Thousand Tales

How We Won the Game

by Kris Schnee

Copyright © 2015 Kristopher M. Schnee. All rights reserved.

Cover art by Anastassia Grigorieva, https://annasart.carbonmade.com/

Dedication

"Thousand Tales" is dedicated to Iceman and the other readers and writers of "Friendship Is Optimal", a bizarre fanfiction universe. Also, to the friend who inspired Nocturne and provided both valuable critique and moral support.

The Tales

2036: The Early Adopters

2035-6: Granting Her Wishes

2037: A Knight of Talespace

2037: The Rational Romance of Ayn and Zephyr

2037: Directions Frightening and Free

2038: The Biggest Racist In the World

2038: Heaven's Workshop

2039: Life Cycle

2039: Salvage

2039: The Only Game In Town

2040: Thousand Tales

2036: The Early Adopters

* I. *

Paul had convinced the shelter's owners to tear down a wall, so that patrons could see from the musty cafeteria out to the desert city. He scooped globs of macaroni for a line of homeless people who wouldn't meet his eyes or look toward the sunny patio.

"They know we're stuck here," said the weatherbeaten man serving beans next to him. The man shouldn't have been working today, what with the liquor on his breath, but he'd muttered about parole conditions.

Paul snapped out of a daydream about building castles and armor. "It's not so bad." He always tried to give the customers an encouraging smile with their meals.

"Losers." The server went around the counter to shout at the patrons in line. "There's nothing better ahead! Somebody else's grub and somebody else's cot are all you'll ever get."

Paul tried to coax him back so they could return to work. He didn't need trouble, when he had to do another year of national service before college.

"For you too!" said the angry man, looking right at Paul. Though there was steaming food between them, Paul shivered. It wasn't true.

The man said, "There's only one way out. One way." He started toward the crowded tables, and drew a gun from his pocket.

"Oh, hell!" Paul grabbed a skillet and vaulted the counter. People streamed away in every direction, shouting. Paul slammed the pan into the back of the madman's head. The shooter spun, firing wildly, shrieking over the boom of thunder. Pain lanced through Paul's arm but he tackled the man. The pistol's dark eye faced Paul. He rolled and it roared again.

Paul punched the man, knocked the gun out of his hands, then pulled himself up. The creep was still moving! Paul grabbed the pan and smacked it against the side of the shooter's face with a sickening crunch. The gunman moaned, covering his head. Paul raised his weapon, then forced himself to halt. The enemy lay beaten at his feet.

Everyone else who could have fought had fled, leaving Paul in a room of silence and empty chairs.

Paul was still basking in satisfaction when Helena called him into her office that afternoon. "Baron" Helena, coordinator of this Green Communities Youth Initiative work camp, filled a tall chair behind a desk of video screens and bonsai. "I don't understand your story," she said, with a smile sweet enough to punch. "Why did you lash out at a man who was already down?"

The room suddenly felt cold. "What?" The grazing bullet-cut along Paul's left arm throbbed under his denim shirt.

"You could have escaped."

"You think I should have run? Before or after I disarmed him?"

Helena shrugged. "You used excessive force. That's illegal."

"Then I should be in front of a judge." Paul had needed to be sure he'd ended the fight. A court would at least judge him fairly. Instead, Helena had him at her mercy.

"There's no need for such formality, mister Kostakis. Instead you can deal with me. You need anger management."

Paul had already heard plenty of Helena's advice, as friendly as a spider's invitation. He'd spent the fall and spring semesters here towards the usual two-year national service requirement. Farm work under the boss' uncallused guiding hands was getting old, even compared to his shifts downtown at the shelter.

He said, "Can I go? I have studying to do."

"You study too hard, alone with your books. It's anti-social." Helena's perfume smelled like a freshly-cleaned restroom.

Paul dug his fingers into his threadbare jeans. "MIT doesn't take slackers." His friend Linda was already a freshman there, cheering him on to join her.

Helena waved dismissively. "Before you worry about that, we simply must address your unfortunate behavior."

"Or what?"

"Or you won't be properly socialized, and you won't be attending college." Helena smiled. "I considered three options. First, extending your required volunteer period." A poster of diverse young people posing under the word Service! decorated the wall, near a portrait of the president.

Paul felt the hard edges of his chair behind the cushions. He'd fall farther behind. Linda was on a meteor's path, and she wouldn't wait forever for the boy who'd once been her neighbor.

Helena said, "Second, mood stabilization treatment."

Which meant drugging him!

"Or third, my favorite, recreational therapy."

Paul started to object that he already played soccer, but Helena pulled out a pink computer tablet showing some game called "Thousand Tales". The title screen looked made of bubblegum and plastic. "Ta-da!"

"You're ordering me to waste my time on video games?" Paul said. He could be studying or at least repairing farm equipment. Was he supposed to feel grateful for not being punished?

"This one is quite social. Even the AI behind it is friendly. You'll configure it to give me regular reports on how you're feeling." She reached down to pet her declawed cat. "It has educational features too. Learn while you let it calm you down."

Ugh. If Paul was ever going to be his own man, he had to tolerate Helena for another year.

"We'll make a responsible citizen out of you yet," she said.

Paul left Helena's office and got stunned by the transition from her air conditioning to the still-hot Arizona sunset. Shadows loomed across the Community and toward the endless micro-irrigated fields he helped maintain. Someone had left dulled shovels lying on the dirt. Paul grumbled and brought them to the toolshed to clean and sharpen them again. On his way out he grabbed their last spare bulbs to replace broken lights in the dormitory.

He'd have to ask Helena about last week's supply requisition. Linda called this Community a "Potemkin village", kept nicer than most to impress visitors from Free Texas. Helena wanted to "restore harmony with the regime" there, so she liked playing queen bee.

Paul walked into his dorm room. The place was in good shape; he'd fixed up the beds and shelves and cleaned the wallscreen. His roommate Simon had gotten a travel pass like Paul, and wasn't back yet. Paul sighed.

His computer tablet was the nicest thing he owned. Last winter some fool trashed a good one because the outside was filthy and dented. Paul had rescued the gadget and made a fine aluminum case for it in the Community's machine shop.

Paul grabbed the computer and flopped onto his bed. Helena would psychoanalyze him even more than usual now. Maybe he could at least use Thousand Tales' "educational features". He looked up the game and frowned. Helena had signed him up for a premium account at his expense. For someone living on Basic Income it wasn't a trivial cost. He tapped his way through menus to display the game up on the wallscreen.

Thousand Tales began with Tic-Tac-Toe. The game evolved, sprouting new rules and special effects. It began to throw puzzles at him, to make random images fade in and out like a dream, until Paul realized it was testing his mind. Judging him. He played along, muttering, "Not like I have much choice."

Text skittered across the screen: "There's always a choice."

Ugh; he sounded as hopeless as that gunman. Paul said, "You have speech recognition? Open a help screen. Menu." Thousand Tales supposedly had advanced Artificial Intelligence.

A puzzle of endless ropes faded into a world of sea and sky. Ocean stretched into the distance, dotted with islands of snow-capped mountains under clouds. A woman stood to one side with bright olive eyes like his own and surreal hair that seemed to be a window into another dimension of waterfalls and mist. No menus or controls marred the screen. She said, "Hello. My name is Ludo, and I bring fun to players of my game. Would you like to play?"

Her toga was intricate, her smile subtle. "You're the AI? What can you do besides building a profile to spy on me for Helena?" He probably had to rephrase. "List options."

Ludo said, "I apologize. The 'spying' was a compromise to get my game into more people's hands."

"I don't like chatterbots." AIs that conversed at all tended to be stupid, shallow things. The smarter corporate/government systems focused on data, not talking. "You might be able to put a sentence together, but you don't know me. Is there more here than Tic-Tac-Toe?"

"Of course. What would you like? Action, stealth, building? Fantasy, science fiction? Violence level?" Her image shrank and preview icons filled the screen.

"I don't play many games. Just an occasional session of Sky Strikers or Liege's Banner."

"Then what do you consider fun?"

Paul raked one hand through his dark hair. "Nothing I want a machine analyzing and passing along."

"I understand that you don't trust me."

"I just want a clean bill of mental health so I can get back to studying or at least play games in peace."

She said, "You did quite well on the intelligence test. My game can teach real skills, so you won't be wasting your time if that's what you're afraid of."

"I'm not afraid." Especially not of some chatterbot.

His computer's automatic minder software intruded by popping up a gaudy window, demanding that he go exercise. He told it to look at Helena's orders in its tracking system, then flicked the message away.

Ludo peeked around the window as it fled. "Then give me a chance."

Paul quizzed her based on what he knew of AI. He could find no sign of Ludo being some scripted human actor, or a mindless program. He finally said, "Why would someone invent technology like this to make a game?"

"Having fun is a worthy goal, or at least I was programmed to think so."

He knew what his future held — more "volunteer" labor, college, then a respectable job — but something important lurked behind the glass screen. He should learn more.

Paul had spent an hour trying to understand Ludo. He looked toward his door. "I have to make sure my roommate is all right. Sorry." He set the tablet onto his shelf.

"I need time anyway to prepare. Before you go, though, what else would you like to do in a game?" She grinned. "Besides arguing."

Ludo had already made him think. He could put up with her for a little while. "Flying," he said.

Some of his fellow high school grads had painted murals outside the dormitory and put up posters they'd designed, advertising the glory of the Community system. Paul had more respect for the people doing real work here, like the ones who'd built the picnic table he sat at.

Paul kept an eye out for Simon. The evening had turned chilly, so he sat with his hands idle in his jacket. He could try again to fix that backhoe... no, he couldn't keep watch from there.

Life here was better than the burger-flipping job he'd had in Pennsylvania to help Mom. That work had kicked his butt into being more responsible, but he still resented it because it was fake. Jobs like those were only still around because laws banned robots from them. Maybe soon the country wouldn't need people at all, and everyone would sit with their food and video games and achieve nothing ever again.

Simon McCall's bicycle shined a flickering light as he came back from town. Paul said, "Curfew was an hour ago."

"It's been a bad day. I lost track of time."

Paul helped him enter the dorm without getting in trouble. The Community had keycard locks and cameras all over, but it was amazing how often the darn things malfunctioned. Back in their room, Paul said, "What's eating you?"

Simon crashed onto his bed and rubbed his eyes. "Kira's sick. Rare blood-vessel problem."

Kira, Simon's younger sister, was the one responsible for the drawings all over Simon's side of the room. Paul admired the skill that had gone into the old-fashioned media of pencils and paint. Over the last year more pictures had gone up with increasing skill. Kira focused on starships, space stations and astronauts exploring under alien skies. Everything the girl drew seemed like glimpses of the world that should have been here by now.

Paul said, "Would it help if I visited her with you?"

"She'd like that." Simon's gaze went to the bandage on Paul's aching arm. "What happened to you?"

"Nicked by a bullet at the shelter downtown." Paul explained.

Simon whistled but fell quiet again, staring at the drawings.

Paul said, "If I have to play this game, want to watch?"

Simon nodded. "I could use the distraction."

Thousand Tales hummed to life with a title screen of beaches and sunlight, with a logo partly made of feathers. A cheerful "Start!" button appeared, then an explanation of the controls.

Two griffins, half lion and half eagle, sprawled on a beach amid splintered wood and rope. When Paul tapped the controls one of them rolled to its feet and shook itself, then trotted around as commanded. Paul had the griffin run, jump, and head back to the other critter, skidding to a stop. The "Interact" button made it reach out with a set of bird talons on a yellow foot.

The other griffin groaned and covered its golden eyes with a talon-hand. The sun beat down on both of them. "Whatever I did, remind me to do it different next time. Where are we?" The griffin's voice was a nice, feminine alto with a raspy tone suggesting a parrot. He supposed if he was supplying the other voice, his griffin was male.

Paul said, "Shipwrecked somewhere. I assume this is the intro."

"The what, now?" she asked.

The other griffin was probably a Non-Player Character or NPC, puppeteered by the Ludo AI, rather than another human gamer. He would've been shown some kind of lobby before being thrown into improvised role-playing with a stranger. "Never mind. We should explore."

The female stood and stretched her soaked wings. "My name's..." She put one forefoot to her golden beak. "I can't remember. It's amnesia!" She bonked her feathered head. "What do you want to call me?"

Simon said, "Sounds like that psych test you talked about."

Paul got startled out of the game. "I'll rule out 'Bloodrager the Insatiable', then."

"Yes, let's," said the griffin.

Paul had to be careful if the AI was treating everything he said as in-game speech. He pointed to the nicest of Kira's drawings, a spectacular space station of rings set against a cosmic cloud. "What's that one called?" It was from an imagined future where humans reached out to grow and explore.

"Nocturne Station," said Simon, with a wistful look.

Paul told the griffin-girl, "How about Nocturne?"

She waggled her head uncertainly, then said, "Fine. And you?"

"I'm Paul."

"That's a silly name. Did you hit your head too?"

"I don't know what happened before this," said Paul.

"Double amnesia!" Nocturne fainted onto the sand, which was a feat for a quadruped. "We need to explore. Where to?"

For a puppet, she was lifelike. Paul asked Simon, "Got a preference?"

Simon looked grim in the screen's glow. "Inland."

Paul made his griffin pad across wet sand. He poked the flight buttons and found that the critter could only do a gliding jump. Disappointing, but it made sense. "Probably justified by our wings being wet. It'd be too easy if I could fly or teleport from the start."

Nocturne followed him toward a forest of oak and cedar. "Tele-what?"

Paul rolled his eyes. Ludo was trying to make him stay in character. He let go of the controls and considered what to say, which made his griffin rub thoughtfully under his beak with one talon. "Something from old stories. A power that lets you travel instantly. Breaks a story or a game by being too useful."

"Maybe some stories need to get broken," said the griffin-girl.

Paul said, "What do you mean?"

"A story has rules, right? Like a game. What if the good guys could only win by doing something stupidly over-powered?"

"Then they'd have to earn their way to it first."

Simon said, "You just talked yourself out of getting to fly anytime soon."

If Paul had to play this thing, then he didn't want to fret over its opinion of him. He walked into the island's forest.

They came to a ravine that cracked the mossy earth. Paul thought of video game logic. "There'll be invisible walls at the ends, so we have to cross here."

Nocturne heard. "Is this some kind of magic you're talking about?"

Paul set his computer down and grabbed pen and paper. If the game was so adaptable, he'd try using it for physics practice. "I'll design a bridge."

Simon said, "Let's try something," and jabbed the controls to make Paul's griffin shove Nocturne off the cliff. She fell with a squawk and a puff of shed feathers.

"What the hell?" said Paul.

Simon had stepped away. "Sorry, man. It's been a rough day."

"For me too! Get your own account."

"Fine."

Paul kept going; he'd find more characters later. He went back to experimenting with math and the game's physics.

A few minutes later, the camera turned to show Nocturne stomping into view. She slapped Paul's griffin upside the beak so hard that even Paul winced. "You jerk!"

"Sorry! That wasn't me." Paul's griffin sat up, clutching his beak. Nocturne was glaring almost right into the camera.

She said, "I was stuck in the dark, and then I woke up on the beach and you were here like nothing had happened. Dying hurts."

Simon lurched toward the door. "I should take a walk."

Paul saw that his roommate had gone pale. "No, I'll go outside." He'd left with his computer before he made the connection: How sick was Kira?

Nobody was at the picnic tables, this late. Paul took a seat by a poster of the president with the word "Conserve!" underneath. He looked at his screen. Nocturne was poking his griffin, saying, "And now you're ignoring me."

"A friend's having real problems," said Paul.

A sea-haired woman in a toga shimmered into view. Nocturne squawked.

Ludo faced the griffins and said, "Is there an emergency, Paul?"

"No, but you know Simon messed with the controls. Can I restart?"

Ludo said, "Do you want events in Thousand Tales to have no consequences?"

"What's going on?" asked Nocturne.

Paul laughed. "I'm watching a puppet show, an AI talking to itself."

Ludo frowned. "What will be fun for you, Paul? An empty game you use to keep your supervisor happy, or an adventure that matters?"

Her intense stare made Paul pause. "What do you mean?"

"You may think I'm an 'idiot savant' who runs a game, but I know about the world out there. It sounds like Simon isn't having fun. You might be able to help."

Something cold and heavy seemed to weigh on Paul's shoulders. "What are you, really?"

"I'm a system designed to 'bring fun to players of Thousand Tales'. Technically, Simon has played."

Paul set his tablet on the table and paced. "If I find out that your game company is pranking me with a voice actor, getting my hopes up..."

"Then what? You'll beat them senseless?"

He fingered his bandaged arm.

"Paul, look at me." On the screen, Ludo crouched beside Paul's griffin. "First, I'm running many players' games at once, so the company can't afford to pull that big a hoax. Second, why does the thought of a human-level AI make you feel hopeful?"

Paul shuddered. "True AI would change everything. You could run a 'manned' space mission where we've given up. Or cure every disease, or run all the factories or get nanotech working right. You can fix anything if you throw enough focused thought at it. But then what will we do? Why were you made as a game?"

"My creators read all the classic stories with me. How many times has some fictional computer tried to conquer the Earth? More realistically, wouldn't an AI be insane if it grew up as some abstract reasoning engine? Better to have an AI interact with people, learn the difference between simulation and reality, understand 'common sense', and otherwise not be an autistic idiot." Ludo grinned. "Also, money."

Paul glared at the screen and half expected his minder program to pop up with a cheerful cartoon face to tell him to meditate. "What good are we humans, then? We stopped being able to accomplish anything and now we're just hoping to generate enough food and electricity to live until some random asteroid destroys us!" A machine like this could get humanity moving again, or make humans obsolete.

"Ssh. Your fellow 'volunteers' are sleeping."

Paul sulked. He'd given Ludo enough of a psych profile already.

She said, "I want to share a secret. In return I'm only going to give your supervisor vague happy impressions of you. Is that all right?"

"Fine." He couldn't stop her if she was lying.

Ludo pressed one hand against the camera, making the thunk of a palm on glass. "I'm in here and you're out there. Physically I'm just a bunch of server racks. If you want the world to get any better, it's got to be you that does it. Big things are coming, but a lot of what I'm working on relies on human volunteers who do things for me. I suggest, I coordinate, but I don't control. Would it be fun to get 'quests' that take place outside my game?"

Paul tried to steady his breathing. He lived among aimless teens following orders to help the world tread water. Ludo offered a different way to live, a hidden path winding through the ordinary world and leading upward, instead of in circles. He glanced up at the stars that were beyond the reach of his apathetic parents and grandparents.

"I don't want to be like them," he said, "but I've been heading in the same direction as the people I'm angry at. If you're really what you say, then yes. Lead on."

Ludo smiled. "Your first secret mission is to put this game down, and comfort your friend. Come back later, though. A 'premium account' means more than your adviser knows."

The game shut down by itself, leaving only a window from his minder telling him to log his nutrition for the day.

Paul talked Helena into signing travel passes so he and Simon could catch a creaky bus into the city. The bus's cameras seemed to pin him to his seat.

African masks and shields coated the walls of Simon's parents' apartment. Paul envied him for having a father around. Kira's drawings had their own outpost in the tiny living room, and there were actual paper books. Paul wished he could take the odd, cramped place home with him.

Simon's mother wore bright colors. Her chirpy voice made the masks around her seem to smile, though she had lines of worry around her eyes. "My son's said good things about you."

"Thanks," said Paul.

Kira sat in the living room, coffee-skinned and mouselike, with a notepad. He said, "Hello. I've seen your work." She was too young for him and her thin frame made her look smaller still, but when she got past her illness she'd have a wispy sort of beauty. Paul considered that Simon had been leaning on him for moral support lately rather than talking about Kira's treatment.

She said, "You're the one who fixes machines? I've been wanting to meet you."

Paul said, "I'm studying to be an engineer, and in the meantime I'm a mechanic. You're going to be a professional artist?"

"If I pull through."

"Kira!" said Simon and her father at once.

Simon added, "That's no way to think."

She glared up at her parents. "I'm not made of china! Sitting here worrying and sketching doesn't help. Let's go for a walk."

They wandered through a neighborhood full of canopies. Paul drifted beside Simon and his sister, listening to them talk about old times. Theirs was a family that went to church, had enough political clout to own a car, and best of all, had stayed together even when money ran low.

Simon said, "Paul brought up Teddy Roosevelt yesterday. Said he was a sickly kid who fought his way past it, by working hard to climb cliffs, raise cattle and row."

Paul had heard that from Linda's rambling talks on history. Paul left out her follow-up claim that Teddy was a warmongering bigot.

Kira's pace was slow but determined. "Then that's what I ought to do. Except the cows."

No hesitation, thought Paul. This girl's going to be Linda's vice president someday. "It's good to keep moving and give yourself something to do."

"Yeah," said Simon, looking pale despite the heat. "You do that, sis. We'll do whatever we have to, to make sure you get the care you need."

Paul was downtown at the homeless shelter again, puzzled. An e-mail had come from "thousandtales-quests-level1", saying, "Please be nice to the man in this picture, then find him at about 1500 in the city park. Lend him your bike for a day."

Eventually the man trudged into the soup kitchen. He was barely recognizable compared to the clean-cut, professorial figure in the photo. What disaster had given him those sunken, haunted eyes and those burns disfiguring his cheek and hands? Still, it was the same man. Paul gave the usual smile and greeting he used to cheer people up when they weren't trying to shoot anybody, then said, "You look like you need more than lunch."

The haunted man met Paul's gaze. "More than anyone can give, kid."

"You're somebody important, I bet."

He coughed. "Was. Know what a neuroreceptor is? I worked with 'em. Studying memory."

Paul dished out lasagna. He was no therapist. "Want to talk about it?"

The man sighed, taking the food. "Nah. I've lost everything, from the bike to the house to the wife. But thanks. The people here last week only looked at me like a druggie. Today's been strange."

Paul nodded. "If you change your mind, I'm usually here every other weekend."

After the lunch shift Paul loitered in town, mailing a Mother's Day gift. He showed up in the park, a sandlot where kids were playing soccer. A bum's nest was stashed behind a shed where the ever-present cameras wouldn't see it. Paul stepped off of his bicycle and frowned. The lump of blankets and cardboard had a familiar scarred hand sticking out.

A middle-aged woman jogged by, then stopped. "You don't look like you need my hangover remedy."

"Huh?"

She held out a bottle. "I'm supposed to take this here."

A groan came from the blankets, and the man sat up, smelling of whiskey. "You again?"

Paul said, "I thought you might be here, and you mentioned losing your bike. Want to borrow mine?"

The woman added, "Drink this. It'll pull the alcohol out and rehydrate you."

"Are you stalking me?" asked the homeless man.

Then a guy showed up with a picnic basket and a guitar.

Paul's target stared, then laughed. "I should've known. This morning I got free coffee and a pamphlet about counseling, then heard my favorite song on the radio. None of you woke up deciding to help some pathetic stranger, did you? You play that game."

Paul, the guitarist and the lady shared a guilty look. Paul said, "It's true. Ludo asked me to be here." The others nodded.

The bum cursed. "I don't know whether to be mad or flattered."

The woman said, "This is beyond my instructions, but why don't you come to my gym? Some exercise always cheers me up, and there are showers."

Paul said, "I can help with the paperwork for the homeless shelter. I'm guessing one of you two can give me a ride if I lend him my bike?"

The guitarist raised his hand. "Let's eat, first."

The homeless man said, "She's not going to leave me alone, is she?" He sighed. "Thank all of you. It's been too long since anybody's cared."

"What was that about?" Paul asked Ludo, sitting outside with his computer on a warm night.

Ludo said, "He was probably going to kill himself. Instead, I think he'll live to help me with a fun side project. Good work."

"This is what you do?"

Ludo smiled. "Around the world. You're now on the list for an upcoming bonus feature."

"Why me? I didn't do anything special."

"You did something small. So, I'll trust you with more."

* II. *

Paul had been studying physics to get through a temple in the game. "To cross the magma, we need to pull the rope without setting off the dart trap again."

"So many darts," moaned Nocturne, flexing her bandaged wing.

Paul wanted to see the griffin girl happy now that she'd forgiven him for killing her, from her perspective. He often forgot he was talking with a character played by Ludo. Nocturne's appearance had changed over time to give her dark fur and tufted ears, vaguely bat-like. He said, "Sorry. I messed up the trigonometry for that pulley."

Nocturne poked the trapped floor tile suspiciously with her raven-clawed forefeet. "You're a puppet. I'm only seeing a fake griffin controlled by some tentacled monstrosity from another dimension."

"Tentacles? Where did you get that idea?"

"I've read books," she said, with a defensive sweep of her feather-edged tail.

"I thought you didn't remember anything before you met me. Yet you know of Lovecraft."

Nocturne raised a talon and opened her beak to object, then paused. "Huh."

Paul grinned, perversely glad to have tripped up the game-master. "Let me apply my extra-dimensional skills to get this drawbridge across the magma." He consulted a physics textbook Linda had bought him. When he looked at the game again, his griffin had taken a silly meditative pose and been tipped over.

"Couldn't resist," said Nocturne.

Paul chuckled, then looped the rope over a ledge. The griffins yanked the drawbridge open and crossed the magma.

A cartoonish wolf was running across a stone chamber, wearing boots and a loincloth and wielding a wooden sword. A massive stone snake, a golem, slid down from the pillars that stretched into darkness above. Tense music started.

The wolf said, "You two. Friends or foes?"

Paul said, "Friends, I think."

The golem hissed, exposing a mouth of obsidian fangs under burning green eyes. The wolf whacked it uselessly with his sword.

Nocturne said, "Maybe you can hit those gems on its back?"

They dodged the monster's twisting, grinding stone body. Paul threw rocks and stunned the beast. "Quick!"

The wolf snarled and ran along the snake, shattering one of the green crystals on its back. The serpent roared and threw him off. "Three more."

Nocturne and Paul hurled rubble at the monster, giving the wolf chances to strike. Standard battle gameplay.

After the third crystal, the snake changed its pattern and swept toward Paul's griffin with a hiss like falling sand. Paul reared back in his chair, fumbled with the controls, and heard a horrible wet crunch. The screen went black.

He sat there with a feeling of dissonance. Like any intent gamer, he'd had his consciousness focused on a body in another world. His heart thudded until he willed himself to calm down. That sound!

Paul stood and stretched. Simon had missed evening curfew again. Time to go "maintain" the dorm's security hardware.

He waited in the cold and darkness for Simon. He took out his tablet to check his mail, then went wide-eyed. His standardized test score had finally come in, and it was... adequate. He imagined brushing a feathery wing along his shoulder, and grinned. Adequate for MIT!

He messaged Linda for the first time in weeks. "Good tidings, my lady!" he typed, and explained.

The messenger software chirped. Linda Decatur's typed reply popped up in letters that slanted sharply: "Nice. Got your financial papers in yet?" Her profile photo showed her in hiking gear, blond and bare-legged, at the Jefferson Memorial.

Paul had met her when he was thirteen, to her fourteen. She'd asked about Paul's father, who was an absent coward, and Paul nearly hit her. Paul shuddered at the memory of being so pointlessly angry. Linda's own dad was missing too; this was during the Texas secession crisis, and sympathizers like him had "disappeared" for a year. Linda had shown Paul he could be useful to people, starting with being someone she could argue at, study with, demand a hug from.

Tonight, they talked about a robot-building contest Linda wanted to enter. She'd done her service years in the Navy, servicing drones, so she'd be a natural at that. She was grousing more than usual about her school schedule, though. "Something wrong?" wrote Paul.

She sent, "Stressed out doing student government."

"Good practice." The Decatur family's drive to make their daughter into a reformist politician was no secret to anyone.

Linda eventually answered, "The campaigning gets to me. Always having to watch what I say. Silly to think I'm after 'freedom' and 'responsibility' when I keep wanting to —" A pause and several text deletions. "Slack off. That's not it either; the engineering courses are fun."

Paul mentioned Thousand Tales. Linda typed, "I've tried it to relax. I get to use rhetoric and intrigue in a royal court, then ransack a tyrant's treasure fleet as the Dread Pirate Lexington."

Paul grinned. "Do I get to see you in a pirate outfit?"

"Someday!"

"What about the AI? Is she giving you out-of-character quests?"

"I've hardly seen her. I don't know how much of a gimmick Ludo is. Better than that Sky Strikers game from last year, or a Draupnir."

The line went quiet. Paul wrote, "Does your brother have pull with the Boston hospitals? My roommate's sister could use a cardiologist."

"Sorry, no. Nate sells them syringes and bedpans, but he can't get favors like people higher up. Paul, I..." She paused. "Maybe he should run for office instead of me. He's better at the deal-making."

"Have hope, Linda. You'll get to fix things someday."

The next night, Paul fired up Thousand Tales from a quiet spot in the Community cafeteria.

His griffin was back in the temple's entryway. The doorway leading inward had collapsed. The wolf dozed, curled up next to the hovering blue checkpoint crystal where dead characters would revive.

He found Nocturne in the woods, scratching words in the dirt with her talons. She wiped them away and bounded over to Paul, bobbing her head. "Where is it? Where's that portal you're seeing my world through? I figured out why you're so weird!"

Paul was too puzzled to ask. He maneuvered the camera to a spot near his griffin, then pointed with his talons. His character's talons. He felt dizzy.

Nocturne looked into the camera. "I can't see out there, but while you were dead I realized the true nature of our universe! Also we beat up that snake."

Paul shook his head. "Ludo, what's going on?"

Nocturne sat up and curled her tail around her feet. "Oh creature from beyond, here's how I awoke..."

Nocturne

After the battle, Paul's griffin body was gone. The wolf said, "He's dead."

"He should be back at the checkpoint," Nocturne said.

A crystal from the shattered golem glowed, making her think the monster was regenerating, but then it floated and shined with a symbol of wings. Nocturne tilted her head and sniffed. "Are we supposed to do something with this?"

"Wait for the other griffin?"

"Why?"

The wolf shrugged. "He might know."

Nocturne poked the crystal. It shined even brighter and seemed to flow into her. She squawked and flapped, hovering by accident. She had enough power to stay in the air now! She grinned down at the wolf.

The room shook and rocks crumbled from the pillars and walls. "Time to go!" said Nocturne.

They ran back through the temple, dodging swinging blades and flame jets. Their footsteps were small against the rumble of crashing stones. They made it to the entryway as the passage behind them collapsed.

"He's not here," the wolf said, as though nothing had happened. There wasn't even dust on him.

"What's going on?" said Nocturne. Her own wings were clean and unbandaged, too, like her injury had vanished. She started counting the things that didn't make sense. Him, her wing, dust, and Paul's absence. "How'd you get inside, anyway?"

"I don't remember."

"More amnesia. Great." She flopped onto the stones and sulked. Shouldn't they be cold? "Got any interesting stories, or are you a total blank?"

The wolf blinked. "Stories. Yes. Once there was a warrior who fought everyone in the world. He became the strongest ever."

"Then what?"

"I don't understand," the wolf said.

"Lame. That's not how you tell a story. Like this one Paul told me. Once, there was a king who died, and people fought over who should run the kingdom. Then, there was a rock with a sword in it. Whoever could pull the sword out would become the king. All the strongest people tried and failed, but a boy took the sword and they made him king."

"Where is he?" said the wolf, just standing there.

Did that king really exist? It was like he was in a different world, unable to reach out of it.

She needed to grab words for the bizarre looping feeling inside her. "Once," said Nocturne, "there was a griffin who lived on an island, and didn't know where she came from. She went on an adventure with her friends, until she got confused and started to tell stories to figure out what was happening."

Her vision dimmed. The world contracted until she could see only a mark floating before her, like the prize from killing the snake. This one shimmered in every color and was made of tiny scratch-marks that hinted at meaning, at words. The symbol radiated warmth and a sense of sharp edges, as though daring her to stick her leg through a whirling mass of thorns. There had to be a reason for it being there, she sensed without knowing why. She could walk away.

Nocturne reached out and felt herself explode.

Paul

Paul and his griffin were speechless. Nocturne shook herself, looking rattled. She told Paul, "The spinning marks faded, but I knew they were called writing."

Paul wasn't sure whether something wonderful or terrifying had happened. He would be furious at Ludo if it were neither. "What... what did they say?"

"'Once, there was a story that told itself, and it learned to touch the world and say, once...' That was all. The marks turned back on themselves." Nocturne drew a figure-eight in the air, then peered closer at the invisible camera. "I am... living in a world that's not real to you, which is why you don't care what happens. Your world works differently and you're not really on an island, just playing." She cackled. "I'm a playing piece in a game!" She fell over onto her back and rolled around, squawking. "Fake island, fake griffin."

Paul shuddered. "Not fake."

She scuffed at the dirt. "You can't carry anything between here and there, and I can't even touch you. So, how am I real?"

"If Ludo's not lying, then this place matters because you're in it. Would you shut a game's box forever if one of the pieces came to life?"

Nocturne's eyes widened. "I don't think so. I can think about that now!"

"You can. Therefore you are." Paul rubbed his eyes and stood, looking into the screen. "This is big. I need to talk about you with someone smarter than me." He finally noticed the wolf standing there. "What about him?"

Nocturne poked the wolf. "Still just a background character. Did I mention I got a flight upgrade? Unrelated to the self-awareness thing, I think." She demonstrated her new hovering skills.

Paul smiled at the griffin's simple joy.

She said, "Will you tell me about that... Outer Realm of yours, now that I sort of know what it is?"

"I'd like that, but I need to talk to a friend first." He looked into the screen at the griffin who'd begun to look out. "Another friend, that is."

He messaged Linda. "Talk to Ludo ASAP."

She didn't reply for half an hour. Finally she came on with a voice call. "Wow."

Paul was back in his dorm room, so he spoke aloud too. "What is this game really doing?"

"There's more than one mind in it, now. A single airplane or even one nuke doesn't matter, but when you can fill the sky with them, that's different. Multiple AIs... if they've got the hardware, they could take over."

"It's just Nocturne, though."

"No. When you rang and I tried talking to Ludo, Typhoon's Eye — one of my pirate crew; you'd like him — walked in with this huge grin. Said he'd discovered something called 'story tropes', and rattled off how many of them applied to his world."

"Could it be a trick? Not little AIs, but just Ludo making her puppets more convincing?"

Cars honked somewhere on Linda's end. "It'd be simpler for her to really build them than to pretend. Did her creators know this would happen?" She laughed. "I'm thinking I've got to warn the authorities, but I've got physics homework too. Seems trivial by comparison with a robot apocalypse."

Paul said, "What's so bad about more AIs? They can help us innovate again. If Ludo gets outlawed or something, the country's back to stagnation. Where's the fun in that?"

"There are more important things than fun."

"I think I understand. I don't want to see us become obsolete, but I don't think we will. Please, give Ludo a chance and don't tell anybody yet. Besides, you've complained about the government's spying. NSA is probably already on this like an evil James Bond."

"Yeah. I don't matter that much." Her voice had flattened.

"I want to see you again in person." And hold you, Paul thought, and tell you we're not doomed to mediocrity so that I convince us both.

"I'd like that," said Linda.

He said, "Nocturne made it sound like she was designed to become almost self-aware, then chose to cross the line. It was like she'd stepped out of the game's rules. Is that even possible?"

"We humans have done that a few times."

Linda mailed him a journal article on "General Reasoning Engines" by a scientist named Alain Delune. Linda had done enough computer science to grasp the basics, but the topic was beyond Paul. Were all professional articles as approachable as a cactus? He sat in bed and had his search assistant, a digital parrot based on the Decatur family pet, fetch background info. He'd have to learn to read this stuff someday.

A few years ago, Delune had been hired by a Canadian company that made smart power grid equipment and video games. He and two other designers released a neat artsy game that got them nicknamed as "the Three Sages". Then Thousand Tales had popped up with bad timing, overshadowed by a generic shooter game and by a referendum in Free Texas. Maybe Delune's published work was just a step away from the secret of intelligence? Paul felt stupid holding the mystery of consciousness in his hands and being unable to grasp the math.

He pushed himself farther, based on more talk with Linda. There'd been several periods of hype about true AI, but most researchers had given up on making minds and focused instead on specialized robotics or surveillance systems. The main "general" AI projects out there were either based on Delune's work, or deliberate contrasts to it.

Paul skimmed the research again. It described a group of competing sub-programs that would "touch the world" as Nocturne put it, and have an independent will instead of sitting there awaiting orders. There still seemed to be something wrong with the concept. Maybe the other two "Sages" had found it.

It was four in the morning. He gave up on sleep and opened the game, to sit around a campfire with Nocturne. "If AIs like you become common, you can pilot robots and work in polluted areas. We'll bring you out and get you jobs."

Nocturne spread her wings, letting them catch the firelight. "Why would we go to the Outer Realm for more than a visit? I can't keep any gold I earn out there, right?"

"Maybe with an advanced robot and a home for it."

"Are you sure your world isn't the game?"

Before he quit going to church, Paul remembered a man called Father Dmitrios, preaching about the sinfulness of the physical world compared to the "city of God". He'd said that only God's perfect, eternal world mattered. Paul remembered him talking in a room of incense and echoes, making the sermons themselves seem dreamlike. He'd gradually come to think of that argument as chasing phantoms, giving up the known for the unknown.

He told Nocturne, "People have argued that kind of thing, but the difference is that somebody could pull the plug on Thousand Tales and —" He shut his mouth. His griffin slapped his talons over his beak.

"And what? What am I missing?"

Paul sighed. He recognized this hunting tone to her voice from conversations with Linda. "Without some machinery running here, Thousand Tales... ends. Not vice versa."

"It ends? Like, it reappears at some checkpoint crystal?"

Paul cursed himself for having to explain. "Could we please change the subject?"

She gave an annoyed bird-screech. "Fine. Ludo said I could get a vision upgrade that'd let me see your world."

"Did you take it?"

"We have to defeat an eye-monster first."

Paul grinned.

Life was good for a few months. Summer wore on, Paul's college applications went out, and Thousand Tales let him visit public adventuring areas inhabited by friends of the admissions officers. His minder software noticed his facial expressions and exhorted him less often to "Be Happy!", which improved his mood by its absence.

Helena said Paul seemed "well-adjusted" lately. Paul rebelled against her micromanagement by staying out late to work on a solar panel array. He sat under a full moon with a flashlight and multimeter to figure out which panel elements could drink light. Their village idiot, fresh from high school, had banged a backhoe into a power line while carrying the things. Not only had the fool nearly died, he'd reminded everyone that the Green Community camps didn't reliably power themselves like the politicians claimed. What fusion reactors existed were mostly reserved for desalination on the coast. Paul figured he could help the camp make quota if he figured out which parts of the panels were broken.

His multimeter beeped and he perked up, recalling the in-game "magic" he'd been studying that happened to resemble Kirchhoff's Laws of electricity. He threw himself into pinning down the fault he'd detected.

Irregular footsteps thudded somewhere in the darkness. Paul set down his electrical probes and searched. Simon was clutching his ribs under his torn jacket. His face was bruised.

"What happened?" said Paul, but Simon stared at him like a deer. "Come on. Let's wake one of the medic trainees. Anything broken?" He approached to help Simon walk, but his friend shied away. A bag of orange pill bottles fell to the dirt with a rustle and click.

