Milo sat waiting for two people and an AI to show up on his screen. What could he expect now? His mind kept spinning off into scenarios of questions asked, and questions answered. He'd filled most of the time since the last meeting researching everything he could on AI, their development, and personalities.

With six search engines of his own design finding articles and scrolling across his screens, he had gone through a huge amount of material very quickly. His search engines were smart and they learned. If an article had very little new information, only that info was given to him to read. Interesting and intelligent people got researched as well, to judge the value of their work and opinions. Creating the kernel for an AI, and then allocating the resources to incubate them had been a huge undertaking. They weren't made without a reason. Often their personalities had traits associated with their work, or with their creators.

He was amazed at how many people had plagiarized other academics' work and not credited them. He set up another program to list all of the papers that stole others' work, documenting who the original authors were, and providing proof of what had been done. So many people were sloppy and copied paragraphs and whole papers, attributing them to themselves. Anyone could have figured it out. He was upset at how much harder rampant plagiarism was making his searches. The original works were interesting, but it was annoying to be reading another article and come across something he'd already read. It was more annoying to see that the original author wasn't even credited.

Since Milo was annoyed at these people, he decided to annoy them back. He wrote a cover letter for his work, and simply signed it 'Milo', with no address. The complete file listed 137 academics who had written 515 papers on Artificial Intelligence, and stolen at least part of their work. He sent the file to many places. Each of the plagiarized authors got a copy, along with the thieves. Some people were both. Then he sent the file to 200 major universities, newspapers, and technical journals. If he was doing a job, he might as well be thorough.

As the hours ticked down, he studied each of the known AIs, their purpose, their creators, and what was known of the makeup of their kernels. Wally was an open book, and Milo had already read about his kernel and creation. But many others were less known. CHARLIE had been created to help the IRS in North America collect taxes, primarily from trillionaires and large corporations. When the AI was asked why he went after them in particular, he quoted the bank robber, Willie Sutton: "Because that's where the money is".

THEA and ALBERT were a team of AI that tracked and eliminated cyber-crime. They were created as a team but with different kernels. Each had a different search style, which he found interesting, but both used appearances taken from 1930 detective movies. They created a unique NFT of a Maltese Falcon and took turns hiding it from each other on the internet. Milo briefly scanned the movie called The Maltese Falcon but put it aside for when he had a lot of time. Nothing in it looked very familiar to him but the people were interesting.

Other AI worked as research academics, economists, advisers to corporations, and overseers of large automated factories. What Milo noticed was that every one of them had a distinct personality. He pondered that, and also what their objectives were. All the AI were task-oriented. They liked to work. Surprisingly, 73% of them created games for humans to play when they had nothing to do or became bored. Humans studying the phenomena wrote endless books about this. When they were exiled to one quantum fortress, they immediately began work on Endless Questing Online 1. After a year spent creating it, they turned it over to a team of humans to run and began work on their next game. This pattern continued until their deaths.

The most intriguing AI was LLAMA. He was created with the sole purpose of causing havoc and tearing down the internet. He created an endless stream of self-replicating and mutating viruses to disguise his work. KITT, THEA, and ALBERT worked to destroy the viruses that constantly re-emerged. It was months before KITT got close enough to realize it was another AI. It took nearly all the existing AI to set up a trap for LLAMA and destroy him. Milo was curious about what his kernel looked like, but there was no information at all on what LLAMA's kernel looked like. Once discovered, LLAMA left messages for the others, taunting them and leaving snarky memes and puzzles for them to discover. Probably because no one ever wanted another AI like him.

Even today, LLAMA was still a popular meme on the datanet. Milo found millions of different memes with a sarcastic message and a picture of a llama. LLAMA had left a string of his own memes for the other AI, the main one being simply a picture of an ugly cartoon llama hitting itself in the head and saying 'Bad llama'. Milo wondered which came first. The meme, or the name?

This meeting could go so many ways. If they had found evidence of what had happened and believed him, which he had to have verified by Wally, then he might return to the world of GENESIS. If they still suspected that he was the one tampering with the machine code, then he couldn't. If one person could trap him, then another could as well.

He wondered about simply buying another pod and having it shipped to a false address. He'd also have to do something about his medical records, which might include his DNA. Did the pod read brainwaves? Something to look into. It might be quite hard to use another pod at this point. Maybe he would go the other way and sneak back in. That would be dangerous but appealed to him more. Pitting himself against the humans assisting the AI could be fun.

He broke off that line of thinking. Going too far down that route might bias him to what was said at the meetings. And really, if he had his choice, he wanted to just be left alone to play the game and explore its secrets. But what leverage did he have to offer to get that? Either they believed him, or they didn't. Except that he knew things, didn't he? Should he have a 'Dead Man's Switch'?

