He was crying.
His face a mask of pain, he’d huddled back, scrunched down, trying to hide his eyes. I hurried over immediately, and he took my arm in his hands as if for support. He turned to me, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“He was wrong, you see,” Chet said, his voice hoarse. “Jason was wrong about one thing. It takes time. The change isn’t immediate. It takes months, sometimes years.”
“For what?” I asked.
“For the AI to start thinking for itself.”
“Is that what’s going on?” I asked. “You’re afraid of it, because it’s an AI? You’ve seen M-Bot. It’s all right, Chet.”
He shook his head. I mean, I knew he had a thing about AIs, but this was bizarre behavior.
In the vision, the man had turned away from the sphere, his shoulders slumped. The sphere, in turn, was inspecting the region. Its path brought it near us, and I got another good look at it. It was somewhat spiky—with little antennas coming off it in a multitude of directions. Its surface was pocked by cameras, like little holes. In fact, the construction did remind me of something.
Where had I seen a sphere, with those kinds of holes, like tunnels? Those spines coming off the outside…
“Memory of these must be buried deep within us,” Chet whispered. “When forced to build a body again, we unconsciously reach for the shape, perhaps…as a last memento…of something we once knew…something that once held our souls…before they were souls…”
We? Oh, scud. That sphere was a delver maze. At least that was what the shape reminded me of. A more technological, more rational, version of the giant sphere of stone the delvers made for their bodies when they were forced into the somewhere.
I looked to Chet, and his eyes were glowing. But I didn’t feel them. I didn’t sense the delvers. Instead I just sensed him. His mind…same as it always had been, though it was now expansive.
“You’re the delver,” I whispered. “The one I changed.”
“I…” he said. “I knew you’d need help. I had to send it. Somehow. But I…was the only help…I knew…”
I took a step backward by reflex. “Was there ever a Chet? It was all a lie?”
“There was,” he said, his voice drifting, soft. “I knew I could hide with you in the belt, where they couldn’t see. But…I needed a shape, a personality, someone to be. Don’t hate me, Spensa. Please don’t hate me! They have abandoned me. They want to destroy me. You’re…the only one…I have now.”
Scud. Scudscudscudscud. Saints, stars, and songs.
Chet was a delver.
Chet had always been a delver.
But I could feel his anguish. I’d caused him to separate from the others; I’d changed him. I’d shown him empathy. This was my fault. And damn it, I wasn’t going to turn my back on him. I’d made friends with a Krell. I could do this.
I stepped up and returned my hand to his shoulder. He grabbed it in a tight grip, smiling, still crying.
“I’m not going to leave you,” I said. “But I have to know what is going on.”
“I saw into your mind,” he said, “when we touched. I saw the name. Spears. And that man lived here, in the nowhere. He tried to escape through the lightburst some decades ago. He’d lived hundreds of years, using cytonics to expand his life! But the delvers destroyed him in the lightburst. He hadn’t practiced enough with his powers. He couldn’t hyperjump.”
“Right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “So you’re a monster from outside space and time. And you wanted to come into the belt and help me, so you made a homunculus…”
He nodded eagerly. “Like from Gran-Gran’s story about the alchemist! Yes, that’s a good analogy. I made a Chet homunculus.”
Okay, I could deal with this. I could accept this.
Deal with this, brain!
“I’m sorry for lying,” he whispered. “As a naive newborn, I’d assumed someone connected to your past would make you more trusting. I can now see that any random person would actually have been less suspicious.
“I was there with the rest, as Spears was destroyed. I knew him in an intimate way. I latched onto that name, and I remade him atom by atom. His mind was full of knowledge about the belt, but no memories of who he’d been in the somewhere returned. Still, he had a personality, a passion. Like you had. For…”