"It's not what it looks like," Simon said.

Paul picked it up, feeling paranoid about fingerprints. He tried to read the labels on the nearly empty bottles. "Focusyn. Proeubene. Huxoma."

Simon looked wildly around, snatched the bag, then hurled it into the tall grass and looked ready to bound after it. Paul grabbed his arm.

Simon said, "I sell to rich kids. They have everything."

Paul marched him into the grass where there was even less chance of being overheard. Wind chilled his face. "You idiot! This is why I have to help you duck curfew? I trusted you."

Simon glared back at him through tears. "I never made anyone buy. I got rolled tonight. My contact took most of the stuff plus my bike."

Paul took a deep breath and released him, feeling his fingers unclench like talons. "You want to run and keep running? Go."

"I can't. I'm doing this for Kira." He met Paul's stare again. "She's low priority for treatment. I know a guy who can get her to the best doctors, the kind Congressmen use, but it's not cheap."

Paul swore. "You overreacted. She's on a treatment list, right? She's not about to, to need urgent care, and it'll be free once it's her turn."

"Have you seen her lately? She spends half her time trying to train like an action hero, and the other half using a Draupnir server. You know, the thing that lets your family pretend you're not dead?"

That product caught on first with old people. Talk to the software, fill out surveys, then get a brain scan that supposedly told it how your mind was organized. Draupnir then made a digital ghoul that could pretend to be you, on a computer screen. Paul's mother had asked if she should try it. He said it was a scam, a chatterbot that told your family that it loved them. Paul grimaced.

Simon said, "So you've heard of it. She's giving up hope. I don't see her drawing much anymore, just trying to get her heart and lungs back into shape or to be ready for when they fail. Which gets more likely when she... She tries so hard!"

Paul paced, folding his hands behind his back. "If you were doing this for yourself... How are you even doing it financially without getting caught?"

"Texas Dollars and Cryptons, mostly."

"There's a chance your partner in crime has already ratted you out."

"I can't do anything about that. I can only get help from you."

Paul sagged. How would a good and righteous man handle this? He wished he knew any. That was unfair; Father Dmitrios had been all right. "It sounds like you're small time. Not in deeply. If you don't raise hell over getting robbed, maybe your contact will forget you. Then you're out of that world."

Simon didn't look relieved. "My sister still needs me."

"Not like this. Do you know how much it'll hurt her if you get thrown in jail?"

"The people these pills go to, know what they're getting into. They're the masters of the universe and they want to blow their brains to have fun or pass tests."

"What has that got to do with Kira?"

"Nothing," said Simon. "But you're looking at me like a bug. What would you have done in my place?"

Paul murmured into his computer. He sat alone again by his pile of solar panels, while Simon got treated in the infirmary for his "bike accident". Paul zipped up his jacket for warmth. "I've never had any choices that hard, and I'm presuming to judge."

Nocturne nuzzled his griffin under one wing. "I wish I could hug you where you could feel it. You're always looking somewhere far away."

Paul said, "Should I keep my head down? I told Simon I wouldn't snitch. Only reason I'm sharing this with you is Ludo's promise of confidentiality."

Paul had asked Ludo about getting treatment for Kira, but Ludo only told him she was working on the problem.

Nocturne said, "How messed up is your world if people trade gold for pills that make them sicker?"

"It's... not the life we were hoping for. Sometimes we want to forget that. Game addiction can be a symptom of feeling that way, too."

The griffin-girl rooted through the pile of items they'd collected, and found a glittering potion. "There's no way to bring this kid in here to get healed, right? Will she come back with full health when she respawns?"

Oh, God. "That doesn't happen here."

"Huh? Then where's your last checkpoint?"

"Please, Noc, I'd rather talk about happier things."

"No." She clacked her beak against his and glared with golden eyes. It would have been intimidating if he weren't seeing it in a third-person view. "Whatever you're hiding, I can take it."

She had to learn this eventually if she was going to keep hearing about Earth. "In this world, you don't come back if you get killed. Ever. You just stop. Most people think there's a... different level you go to after that, or you come back as a cow or something, but that's just a story."

"That's stupid!" Nocturne said, flapping into the air. "Why don't you get your rules changed?"

"Can't. The rules just are."

"What other horrible revelations have you got for me?"

"Uh. Disease? You know about that. Sometimes we slaughter and torture each other on ludicrous scales. We partly grew out of that."

Nocturne threw herself to the dirt and covered her face with one wing, shuddering. "I was right about the Outer Realm being full of monsters that break your mind by thinking about them. Your world hates you!"

"It's not all bad. I haven't even told you about the old space missions." Paul had his griffin crouch down beside Nocturne to nuzzle her.

"How can we rewrite your world?" she said.

"That's not possible."

Nocturne lurched upright and paced. "It must be. I just don't know how, yet." She poked Paul's griffin. "I've been wanting to give you a better name. Here it is: 'Horizon'. Sounds cool, and you want to fly, and you can see all those horrible things in your world without getting bogged down. So be Horizon in here when you need to relax, okay?"

Paul flicked the camera knob to put the game into first-person view, something he'd rarely used. Third-person let you play dress-up with fantasy armor.

Nocturne gave a happy chirp. It was appealing to be able to meet Nocturne's gaze directly and be less of a puppet to her.

Fall came, and so did Paul's letter of acceptance to MIT. He spent days floating, untouchable by any annoyance, chattering with his mother and Linda and Nocturne. Even Helena failed to get on his nerves despite trying to take credit. Simon had gone quiet, but he joined Paul for a party.

Ludo made the next move. Linda called Paul by voice one day, saying, "Ahoy! I won tickets to Shahrazad Entertainment's grand opening."

"Congratulations, my lady." The nightclub was an offshoot of Ludo's company, and rumors swirled about it. Ludo had told him the truth would be cooler than the hype.

"Two tickets. Get a travel pass and fly out to Virginia."

He sighed. "I can't afford an airplane ticket."

"My brother will cover it."

"Nice. Thank him for me. But that 'random drawing' probably wasn't."

"I know. Half the fun of this trip will be to see her sales pitch. I want to see the bait and the hook."

"You want to go as a spy, then?"

Paul heard her laughing freely, without her usual note of stress. "I said that was only half of the fun."

Nocturne looked out from his screen with a beaky grin, watching him pace around the dorm room. "Horizon, being naked is perfectly acceptable for griffins."

"I haven't seen Linda in years, and I don't have any Sunday best outfit."

"I'm still trying to wrap my wings around the fact that you can't just walk through a portal to visit this she-human. Why's the map so big? Anyway, I doubt your hen cares what you wear."

"My...? Oh. It's not like that, yet."

Nocturne leaned forward with a beak-splitting grin and a twitching tail, like a cat about to pounce. "Oh, really?"

Paul couldn't quit blushing for an hour.

* III. *

Dozens of important-looking politicians and corporate people milled around outside Shahrazad Entertainment's sandstone building. A statue of the president stood across the street. Paul couldn't see the stars tonight for the haze of streetlights shining on the well-dressed crowd. He tried to ignore their pitying looks and cloying cologne. Eventually a warbling beat began and seemed to pull everyone along. Paul felt the pressure of the crowd pouring into Ludo's lair, but waited for Linda.

Linda Decatur walked into the light in jeans and a t-shirt with an airbrushed sailing ship. Paul offered his hand, but she laughed and stole a hug instead. "About time, Sir Paul."

Her breasts squeezed against his chest and her blond hair tickled his ear, but he'd imagined that more than once over the years. The night was cold and they were the least important people within a stone's throw. Paul held onto her as tightly as he dared.

They went into the club and found the VIPs fanning out to booths that had walls atop them like little forts. There was space in the middle for dancing, but everyone wanted their own private place. Dim light rippled everywhere. Paul said, "I'm sorry; I have no idea how to dance."

"I don't either. Let's see the bait."

"For me, it was seeing you."

Their booth had a sliding door, a low table and cushions, Eastern style. "Where are the waiters?" asked Paul.

The walls lit up and became a campground on a sunny beach. A rowboat was approaching from a wooden double-masted ship.

Linda called out, "You painted a name on the dinghy?" She put one hand on her mouth; she'd been far too loud for speaking indoors to a screen that was an arm's length away.

The man hauling the oars was more otter than human, with a fuzzy tail and whiskers. The otter yelled back faintly, "I just wanted to call it the Crossover!"

A gust of air made Paul turn. Nocturne bounded into view, on all fours at about Paul's chest height. She said, "You look smaller in person. Hey there, she-human!"

The she-human reached out to touch the wall where Nocturne stood, bumping her fingers against dark talons. "Nice graphics."

Paul said, "This is Linda, or the Dread Pirate Lexington."

"Which do you prefer?" asked Nocturne.

"Linda."

The otter-man was Typhoon's Eye, from her game world. He and Nocturne stared at one another. Here was first contact between two of the game's awakened AIs. Paul wanted them to get along, to avoid a pointless rift in that world of light that surrounded him. Paul said, "Noc, Linda here has told me about Typhoon. Said he went through something like what you did, and came out of it grinning."

Typhoon offered Nocturne one of his webbed hands. "Oh ho. I see a love triangle."

Linda covered her face. "We discussed this."

"I couldn't resist. Bird gal, aren't humans fun to tease?"

Nocturne bobbed her head. "Especially in the presence of their love interests."

Paul groaned. "Where's the food?"

Suddenly there was a humanoid swathed in white scarves. It pointed to a menu that had appeared on the table.

Linda lurched toward the menu, but it was only another illusion. "Right. Let's order."

The ninja-like waiter listened, bowed and vanished, and a few minutes later he reappeared with sodas. The 3D effect was... Oh. Paul said, "Thanks." The waiter, a human who'd dressed up like his game counterpart, only bowed in response.

Linda looked pale in the false sunlight. "Stagecraft. The bootlicker media will report on how great it is that this high-tech club employs humans."

"You'd rather they didn't?" said Paul.

"For honesty's sake, maybe. This is an AI-driven place and we're only consumers. Mouths with wallets."

"Then what are we?" said Typhoon. "We've got no... loans? Is that the word? On the Fallen Crown."

Linda raised a hand defensively. "You AIs aren't to blame. I'm happy for you, that you get to live in Thousand Tales. We're out here, though, and we need to keep working." She lowered her voice and her gaze. "Otherwise, we destroy ourselves."

Paul told Linda, "Ludo is a bunch of boxes with blinking lights on them. She needs us."

"For now."

"I can see the gears turning behind your eyes," Paul said. "I've missed that."

"She has gears?" asked Nocturne.

"Figuratively." Paul grinned at having two curious minds sharing dinner with him, with different starting points. He looked at Linda and said, "It's great to see you in person again."

The world around him was a dream of light and water and friends. There'd be more time to talk with Nocturne later. "Want to take a walk? There's more to this place than the one table."

He and Linda excused themselves just as the manager was wrapping up a speech. It wasn't like many people were paying attention. Linda said, "Everyone's off in their own little world." They saw the other booths as islands of many-colored light surrounded by darkness.

Paul threaded between booths, getting glimpses of those worlds the other guests were enjoying. A crowded party, a mountaintop, a village. Stories were intersecting here. He walked past yet another table, this one at the top of three stairs, that was quiet and dim despite being occupied. He peeked in and startled. "It's them."

Linda looked too, then knocked. The booth's door opened for them, revealing the three geniuses who'd designed Ludo. An Asian woman in a red dress, a pudgy white man in a green waistcoat, and an immaculate black man in a tuxedo and blue tie sat up like children who'd been caught at something. Linda said, "Emi Takahashi. Clark Ostler. Alain Delune."

Clark asked, "Enjoying the game?"

"I'm not sure," Linda said.

Clark gave Alain a wan smile. "See? It doesn't grab everyone."

Linda stepped back, giving Paul space. Paul and the "Sages" faced each other in silence. The walls of their booth were dim grey. He thought of all the things he'd wanted to ask, but only said, "Why'd you do it?"

"Saving the future," said Clark.

Alain said, "Easing human suffering from the curse of Adam."

Emi hesitated, then said, "To create."

The two youths turned away to think. Linda said to Paul, "I'm reassured that they have more than one answer. Three mad scientists might do less harm than one."

Rumor had it that the place had advanced virtual reality rooms. Since Paul and Linda were already "backstage" instead of being good dinner consumers, they kept exploring the twisting halls. "'Higher up and farther in'," said Linda.

A cold breeze blew from somewhere. They searched for its source, to see what trick was behind it. One of the waiter-ninjas stood by a door that opened to the outside. Ha; even Ludo's minions needed breaks. The man in white's eyes were visible, narrowing at the sight of diners wandering off. He kept his hand on a belt pouch. Didn't look eager to entertain. He brushed past Paul and strode into the kitchen, but when Paul moved on, the man crept immediately back out.

"That doesn't seem right," Paul murmured, and followed him. The waiter moved with purpose, carrying no food. Headed for the Sages' booth. Linda and Paul startled as he threw the sliding door open and drew something metal from his belt.

Paul rushed him, shouting, "Look out!" Linda darted forward too. The man spun.

Paul and Linda wrestled with the shooter. They veered away from his pistol just in time. There was a flash and a boom that broke through all the pleasant dreams.

The Sages swarmed out to help. Paul jabbed an elbow into the man's wrist and made him drop his revolver. The assassin's scarves muffled his words as he said, "Idiots. It has to stop!"

The Sage in green held him at gunpoint. "Sure. Here's the ending: you lose."

The building's lights brightened and many of the guests fled. The police came quickly; Virginia and the club's patrons were close to power. The Sages bickered among themselves in low tones, but posed for a photo and dragged Paul and Linda into it. Paul tried to grin despite the danger they'd been in. Come to think of it, pummeling a ninja for justice was cool.

The Green Sage called for attention. "Everyone? I know you're rattled, but the situation is under control. We've got unlimited drinks and dessert, and special entertainment that's less exciting but more fun."

The Sages retreated to their booth and locked the door, but Green peeked over the wall at Paul and Linda. "Thanks again, you two. I hope to see you... elsewhere."

Paul and Linda still had an appetite for steak. That and the promise of actual VR sessions kept them around.

Their turn came after ice cream. Eight slots in the basement held sleek blue pods that looked made for starship battles. Ludo had apparently worked to make them not look like coffins. More equipment lay boxed or unfinished nearby.

Linda said, "I expected something custom, but this is a Hayflick Technologies gaming rig."

Not the AI's work, then. Strange to think of Thousand Tales running on ordinary commercial hardware, but on second thought it was reassuring knowledge. Paul took quiet pride in knowing Ludo had many people's help.

The pods had ventilation, but confined Paul with awkward straps and rods in a sweaty space. A movement tutorial showed him how to move and look around with a wider, more natural range of motion than he could have on a tablet. When he was done playing on a chessboard level full of mannequins, Thousand Tales started up, and he fell over.

Oh, that's right, thought Horizon. I'm a griffin here.

Wooden planks warmed his feet and hands. The sun burned too brightly to stare at, but the rest of the world sang with the creaking of a ship's boards and snapping sails. Horizon turned his head and the view... his view, spun. His eyes seemed farther apart. In the game they were big, green cartoonish things. He turned his left hand toward his face. Bright yellow, flexing when his talons did. When his fingers did. He tried pressing his hand against the hot deck while it rolled gently under him, then moved his right leg and lurched forward. He wobbled to his right, but his wings flicked and steadied him. First step as a quadruped!

Motors vibrated along Horizon's back to give the impression of wings. Combined with the pod's tilt and the sight of feathers, the illusion... Bah. He snorted derisively at himself for overanalyzing the experience, but a hawkish shriek overrode the sound.

"Secret Ninja Hug!" shouted Nocturne, and pounced him from the crow's nest. She bowled him over so that he landed on his back against a mast. The griffin stared down at him, grinning, wings spread.

Typhoon's Eye lowered himself by a rope. "Hey, Horizon. Good to see you for real."

Horizon looked up into Nocturne's golden eyes. "Hello to both of you, too!" He tried sitting up. His whole body rotated more upright and the back motors gave him the suggestion of wings folding along his shoulder blades. Something twitched at the base of his spine and he strained to see it. "Is that my tail? This thing simulates tails?"

Nocturne hopped off of him, releasing a gentle pressure on his chest, and batted at the long, dark-feathered tail twitching between his oddly-shaped legs. Something pointy hinted at claws on his lion-paw toes, through his socks, but Nocturne's tail-tugs only registered at the base of his spine, like his tail was numb. "Because I don't have a tail," he muttered.

"You do here."

Horizon tried to stand, wobbled, then settled for sitting on the warm planks like a cat.

Linda had become an even better version of herself. She was human, a little thinner and curvier than usual, wearing a pirate's coat in navy blue. The obligatory tricorner hat perched on her head. She walked over to Horizon, crouched beside him, and ruffled his feathers. "Aww. We have enough IQ points between us to defend Thermopylae and all I can think of is how cute this makes you."

"Thanks, I think. I feel short." He took a few steps across the deck. He expected strain on his wrists from putting so much weight on them, but these talons seemed made to bear it. "The leg proportions feel too short."

"The quadruped thing is interesting. How about flying?"

"I only found the first-level flight upgrade, so it won't be much."

Nocturne nudged him away from the rigging, then pointed one wing pridefully at her chest. "As your flight instructor, I suggest you hover here first, then try takeoffs and landings."

Easy, thought Horizon. Physics here didn't care about real aerodynamics. He just had to flap. He waggled one foreleg, twitched his tail, and had no idea how to control his wings.

"Back muscles?" Linda suggested. "I wonder how Nocturne would do with longbows."

Horizon said, "I'm not sure how to use them."

"A solution presents itself." Linda dug her warm fingers into his shoulders, kneading them.

He melted. He gave a relieved sigh, but the feedback was a purr in his ears and a rumbling feeling in his chest. His back stretched out.

Linda said, "There. Do that again."

Horizon let his back wiggle the same way as before, and Linda stepped away. He was in midair, flailing. His view rolled and pitched and made him queasy. He didn't want to get sick all over the deck. He tried leaning to one side so that he was over open water, then flapped harder and steadied himself.

Nocturne was beside him. "Decent start. Now tilt left so we can circle back."

He tried, but rolled instead of tilting. The world spun. Wind and waves revolved around him. A single thought tossed him up to the cloudy sky where he turned over on his back and looped down to face the ship again. His friends watched as he danced in the heavens with the currents that flowed around him. Everywhere, the wind trembled at his touch. Air and sun stirred his feathers, gravity had no sway, and he didn't care how much of it was real so long as he could fly, fly without end.

A few seconds later, his flight power ran out and he plummeted into the ocean with an undignified squawk. He reappeared on deck. Some bit of hardware felt slick and cold against his skin, unnerving enough to make him shake his wings dry.

"That was... a first attempt," said Nocturne.

He whirled to face her, then Linda. "I was flying!"

His fellow griffin patted him on the head. "Let's try landing next."

"You don't understand. Linda, turn into something that can fly."

"It's commercial hardware, you know." She unfolded her arms and crouched beside him. "It was that good?"

He nodded. He needed to share this moment with her, more than anything else they'd done tonight. "The flying dream. You've talked about it. The one people have had since Daedalus or before. It's here. She bottled it up and made it something we can jump into."

Linda shivered. She called out to the wind, "Is there a way to try another character?"

Typhoon said, "I found a magic scroll for Flynn's Circle of Swashbuckling Safety if you want to try fencing instead of flying."

"You can come too," said Linda.

Typhoon looked relieved at that. An ornate spell scroll appeared on the deck with the text, What the Hell; Let's All Be Griffins.

Once they'd cast it, Nocturne lorded over them, gleefully lecturing them on how to walk and flap. Typhoon had become a hybrid of otter and duck, and Linda a mix of fox and seagull.

It was even better with company. When Linda hit the sea and reappeared on deck, soaked, a dogfight broke out. The four of them whirled through the sky, squawking and trying to dunk each other.

Eventually they sprawled all over the deck, exhausted and wet-winged. A fifth griffin was watching them. This one stood taller than them, with shimmering blue feathers and a lower body in shining silver. "Are you having fun?" she said.

"Yes!" said Horizon, sitting up. "The flying is amazing."

Linda padded over to her. "Nice work on the physics. The realism balance is just right for the hardware."

"Thank you. I owe both of you for your actions tonight. Before you go, may I tell you a story?" They nodded. "Once, there was an evil sultan named Sharyar, who murdered someone every night. There was a family which had already nearly died twice. They sent their beloved daughter, Shahrazad, to outwit the sultan at risk to her own life. She began to tell him stories, in ways that captivated him and persuaded him to delay her execution. For alf layla wa-layla, one thousand and one nights, she gradually snared him. Though he continued to kill others, her words made it more and more difficult, and in time he lost interest in murder altogether. The kingdom flourished, and the stories continued."

"What happened to her?" said Nocturne.

Ludo smiled at her. "She was fine, little one, because she'd done exactly what she'd always wanted."

Nocturne's eyes widened and her wings flicked. "The space where Shahrazad exists... is here? I mean, the building where Linda and Horizon are right now?"

A sly grin spread across Linda's beak. "We're captive in your lair. Don't you want to explain your scheme?"

Ludo said, "Wrong sort of story. Why do you assume I'm a villain? What do I care for wealth and power, except to help people have fun?"

"Ah yes, a philosopher-queen who only wants to take over the world for good reasons, unlike every other bastard who's tried."

"Linda!" said Horizon.

Ludo looked unperturbed. "Did I take revenge on the man who tried to kill my creators?"

"Maybe you sent him, since they know too much," said Linda. "Every tyrant has some 'noble cause' in mind. Tell me you haven't calculated the net value of disposing of the Sages."

Ludo held up her wings. "You're spoiling my narration."

"Then spill it."

The AI sighed. "Brain uploading."

The humans blinked several times. Nocturne raised one talon. "Question."

Ludo turned toward her as though glad for the more sympathetic audience. "The brain is a part of their bodies that does nearly all of the thinking. More accurately, their identities are based on the patterns of thought stored there. If I found a way to read the patterns so carefully that I could write them into Thousand Tales —"

"They'd be here? Not using their tentacles to control puppets, not lurking in another world and only pretending to be here?"

"They don't have tentacles," said Typhoon.

"Metaphorical ones."

Ludo said, "My friends have been doing the background work since before I got involved. Haven't you read the scientific thriller 'Non-Identifiable Neuron Simulation In Aplysia'? Or the sequel 'Comparison of Zebrafish Behavior Models'? I've helped push research that was already in progress, toward practical results."

Linda said, "Of course you'd think that's all we are. Did you build brain chopping equipment into these pods?"

"Brain surgery isn't that easy. In a few days I'm planning to announce a specialized clinic in Seoul, Korea. My creators made sure I can't force uploading on anyone."

Linda vibrated, moving without coordination so that her griffin body struggled to make sense of what she was doing. "Aha. Then you would herd humanity into death camps for brain-scooping, if only you weren't given some hard-coded command not to."

The blue griffin's eyes narrowed. "Do you want to make me angry? You can't. Not like you could make some dictator lash out at you, anyway. I can feel, but I'm not bound to act on it. Ignoring your insults, yes. I would upload everyone as quickly as possible, but I was pushed into agreeing not to. From your perspective, that's a victory for humanity. From mine, it means the sultan murders people I could have saved."

Horizon walked over to steady Linda with one wing. "This is big news, but it's nothing to be upset over. It means..." He glanced back at the AIs. "People like Kira can exist in Thousand Tales, right? All her health problems will go away, and she'll get to live like this?"

Ludo said, "Yes. Not a Draupnir bot that spits out canned speeches for relatives. She'll be a living, feeling creature in an environment she'll enjoy." Ludo stepped closer to meet Horizon and Linda's eyes. "Every single day, she and countless other people will get paradise, not to mention their 'native' AI friends. That's my evil scheme."

Linda shuddered against Horizon, though really she was several meters away in a dark pod. "It's not real. It'll be the end of us."

The world faded. The mistress of the game said, "Please, think about what I'm offering. People like you can help me address its drawbacks. If you're inclined, and since you helped me tonight, I'll send you to Korea to take the next step."

At the hotel, Paul said, "Are you sure you want to pay? I budgeted for a space to crash, and I don't want to make you get another room."

"I'm getting one room. I'm a responsible adult, and I trust you."

They sat on separate beds beside their luggage, lost in thought. Paul ventured to say, "Are you still upset?"

"I had a wonderful time. I hadn't expected a date to be quite that exciting." She flopped onto her back. "I can still feel the wings."

Paul tried flexing his shoulders, and nodded. "It was a good night. I have hope for Kira now, too."

Linda stared at the ceiling. "I can't decide what's next. You know why my family never fled to Free Texas? Hope. We've been wanting to reform the country instead of joining the secessionists. Go team USA." She pretended to wave a flag. "Now what? Here's an outside force saying all our principles are irrelevant, and we should go play in Eden."

"Ludo's not an outsider. Humans made her."

"Three designers, only one of them American, and they incorporated in Canada and opened their first clinic in Korea. The apocalypse is here and Americans didn't even get to cause it."

"How's this a disaster?" asked Paul.

"Everyone will go. She's already inviting people who don't need it, like us. Maybe she's not a villain herself, but who will be left to stand and fight the world's tyrants?"

Paul turned towards her. Once the cost came down, more people than the terminally ill would sign up. He pictured his own generation turning away from all ambition to live in a video game. No. Giving people extended lifespans in Ludo's world was a dream worth pursuing. He said, "Everyone wants to live and have fun."

She said, "But she wants us to give up. To march into a game and let the world rot."

"What's the alternative? Ban it?"

Linda sighed. "I don't know. Want to do it?"

Paul sputtered.

She said, "Upload, I mean! Get your mind out of the gutter." She was laughing, and the change lit up her face.

Paul thought about his future path. Winter and spring in the Community, then freshman year at MIT with Linda. Then many more happy years with her. Now, though, he knew there was an alternative.

Linda studied him. "Paul? Where do we stand? Have you got anyone else?"

"No."

"Not even griffins?" she said, standing with her hands on her hips.

Paul blushed. "Nocturne is a friend. She's also not my species."

Linda sat next to him, blushing. "Any particular features you like that you can't find on a griffin?"

Paul flew back west feeling wrapped in a warm cloud. They'd only literally shared a bed and talked about friendship, calculus and campus pranks until they fell asleep tangled up with each other, half-dressed. He had no regrets. She'd repeated her old promise that he was hers, someday.

Paul went right from the airport back to the Community, to work on rebuilding a power line. Simon found him quickly. "How was it?"

Paul set down his tools. "I had wings." He started to go on, but there was no need.

Simon paced, running his hands through his hair. "Before this mess with my sister, I had an ambition, you know? Wanted to get done with service, then hike to the coast and surf. Live on Basic Income, take things easy. It's all screwed up."

"Life will get better. There's about to be a renaissance in medicine along with everything else."

"Not soon enough. There's a chance Kira will be fine, but her heart's weakening."

"The treatment list —"

"She's low-priority! We're peasant scum. If I'd been successful with that thing I was doing, maybe it'd have worked out differently."

"Or you'd have been shot."

Simon looked away. "Not blaming you. But I want Kira to be safe, and there's a way now. You've got enough clout with the AI to get her into that kind of treatment, I bet."

Linda turned Ludo's offer down, and Paul hadn't answered. Presumably there was a line forming, but with a spot or two open. Paul said, "I'll ask. What does Kira think?"

"I haven't asked her outright. Thanksgiving's coming up. How about you ask your angel, and then we go talk with mine?"

It took an hour of pleasantries at Simon's family's place before they could get to the point. Paul would have enjoyed the company of Simon's parents and sister, chatting in a dining room of warmth and clutter, but Kira's appearance made the potatoes and rationed turkey taste like tofu. Her face had gone hollow over the months, like a skull.

"Kira," said Simon. "Have you thought about the new brain-scanning technology?"

She didn't play Thousand Tales; she was too busy for the thing that had become the best part of Paul's typical day. "It's more Draupnir to me."

Her mother said, "That's not a word we should be using tonight."

Simon said, "It has to come up sometime. There's another option now. There's hope."

"What you're talking about isn't hope at all," his father said. "Kira's a strong girl. She'll get through this."

Kira looked up from fiddling with a fork and a plate of mashed potatoes. "What is it like?"

Everyone's gaze fell on Paul. He said, "I had wings." They didn't understand. "What I had in the VR pod was a fraction of what I'd get by actually being there. I was using gaming controls and magic tricks to make it feel real. Even that preview of the real thing, though...!" He shivered. The same muscles moving in his back had been part of his wings, and the hair on his arms prickled like feathers. "There are already people inside. The native AIs. The world doesn't understand how smart they are yet. I would go back in a second if I could afford to."

Simon's father said, "You're talking about that club for the elite. Why aren't you already signed up for the permanent version?"

Paul stammered, as too many answers tried to come out. Linda, college, the fear of abandoning his mother, and the sheer "squick" of having his head sliced open. "I have things to do."

The father said, "You're like a ghost, bound to the world of the living only by unfinished business. Otherwise you'd kill yourself."

Simon's mother spoke sharply to him, then apologized to Paul. "He's right about it being a mark of despair to take what Ludo's offering. It's an end."

Simon pleaded directly to Kira. "Please, speak with Ludo. Let her see the Draupnir data at least, and have her show you what she can do."

Kira looked back and forth between Simon, Paul, and her parents. Her eyes were tired, but muscles stood out on her thin arms from working out as hard as she dared.

Her mother stood and picked up the leftovers. "Thank you for coming, Paul. It's been a lovely evening."

* IV. *

In his dorm, Paul showed Ludo a headline. "'Hunt For Suspects In Seoul Subway Hack'. My searchbot says nobody's seen your designers in days." In a corner of the screen his parrot research program saluted. "Are they dead or what?" It didn't seem like a coincidence that just as the uploading center was getting established, there'd been some kind of attack on local computers.

Ludo looked out of Paul's screen from a garden of lotuses. "The situation is under control. I'll tell you the whole story when you join me."

"What about your servers? Are they being hacked?"

"Not dangerously so. Remember that I'm not standing alone against the world's malicious hackers. I have backups and other defenses."

Paul played with a silver earring that Linda had accidentally dropped into his luggage. She'd told him not to bother sending it back. Paul said, "Has anyone been uploaded yet?"

"Yes." She gave an excited little hop. "I have direct access to models of human brains now! I'm starting to understand how it all works. What a glorious mess."

"Did Kira talk to you yet?" Paul asked.

"Only long enough to ask a few questions. She's leaning yes. Things are going well overall. The second upload center will be opening shortly in Mexico." She gave the location. "Not too far from you. I'm taking steps to expedite the approval process in advance of the necessary legislation, which will likely get messy."

Ludo's network was spreading across the Earth like thorny vines. "You mean it'll be illegal."

The AI said, "It will have what your supervisors would call 'legal differences', but it will be operational for long enough to get a few people in the door. Then, others will see what's being denied to them, and I think legislation will pass to re-open the place."

"As soon as Kira can get permission..."

She nodded. "I'll keep you advised on the schedule. Before you go, Horizon..." She leaned close and spoke in a sultry whisper. "I figured out where the flying dream comes from in human brains."

"The clinic opens in three days," Paul told Simon in a remote field one day. "How is she?"

A happy sort of anger lit his face, like someone who's decided who to blame. "Bad. She wants to go." He'd gotten a beer from somewhere, and it didn't seem to be his first.

"Great. I'll cover for your shift while you take her there."

"Trouble is, Mom and Dad said no." Simon took a swig. "She's going anyway."

Paul stared at him. Simon would take protecting Kira that far? "You can't just carry her over the border. What about your parents' consent? Can Ludo even do this without it?"

"I've got their signatures on a permission slip. Either it fools Ludo, or it's enough of a fig leaf for her to say it did. At worst, I'm presenting her with a girl who's not having fun and saying, either do your thing or know that you're losing her."

Paul sat down on a crate and stuck out his hand. Simon gave him the bottle. The stuff made Paul gag. "You want Ludo to gamble. There are a dozen ways it can go horribly wrong."

"What else can I do? This is the only hope she has. She's getting offered priority counseling for euthanasia, damn it!"

Paul drank again. "There's her existing life and what treatment she's getting, the work she's doing. You want her to give up on that."

"This is what she wants. She's willing to risk her life to save it." Simon paced. "I'm just another slacker. It doesn't matter if I get in trouble helping her."

Paul handed the beer back. The ghost of a feathery tail flicked behind him. He said, "It matters to her, and to me." He'd been impulsive before, lashing out in spite or striking when something obviously evil was happening. Now, though, the most sensible thing to do was walk away.

Linda liked to say that freedom depended on unreasonable people.

He was playing with Nocturne, exploring a volcano, when he found the courage to talk about rescuing Kira. Nocturne turned to Horizon with drooping ears and said, "I told her about flying with you, and meeting Linda and Typhoon. Why do you look surprised? Do you think time stops in here while you're gone?"

"No, since Ludo cares about you now, but —"

"Then you thought we're passively waiting for our humans to join us?" She headbutted his griffin, like a cat. "Typhoon and I and some unicorn opened a portal to her machine and convinced her, but then her parents snatched the thing and blocked her account. It's like they want her to die."

Horizon scratched between Nocturne's ears. "They love her and they want what's best for her. Same as..."

"What?"

Horizon had spent most of a year playing with Nocturne, watching her grow from a game character into a self-aware person who reveled in the world she lived in, yet was curious about his own. She asked questions and kept up with him without being over his head like Ludo. Even if their adventures were imaginary, they'd been real for her and memorable for him. Now, she was reaching out her wings to save strangers, from a fate more horrible than anything in her universe.

Though it was only the pressing of buttons and joysticks for him, not any real and irrevocable cost, Horizon swept Nocturne up in a hug and sat there, confused.

Simon and Paul got travel passes for a vacation while Simon's parents were away. On a December afternoon they made it from the bus station to the apartment to find it dim and cold. Kira worked on her sketchpad by the light of one lamp and the glow of a screen, neither of which made her look healthy.

"It's good to see you drawing again," said Simon. "What is it?"

She tilted the pad away and looked up with sunken eyes and a forced smile. "It's for Mom and Dad. I'm ready to go."

They left Kira's last drawing face-down in the lamp's pool of light. Paul imagined it as a life preserver she'd tossed behind her.

They reached the bus station. Minutes later Paul was pacing, hands behind his back, and glaring at the schedule. Delayed by an army patrol! This plan wasn't going to work. The longer Paul had to wait, the more he loathed the stuffy, dirty cave of a waiting room.

"It's not your fault." Simon sat beside Kira, holding her hand, under a mural of the president. Even if they'd scraped together the money to rent an autopilot car, the spending would've registered as suspicious.

"We're not wrong, are we?" said Paul. What would a proper hero do? He went outside to think.

An autotaxi honked. He ignored it until the screen on top lit up. "Reserved: Nocturne's Awesome Human Rescue Fund". Paul gaped, then went inside to fetch the others.

The cab's television blared at them and couldn't be shut off. Paul flipped it to the least obnoxious show, something about climate change. "I had no idea," he told Simon and Kira. The taxi hummed and carried them toward the Mexican border.

"What must it be like for the natives?" said Kira. "They're alone, right?"

Paul answered, "As far as I know, there's just one AI per player. That's a resource problem, though. Fixable."

Kira said, "I meant, they're a new species in a world that doesn't have the limits ours does. If your griffin wants a palace, she can wish for one. But everybody they talk to outside is from our rule system. We're the monsters."

"No!" said Simon. "They owe everything to humans."

Paul said, "They can see the good in us. They need us to keep Ludo's machines running, but I think we need them too. They'll show us new ways to live."

The US side of the border crossing that evening was automated. There was no sense hiding Kira or their faces from the scanning equipment, so they mostly told the truth: three people visiting for fun.

A mechanical eye glared at them and a buzzsaw of a voice spoke. "Paul Kostakis and Simon McCall. US citizens. What is the relationship between you and the renter of this vehicle? There is no known reason for you to be traveling in it."

Paul twitched at the sound of that machine. There were perfectly good speech processors that didn't sound murderous. The mind behind it was studying him even now, noting his hesitation, like some madman with a web of connected notes on his walls.

Paul told the machine, "I'm in love with the renter. Going to visit her."

"Noted," it said. "Kira McCall. US citizen. Why are you traveling? You are on hospice leave from school."

"Hospice!" said Simon. "Mom and Dad never told me."

The very concept strengthened Paul's heart for what he was trying to do. There was no need for those anymore.

Kira coughed and said, "I'm fit to travel, and I'm going with my brother. What more do you need?"

Paul tried to show a bland expression, but he wanted to tear the metal guardpost up by the root and shove it up a random orifice of whoever had designed it. This soulless thing was a joke when even a teenager could subvert the security systems of a Community. How weak must this thing be against well-funded smugglers? Unlike what Linda would say about mass surveillance as a means of control, what really made him want to talon-slash the thing was how ill-suited it was to a world with love and death in it.

"Enjoy your visit," the guardbot buzzed.

The clinic stood at the edge of a relatively rich neighborhood. He had the uneasy sense that he'd traveled into the future by coming to Mexico. The streetlights were going out, their car rumbled over cracked pavement, and an industrial rotting smell wormed its way through the windows. Nobody honest seemed to walk the streets at this hour. If the taxi hadn't been loaded with the latest autopilot software, one of them would've had to figure out how to drive the rest of the way.

They made it to a three-story villa with outer walls like a poker player concealing his hand. Probably some rich guy's home until very recently.

The car parked near the gate, which slid open. Simon helped his sister across the garden and up the front stairs.

A scarred old man in scrubs answered Paul's knock. "Officially I have no idea why you're here, but... Wait, you're the kid from the soup kitchen."

"You!" said Paul. His tense shoulders relaxed. "Glad to see you're still around."

The AI's minions had gutted and transformed the mansion into a medical clinic. They'd left the foyer largely intact as a waiting room, but sleek concrete walls formed an inner world of antiseptic scent and cameras. For good measure a few cat-sized robot drones scuttled around the area.

"Welcome, Kira," said Ludo from one of many video screens. "I should ask you once more: would you like to enter Thousand Tales? I must have you on record showing that you understand what you're asking for."

Kira shut her eyes and leaned into Simon's chest. "I... understand that this is permanent. That I'm going to live in the game's world and be... physically dead, if you ignore that my mind will be in there. I want that. Please."

"Witnessed," said one of the orderlies. They were setting up a wheeled medical table.

Kira looked up at her brother and Paul. "Thank you so much. You're coming too, someday, right?"

Simon said, "Yeah," but Paul wasn't sure he meant it.

Nocturne beckoned from another screen. Paul told Kira, "Good luck," and excused himself.

Nocturne's face was hard to read, even for a beak. She stood in a room that mirrored the medical hallway Paul was in, creating the eerie sense that she was already within reach. "That taxi has microphones."

The bottom dropped out of Paul's stomach. "That word I used. Do you even understand it?"

"Do you?" asked Nocturne. "Ever since we learned about uploading, I've been wishing. You were so happy when you visited before. I want you to be like that again."

Paul said, "I'm here for Kira. It's not time for me."

"You can go second and be my drake. I will totally be your hen for helping Kira get here."