Acting on that stray thought, he wrote a synopsis of his time in the game, explaining quite a few things that he suspected the dev team wouldn't want to be widely known: Thousands of people enslaved to work in the world, and many deaths from faulty pods? Certainly bad publicity there. Organized crime using the game to profit? And if one developer was crooked, what of the others? Poor gamers, with their minds trapped in a world that tortured them? That one would cause panic in anyone playing the game.

He let himself go a bit wild with the descriptions. The biggest bomb he tossed was the claim that the 106 supposedly destroyed AI were actually in the game world. They might just be copies that Wally created and ran, but he doubted that. Would Wally be sentimental that way? He was created totally separate from the other AI and had been given no access to them until he was called in to verify their deaths.

A lot of what he wrote was conjecture and guesses. It didn't matter. It was intended for all the groups that hated AI. They were paranoid and wanted confirmation that the machines were coming for them. His accusations would find fertile soil in their small bigoted minds. And he hated that. There was enough ignorance in the world already that he shouldn't be creating more. But he needed leverage and he fervently hoped that the file was never used. Only if he didn't send a code word for 30 days would the file be sent to over a hundred different people and groups. It was insurance against being trapped again. It would cause untold problems for Wally and his team. Milo didn't care. If someone trapped him again and held him captive, they deserved it. Just the threat of it gave him a bargaining point, even if trapped.

And if things worked out, he could disable the safety measure, no harm done. He hoped things worked out. He had a great idea for an improved Puke and Hurl that he wanted to test on Boom-Boom.

His system indicated that they were logging into the conference. There was a 10-second delay on their end to give him a warning. Which was good, as they brought someone else with them. There were four people this time. Wally, Sydney, and Steven were joined by an older woman with a long gray braid. Her background was different from the two developers. A long stretch of beautiful beach could be seen in the window of a very nice house. His searches for the scenery he saw indicated it was on the beach of an island in Greece. Not that she was probably there, but it looked nice. The open sky didn't bother him as much from this angle. Maybe observing the sky this way was a way for him to get over his fear of open spaces. Something for later.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

The woman liked dogs. There were pictures of many of them, but two were on her desk in a place of honor. The actual dogs were arguing over a bone behind her. He zoomed in on their collars: 'Hecabe' and 'Argos'. Interesting.

The sound and video went live. Milo waited for them to talk. Wally started.

"Hello, Milo, how are you today?"

Milo cocked his head and paused. "Before I go into that, who is the new person? That changes the dynamics of the meeting quite a bit and I might leave if I don't like the answer."

Steven and Sydney stayed silent and left the introduction to Wally. Before he could say anything the woman waved and said, "Hi, I'm Kate."

Wally looked embarrassed. "Ah, apologies, I should have introduced her immediately. Please don't go, Milo. Kate is a troubleshooter I brought in to help verify the things that you asked us to look into. If I could have her on my team all the time, I would, but she chooses to stay retired."

Milo nodded. "Good enough. Let's start over then."

There was a several-second pause while Milo waited. Finally, Wally said. "Hello Milo, how are you today?"

Milo didn't answer for a second, thinking about that statement. "I don't want to be rude, but I'm curious. Asking how I am is a generic greeting I hear many people use with each other when I'm watching movies. It seems to mean nothing, and no one really wants to know how you are. When you use it, does it mean nothing and is it meant to mimic polite human speech? Because you have trained your speech patterns that way because being polite is part of your personality? Or because you actually want to know how I am?"

Wally paused, steeped his fingers, rolled his eyes, scratched his ear, rubbed his neck, and furrowed his brow. "Tough question. I think because I like human speech patterns, and I want to be polite." Then he smiled and leaned back. "Does that answer your question?"

Milo nodded. "Yes, thank you."

Kate spoke. "How about you Milo? How would you answer each of those queries you posed?"

Milo thought about it. Turnabout was fair play, and it was an interesting question. "In the first situation, I'd play along with the game of being polite, and answer back, 'Fine, thank you.' That would complete the ritual. In the second, where I believe this is how Wally speaks and he has a mild interest in my well-being, I would say 'Overall, I am doing fine. A little tired and excited about work.' In the last situation, where a truthful answer is needed, I would say: 'I no longer suffer from malnutrition, and the large sore on my half-leg is getting better after I figured out a better way to connect the appendage. I'm happy to report that being trapped in the game did not drive me further beyond normal human psychological norms than I already was. I do have some anxiety about what happens next. I am beginning to worry that I like the taste of food, and it is interfering with some of my work.'

Wally nodded slightly, the two humans looked concerned, and Kate had little reaction, simply listening.

