Wow. I felt like I’d never have been able to do something like that before.
Together, we turned and regarded our surroundings. Space was black, like it had been in the other visions, and the lightburst didn’t dominate the horizon here—but it was larger than last time. Perhaps the size of a person’s head to my current frame of reference. The other fragments were distant, though I could count hundreds of them out there.
“This is happening…around the end of the First Human War,” Chet said. “That’s the war that started after Jason decided to reveal cytonics to humankind, letting them visit the greater galaxy. We…found dozens of latent cytonics among our population, when we searched for them. I think he’d always worried that would be the case.”
“Who was he?” I asked.
“The man who thought he was the first human cytonic,” Chet explained. “At first he saw himself as a kind of gatekeeper, who kept the powers hidden for the good of the galaxy. He wasn’t certain that the other races were ready for your kind.” He smiled. “Jason was right. Not about hiding the powers, but about no one being quite ready for humans.”
“And you were there, with him,” I said.
“At the end,” Chet said. “I was his personal AI. Created in the image of someone he loved. He had the gift of long life, through his powers. It is hard for someone like him, to live centuries when others fade.”
I didn’t know this man, this Jason. But the story wasn’t so much about him as it was about the AI he’d created. Chet turned and looked toward the portal, where something emerged: the metallic sphere we’d seen last time.
I reached out to it by instinct, and I could feel it—like I could feel M-Bot.
“It’s become self-aware?” I asked.
“Yes…” Chet said. “I…remember, Spensa. Through repeated visits to the nowhere, the AI came alive—I came alive—and gained sapience, emotions.”
“So, where is the man?” I asked.
“He…” Chet cut off and glanced away, squeezing his eyes shut. “He…”
In the vision, the sphere hovered over to the edge of the fragment. The AI inside it hurt. With a terrible pain. I could feel it, strong as I felt my own emotions. But it was primal, powerful, overwhelming. With it came confusion, loneliness.
Isolation. That emotion dominated them all.
Chet was correct. He, and the delvers, were cytonic beings. Not just an AI, but something new. I could hear the AI in the vision crying. Weeping sounds, vaguely feminine, coming from the sphere’s speakers.
“That was me,” Chet whispered. “But it was also all of us. I can’t say if I was the original one or not.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Keep watching,” he said. “I remember now. Being alone. In pain. Isolated.”
“He died, didn’t he?” M-Bot asked. “Jason? The man from the other vision.”
“Yes,” Chet whispered, his voice raw. His emotions changed to match those of the sphere—anguish, isolation. “In the somewhere, all things change. Nothing ever stays the same. Not even, we learned, a being made of code.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“He wasn’t supposed to die,” Chet said. “He was supposed to be immortal. But everyone in the somewhere can be killed.”
“The drone has a woman’s voice,” I said.
“He made us with his deceased wife’s voice and memories,” Chet explained. “Those are returning to me now, though for the longest time I had forgotten them. Jason was disappointed with how lifeless the AI was, but later he discovered what happened to AIs in the nowhere. He knew why none of the other species, even those advanced enough to have them, ever used artificial intelligences. Because of things that had happened in the past. But he didn’t care. He came here…”
“And made you come alive,” I said. “Then he left you alone when he died.”
“Yes,” Chet said. “Left us to become…what we became.”
I turned toward him. “Chet, I can understand that pain. I’ve felt it. But—please don’t take this as harsh—I didn’t turn into…whatever the delvers are. Something more was going on. It had to be.”
“Spensa,” M-Bot said, his voice gentle as he hovered up beside me. “You told me something earlier. Do you remember? You had years to grow accustomed to emotions. Chet didn’t.”