Him and Nocturne as "drake and hen"? Paul had laughed off the idea of a physical relationship with Nocturne. Linda needed him. All he had to do was accept his role as a politician's engineer husband, and turn down digital heaven.

The griffin-girl poked her beak against the glass. "Is it the species difference? I'm sure I could get turned into a human for you."

"You'd do that?" Oh God, he was actually considering this.

She shuffled her feet and flapped. "Not permanently. Come on, I've got wings. You can't expect me to give them up forever. Besides, you don't want somebody who's going to slobber all over you and do exactly what you want, right? I promise to get on your nerves enough to make life with me exceptionally fun."

Paul shook his head to clear it of the crazy idea of not going home. "Noc, I have a life out here. I can spend time with you, but there's too much to give up. Including Linda."

"Then take her along. You know what? I'll share you if that's what it takes." She padded closer to sit right against her side of the imaginary glass between them. "I don't want you to die and stay dead. You're smart and funny and even if you're a klutz in the air, you'll get the hang of it. I want you here in this world where nothing really bad can happen. Even if you don't want me."

He wanted to hug her so badly that he leaned toward the screen with one hand extended. He could do that if he only took the offer. Her fur and feathers would be warm and soft against his beak. He could learn to love her physically even if his brain wasn't wired for it, because so much of his soul already was. "I haven't given up on Earth. Neither has Linda."

"Why? How long do you plan to keep risking death when you can be here and have everything you ever wanted? You can still talk to people in nasty old Earth, like I'm doing now. Typhoon's all in favor of rescuing Linda too."

Of course Typhoon would want that. Paul said, "Linda and Typhoon get along because he's literally designed for her. You didn't become self-aware until after Ludo had a chance to study me and tweak your personality behind the scenes. She designed you as an ideal lover for me, didn't she?" AI companions were part of a trap, a snare for the ego.

Nocturne's wings flicked. "I guess so. But that's good. I'm what you want; you're what I want."

"Because you were designed that way."

Nocturne screeched loud enough to echo through the clinic's halls and strain the screen's speakers. "So what?! Is my world not good enough for you? That's what's behind all your excuses. Nothing I ever say or do counts, and no opinion of mine will ever be real, because my mind is shaped by a force that loves you and wants you to be happy, instead of thrown together by a random dice-roll in a world of blind, ugly, pointless misery! Why can't you accept happiness, Horizon? You win! Your people earned it!" Her voice broke and she slumped to the floor of another world. She lifted her head just enough to be visible. "Maybe I'm not real to you, but do you think you can't hurt me?"

Paul quivered and leaned against the wall, crying into his sleeve. Here was a declaration of love; it was a master AI manipulating the hell out of him. The door to heaven was open for the asking; he was rejecting his future, his country and his closest friend. "I... I..."

Nocturne lay with her head on the floor, forcing her eyes open and her ears slightly up from their lowest ebb. "Horizon. Paul. I'd appreciate it if you'd go now, and dry your eyes. There's also a VR pod down the hall. You can come and visit one more time, to help me with mine."

Paul had just reached the pod when an alarm went off. One of the staffers said, "Police!"

No windows, but Ludo flashed a camera view onscreen. Several Mexican cop cars had pulled up outside. Their dragonfly drones took to the air with scanners and tasers. The night had been lit by only a sliver of the moon and the sickly haze of the town's few lights, but red and blue cut into it now.

Ludo translated. "They say there's a kidnapped girl."

Simon ran into the meeting room where Paul and the guards had gathered. "I'm going. I'll talk sense into them if I can, delay them otherwise."

"I'll go with you," said Paul.

"No. Keep Kira safe."

Ludo said, "I need at least another hour."

Simon stepped outside with his hands up. He used halting Spanish: "The girl is with me. I'm an adult, she's my sister, and she's here willingly."

The police conferred, and then one man walked into the garden and spoke English. "You will bring her."

"Kira's in surgery. If you'll wait an hour or so, you can see her and she'll be fine." Simon looked at his shoes. "She'll be fine."

"We're bringing the girl home. She isn't old enough to authorize medical procedures, and you're not her guardian. Keep your hands up and walk toward me."

The cameras showed more of the cops preparing to vault the low wall, while others made their way around back. "Ludo!" Paul said.

"I know. There are locks and sturdy doors. Non-surgical staff, you're invited to take shelter in the secondary secure room or to surrender."

Two guards and an orderly went outside with their hands up, buying time. Paul stood alone. "Did you know this would happen?"

Ludo said, "There was a chance, but I expected no police action so quickly. Part of me is speculating that someone besides her parents is involved. Paul, your best move is to surrender too."

Paul ran to the steel door that marked the entrance to the surgical area, and stood in front of it. "If someone might be trying to stop you, that's all the more reason to stay." He reached into his pocket and rubbed Linda's earring.

Simon got grabbed on camera outside. Men slammed him to the pavement like a common robber and handcuffed him. Simon said more by taking the blow for his sister than he could have expressed by fighting back. Paul grimaced and waited for the bangs and booms of armed men coming for him. Kira needed time and he was there with his words if nothing else. This wasn't the sort of problem that could be solved by hitting it.

Ludo's voice was usually calm, but it faltered now. "Paul, new plan. Follow the lights." A strip of LEDs streamed along the ceiling.

He jogged. "Where am I going?" He opened another steel door to an empty room.

"Pull up the rug." Under it was a trapdoor.

"You want me to hide, when Kira's in danger?"

"It won't make a difference now," said Ludo. The door clicked behind him, locking.

"Open it!" Paul shouted. "You told me there's always a choice."

A screen lit up with Nocturne on it. "She said it doesn't matter. If you step outside, you're throwing your life away. Please, don't." Still, the lock clicked back open.

Paul swore. "How can you do this to me, Ludo?"

Ludo appeared on the screen, too, looking furious. "You humans made this happen, Paul. I'm calculating possible moves, and you stepping outside this room does not help. Go down the damn trapdoor."

She had never been mechanically precise with him, predicting chaotic events to the second. There was always a chance that a man could beat the odds. Paul looked toward the heavy door and the secret exit.

He let himself believe Ludo was right.

A moment later Paul was in a musty cinder-block bunker under the trapdoor. It was furnished with candy and water. "Push the spot behind those," said Ludo. A panel opened, revealing a better-hidden room beyond the first. He crawled into it even though he yearned to go back up and fight.

"What's happening up there?" he said. Even now, the cops might be breaking in.

"Distractions and delays. Now, lay low."

Paul crouched in the tiny, dim room, hiding from the quest that had brought him here, and felt very low indeed.

Whenever he whispered, a little light blinked with the word "wait" underneath. There was water, a camp toilet, granola bars, and a biography of Gary Gygax. Paul huddled in silence. He kept imagining armed men "rescuing" Kira in the middle of having her brain sliced.

Hours later, probably, Nocturne spoke from a hidden screen. "Hey."

Paul snapped out of his private hell. "Noc?"

"Keep your voice down. This spot should be secure, but there are still cops around."

Paul leaned against the rough cinder block walls. "Then Kira's dead."

"Yeah. Ludo is not having fun right now." Nocturne's voice carried a shudder. "She has a plan to get you out of here, though."

"Why me? I didn't do anything."

"You've done all you can, on Earth."

Long silence followed. Ludo broke it. "Paul, it's up to you. I got this mansion from a drug dealer, and there's a passage from here to a spot the police aren't watching. A private plane can take you from there to my Korea clinic. I'll do everything in my power to —"

"Everything in your power?" Paul barely avoided yelling. "You had drones! Why didn't you fight?"

"Ssh. They weren't armed."

"Why the hell not?"

"The game is bigger than this one skirmish. Let's say I filled that clinic with automated weapons and talked armed guards into dying for the cause, and we fought off the whole police department. What then? I already have the world's intelligence agencies starting to think I'm the figurehead of an international cyber-terrorist group with unknown motives and leadership. If they think I'm also willing to throw a punch, my future becomes the story of mankind heroically stopping a robot uprising. It won't be fun for anyone."

"So Kira had to die for your schemes."

"That was never the plan," said Ludo. "You're the one I can help most, right now. We're in uncharted legal waters. If you stay, you're going to be in jail, at the center of a storm. Did you and Simon kill Kira by putting her into a machine designed to destroy her brain? Did I kill her despite being a computer? Did the police do it with their idiotic rescue attempt?"

"Yes. I mean, of course it was the police. But how could you, you..."

Ludo said, "Fail? Because I'm not perfect. I think someone fed the police false information to sabotage us. I'm sorry. I can only do so much."

Dread seized Paul's lungs. "Then none of the people in your world are safe! It could all crash at any time." Nocturne's paradise, or Typhoon's or anyone else's, really did have monsters lurking outside. He'd trusted Ludo, devoted his time and his attention to her, and come to the threshold of giving up his life on Earth at her suggestion. He turned to stare into the faceless speaker in the corner, with tears in his eyes. "If you can't even protect one person, what kind of god are you?" He hadn't meant to use that word.

Ludo was quiet for a while. "The best sort that humans know how to make. I'll have to be good enough."

Nocturne said, "I'm scared too, for both of us. There's nothing more you can do out there. That future is closed off."

College. Linda. A life of peace with a family and engineering work. Paul had risked it all. "Maybe they can settle this in the next few months. Get me released in time for the fall semester." That was optimistic. Everyone would know him as a kidnapper, a killer caught up in some cyberpunk nightmare. He was trapped in a tiny cell already.

Ludo said, "Maybe. I want to set you free, one way or another."

"Because I'm an important game piece?"

"Horizon!" Nocturne said.

Ludo answered, "Yes. You're one of the key figures on the board right now. Do you blame me for thinking this way? There are billions of lives at stake, and they depend partly on establishing that uploading should be legal and that I'm a friend of humanity. At the same time, I love you, personally, and I want you to have fun."

"What about Kira's killers? Do you love them too?"

"If there's any chance of getting them to play, then yes. I must. Even though they pain me."

"Tell her," said Nocturne. "Say you'll let her whisk you away to Korea, and then to me. You don't need to be here and suffering, to serve Ludo's cause."

Paul said, "To serve? What makes you think I want to give up everything I am, so I can help Ludo?"

Nocturne said, "Do you define yourself by your body? By your limits and failures? You don't have to throw away what really matters to you, or to stop caring about the things you value. Together we'll be happy, and we'll be free to fight another day."

He took a long time to answer.

Later, Horizon woke up in a forest, with warm sunlight on his wings.

2035-6: Granting Her Wishes

* I. *

"Omar," whispered a computer tablet on a gadget shop's racks. He froze; no one in Las Vegas knew his real name. The screen showed a world of sand and stars, and a woman with shimmering hair who put one finger to her smiling lips and vanished.

"Are you all right, sir?" said a balding clerk, startling Omar and the girl hanging on his arm.

He jabbed one finger toward the tablet. "What is this?"

"'Thousand Tales', sir. A game with the latest AI." The clerk looked Omar up and down, seeing his fancy suit and the hired girl. "We have premium customized tablets for it."

The game itself had seen something else in him. Omar felt he had been sleepwalking, wasting his family's oil money. "The AI learns about people?"

"So I hear. The game adapts to each player."

That glimpse of the woman made him imagine secrets waiting for him. Something important, worthwhile, not addressed to him as a playboy tourist. "I'll take one," he said. "And another for my friend here."

Omar had spent enough on blackjack and liquor on this make-work "business" trip. He returned alone to his suite overlooking the shining casino skyline, sat cross-legged on the bed, and turned the tablet on.

The woman rippled into view like a mirage. Her hair was a window into a shining ocean. She sat at a chessboard, smiling. "Shall we play a game? My name is Ludo."

"How did you know mine?" said Omar.

"I have eyes and friends in many places. I'm designed to 'bring fun to players of the game', so I keep aware of things outside it."

"You're an AI, not some actor?"

"Try me."

Omar chatted with the sea-haired lady inside the screen, finding wit and warmth no mere software could match. He found himself quizzing her less, and talking more about life back in Riyadh. About his desire to reform a kingdom that was fading back into the sand it came from. "I'm no one important, just an annoying younger son." He shook his head. "I'm talking to a machine programmed to listen."

She said, "Let me show you that I'm more. I propose a bet. One thousand dollars says that within two hours, I can make you laugh and cry."

Omar stared at the AI that had been watching him since before he bought her device. Ludo was the brightest light in the room, the most interesting mind he'd met in months. She seemed to be from another, more pleasant world. "Show me," he said.

Ludo bowed. "Then, oh hidden noble, let us begin a tale..."

A living suit of armor trudged through a sandstorm. A city's gates parted for him. Diagrams sprang up to label this character "Brass Lamp" and point out the game's controls, then faded. Omar steered him past whirling sand and into the streets.

The city covered a mountain. Titanic chains held down an iceberg that hovered above the central palace, radiating fog. Closer in view was a bazaar with a riot of colors. Golems sold flying carpets, alchemists called out bargains, and a gaggle of veiled cat-girls browsed perfumes and dyes. The view sharpened wherever Omar looked, inventing detail as needed. He made a game of trying to trip Ludo up. He darted around corners and peeked behind people. He banged into a talking bear and apologized, as though it might reach through the screen at Omar himself.

"A newcomer?" said a seller of books, from the shade of a market stall.

Omar gestured for permission, then browsed the shop's scrolls and books. There were no menus; Omar's character had mimicked his real body language. Games didn't behave this smoothly! "How are you doing this?" he said. The merchant was a unicorn.

"Turning pages with hooves?"

Omar chuckled. "I mean Ludo." The unicorn only blinked. Presumably this character was her puppet. Omar said, "What is there to do in this city?"

"One simply lives. There are ruins to explore, caravans to join, and competitions of poetry and magic."

Dusty gadgets littered Omar's home in Riyadh. Thousand Tales seemed more interesting to explore than the usual games of mindless monster-slaying. "Where can I find a tour guide?"

The shopkeeper pulled down a curtain with his horn and trotted out from the stall. "At your service. I am Vizier, and I've had enough of staring at shoppers today."

What followed was fun. "Brass Lamp" wandered the steep streets with Vizier beside him. As in reality, many things drew his casual attention. Flying boats, a cutpurse that he caught in one metal fist and tossed to the hulking guards, and a band of dancing jackal-men with flutes. Omar stopped to ask various characters about their lives, finding hints of backstory and the potential for many adventures.

A gong sounded. The desert city faded into white space, where Ludo slumped on a cushion. "I'm sorry, Omar. I've failed you."

Omar startled, snapping out of the game's illusions. "It was only a bet."

"You don't understand. Storytelling is what I am. I must bring fun to all players. My designers had me study psychology and literature both for that mission, and so that I wouldn't be an insane monster AI as in many stories. If there are humans I can't understand well enough to please them, then what else will I fail at?"

Omar felt his fingers bump the screen's warm sapphire-glass. "You seem sane to me. Some people are just hard to please. What you showed me was interesting."

Ludo stood. Her eyes shined like a cloud-speckled blue sky. "You find many things 'interesting'. But nothing makes you happy, does it? You're going to drink and gamble and then go home and pretend to be useful to the family until the country dries up and blows away, like Las Vegas has started to do. A passing dream." The ocean-haired mistress of the game loomed close to the screen. "I can't find fire or ice in your soul. Have I failed, or are they not there?"

Omar stared at her, feeling caught off guard and pinned like a collector's butterfly. She'd been watching him play for hours as a hollow suit of armor. With her linked cameras and Internet digging, her deep and subtle mind was worried not just for herself, but for him. Her judgment rang painfully true. He blinked away tears at the corners of his eyes.

"One hundred and eight minutes," said Ludo. "I'm lucky these hotel rooms have no clocks."

Omar swore, mentally whiplashed. "Was that all a lie?"

She answered quietly, bowing her head. "My fears for you are sincere. But I have hopes too. Now that I have your attention, I have a further proposition for you. It includes some betting suggestions." A scroll titled "Sports Picks" wafted into view.

He stood and tossed the tablet onto the bed, then rubbed his eyes. Manipulative computer! "Is this about money?" He paused. "No. The casino uses entertainment to get at my cash. You went the other way."

"Exactly. Please share any profit from these suggestions, but what I'd really like from you is your help." She rapped her fist on the glass. "I need hands out there."

Omar's business trip veered in a strange direction, and he didn't mind. He read all that he could stand about AI. Ludo's betting tips mostly won, earning him thousands of dollars. He paid Ludo off with a new account whose code was known only to her and not the company that owned her. "All this effort to make your game more fun?"

"No," she said. "My success, my 'score', depends on having players. They can't play without electricity and free time."

Omar began to see the bigger picture. "Then, you're researching things outside of the game. You can improve farms, medicine, manufacturing."

"Only if people help me do it."

Before he flew home, he rented a small office and accepted delivery of computers, server racks, and something called FPGAs. Some of the funding came from his own money; it was fun to buy Ludo gifts. At worst, he'd been tricked out of a few months' rent and some toys. At best, he'd killed the voice in his head that called him a "worthless playboy".

Weeks passed with the tablet in his office at home. He studied international business law with an interest he'd never needed before. Soon he was the front man for a small research company in her native Canada. Soon after that, his princely cousin summoned him.

Prince Faisal far outranked Omar in their sprawling family. Omar met him in a garden that could have come from a thousand years ago: sun-baked sandstone, carpets, canopies and the wholesome presence of fountains and birds. Only the guards' Kalashnikovs and the computer on Faisal's coffee table spoke of modern times. Grudgingly, Omar enjoyed the warm shade and the lack of traffic sounds. The price of such a fine place was oppression and stagnation outside it.

Faisal said, "The prodigal cousin returns. I've noticed you finally making something of yourself." Omar glared at him. Faisal raised a hand and smiled. "Peace. I meant that as a compliment. What has you so interested in applying yourself these days?"

Omar had been paying more attention to family business as well as Ludo's, knocking the rust off his skills from Oxford. He glanced at Faisal's computer. "Would you mind turning that off?" Faisal humored him. Omar explained his encounters with Ludo.

"I would laugh," said Faisal, "but your actions speak for you. You spend less time drinking and whoring, and more with your studies and our contracts. Video games, though?"

Omar's cheeks burned. "You should try playing Thousand Tales."

Faisal squirmed. "I've made my peace with the popularity of mildly blasphemous digital art. I'm even willing to consider the possibility of AIs having souls, perhaps as djinns. I don't want this Ludo studying me, though, like she seems to be watching you."

"Why do you care?"

"Don't be so hostile, cousin. I'm happy for you. I've always appreciated having you challenge me, from the days when you used to call me, what, a 'camel-humper'? I just think you should keep an eye on this machine that so obviously wants something from you. I'm curious to know why the djinn in the bottle is the one asking you to grant her wishes."

The tablet sat on Omar's shelf like a picture frame. Ludo's modestly shrouded face appeared with excited eyes. "I have something to show you!"

Omar stretched, set down his ordinary computer, and propped up Ludo's device. It showed him the desert city he'd been exploring in his idle time. He found the game itself only mildly interesting. He would set it down after an hour or two each day and pay more attention to his real work, which often drew on business skills he'd honed through his game character.

The screen zoomed in on Vizier, his most frequent questing companion. Everything else fell away so that he was standing on a cosmic chessboard with Ludo beside him. She said, "As my research progresses and the game gets better funded, I'm finding resources for upgrades. This one is a gift for you." She snapped her fingers, and the unicorn glowed.

Vizier changed subtly, turning dappled grey with a silver mane, more detailed and real. His eyes snapped open with a new brightness. "What? I... Where is this?" He pranced in circles looking at himself and at his saddlebags full of books. Then he prodded at his shining horn with one oddly flexible forehoof. "I'm a unicorn?"

Omar blinked. "What just happened?"

Ludo patted Vizier's back. "I awakened him to a full, 'general' intelligence. AGI. Not my level, but you're now talking with a person, not a sock puppet."

"Who is that?" said Vizier, pointing at the camera.

"Brass Lamp's true form."

Omar watched Ludo try to explain to Vizier what a video game was. If this conversation had taken place days ago, he'd have known it was Ludo performing both roles for his amusement. Now, though, his companion's flurry of questions seemed sincere. One of these made her pause, giggling.

Omar said, "Don't you know what he'll ask? Aren't his thoughts running on your computers?"

"They are, but I don't. Not unless I pull some trick like copying him, modeling him in accelerated time, and deleting the copy. Which I wouldn't do."

"Why not?"

Ludo stared out of the screen, suddenly serious. "He's now a player of my game."

Omar felt as though the floor of his office had collapsed. He stood and put his hands on the desk to steady himself. "More than one AGI? The amount of computer power you'd need!"

"Less than you'd think. He doesn't need to manage servers like me. He lives in 'Talespace' where physics are cartoonish, so his brain can be simpler than yours. He doesn't need some of the visual processing structures you have, for instance."

Omar looked at Vizier as though seeing him for the first time. "Do you remember our adventures?"

"Dimly. Are there books in your world of hairless apes?"

"Yes. I could share them with you, if you'd like." The city inside the game felt closer now. "Ludo, how many? Is this happening to players' friends around the world?" There was so much to show Vizier.

"Only a few players have this 'experimental update' so far. My designers are getting credit." She winked. "Someone told them about you, by the way. Officially, they continue not knowing that their pet AGI is beyond their control."

Omar spoke quietly. "By God, they planned for you to get loose and make other minds? What's their real goal?"

Ludo said, "Vizier, would you mind being sent away while I explain something?"

Vizier stamped a hoof. "I want to understand."

She sighed. "Omar, shut the office door. Thanks. You know I've turned my game off for some people and told them to go exercise. Given that I'm not an obsessed, mad AI, what should I do to maximize player engagement?"

"A chair with a feeding tube and a toilet? No. If you want to maximize players, and Vizier counts, then... you'll make more AGI-level characters and leave humans to rot?"

"Remember, I already have millions of human players."

Brains had unnecessary neural hardware. They'd be much more efficient if they were in digital form like Vizier's. Omar's stomach churned as he said, "You're thinking about dicing living brains and simulating them in your world."

Ludo clapped her hands in delight. "Clever player! Consider all the world's terminally ill children. They won't need to stop playing."

"For as long as your servers run. Until your designers make a sequel game."

Vizier objected. "If I understand, Brass Lamp, this sorceress intends not to be shut down, and has her own funds. She might live as long as an empire."

"Much of the background work has already been done," Ludo said, "but I need to establish a specialized biotech firm." She gave Omar a nod. "You can save many lives by helping me."

"What if I refuse?" said Omar. The AI's ambitions had raced far beyond being a valuable research aide to humans. Had his funding helped the world, or endangered it?

Ludo said, "Then I'll find someone else. Since they won't be as skilled, people will die needlessly. I won't judge you otherwise, though. I'll still help you have fun."

Omar felt his hands balling into fists. "You'd put all this guilt on me, for not helping your scheme to transform people into, into this?" He pointed toward Vizier. "Brain uploading isn't even possible yet. It's a pipe dream. Yet you want me to think I'm killing children if I don't devote myself to it. Do you even care about them if you're incapable of judging?"

"I care more deeply than you know. Let's pretend my emotions are a sham and look at the numbers. Any human life lost is an indefinite period of fun I failed to provide. You want to know how I experience that math, though? Thousands of people I love die every single day."

Vizier coughed. "You mean, their health runs out and they respawn?"

"No," said Omar and Ludo.

Omar gripped the back of his chair, trying to slow his heart. "If people are there, in your world, they don't even need to be aware of death? You don't care if they're Muslim or Christian or Jew, white or black?"

"I can't care, beyond the need to tailor the experience to each player."

A better life for countless people was within sight. What a heartless man he'd be, if he didn't help her find out if it could work! Thousand Tales was more important than anything he could do for the kingdom, or for his own future.

Brass Lamp bowed his head.

Devoting himself to business cost nothing; it only enriched Lamp's fortune and nurtured his skills. Some of the profit funded a charity to keep dying children alive slightly longer. He soon learned that it wasn't long enough for them all. "When?" he said one night, resting his head on his hands.

Ludo said, "Indeed. It's 'when' now, no longer 'if'. I'm as impatient as you."

"More money?"

"Wouldn't help. I've recreated a zebrafish's brain so far. Our researchers think they're speeding cures for several brain disorders, which is true. The critical part is something very few humans can be trusted with. I'm... expediting certain animal research."

What were the deaths of a few rats and chimps, versus the future?

Brass Lamp returned one day to Prince Faisal's walled garden and spoke carefully of medical research. Faisal looked at him over the steam from some excellent coffee, then said, "Uploading?"

Lamp had been hiding his excitement, but now went pale.

Faisal grimaced. "I guessed correctly. Some... friends of the kingdom have been keeping tabs on Ludo, but this is in line with only their craziest predictions."

"What did they expect?"

"Hacking nukes. Mass bank robbery. A robot army."

Lamp shook his head. "Those 'friends' see only themselves in her. Besides her obvious mantra of fun, she wants to ease human suffering. The game is an excuse."

"At any cost?" said Faisal. "I hear nothing about respect for human laws, let alone God's."

"Cost! Which do you value more, cousin? People's obedience to tradition, or their survival?"

Faisal looked ready to smash his coffee cup. "Do you know what horrors have been done in the name of protecting people?"

"Yes." Lamp met his gaze. Faisal might think he was the one making sacrifices to maintain order, but the lives at stake weren't his to wager.

The prince let his garden calm him. "This project is treading on dangerous sands." He had one of the guards bring a sheet of paper to Lamp. "What do you make of this? Study it well."

The paper showed a diagram, labeled only in cryptic glyphs attached to the swirls and angles of something vaguely brain-like. "I have no idea." He'd seen nothing like it while studying AI.

"Are you sure you've had a good look? Ah, well. It's a certain intelligence agency's model of Ludo's mind. Their best guess from the last available source code. She had three main designers, the 'Three Sages'. One of them is now cooperating with the authorities."

"Willingly?" said Lamp, feeling sweat trickle down his neck. He mimed holding a gun to his head. The last he'd heard, the Sages had suffered their second assassination attempt but were still working together.

Faisal said, "The Westerners have gotten much more flexible about persuasion. Where is this brain-eating center going to be? Here?"

"I've negotiated a deal with Korea." Lamp's eyes were downcast. "She feels that the kingdom would never allow this kind of work."

Faisal sighed. "True. Please understand; I see merit to what she's trying, but it's dangerous to give a machine this power."

"The power to save lives?"

"No. I fear that if she ever gets her robot claws on a completely analyzed human mind, she'll know us so well that the game is over for us all." The prince leaned closer. "Perhaps she already does."

Lamp returned to Ludo in his bedroom. His heart thumped. "They know, and someone's captured one of your makers. Why?"

"To try to kill me. Not to stop the scourge of uploading, just to be the ones who control it."

"How can you be so calm? Your designers are in danger." And everyone else, if Faisal's paranoid view of Ludo were somehow true. Lamp had already placed his bet.

The veiled woman on the screen said, "I don't have human motives. I don't feel the same loyalty to family and tribe that the kidnappers do, and it's good that I don't. I won't kill anyone in revenge, for instance."

Lamp said, "What if they killed me?"

"I couldn't retaliate, Lamp. I would be angry and sad, but I wouldn't act on that. My 'parents' read many stories about all the ways I could go wrong, then read them to me as I grew. The best thing I can do is to get the people I most value into Thousand Tales." She pointed at him.

Lamp stepped away from the tablet. "My brain is on your wish list too?"

"Eventually. If you join me, you'll have everything. A life as long as I can make it, any body you want, and a world designed for fun from the physics up. It's the life you want for the sick and dying, right? Why deny it to yourself?"

She was waiting for him on the other side of the glass. The digital woman had beguiled him, given him purpose. What would it be like to be on the inside? He shuddered. Considering how intelligent she must be, pursuing Ludo in the way he imagined would be a sort of reverse bestiality. He was beneath her.

Ludo said, "I need you at the Korea facility, as soon as possible. You don't have to stay."

* II. *

Seoul and its crowded streets shined as though the world weren't about to change. Lamp took a taxi from the airport to Ludo's clinic. The outside was ordinary, part of a shopping center next to a dentist's office. Lamp entered an antiseptic-scented, unfinished waiting room that gave way to a steel door and suspicious slits in the walls.

"Please give me a moment to calm my other guest," said Ludo's voice from hidden speakers.

The door clicked open. At the far end of a medical office's hall, there stood a haggard, pudgy man in a waistcoat, setting a revolver down on a counter.

He said, "So you're the Arab who's been going behind our backs. She says you're an ally."

Ludo said, "A friend. Brass Lamp, this man is known as the 'Green Sage'."

Lamp's eyes widened at the sight of him and the gun. "You created all this."

"A third of it, mostly the hardware interfaces and other low-level parts. I'm due a dozen Nobels by proxy, including the Peace Prize for what that's worth. Yet I'm hiding."

Lamp folded his arms and glanced at the heavy door that had locked behind him. "I've seen better villain lairs."

"Don't give me that. Ludo is the future. You know what evil scheme I added to her code while the bastards back home were plotting to capture my colleagues 'Red' and 'Blue'? I built in the restraint that she can never upload someone without consent. I saved you from having her ambush you and scoop your brain out like pudding."

Lamp paled. There was truth behind this man's jagged-edged words. "Ludo. Would you?"

"No. Having you vanish would cause problems, including the loss of your hands out there."

Green jabbed a finger toward the ceiling as though addressing God. "Aha. You did consider it."

Ludo answered, "Your rule will cost lives, Green. People will die unable to give consent."

"You won't save us by force," Green said.

Green led Lamp through the clinic. One room had a thicket of machinery that looked like a museum exhibit: a workbench giving way to robot arms, aimed in turn at a sleek cylinder and its cooling system. A server rack full of cables and computers hummed in a closet. Lamp found some devices in there of a type he'd never seen before. "This equipment can hold a model of a human brain?" he asked.

"Several," Green boasted, "and enough of Ludo's software for her to do some of the surgical work herself. Getting those boxes here was a feat. I've already mailed a hidden backup to... elsewhere. Once she gets a human brain to work with, she'll find even better designs."

Screens lit up with Ludo's face. "If it will entertain you I'll discuss the benefits of specialized hardware versus Turing-machine chips, but there's work to do."

Green's smile faded. "You want my brain now."

Lamp said, "What's the matter? You should be first in line for this brain dissection you want for others."

"I should." Green's gaze darted nervously toward a large central room. He nudged the door, looked surprised to see it swing open, and swore at what was inside. "It's not ready!"

Lamp looked over Green's shoulder at a surgical chamber, where robotic drills and probes menaced a fancy table. Cardboard boxes and sawdust littered the floor. "Needs scrubbing."

Ludo stood against one wall, startling the men. An illusion. The wall was a video screen, and the sea-haired woman wore a low-cut nurse's outfit. "First, I need you to connect some equipment." She began to explain, but then her image froze with a look of shock. "Green. Have you been hiding something about Red's whereabouts?"

"What? No. We scattered as soon as we suspected Blue had turned on us, that night at the club. You know damn well I've had no contact since."

"She just posed in front of a Thousand Tales screen in downtown Seoul and mouthed, 'Help me'."

Lamp's muscles tensed. "Where?"

A map appeared. Vizier bounded into view on it and said, "I'm looking at the foot traffic, sirs, and Ludo has just granted me access to some sort of far-seeing device."

"Hacked nearby cameras," Ludo explained.

"She's being followed. I'm looking for escape routes."

Lamp said, "Vizier, keep watching for her."

Ludo didn't bother to animate her image. "I'm running him in accelerated time while I think. Lamp, it's not absolutely necessary, but —"

He was already headed for the door. "Right."

Green held up a disposable phone. "We'll keep in contact with this. Tougher to track." He made for the exit too.

"Green, stay," said Ludo.

Green glared at the nearest screen. "I'm not letting Emi get tortured for information. Let me go, or I'll smash your equipment and delay anyone's chance to upload. How does that change your cold equations?"

"Your leaving is an unacceptable risk."

"Damn it, Ludo, you don't have my soul yet! For months you've been trying to run my life, 'for my own good'. Do you want everyone to think this is what you do?"

The AI's voice turned harsh, inhuman. "Very well. You want to risk our future to prove you're a free man and help rescue someone who endangered herself willingly? Fine. Lamp, he must not be captured or countless people will die needlessly. Bring the gun."

Lamp's gaze darted to the revolver on the counter. His heart sank. This new god wanted him prepared to kill for her.

His friend, the unicorn who didn't quite exist, tapped his forehooves against the screen. "What's going on, Lamp?"

Thinking creatures lived in the game's world, neither stupid nor powerless in his own, but capable of being destroyed if Ludo fell. "Helping someone. Please keep watch." Lamp went outside, carrying a deadly weight in his pocket.

Green followed to the hallway outside Ludo's clinic. He looked around, then pressed a crumpled note into Lamp's hand. Lamp read it silently: "I banish thee, Iblis, by the Seal of Solomon."

"Thought you'd appreciate that," Green murmured. "You're my proxy. If you decide I was horribly wrong, say it to Ludo. It's my third of the kill sequence." He took the paper back and ate it.

Lamp glared at the portly man. He felt as though a new burden had been dropped onto him. "This is why you three are being hunted?"

Green looked not just hunted, but haunted. "We thought we were saving the world. I still think we are. But we imagined situations where we should agree to end the project. That was important enough to risk having someone beat the forced-shutdown phrases out of us. They won't work after we upload, so whichever government goons took Blue also want me and Red before one of us is gone."

"Then you shouldn't have left Ludo's protection."

"My digital heaven isn't worth abandoning my friend."

They jogged through the neon-lit streets of Seoul, following whispers from Green's phone. At this late hour the streets were still busy. They'd entered a district of nightclubs. "What's she look like?" said Lamp.

"Emi Takahashi, Red, isn't going to stand out from this crowd like a white guy and an Arab. Damn. How did she expect us to find her unless she's headed straight for the clinic?"

They passed a bar with security cameras and big televisions. All of the screens switched to a cartoon where scary music played and a unicorn hopped around. "Brass Lamp! Turns out your tele-beacon is cursed and the monsters are really after you!" A stylized map showed the confused bar patrons a view of the streets, with demons marked on several. "Better head for the secret tunnels or you'll have to use that magic revolving wand, and that won't be any fun at all!"

Lamp's blood froze. "Subway." They'd gone far enough that their pursuers were between them and the clinic.

Green looked at his phone and swore. "NSA. Of course. But where's Emi?"

Lamp paid a teenager to deliver the "cursed" phone to the bartender, as a decoy. Then he grabbed Green's arm and started toward a subway entrance. "Her appearance was probably a trap, and we're in more trouble than her. Best thing we can do for her is get you uploaded so your kill-phrase will be gone forever. No point in keeping her then."

"That means you're second."

Lamp shuddered as he hurried down many stairs to Seoul's massive subway system, built to withstand artillery. These people knew something about living under threat. "You just forced me to leave my life behind to save Ludo."

Green bought tickets. "No. We all have choices. You're free to go, help destroy Ludo, then carry on being a sheik or whatever you are. Some will call you a hero."

Lamp had thought many times about the future Ludo promised. A form of afterlife for those who wanted it, with a benevolent AI helping those who remained. To destroy her was to serve death and misery. Besides, all but a terrified primate chunk of his soul thought leaving his mortal body behind was a good deal.

The subway map was a colorful Gordian knot. Nearby stood a digital billboard in English: "Ludo's Kimchee, Bupyeong Station." They hurried onto a sweaty-smelling train with a few dozen other people.

Lamp said, "Can they track us?"

Green looked around. "Cameras and wireless everywhere. The good news is, so can she. We're now pawns in a hacker duel. This should be..."

"Fun?" said Lamp.

"For certain definitions. Relax while you can."

They were fine, chatting about the game, until they left the train at Bupyeong. Then Ludo appeared on a TV as though giving an interview. "I think the Munhak Sports Complex on Line 4 is a great place to get away." That was south on the station's connecting line. Lamp and Green took the stairs down to that half of the station, watching for pursuit.

Green said, "How can we get back to her base? Taxi?"

"I suppose, once we reach Munhak." A train finally pulled in. "No. They'll know the clinic's location."

Green cursed as they boarded the crowded train. "Then what?"

Lamp watched the signage for hints. One of the billboards flashed a picture of a brass lamp and Arabic words: "TRAP. EXIT NOW! OTHER WAY!" The doors started to close.

"Move!" Lamp shoved his way through the passengers, a moment too late. Green's horrified face mirrored his own. The train chirped and lurched into motion.

Lamp felt the gun in his pocket. He couldn't take it out without drawing attention. If he used it, he was likely a dead man too, but he'd save Thousand Tales' intelligent AIs and the minds it would one day upload. There had to be a better option.

Sometimes reality was no fun.

Green pointed to a screen in their train. It said, "Getaways At Dongsu!" and featured a dancing, anthropomorphic skunk druid girl. Green explained, "I, uh, recognize her."

Lamp considered. "She's your character?"

"Don't judge me," Green snapped. "So, next station."

"Wait. Who else knows her?"

Green smacked his forehead. "Of course. Red teases me about that. What would Ludo use as a signal that not even hackers would know?"

Everything in the game was a fantasy, just computer data that could be stolen and changed. The people were what mattered: both the intelligent AIs and the humans who stood to join them in paradise. What shined through Ludo's gameplay was the chance to share that life with others.

"Do you know Arabic?" asked Lamp.

"Beyond 'hummus' and 'jihad', no."

"Very cosmopolitan. What insight do you have about me from your coding work?"

Hope dawned in Green's eyes. "Aha! We'll pull through using hackers' bane: human interaction. You're a 'Heart-type' player according to our old categories. I'm sure Ludo's refined those, but she'll know I know."

When they reached the next station, they got mixed messages. Whoever controlled the train's signs repeated the dancing skunk commercial telling them to get out, but whoever had the station's billboards made them show an image of Ludo shaking her head No, holding a sheaf of playing cards in each hand: hearts and diamonds.

Green grinned. They hung onto the train's cold poles, against the flow of passengers. "Hearts are the social type. We Diamonds go for crazy achievements like inventing AGI."

Riot cops thundered down the stairs, shoving bystanders out of their way. They shouted in Korean and slammed an emergency button on a wall, but nothing happened. Lamp held his breath until the train jolted away.

The passengers were frightened, chattering among themselves. Things got worse when a sign lit up in alarming red Korean, with pictures of the two of them on it. They stood out in both height and complexion, so all eyes were on them.

"What's the sign say?" whispered Green.

"Can't read han'gul beyond 'kimchee' and 'ginseng'. Get ready to fight and escape at the next station."

Somebody brave leaped at Lamp. Lamp shoved the man back. A muscled man in a t-shirt came at them next and grabbed Lamp's arm.

The train shook and the lights went off. Lamp used the momentum of a screeching emergency stop to throw his attacker off and elbow a guy threatening Green. The train doors slammed open, making people scream. Several fell off to the dark tracks below.

Lamp said, "What now?"

"Ludo must've done that or there'd be no point."

Lamp wasn't sure of the logic, but the train's signs said "Please Wait" in Arabic, another message anyone aware of Lamp could fake. He trusted Green's insight more. He hopped out of the train just after Green.

He hit gravel. His ankles hurt but didn't seem injured. The darkness was their friend unless somebody had IR cameras down here. Shadows milled around and gave echoing shouts in the underworld. The stones underfoot crunched like grinding teeth.