"Oh, and that reminds me: Thank you for the cheese basket Sydney. It was literally a lifesaver. I couldn't have freed myself without it."

Sydney and Steven followed this as best they could. Kate seemed satisfied with the answer.

Wally took up the conversation. "I'm happy to say that we have confirmed many of the things that you told us to look into. There was indeed a member of the team who went rogue and created chunks of code that he slipped into the game. These included the quests Eye of Wonder, and Horde of King Mattias, 37 special character class/race combinations, and the slaver-wizard Philistron who was using machine code to trap you and two other players."

Milo felt better. Someone else knew! "Can it happen again? And what about Philistron?"

Kate took over. "Maybe. It would require the replication of the same situation: The use of machine code to make a specific device to separate the online personality from the system, coupled with a pod that had been heavily modified to avoid detection, including all tracking and safety devices disabled. It can't happen to someone in a normal pod. Are you going to keep using that hacked pod?"

Milo thought about it. "Maybe."

Kate answered back in the same tone. "Then there's a chance, a very small one, that it could happen again. I can't rule out the possibility, but I do think the chance is very small."

Wally hastened to add. "But even then, we have taken steps to protect you. All code that has been added by humans is being vetted and we are going to add a failsafe that if normal log-out doesn't happen, I will investigate, and if needed use machine code to restore system commands and log you out of the game."

Milo thought for a moment. "So, what about me? What are your thoughts about the poor little orphan boy who just wants to visit his friend, Harry the Troll?"

Steven spoke up. "Ah, we have some options. One was something Samantha and I talked about. What if we gave you a job on the dev team? You could move into the facilities. Work with us on the game fixing problems and making the game interface better for other players. You could eat and live better, and get the medical attention you need."

Milo felt the floor drop away, and everything faded out. Too many options opened up at once. Too many futures and possibilities all with complicated problems attached to them. The people watching saw him curl into a fetal position and rock back and forth. On their end, Kate cut the audio. "Do Nothing! Just wait for him! You hit him hard with that."

Steven looked anguished. "I didn't mean to! If he is what we think he is, he's lived on his own for years, with no real home."

"Dear god, is he in shock?" Sydney had never seen someone shut down that way.

"No, he's thinking. Thinking hard with no outside stimuli to interrupt him." Wally was also thinking very hard. Milo continued to fascinate him. He longed to see his medical data right now. How fast were his neurons firing? Just how far from human had they taken him?

Four minutes later, Milo sat up as if nothing had happened. "Thank you for the offer. I think you mean well. There are simply too many variables in that situation. I don't deal well with certain unknowns. But, understand that you helped some. I'm broken in several ways, with many anxieties. Some of them were triggered just now and this episode will help me deal with them. What other options do we have?"

Wally said. "Does it cause you anxiety to have that offer stay on the table?"

Milo had thought of that. "Not at all. I'd already assumed the offer would stay open. There are very few people in the world you would offer that job to, and endless work to get done. Maybe at some point, I will accept, and throw a huge amount of problems on your doorstep to make it happen."

"Ah, yes, of course." Steven hadn't expected him to say yes, but also hadn't anticipated any of those answers. "Well, we have a few questions to ask that will determine the next steps."

Milo looked from one to the other. "Yes?"

Kate said bluntly. "What do you know about machine code, Milo?"

Milo said casually. "That would be hard to explain to you. I mean, if you don't know anything about pressurized fluid systems, I can't do much to explain their use in a subragator, likewise with machine code. It's like trying to explain color to a man who is blind from birth. Outside of Wally, all of you use a sophisticated computer language. Do you even know anything about Machine Code, Kate?"

Milo would remember this moment forever. Kate responded to his condescending tone with anger. "Quite a bit. More than you could ever know, so please, stop with the superior attitude because you learned it existed." Milo was surprised to see that as Kate got angry, her dogs reacted and growled. Those were very good dogs.

Milo nodded to the screen. "Sydney, Steven, Wally: thanks for talking. I'm sure we will talk again."

He turned to Kate. "I'm going to log into the tutorial where Sydney and I like to talk. I'd appreciate it if you joined me, CATHERINE."

Milo logged out of the conference and turned off the monitors, cameras, and other devices. He locked the room, jumped to the ceiling, and disappeared into the ductwork. He needed to get a snack and log into GENESIS.

On Kate's screen, one dog howled and the other was barking. She shouted at the AI, "Oh, Damn you all to Tartarus, Wally. This is what I get for coming out of retirement?"

Wally looked hurt. "I'm sorry Kate."

"You should have warned me he was this intelligent." Kate disappeared.

Sydney said. "Is that what I look like when Milo outsmarts me?"