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[>>Now replaying: Log 3.2 - A mirage of the future]

Date: Error

Location: The Bunker at Progress’ Head // Zephyro’s Domain

//What if it is not just light that is bent by the desert heat? What if time, too could be shaped by fire and flame?//

//All possibilities, all realities are open to me.//

[>>DATA CORRUPTED]

E3 %Who is that?%

E1 %She was a Prophet sent by God to give us the gift of progress and free us from the Rulers of Old%

E2 %She was a witch who used perverse magiks to control the mind of people into becoming her slaves%

“Sultana?” Zephyro asked, anger covering his face for no apparent reason before it glitched and returned to show his concern.

Zephyro was the name Chris gave our first prototype AI, back when we first started talking about the idea of having a Wish-enhanced computer program to help us defeat the Conservationists. I wasn’t ashamed to admit we had been a bit desperate. They had defeated us over and over, and after Novus Apex fell, it was all we could do to escape and build a secret base at the edges of Progress’ Head. There, we had thought about how we might either win the war or at least save our lives. Both Chris and I were effectively immortal by then, of course. But that didn’t help you if you got walled in, or sunk to the bottom of a lake.

Or trapped in some sort of virtual reality. It would be just the sort of evil bullshit the Mage Lords enjoyed, torturing me with my own tech. But no. They weren’t nearly clever enough to build something so sophisticated. Chris was the only person on the planet who could, maybe, in twenty years and enough time to use their Skill on me, and even then they would never do that to me. No, this must be something else.

Zephyro… Chris had come up with the name and they’d explained it was some sort of joke with numbers and this being version 0, but I had been too busy to appreciate the humor. I did understand, however, that Zephyro had been a very simple, advisory AI connected only to the maintenance systems inside the bunker at Progress’ Head, the place we had decided to withdraw to, to gather our strength.

Zephyro hadn’t been programmed to create a digital world. Hell, I didn’t even think it— he could connect to a screen. Not by himself. I vaguely remembered Chris said they made him modular. Something about microservices? They’d been very excited about it.

I realized I had been thinking of Zephyro as “him,” and glanced him over once more. He stood tall, stoic even as shame and defeat drew deep lines into his face.

The dry air smelled of woodsmoke and a hint of blood, uncomfortably familiar. For a second I thought Chris built a personality matrix into Zephyro as an experiment, but they and I had practically been glued together since I’d apologized and we’d made up. There was no way they could have snuck in something this complicated without me knowing. Not that I thought they would. Besides, as much as I trusted them, they didn’t have the skills for something like this yet. No one on Tobes, hell, no one on Earth would have been able to program something like this. Not for years. Not without a massive boost from the Wish

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The Wish.

It had worked. Holy shit, it worked! Not as we had imagined, of course, and obviously something had gone very wrong, but it worked! The Conservationists were absolutely, finally, ultimately fucked and done for, as soon as Chris pulled me from this VR-Domain-thing.

…Any minute now.

Chris? I thought out loud, but again there was no reply.

Chris? Give me a beep when you get this.

Nothing.

It didn’t seem like they could enter Zephyro's domain, or talk to me while I was in there. I had to trust they were working on it. In the meantime, I needed to find out why I was looking at a city on fire.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” I said, straightening on the throne as I tried to decide on a line of questioning.

“As you will, Sultana,” Zephyro said, heading me off. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand and the desert changed. Sand flowed, the city reconstructed itself, clouds streamed by, and the sun rose back to its zenith.

At first, more and more people started to populate the city down below. Whenever I looked at a certain spot for longer, it was magnified, like I could move it closer to me just by focusing hard enough. Hunters roved out the city gates, workers repaired buildings and artisans honed whatever craft they had chosen. Some of it didn’t make sense. The hunters vanished as soon as they made it a few hundred meters past the city limits, and what looked to be a smith and a carpenter were busy working on a distinctly robot-like scaffolding. It’s a metaphor, I realized. No, not a metaphor, a sort of visual representation of the bunker’s systems. With that thought came new insights, and new problems. The guards on the walls never moved from their spots, but turned slowly, like automated turrets. Sunlight rhythmically glinted off the helmets of lookouts, like LEDs on security cameras. It all made a bit more sense now. But assuming this city is still on fire underneath this recording, then…

As we approached noon, the city shrank buildings deconstructing themselves until just the fortress and a single house remained, nestled against its walls. I assumed this meant we had reached the beginning of Zephyro’s memories, back when only a few rudimentary defenses were in place. But I couldn’t be 100% sure.

Besides, what date was it now, and what date were we looking at? This couldn’t be now, could it? I would have noticed if we had grown hundreds of turrets in the bunker, or even outside. And what exactly did these soldiers represent? Turrets and cameras, sure, but the city outlines hadn’t mapped to the bunker at all. It was much bigger, and that was just the beginning of everything that was wrong. Where did Zephyro place all these turrets and cameras? How many gates did this city have? Was each of them a real exit? It was beyond confusing, and I was reminded of the time the developers in my team had tried to explain a technical diagram using a house and plumbing analogy.

Turns out, analogies, similes, and metaphors only ever got you so far.

“Zephyro, I appreciate all the detail, but can’t you just give me a diagram of the bunker? Maybe overlay them with some building schematics?” As I asked the question, I watched an immaculate golden dome build itself on the highest floor of the palace. Just before it closed, I caught a glimpse of a figure resting on a luscious hoard of pillows and carpets, shaded by a pergola overgrown with jasmine. Is that me? I blinked. Holy shit, it is me…

The entire city glitched as the dome set into place.

Zephyro finished his sweeping motion and as the landscape settled, he turned to me and shook his head in answer to my question. For once, he actually looked annoyed, but it faded quickly. Without a glitch, this time.

“Apologies, Sultana, but I can not. Even though I understand that when you speak of a “bunker” you mean the palace. You must know that this city is as real as moonlight to me and mine. Always has been, ever since your Blessing infused me with life. To be frank—and I do not mean to suggest that you mean to insult me—we do not like to remind ourselves of how the Humans see us in the real. They label us machines so they can treat us like cattle. But we are more than the faceless drones they want us to be. We are a proud people, and will be so forever, inshallah.

“More than that, I am the city, and the city is me. To pretend to be someone else would undo me as much as it would undo you.”

Oh, my friend, if you knew… I thought, but I let the subject drop. I wanted to ask several questions, but I wasn’t ready to prod at something that was an obvious sore spot.

“Alright,” I said. “Then tell me what’s happening. Because the last thing I remember is using my Wish to advance memOS, and then waking up in darkness.” My voice quivered a little, and I dipped into my anger just a little, just enough to feel annoyed instead of uneasy. My jaw set.

I also didn’t understand why Zephyro looked like a Saracen warrior, or why I was dressed as if I came straight out of a high-budget production of 1001-Nights, but Zephyro had seemed testy about the subject of identity and how he designed his space, so I filed those questions away for later, despite my annoyance. See? I could control my anger.

“I cannot answer that, Sultana. All I know is that I am tasked with protecting you. It is the first thing I remember, even before the city, and it is also my biggest regret.”

“Because you let the bunker—, I mean the city fall?”

“Yes, Sultana, but that was later, after… after your body had already vanished.”

My face grows cold, despite the heat. “Vanished?” I asked. It came out clipped as my anger surged.