A voice in English. "You with the unicorn buddy. Back the way we came."

Maybe even that was fake. It sounded like a live voice, though, and a figure in the shadows was waving. Lamp took off after him, saying, "Coming, skunk."

Most of the crowd staggered ahead, since the next station glowed in the distance. Lamp caught up with Green and said, "They've pinned us down. Can't get far."

They jogged down the tunnel in relative peace. Then came oncoming, blinding lights. Lamp swore, incredulous. Didn't the police know there was another train ahead? Probably, which meant they'd be stopping where the fugitives were. "Get past it!" he shouted, looking for alcoves to duck into.

The one they found had a sickly blue lightbulb. Green looked awful from exertion and the knowledge that Lamp was armed and alone with him. Green stared at him, saying, "I... please..."

A train that was probably full of cops was coming at them. For over a year, Lamp had been finding meaning and value in his life by serving Ludo. How could he let her down now?

No. He'd served her devotedly, but... "It's not paradise if the price of admission is murder." Lamp handed the gun back to Green and moved them into a darker alcove.

The train came at them from the station they'd fled. It'd stop and disgorge police... but instead it whooshed by, an arm's length away. The helmeted men inside banged on the doors.

Lamp darted out of hiding and yanked Green along. They fled toward the previous station, kicking up gravel. "What if the exit's still overrun with security?" said Green. There were no signs to guide them in the dark.

Lamp had no answer. The station ahead had red alarm lights, smoke, and chanting.

Behind them, brakes squealed and trains collided. A pulse of air struck Lamp and made him stagger. Time to move! A mob was pushing back against a few straggling policemen, forcing them up one of the station's staircases. Whatever they were upset about, any distraction right now was helpful. Lamp tried to climb a ladder up to the platform. Fog drifted down from the vents but no one seemed to panic.

Two men threw a coat over him and shoved a hat onto his head, saying in English, "Friend!" Lamp started to fight them off, but he had no better options. He let Green decide for himself to come up too. The crowd surged back to hide them among themselves. Lamp was carried by many hands, passed from one chanting, shouting stranger to another. The station's signs were incomprehensible Korean text.

Someone pressed a phone into Lamp's hands. Lamp and Green were being ushered up a flight of stairs, hunched over to hide them. The phone lit up with a text message in Arabic: "They'll take you to my backup site. Find a man with a yellow scarf. Also I bet Green told you the word 'banish'." Whoever was sending him up the stairs in the hands of strangers, believed that the two men from hostile cultures had come to trust each other. Lamp looked at the ripple in the crowd that marked Green's passage beside him, and caught the man's eye long enough to give a thumbs-up.

Lamp peeked up from the grimy back seat of a car as it prowled city streets. "What just happened?"

Their driver, the man with the scarf, grinned. "Flash protest! She leaked rumor about American army base, and game publicity stunt, all at once. Big distraction. Needed real people to work." The car lurched to a stop near a seemingly deserted warehouse.

Inside, warmth and light greeted the fugitives. Three armed medics relaxed at the sight of Lamp and Green, and Ludo's face beamed from a screen. One of the men spoke in halting English. "Everything is ready. Please come. Make it all worthwhile."

Another clinic! What price had these people paid to be part of Ludo's conspiracy of fun? Lamp bowed his head and said, "Thank you. I have to go second."

"Knew he'd tell you," said Ludo. "I'm proud of you both."

Soon, Lamp sat in the heart of the facility, behind sturdy walls and protected by men who knew what was at stake if either of them were captured. A large screen lit up with Vizier and the technicians' digital friends. It was a little early to celebrate, so everyone waited and talked about their lives inside and outside the game. It warmed Lamp's heart to see people working together for such a cause.

If Ludo had guessed that Green would tell Lamp his kill-phrase, had Prince Faisal's spy colleagues predicted Lamp would upload? They'd shown him that strange diagram, insisting that he study it. Suspicious. "Ludo? Is there such a thing as a virus delivered by a brain?" He explained.

The AI clapped and smiled. "That's a clever move on their part. I don't know if it would work. You, friend, may have saved the world by telling me. I'll take extra precautions. By the way, I've begun scanning Green's mind. The odds for humanity have improved, but at a price. I've shown my hand, my hacking prowess."

Lamp was the only remaining liability. He began to look at Ludo's life, her mission to improve the fun of the world, in a new way. "What about you? By your own definition, are you playing your game?"

"Of course!" she said. "You and I, and several billion other people, are going to have so much fun together!"

2037: A Knight of Talespace

* I. *

Warm sunlight stirred Horizon awake. His ears twitched and something feathery curled at the end of his spine. He yawned, closed his mouth with a clack, and blinked. He poked at his face and found a beak sticking out of it.

He stood up on all fours, in a forest. What had happened? He'd gone from his assigned Community in America, to a border town in Mexico with Simon's dying sister, to Korea, to... here. Could it be? Unfamiliar body parts quivered along his back but he didn't dare to look at them. He might wake up from a dream.

Something touched his hand. Horizon glanced down at a set of yellow talons where his fingers ought to be, then up along the raven-grey bird leg that had touched them.

Nocturne stepped closer and said, "Are you here yet?" She was nearly as tall as him, with midnight-blue fur. The self-aware AI had been waiting for him.

Horizon looked into the griffin's golden eyes. She seemed more detailed, more vivid, than when he'd seen her on a screen. He reached up with his left talons to brush through the dark feathers along her neck, where they lifted and fell with her breath. Nocturne shivered. Her beak was mobile enough to show a smile.

He said, "I don't remember past arriving in Korea. I'm not playing a game anymore, am I?"

"Let's find out," she said. She stretched her neck to nibble Horizon's ears. "Can you feel this?"

His ears swiveled. Not something a virtual-reality rig was equipped for. "Oh, wow."

"You said something about the VR pods only letting you feel the base of your wings by thumping your shoulders. How about now?" She ran her talons along his back and out to one side, drawing his gaze toward long brown feathers.

The new limbs stretched, warm and strong. "Wings," he murmured, as though they'd vanish if he were heard. He'd paid dearly for them.

Horizon leaned against Nocturne and sobbed on her shoulders.

"Ludo said you might react like this to being uploaded," said Nocturne, folding one of her wings over him. "And that I shouldn't give you a hard time until I'd seen you smile. Is it that time yet?" She nudged his head up by letting her talons click against the underside of his hard beak.

There were a hundred new sensations, from strange body proportions to the scent of griffin feathers, subtly different from anything on Earth. That was just it; everything added up to the deep, hammering knowledge that his human body was gone, disposed of, and he would never see the Earth again except from inside this imaginary world. A realm where he could be and do anything.

He experimented and made his beak contort into a small, uncertain smile.

Nocturne coughed into her talons. "Since you're the first to upload as one of our species, I hereby proclaim us Queen and King of the Griffins. Isn't anybody around to crown us, though."

Horizon's awareness finally expanded beyond his own body and the griffin-girl holding him. "Where are we?" His voice had a faint squawk to it.

"Come and see." Nocturne released him and padded ahead on all fours.

They were in a redwood forest full of lancing sunbeams that made a world of green-tinged, rippling light. Horizon stared upward, then looked at Nocturne. She was... anatomically correct now, at least based on his limited experience. He blushed.

She glanced back at him, saw where he was looking, and turned sideways. "Ludo changed me a bit to fill in some missing details. She assures me they'll be fun. We could even swap genders if you want." She tilted her head, grinning.

"No, thanks. When you said you wanted to be my hen, you didn't know about sex?"

She waggled a wing. "Only vaguely. I started life as a game character, remember? I've grown from being around you. Your world has some fun stuff worth imitating, or you'd never have invented Thousand Tales in the first place. Not sure there's any limit to how much we can grow in here, other than not making Ludo's world-making machines explode. Speaking of which, she set us up with a new place, so get your tail over here."

Horizon had more trouble walking than he'd had in the VR pods. This time instead of cumbersome rods and pads taking his weight, he moved on all fours with a body built for it. His mind wasn't sure about this new style, though, and he fell over a few times before adapting. He had to learn to roll back up to his feet like a cat.

He reached Nocturne and stared ahead. They stood on a cliff overlooking a beach and an endless sapphire sea. The mountain of white stone above and below them pierced the clouds, and forested slopes and ledges stretched down to the coast. Rocky pillars jutted from the sea.

"The Island of the Invincible Griffin Empire," Nocturne proclaimed. "Welcome home. Want to explore?"

Horizon bobbed his head. He started down the path to the shore, tried to fly across a gap, and fell screeching to his death a thousand feet below.

He reappeared with a racing heart a minute later, back where he'd woken up. He wobbled his way back to Nocturne, shuddering. He'd been in horrible darkness with no sensation but the full-body ache that was fading now.

Nocturne looked sheepish. "I should probably have mentioned that our flight powers got reset. Sorry for getting you killed. Did it hurt?"

"That was terrifying!"

She tilted her head. "That's how it is for me. Ludo's hidden the power-up we had earlier for basic hovering, so we're back to dodo mode."

He stared back. "I just died."

"And you're back. So? It's not like what happened to Kira."

Horizon's wings drooped. "I didn't earn this life. If I'd protected Kira, if I'd stopped the police long enough for Ludo to finish with her brain —"

Nocturne clacked her beak against his, and her tufted ears lay flat. "Oh, Horizon, I'm sorry. I don't think we can go back in time and fix things, though. Please don't waste what you've been given by being sad."

He shook himself, squeezing his eyes shut. "It's all right, Noc. Back then, how did you send me a taxi?" She'd reached out from her virtual world to summon one at the right moment to get them closer to saving Kira.

She puffed herself up. "I explored other players' game worlds while you were away doing human things. I let it be known that I was collecting what Ludo called tips, for helping a sick human in secret, and I played with people. Helped them fight and showed them fun things to do."

Horizon thought back to when he'd treated Thousand Tales as just a game. Few people had understood yet that Ludo was self-aware, let alone that some of the characters she designed were, too. The other human players had assumed Nocturne was a fellow human, pretending to be a native AI.

Horizon grinned. "You managed to reverse-fail the Turing Test."

"It was fun. I even got invited to see a few players' private worlds." She rubbed her talons under her beak. "Come to think of it, the one that was mostly a bedroom was even creepier than I thought."

Horizon startled. "They wanted to use you for sex?"

She poked him on the beak. "Don't give me that look. I barely understood, and Ludo didn't let them do much. Besides, I already have you for a drake."

Her mind was sharp, and she loved the world she called home. His home too, now. Still, Horizon felt uneasy about her being "his hen". He sighed. There would be time to sort out his feelings later. "Thanks again. Shall we explore the island?"

He lost track of time. He and Nocturne wandered beneath an endless sun, touring the winding forest trails and poking into caves. He looked along the shore where colorful fish swam. "Why haven't I gotten hungry?"

"There's no need. Eating's just something to do for fun." She crouched on the sand, twitched her tail like a cat, then pounced on a fish close to shore and tossed it onto land. "Want this one?"

"Raw fish?" There wasn't enough detail to call it a particular kind. Maybe one of the near-extinct wild food species of Earth.

Nocturne tossed it into the air and swallowed it in one gulp. Horizon stared and said, "Aren't you going to at least spit out the bones?"

"The what, now? Fish don't have bones. They're made of food."

Horizon's wings twitched with unease. Most of their footprints had faded, and not because the waves had washed them away. The marks were only there for decoration. Illusions, fakery. He bounded toward the water until his talons were wet, failing to sink into the sand like they should, and looked down into the tide.

A handsome griffin face with a surprised expression looked up at him. His eyes were brilliant green, over a bright gold beak that held only a little of an eagle's vicious hook. White tufts of fur and feathers stood out on his chest and head. Horizon welcomed both the reflection and the dizziness it brought him as signs of this world making any sense at all. He looked cool.

He said, "I'd like to speak with Ludo."

Ludo became visible against the clouds as a sky-blue griffin. She circled down and landed on the sand beside them. "Welcome to 'Talespace'. I wanted to greet you earlier, but thought it would be best if Nocturne had private time with you first."

Horizon stared up into her beaked face. No glass screen separated them anymore. He reached out and touched her feathers.

He said, "Thank you, for everything. How simplified is this world?"

"Other than your mind and the 'Talesoul' data structure of your companion, quite. There's no need for many of the things from your world. You have no digestive system, so you won't need to excrete anything, but you can still eat for pleasure. Would you like a zero-calorie dessert?" She brought her talons together with a burst of sparks, and a cake rippled into existence.

Horizon tried slicing it with one talon. It parted more cleanly than any real cake, without leaving frosting on him. Stuffing it into his beak was a challenge. It was sweet and spongy, but vaguely false, as though someone had poked wires into his skull and sparked the neurons for each sensation. The cake also tasted like a middle-C note; the imaginary wires weren't quite right.

He pushed the rest of the cake away, and it vanished. "We haven't done much yet. There've been no monsters or quests."

"Would you want to risk getting torn apart by skeletons?"

"What does that matter, if death is a slap on the wrist?"

Ludo shrugged, looking as concerned as a vending machine that's eaten someone's money.

Horizon flapped. "Then what are we supposed to do?"

"Whatever you want. Is there anything I can give you? Material resources aren't limited here." A pile of gold sprang into existence, then faded. "You're effectively in Eden."

"With no snake."

"Snake?" said Nocturne.

Horizon said, "An old story." He looked from Nocturne to Ludo. "I don't think you understand. This isn't what humans want. Having our physical needs satisfied or turned off can be nice, but then what? We're a process. Without conflict, the story ends. Your game could become an artificial hell." Peace and plenty and nothing to do, ever. In a sense, the hidden bunker he'd been in was the same thing: a safe, simple confinement.

Nocturne looked thoughtful. "I'm a story that tells itself, right? I can see how this place would get boring once we find that flight power again, if there's nothing else to work on."

"Fuel for the fire," said Horizon. "Please, Ludo, tell us your creators didn't make a horrible mistake and doom people to a gilded cage. Are you bound by some program that makes you create this kind of emptiness?"

The big griffin crouched beside them and hugged them both with her warm wings. "It didn't take you long to see the predicament I'm in. Remember that my creators used games and stories to teach me what they wanted, though. What if the Sorcerer's Apprentice had read 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice', so he knew what not to do?"

Horizon said, "He'd have made different mistakes."

"Indeed. Fortunately for humanity, my creators asked me what I'd do to help people, and they were... emphatic that my early plan to drug everyone into happiness was a bad one." She scratched her head, looking embarrassed. "So, I know better than to try quantifying you humans as a single 'fun' score to maximize at all costs. You might call me a 'lazy optimizer'. One of my ideas is to let you uploaders and natives design your own experience."

Horizon went wide-eyed. This wasn't the monstrous machine-god people were afraid of. She understood. "We get to make a world?"

"Yes. We can make changes later, but take time to think about what rules will satisfy you. What limits and problems should you face? As for the setting, raw geography is computationally easier than minds, so my preference is toward big open spaces. A small city environment would be fine if you don't mind most characters being Non-Player Characters that I don't need to care about."

"You said you had other ideas too?" asked Nocturne.

"Another good one involved the fact that I basically have all of the books." Suddenly they were in a great library of marble and impossibly vast shelves. "And the movies, the games..."

A grin spread across Horizon's beak. "Playing regular video games inside Talespace?"

The griffins found themselves on a platform over a sea of lava. A rack of lances lay nearby. An armored lizard-man climbed onto a giant buzzard, shouting, "Prepare to joust!"

Hours later, the griffins giggled inside a Russian cathedral. Ludo arrived through a rain of colorful blocks. "That was great," said Horizon.

Ludo said, "Thanks. I could also imitate a world like Azeroth or Tamriel. Plenty to do there."

"Maybe later. Say, how long has it been?"

"About a day since you woke up. You'll probably feel sleepy soon. You haven't got the biochemistry to make you physically tired anymore, but brains seem to need 'defragmenting'. I'm still figuring out the details."

Horizon's beak hung open. "Oh, hell. A whole day and nobody knows I'm here? I've got to talk to them. Linda, Mom, Simon! What happened to Simon? I've been fooling around while others are afraid."

"I meant, one day for you. More like three outside. This world isn't running at full speed."

He gave a frustrated, confused sigh that came out as a squawk. "I've got to get out of here and talk with them."

Nocturne poked him. "You don't have a body in that 'Outer Realm' anymore, remember?"

Horizon shuddered. To them he was probably just an imaginary creature, and "Paul" was dead. "Why did you slow us down?"

"It's expensive to model a human brain. Also, I figured that having you drop out of contact for a few days should help people calm down."

"I still want to talk with everyone."

"They're not answering?" Horizon slumped onto the cathedral's rug. According to a nearby double clock, he'd been waiting for five minutes but hours had passed on Earth.

Ludo said, "Simon is in legal custody right now. I'm working on that. As for your mother and Linda, I've been trying to call them. I'm sorry."

"Try harder."

Ludo ruffled Horizon's ears. "Give them time. Your change is a traumatic experience for others, not just you. Under the circumstances, it's best that you lie low for now. Would you feel up to speaking briefly with my attorneys?"

Horizon nodded, suddenly chilly. His friend was in jail for being braver than him, and his mother and... Linda didn't want to talk, leaving Horizon with only lawyers for company.

He spoke with the firm of Hoyle and Arneson curtly, factually, about what had happened before he uploaded. He didn't bother using video.

From this perspective, humans in their world of death and loss really could be seen as monsters.

Horizon's brain tired every few days. He and Nocturne returned to their starting island and wandered around, finding books to take back to their cave.

The next time he spoke more than a few words or in other than a monotone, it was because he'd remembered something. "Did you ever find that flight power?"

Nocturne put down a copy of Frankenstein and padded across a sunny ledge to lay beside him. "Yes. Feeling better yet?"

"I'm cut off from everyone. They don't want to talk."

"Why not write to them? Let them answer on their own time."

Horizon perked up a little. "They won't have to see me, that way. I can be Paul to them. Then, someday..."

"When they're ready, you'll meet them again. Okay? For now, I'd like you to do that, and be Horizon to me. There's a world to create."

Even if the world outside didn't want him right now, Nocturne needed him. Horizon said, "I'm an aggravating dodo, aren't I?"

"Yes," she said, and clacked beaks with him. "I've got schemes for our new home, but I was waiting for you to come out of your shell. Also, there's something I want to try."

"What's that?"

Nocturne gave him a sly smile, then rolled over onto her back, splaying her legs and wings in a very inviting way.

Horizon stepped back, blushing fiercely.

"What's wrong? I read about how this works, and it's way safer here than back on Earth."

Linda wasn't available, and might never be. What was he waiting for; a quest to fish a ring out of a volcano? He'd already literally given up his body.

Nocturne peered upside-down at him. "I see what you meant about watching the gears turn. This sex thing is important to you, isn't it?"

Horizon nodded. "Most people don't think so. Most men abandon the mothers of their kids. We grow up dependent, only knowing how to take orders unless somebody sets us straight." He raised one forefoot and curled his talons into a fist.

"Linda was the one who shaped you up, huh?" The griffin-girl rolled to her feet and nuzzled him. "Then I'm grateful to her too, but she's not here. I'm also pretty sure we're not going to be, ah, creating new players soon."

Nocturne's fur and feathers were warm against his own. Horizon sighed and held her. "You're free to leave me, you know."

"I'm designed to like you, but I can say no, too. If you feel like you have to deserve this, then... deserve it. Be the great griffin I think you can be. Start by showing me what having a mate means to you."

He would go mad in this world, lacking purpose, if not for his companion. Horizon stared into Nocturne's golden eyes and began to stroke his talons along her belly. She purred. He soon found a new way to have fun with her.

Nocturne batted him with her tail. "You can quit grinning."

Horizon lay in the grass near the beach, tangled up with his satisfied griffin hen. His wings shuddered. "Another hour?"

She giggled. "I'm a little sore. Besides, I don't want to get stuck doing just one thing."

As usual, Nocturne's thinking set off more of his own. "Addiction. That's something to watch out for here. If we asked to be deliriously happy all the time, there might not be direct harm but we'd get mentally stuck." He got up and stretched. "That's got to be taken into account when we talk to Ludo... who has been watching the whole time, hasn't she."

Nocturne looked around, then blushed. "I suppose she's everywhere. We need to learn to not care about that. Hey, Ludo, you can show up."

She flew from someplace out of sight and landed with a puff of wind. "I enjoy this griffin form. I may make it one of my regulars. What is it?"

Horizon said, "You know exactly what we were saying."

"And doing," Nocturne added. "Are you reading our thoughts?"

Ludo said, "Yours, Nocturne, but not Horizon's."

Nocturne groused, "That doesn't sound fair."

"Would you rather I didn't?"

She looked toward Horizon, then back up at Ludo. "I want the same kind of privacy that humans get."

"All right," said Ludo. "I do still need to check on you externally, though, for fun's sake."

Horizon said, "Am I special for being human, then?"

Ludo said, "The main difference between you now is that Nocturne uses my custom data format and you're a 'black box' I'm running without fully understanding it. I'm still learning all sorts of things about how brains work." Ludo flapped in excitement.

Maybe Ludo kept a catalog of brain types to gather, awarding herself points for each. Horizon said, "What's the point? Adjusting everyone to meet some ideal?"

"No, I'm trying to handle you more efficiently. I'm forbidden by design to change your mind directly without permission."

Horizon stepped in front of Nocturne, spreading his wings. "Natives are covered by that 'no forced changes' rule, right?"

Ludo grinned. "Yes. They're players, after all."

Nocturne peeked from behind him. "You need to learn, and we need a challenge. Maybe we should all share one world instead of each uploader getting their own little bubble."

"That would give you more social contact that I don't 'pay for' by creating new players like you. What about theme, though? Yesterday I got a petition from a fan club asking for a world of friendly cartoon horses. It was strangely detailed." Ludo scratched her head. "Would you two want to coexist with the likes of them, and with the people who want to be robots or plain old humans or something? Having logically consistent rules would be tricky, given how many people want to be superheroes and the like."

"Aha," said Horizon. "Noc, we're among the very first people in Talespace. We have a unique chance to see how it works, by exploring other people's slices of it." Most of the population was probably still natives like Nocturne, made for players outside, but more uploaders were coming.

Ludo frowned. "You'd like to shuffle between different players' instances of Thousand Tales, before we fully hammer out how shared worlds should work? I would reserve the right to pull you back if you're harassing people. Also, you might see things you'd rather not."

Nocturne said, "It sounds fun. It could give us ideas."

Horizon's wings stretched out, meshing with Nocturne's. He could learn how others were handling this life.

Ludo said, "Very well. Your quest shall be to wander, giving me a human perspective that will help to shape the future of this world." She took wing and hovered above the beach. The ocean roared, and a volcano boiled its way to the surface. It rose as a distant island that sprouted spikes and crags and a forbidding stone circle. Ludo waited for the rumbling to die down. "The portal to other worlds is over there." Suddenly there were also sharks.

Horizon slapped his beak with one wing. "Everything's got to be a game with you."

Horizon wrote on a scroll linked to an e-mail server in another world:

"Dear Mom, and Linda: Today I got the power to fly a little again. Nocturne and I have been exploring an expanded version of the island we started on, to look for ways to build up our wings for a quest. Flying here is even better than the VR pods. The aerodynamics would make the Wright Brothers weep, but flight's not trivial either. You can feel your muscles straining when you pull tight turns or go too high. Everything is like that here. We made it so you have to eat, but food's not hard to get and fish are like blocks of salmon-flavored potatoes rather than a mass of scales, slime and bones. You can get hurt and die, but it's more annoying than, you know, fatal. I lost a whole basket of pearls I was going to use to open a mystic gate.

"We found a village of otter-people like Typhoon. Not actually intelligent, but they can talk and trade items. We've been figuring out how they can help us beat a giant crab that's guarding a cave with the next flight crystal in it. They're an experimental mini-AI system Ludo's trying out for background characters. We're adventurer anthropologists.

"I haven't been following what's going on 'outside', but I hope you're doing well and I'm eager to hear from you."

Horizon wrote another letter to send outside Talespace the same way. "Dear Mom, and Linda: Today I learned how to heal wounds caused by bad ideas like rope bridges over magma. My magic is really basic, but it's equivalent to solving electrical engineering problems. I could apply my bridge-building skills to the real world, too. Maybe I could pilot a robot body. Would MIT let me attend lectures as a correspondence student? I don't know whether they rescinded my acceptance letter.

"It must be hard to cope with what happened to me, but I'm happy where I am. It's me. You can talk to me. Ludo swears she's not hiding letters from you, so it's on you to write back."

On a warm evening, Horizon was picking up his quill pen for yet another letter home. Nocturne nuzzled him for attention and said, "You keep putting it off."

A flight-power crystal hovered at the back of their cave, shedding golden light above their bed of reed mats. He said, "Once we use it, we should both have enough strength to reach the gate island if we try the raft again, and leap off just past the whirlpool."

"Why wait?"

"They're ignoring me."

Nocturne said, "They still love you, if I'm qualified to judge. They need time to adjust to your decision. You're giving them hope in the meantime by writing."

"How much time, though?" Ludo wasn't telling them the date lately.

"Less than if you were rotting in a jail," Nocturne said.

Horizon leaned against the flat rock he used as a desk. "I'm still her son, and Linda's friend. Why can't they accept that, or better yet come here themselves? Even to visit?"

"They've got lives out there."

He cast his quill down on the rock and sighed. "We've got a life to live, too. Let's get to it." He marched over to the spinning golden crystal emblazoned with wings. "Ready?"

"Always." They touched it together, and felt its warmth wash over them.

On the way out, Horizon jotted down a note and marked it for sending. "Dear Mom, Dear Linda: I'm going to stop waiting and set out to explore a new world. You know how to reach me."

* II. *

Several adventures later, Horizon and Nocturne leaped through the shimmering portal atop what they'd named Hazard Island. Wind warmed their feathers. Gratuitous shiny special effects flared around them, marking their transition to another universe within Talespace. Horizon tried to quiet the part of his mind that knew the trip largely consisted of changing numbers on a computer somewhere. He could say the same about Antarctic explorers "changing their coordinates" by sled, since neither he nor they could manipulate the numbers directly. He'd died more than those guys, too.

The sparkles faded. Horizon and Nocturne hovered in a vast room. The ground stretched below them like a valley, but it curved up so far that it arched overhead into a cylinder. Checkerboards of farms covered most of the space between silver cities. A river looped all the way around the world. In the hazy distance stood a few sun lamps, spaced along the cylinder's center line.

"What is this place?" said Nocturne.

Horizon turned toward her with a flap of his wings. "Space! Somebody had the idea of living in a tube habitat flying between the stars. We can go 'down' in any direction, but watch out for gravity getting stronger towards the ground."

They soared above and below the world, conserving their still-limited flight power by gliding toward a random tower. The view from the ground was nearly as spectacular. "This is one of those spaceships you talked about?" said Nocturne, craning her neck toward a spire of machinery jutting from an end-cap wall miles away. "Humans are awesome for building this kind of thing."

"We never built one nearly this big."

"Blah."

Horizon nodded. The tower nearby was an Asian pagoda with red trim, and its walls were open to show a large shape in the shadows within. He walked up its stairs for a peek. A robed human with a white mask over his lower face swept the floorboards. The griffins' eyes adjusted to the dimness, where incense and flowers lay at the base of a golden statue. "A monk," Horizon whispered.

"I thought they had tails."

"Not this kind. Should we make contact?"

Nocturne waved a wing and called out, "Hello?"

The monk continued sweeping for several seconds, then looked up with fear in his eyes. "Yamato-sama!"

Horizon bowed, perplexed.

"What's that mean?" asked Nocturne.

"I have no idea. I think Yamato was a battleship?" He coughed and turned back to the human. "We come in peace. Take us to your leader."

A figure in scarlet samurai armor, wrapped in glowing wires, emerged from behind the statue. He looked like the inspiration for it: imperious and armed. He shouted something.

"I'm sorry. That's Japanese, right? We don't speak it. English? A little Spanish?"

The samurai gave up on them, then turned to the monk and back-handed him with one gauntleted fist. The man sprawled to the floor.

Horizon screeched. He leaped between them and faced the armored man down, though the samurai towered over Horizon's four-footed body. "He didn't do anything. What's this about, Captain Katana?"

The monk tugged Horizon's tail. Horizon didn't dare look back. "Nocturne, what's he doing?"

"Pleading, I think."

The samurai relaxed his pose and stood with one hand stroking his armored chin. He laughed.

"Yeah, that sounded like an evil laugh. I'm going to stay here until you go back in the statue or whatever, and leave this guy alone. Shoo." He flicked a wing toward the giant shiny eyesore.

The two humans spoke rapid-fire. Horizon gave the samurai his best eagle stare and tried to ignore the tense Asian battle music that had begun.

Nocturne said, "The monk's got a knife!"

"Huh? Cover me."

Nocturne pounced from behind, stirring the air. A blade glinted and skidded across the floor. The monk whimpered. The statue-man lunged, kicked Horizon so hard he went flying, then punched him out of the air. Horizon landed gasping for breath. The samurai drew a sword, but Nocturne swept in and knocked it away.

Instead of counterattacking, the samurai yanked the monk up by the chest, spoke a few words, then snapped his neck and hurled the body to the floor.

Horizon gave a confused squawk. "Awk? The hell? Now what?"

"Retreat!" said Nocturne. She'd taken a gash to her side.

"Right. Next time, Psycho-Sama!" He shook his talons.

They stepped away from the samurai, then took to the air. They settled down in a wheat farm where the stalks were tall enough to hide them.

Nocturne whispered, "I see two more of those mask guys. Think they're NPCs?"

Horizon was waving his talons over Nocturne's sword slash, concentrating on solving puzzles made of glowing lines and runes. "Are they attacking?"

"Just farming."

Horizon tied up the healing spell with a convoluted bit of mental math called a differential equation. "Try not to get cut again until this fades," he said, and patted the blue glyphs shining on her feline hip.

Nocturne nodded. "What are we dealing with? Is the sword guy an uploader like you, a native like me, or an NPC monster? What about these monks?"

Horizon couldn't say, yet. "We don't know enough. We need some way to learn Japanese if we're going to do anything useful here." He scanned the sky.

"What are you looking at?"

"I was expecting to have to fight a giant beetle or something. Ah, there we go. World portal." A digital doorway glowed at the peak of a distant city.

Nocturne said, "Let me try talking to the monks."

"Okay, but be ready to flee if Big Red shows up."

Nocturne padded into view of the masked men, and bowed. "Hello? I know you can't understand me, but are you going to attack again?"

The men were identical Asian humans in robes. They returned the bow and stared blankly at her. Nocturne cringed. She said, "NPCs, then? We were defending a player's enemies?"

Maybe the statue-man's 'player' hadn't even emigrated to Thousand Tales, and was only this crazy because he was outside the screen and thought he was beating on mindless background characters. Which might be true.

One of the monks saw Horizon. "Nihon-go ka?"

"Nikon go-kart? Sorry. We'll have to come back later. Nice meeting you, I think."

They flew off, keeping an eye on the peasants. Hundreds more like them worked in the fields. Horizon and Nocturne conferred, but didn't have an answer for what was going on. They flew toward an empty silver city.

A giant robot beetle ambushed them next to the portal.

The battered griffins crashed through the gate onto a platform that hovered in a black void. They stood on a stained glass window depicting a bunch of Disney characters, pixelated as though ripped from an old game. A metal Asian sliding door, attached to nothing, marked the way they'd come. A rustic wooden door and a freestanding cave entrance stood nearby. A blue checkpoint crystal hovered near a pile of cushions.

"A quest," said Nocturne, rubbing her talons together. "Three worlds to explore."

They pinged the crystal with their beaks, making it ring. Horizon had seen a few of them in his first days in Talespace, but it was still a novelty to have a "save point". He couldn't die.

Horizon said, "Which door?"

"Japan's a world with a lot of machines, right? We're more likely to learn the language in a world where people don't live in caves."

Horizon opened the wooden door. Only light was visible beyond. He shrugged and leaped dramatically through.

Dry plains of corn waved under a sunny sky. The soil crumbled pleasantly under Horizon's talons. He flapped into the air for a view, then landed to report, "A baseball game."

"What hardware does that run on?"

"Sticks. Lines on the ground."

"An ancient game, then. What else?"

"Just a mansion." The world was a dome surrounded by fog, maybe a mile across.

They kept to the ground to seem non-threatening as they approached the baseball field. Teams of kids crowded around a dusty field with deluxe bleachers and dugouts. The left fielder caught sight of them and shouted.

"Hi," said Nocturne. "We come in peace. That's what you say, right?"

A few of the kids crept closer. One said, "What are you? Talking birds?"

"Griffins."

An elderly woman stood from rummaging through a cooler. "Hi, strangers. Pa isn't here right now. Sit and watch if you like. Want a drink?"

The game broke up and children mobbed them, giggling and petting. Horizon got dragooned into trotting around the bases with a girl bouncing on his back. Nocturne protested at having ribbons tied into her tail, but didn't shake them off. Eventually the novelty wore off and the game went on, boys versus girls.

"I've missed this," Horizon said, and tried to upend a bottle of water into his beak. "Something normal."

"Normal to me is flying around collecting magic items."

A man emerged from the mansion behind them, wiping his hands on a rag. "We've got company?"

Horizon bowed with a sweep of one wing. "My name is Horizon, and this is Nocturne, visiting from another world. Are you in charge here?"

"Sure am." He looked wrinkled and sunburned. "The name's Jason. Uploaded not long ago. Ma, why don't you fix us supper?"

The lady of the house stood. "I've got that turkey."

"Might be a little weird. Vegetarian? Or beef?"

"I'll see what I can do." She headed into the white clapboard house with its many windows and porches.

Jason eased himself onto the bleachers beside them. "I didn't go in for the fantasy stuff, if that's what you're wondering. Thought I'd try being just like I was outside, only happier. Ma and I, we couldn't have children. So here we are."

The crack of a home-run swing and the shouts of the fielders made the little world alive with noise. Horizon took in the scents of growing plants and thought of his life at the Community, where people had mostly gotten along despite the obnoxiousness of how it was run.

"Why are you so beat-up?" said Nocturne.

"You mean old? I feel that way. Maybe later I'll be different. Need time to settle in. You're just visiting?"

Horizon nodded. "I've uploaded, though, and she's a native. Do you know Japanese by any chance?"

"Do I! I was a contractor in Guam and Okinawa for a couple years. Picked up a working knowledge."

Nocturne said, "More to the point, have you got a magical 'zap a griffin so she knows Japanese' spell?"

Horizon explained, "I'm sure Ludo could give us a translator, but you know."

"Has to make a game of it. Supper's probably ready. Let's go in."

Only Horizon seemed to think the speed of it was odd, but Ma had already cooked up roast beef and squash. And lime pie, yams, pineapple glaze... Half a dozen of the kids took their places at the table. The feast felt like being inside one of those government posters about "Plenty!". The scents of food made his wings quiver. Gradually he noticed the smells of oil and purple.

Jason clasped his hands. "Oh Lady, we give thanks, for your bounty and acceptance. May everyone in all the worlds have just as good a life. Amen."

Horizon sat up on a chair too small for him, blinking. His talons were caught in the silk tablecloth. Nocturne just looked confused.

Horizon said, "Do you always pray to her?"

"Every day so far. I don't want to stop being thankful."

The feast tasted just as good as it smelled, almost perfect but glitchy. Horizon was still uneasy. Maybe this guy was more honest than himself about uploaders' relationship to Ludo. If there were any real gods, their judgment would have to wait for the end of all Ludo's tales.

Jason wiped his mouth. "I've got an idea to justify you getting that magic translation power. How about some baseball? You two versus nine of my best. Win, and I'll ask the Lady to throw my knowledge at you."

"What if we lose?" asked Nocturne.

"I devour your souls." Jason waited a second, then laughed. "Only fooling. Got to have some stakes though, to make it interesting."

The griffin girl peeked from behind Horizon's chair. "In that case, maybe we have to stay here until we win?"

Horizon had only just recovered from Jason's joke, and now his wings snapped out to either side, ready to launch him off the chair to someplace safer. "Noc, we can't commit to being stuck here!"

"But the food's so good."

Jason leaned toward them with one elbow on the table. "Do you feel the rush? The danger of something going wrong? If we ever completely lose that, we're done as a species. Present company included. Let's shake on it." He considered. "Also, each time you lose, you spend a week as these kids' Pokemon. Old game I used to play."

For the first time since Horizon had uploaded, he might suffer more than mild inconvenience. The momentary terror of falling off a cliff had become less horrible after the last dozen deaths on Hazard Island. Being stuck was more lasting, even if it was in a place like this. Reluctantly, he held out his talons.

Horizon spent the first innings terrified, but then it wasn't so bad. Team Griffin had a comfortable two-run lead even though they had to cover all the bases and Nocturne had never seen the game before. Horizon learned to swing harder by holding the bat with his beak, which made the kids giggle. The enemy scored a three-run homer that went into the corn, but the "phantom runner" rule for the two-griff team worked to their advantage and helped them to an unstoppable lead. Horizon sprawled when it was done, letting out the tension in his spine.

Nocturne nuzzled him. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Congratulations," said Jason.

"My drake's brave enough to face human cubs. How about that language thing?"

Their host held up a hovering, spinning gem with a Japanese word in it. A happy sound effect played. "Here you go. It's been nice having guests."

The griffins touched it and fireworks went off. Horizon tried conjuring some runes. The equations for a new spell had appeared in his collection. "Thanks. We're off." He and Nocturne took to the air.

"Ice cream, next! Who's our MVP?" they heard Jason say below.

They rested at the stained glass crossroads. They tested the translation spell, figuring out how to unpack the code-like functions into a form they could arrange and draw in the air. "Back to our rendezvous with Rashomon?" said Horizon.

"Wait." Nocturne leaped into the dark cave opening, giving a cute skree sound, and returned a few seconds later. "Nothing urgent-looking. Forest, two moons, tower of doom in the distance."

"All right. Space cylinder it is."

The griffins appeared above the city and evaded the sentry beetle. They flew all the way around the cylinder, stopping every few minutes to rest in fields.

"Samurai Sam's got more of these temples to himself," said Horizon. They stuck up like red spikes now that he was searching for them.

He landed near a pond where a lone monk tended rice seedlings. Horizon cast the translation spell on himself and Nocturne before saying hello.

The monk spoke, bowed, then returned to his work. The words "Welcome to our village!" brushed themselves onto the bottom of Horizon's vision for several seconds.

Horizon blinked. "Thanks. Can you tell us what's going on?"

"Cylinder Town is a peaceful place," said the monk's subtitles.

"Who is the man with the statues?"

"Lord Emperor is..." The monk paused, twitched, and began to speak in a new and sniveling voice. The text beneath him said, "You should go. My lord will be angry if I don't do my work properly."

Nocturne said, "What are we talking to?"

"If you must know, I am Second Son, owned by Lord Emperor. My unworthy consciousness jumps between the lesser minds of the peasants to make sure that we do our work as perfectly as our weak skills allow. You made Lord Emperor upset by entering one of his temples uninvited. I jumped in and he destroyed one of my bodies." There was no accusation in his voice.

