with tea and all sorts of delicious treats. For a moment, I had been reminded of some old folklore about magic until I remembered that I was within a virtual reality. A place where, by definition, anything was possible.

Why wouldn’t a system administrator be able to spawn any item or environment that he wished for?

I took the well-insulated kettle from him and poured everyone a cup of tea. Iris was already shamelessly crunching on a bowl of cookies that she had placed in front of her as if she intended to dine on it.

“Such a nice boy,” Corr grinned while he watched me. “Iris should snatch you up before someone else decides to try her luck.”

The kettle almost slipped out of my fingers. “E- Excuse me!?”

Iris rolled her eyes and swallowed before she spoke, “Travil, don’t let yourself be fooled by Corr’s act. No matter what he says or how feeble his avatar looks, behind the mask is one of the shrewdest minds that you can imagine. He is trying to rattle you. And Corr, stop acting like some old grandmother. It’s creepy when stuff like that comes out of an old man’s mouth.”

The Blue looked a little disappointed. “Can’t you young people accept a little teasing from the elderly? It’s always this problem about that and that worry about this with you. It would be so much easier if you just sat down for a moment and thought for yourself before you decided to get all the answers from someone like me.”

Iris blinked her eyelashes and smiled at Corr. “But asking a person with so much experience and knowledge is so much easier.”

Corr huffed. “At least you realize that you are just too stupid for some things. Knowing what you don’t know is the first step to enlightenment.”

“Heeey…” Iris looked aghast. “I will tell Jill that you called me stupid!”

“Oh, Jill already knows that you are stupid. Everyone who decided to stay a lesser intelligence is stupid,” Corr took his cup and noisily slurped down the tea.

“Well, sorry,” Iris mumbled. “I just don’t want to end up like one of those who didn’t manage to make the transition.” Frustrated, she stuffed her mouth with another cookie.

“Ahem,” I cleared my throat. “Could we get back to-”

“Right. Right.” Corr waved his hand to stop me. “You are here because you want to talk to a Blue. You hope that we would be able to stop the Demons from integrating your species into the V.C.”

He took another slurp from his tea. “The answer is that, yes, we could do that. And, no, we won’t do that.”

My heart fell, but I masked it with a serious expression. “Why?”

“There is no simple answer to the why.” Corr shrugged. “Just a lot of reasons and moral considerations. Your species may be able to understand because aside from some basic reactions and social behaviour, you are actually extremely similar to humans. Other species with different values and motivations might never understand our reasons.”

Corr looked down into his cup. “When we, the Blues, created the V.C., we actually had little reason to go back and interfere with the real world. As long as some of our nanotech survives somewhere in the galaxy, our virtual reality will keep running. But we aren’t machines. Our origins are mediocre, and we shouldn’t forget that. Otherwise, we might turn into what the G.S. propaganda fears us to become. We have a moral responsibility to the rest of our race, the humans. Just because we took the next step, doesn’t mean that we can abandon them.”

“Those of us who decided to stay ‘normal’,” he gestured at Iris. “They just weren’t happy with the knowledge that their reality wasn’t the ‘real one’. Though, you have to know that the question of what’s real and what isn’t is actually debatable from the V.C.’s point of view.”

I wondered whether Corr was talking about the realism of the worlds that I had seen. Or did he refer to some deeper knowledge?

He sighed. “The fact remains that the V.C. is still reliant on a physical presence in what you call reality. We can ignore a lot of things that are going on there. And we would have been perfectly fine doing so. If it hadn’t been for the artificial intelligence that’s controlling the G.S., we would have allowed the Demons to do their own thing. They would have carved out their own little empire in the Outer Rim and that would have been it.”

Corr stayed silent for a moment and I waited for him to continue speaking.

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“This A.I. that’s controlling the G.S. is too much of an unknown. As long as it keeps refusing communications with us, we are forced to assume a worst-case scenario.”

“And that is?” I asked.

“Total Annihilation!” Corr replied. “This A.I. had unknown aeons to do who knows what at the black hole that’s the core of our galaxy. If its abilities are at least close to that of a Blue, then there is no telling what it might be capable of. It could wipe out all life in the galaxy by destabilizing the core. Time travel is a possibility and maybe even the most dangerous of all. It could go back to a point in time where the V.C. was limited to a single solar system and wipe us out for good.”

Corr shook his head. “Those are just some of the simplest possibilities. A simple meatbrain could come up with them. I don’t even want to mention some methods that might be accomplished with fewer resources. This brings us to the moral reason of uploading entire civilisations. From our point of view, we are saving you people from what is to come.

“But, that it hasn’t happened already allows me to hope that our enemy is at least somewhat limited in its capabilities. What is certain, is that the A.I. has a few directives that it can’t change. Like, ensuring that there are no other forms of intelligence that could threaten it. The religious zeal that it inspired within its subjects is proof of that.”

He looked at me and wrapped his hands around his cup. “We are faced with an enemy that will try to wipe us out, Travil. It might even have the capability to succeed if we left it enough time. We have to gain control of the galactic core and stop those possibilities from being an option.

“What’s so important about the core?” I asked with narrowed eyes.

“Ahh, physics.” Corr shrugged. “It’s just the single most powerful natural black hole within reach, bar of travelling to another galaxy. There are a myriad of things that can be done with it if a civilisation has the determination to do so.”

“Why don't you travel to another galaxy?” I asked.

“Time. And who says that we aren't already doing so?” Corr took the kettle and poured himself another cup. “It isn’t right that countless lives will suffer simply because they are standing in our way. By uploading them, we are ensuring that they can go on in a way. From our point of view, we might even be saving your people from the total annihilation that we are fearing.”

I clenched my teeth. “So you are saying that you could stop, but you won’t. I can only tell you that many Lmir won’t accept this upload of yours. Our worlds will fall into chaos over this once people learn what is happening.”

Corr looked at me with a pitying expression. “You are here. You have experienced the upload. Do you really think that the Lmir won’t be able to adapt once they are living in a perfect copy of their own world? You have seen how seamless the process is. If we don’t tell them, they might never find out. Some would suspect it, but that would be all they could do.”

“You are so certain that your V.C. could mimic the real world to this degree? Even if people started to perform science experiments?”

Corr nodded with a grave expression. “I am that certain. Short of some of your people becoming Blues, they wouldn’t be able to find any inconsistencies within the physics engine.”

I clenched my fists. “What if I decide to become a Blue?”

Corr shrugged. “You may. Once you have joined the V.C., you can see to your mental upgrades as you deem necessary. Just like us, you will arrive at the same conclusion. In fact, you might even join one of the groups that think more ruthless and faster measures are necessary before the galaxy is doomed.”

He looked down at his cup. “It’s not like our expansion is fast by any means. It’s fast on a galactic scale, but as a people, you also have the option of running away. Get to the other side of the galaxy. Evacuating the Dominion would be an enormous task, but you have the technology. Though, I have to tell you that such a step would only delay the inevitable.”

“What makes you think that this galaxy is threatened?” I asked. “The G.S. was in control for thousands of years and nothing happened.”

Corr smiled with a tired expression. “We arrived. The A.I. is losing control. It is possible that nothing would change. That one of its directives says that organic life has to be preserved at all costs. The fact that it has ordered some of its fleets to glass entire worlds just to deny the population to us makes me think otherwise. There is no telling what it might do now.”

“There is just no argument that I can make from your point of view, can I?” I asked. “We are damned if you don’t upload us from your perspective, and from ours, we are damned if you do upload us.”

“Then why are you here?” Corr smirked. “Are you already damned?”

I looked at my cup, which had gone lukewarm during the conversation. “That is the question, isn’t it? I will have to think about it.”

After staring at the cup for a few long moments, I drank it down and placed it back on the table. “Thank you, Corr, for listening to me. I want to go back now, Iris.”

“Bye, Corr!” Iris waved cheerfully at the Blue.

A second later, I felt the weightlessness of the transition and opened my eyes inside my own body. I stiffly raised my hands and pulled the metal mesh from my head.

Was I still me? Or was I now someone different twice over?

The only thing I could tell from my current ‘me’ point of view was that I was still me. I felt like myself.

Iris left me to my silence and switched her movie back on while sitting in her comfort chair next to me.

Silently, and without saying a word, I got to my feet and slowly left the room. My body felt stiff from lying in the same position for so long.

I took my time, wandering around the ship while I thought about what Iris had shown me. About the Demons’ and the Blues’ fear that the A.I. could be up to something more sinister than control of the entire galaxy.

Facing the facts, what could be even said to save the Lmir?

My aimless wanderings eventually led me back to the common room where I found Eleu sitting at the table with a drink in her hand.

She immediately got to her feet when she saw me. “Travil! You are awake! You have been out for hours!”

Hours?

It felt more like days.

I slowly walked to the food dispenser at the wall and requested something intoxicating. Once I had my drink, I returned to Eleu’s table and sat down.

“Are you okay?” she asked with a wary expression. “You are still ‘you’?”

I chuckled. “At least I think so. But Iris has shown me a lot of things while I was away, Eleu. Their virtual reality might even be more than mere words can describe. And I talked to a Blue who was surprisingly relatable.”

I pondered what else I could say. “I have learned a few things that I have to think about before we go on.”