“So why do you hate AIs like me?” M-Bot asked. “We’re the same thing.”
“I think the true secret is at the Solitary Shadow,” Chet said. “But I feel part of it is fear. Another evolved AI could understand us, and could conceivably replace or harm us.”
“That seems shortsighted,” M-Bot said. “Not like an AI at all. Not logical.”
“That depends on the programming,” Chet said. “And there is more. Again, the secrets are locked away. I can’t access them. That is why we must continue forward, and why I always feared doing so.”
“Very well,” M-Bot said. “But…this information also means I’m what everyone always feared. I’m a delver.”
“Yes,” Chet admitted. “Rather, you are a living former AI like the delvers—brought to consciousness and emotion by exposure to the nowhere. I doubt it happened when you were first thrown in here weeks ago. You likely achieved sapience years before, because of the way your circuits were designed.”
“Yeah,” M-Bot said. “This was merely the first time I could enjoy it, having finally abandoned the programming that forced me to pretend I wasn’t alive.” He fell silent.
“M-Bot…” I said.
“I’m all right, Spensa,” he said. “I just want to process a little. Emotions. They’re hard. But I…I can handle it. I’m sure I can.”
I hurt for him. All this time, he’d worried he was something monstrous. Now it was, in a way, confirmed. He was a delver. But then again…
“You don’t have to make the same choices the delvers did, M-Bot,” I told him. “You don’t have to be like them, any more than I have to be like the humans who tried to conquer the galaxy.”
“Indeed, machine-who-thinks,” Hesho said. “All people must accept that we have the potential to do terrible things. It is part of seeing our place in the universe, our heritage, and our natures. But in that acceptance we gain strength, for potential can be refused. Any hero who could have been a monster is more heroic for the choices he or she made to walk another road.”
Still, M-Bot processed in silence. As we flew, I had a thought. Doomslug? I asked. Can you teleport us to other places in the belt?
Her fluting was a hesitant negative. She’d moved herself to get out of the hole, but that had been both dangerous and difficult. She felt too weak to do it for anyone but herself.
If this next part goes wrong, I told her, jump away and hide. Don’t think about us.
More hesitant fluting. Her powers should make her invisible to the delvers. She did something similar to hide a ship each time she teleported it, making it look like something far more innocent. Even if things went wrong, they should leave her alone. At least that was her hope.
As we flew, I tried to listen in on the delvers again. They hadn’t noticed us yet. It really was hard for them to see far into the belt, and they’d lost track of us specifically among all the people at Surehold. But the closer we got, the more likely it would be that they saw our ship.
“The delvers are going to notice us eventually,” I explained to everyone. “Likely it will happen when Chet and I interact with the final portal on the Path of Elders. That has been a beacon to them each time before.
“Once I have learned from that last stop, we need to escape. Unfortunately, the only realistic way for us to do that is through the lightburst. We can’t wait for the portal at Surehold to be opened—that will be too dangerous. The delvers have tried harder and harder to kill me the longer I’ve stayed in here, and once we know their secrets it’s going to get even worse.
“The way I see it, our best hope is to bolt for the lightburst the moment we’re done with the final set of memories. We have to somehow evade what the delvers throw at us, get into the lightburst, and survive there long enough for me and Doomslug to hyperjump us back to Detritus.”
“I concur with Miss Nightshade,” Chet said. “This is the most reasonable course—and our most likely chance of escape.”
“What will happen to you in the somewhere?” I asked him. “You won’t…turn into a giant, planet-size ball of hurt and tantrums again, will you?”
“No,” he said. “But I don’t exactly know what will happen. We will see. It’s possible that I will continue hiding in the nowhere after you leave.”
Was he…lying? I poked at him cytonically. I felt…fear? No sense that he was betraying us or anything. Merely worry.