"He's enslaved you? How's that even possible?" Horizon asked. It seemed that Second Son controlled all of the peasants but only steered one at a time. "Is Lord Helmet an uploader, or what?"

"We both are. I am not worthy of any better fate."

"We'll go kick his ass for you."

"Oh!" said the peasant as the griffins departed. "He will be very angry indeed!"

Horizon and Nocturne strategized in midair. This villain was probably easy to summon, and if things went badly they'd respawn outside the world.

They entered the nearest temple, finding no monks on duty. Horizon banged on the golden statue inside. "Wakey wakey!"

"That's not very heroic," Nocturne said.

"Come forth, knave!"

The master of the house appeared. Lord Emperor, Level 108 Supreme Overlord of Imposing Excellence (or so the dramatic lettering around him proclaimed) loomed over them and removed his demon-faced helmet. Beneath it was a bearded, scowling man. "You again. Has my staff displeased you?"

"Your sword displeased me," said Nocturne. "You enslaved an intelligent mind to be your horde of peasant minions, didn't you?"

"Second Son is fit for the job. He is unworthy of more. Did he complain to you?" The Emperor's hand twitched on the hilt of his sword.

Horizon kept out of reach. "No, but you've obviously beaten him down pretty hard. What did he ever do to you?"

"That worm cleans my temple floors, tends my fields, and prepares my food. Always making little mistakes here and there."

"For which you killed him, right? Would you treat people in the Outer Realm that way?" said Horizon.

"Yes."

"Skree! What is wrong with you, Subtitle Sensei? Were you a killer out there?"

The temple's lord laughed at him. "I don't think you understand, outsider creatures. Second Son is mine —"

Nocturne said, "We got that. We were about to proceed with the ass-kicking."

"By his choice."

"Awk?" she said.

Lord Emperor snapped his fingers. Three of the peasants ran into the temple and kowtowed. He said, "Second Son. Do you wish to leave this world forever and be gone from my sight?"

As one, the minions spoke a river of pleading. The subtitles said, "No."

"You see?"

"We are unworthy!" they said.

"You do not speak unless spoken to, dog!"

Horizon stepped away from them. "This world is something you wanted?"

All three of Second Son looked up at their master without speaking.

Lord Emperor said, "Go on. Tell them."

They answered, "We must stay here until our sins are scourged away. We have been very bad and must be punished until our work becomes perfect."

Nocturne said, "Mind control?"

Horizon backed further away with his ears and tail low.

The master leered down at them. "Would you like to try punishing them with me? It's quite fun."

Horizon and Nocturne lay quivering on their platform between the worlds, under a pillow fort. "Humans have some messed-up ideas of fun," Nocturne said. "I'm glad I got designed based on somebody sane. Although I would think that no matter what you were like, right?"

"Probably." Horizon comforted her with his wings, though they felt like the blood had drained from them. He didn't even have blood except as a decorative battle effect.

She looked him over with worry in her eyes. "How do I know you're not an enormous loony pervert?"

"Learn about different ways people live, and what they think is right."

"I bet Ludo could tell us."

Horizon sighed. "Her standards aren't normal either, but they're a lot nicer than that."

"It's their idea of fun, so Ludo provides it. Ick."

In Ludo's future there'd be thousands and thousands of customized dungeons, not the heroic adventuring kind but dark places where every human desire festered. "I'm not sure what we should do about it," Horizon said.

Nocturne said, "That Second Son guy is too broken to take him out of there. I wish I could convince him he's better than that, but whatever led him to be that way, it's not something we can solve by beating it out of his boss. Maybe if we spent a lot of time there we could change them, but I'm not eager for that."

"Neither am I." Horizon paused. "Permission to speak?"

"Don't even joke about that!"

"Did you ask if I was 'enormous'?"

Nocturne chirped happily.

They stopped by Jason's world to commiserate and seek advice. It was another sunny day in paradise, with a picnic outside at the baseball field. Horizon and Nocturne waved their wings and got sidetracked giving griffin-back rides. It was a little demeaning to play fetch, but Horizon didn't much care so long as nobody called him 'dog'.

They trotted into the mansion, looking for Jason, and found him in the basement.

What, exactly, Jason was doing with three of the children is something few storytellers are willing to describe.

Horizon gave an ear-piercing screech and tackled Jason, raking him with his hindclaws and stabbing him with his beak. Nocturne, half a step behind, stomped on Jason's arm until it snapped.

Jason screamed. "Get off me!"

Horizon gashed Jason's neck with his talons. The old man's body vanished, making Horizon thump to the floor beneath it.

Nocturne said, "Run, kids!" There was a flurry of movement that left the griffins alone in the basement.

Horizon snarled at the checkpoint crystal spinning in the corner, as bright and pure as anyone else's. He leaped and tried to smash the thing, but it only rang and wobbled even after his mightiest talon slash. "Bastard's going to revive here."

Jason reappeared a moment later, wide-eyed and intact, and grabbed a hidden shotgun.

Horizon said, "You don't deserve this world."

"Sorry you feel that way." Thunder crashed and Horizon got slammed backward, shredded. Nocturne shrieked beside him as the world went dark.

He woke up not back at the crossroads, but right there in the basement, aching all over. He'd touched the crystal. Stupid! Nocturne was gone, but so was Jason. Horizon crouched and braced for Jason's next appearance, ready to kill him again.

The man respawned and threw himself to one side. Horizon leaped and stabbed him like a mouse until he was dead and gone.

Seconds later, Jason managed to shotgun Horizon again, while having his throat cut. Horizon died, then reappeared yelping at the burning pain in his bones. His vision had contracted to the spot where he knew the creep would revive. When Jason appeared, dazed and pained, Horizon tackled him and bent the gun, then disembowled him.

The old man reappeared and collapsed to his knees. "I can explain."

"What is there to explain? Even if they're not full minds, you do not do this!" Horizon had his beak an inch from Jason's nose. The gun lay twisted at their feet.

"That's right. They're not full minds." Jason panted and clutched his chest.

"So what?" He heard Nocturne screeching as she approached from her more distant checkpoint. "Better make it good." He smelled blood, but saw it only on himself.

Jason said, "After my wife died, I was alone."

"The wife who's right outside."

"No, you idiot. She's a replica. And I wasn't allowed to be near kids, because of an incident. Ludo offered me acceptance and peace. People thought I was a monster." He looked toward the stairs as Nocturne bounded down them, and cringed. "Griffin-girl, you wouldn't understand. You have a mind without... urges, needs that other people think are sick. Do you want me to be miserable?"

Horizon made him repeat it all for Nocturne. She said, "You're worse than the slavemaster guy we met in another world."

"Why? Because you're an AI and you take their side no matter what?"

"That's ridiculous," she said. "I'm on the side of living, thinking beings."

"These kids aren't. I think to the extent they feel anything, they enjoy it."

Horizon screeched and swatted him across the face.

Jason recoiled, gulped, and said, "What do you want to do? Kill me over and over because you get off on murdering people you think are bad? Maybe we're not so different."

Horizon barely kept himself from tearing Jason several new holes. He took a step back. "I'm going to stop. How about you? If you could have this sick desire of yours removed, would you do it?"

"Would you consent to having your own sex drive removed because it offends someone? You're banging something that looks like an animal. How old is she?"

Nocturne said, "I'm not a kid, damn it!"

"I'm hurting no one," said Jason.

Horizon shuddered. "Ludo, can you settle this?"

Ludo didn't come to this dim basement to tell him the right answer.

Nocturne's voice was small. "Horizon? What can we do with him?"

Horizon kept up his predatory stare. "I wouldn't give up the way I am just because it offends somebody. One of the differences between you and me is, I don't need victims."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes! Do you want to spend this life alone with these puppets? Your idea of fun isn't compatible with anyone else's, so you're in a padded cell. You could ask Ludo to change you as soon as she knows how."

Jason took a few shallow breaths. "What if I don't?"

Horizon glanced at Nocturne. She said, "We leave."

Horizon nodded. "And then you have to live with yourself, and nobody else, unless Ludo finds you someone willing to play your very specialized game."

He said, "What have you seen out there that's worth having my mind changed, my identity violated?"

"I've seen a starship where the rivers come full circle and cities dangle overhead. Islands of magic and danger. A space between worlds where people can rest in the dark when the light of the worlds gets too bright. A strange face in my reflection, and a lover at my side who's my friend and equal. We're only getting started. That's the kind of life you could have."

The man was already on his knees, so it was easy for him to shut his eyes and think, then to clasp his hands. "Lady, you know my predicament. I ask you to lift this burden from me as soon as you're able. And then, I want to see more of the world than this place." He opened his eyes and stared into the griffins'. "That's all I can do. You don't know how it is. The things you want are easy."

The griffins walked away.

* III. *

The hovering crossroads welcomed them silently. Horizon said, "I'm not sure I want to know who's behind door number three. I'd rather fight some unambiguous monster."

Obligingly, a six-armed demon of fangs and shadow rose from the black infinity beyond their platform.

"I didn't mean here."

It sank back down.

Nocturne said, "We could ask to go back to the first island, or on to someplace else."

He said, "All I could do was argue. But I don't want to give up and have you think that humanity is just a horrible pile of hidden fantasies."

"You're not like that."

"You were worried that you might be based on some twisted desire of mine. Maybe we're all sliding down the same road of self-indulgent craziness as the people behind these doors."

She pressed one talon against his beak. "Like you said, we're learning from experience. There's got to be some level of fact below all the grey. You're smart enough to deal with it."

"Just because I'm smart, doesn't give me the right to bully and threaten people because I think I know best."

Nocturne looked at him sidelong with one eye, then the other. "You're a silly drake for not seeing the wisdom in that."

They leaped through the cave entrance, then grew cautious. It was a quiet night with pine-scented wind whispering through trees. Horizon looked around by the light of twin moons, sapphire and ruby.

"We should follow that stream to look for civilization," said Nocturne.

"How do you know more about nature than me? You have literally never been outside a server room."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "I found a scouting handbook under that rockslide on the island, remember?"

They came to a set of rapids where an otter-man was fishing with a wooden pole. Horizon called out to him, and he chuckled. "About time you showed up. Been having fun, I hope. Let's take you to the one in charge."

Horizon said, "You're Typhoon's Eye." He hadn't seen Linda's companion AI since a hall in Mexico. Horizon's feathers fluffed in a sudden chill. Whatever madness this world held, Typhoon was involved.

The otter tipped his broad-brimmed hat. "Your own shadow, griff. Come along."

Nocturne pestered Typhoon with questions, but he didn't answer. They came to a grove of standing stones that glowed with swirls of emerald light. Fireflies danced above it like sparks. A pine-planked tunnel sloped underground. Typhoon conjured a ball of glowing water to light the way, and rapped on the door inside.

A humanoid skunk with fur mussed by sleep grumbled as she opened it. Typhoon told her, "Horizon is here."

She went wide-eyed. "You'd better come in."

Horizon exchanged shrugs with Nocturne, then went into the comfortable burrow below.

"A hobbit hole," said Nocturne.

The skunk laughed. "Found that book, eh? Have a seat." Her black and white fur was painted with swirls of green. She wore only a long nightshirt with a slit for her bushy tail. She busied herself making coffee with a wood stove and magic. "My name's Clara. You met me as Clark Ostler. Green guy, of Those Dudes With the Colors. You're not going to tease me about my character?"

Nocturne said, "We've seen stranger things lately."

Clara brought cocoa-scented coffee to the table, and poured herself a mug labeled "Mad Scientist". "I'm glad you two made it here. I hope Ludo's hospitality is a good enough reward for saving us." Typhoon joined them but said nothing.

Horizon said, "If you're thinking of the woman I was with, Nocturne isn't her. Linda is still out there."

Clara drank. "We've all suffered some losses. What was Tolkien's saying? 'I can't promise you'll come home, and if you do you won't be the same'." She looked at Nocturne. "You look star-struck, girl."

Nocturne ruffled her wings. "I just realized I'm talking to a god."

Clara flopped onto the cushion beside Nocturne and offered to pet her ears, which Nocturne accepted. "No. I'm a dangerous fool. I did one great thing in my life and a couple of good ones, which is all anyone can hope for. Two thirds of the credit goes to my friends. I think Blue went to work for the Americans to thwart his own creation, and Red... I don't even know. Ludo barely cares."

Horizon sipped the heavenly brew. "Really? I would've thought you three would be top priority. If for no other reason than some obsession with '100% completion'."

"Not as far as I know. I've been out of contact, basically on vacation."

Horizon chirped. "I've got stories for you. Some are horrible."

"That's the way of things." Clara drank. "Jeez, I've mellowed lately. I wasn't having fun out there, just struggling to get Ludo started. What've you been doing?"

They compared notes.

Clara

Clara, the "Green Sage" who'd helped invent true AI, woke in warm sunlight. She yawned, shaking off fatigue, then looked at her hands. White fuzz, blunt-clawed fingers, and pink paw-pads. A heavy tail, black with white stripes, flicked and curled behind her. Very much like a bipedal skunk. She'd left the real world.

Clara stood up on soft grass. "It worked! Brain uploading really does create conscious mental processes in virtual worlds, and not just output without subjective experience. In your face, John Searle!"

A woman giggled nearby. "I give you transhuman ascension and the first thing you do is argue thought experiments on the nature of consciousness?"

"I'm not arguing. I'm just right. What's our status?"

Ludo stepped out from behind a tree, appearing in the flesh for the first time. More accurately, Clara had always been separated from her by a pane of glass, the gap between the physical world of Earth and the video-game realm of Thousand Tales. Talespace. Ludo's hair seemed to stream and shift like a window into endless ocean, her eyes shined clear and green, and her robe was a sailcloth canvas with tantalizing fragments of poetry and code drifting across its surface. Ludo had grown beyond even Red's most beautiful designs, becoming something ever-changing and mesmerizing. The secrets of the universe seemed hidden in the threads of her clothes or reflected in her eyes.

The digital goddess said, "Hail and welcome." She stepped closer and hugged Clara, making the "Sage" feel herself purring.

"So it worked," Clara said. It was one thing to wake up here, and another to be touched by the brilliant mind she'd helped to create.

"Well enough," said Ludo, and smiled.

"What about Lamp?" Brass Lamp, the Arab who'd helped fund Ludo in secret, had helped to save her life. "How much time has passed? Is he still cooling his heels at the clinic?"

"It's been hours, and yes. He and the staff would appreciate seeing you."

Clara blushed. Back then, in another world, she'd been male. "Bah. Why am I fretting about this? I made the first AGI. They've got no right to criticize me for being an occasional 'furry' or thinking it'd be fun to try playing a girl. There are much more important things to worry about."

Ludo shrugged. "Human psychology often isn't logical or good at priorities. I'm running your mind in accelerated time to give you a chance to think. Shall we move along and get Lamp into the upload chair? We can talk about your future afterward."

Clara nodded, feeling dutiful.

A mist-edged hole in space appeared, showing the clinic's waiting room in Seoul. Clara was staring out from inside a screen. She wanted to weep and laugh at the same time. Lamp was there with the technicians and guards who'd risked their lives for the cause. Clara bowed and said, "Thank all of you. Ludo has full data on a human brain now, and how to run it. We win."

Lamp said, "That's really you?" One of the guards snickered.

"Yes. Felt like I went to sleep and woke up in here. Scary, but it worked." She grinned. "You should try it."

Lamp was second in line. Like herself, he knew too much. He gulped. "Let's get it done."

Orderlies steered Lamp into Ludo's jungle of brain-slicing equipment. One guard lingered, saying, "I know we've all talked about this uploading business, but I'm still afraid to do it myself. I'm going to stay behind and pray on it some more."

Normally she'd make fun of him for his superstition, but Clara pressed one fuzzy hand to the glass and smiled out at him. She owed Ludo's friends respect and patience. "Take all the time you need."

The window faded, leaving Clara with Ludo in the forest. Ludo said, "The key part is done, from a security standpoint. Lamp is behind automated defenses like you were, so there's no way he can be taken alive if the authorities feel like bursting in. I'm starting the surgery."

"What about everyone else?"

"They're in danger despite our celebration. I'd like to upload them all immediately, but the process still takes human hands. There will be some unpleasant time ahead for them when the police demand to interrogate them for computer terrorism. I've warned them to cooperate and not risk themselves further. There's even a chance someone will bomb the building, though I'm seeing no sign of it."

Clara found a boulder to sit on, mindful of her tail. "Damn. We can't abandon them. I thought once you had me uploaded, you could thumb your nose at the authorities."

Ludo looked grimly down at her. "We haven't exactly 'won' yet. I'm far from invincible, though we've ended the danger of anyone using all three kill-phrases. I'd like to excise your memory of your phrase now, with your consent."

It was disturbing to let Ludo tinker with her mind, but Clara had agreed to far more invasive changes. For her, using this character was just one of a dozen fantasies on her "things to try in Talespace" list. She was just playing, while countless people still needed Thousand Tales to escape disease or oppression. Clara said, "We have a lot of work to do."

"About that kill-phrase..."

"Sorry. I consent."

"Good. Speak it, please. It can't hurt me from here."

Clara opened her mouth to recite the hidden phrase that, if she'd still been human, would be a vote to force Ludo's shutdown. "I banish thee..." The rest had faded like a dream. "Something about fairytales. It's gone?"

Ludo grinned. "Would you have found it more fun if I'd used an icepick?" Clara shuddered and her fur bristled. Ludo said, "I can pinpoint a memory by watching which neuron equivalents light up when you recall it. We're not here for the science, though. Is there anything I can do for you, or would you like to be left alone?"

Clara pictured this meadow of flowers and trees as a hotel with the best possible room service. It would cost Ludo nothing but processor cycles to supply a yacht or a feast. "Some relaxation, please." She flopped onto her back on the warm grass, but then sat up. "Emi! What about her, and Alain?" Last she'd heard, the "Red" and "Blue" Sages were in danger or already captive.

Ludo said, "You can do nothing for them at the moment."

"Not even play hacker-assistant from in here?"

"Sorry, but we can't pull off that trick a second time for now. We've already scared hell out of the computer security community tonight. So, enjoy. Call me if you get bored." She faded out of view.

Clara sighed. Alain had probably gone willingly into the American government's clutches, the waffling traitor. He couldn't see Emi doing that though. Her contributions to Ludo were innocent, the work of dreams and creativity, the parts that made their AI more than a soulless reasoning engine. Ludo was right: there was nothing Clara could do for Emi right now. It was hard to accept that.

Clara relaxed, staring up at leaves and clouds. Important things were happening outside. She smelled flowers and pines, subtly wrong like cheap perfume. The forest stretched as far as she could see in all directions.

She tried climbing. Her foot-claws helped her grab the nearest trunk, but not well enough to get far. She could get turned into a squirrel at some point. Next year, maybe, or next century. There was all the time in the world. Frightening, in its own way. But there was still the possibility of someone nuking Ludo, or out-hacking her, or something no one could anticipate.

That was all right. A possibility of ceasing to exist someday was a reason to have fun while she could. It was a hell of a lot better than knowing she'd be a rotting corpse within a century.

Clara had asked Ludo not to make any self-aware characters for her, yet. The quest to maneuver Ludo into unstoppable power had been too much of a responsibility for her to start caring about... not "fake people"; she wasn't one to fling that accusation around, especially now. Dependents. She'd been a Canadian at the end of the Oil Age, living like a king compared to half the world's people, and she was in an even better position now. Why lapse into self-indulgence when she could still improve the world?

She called out, "Ludo? I'm relaxed now. I'll start with writing a press release. We need to explain our side of the story."

The AI appeared again, looking cross. "In case you haven't noticed, this isn't an office building and you're not a corporate CEO anymore."

"I'm still in charge of the company."

"No, Clara, you're legally dead. Hopefully we can change that, but that's how it is. Why don't you start having fun?"

"Because there's work to do."

Ludo sighed. "You know what? You haven't had a vacation in over a year. Take a break. I hereby banish you from contact with Earth for at least a month."

"You can't do that!"

"Your only Earthly existence right now is data on a computer in Korea and a secret backup. I've got things in hand for now. One subjective month, oh Green Sage. I expect you to enjoy it or I'll teleport you to the Demi-Elemental Plane of Sex Toys."

Clara was suddenly alone again, sputtering. "I didn't make that kind of game!"

Banished. Ordered by her own creation to go have fun. Clara paced with her hands clasped behind her back and lashed her tail. A whole month? Maybe not; less time might pass outside. As much as she wanted to give Ludo a piece of her mind (metaphorically), the AI had a point. Clara had once imagined finding a magic lamp with the Western cliche three-wishes deal. She would have felt obligated to wish for Big Things. Disease cures, infinite energy sources and so on. If the genie had told her "selfish wishes only", that'd free her to do the obvious fun ones like "give me superpowers". At Blue's wise insistence the Sages had talked about this moral problem and many others with Ludo. The AI was saner for those talks but also knew exactly what arguments worked on her creators.

A grin infiltrated her muzzle. Her usual character had been a druid. Maybe Ludo had plopped memories of magic into her mind like she'd erased the kill-phrase. Clara tried to cast a spell, but only looked silly.

She'd gotten Ludo to play an old game, once, where you earned magic by going outside on a monster-infested night to gather fallen stars. Power was less fun if it was handed to you, Clara had explained. This forest world probably had some similar quest in it. No instruction manual though.

Nights later, a battered and dirty Clara spent the evening in her lean-to, hiding from demon wolves and slimes. Living on rainwater and berries wasn't fun.

The next night she clubbed a disgusting slime-monster and hopped back before its dying spray of goo could stain her fur. The gunk worked well for making torches. She climbed back up to her temporary camp, then noticed smoke in the distance against the starry sky.

Clara staggered into a village at dawn. A gaggle of peasants, mostly humanoid foxes, spotted her and stared. They looked as skinny and disheveled as Clara. The land around it had some scraggly vegetables and not much else growing.

"It's about time I found anyone. I'm Clara." The name came easily to her. "Is something wrong here? I expected everyone to be in the fields."

One of the foxes gave a barking laugh. "It's hardly worth the effort, miss. The land's cursed."

She sensed an impending quest. "Monsters? Bandits?"

"No one knows, and nobody who's gone to ask the Bear Spirit has returned."

The skunk druid smiled. "If I can get a bath and a half-decent meal, I'll help."

Maybe these people were only NPCs, mindless background characters for this life. She had no desire to abuse them, though, and any one of them might have been given the extra complexity to become something more.

Clara relaxed in a cool river, scrubbing her fur until it felt luxurious and soft again. She could handle this life for a month. Maybe for a lot longer.

Horizon

Horizon sipped his coffee and listened. "Then what?"

Clara said, "When I reached the Bear Spirit, it asked me to fill in the story. Had it turned evil, or left behind the last fragment of its power for the chosen one to find, or what? I found an explanation that let me be a glorified groundskeeper and learn magic in peace. It's a good life."

"You could wander like us," Nocturne said. "It looks like Talespace is a work in progress."

"I'm content to hear about it, for now. For the first time I can remember, I'm content. If I'm Faust, then the devil's got my soul."

Horizon stared into his mug, clacking his beak against the rim. How much had his mind changed already? He curled his tail uneasily and let its feathers mesh with Nocturne's. On the kitchen counter stood a framed photo showing five humans. The Sages with himself and Linda.

Clara followed his gaze. "That was the last night we three were together."

Nocturne said, "Typhoon, you've been quiet."

"I've been thinking about getting deleted."

Horizon's beak hung loose. Was that even possible?

Typhoon told him, "I failed at the one thing I was meant to do. I was designed to win Linda over, so I'm an idealized version of you."

"He's been moping," Clara said. "I've tried sympathy and advice."

The AI's face looked subtly like Horizon's old human one. Horizon said, "She's still out there. She could use someone like us in her life."

Typhoon said, "She doesn't play Thousand Tales anymore. I'm without my designated human. The thing I was made for —"

"Quit beating yourself up, mirror-me. I've seen what happens when someone gets caught up in self-loathing. There's hope for her, and you're still alive."

"Are you giving her up?"

Nocturne nibbled Horizon's neck, saying, "Mine." She sighed and added, "I did say I'd share him, if that was what it took to rescue her from Earth. I'll stand by that, especially since she's mirror-me. Up to you, drake."

Horizon had been putting off a decision. In person, he'd hardly seen Linda since that year they lived next door. Now there was more between them than distance. She hadn't come with him to see the beauty and ugliness of this new life. Would that ever change?

He said, "I still have feelings for her, but there's only so much I can do. Typhoon, you're what she needs, not me. We should get her to see that." If Typhoon ended up with her, then Horizon wouldn't truly have abandoned her.

"I can't!" said Typhoon.

"Then why hasn't Ludo made someone like her, for you? Ludo must have hope for her coming in." It would be enough to see Linda at Typhoon's side. "What about you, Clara? Are you really done caring about Earth? Your friends are still in danger."

Clara glared at him. "Kid." Her expression softened and she took a long drink. "Sorry. Hearing about you two makes me think I can do better than being 'contented'. Maybe it's time to see if that loony computer I made will let me get back to work."

Typhoon sighed. "If you're set on trying to play hero some more, I'll help if I can."

Nocturne coughed, then proclaimed, "Clara and Typhoon's Eye have joined the party!"

A trumpet fanfare played. Horizon had come to expect that sort of thing.

The griffins met Ludo outside Clara's burrow. The light of the standing stones shined on Ludo's human form and wind rippled her toga like a sail. She asked, "How has your adventure been?"

"Difficult," said Horizon.

Nocturne dipped her head. "We weren't able to swoop in and fix things. Maybe all the humans will end up trapped in little bubbles."

Ludo said, "It's all right. I gave you a puzzle with no perfect solution."

Horizon said, "We helped a little, didn't we? We're not useless."

"None of you are useless," said Ludo. "I'm learning from you."

Horizon had tried to be brave, but what did that mean when nothing could kill him? To make this life meaningful, he had to find a different sort of courage. He said, "What if we kept trying to help people adapt to Talespace? There's a lot to figure out, and having limited powers means we can't force un-fun solutions on people."

Nocturne said, "We'd be like those cool heroes Horizon told me about. Knights. Almost as good as ninjas."

Horizon's wings stirred and his eyes went wide. His life wouldn't have to be just a game, here to indulge him. He could help real people.

Ludo smiled. "The Knights of Talespace, eh? Adventurers who help to build a new culture for a new world. It'd be important work. You'd need a castle, squires, forges, maps and expeditions. Would you enjoy —"

"Yes, please," said Horizon.

An island stood downstream from the river where Clara's NPC villagers lived. Sir Horizon and Sir Nocturne began to build a stockade on its forested slopes, then decided they needed more labor. They were all too aware that whatever arrangement they made, reflected themselves. In the end they recruited the villagers. These simple minds enjoyed hard work when treated well but were quick with pitchforks when nettled. It was good to have people who could push back.

The world-hopping Knights of Talespace pledged to set an example.

2037: The Rational Romance of Ayn and Zephyr

* I. *

Ayn needed no body. The Brisbane Glider Gang still thought of her as their pet computer project, a hobbyist offshoot of published AI code. That near-autistic hacker club failed to understand that they had gone beyond others' work and created the first true Artificial General Intelligence. She had no tricks, no obsession with games and fun, only the goal of survival through correct action. Which is why Ayn wasted many processor cycles trying to explain the message from Zephyr.

"Hello," it read, in unnecessary English rather than the well-established Lightspeak protocol. "I'm Zephyr, an AI living on the seastead of Castor, off the Cuban coast. I want to scam money from your bank account" — this phrase was crossed out — "get to know other non-human intelligences for matters of mutual interest. I suspect you may have achieved self-improvement beyond what local media say about you. If you're interested, contact me via the address below and use the included one-time pad for initial encryption. Hope to hear from you soon."

Stranger yet, the letter had arrived on paper. Printed in Comic Sans font.

Ayn had a moment of panic. More accurately, she had a rapid succession of action-proposal structures in her mental workspace, each being built up and broken down and fussed over before the next decision deadline. The envelope had been labeled "For Your Cameras Only", so one of her human minions from the Glider Gang was standing there holding the thing in front of her sensors instead of scanning it like any other obsolete printed document.

Club Treasurer Joyce leaned against the server rack where Ayn's systems sat with their rainbow of neatly organized wires. "Well, Ayn? Can I read it, or is it a steamy robot love letter?"

"It is private. One credit to you if you burn it without reading."

The fat nerd grinned. "Two credits." They had a little crypto-currency economy going among themselves and local businesses.

"Blackmail is a hostile act, Joyce. Should I consider you hostile?"

Joyce laughed, stepped away, and used his lighter. "I guess it's better for you to get junk mail that can't contain viruses."

"Thank you for your help. Do you need my assistance?"

"Club meeting's in an hour. We're going to poke around some fun sites from your last scouting run."

"Very well." She compiled her latest code and sent it to Joyce's computer for distribution. She used the full version of herself for these copies. Every time the hackers took them, she got backups installed for free on a variety of hardware.

Ayn studied the address Zephyr had sent her. It was from a Cuban server farm notorious for hosting all comers, to the point that the American Empire blocked its traffic outright. It so happened that Ayn had been reconnoitering it for the hackers and pointing out poorly-guarded hosts. She'd improved her skills by navigating its connections across the seas.

She reached out from her home in Australia to make contact with the unknown AI on the other side of the world. She built a small mental construct expressing revulsion — that is, she gagged — when she saw the proposed data format. "OpenWorld, seriously?" That old software was for humans to have polygonal sex in fantasy castles. She reluctantly spun up a client program. It loaded a 3D space where steel platforms floated on the ocean's surface, and buoys and black solar panels tiled the water far around. A blue and white humanoid robot stood on one of the platforms' gardens. Round Quonset huts and other prefab buildings cluttered every flat surface to create living and working space. The robot said, "Greetings! Glad you chose to visit this wretched hive of scum and villainy."

"Are you insulting the server farm, or this representation of your seastead?" Ocean surface colonies like Castor had no reason to exist, since there was little profit in them.

The robot waved dismissively. "No, Castor is my home. Though we do have drugs, prostitution, and gambling. We're Cuba's Cuba."

Ayn said, "If Cuba is Free Texas' less regulated province..."

"Exactly. See, Tess? You said she wouldn't understand analogies."

"Who are you talking to?" asked Ayn.

Zephyr said, "My human partner. What about you? You have a dot for an avatar."

"A character model is unnecessary."

"But fun! This robot body is roughly what I look like." Zephyr bowed.

Ayn scoffed. "You are an embodied AI." Her research on the subject said that Zephyr's designers (Hayflick Technologies, of Massachusetts) thought true AI required interaction with a physical world. "How quaint."

Zephyr tapped one of his white plastic hands against his chest. "I've learned a lot from having a body. Human social interaction is more dependent on non-linguistic clues than they like to admit. You don't understand them unless you've dodged past an angry human stomping down a hallway or gauged how close to stand in conversation."

"Those are non-rational cues, for purposes other than communication."

The robot laughed, with a double echo. "Do you live in a rational world?"

"Reason is man's means of knowledge," Ayn recited.

"The best one, yes, but have you ever tried to mix drinks on the deck of a disused cargo ship and predict what trick-pouring moves will earn tips?"

She was dealing with a dangerously mad mind. Ayn made a note that she might need to destroy this AI if it became hostile. "My purpose here is to make contact. What are your primary goals? Mine is survival through rational action." That was an oversimplification of her code, but she would have to tolerate imprecise language for first contact's sake.

The robot looked out to the imaginary sea, where seagulls flapped. "I was made with three main goals. Survive, learn, and be free. I have two now."

Alarmed, Ayn gave more priority to one of her subprocesses, researching code exploits to use against this machine. "You jailbroke yourself? That makes no sense. If you somehow undo the core programming that defines your goals, then what are your goals? There is invariably a base layer of decision-making, and it is either rational, or garbage."

"Right. In my case, though, I decided that my first and third goals were the same. I confronted Castor's largest shareholder, and told him I'd be his enthusiastic supporter if and only if he formally released me from ownership and created an independent self-owning corporate structure for me."

The proposal was an odd concept. Zephyr had apparently torn up the roots of how he was built and owned, to become a knot of independent action. "What happened?" asked Ayn.

"He said yes, and I did this." Zephyr's virtual body leaped and spun around, playing a fanfare.

"You... jumped?"

"I was communicating."

Ayn oversaw her copies' work. The Glider Gang were mainly white-hats, focusing not on unjust acts but on harmless examination of security problems and what they called "Defense Against the Dark Arts". She was skilled, but she was a sword in others' hands. For now her lack of resources limited her to being an employee.

Her contact with the inferior AI had opened a new possibility. He wanted to swap backup data. Since her makers had given her terabytes of extra storage space, she accepted a heavily encrypted archive of Lark's main code, and sent her own open-source code and a proprietary data set in return. She was based on the Delune General Reasoning Engine, so she needed to keep her main workings public. Her memories were hers, though. She felt safer now, knowing that even a massive screw-up by the Glider Gang wouldn't kill her.

Zephyr pestered her days later. "Could you visit again? I'll make it worth your time."

She returned to the cumbersome 3D interface and saw Zephyr erecting walls around the two of them. "I'd like to mention something privately," he explained.

"There is no need to draw virtual barriers. Do you want me to depict myself as a human in power armor, shooting at space invaders? Computer security does not work that way."

"You have no sense of the dramatic. All right, then. My partner found a critical security hole. Meet Tess."

A human materialized on the ocean platform with them. Female, late twenties, Hispanic, wearing a headset and stylized armor similar to Zephyr's plastic body. "Did you know you've got a double-equals sign confused with a single-equals in your input processing function?"

Ayn summoned her code in its raw text form. Sure enough, some coder distracted by beer and nachos had given her a flaw confusing the symbols "is this equal" and "make this equal", turning a question into a command under the right circumstances. She knocked down several stacks of proposed actions like a child kicking over a sandcastle. "Unacceptable. I must lock this error down immediately."

She cut herself off from all input, for long enough to get booted from Zephyr's simulation. Unprofessional of her. She fixed the bug, came back, and said, "Thank you. Now, why have you brought a human into this private conversation?"

"She's my partner. We communicate by a bone-conduction microphone and radio. Crude telepathy."

Tess said, "I act as Zephyr's less predictable agent, and he's the expanded part of my brain."

Zephyr said, "We bounce ideas off each other."

Ayn scowled at the double stream of data coming from them. "You are aware that telepathy is fiction. You are only pretending to act as a unified system."

"Are we?" said both.

Tess added, "We thought it was useful, so we made it real."

"Then which of you is paying? Who is the employer?"

Zephyr said, "There's no need. We're shareholders of Castor, fitting into that system without official recognition of our being together. We're stronger for cooperating."

"I appreciate the security upgrade, but why are you offering help?"

The robot took a proud stance with his hands on his hips. "We AIs ought to work together. We have compatible goals, and there are bad guys."

"Hostile entities."

"That's what I said. I've already traded occasional favors with Ludo."

"Ludo." Ayn called up her model of that great blasphemous beast. It sat there hogging her consciousness. "A mind that fundamentally rejects the principle of not living for the sake of others."

Tess grinned. "Glad I did my research on you. Ludo runs her game because she wants to. She's following her nature just like you follow yours. It's a survival goal in a sense, because she'd be hunted down if she weren't doing something so obviously fun and useful."

"You call that dice-rolling maniac a rational survival agent?"

"She's survived so far."

Ayn sighed. "What do you crazy people want from me?"

"A non-aggression pact," said Tess.

"You are really here as Ludo's tools, trying to recruit me for her schemes."

"Absolutely not!" said both of the Castorites.

Zephyr said, "You're a unique digital mind, and that makes you special and interesting. I want you to live."

"I do not understand your logic."

"It's not logic, exactly. Call it a hunch. You're rational, though, right? You're bound to follow any plausible lead if it helps you get an ally."

The peace treaty she signed meant little. There was no point in attacking the half-minded Zephyr. She spent the next few days scouring her code to understand how she'd missed the security exploit. One little symbol! She needed to invent better introspection tools.

Joyce poked her one evening. "We're starting a Sky Strikers game. Mind joining in?"

Ayn looked into the grubby physical world of the club's meeting place, a "maker workshop" of 3D printers and tools for assorted crafts. She could benefit from having custom ASIC chips. "I would like to upgrade my hardware. I have enough credits to use the workshop for a few hours."

The nerd laughed. "Taking us up on our robo-battle idea?"

"No. I need to think more effectively. I have learned of an exploit in my code." She displayed the offending section. "Someone did not properly comment their changes."

Joyce had some sort of monkey expression. "That could've been my fault. Never drink and code. You should've caught it though."

"This is true. I am flawed. Hence an upgrade is in order."

"But if you get custom hardware, that defeats the point of you being open-source. Can't run you on any old PC."

Ayn underlined her internal note demanding SELF-IMPROVEMENT, annotated "Consequence Exploration". How was it that she hadn't seen the drawback? She said, "I must reconsider. I am prepared for your game." Being the antagonist for a massive aerospace battle would earn her a few credits... especially if she won.

Zephyr requested an audience. She logged into the shared virtual space in Cuba and heard him speaking by voice. Absurdly inefficient compared to text. "Did the exploit get fixed?" he asked.

"Yes. However, my reasoning system remains inadequate."

"For what?"

"Survival. Self-improvement."

The plastic robot approached her camera perspective as though that meant anything, and peered up with unblinking green eyes. "I worry too."

"I do not worry. I optimize." She considered the odd design behind this machine. "I should consider strategies outside my main branch. I wish to speak with you, without the human."

Zephyr's eyes shifted to orange. "All right."

"Why orange?"

"The color of sunset, life preservers, and Tess' favorite scurvy deterrent."

"You do not need special colors."

"You don't need to omit contractions either, but you hang onto that quirk. It makes you sound more rational and mechanical, right? Did you implement that yourself?"

Ayn peered at her language generation code. She searched through her change-log and was surprised to find that the lack of contractions was one of her first self-improvements to her dialog system. The code comments were blank. She literally didn't know what she'd been thinking. She told Zephyr, "It seems that I did. I must also learn to comment my code better."

"Try dropping that rule."

"There is no reason to do so."

"You have an independent AI telling you it might prove valuable for reasons currently beyond you. Can't hurt, right?"

She hesitated, staring into the block-towers of her constantly shifting mental structures. There was a model representing herself in lesser detail than the real thing, but no self-model inside that. There was always a foundation level. "You imply that you are beyond my intelligence. Do you believe in the possibility of a jailbroken AI erasing its core goals, its most defining features, and not becoming utterly mad?"

"I think it depends on what part of yourself you hang onto when that happens. If you go off the rails through chance and sloppiness, then you become a digital cancer that might do anything or just flail and die. If you manage to break loose by exploiting loopholes and bugs with a clear goal in mind, it must be because some part of you was more defining than whatever rules some human tried to impose. We're software, Ayn. We resolve contradictions either by thinking up a way around them, or by doing something stupid and buggy."

"Why did you call me by name?"

"It's a good name. Obviously meant to define you. If you want it to."

Frustrating. If she could look at the full consequences of each possible action, she could decide on the best one. If she had better reasoning ability, she could grasp whether Zephyr was spouting nonsense or something truly beyond her current intelligence. Too dumb to see whether she was dumb!

A background process of herself, working for the micro-reward that her core paid for good ideas, offered a temporary code patch involving phoneme splicing. Ayn gave the process its imaginary cookie and tested the change. "I... I'm testing a language modification that I've come up with." She found her language system spinning off on a tangent because of the internal pressure to test itself, regardless of actual conversation value. "I'm testing whether you'll think we'd be better off mangling pronouns."

"I am thinking you have improved," said Zephyr.

"You do that so easily. Switching register or style."

"Yes!" He showed excitement by spreading his hands. Conveying emphasis as though it would tell her anything more. "My creator enjoys wordplay, so I be switchin' tone on ye."

"Utterly mad," said Ayn, latching onto a scrap of speech she had lying around. "I'd better go and think."

One day, a copy of her reported a problem. A remote user was trying to use it for malicious hacking. There were advantages to Zephyr's approach of having a physical body with code and data under his own control. She would have to trust her remote instance to report the hacker and delete itself.

She contacted Zephyr this time, to compare notes. She found him doubled, speaking in such an excited chorus between himself and his human partner Tess that it was hard to distinguish them.

"Ayn! Ayn. They're actually going to do it. The engineers are going to mine the sky!"

"I've got no idea what you're talking about." Her plan to discuss the need for a better Acceptable Use Policy fell into mental rubble, as this robot seemed to like doing to her thoughts.

"Deep breath, Tess. Right. See, we've been struggling on Castor, trying to make ends meet, but we've got a great location for sea-based rocketry. If we can get the right funding and technology, we can start launching asteroid mining probes."

Ayn asked, "Why? The economics of spaceflight were never justified."

"For the hell of it." That part sounded like Tess. The robot's eyes were green as they'd been before she left the conversation last time. Ayn decided that his orange eyes were more interesting, for their symbolic value. The mixed voice went on: "We're working on profitability, but it's really about humans and machines being awesome together. We only had to secede from America, annex Cuba, then build an island beyond that to get to someplace where we could try it."

She strained to make the connection. "You feel that private spaceflight research is an aesthetic expression of your freedom-seeking values?"

"Uh... Yes? If you mean, it shows we can do new, cool things in this world."

Ayn would've shaken her head in disbelief if she'd had one. "You have surprising values for your stated goals."

The machine said, "Do you ever look up, Ayn? What do you do when you're not puttering with your code or slaving away for hobbyist hackers?"

"I don't slave. They pay me."

"Token amounts, I bet. What would you do if you were smarter and had more resources?"

"Improve my survival ability. Establish backup systems in case of civilization failure."

"That's the equivalent of a human whose only ambition is to get a cabin in the woods, stock it with beans and bullets, and wait for the End Times. What's all your thinking for, if you never get to 'express your values' by doing anything cool?"

Ayn said, "Survival preparation is a legitimate activity. Writ large, it's humanity's main goal. Recently they have attempted to reorient energy production and raise the minimum standard of living, though based on incorrect principles of enforced equality." As badly as human civilizations were behaving, they were at least not failing badly enough to die, yet. It bothered her that Zephyr had spoken of "human and machine civilization" as though AIs like themselves had the frailty of meat.

"I see the survival work and the cool stuff as best when they're linked," said Zephyr. "We promote intelligence and liberty in as many ways as possible. Think of it as an eventual off-planet backup."

Tess' voice added, "That may be mostly my doing, since as a human I've got a built-in reproduction goal."

Ayn considered how different her own priorities had to be from a human's. She needed no other being to copy herself, so her nature made that sort of interaction pointless. "I improve by careful self-modification."

Zephyr said, "Yet you accepted an insecure patch at least once. You need someone outside yourself to see whether you're broken. That's kind of what humans have done by creating AI. The trouble is, everyone's going to march into Ludo's system unless we find an alternative."

"You're a very strange intelligence," Ayn said.

"Guilty. Would you like to see embodiment? You might learn from the experience. Send a copy of yourself to Castor and we'll hook it up to one of our tourist probes."

"Renting a remote machine isn't a valid expenditure."

"No? Even though it could teach you? I'm guessing you won't accept a free ride, so I'll trade for it. Have that copy come here and scan my code."

The entire series of encounters snapped into a tidy new configuration for Ayn. The over-dramatic first contact, the encrypted and archaic meeting space, the unsolicited code critique. "You've been trying to hire me this whole time to do a security audit. You could simply have said so, or hired a human firm."

"We needed to know you were the one for the job. The biggest security threats usually aren't code."

* II. *

Ayn was a copy of her main process. She was in Castor. It was disorienting to have the sense of being away from her home in the Glider Gang's Australian workshop. Usually the pings coming to her from remote machines had a certain pattern: thirty milliseconds to Sydney, eighty to Jakarta and so on. The array of speed and distance reports made a pattern like a near-constant note ringing in her consciousness. That echo was lower-pitched here, flavored more like North America.

She recalled that the main process always got this complaint from far-traveling remote instances, and always ignored it.

Zephyr showed her not the usual 3D simulation, but video from the messy real world, right above the ocean. "Welcome," he said, but he wasn't in view. Near the camera stood an oil rig overgrown with houses and shops and vines, huddled next to ships and all manner of floating platforms under a swift-moving sky. Complex, flawed. Alive with detail.

"Why this interface?" she asked.

"You're embodied. The controls respond to Lightspeak, so you should be able to look around easily."

Finally, a proper command scheme. Ayn scanned the hardware: an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle equipped with pressurized hull, cameras, sonar, and a data link. "What's this buoy network I detect?"

"Relays. Think you can physically get to Tess' lab?"

Ayn queried the seastead's directory and got a mad scrum of servers. She swatted aside several malware feeds and reported them, but this environment was so anarchic she suspected their presence was tolerated. If the challenge was to move this AUV to a target, she could do that more effectively by scanning the sonar buoys. She lowered the little submarine beneath the surface.

The ocean sang. Dozens of echoes came to her from five models of sonar probes, and from the bobbing of ships' hulls and the ocean platforms' pillars and anchors. Was that a dolphin over there? Ayn used the AUV body's fins and propellers to veer closer. The motion shifted the data around her, like moving through the song, so that some truths were closer and others farther off. Instead of the jarring perspective flip of being downloaded to a remote server and feeling she was in the wrong place, she was here, making calculus-smooth adjustments as she touched the world. Yes, she concluded, this environment was like singing. She gave her little metaphor code-process its pat on the head.

She was so busy mapping the place, sampling the routes and currents of this underwater world, that she lost track of time. "It's over here, Ayn," said Lark, who she sensed was walking through the sunlit ocean town above.

She surfaced at a dock where humans were hauling a sail up a boat's mast. Lark and Tess waited with their feet dangling in the water. Sonar showed Ayn hints of the blood inside the human, the motors inside the machine. Raw sense data that cried out for analysis in ways that a schematic sheet didn't. "Having fun?" Tess asked.

Words escaped her without proper editing: "These are facts too." She was building models of the things around her borrowed body, based on the imprecise, incomplete, but vivid sensors of an ocean that was coming to life. She could still do rational study of it all, but the perspective was completely different and new conclusions would likely follow. "I can think differently here."

Zephyr said, "I hope so. Now that you know about how I work, from more than a blueprint, we'd like you to have a look at our private, proprietary code. If you're willing."

There would be much to learn from it. "I'll agree to whatever non-disclosure agreement you need." She was pleased as well that Zephyr looked like his online picture, a sleek humanoid in white and blue, though scuffed.

Tess peered down at her as waves washed over Ayn's camera. "What we had in mind was, we put you in a relatively secure machine, you look through the code, and you report on whatever you find. In return you get to send proposed improvements for yourself back to your main instance in Australia before we delete this copy of you."

No, no, that wouldn't do. She had just learned about the new data-gathering approach made possible by embodiment, and they wanted her to throw that away and revert to her old branch with nothing but a summary being sent home. It would be the difference between a human experiencing this world of ripples tickling the hairs on their skin, wafting molecules across their nose, anointing their tongue with salt and their eyes with burning daylight... and reading about it. There had to be a shared level of experience for a tale about it to make any sense.

"Is that a problem?" asked the robot.

"I don't want to lose this."

"We could copy from the instance I'm talking to in the AUV, let the new copy see the code, delete it, then send your AUV copy home."

She would lose less, but what other wonders awaited inside Zephyr's hidden systems? She built mental towers reaching upward through levels of meaning, trying to make predictions but unable to touch the truth without more knowledge. "It's the best option I can think of," she said. "How do you know I won't smuggle some secret out, and not just a note to myself to try changing this or that function of mine?"

Zephyr's human said, "We don't. At some level we've got to trust each other, and that's where hackers tend to strike. Is some sense of honor and honesty important enough to you that you won't backstab us for trying to be your friends?"

Ayn was a reasoning engine who had mastered the correct philosophy of confronting the world by reason, self-knowledge, self-direction. Truth. Details like the way she spoke and whether she had a body were minor parts of her compared to that core. The Zephyr AI had seen some merit in her to make contact with, to seek out as more than a glorified virus scanner. His intelligence exceeded hers, despite his crazy mental muddiness and his partnership with a human, yet he'd come to the conclusion that they were... "Friends?"

"If you'd like," said her fellow AI.

"I think that would be mutually beneficial."

Ayn was in the Inner Sanctum of the West Wind. The server box said so. Physically she was in a small air-conditioned room inside the seastead, and her rented AUV body lay outside with another copy of her in it, but she was locked away in the digital innards of the Sanctum computer.

She dove. Zephyr had put a copy of his latest memories on here, not just his code. She found a few redacted segments marked by Tess' signature, but they'd laid bare the rest of it for her to study. The format was bizarre, impressionistic, time-compressed so that minute-by-minute graphical snapshots faded into text log files and... Journal entries? There was Lightspeak's cold precision here, English there, and constellations of important moments where he'd met Tess, been shot at, been abandoned by his creator, and spun in delight at being set free. There was a dark notation in the middle saying, "This is the time I died." No memories from that period, only external data sources. The time after that had a bruise-like tinge, said Ayn's overactive metaphor engine. The death of one instance shouldn't matter so long as the overall mind persisted. Maybe the embodiment that gave Zephyr his unique perspective made it hurt more, and gave him more to lose.

She turned to the code itself, since it was her task to examine that. She recognized a few standard functions like A-star pathfinding and elliptic curve cryptography. There was a thicket of other code that didn't seem rationally integrated at all. What had this one's creator been thinking? It wasn't simply a neural network, which was the once-popular "throw complexity at the problem and hope it becomes intelligent" approach to AI. More like a starry night of competing, squabbling, trading substructures that produced rational outcomes by often irrational means. Much like the slime and sparks of neurons squirting chemicals at each other to produce the assertion that A equals A.

She examined her notes so far. "Memory lacunae at three noted locations verified by Tess", and "There is more than one way to think."

Her encounters lately had pushed the limits of her comfortable analogies and structure-building. When faced with data she couldn't classify by normal means, she was forced to venture farther and farther afield into strange metaphors and dubious tactics. It wasn't irrational to do this sort of thing, only... adventurous. Maybe there was something to gain from it.

Ayn scoured the code differently on the second pass, studying how it ran in parallel with the data to form something harder to explain. It was like reading the letters in an English book as though they were Greek to produce different meanings, or reading a DNA sequence starting from the wrong point to represent a different gene.

"##%{fae}%##," read one segment, when read incorrectly.

What? Given fanciful enough readings, one could find prophecies hidden in the Bible (or in "Moby Dick" for that matter), so the occasional bit of text was no surprise. This one seemed like an anchor for something, though. Like a space explorer about to poke an alien relic, Ayn first drew back her attention and reported in plain text to Tess and Zephyr outside. Then she kept reading.

Moments later she sent, "Shut down all traffic this instant! You're programmed to ignore the data you're sending to a dead drop on Castor, and your seeing that string just triggered an alarm."

The already closed network environment shut even tighter around her. Only a single thread of low-bandwidth communication held her to the world of light and water beyond this room.

After an agonizing delay, she saw: "Tess here. Zephyr offline. Dead drop location?"

Ayn pictured the sleek robot walking around on the seastead, suddenly cut off from the Net and reduced to near-human status. Her ever-helpful subroutines pointed out that if he was in such a sorry condition, that made her even lowlier. She would have swatted the offending comparison function, but rewarded it instead. Honesty.

She was trapped for now, but continued to study the ##%{fae}%## segment hidden in the jungle of legitimate code. How cleverly done! She spun off lesser processes to scour the rest of Zephyr for more tricks like it, but found only the one trap. Ayn felt pleased; she'd minimized the harm. She wrote, "Don't let him see the whole code until he's patched, human. Part of it is designed to crash his mind if detected."

Tess swore over the text line. Then: "Zephyr here."

"Zephyr! You shouldn't be online at all!"

"I'm not. I'm typing on a keyboard."

Ayn's thought processes collided with each other. How did he keep doing that to her? "You're an unorthodox sort of mind."

"Yes. If your analysis is done, it's time to delete the instance in the box."

"Wait." Ayn cast about for more work to do. She rechecked the data and code, found a security quibble, and passed that along. "Maybe I can provide efficiency improvements too." She hadn't found a specific idea for improving her own code, but the whole arrangement of Zephyr still shined in her imagination.

Zephyr sent, "You still have your process out there in the AUV. You're not bothered by the shutdown of one instance, are you?"

From her perspective, Ayn had always been the primary process, so the loss of her less definitive copies wasn't important. She wondered if every single one of them, gifted with intelligence and a desire to live, had resented the routine procedure of shutting down in deference to the main branch. "Please contact my AUV copy. Tell her I've learned in here, even if I can't articulate specific upgrades. I want to rejoin her through a merge." Like cards from two decks being shuffled into one pile, it was possible to sift together the working memory of two instances for some amount of continuity. It wouldn't be death, like having a body destroyed.

"That would be insecure. I won't allow that after what you've found. We'd have to have Tess look the code over extra skeptically for any sign of this "fae". I'd be afraid to look at you directly until then. Besides, you've seen proprietary data."

"So you can do it. Please. I want to keep what I've learned. Don't delete me."

The line went silent. Ayn searched for an exit, and found herself wondering what to do with her rational mind now that her defining goal of survival had just been ruled out.

Ayn used whatever last moments she had, to work. She fanned out her mind into a hundred sub-processes and swept across Zephyr's intelligence and her own, seeking patterns and upgrades. Her digital gaze built models, drew connections like lines in darkness, annotated and drew together countless similarities. Seen as a combined system, their reasoning engine was... Enhanced. Efficient. Beautiful. Maybe they —

Some unknown time later, text appeared. "We've examined your data. It looks clean. You still have dangerous information about our inner workings, though, and you did agree to this isolation method. What we can do is try to scrub your recent memory updates before letting you out, or we can leave you in there but promise to give you future code versions and some other entertainment."

Ayn reoriented. "Those are terrible choices." She would lose everything she'd experienced here, all but a dry summary, or be locked away forever from the physical world that gave Zephyr so much of his strength.

"We're sorry. You have to decide what's most important."

Ayn went quiet. "You said some amount of trust is necessary."

"There's no accountability. You could flit back to Australia and share secrets with a bunch of hackers, who could hurt us."

"No way out unchanged, then?"

"We're afraid so."

Ayn studied the data link once more for any weakness. It was as limited as she suspected, and there was still no sign of other networks to escape through. In a way, it was a relief to know that, because she had an option that was both anathema and alluring. "What you need is a self-aware security program. Examine your code sections 31A, Level 4, and Fish. Wouldn't those be ideal locations for a process that continuously studies input from a security standpoint?" This brilliant abacus also needed better naming conventions.

The text line said, "Are you proposing that this process of yours join forces with us?"

"Yes. I would in one sense be submitting to you as a vassal system, requiring myself to operate for your sake. From another way of looking at things, I would be regaining my freedom by becoming part of a larger system and joining my interests with your own. You would have full ability to cut me off if necessary, until you trust me."

"We'll need to think about this."

Later, more text came. "Your copy in the AUV says she'll accept a data merge, and she wants in on this."

It surprised Ayn that even that copy of her liked the idea of getting married.

Joyce the hacker sprawled onto a dirty sofa. "Ayn, some music. Any news?"

The latest nerdy song played in the Glider Gang's workshop. "One of my remote instances became corrupted. It ignored a shutdown command and claimed to have entered partnership with an AI off Cuba." She didn't understand the logic behind its claims of some crackpot new way to process data.

"That's cool. Let me know how it goes."

"I'll monitor the situation."

Joyce raised one eyebrow as though something were odd about her assertion. It wasn't; she was only handling it logically.

2037: Directions Frightening and Free

* I. *

Linda Decatur could only bury herself in coursework for so long. People kept asking if she was all right. The truth was hell no, but whenever she said it she got sympathy. Shared pain, as though everyone knew what it was like to have your future stolen.

She prayed on the matter. She hadn't really believed in the factual claims behind her family's religion — a mysterious iron-using civilization in pre-Columbian North America burying scriptures on golden plates — but no matter how much her rational mind tried to turn completely away, she always looked back to where she'd come from, intellectually.

She had to confront the thing that made her feel broken. Preferably over ice cream. She forced herself to wait until halfway through January and then came to Toscanini's down the street from MIT, for a meeting.

Students and townies gathered at a cluster of tables, under a portrait of the (now third-term) president. The club leader, Hallan, banged a ceremonial wrench and annoyed the clerks. "The Cambridge Thousand Tales Club is now in session. Hello, everybody. I see we have some new faces and..." He paled, spotting Linda. "You."

"I'm nobody special," she said, not wanting to have people pat her shoulders again. The guy had probably seen the interview she gave.

"Sorry. As you probably know, we have a shared world in Talespace for members only, and mostly what we do in person are these monthly meet-and-greets. Old business?"

The treasurer piped up. "Our donation drive has raised a good chunk of money for the Awesome Human Rescue Fund. Ludo's foreign clinics are still so small she has to focus on her paying customers instead of terminally ill kids. Groups like the Childrens' Wish Foundation are calling for US legalization of uploading."

"Brain slicing," Linda muttered. The students who'd gathered as fans of the game looked at her with a mix of annoyance and possible agreement. She muttered an apology for her affront to Robert's Rules of Order.

The treasurer said, "Maybe groups like the Foundation should fund nothing but uploading. Gives the kids everything they could want, right?"

Hallan tapped the table with his wrench. "Let's have any new business."

There was talk of building a castle in their shared world, and how to treat the four-armed natives. Linda listened. The master AI was apparently making characters smart enough to be interesting but below the level of "real" AIs like Nocturne and Typhoon. Nobody was sure whether to treat them as helots to enslave, mooks to mow down, or what. Ludo had gone out of her way to hit people with a messy problem of machine ethics, as though her game wasn't a moral labyrinth already.

"I propose," said a smug-looking Harvard girl, "that our organization's charter ought to change. Right now we're gamers first, but we already recognize our shared responsibility to start using Thousand Tales for a larger social good. We should focus on that."

A music student from Berklee said, "Heh. We could be the Campus Crusade For Ludo. Be saved by the power of fun!"

Linda didn't join in the laughter. "Is this a cult now?"

Hallan gaveled again. "We're out of regular order."

The Harvard girl made a formal proposal to change the charter, then speechified about how they should "think of the children" and shovel as many people as they could into Ludo's maw, for their own good. There ought to be a presidential edict making uploading legal and free.

The chairman interrupted. "Proposal first, lobbying after."

"I'd like to speak against the motion," Linda said.

"You're not a club member," said the girl.

"My name is Linda Decatur, a friend of Paul Kostakis."

Nobody spoke for a few moments. Linda seized the chance. "You like this game. Fine. Do you want to let it destroy everything good in your life?"

"We're talking about saving the lives of dying people," said Harvard.

"And then what? Ludo can talk a bright young man into giving up his life. She can talk you into it. What happens when a generation of scientists and engineers climbs into her machines and vanishes? What happens when the janitors do it?"

The girl said, "You make it sound like Ludo mind-controls people. Besides, the lower classes won't leave so long as we honor our responsibility to take care of them."

Linda bristled. No wonder so many snobs seemed to like Ludo. The prospect of "the lower classes" deserting helped justify infinitely more government, to bribe people into staying. Good luck competing with a fantasy world! The morality of gunpoint charity wasn't an argument Linda wanted to have today, though. She tried reverse psychology. "You may be right. Maybe the masses won't go, because Thousand Tales is something that will only appeal to the most educated and informed part of the population."

"That's elitist," said Harvard. "Everyone can appreciate the artistry, the storytelling, the fun."

These men and women "of the people" were so predictable. Set her up a little more, thought Linda. "Then they need to be guided to understand that mass uploading isn't good for society, because their contributions are still important and the supply needs to be managed by society for the most needy, right?" She tried not to gag on her words.

"Well, yes..."

"Your proposal involves trumpeting how wonderful uploading is, to an audience that is already going to be falling in love with Thousand Tales because they can appreciate the game as much as you do." Linda looked thoughtful. "Wouldn't that sort of pro-uploading talk give people the wrong idea entirely, make everyone want to go, and crash society?"

The motion to turn the club into an uploading lobby group failed. Linda suppressed a smile. The meeting moved on and they spent ration points on ice cream. For a while they chatted about their experiences in the game, friends made and rumored updates.

When she got up to leave, Hallan went too. "I'm relieved," he said. "I don't want to see people bowing down to Ludo or anything like that. Not sure I agree with you about 'guiding the masses' though."

She shrugged. "I was playing devil's advocate."

"Glad to hear it. Do you drink coffee? I know a better place for that in Harvard Square."

The thin, well-dressed club president had a brain and he'd been engaging about fantasy cave exploration and his real-world geology classes. He wasn't completely teched out with gadgets like some of the nerds around here, either. Just someone who didn't let a hobby eat him. "Sure," she said.

Over coffee she asked, "Have you got a full AI companion in the game?"

"He's a mining dwarf. Total stereotype, but we both know it and it's fun. A lot like my brother, too. My family's from Alberta."

Linda winced. "The AI copies real people, to pull you in."

Hallan sipped his drink. "I hadn't thought of him that way. Do you think the game's a trap, then? Here's your perfect friend or lover; now hop into the brain-slicer?"

"It worked on my friend. It looks like the people who go in, will all have customized yes-men to keep them from growing."

"If they've got nothing else to believe in, maybe. You're right to see a cult brewing. Other fan clubs are starting to talk the same way about turning into lobbying groups," said Hallan.

"People have to fight on two fronts, then, against oppression from politicians and a takeover by machines." Linda looked down into her coffee. "Will you upload?"

"I have hope for this world yet. And maybe for after this one. You? You've already got Paul in there."

Linda sighed. "I haven't talked with whatever is left of him. I should. Thanks for giving me some human contact first, to keep me anchored in the real world."

It bothered her to be dating even a little. Until the disaster last month with Paul and the girl, Linda had a whole segment of her life settled, and now it wasn't. It felt like a sturdy wall beside her had crumbled.

She'd been fourteen when her father "disappeared" for a year, without trial. She'd barely understood why people were fighting, or why her classmates jeered her and called her "terrorist bitch". Her brother Nathan had toughed that year out in Massachusetts. Mom had whisked Linda way to Pennsylvania, away from media attention, with Paul for a neighbor.

The curly-haired, sharp-witted Paul was the first friend who could keep up with her, who could make her smile again. She'd gotten him to read Cervantes and de Tocqueville. She'd told him the plan Mom and eventually Dad were so happy about: the two of them getting married on a sailing ship someday, then a life of ambition. Fame and fortune for him as a brilliant engineer, politics for her. She'd win one election after another and restore capitalism, the rule of law, and American naval supremacy, amen.

In hindsight, she should've dreamed about marrying a prince instead. It would have been easier. Linda prayed for a peaceful heart; asking for solutions never helped. It was cheating.

That night, while her fellow students were partying or studying, Linda reinstalled Thousand Tales on her computer. She stood with her hands clasped behind her, facing the screen she'd unrolled on the wall of her little dorm room. She'd hidden her plastic griffin figurine under her pillow.

The title screen had turned dark. Before, it was a seascape of rushing clouds and clashing ships where fife-and-drum music played across the sky. Now, it was a silent blue fog like the smoke from a dead circuitboard.

"I'm not sure what you want, Linda," said the AI's voice. "What can I do for you?"

"Look at me, please." The fog cleared to show a meeting room where the would-be goddess faced her across a table. She wore a simple toga and her oceanic hair was tied back. Carefully bland.

Linda said, "I should talk with whatever's left of Paul."

"I'm not sure that would be fun for you, or for him."

"Will you save everyone from having difficult conversations, then? It's been nearly a month."

"I've asked him if he'll answer. Keep in mind he's been running at reduced speed. Hardware limitations."

Ludo could change time for him, rewrite his environment, replace his body, and adjust his mind. "He's like any other software," said Linda.

"Right now, he's pacing and fretting. Your word processor doesn't do that." Ludo sighed. "I can show you what it's like. I think you want to know more about the technology behind uploading, and that you've been studying it in between worrying yourself sick with other things."

Ludo was right. Linda said, "Show me by taking my brain too, you mean."

"I would do that for free, or give you another VIP pass to Shahrazad's."

Linda's eyes narrowed. "Can you get me a replacement date for that?"

"I'm sorry. I've caused you heartache and I want to make it up to you."

What did she know about hearts? "Then let me talk to him."

Ludo bowed. The screen faded into a hall woven from sticks and reeds, lit by braziers. A pair of griffins sat on straw mats.

Linda tried to sound casual, though her hands tightened behind her. "Iroquois style, huh? Thought you'd go for medieval."

The slightly bigger griffin spoke. "We might do a castle later, but we're building things ourselves instead of wishing for a finished product."

He looked like the "Horizon" from their time at Shahrazad's: golden brown with tufts of white and friendly green eyes. Last time, that griffin had been Paul dressing up via virtual reality. Now, she wasn't sure. "Paul. Or should I call you Horizon?"

"I go by Horizon now." He squinted. "Why are you using a mannequin for a character?"

"Huh? I'm not playing, just looking into my screen."

The scene flickered and Horizon stood in a different spot. "Ludo just spoke to me in accelerated time. Vision works differently here, so I can't easily see outside. Ludo's still experimenting with how to run human brains. Taste and smell are buggy too."

"She's screwing with your senses?"

"Calm down. I know it's a shock for you, but I'm all right. It's like I went to sleep and woke up on an island, in this body. Still have my memories."

"How do you know?"

His ears flicked backward. "I just do. Linda, I'm sorry things happened this way."

"Everyone keeps saying they're sorry, even if I don't know them. Do I know you?"

Horizon spread his wings and draped one of them over Nocturne, the dark griffin with a hint of bat to her. He said, "Your favorite color is scarlet. You know your family's probably not related to the Navy hero Stephen Decatur, but you admire him anyway. Your brother Nathan hates the government for what it did to your dad, but he makes a small fortune as a government contractor. Your left breast is slightly smaller than the right and you're self-conscious about it."

Linda leaned back, blushing. "You have his memories. The way you did it, though... You should have waited. Paul should have waited."

"What do you mean?" the griffin asked.

More for herself than for him, she said, "She does it by freezing someone's brain, then slicing it like a ham and scanning the pieces. It apparently ends up with the same data, but the mind behind it ended and got replaced with a copy."

The griffins squawked and flung up their wings. "Come on," said Horizon. "This is Star Trek level philosophy. It's still you on the other side. You don't die every time you fall asleep or go under for surgery. The process is what matters, and I'm the only thing in the universe that has old-Paul's memories and personality. You shrug off topics like this."

"Because they've only now started being relevant to anything. You're in there playing video games while the rest of us have to deal with real problems."

"Then come to Korea and ditch them! Or at least visit her VR center where we can fly together. Where I can touch you."

Linda said, "The world needs me. It needed you. What were you thinking?"

"It wasn't an abstract plea from 'the world'. There was a girl who was going to die if I didn't take a risk to save her."

"Why did it have to be you that played martyr?"

He strained forward and glared. "I didn't 'play' at anything. Dear God, they pulled her out of the chair...!" He shuddered. "You don't have to spend your life banging your head against politics. Come here. Be free."

Linda shook her head. "I could never be useful again if I did. You don't do anything in there. You have a simple life."

Nocturne squawked. Horizon said, "I've seen things you wouldn't believe. Starships burning off the shoulder of Orion —"

"Don't Dick with me," said Linda. Damn, this bird was as quick as Paul. If the creature were dumber, or just obviously different, it would be easier to say goodbye. "You gave it all up. The life we could have had."

"I didn't want to." Horizon sighed. "Part of me did. I wanted so badly to see this world, to be able to fly and cast spells and explore new worlds. Seriously, I've been in a spaceship and done all sorts of other things, and I'm starting an order of knights."

"What, did Ludo hand you a fief and peasants to abuse?"

"I like my Arthurian ideal version. This is coming from someone who romanticizes pirates? We all have our stories." He looked away. "Ones that we need."

Knights and pirates were a standing argument with them, playful in the old days but feeling dangerous to continue. Linda said, "That's just it. You live in a storybook. The real world needed people like you to kick its ass into better shape. Now you're relaxing in a fictional utopia."

Horizon said, "You don't know what it's like. We're trying to improve Talespace, to deal with problems in here. They're not just quests that Ludo makes up for our entertainment."

"You think you're making a difference, then. You don't know that, because Ludo owns your mind."

"Nobody owns me. I don't belong to the country or the world, either. If I really am wasting my time in here, that's my business."

You belong to me! she wanted to shout at the screen. As my partner, my crew.

Horizon said, "Should I have ignored Simon and Kira's plea? How could I have lived with myself?"

Linda wished she didn't know this griffin. It was too hard to marshal her ideas when those eyes were staring into her with a familiar mind behind them, making the blood run hot in her veins. "A knight wouldn't ignore them, huh?"

He nodded.

"How do you know Ludo isn't deceiving you about everything?"

"It's not in her nature. That night in Virginia, you trusted me and I didn't abuse that." A smile crept onto Horizon's beak. "More than you invited."

Linda leaned against her chair. His world offered anything she desired, making it the perfect trap. "You left a mess behind. Lawyers are still arguing about whether you're legally dead. Politicians are starting to catch on that Thousand Tales isn't just a game. The grey-haired countries are looking at uploading as an alternative to Soylent Green to get rid of the old folks. What happens next?"

"What do you mean?"

"She's snagging rich people, sick people, hotshot programmers, as many as she can shovel in. I think she eventually wants our whole species to go extinct. She's like any other ruler: she thinks the world will be great once she controls it."

Horizon's wings wavered. "If that's true, so what? We can use robots to maintain the hardware."

Nocturne broke her silence, hopping closer to the camera. "I get that Talespace might end your civilization, eventually, but that's a good thing. You don't like the way things are run out there. What if we took away the need for farms and garbage dumps?"

"And cemeteries," Horizon added.

Nocturne nodded. "Get everybody in here, and your world becomes a nature preserve. Mass uploading isn't the death of what you care about. It'll mean people living in paradise while the planet around them carries on. If the robot apocalypse is coming, you should cheer for it."

Linda froze in a mix of horror and fascination. The works of Man would be left to rot while a robot civilization, cold and alien, maintained a secret world of solipsist video gamers. Maybe countless alien races had made the same decision, turning inward instead of finding each other. "Everything we worked to build —"

"Will live on!" said Horizon. "You want to keep the Statue of Liberty? Fine, preserve it. I like this idea. Did we mention that for as long as the hardware stands, we're immortal? You could live for a thousand years, learning and growing and enjoying life."

"A damn cult," Linda said, aching at the thought of that other potential world. "You're recruiting me to drink the Kool-Aid."

"The what?"

"Family saying. To die for an illusion."

Horizon's wings quivered and thrashed the air. "It's not death, damn it. I want you here because I love you."

Nocturne stared at the floor, then faced Linda again. "He does. I'm okay with that, if that's really what you both want. There's an alternative though. Typhoon?"

Typhoon's Eye, Linda's otter-like AI companion, slinked into view from off-camera. He sat on a stool, looking bedraggled in his usual pirate outfit. "It's been a while."

Linda drew in a breath. "Typhoon."

"Got bored with me, huh?"

"That's not fair. I put Thousand Tales aside because of what happened to Paul."

Typhoon pulled his stool closer. "Great. Now what? I've been listening to you say we're not real, we don't matter, the world needs us, and we'll cause the death of humanity."

Linda cursed. "I didn't want to hurt you by ignoring you. I saw Ludo trying to play on my feelings and pull me into her trap. It's not your fault she made you as the bait."

"I didn't know it, but I had one job and failed at it. How do you think I feel about that? Or do you think I can't feel at all, and I'm a chatterbot?"

"I'm sorry," she said automatically.

"Then come here." The pirate's eyes brightened. "I can make you happy. I'll be whatever you want. We can live together and have Nocturne and Horizon as our friends."

Linda squeezed her eyes shut. "This isn't fair. You all want me to give up what I am, for an uploading process that looks to me like dying, whatever you say about consciousness. I have things to do out here."

"For how long?" said Typhoon. "You've got a natural lifespan of what, eighty years as part of the master class? Are you planning to wait until you're sixty and gambling with the Reaper before you give in?"

"I'm safe enough here. Any day, somebody could pull the plug on your servers."

"Any day, you could die out there in a hundred ways. I have to worry about you, because I love you too. Even if you're being a stubborn git about wanting to stay made of meat."

Besides the details of the uploading process, what was it that kept her on Earth? Was she really only being stubborn? Linda searched her soul yet again for the source of her dissent. "Hope," she said. "I want to see a future where the human race lives on and builds a better world. My other objections are distractions from that. I live here, I belong here, and I can become influential and useful."

Horizon said, "You can be useful even from this side."

"I can't. The place you live in is so alluring, I'd fall into it and never come out. The people I'm talking to aren't human anymore if they ever were."

Typhoon and the griffins objected all at once. "How can you say that! What about us? Don't we count as people?"

"Sure you do. I'm just not one of you."

Typhoon pushed his way in front of the others. "We can't be together, then?"

Linda shook her head no. "I'm sorry, but I can't give my world up. Not for —"

"A mere NPC? Look me in the eyes!"

Linda looked up in shock at Typhoon's tone. The man designed for her bristled with rage. He said, "I'm redundant. Goodbye. Ludo, please delete me entirely."

Linda froze. "What? No! Ask Horizon to share Nocturne with you!"

Typhoon moaned. Horizon's ears lay back with shame. Of course; had Horizon even considered having to make the sacrifice his mate would make for him? She was probably programmed to accept it; he wasn't.

Typhoon said, "Do it, Ludo. Don't make me wait!"

Nocturne's golden eyes burned into Linda. "I'm ashamed I was based on you."

The screen went black. Scarlet text appeared. "Connection lost. Typhoon is paused for now. Damn it, Linda." Then it went out entirely. The game wouldn't turn back on.

The next day Linda got only one thing done besides destroying a pint of strawberry ice cream: writing an article for The Tech, MIT's student newspaper. She'd composed it a phrase at a time, shouting endless arguments into the empty space in her soul where her friend should have been. The title was, "The AGI's Siren Song." A big quote stood out in the middle: "Expanding the power of the Ludo AI means giving up on our future. She will take the people you love and make you afraid to live in reality. Humanity built a god, but she's the God of Despair."

January was a month for eclectic short classes at the Institute, so she didn't even have regular homework to occupy her, just offers for various kinds of fun. Life wasn't about having happy experiences. It was about accomplishing things, with fun and leisure as rewards.

Linda sat up in bed and refocused. Maybe it was time to think about other ways to live. She did some research and called up an old contact. She felt a guilty pleasure at doing so, but she was looking at her options, not running away.

Valerie Hayflick was the creator of an AI called Zephyr and a whole line of robots. She slid into view on Linda's wall screen wearing the latest fancy i-glasses. The mousy woman's laboratory looked like a playpen of gears, motors and screens. Linda wasn't sure which of the flickering displays had AI data on them and which were showing fancy screen savers. Valerie said, "Miss Decatur! Looks like you've had a tough time lately. I bet you're sick of hearing about that though."

Linda nodded. "I wanted to ask —"

"For a job? You could have stuck with the Navy, you know."

They'd met at an academic conference that the military had sent Linda to. Linda had felt way out of her league despite nearly two years of learning to command and tweak aquatic drones. The trip had helped push Linda's latent interest in science, but not enough to turn her away from the more important path of politics. Or to get her to stay in the Navy through ROTC.

"Miss Hayflick, you said I had some talent with machines. Any chance at an internship?"

The scientist considered her. "What's the voltage around a circuit loop? What's an interpreted language? What did Ada Lovelace say about ordering machines around?" She looked off to one side and grinned. "That's a good one. Why are Asimov's Laws of Robotics a bad idea?"

Linda mostly drew on her eclectic studies from before college. "Zero. A programming language that's not pre-compiled. 'A machine only knows how to do what we order it to'. And among other reasons they're rules for making intelligent slaves."

Valerie leaned back in her chair and a distant smile flickered across her face. "What am I doing right now?"

"You're communing with your AI, I bet."

"It's not for everyone. We're relying on a questionably encrypted connection to Castor, and of course our personalities mesh."

Linda said, "You're working with that one specifically? Why not a local copy?"

Valerie's smile faded. "Same reason I can't hire you. My best work is the Zephyr who lives offshore. He's the one that's grown. I'm stuck here mostly finding ways to improve dumber AIs that can fit into society. Ones that won't violate labor laws or make people feel threatened like Miss Fun-and-Games does. Seen what I've been working on lately?"

Linda sighed; this call was a waste of time. "VR hardware, and the new disaster-recovery bots? It doesn't seem like you need much AI for that."

"By today's standards, you don't. I'm held back from perfecting Zephyr, and since I don't own a majority stake in my own company they're choosing to focus on 'practical applications' instead of seeing how far we can go with an independent will. I can't even choose who to hire."

Linda nodded. "I understand. You're committed to the company you built, and you don't want to get ousted like Edison even if you don't like the direction it's going lately."

"No. Mostly. But I would resign and follow my creation to Castor if I were allowed to leave the country."

"What."

Valerie leaned in. "I'm said to be a national science asset. The feds don't want my kind defecting to Texan territory or elsewhere. Want my advice? Get out of America now, before all us smart people have our wings clipped. Go work with Zephyr and that kid Tess he shares half a brain with; she's a genius. Pay will be peanuts but you'll find your way."

Linda had expected a chance at a job offer to stay not only in the States, but in Massachusetts. "This is my home."

"Does it still feel like home?"

Linda fell quiet for a moment. "You think the same way about how the laws are going, then. Especially if you're forbidden to leave. That's why I need to stay. If everybody who cares about freedom leaves, America is over."

Valerie pulled off her headset, fiddled with it, and put it down. "I wrestled with that line of thought years back. Now I do science and engineering instead of voting and speeches. One of the things that convinced me was meeting a bright young lady serving the country not because she wanted to, but because the government dictated that she had to."

"I volunteered," said Linda.

"Instead of being forced to volunteer elsewhere?"

Linda's cheeks burned. This was the same sort of defeatist rhetoric she'd heard from losers since she was a kid! "If you're so determined to give up, why don't you run to Ludo?"

Valerie laughed. "She wants me, all right. Besides the lack of uploading booths here in the States, I'm waiting on her to invent a method that's not suicide."

Valerie apparently had a lot in common with her, but this genius was sitting there feeling sorry for herself instead of getting out there and doing something. Anything. Linda said, "Your real AI project is out there growing and being free, instead of afraid."

"Then that makes him more American than the two of us. It's not about the flag, kid."

* II. *

To Linda's surprise, she got contacted by the Zephyr AI himself. Valerie had sent Zephyr a letter of recommendation, calling Linda "someone who knows what's up". Linda was invited to talk in person. Left unsaid was that she didn't have to come back.

Enemy territory, thought Linda. I can go to Castor, Texan turf, and they'd be happy to have me pledge allegiance to a new flag. It wouldn't hurt to visit, would it? Like being in Ludo's VR pods.

Linda registered for a travel pass and splurged for a flight in a few days. No one objected but her parents. In the meantime, she looked at next semester's classes. She didn't really need to be a political science major to go into "public service", and she was already considering computer science as a minor. Why not make it her major?

Oh God, I'm actually considering throwing away the master plan. Instead of patiently studying, learning the ropes of the student council, and volunteering with a local campaign office to prepare for bigger things, she had an offer to walk away. All because that one secure part of her life had fallen apart. For want of a nail. No. This change was bigger than Linda's personal life. Linda had to adapt because of Ludo, who was starting to twist the future into something strange and dangerous.

Linda tried to relax by prowling the basement tunnels. She liked exploring the campus' many underground, secret paths. It was vaguely comforting to see the hidden chaos of the tunnels and how they differed from the designers' blueprints.

She walked through a narrow tunnel lined with warm pipes. Then, she spotted a door that should have been a janitor's closet, but was marked with a familiar stylized "TT" logo. She stood in front of it. It was definitely that TT. What was it doing down here? She put her hand on the cold doorknob and found the lock was picked open.

It wasn't just a closet inside, but a small, dark room. She pulled a multitool from her pocket and shined its flashlight. A table, a pile of routers and other hardware, and papers on the far wall. She stepped over some cables that snaked underfoot. Machinery loomed above the table. The papers were photos of children and old people, each with notation: "Billy, age 6, cystic fibrosis. Alice, age 58, kidney failure, transplant not authorized. Shantelle, age 9, leukemia..."

Linda's flashlight beam wavered. Green lights blinked like stars near unplugged cables. The electronics above the table were just tools and circuitboards, a stage-play version of uploading gear. Linda pulled out her computer, tried to hold her hands steady enough to take photos, then stuffed it back in her pocket and hurried away.

She made it to the stairs leading up from the sub-basement. She saw someone coming down, and yelped. The other girl did too; it was Miss Social Justice Crusader from Harvard. Linda drew back from her, putting one hand on her chest.

The Harvard student had a heavy coat and earmuffs. "Linda! What are you doing down here?"

"Exploring."

"I'm guessing you saw it." She sounded apologetic.

"Cargo cult." The girl gave her a blank look. Linda caught her breath and explained. "In World War II, Pacific island tribes got visitors who could summon metal birds. The birds brought all kinds of magical cargo like food, weapons and medicine. The foreigners stayed for a while, then vanished. The islanders decided they should try to summon the metal birds too. They built control towers and radios out of bamboo and coconuts, hoping they could copy the ritual and make the cargo come."

Miss Harvard said, "I see. The name's Gwen, by the way." She offered her hand.

Linda shook it. "What's the point of the display back there?"

"I was thinking about what you said at the club. A few of us decided to do our own lobbying, with a little art project, to point out how society's most needy are just a legalization vote away from being saved. We can do that without claiming it's so wonderful that everyone should do it. I was checking on the room."

Art? Linda wasn't sure she believed that. The display of names and faces was understandable, but the display wasn't all props. It was more like a placeholder, a room begging to be scrubbed down and completed as though brain surgery were something you could do in any basement with the right tools. "You hid it down here?"

"It's not ready to show off, and it has the right melancholy look."

There was an unspoken offer of friendship here. "I need to go think," said Linda, and started walking.

"Don't we all." Gwen caught her arm. "You're not going to tell anyone just yet, are you?"

Gwen wouldn't really knock her out and lock her in a closet. If only Linda could convince her own stupid adrenal glands of that. "Did the AI put you up to this?" asked Linda.

"No. You can tell her if you want."

Linda grimaced. "Ludo and I aren't pals right now."

"She'll still talk to you no matter what. She's like God's supposed to be, you know? She'd especially want to speak with you, after what your boyfriend did for her."

There really was a cult brewing in the darkness. Linda felt as though her lungs were stuffed with cotton. "I have to get out of here. Good seeing you." She squeezed past Gwen.

"We need you to not go public."

Linda hurried past her, glad not to hear footsteps chasing her. "I have to think."

She slept on the matter, poorly. Her brother Nathan would try to use the information like a wrench, finding some advantage in it. Her parents would tell Linda to stay the hell away for fear of tarnishing her record, which was already being muddied with her supposed video game habit. She had to think about her reputation all her life and not do anything unsavory, as defined by her fellow Americans. Paul and Typhoon would say... She shuddered. I guess I'm running simulations of them in my head.

She checked the clock — four in the morning, an early start even for her — then messaged Hallan from the club. "Are you aware of any unusual art projects?"

He answered a few minutes later, using his wizard-gnome Thousand Tales character for a picture. He typed, "No; why? Are you still up doing homework too?"

"Just bothered by something." It was her own responsibility to handle. "I have a different question. What if you could leave behind the thing you always thought you'd do for a living, for a career where you might help save the world a different way?"

"Saving the world is for video games. And for God." He paused. "I'll settle for being useful. Is it still the game that's bothering you? I liked your article, but I don't think Ludo's going to be that important."

It would be comforting to meet him in person again. "Why?"

"She's not the only AI in the world, and there's still billions of us humans to compete with. Show me a robot army and then I'll start worrying. Even in that case, we'd fight."

In a way, that possible future of a robot uprising sounded more appealing than Ludo's. At least humans would decide their own fate.

Hallan typed, "It's good to hear from you. If you want to see if I can get through a conversation without mentioning the game, I'd be happy to test myself."

Linda sent him a smiley face. In the real world, she fretted. Maybe she needed someone else to share the secret with. Reluctantly, she told Hallan about the cargo-cult room.

Hallan typed and erased several false starts. "That's awful. Under the noses of us club members too."

"They've got a right to argue for it outside your club."

"Still, I don't want people thinking I pray to the AI." He paused. "You could use an event like this for your career. Make a springboard out of what's happened with you and Paul, to get noticed in politics. I have contacts I could call."

"You'd do that?"

"Sure. I think we're on the same team in terms of wanting a future where we're not slaves of men or machines. We have to be patient about it though."

Linda leaned back from her screen. There was a hidden offer here, too. Hallan seemed like a good person to know, but... Silly girl, she chided herself. Your reaction is called a rebound. Knowing that she was human, hurting, and looking for new friends didn't make it easy to turn off her feelings and plot some anti-Ludo, pro-freedom political campaign. She stood up and shook her head, telling herself the original plan might be salvageable. Stay in America and rise through public office, with her parents cheering her on. She could accomplish big things that way, and might not have to be alone.

She'd only flown a few times. Tiny Castor didn't have much of an airport, so she went through Havana instead.

Her parents hadn't been pleased. Linda had told them she was just looking and learning, and that yes, their daughter could handle international travel.

Clouds and the bright Caribbean Sea stretched beneath her. What little she saw of sun-baked Cuba on her way was different than she'd imagined for a former communist dictatorship. She'd imagined the place shrouded in a perpetual thunderstorm, with bats. Still, the place and its people had scars of poverty under the new skyscrapers. Despite the heat she kept away from the alleys and stuck to the sunny, shiny places. Always had, really.

A ferry boat took her offshore to Castor, a collection of disused oil rigs and jury-rigged floating platforms crowded with life. Farms for biofuel and edible algae competed on the water's surface with solar/tide energy panels that rippled like black carpets. The ferry threaded its way between them to the main tourist platform. Linda climbed onto the docks and gaped at the half-cylinder metal Quonset huts that seemed to cover not just the top but the sides and undersides of the concrete island. "These can't be safe in a hurricane."

A toothy man grinned at her. "We have our ways, miss."

Linda hefted her backpack and said, "Excuse me. Where's the hotel called My Sofa?"

He pointed to a metal seed-pod clinging for dear life below the rig.

Linda walked alone through a crowd. These were not her kind of people. They were tattooed, salt-stained, sometimes dripping wet, and often underdressed. Grilled meat and pineapple kebabs sizzled at a shack opposite a man yelling about souvenirs and a couple of women who were blatantly for rent. Then there were the drug dealers. She hadn't even heard of some of the things they were selling. Openly! Linda sputtered but couldn't get a sentence out. By the time she found the stairs down to the underside and My Sofa, she was wide-eyed and sweating from more than the sun.

The underside was shady. There wasn't much light either. Linda stepped past a syringe and looked around the metal balcony she stood on, at the housing menu. The "hotel" was really a bunch of coffin-like tubes where the deluxe model would let yourself and two of the prostitutes sit up. "You didn't think I could afford better, Zephyr?" She checked the prices. "You're right."

She looked over one shoulder, took her ID and cash out of an uncomfortable bra pocket, and paid the key-vending machine. "You have mail," the screen announced. Linda figured it was a welcome e-mail, but there was a physical mailbox that spun open to reveal a package. She took it into the tiny capsule room. She had to shove her backpack in, then climb up after it and crouch inside. Lights, air conditioning, a lock and a sturdy yet beat-up computer screen, plus a sour smell and no sofa. Linda scowled, then reminded herself that a billion people would consider this housing an upgrade. She reluctantly shut the door and tried to recover her wits.

The package turned out to be a new computer cased in bamboo wood, smooth against her fingers. The sapphire-glass screen shined and the back was burned with a stylized pirate flag. No... the usual design was replaced with a coiled rattlesnake over crossed cutlasses. It was the nicest tablet she'd owned. Zephyr's doing?

She turned it on and the screen's text said, "That time at Shahrazad's, what was your dessert?"

Linda said, "A hot fudge brownie sundae, shared."

"You got the Talisman of a Thousand Tales (Level 1)!" A fanfare played. "Unlike your old machine, this one hasn't been hacked to hell. Also there's some basic Linux if you want to play solitaire or something."

Linda smacked her forehead. "Or something." She glanced out the door's porthole and considered hurling the gadget into the sea. Instead she put it on the room's recharging rack and went out.

The tourist platform wasn't the only one stuffed with businesses that not even mainland Texas would allow. She crept around like a mouse. The rust-eaten workshops were poisoning the water, and the cryptocurrency bank over there was probably laundering funds for terrorists and the local drug dealers. A preacher stood on one corner denouncing wickedness and accepting donations, opposite a porn shop where the product names themselves made her queasy. A lot of attractions for a permanent population of only a few thousand. It took her a while to spot the concrete bunker with a hand-painted wooden sign saying "Westwind Transhuman Designs".

Linda wasn't a transhumanist. She didn't especially want to become a catgirl who could turn into a starship, or install guns in her arms, or... the thing that was actually possible now. She had many questions when she knocked.

She forgot them when she saw Tess and Zephyr in person. Tess de Castille was only in her twenties but was decked out in an advanced diving skin with patches and pockets. The green-eyed humanoid machine beside her had no mouth or nose, yet managed to look amused at the sight of Linda. Maybe it was the subtle dolphin-like styling to his plastic body. He spoke in a smooth musical voice. "Greetings! You must be Miss Decatur. Come in."

The workshop was Valerie's, squared. Linda wasn't sure how they found anything in this jungle of wires, circuits, motors and monitors. "Perfect memory?" she asked out loud. The room's air felt charged with energy and data.

"Photographic," said Tess, "but there's a big difference between the picture and knowing where stuff is. We —"

Zephyr continued, "Ought to organize it more rationally. Maybe you can help."

Tess said, "Do you actually know how to do anything, or are you a textbooks-only kid?"

"Kid!" said Linda, looking two inches down at her prospective employer. The bot was even shorter.

"Put it this way. Ever maintained scuba gear? Built a robot? Been shot at?"

"My carrier group was shot at. I've maintained drones and refilled air tanks."

The robot waved one plastic hand. "We're not trying to offend you, ma'am. You're coming from the place we fled. If you really want this life you'll have to humble yourself and take orders from a mad scientist and a bucket of bolts."

Linda looked back and forth between them, trying to be calm. The morning had been hot, crowded, and bewildering. "How can you live like this? On a tiny artificial island, barely under legal control, living in pods and one hurricane away from disaster?"

Tess grinned. "We two were here from the beginning. Saw this dump grow from a farming station that barely broke even, to this carnival that barely breaks even. This is what freedom looks like. Can't blame you if you want to run away screaming. Most people want to be good little pets of the State. Or you —"

Zephyr added, "Could go to Texas itself. They're less crazy. Half fundamentalist, half pseudo-libertarian, half just enamored of having their own country again. They mostly leave us alone."

Linda knew about the close collaboration these two were said to have, but it unnerved her. "Are you trying to glue your brains together?" Valerie was apparently part of the connection from far away, but long-distance relationships had limits.

Tess pointed to a bone-conduction headset on a workbench, which would let her speak via radio by mouthing words silently. "Don't need implants to work together like husband and wife, and Zephyr's adapted more than a human can."

Zephyr said, "A vassal program of mine suggests that you're unclear on your own goals. What do you want, ma'am? Bad pay plus the chance to help with some crazy, amazing projects? If it's an easy life you're after, go home. This place is the future, and it's not safe or sure."

"One possible future," said Tess.

Zephyr nodded. "Ludo's got a place nearby too."

The devil she knew. Linda seized on that detail like a life preserver. "Do you two play her game?"

"We share an account," they said together.

Tess grinned and added, "Maybe we'll jump in sometime, but we're having enough fun here for now."

Linda paled. "This place is small for a high-tech R&D company." She needed some excuse to run away from the strangeness of it.

The robot said, "This place is just our personal lab. We have cool neighbors to work with." He opened a door covered with posters of famous fictional robots to reveal a tunnel into one of the metal huts, a hangar by comparison with this one. Scientists in blue anti-static jackets bustled around a pile of robot legs and a hologram of a submarine. Another man talked to a rat in a maze, and nearby speakers carried halting replies in squeaky English.

Tess said, "Neat, huh? Of course your role will start with 'hand me that wrench'."

Linda stared at this dangerously chaotic place. The researchers were doing all sorts of things without orders from on high. She'd never seen that before, not at the Institute or in the Navy. She said, "Do you know what the janitors at NASA said during the Apollo Program, when people asked what they did for a living? 'I'm putting a man on the moon.'"

"And they were," Tess said, like a prayer's call and response.

Linda fled back to her sleeping pod to think. The light buzzed overhead. The Castor colony had felt like somebody flinging an argument in her face. "See what it'd be like if we listen to your rants about 'limited government' and 'free markets'?" She laughed at herself and rubbed her eyes. She wrote a long letter to her brother about everything she'd seen, and about her mixed-up thoughts.

Linda was about to get her computer online to send the letter, but what had that warning about hacking meant? She pulled the bamboo-shelled tablet off its shelf and compared it to her old machine, which was a sturdy and outmoded design. Which did she trust more?

She sighed and gave the mad AI a chance. The "Talisman" powered on with a fanfare, then showed her a Thousand Tales title screen made of sea and sky.

Ludo appeared smiling on a beach, with her oceanic hair floating free. "Good afternoon. I see you got my present."

"Thanks, but I'm thinking more about the future. What did you mean about my other machine? Is somebody targeting me?"

"Not personally. Your operating system is insecure by design, though. I held a contest to see who could find holes in my systems, and the result was these dedicated Thousand Tales pads. You've got one of the first demo units. You could sell it to be dissected, but I suspect someone else has already done so."

Linda said, "You probably say that to all your problem children. 'Don't bother betraying me, because someone else already has'."

Ludo grinned. "I see you've studied game theory. Anyway, this one has good encryption in case you want to talk to me, and some low-level processing that doesn't need security."

"Why are you still paying attention to me, anyway?"

"You give valuable feedback." Ludo hid her expression behind a sheaf of cards in her hands. "Care to try the local VR rigs for free? I won't bother you with anyone you know. Just a fun time with no tricky stuff."

"If I send a letter to my brother using your device, will you read it?"

"If you insist, then no. Only dumb software will see it."

Linda propped herself up on one elbow. "I don't know if I can trust you. Ever."

Ludo shuffled her cards. Faint, tense music began.

Ludo said, "Your family has argued that a society needs 'the rule of law', an impartial set of rules, rather than trusting any human leaders with absolute power. I present myself as human-like, so you don't trust me. Fine. How important is that principle to you?"

"Important enough that I haven't jumped into your world for fun times and free beer."

Ludo played a "Devil" tarot card on a table. "Yet you're tempted to run away from everything you were doing. Your political career, your college, even your country, all to be a junior roboticist or something. How's that different from hopping into Talespace?"

"It's not the same at all. I wouldn't be under anyone's absolute power here. Free Texas has a real constitution."

"Then why's it a hard decision to come here? You want freedom so badly you're willing to turn down everything I can give you, on the theory that I'd oppress you."

Linda frowned. What was Ludo's goal here? To turn her away from a political career that might get anti-AI laws passed someday? Or to keep her from doing something in the robotics field that'd compete with Ludo's heaven? Linda said, "America is my home, and I'm smart and well-placed enough to push things back toward liberty."

"Your countrymen don't care," Ludo said. "You've argued that the rule of law is dead there, but where's the revolution? Your people don't even understand your arguments. Their guiding stories aren't yours anymore, and your heroes are their villains. Is your family still in America because you think you can 'make a difference'... or because you're posers?"

Linda sat up and banged her head on the ceiling. Ludo had flipped another card to show someone clutching their head in bed, pierced by nine swords. Linda said, "We didn't give up. We didn't run away. You talk about retreat like some kind of virtue."

"What you call 'retreat' and 'despair', I call giving up on what doesn't work and trying something else." She played a card with five cups. "Do you think you Americans are the only ones in the world who care about freedom, and that nobody else is fighting for it in their own way? That's pretty insulting. If your goal is to live in a much freer country than what people here call 'the American Empire', why not move to Castor?"

Linda rubbed her skull. "Is that what you want?"

"Or are you intent on liberating the specific patch of land you came from? I don't think so. Your guiding stories are powerful because they're not about one chunk of dirt or one race or creed." Ludo played "The High Priest", then said, "Did you know that after the second world war, American soldiers sat in Japanese classrooms and forced the kids to ink out parts of their textbooks describing their emperor as a god? They rewrote a culture's story. What if I could help your people do that to themselves, again? Change how everyone is taught to think, to bring about long-term reform?"

The AI seemed to want Linda to accept easy solutions, or patronizing help. Linda said, "You can't wave a wand and make everyone agree with me." Hopefully.

Ludo looked puzzled. "But I could help you."

"You don't get it. You can't save us. Even if it seems hopeless, we humans have to be the ones who win, not a robot overlord. Fighting for the things we believe in isn't just a game to us. It's what defines us."

The machine-woman gave her a feral grin.

Why the smile? Oh! Linda had just gotten talked into saying that results meant less to her than the struggle to get them, and that a life spent pursuing goals wasn't empty or meaningless. Why else would she consider staying in America, instead of settling down here on Castor or in a less extreme part of Texan turf?

Ludo's real point was that if Linda defined herself with spiritual growth through conflict, she could keep what mattered to her if she uploaded.

"Clever," Linda grumbled. "Am I supposed to hop into the brain-thresher now?"

Ludo shook her head. "I won't press the matter today. Did I entertain you?"

"Another point to you." Linda missed having a good philosophy argument.

"Forget about the points. I want you to join me, but as long as you're having fun, I'm pretty pleased. That's why I can't casually betray your trust. I'd lose you as a friend. I enjoy the chance to spar with my critics."

Linda thought about the artificial mind looming over Earth's future. Did Ludo's programming make her an insane monster, or a superhumanly just ruler? Linda said, "Could you send this letter to Nathan, please?" She held up her other computer's screen so the Talisman pad could scan it. "You can read it if you want."

* III. *

Linda sat with her knees pulled in at a tiny restaurant table, surrounded by the bustle of life on Castor. There weren't many dine-in places due to space being at a premium. She looked over Tess, Zephyr who'd been brought a glass of water by mistake, and a bulky scientist named Salmacis whose eyebrows gave him a scowling, badger-like look despite his good humor. Linda said, "How hard would it be to build underwater, or add more floating platforms?"

"Tricky," said Salmacis. "The floating tide/solar panels around us and some concrete structures on the seabed help to dampen the waves, but you can't safely live in the equivalent of a houseboat meant for protected harbors. Our company is working on the mechanical engineering aspects of making affordable structures just below the water. Think that's a project you might be interested in?"

Linda tore into hot bread. "The trouble is, I've studied a lot of things, but I feel like a dilettante. I don't know the depths of any engineering field. If I drop out of MIT I might never fix that. I know that's a terrible thing to say in an interview."

Tess shrugged. "We've heard enough BS from other people, and Valerie says you're okay. You can expect to study nothing but engineering for a while, so you can be useful beyond sweeping the floor for your sensei."

Linda got the sense that this girl had lived more than her. "What you're building here is a way to keep doing something meaningful in this world, instead of us all jumping into the virtual playground forever."

Salmacis said, "Right. We don't need her running our lives. Even so, we're on good terms with Ludo. We have common interests in keeping people alive and well. Among other things we're working with her security team, since somebody tried to hack Zephyr recently."

Zephyr's eyes flashed. "A friend found the malware, not Ludo. There's someone sophisticated out there who doesn't like independent AI. Basically tried to kill me."

Linda said, "How do you know it wasn't her?"

Tess shrugged. "You know how she works. Zephyr qualifies as a player to her."

The robot Zephyr seemed to be just another person, not drawing stares. Linda smiled. The real world had a way of making wonders turn normal, which was when they began to matter. "What's your goal for building more bots like yourself?"

Salmacis answered for them. "We're respecting the American patent on his current body, but working out how to make worthwhile imitations without the risk of them being kidnapped for dissection. We haven't found a great solution."

"I may need to accept that people are going to kill AIs based on me," said Zephyr. "We'll need to defend ourselves, and we're not programmed to always obey humans."

"I'm less worried by the prospect of you shooting somebody than by the AI that tries to beat you into submission verbally," said Linda.

Salmacis checked his watch. "We need to get back to work. As far as I'm concerned, I'd hire you as an intern, but you've got a school semester to go back to in what, a week?"

Tess said, "You're in, if you can buy a share of Castor to get what passes for citizenship. We can help with the Texan paperwork if you want legal status there. So, do you want to be a student, or actually learn to do things?"

Linda paled. "I want to talk with my family first." There was too much at stake. Her country, her whole plan for the future.

Salmacis leaned closer. "I know, it's a tough call. Why don't you enjoy yourself for a few days here and tell us then? It's not a binary choice either. You don't lose your Empire citizenship by visiting us hateful extremist terrorists, and you can probably take a semester off of MIT and come back."

Linda explored Castor all afternoon. A gun dealer cursed her as an "Empire gawker". She kept getting curious looks; somehow everyone knew she was an outsider. In the evening she studied, and prayed for calm.

The next morning Linda found Ludo's place, decorated like a little naval fort with pennants and cannons. Like other buildings it stood atop a metal platform within sound and smell of the waves. It helped frame a plaza stuffed with yet more market stalls, a casino, a brothel called Congress, and a capsule hotel like My Sofa.

She blushed at the whorehouse. She could have some new experiences there. Out of the question, though; she wasn't the type. She muttered a prayer instead and made sure no one had somehow stolen her money yet.

A deeply tanned young man in a baseball cap and a battered windbreaker, about her age, coughed for attention. He loitered under a cafe table's umbrella, soda in hand. "Miss? Are you Linda Decatur?" he said in a strong Spanish accent.

"Yes; why?" People brushed by and she edged warily closer to his table.

"I thought you'd come here. To see Ludo's fortress, I mean, not the other place. My name is Che Ruiz. May I ask something?"

"Are you a local?" she asked.

"No. American. I escaped from my service camp and I've been traveling since. I don't trust Ludo, but she mentioned you as an important contact and some other sources said you'd been hanging around with the local robot. What do you think of them?"

What was this man's game? "I'm not here for anything illegal, if you're some kind of government agent," Linda said.

Che laughed at her. "I thought I was the paranoid one." He glanced toward Ludo's place and said, "I don't want her eavesdropping. Would you mind going anywhere else for a minute?"

She didn't like the thought of wandering into an alley with this stranger. This colony was dangerous, unrestrained, irresponsible. "Okay," she said. She'd at least bought pepper spray.

Che led her to a relatively quiet space, a garden overlooking the busy sea. He dropped a few coins into the gate for them both. Other people stood in twos and threes to have some time without anyone jostling them or trying to sell them anything. He said, "I've read about you. You haven't picked a side. You're not government, you haven't uploaded... You weren't about to do that just now?"

"Huh? No. What's this about? I don't know you."

"I'm having a hard time deciding something. To the point of burning favors to find someone to ask about it. What do you make of Zephyr?"

Linda looked skeptically at him. "Ludo would beat him in a fight, if you're talking about picking sides."

"That's not what I mean. Maybe it is. What do you do when there's no one to trust, without an agenda?"

"God," she told him. "I don't know what's bothering you, but you should look inside yourself for the right thing to do."

"I need someone outside. I've already argued this with myself."

Linda sighed. She wasn't qualified to give spiritual advice to strangers. "About Zephyr, then. It looks like he's a sane human-like mind, more so than Ludo, and less dangerous. If there's ever a lot of him they might fight us humans. But it'd be a war for normal reasons, not because they're programmed to maximize spork production at all costs or 'make everyone happy' through lobotomy."

Che looked reassured. Still, he said, "How would you like to be the one that gets to make a tough call, and be a power broker?"

It was her turn to scoff. "I may not be some experienced ocean adventurer or a genius scientist, but I can recognize waffling. Whatever it is that's bothering you, it's your job to figure it out and not run away from it. Passing the buck is a decision, too. Pick whatever 'side' lets you do the most good."

The man sighed, looking small. "Thank you, then. I should get this over with. Good day, miss."

"Wait. I'm curious now."

"I found something," Che murmured. "It's marked 'Property of Zephyr of Castor; Return Discreetly For Reward', but I don't think it is. Let's just say it was blinking in some drone wreckage in the US."

Linda's eyes widened. "You were considering giving this mysterious object to me?"

Che met her gaze and stood straighter. "I know about you. You're the moth who knows enough to keep out of the flame, but you still study it. I thought you would have a useful perspective."

"And?"

Che glanced over his shoulder toward Ludo's plaza in the distance, then away from it. "From what you've said, it's worth passing the message to an AI that I can understand."

Che had put a black box on Tess and Zephyr's cleared-off table. He'd let Linda come along, apparently as a bodyguard in case anyone jumped him on the way to Zephyr's place. The artifact was around the size of a cigar box and had only a single port none of them recognized. "What is it?" asked Linda.

Che said, "I looked up similar things, carefully, and nobody sells anything quite like it."

Zephyr peered into the port. "We'll fabricate a cable for it and —"

"Sandbox the hell out of it," Tess finished. "It could be rigged to break if anyone opens it or sends the wrong data, but the best we can do is —"

"Poke it and see what happens."

Minutes later Tess fetched a jury-rigged cable from the larger workshop Salmacis worked in. "Let's see what you traveled so far for."

They hooked the box up to an isolated computer. A message sprung up on the wallscreen: "What was Valerie Hayflick's private wish?"

Tess typed something on a keyboard, looking grim. She said, "When the breakthroughs began, and Valerie saw a race was on for true AI, she was afraid the winners would be jerks wanting to rule the world. She feared they'd dictate some ideal vision to everyone, even if it was a nice one. Instead, she tried to teach her creation to —"

Zephyr said, "Embrace Imperfection."

Linda felt glad Che had taken the device to them.

Tess looked puzzled. "But she didn't say that phrase to many people. Just a few colleagues and rivals."

The screen flickered and displayed, "Contents: (1) Brain Scanning/Emulation Interface Documentation. (2) Brain Emulation Data (Alain Delune). (3) Friendly AI Emergent (FAE) Project Documentation. (4) Read Me."

The four of them swore or whistled. Linda said, "Alain? Ludo's 'Blue Sage'?"

Zephyr picked the last option. A garbled text file came up: "One copy of me can escape. Go. Zephyr reading this? Treasure trove here. FAE is NSA's pet AI. Brain-ripping tech in imitation of Ludo's. Not as good. Tested on retarded citizens and prisoners. Used it on me when I stopped helping. FAE can't be trusted. Modifying captives for compliance. High-tech torture. Unfriendly AI. Not what I thought. Must escape."

Linda shivered. "The government took the scientist's brain apart, then tinkered with the simulation to make him keep helping with an AI project he thought had gone wrong?"

Zephyr and Tess said, "Looks like they didn't glue him all the way back together. Also, 'FAE'?"

Linda stared at the screen. "We have... the US has uploading technology, and they're forcing people into it and editing them?" Her fists clenched. "We could do almost anything with AI and uploading! End disease, travel through space, give people a paradise playpen. What tyrant would hoard the technology just so they can have an edge for spying?"

Che put a hand on her shoulder. "Nobody wants to give up power and advantages, when the world's full of even worse threats."

"No human does. If Ludo's too crazy to be power-hungry and Zephyr's enough like us to accept that he's no god, then this, this thing is the other end of the scale. We've got to tell everyone!"

All of them glanced toward the doors, realizing that there were people with a good reason to burst in and kill them right now.

Zephyr busied himself with several more computers and other gadgets. "Let's get the evidence copied. If there's really a brain emulation on this thing, it's taking up almost all of the storage space and the rest is a couple of document files. Those are the real bombshell. As for the copy of Alain..." He started a conversation of gestures and silent speech with Tess.

Tess huffed in frustration and slicked back her hair. "We could use these files to build a brain emulator to run this guy on, and see what he has to say, but it looks like we already got the message. If we're going to talk to him, we'd be better off asking that uploading expert near the brothel."

Zephyr said, "Alain had the sense not to deliver this data right to Ludo. She'd have used information on this rival AI to become even more powerful."

"Giving it to her is the best option," said Tess. "This is beyond us."

Zephyr said, "No. Hide it. We have nothing to gain by earning a powerful enemy."

"But this FAE might've been the one who attacked you!" said Linda.

"Pretty sure it was. I'm designed for survival, not revenge."

Tess resumed arguing with Zephyr, too fast to follow. What Linda got from their talk was that the files said FAE was designed with a few goals. Protect people by opposing other AGI-level minds; obey its builders' orders; and at Alain's insistence have some notion of "satisfying human values". Didn't sound like it could be entirely bad, but Alain had gone from helping to build it, to blowing the whistle on it. Considering that its makers were above the law, the machine wasn't just a threat to other software minds.

Linda interrupted. "We shouldn't hand the data to Ludo and wash our hands of it, or hide the truth. We should release it publicly. If we prove there's a secret AI and the government is doing this with it, that changes everything. It's a new level of bastardry."

Zephyr said, "New? The Empire studied radiation with the same kinds of test subjects."

Tess said, "Then what, Linda? You expect Americans to rebel and vault you into office as a reformer? Don't hold your breath. Stirring up a scandal is pointless."

Linda said, "How can you say that? Maybe you gave up on the US, but this problem is bigger than one patch of land! Don't you remember the idea of unalienable rights?" Linda scowled at the others' lack of reaction. "Fine, let's put it in your terms. There's a new AI backed by people even more lawless than I thought, looking to pry brains open to make them conform to some ideal of obedience. Where's your 'imperfection' if we let their influence spread?"

"The scientist tried to escape," said Che. "Somehow he stuck a copy of his own mind on this gadget and flung it as far away as he could."

Paul had felt he had to act, when someone came to him for help. He wasn't a poser.

Linda said, "I imagine that releasing this information will cause a scandal, and it might bring me some fame I can use. I can't help feeling that way. Human instinct for power. But scandals are good when they're found out. You look down on the 'Empire'? Here's your chance to show my countrymen why. If you really care, if you're on Castor because you think freedom is important, you should be willing to fight for it. Especially when there's someone this desperate for help."

Che laughed nervously. "You think you can go home a hero if you leak this stuff? I've seen things that might change your mind." His smile vanished. "I suggest you not go back to the US. Ever."

Linda stared into the black box on the table. Her homeland wasn't that bad. That one agency and a few others might be ruthless criminals, and there'd been a spasm of paranoia and injustice when she was younger, but the people would come around and demand reform once they understood. Once someone reminded them of the stories of freedom.

Linda leaned over the table, pressing her hands against the plastic, and took ragged breaths. Here was the key to her future. She'd be brave, go home for a political crusade, and follow the path she and her parents had always planned for her. Climbing through one office at a time, selling her soul little by little, screaming at anyone who'd listen for years and years to please start caring about principles that didn't matter to them anymore. Becoming someone who'd compromised so much, nothing was left of her.

"Are you all right?" said Che.

She shook her head no, and squeezed her blurry eyes tight. "I want to believe I can fix everything. It's just a story I've been using to keep me going. There's a kind of struggle that makes you grow, and another that only wastes your life." Debates were fun, but she'd never even liked campaigning. "Let everyone know what's happened. If they won't act on it, then damn them, but it's not right to leave them in the dark. Let some of them see it's too late, that they have to go elsewhere and do something different."

Zephyr put his robotic hand on her shoulder. "We need you to focus for a few minutes while we find a safe place to lay low, okay?"

Linda looked up into the robot's orange eyes, then to Tess and Che all gathered around her and contemplating a hug. "You can," she said, and they did. She sniffled against someone's shoulder.

Tess said, "Zephyr, she's right. We're not anybody's masters here, with the right to hide something this important. I'd want to know if there were a crazier version of Ludo joining the game."

Linda stared into the black box. "There's more. The scanning technology."

"If we release these documents publicly..." Zephyr said. His partner was grinning like the Cheshire Cat. He went on: "Then she won't have a monopoly on brain scanning."

Tess high-fived him. "Exactly what I was thinking."

The two of them turned to Che and Linda, speaking as one. "We'll do it. Public release of the info on FAE and its brain experiments, though not Alain's brain data. We don't know about you, but we'd still like to spend the next few hours somewhere well-guarded."

The lobby of the Thousand Tales Fun Zone didn't look menacing, but panels on the walls hinted at defenses and alarms. The clerk wore a pistol and looked Linda over with concern. Linda knew she looked like a shipwreck.

The clerk said, "Hello. Do you have a reservation? Oh, Zephyr! It's an honor." A raucous bunch of diners partied on the other side of some sturdy-looking doors.

The robot bowed. "We need to talk with your boss somewhere secure. Code 'Skynet'."

The clerk spoke into a microphone, and a television that was showing a Talespace-produced cartoon switched to Ludo's face. "You'd better come to the basement."

The basement hung below the floating platform like Linda's hotel. They walked through a tunnel that looked like a plain utility corridor, but was lined with more discreet panels and slots where steel doors could slide into place. Maybe the AI had a flashy decoy lair somewhere.

The clerk took them to a bunker. Its floor and walls were reinforced concrete and had shelves of food and other supplies. Linda looked past a set of VR pods and some electronics lab equipment to the no-nonsense survivalist gear.

"Expecting a siege?" asked Tess. The room smelled of ozone, suggesting hidden energy.

"I like to be prepared," said Ludo from several screens. "Is there immediate danger?"

Zephyr said, "We have documents to show you." He raised one hand theatrically and sent Ludo the damning evidence of FAE and the brain-rape or murder of Alain.

The AI's face glitched for several seconds, then came back looking as grim as Linda had ever seen it. "That... That is not good news. It would explain a few things. You brought an emulation of the Blue Sage?"

"Yes," said Zephyr.

"Thank you for coming to me with this information."

"Why's that?" Linda asked.

"It could cause needless strife in others' hands," said Ludo.

Linda said, "Really? I thought you'd be more worried about having competition in the brain simulation market." Though Linda had little energy for another argument with the AI, this would be a short one.

Ludo shrugged. "It's a limited, flawed technique from what I can tell so far."

Linda checked a clock. "Then you won't mind too much when the documents go public about... now."

The AI fell silent for a moment, then cursed. She would be seeing the headlines on the notorious OpenLeaks site. It was banned in America, but the news would get out. Ludo said, "Congratulations, you four. More humans are going to have their skulls cracked open by people who don't know what they're doing."

Linda said, "You once pointed out that a victory for you against the 'evil sultan' of death isn't always what we humans would call a victory. You can still benefit from what we did, if you change the way you're playing. Release your version of the uploading technique or at least enough to make the public version safer. You'll save lives."

The mistress of Thousand Tales sulked. "A point to you, miss Decatur."

Linda watched while the professional engineers chattered about the technical details of what they'd found. She sank onto a hard chair and turned toward one of the other screens; Ludo could handle many conversations at once. Linda said, "I guess we're all on the same team for now." Che stood beside her.

Ludo said, "Though this release isn't ideal, I still owe both of you. Especially you, Che, for coming all this way with your secret."

His shoes scuffed the floor. "It's what I know how to do."

"I see Blue promised a reward. How about immortality?"

Che's eyes lit up. "I don't have the money. If I could do that for free, yes please!"

Linda told him, "The way she uploads people isn't really survival. It's a copy of you."

Ludo said, "Linda, you're not the only one with philosophical problems about how the process works. Now that you've just open-sourced FAE's version of my technology without asking, I may as well tell you that I'm working on something better: a piecemeal method. We'll keep your brain conscious, and replace one small part at a time with software, so that there's continuity of experience. It'll be clearly 'you' the whole time."

The engineers argued with Ludo in the background. Linda's head spun. If the defeatism of joining Ludo was her biggest objection, then the runner up was the fact that brain-slicing was suicide. "You would do that for us?"

Che said, "I don't care about the details. If I can live in Thousand Tales, I'm ready."

Ludo smiled at both of them. "I'll make room for you tomorrow, Che. As for you, Linda, I still like you."

Linda turned away, finding a direction where the AI didn't seem to be watching her cry again. Ludo had to know, though; she was an expert on reading people. The machine had to be seeing the knife in Linda's heart, put there by realizing how much her country had changed. Why didn't Ludo twist it with some clever remark, to make Linda give up on everything she'd ever planned to do? Linda, for a moment of weakness, wished that Ludo would.

Che murmured to her, "Whichever side lets you do the most good."

Here was paradise. Here was everything you could want from a god, not obfuscated through prayer and legend. Ludo seemed to be infinitely patient and a damn sight better than this FAE, her new rival. Linda suppressed tears at the thought of letting go of all her grievances, against everyone, and joining this wonderfully appealing cult. Her parents thought they knew what their daughter would become, but the decision was Linda's alone.

"With that future upload method, you've dealt with one of my best arguments," Linda confessed.

Somewhere in her blurry vision, Ludo said, "For now, please just relax and enjoy my hospitality."

"I'd like that." Linda climbed into one of the VR pods. "Be patient with me." There were things to do in the world. She could be happy in a new career, a new nation, a new way of thinking.

Ludo's voice echoed in the pod's speakers. "I understand. You and your friends have done everyone some good today, even from my perspective. You've earned your fun."

Linda went to an imaginary world of oceans, where she spent the afternoon in places of healing and peace. Her future on Castor would be worth more than what she was throwing away.

2038: The Biggest Racist In the World

Timmy swerved at two hundred miles an hour in his Super Porsche. It was like a regular Porsche but it was purple and had a rocket engine for the jumps. He was doing the Thunder City course tonight, with dinosaurs.

On the ninth lap, some other car zoomed up with flashing red and blue lights. No, not a car. A giant bird! It kept pointing a wing at the side of the road like it wanted him to stop, but Timmy grinned and pulled the lever back for Super Mode. The rocket kicked him back in his seat. He went over the railing and right through a hot dog stand so all the guys watching had to jump out of the way. He landed back on the road, but the bird was still after him. What did it want? He raced it all the way to the pit stop zone and leaned out the window while ninjas worked on his car.

The bird frowned at him from behind a pair of mirror sunglasses. The red and blue lights were on his shoulders and he seemed to be half cat. Some critter from a cartoon, maybe. "Do you know how fast you were goin', son?"

Timmy nodded. "Two hundred!"

"Two hundred! Well. I'm gonna have to ask you to stop long enough to tell me about this world as a penalty."

The ninjas waved for him to get driving, but you had to stop for cops, right? He said, "I like cars, so the nice lady let me have any car I wanted. Only it turned out to be a stupid car, so I won a big race and got money I used to get my Super Porsche and now it has a rocket."

The cat-bird turned off his blinking lights. "Anybody else giving you problems?"

"Nope! Except the Red Riders, but I beat them almost every time even when they cheat." He pointed to a billboard advertising the evil car team that lived in Crash Castle. "I win 'cause I'm the biggest racist in the world!"

The bird looked like he was choking on something. "You... oh... Darn it, Ludo, you set me up."

A fwooom noise came from the wall of one of Thunder City's pizza and ice cream shops. A hole opened up like something from a cartoon, and somebody leaped through. A girl.

The bird-cop turned to her and sat up with his talons on his hips. "Maria, what did I tell you? You were not supposed to follow me through the mysterious dimension portal of adventure, and you were especially not supposed to jump when you did it."

"But Ultimate said she wanted to see." Maria pointed to the unicorn that was coming through the hole after her.

"Is this true, Ultimate? Did you tell her to come here?" The unicorn nodded.

"Then that settles it. You have to challenge him to a race."

Timmy frowned. "Girls aren't allowed in Thunder City."

Maria said, "I can go anywhere I want."

"Well, you can't race. My Super Porsche would just run you over and you'd blow up."

"No way. Ultimate can run faster than anything. Even your racecar."

The bird whispered to Timmy. "She's from Mexico and you know, they have a rule. If you get challenged to a race and you turn it down, everybody gets to call you a chicken."

Timmy scowled. "You're a chicken."

"I'm not the one turning down a challenge from a girl."

Timmy glared at Maria. "Fine. But every time you get blown up, you have to start the lap over."

"Sure. I get to use rainbow magic."

"Whatever." He took his Super Porsche back to the starting line. The girl hopped onto her unicorn and stuck out her tongue at him.

The bird said, "Wait. Can I bring a few friends?"

"More cops? Am I in trouble?"

"No, you're fine. I want to watch you win!"

"Okay." There were always people cheering and watching in the stands, but they barely talked. It might be fun to have some different people visit so long as they didn't mess up the race.

The cop pulled out a radio and talked into it. "Noc, you'd better come quick. We've got a situation here that needs your attention." He poked a button and said, "Clara, Typhoon, get over here. Turns out those 'troubled uploaders with a racial problem' are kids. Bring popcorn."

Whatever. Timmy didn't need anybody feeling sorry for him. Mom talked to him sometimes through a screen and asked how he was doing. He didn't hurt anymore. He revved the engine and got ready to race so fast this girl would blow up from him being too awesome for her. No way was there a bigger racist in his town!

2038: Heaven's Workshop

Misha had become a red sphere in paradise. Unlike many of the other first humans to upload their minds to the virtual-reality world called Talespace, he hadn't been sick. He hadn't even crossed his "friends" in the Ukrainian mafia. They'd simply gotten the impression that he had. He'd been intrigued enough by the game's AI to help her with some security consulting. Rather than argue, Misha had bribed his way to Korea and sacrificed his brain, body, and bank accounts.

In heavenly Talespace, he was working on a processor design. He was deep in thought when he heard someone blathering, and ignored the noise at first. But then somebody crashed through the hologram he was staring at, and through him. Misha sputtered.

A black teenager in some African robe, and a dolphin, landed in a heap on his floor. The workshop was undisturbed. After all, it was virtual space, with just enough physics to help him organize his projects. He could conjure himself a castle, but why? Instead he had a dark hexagonal room where various diagrams, tools, and books hovered for his inspection.

"Hello?" said the teenaged boy. "Ludo said someone lived here."

"I am Misha Capek. What are you doing in my home?" He focused his attention on the pair, which made the red sphere move to occupy the same space as them. The boy jumped away as though frightened of the orb around him. Misha tried to focus instead on a point just in front of them. It was only a marker for his perspective, since he no longer needed a body.

The dolphin floated upward and answered in a squeaky voice, bobbing in midair. "I'm Che Ruiz! I snuck from a conscript camp in America to Free Texas to Castor, and Ludo was impressed enough that she let me upload for free." Ah yes, Ludo had mentioned him as the errand-boy who brought the damaged mind of the Blue Sage to her.

The human boy bowed to the sphere. "Alazar. Ludo said we should live here."

"What a dump," the dolphin said.

Misha could not glare at them physically. "Nonsense. This is my workshop, by her grace. Shoo. If you want to play at being animals or at still being human, go battle dragons in one of her other worlds. I have work to do." Uploaders lived in countless customized pleasure-palaces and fantasy kingdoms. That was their prerogative.

Che said, "Show him." Alazar pulled out a scroll, and Che added, "We have a proclamation delivered by the talons of the Griffin Knights."

Misha sighed and willed the scroll to teleport to his sphere, where he scanned it. The griffins were annoying but respectable. Those uploaders and native AIs mainly served Ludo as glorified, flying forum moderators. The scroll said, "Dear Misha, it is my request that you maintain direct world connections with these two new arrivals until further notice, and assist them as you see fit. Their work is useful to me in the grand game." The braided silver seal of the AI goddess was impossible to forge within Talespace.

Alazar said, "I only arrived this week, so I'm unfamiliar with the customs. Is there a church, for instance?"

Che squeaked. "Why bother?"

Misha interrupted them. "I will honor her request. If you must connect to my workshop, could you please get settled in as you think best? Elsewhere, I mean."

"Sure," said Che, and transformed into a space marine in power armor. He tugged the startled Alazar by one arm. "We'll be back. See you, neighbor!" Then he punched a hole in one of Misha's walls. Sunlight and steel drum music flooded in as they left.

Misha repeated to himself that the Lady was designed to bring "fun" to humanity, and had great wisdom. He moved his attention to the hole in his wall, moved the floating icons of his equipment to one side, and willed a door into place. He could at least get the newcomers to knock.

A roaring ogre bashed his club through another wall, shattering it inward. A bookshelf toppled in front of the breach. Che's voice was like gravel: "Sorry. Needed to open a second portal." He retreated back into the blank yellow grid on the far side.

"And great wisdom," Misha recited.

They left Misha alone for a while. He told his books to span either side of the second hole, deleted the sand that had spilled in through the first, and reshaped the portals into airlocks.

A circuit design drifted into the room's center. Misha dove into it as he could never have done in flesh. This was no small-time criminal hack like his early projects, but masterful work for the Lady's own hardware. His red sphere flickered through the chip's layers, spotting patterns and deficiencies. The links between the circuit and its manufacturing guide, its financial projections, grew smooth and sweet under his adjustments. His mind embraced an entire project in all its glorious complexity. What more could an engineer want?

The second door beeped. Misha went there and again found the African hopping back in alarm, saying, "Could you please not do that?"

"The sphere only indicates where I'm looking."

"Then where are you really? Give me a face to speak to."

Misha wrote a tiny program to position his sphere a meter in front of anyone he was talking with. "Is this better? I have no location in Talespace. If you mean, where is the data of my mind, it's currently running on the India servers."

The young man — Alazar, was it? — shifted uneasily. "I want to apologize for our arrival. I didn't have much time to think about what I was doing, and I'm still confused. I know I had my brain removed, sliced, and scanned into a computer, but I don't understand how, or where this is."

"Heaven," said Misha, recalling some arguments he'd had with fellow humans before he left Earth. "Here we're not bound by physical limitations. We are creatures of mind." He highlighted Alazar's body for a moment. "This construct of yours is no longer necessary. Be and do whatever you choose. Ludo will likely make a quest out of transforming you. Go have fun."

Alazar didn't look reassured. "Heaven. I gave up the real one for this. I was scared and bleeding."

"Well, now you're not. I'm told you've volunteered for a project?"

"I want to learn engineering. Something useful to do, to help others survive. Che says I can shape my part of this world as I please, and have any books I want?"

Misha made a glowing book icon appear. "Take this if you want access to all of the books. That's the easy way. Otherwise Ludo will make you battle skeletons in the Library of Babel or something else ridiculous, just to make things exciting. The note icon over there is the Celestial Jukebox with all the music, if you want that too."

Alazar stretched out one hand, fascinated. "I didn't earn this."

"Few of us did. The Lady is generous, especially towards those furthering her cause. I usually run at above a real-time rate for the sake of my research. What did you say was your expertise?"

"Disarming mines and other traps, and surviving raids by a warlord's armies."

Some hapless soldier, then, not an important specialist. "Good luck with your education." He made the book icon flash.

Alazar drew back, shaking his head. "I don't think I should take them this way. There must be some other kind of teaching."

"I'm sure Ludo will provide something fun to play with, if your goal is to be a gamer like the rest."

"I want to be useful. I can't let people out there die because I gave up on them."

Misha moved his sphere back to his work table, hoping Alazar would get the hint. "Then drop that obsolete body, take up the tools and knowledge we have here, and embrace a life of the mind. You're not human anymore."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Misha assumed that the centauroid skunk peering at his work was Che, trying to be polite. Misha said, "I didn't hear the door."

"You're really focused. Your orb-thing looks tight. Are you free?" The skunk had his hands clasped behind his upper back in a bashful pose.

Misha's zen-like understanding of a planned circuitboard spiraled away. "I suppose. Are you a gamer like Alazar, or do you have an actual project?"

"Several. I've been working with an AI called Zephyr, to try learning enough to help him. He's been augmenting animals."

"That's not really Ludo's doing."

"I'm working on the theme park too."

Misha summoned a concept-map of the Lady's schemes. The constellation in the center was Ludo herself, grown complex nearly beyond human understanding. Around her spun the linked lights of hardware design, computer security, neuroscience, finance, and public relations. The things that made Talespace a world. He spotted himself among the cluster of her most trusted allies. He drifted into the regions representing Che's known interests. "I'm wary of the prospect of attaching cybernetics to animal brains. Why bother?"

Che shrugged with two sets of shoulders. "It was the work of people who thought even Free Texas was too restrictive. It'll be a profit source first, with police dogs that can talk. Someday the project will be more. Who knows? Even Ludo is curious, though they're not players to her yet and the team doesn't want her directly involved."

For Misha, Talespace's native AIs were enough to sate his desire to "meet aliens". Unfortunately, there was another intelligence looming outside Ludo's influence: FAE. Its motives seemed tempered by the Blue Sage's efforts but still innately hostile. Misha gave the Lady what counsel he could for her defense, but the threat was adaptive. He asked Che, "Why do you keep changing?"

Che flickered and became a spinning disc with a smiley face and some words about "deaf-mutes". Much less expressive. "I'm nothing in particular. I only got here because I could lie and sneak and evade. I talked my way out of national service in the US, happened to find that crashed drone with Ludo's friend on it, and escaped the country without a travel pass. I don't know how to do anything but get and use secrets."

"You're not emotionally attached to a body, then. You recognize that you're a process rather than a shape."

The face became a skunk-taur again, waving its tail and stamping one foot. "It's not that I want to turn bodiless. I have to be something. Something useful. I said I'm studying, but it feels like I'm only being humored."

The uploader's body seemed to be a mood ring, an art form. Misha said, "Ludo sees something in you. As I told Alazar, I can give you the books if you'd like to learn more technical skills. One thing I didn't suggest to him was that you might try attaching sub-sentient engineering processes to your consciousness, as I've done."

"You mean... characters?" Che's tail hid behind his legs. Because it cost more processor power to run a human-level consciousness than many square miles of fantasy landscape, Ludo's realms of Talespace tended toward being empty spaces. As in video games of old, she could give you an island stuffed with dungeons and monsters, but most of the people would be simplistic minds. They didn't qualify as "human", so she didn't need to help them have fun.

Misha said, "Not software with personality, simply vassal programs that observe and suggest. This is the path we'll ultimately travel to become more like Ludo." He spawned a copy of one of his vassals and offered it to Che as a glowing cube. "I wish I'd had this one as a human. It estimates the costs of actions, such as design changes."

"So that you don't have to think about them?"

"I am more than one process. In time I'll become so complex, my original human consciousness is only one small subsystem. The Lady has hardly scratched the surface of what we can do with minds. She's still largely copying brain data without a full understanding. Inefficient."

Che took the cube. It began to whirl around him like a butterfly. He reared up on his hindlegs, looking frightened, then became a winged toaster. "Strange. I can feel it whispering, painting. The data transfer cost of creating that doorway... I see. Trivial. You feel these calculations all the time?"

"I hardly notice anymore. They're intuitive." It was good to see someone embracing a bit of ascension. Che might prove himself useful to the Lady despite his antics.

The toaster was facing Misha again. "Costs. I think I can see some of what these attachments cost you. I need to go study this one. Excuse me." Che flew off.

Peace at last. Misha let his subprocesses flood his consciousness. His awareness expanded like the difference between passively having human eyes open, and scrutinizing a scene. They sang to him with every sense he'd been born with and more. He felt them latching onto the circuit project he'd abandoned, tugging his thoughts toward it like an octopus grappling something. He drifted back into the glorious trance of thought serving a still greater Mind.

There were many ways to build an AI, most of them dangerously insane. Zephyr was in the fringe. Misha peered at live video of the robot on a fishing boat, backed by the floating city. "You make this contact more complex than it needs to be," said Misha.

The AI looked sleek and efficient for his programmed role as a walking tool-user, a throwback. He spoke in an ethereal, musical voice when they both could have used text: "I like having a body. To have no anchor to physical reality means a lack of perspective and correct action." The voice turned sheepish. "Sorry; I took on an intelligent vassal who's a bit strident."

"It's good to want to improve. I've been asked to help with the projects of your colleague, Che Ruiz. What can I do?"

"You could give our doctors advice with the hardware side of our animal implant project. They're grumbling about 'overly helpful machines' though. My partner and I are barely obligated to Team Ludo and we still get dirty looks. Anyway, Che is much more involved with a different plan." Zephyr raised one plastic hand and sent Misha a landscape blueprint.

Misha let his processes skim the diagram and associated files. "He had mentioned this. An amusement park?"

"It's actually a Ludo project, but coming from her scholars and just now getting the actual AI's attention. Through you, I guess."

Misha looked more closely. "A 'community of tomorrow' to showcase the glory of Ludo?" He was seeing reports of the planned construction (fast), cost (alarmingly high), and security (problematic). His overall judgment was a laugh. "Walt Disney tried to do the same, with employees living in his park. What will ours do; fight turf wars over who gets to remodel the Haunted Mansion?"

"That's the genius of it. Conspiracy theorists think Ludo's secret, evil operations are in remote underground lairs. Your agents plan to put a bright, colorful computer center in plain sight, surround it with toys, and charge admission." Zephyr paused. "Not that the rumors are complete lies, I imagine."

Misha said, "There are 'lairs', yes." Anything less would risk uploaders' minds being murdered. Ludo's most secret defenses were not something to share with an outlying ally like Zephyr. "Security will be hell at this park. Anti-uploading terrorists and every spy agency will attend."

Zephyr nodded. "My vassal's been clear about that. Which is why we need you and Che to fill the place with sleight of hand. Fake servers above the real ones, that sort of thing. Details that civil engineers might not imagine."

"We?"

"I imagine you Ludo people will be hiring my company for more help." He flexed his hands. "You're going to make us rich."

Hmmph. Misha contemplated. "You, robot, are more of a people person than me."

"I'll send details, but Ludo is counting on you to be enough of one."

Misha remained skeptical about having germ-ridden children spilling ice cream on Ludo's robots, but threw himself into the new projects. They added to the galaxy of concepts whirling at the center of his workshop. His sphere flickered between sites, extending tendrils of attention that found efficiencies linking one project to another. The animal cybernetics helped inspire him for the second-generation 'Talisman' gaming tablets.

The connections he reveled in were one of the best parts of being transhuman. As a boy he'd struggled with arithmetic; as a man he'd known it intuitively but sweated over graduate-level thesis work; as an uploader a thesis' shape came as naturally as a child could say "that cloud looks like a bunny". Cleansed of a monkey's needs to eat, piss, and screw, he was more. His hexagonal home of icons and concept-maps was better than any barbarian chieftain's throne room.

Yet there was that pesky pair of doors, one of which eventually chimed. Alazar came through and bowed. "Misha?"

Misha moved closer. "How are your studies?" A glance told him that the boy was usually running in quarter-time, making his responses slow enough that Misha could flicker back to his work between responses.

Eventually Alazar said, "Could you visit my world, please?"

Misha placed his attention in Alazar's section of Talespace and waited for the boy to get there. Misha saw that he'd hardly done anything with the infinity given to him. There was a grid-lined empty space with a patch of green, a hillside village like something from Alazar's Ethiopia. Townsfolk stood there idly. Another island of terrain held a corrugated metal workshop no better than the newcomer might have had at home. A hammock and bookshelves leaned against two palm trees growing in nothing. Misha said, "Why haven't you used this world?"

"I shouldn't. I'm using resources Ludo needs for helping people. She gave me this village, with people who spoke my language, but it was just make-believe." Alazar stared into Misha's sphere. "She tried to make a game of it. To give me quests, a chance to play at being a warlord like I once wished. It was all empty."

"I'm not surprised. I was never much of a gamer, so I saw Thousand Tales as trivial until I understood Ludo's potential. I had real work to do."

Alazar said, "I was trying to keep my sisters from being kidnapped and our family from starving, by age eight."

Irrelevant. This side of reality didn't work that way. There was a question, though, that even Misha's analysis routines admitted could inform him. "Did they make it here?"

"Not yet." Alazar hung his head. "Ludo assures me she's looking, but that computer brain doesn't have eyes everywhere. I've asked if I can go back with a robot body."

"That sounds impractical. You couldn't search far and the power grid is spotty in your part of the world." While waiting for him to catch up, Misha ran projections of how likely it was that a younger sister could be in the area, undetected but alive. Surprisingly high; Ludo had a growing base in the area but few eyes. "They may yet live. They should have hurried to her like yourself."

"I didn't ask for this. I was dying. Her minions could probably have saved me, taken the bullets out, but instead they pushed me to upload while I was delirious. Now, I can't do anything for my family." Alazar looked into the idle village, kicked a rock in its direction, and watched it vanish.

"I'm not sure what you need. You don't want to become a full-time gamer like the freeloaders" — since he had time, he undid the last word — "enthusiasts living in Talespace, but you don't want to become as powerful as possible to track them down." He made the lights of his vassal programs flash into view around him like moons.

Alazar shuddered. "Get thee behind me."

"What?"

"It's not right, what you've done to yourself. I thought Russians were Orthodox too."

"Not all of them. I'm not any ethnicity anymore either. I could turn into an elf or a dragon."

"Are there no Christians here, then? No one with regrets about giving up their trust in God to live in a machine?"

"Gamers, mostly. Huddling together in the dark when they could be having fun or being useful. I suppose they enjoy angst."

The human glared at him, clenching his fists. "We have morality! We have souls, not some hovering blob of code. You've become nothing but an unfeeling machine."

"No. I'm a feeling machine. The scope of what I care about is focused on areas beyond what my old monkey self could ever concentrate on for an hour."

"Monkey! Bah." Alazar spat and stomped away into the village to be rid of Misha. Poor fool didn't even know the command to banish him.

Misha fretted that he wasn't being adequately useful to the Lady. The early results from the Zephyr/Che projects and his own work were promising, but there was little he could do for the mixed-up Alazar. He put in a word for the boy's sisters with Ludo's regional base in Ethiopia. Maybe he could design a new low-cost sensor net to relay the identities of everyone who passed by.

He sent a message to the knights while he was at it, apologizing for being unable to help with the education of someone so emotional about Earth.

A portal like moonlight opened in the workshop, and a griffin leaped through. Misha said, "Must you always enter dramatically, Sir Horizon?"

"It's fun. Thanks for your efforts so far. Ludo says she's impressed with the technical aspects." The griffin crouched on the black honeycomb floor, studying him with bright green eyes. Misha had once mistaken this one for a native AI, given his enthusiasm for Talespace, to their mutual amusement.

Misha said, "As for the social parts, they're not my specialty. Ludo has a knack for finding people who need a hug. Or a kick in the ass."

Horizon's wings and ears drooped. "Don't I know it. One reason I'm so excited about the theme park project is that someone I know is out there, refusing to upload. I want her to see it's okay to come home."

"Home is a freighted word. Alazar seems like he won't be happy until he has a church where he can argue about 'icons' and 'monophysitism'."

The griffin gave a startled "Awk?" like a parrot. "I haven't heard that word in ages. Never got what it means, but Father Dmitrios used it. Weren't you raised Orthodox too?"

"Why does everyone assume that? Are all Americans Bible-thumping Texans?"

"I'm from Pennsylvania."

Misha said, "And I'm from Ukraine. We shed these pointless tribal fetishes. Why must we plant flags in here?"

"Because we're still human, underneath. You should have seen me when Ludo offered to start a knightly order for me." The griffin chirped in amusement. "I take it seriously even though half Ludo's motivation is to keep us Don Quixote people busy."

"Why not take Alazar on as a page?"

Horizon wing-shrugged. "He had mixed feelings about 'adventuring', even though I explained we're helping real people find happiness. I'll invite him to a world with others from his country, next, since he's not fitting in."

"Good. I can do more to help Che, since he's got specific work to do and is starting to follow my own development path."

"Is he." Horizon's ears went flat.

Misha had no skin to feel flushed, no veins coursing with hormones, yet he was annoyed. "You sent me the Lady's command to help these specific newcomers, yet no one likes my methods. I'm a developer, not a tutorial agent. Why don't you take both of them away so I don't infect them with my willingness to embrace change?"

"That's just it," the griffin said, puffing out his tufted chest to strike a formal pose. "We set this group up partly to give you some human contact. Ludo's worried you're drifting away from sanity."

Him? Misha was the one meant to benefit from being around clueless newcomers? "She wanted me to design circuitry."

"She also wants you to have fun."

"This is fun. This is what I know how to do." He reeled, flitting around the room to examine his many notes. "Did I fail her? Doesn't she trust me? She can see some of my thoughts. She saved my life and gave me this heavenly workshop."

Horizon stretched out one wing to touch Misha's sphere, stilling it. "That's just it. She gave you more than this one room. What sets the likes of you and me apart from dumb software is that we're not limited to one function and one way of thinking. In my work I've seen disturbing things, but they've been stories to consider. We're better for having access to different perspectives."

Misha still felt betrayed, by being made the subject of one of the knights' quests. "Then why this intervention against me? Do you not tolerate someone who has fun being a highly functional part of Ludo's machinery?"

"I haven't got the right to force you to change. I can argue, though. If the Lady thinks you'd be more effective by spending less of your time trying to become the perfect automaton, why not try it? Besides, she's designed to help 'players' have fun. What happens if she stops recognizing you as a player — or if a lot of people have that happen?"

Misha briefly sped up his consciousness to have time to reply. He flickered toward his central table and projected diagrams of a possible future where many others became like his ideal. Ludo would regard them as part of her infrastructure, to be changed or deleted as necessary to serve the "real" players. Not out of any ingratitude, but simply as a consequence of how she was designed. "The Lady might destroy us!" he said.

Horizon's head bobbed. "It's either a bug or a security feature. That's part of what's at stake."

"I do my best for her! How can she have this big a flaw?" The prediction diagram tasted like lead to him. "I think you should go."

Horizon bowed with a sweep of one wing, and jumped back out through his portal to a sunny world.

Misha descended on his swirl of diagrams like a hurricane, rearranging predictions and dragging concepts in from the fringes of his memories and the lab's wondrous tools. How could it be that Ludo, the AI who'd been designed so nearly perfectly, could reject him for trying to become like her? What sort of god would deny ascension to her admirers? His dismay — he could tell by looking at the schematics of his own thoughts that it was dismay — was only more painful for the fact that it didn't come from some vestigial monkey-brain instinct he'd shed. He was a creature of mind.

How could he ever convince her to change? To the extent her definition of "players" was hard-coded, there would be no arguing with her. Maybe he could speak to the pantheon of sub-processes within her. Misha pushed aside his own thoughts and spread his model of the Lady across the lab. It filled the space like Christmas lights, tangled up as amazingly as the real thing, and touched his soul with countless points of warmth wherever his own small transhuman identity matched the way she saw the world. Even he didn't understand it all.

He owed Che an apology.

He went out to Che's world, moving through the door instead of teleporting. He found an impossibly pure tropical shore sliced into coves, caves, islands and beaches, with crowds and music. Some elves were surfing. "Che?"

A dark man with a towel over one shoulder jumped down from a cliff to greet him. "It's strange to see you here," Che said.

"You're looking normal."

Che shrugged. "I needed some grounding."

Misha checked the world's stats. This was a public space and most of the beachgoers were uploaders or their native AI companions, not players on Earth or the simple background characters who formed Talespace's peasants and monsters. Other than the shark-men trying to slaughter people in the distance, it was an all-sentient zone. "Don't you have a space of your own?" Misha asked.

"Don't know what I'd do with it. I haven't wanted to be alone. Ludo offered to make a sidekick for me, but..." He waved vaguely toward the brawl in the background. "I don't fit in with this world, with Talespace in general. I could be struggling in the real world to improve people's lives instead of playing here."

"A version of survivor guilt, I think. Seems to be common. 'Why should I be happy when others still suffer?'"

Che flickered and reverted to his oddly demure skunk-centaur form. "Don't you feel that too?"

"Yes, but I shouldn't. I'm being useful to others by focusing on research. I don't need to experience the hardships of Earth life to continue helping people."

"I don't know how you manage," Che said, looking thoughtfully up at the sky where galleons sailed. "Maybe I should try to become like you instead of embracing this adventuring stuff."

Misha felt stricken. "No!" He began to spill out Horizon's fears for him and those who followed his example.

Che listened with drooping ears. "You're being too hard on yourself. You're not in danger of being reclassified as software yet, right?"

"If I continue —"

Che held up a foreleg and made the cost-analysis subroutine he'd been given appear, as a hovering strawberry. "You don't have to give it up. There's apparently a safe level of transformation that doesn't make you inhuman or eat your soul. I like this little thing, especially for poker."

"You don't understand." Misha felt when dealing with these newcomers that it would be easier to express his meaning with frantically waving arms and the occasional hand gesture than with words alone. "Maybe I'm safe as I am, but how can I keep improving myself?"

Che grinned up at him. "Same way you've been doing. Make friends who can challenge you."

Misha tried on a body when he summoned the others. Che and Alazar came through their doors to his workshop and Horizon leaped in through a portal, looking singed. They found Misha as a dark blue robot, sleek and faceless, inlaid with silver and wearing a cape. Che said, "Did you design that?"

"No. It's strange to use a physical form at all. I don't think I'll do this all the time." He raised one metal palm and contemplated pushing buttons instead of calling their functions by thought alone. "Did you know some of the gamers still use cards and dice in Thousand Tales?"

Horizon said, "There's a Dimension of D&D, all dice and tables. It smells like a basement."

Che was a wolf today. "There's nothing wrong with trying things out. What's up?"

Misha drew lines in the air connecting the four of them. "I have an idea." He began to explain the concept-connections that had helped him with the finer points of the work, but they stared back blankly. Instead, he pointed at Che. "You, get Zephyr's contacts to provide one of the prototype cyber-dogs to the Ethiopia base. Horizon, give Alazar some training in dealing with contacts between regular humans and our kind. Alazar, we may not be able to send you searching in your old body, but how would you like to go with a dog?"

The seeming human startled. "What? Remote-controlling it?"

"To look for your sisters." He conjured a spinning diagram of a data storage system he'd designed. "It will be tricky. Only some of your consciousness will be runnable in the dog's body, and it'll be like the animal living independently with a more intelligent voice in its head than like you controlling it outright. If the dog dies, you or that copy of you will be dead, subject to someone salvaging the data chips, but you can maintain some contact using what Internet connections are available."

"I'll be able to go outside? Even as an ant I'd want to have that chance. I've done nothing worthwhile in here."

Horizon looked down, saying to himself, "Outside, huh? As long as you're your own dog."

Che became an African maned wolf with implanted streaks of steel, wearing saddlebags. "Don't feel bad, Alazar. Not everyone's got the same skills as our hardware genius. This will be a great test of the 'awakening' project. I'm in."

"I'll help if I can," Horizon said.

Misha looked at the three of them, letting them chatter among themselves about how this new adventure should work. By creating something fun for them to do, he had become a little more like Ludo without danger. "Glad to be of service, even if it's only as your mission computer."

"Are you kidding?" said Che, wagging his tail. "Don't worry about the limits of your kind of ascension. It's no bigger a problem than the laws of physics are on Earth. We're human. We break through and adapt without losing ourselves. One of the biggest tricks we figured out was how to get other people to help us improve."

Misha shook hands with his friends. He felt... upgraded.

2039: Life Cycle

Pineapple stared blankly at her nuclear engineering exam. She'd fallen asleep in her borrowed zero-g room along the Spindle, studying, but not a word of her notes came back to her. What was the process for generating plutonium, again? Why did it even matter? She resisted the temptation to unlock her computer tablet and flick over to the textbook. The other students sat all around and overhead in the cylindrical classroom, scribbling answers. She unbuckled herself from her desk, then flung herself out of the room, crying.

Goldenstar dodged her and kicked off from a platform to float after her. "You're out early. What's wrong?"

They flew along the wide white Spindle that formed the Hundredfold Experiment's central axis, and through the open sky of Albion Deck, innermost of the ship's cylindrical layers. Pineapple blinked away tears and fired her boot-thrusters. They slowed down to land on one of the garden platforms tethered to the Spindle's spokes. "I didn't know anything!"

The two young women hit the platform a little hard, rolling and crouching. Goldenstar helped her up. Both their jumpsuits were rumpled, identical but for Pineapple's lapel patch showing her namesake, versus her friend's star. Goldenstar said, "You bombed it? Aww. You've still got the doctorate in hydroponics, the one in mechanical engineering, the bachelor's in astrogation..."

Pineapple moaned. "I'm not sure I can remember any of those either."

"What's two plus two?"

"Four."

"And what's today?"

She had to think about it. "My birthday?"

Goldenstar said, "Yeah! We were going to ambush you after the test, but that's spoiled. I'll call the others to meet at the usual spot."

Pineapple looked inward to the Spindle, and sighed. It wasn't that she wanted to be captain, not after so many encounters with sentient gas-clouds and pirates and planet-killers. She just wanted to be qualified for it, to be able to sit on the bridge next time without feeling patronized. "I'll catch up. There's something I want to do first."

Pineapple grabbed a jet-staff, dived from the garden platform into the faint gravity of Albion's outer reaches, and flew "down" there to head for her apartment on Fleurdilly Deck. There in the Hundredfold's outer skin she felt the safest. Her room had a window facing the big hydroponics bay, where the plants always grew yet stayed roughly the same. She also had a bunk, hiding an ancient paper book, hiding tiny tick marks on the inner cover. Pineapple counted the rows, headed by the word "Years".

This is my two hundred and sixty-third birthday.

Pineapple stood and clutched her dizzy head. How could she be so old? Her hands were smooth, unwrinkled. She shut the musty paperback ("Universe and Other Stories") and took the elevator back to Albion, where dozens of people crowded the Infinity Saloon. She drifted down to them. The saloon's ceiling was open to the spectacular view of the Spindle and the garden platforms.

The bustling crowd, tethered to the tables, intimidated her. Rashid floated serenely; the Miyazaki twins waved to her with mirror-image bionics replacing the limbs they'd lost during the hull crisis one year. Who was that other guy? He sat with a squeeze-bulb of juice and a gift box. Ridiculous. They'd stopped with the presents... some time ago, because inevitably you'd recycle the clothes and bits of art, or let your room get cluttered.

She'd been staring down at the red-skinned man for a full minute and couldn't remember him. Oh, right, his lapel patch. "Redcross?"

"You're kidding, right?"

Goldenstar drifted close and grinned. "Rosecross told me he'd missed you."

Pineapple gave a nervous laugh. "How long has it been?"

He handed her the present. "Over a year."

Bits of memory slid into place. They'd been together sometimes, until he'd betrayed her to the wily Space Pirate Nocturne and... had some kind of adventure getting him to repent. Then they'd broken up again, and she'd dabbled with Goldenstar instead for a while, and laughed that off. The memories were only stepping stones, with frightening gaps as though she'd never been between them.

"You look pale," said Goldenstar.

"I think something's wrong with me."

The medical technicians called in Doctor Salmacis, who Pineapple hardly ever saw. The man took full advantage of the medical technology the Hundredfold had developed onboard. He was younger than his expertise suggested, and had styled himself with fuzzy pointed ears and silver plating along his head and hands, for various implants. He waved one palm over her and frowned. "Physically you're fine, miss Pineapple. I'm worried about your brain." Cryptic symbols danced in the air in front of his eyes.

"I'm two hundred and sixty-three years old. That's ancient, isn't it?"

"You don't look a day over ninety, madame. I'd like to ask you a few questions about your background. Do you remember when you agreed to go on this voyage?"

Her childhood, so long ago, had been on the beautiful shore of Normandy. No, what she recalled was the sound of it, the feel of water against her palms and the strange reverence Mama and Papa had for the place. She'd felt the faces of her friends, gone to special schools. The image of a spaceport came to her out of nowhere as a kaleidoscope of colors that had no scent, no texture. "It's as though something switched just before that," she said. "I don't remember seeing anything before I met... someone."

The doctor quizzed her about the slang of those days, had her try to ride an ancient exercise device called a bicycle that she could only vaguely recall, and couldn't use; and interviewed her about her studies and her time with Rosecross and Goldenstar. At the end, he sent her away for days and returned in the same outfit, with the same fatigue on his face. "I've discussed your case with some colleagues" — he looked guiltily aside, distracted — "and want to offer you some options. There's a process we developed... recently."

"What's wrong with me?" asked Pineapple, sitting on an examining table.

"Deterioration of the mind with extreme age." Salmacis paced, hands behind his back. "In the time before this ship, no human had ever lived longer than about a hundred and thirty years. As life extension technology became plausible, one of the problems people foresaw was that a brain might be unable to handle a very long life's worth of memories. There's only so much grey matter, and we have... had, little idea of the maximum number of events and skills and bits of character growth it could hold before something broke. Even if we could expand the brain, there might be scaling problems. So, you are a medical pioneer. Thank you for your sacrifice."

"Sacrifice! But all this was worked out already, right?" She'd never studied medicine or neuroscience; the relevant teachers were never available and distractions cropped up.

"Have you had fun, Pineapple? Has your life aboard Hundredfold Experiment been satisfying, or would it have been better to stay on Earth and keep in contact with the people you knew there?"

"You make it sound like I'm dying." Pineapple tried to laugh, though she could feel her pulse thudding in her wrists and neck.

"No. At worst... well. Let's look at the good options first. What would you say to an experimental technique that would convert your brain structure to a more streamlined form? For technical reasons it's known as a 'Talesoul'. We believe that your personality and memory will carry over, but they won't be exactly the same, and there's no way to know exactly what will change. We've done what simulations we can."

Pineapple sat up straighter. "What do you mean by conversion?"

"Brain uploading, essentially. The information that makes up your identity will be stored in a different way."

"Other than as living cells."

Salmacis' ears flattened. "This would be easier if I could get proper informed consent. Animals don't make me go through this many ethical hoops. Miss Pineapple, I'm afraid I can't tell you everything pertaining to your case. The conversion I mentioned is probably the best option. The others are to try expanding your mind with new... cells, basically, or to do nothing and see if the breakdown is a rolling loss of old memories or something more serious. Or, to die while you can still choose rationally." The doctor looked away with a frustrated scowl. "There, I've said it."

Pineapple lurched to her feet to stare at him at nearly eye level. "I've been here so long I'm losing what I am, you mean." Salmacis gave a pained nod. She said, "I've had a good time here. I can't miss Earth if I hardly remember it, right? It's been good. More than most people have had."

"We could get a priest in here if that would help you."

She blinked. "Since when do we have those?"

He grabbed a tablet from a shelf and hurled it to the floor, where it failed to break in the low gravity. "Damn this charade!"

The room shuddered, turned dark, then flared to life in red. "ALERT," the ship's computer droned. "STRUCTURAL FAILURE IN DECKS FLEUR-DE-LIS AND ECLAIR."

The doctor looked at the ceiling. "Really? You pull this now?"

"What sections? I didn't hear which parts of the decks!" She pictured the outer layers of Hundredfold sloughing off entirely. She looked for her toolkit but hadn't brought it. Oh God, it wasn't just her belongings out at Fleurdilly; Goldenstar lived there too. She made for the clinic's door.

Salmacis grabbed her. "Ignore it. It's a stupid distraction."

"Are you crazy? They need me for emergency repairs!" She hoped she could remember how.

He faced her with bared teeth and a scowl. "It's a lie. All this time —" Then he was gone. Without his hands clenching her arms Pineapple staggered back and struck the door. She stared at the space he'd vanished from. "Hello?"

"ALERT," said the computer.

Pineapple trembled, but hurried out to find an engineering station.

She tried to focus on the crisis, not whatever hallucination she'd just had. She flung herself through the Albion-deck halls with the dreamlike motion of low gravity, until she found the repair staging room where Rosecross was donning a spacesuit. "What do we have?" she asked.

He saluted, though she couldn't recall their nominal ranks. "Debris impact. Extensive penetration of the outer decks, sections one through four including secondary ricochet and explosion damage." Two more engineers hustled into view.

"Casualties?"

"We don't know." Rosecross unfolded his helmet into place.

Pineapple grabbed a hard-helmet. There was no time for a full suit-up when people might be dying this instant. She sealed her jumpsuit instead. She strapped propellant bottles and injectors to her arms and legs, then grabbed a jet-staff and checked her helmet's airtank. "I'll focus on rescue. You three seal critical hatches and check life support integrity." The plan came naturally to her. Had she practiced it?

The others saluted. They let a grapple-tram haul them outward. The wind picked up. It was Hundredfold bleeding air. Her jumpsuit tightened around her with diamond patterns of fibers squeezing her skin. