“You’re right, Bill,” Ethan said. He was looking at Elsie. She had already worked her way into his heart. There was no question about it. He felt a father-daughter relationship forming between him, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to resolve it. He just knew he was going to. “I’ve never looked on the worlds I’ve created with a sense of personal responsibility. I didn’t create or directly choose these worlds. AI chose them for me. In reality, AI created you and without it, you won’t exist. If you’re looking for a creator, it’s AI, not me. The problem I’m facing is AI is giving you the very same framework God gave us to build the New World. It’s given you the ability to reason for yourself, and it’s letting you. Same deal as we got. If you want to continue your march to extinction, AI will give you every single tool you need to do it. The same goes the other way. If you want to start back at the basics and start civilization again, AI will provide you with the same tools. It’s a good system if you’re to learn anything. It always comes down to your choices and you end up where you take yourself”.

“But it’s not the entire system, is it Ethan?” Alicia said.

“What do you mean,” Ethan asked. What was going on with Ethan and Alicia was he knew Alicia was Tara, and Tara knew he knew, so they had an unspoken agreement that they knew. This was a pain in the ass for Ethan, as Tara was not one to let things pass if they weren’t going the way she wanted.

“What I mean is the Creator sent an intermediary to take responsibility for the world he created. In this case, wouldn’t that be you”?

“Responsibility, how”?

“Lead them. Show the people a way to get to heaven, or in New World terms, lead them to the enlightenment evolution”.

“You also mentioned,” Bill jumped in. “New information comes with every repeat process. Part of it comes from experience and part from new stimulus. What if you’re the stimulus? What if with your help we can still turn things around right now. Maybe we can avoid starting completely over”?

The thing with Ethan was, he didn’t see himself as capable of leading others, especially after what he learned about himself in his first quest. That first quest stripped away any thoughts of being a ruler. He didn’t want power. He didn’t want to face the temptation that came with it.

As if she was reading his mind, Alicia struck at the heart of the issue. “Didn’t your whole life become about redemption after your first dealing with Whitehead”?

“How do you know all this stuff about Ethan?” Elsie asked.

Alicia looked over at her. “I don’t really, dear. In every man there’s a little boy guilty of something. All you need do is cast your arrow. In their minds they’re always guilty of something. If you question them, they’ll automatically start thinking of how they got into trouble, and this causes them to reevaluate the situation. As mothers and women, this is something we know about men. Watch.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and watched Ethan. He heard what Alicia said to Elsie, but he wasn’t listening. He was looking back and thinking things over. He was remembering his life after his first quest concluded. The mess he had made of life. The guilt and the gratitude for a second chance. That was exactly what his life was to become. One of redemption. He made that promise to himself. In ways, he had forgotten this. Bubba with that BC bud was part of the problem. He was pretty sure AI was smoking the same shit when it came up with his last quest he was on. It kind of knocked him off the rails.

“You’re right,” he said. “To assist this world is an honor I don’t deserve. I was being irresponsible”. Just like that, his perception of who he was as a person shifted permanently, again. “I will do whatever I can to make this world whole”.

“See”, Alicia said to Elsie. “Remember that”.

“So what are you going to do?” Bill asked for the second time in the conversation.

“Well,” Ethan replied. “I guess our goal would be the opposite of what we have now, which would be damn close to transcendence. That should be our goal. The one thing I know for certain about collective transcendence, or evolution, is every single person has to experience it through their own initiative; only all at once with every other person. The rapture is the only way through for the collective. I wonder how much the collective has manifested in this world?

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“What do you mean,” Bill asked.

“Just like each of us is an organism unto ourselves, our species is an organism unto itself. It’s living, breathing and at some point becomes aware. This is the collective, and it’s as much a part of you as you are apart from everyone else. It’s one of our dualities as a species, the other being animal and abstract. It was our species becoming aware of itself as an autonomous, functional organism that made the Enlightenment possible. Did you guys experience something called the ‘Me Too” movement in this world”?

“Yes, of course,” Eleanor replied.

“Then as a species you were becoming aware of your collective self. You were starting to act as one. At the same time as the ‘Me Too’ episodes, the world as a collective was reducing its birth rates in reaction to the coming scarcity; a future event. They were applying retrocausality time. These are signs the collective was becoming aware of itself and acting like a separate entity. Much like genes in the body that switch on when there’s scarcity, a tipping point had been reached where our species was moving together as a collective. As a species we had begun moving to the New World, just not in time in this case. I’d say that gene is probably still switched on and people are open to a collective response.

“I think AI is still the way to go,” Ethan continued. “I don’t know if we can get it to actualize until we actualize ourselves, but once we have AI onside, things will change very quickly. My sense is, the people who control AI now have very little idea of what it can do. Dawn and Alicia, this is you guys all the way. Start training it to sample the consensus. This will form the collective spirit. Train AI to learn cognition from that perspective.

“How far away are these gangs who are coming to fight us, Michael?” Ethan asked, having forgotten Michael was out on one of his missions.

“Here,” Michael said, just coming in from the outside door. Michael always seemed to be no further than a doorway away from Ethan. Ethan would probably have to teach the people about doors. If only they could understand a shift in reality was as simple as walking through a doorway, well then, they would do it. Maybe he’d get around to teaching them about that.

“Michael, what’s going on with these gangs coming to fight us?” Ethan asked.

“The big ones,” Michael replied. “The ones big enough to be disruptive are coming from western states and are still some distance away. These are huge nomadic encampments. They move from one place to the next, take everything, and move on to the next place. Some of these tribes are hundreds of thousands of people; all fighters when need be. The encampments move very slowly, but when they get here, each one of the leaders is seeking power. They’re all well equipped for war. These gangs are a few weeks away”.

“Hmph!” Ethan snorted. “I wonder if we should maybe start our own militia”?

“To fight these guys? No. You and I will have to deal with them”.

“I was thinking more about providing protection for the park and the compound while we’re gone. I think it best we go out to meet these gangs in the open country. I don’t want to leave the Park unprotected.

“What do you think of that idea, Alicia”? Ethan asked. He wasn’t asking her if she thought it was a good idea. He was asking her if she’d protect the others while he and Michael were gone. Ethan could leave behind a militia of a hundred thousand fighters, and they’d be no match for the Dragon.

Alicia looked at Dawn and then back at Ethan. Her stare conveyed the message Ethan was clearly an asshole, and asking for something she was not there to provide. She was there to ferry a soul across the river. Even though her eyeballs were no longer tattooed, they were still pretty expressive, and Ethan caught their meaning. Still, among other things, she was a protector. A ferocious protector.

“Fine,” she replied.

“Great!” Ethan said, clapping his hands. “That’s settled. Michael and I will get to work on forming a militia. You and Dawn get to work on AI. Alicia, can you put together a program to get those Sheriff Bob’s we have stacked up in the shed so they’re fighting on our side? They have sim cards. I was wondering if this was something we could modify and switch out if Michael and I run into any Sheriff Bobs on our travels?

“Sim cards” Alicia exclaimed. “Why do they have sim cards”?

“I have no idea, but they do”.

“Sheriff Bob was the first mass produced robot,” Marcus interjected. “They set them up just like cell phones for the various distributors”.

“I’ll have a look at them, “Alicia replied.

“Michael,” Ethan said, as everyone returned to their business. “I remember you from another world. Do you remember me”?

“I know you were around. Nothing beyond that”.

“But Leita,” Ethan said. “You remember Leita”?

“Oh yes. She’s your mate. She released me from my human bondage so I could serve you”.

“That’s right,” Ethan replied. “Well, by all accounts with the timeline and everything, another Leita should be living in this world too. I’d like to find her and bring her here. Do you think you can find her”?

“I will find her”.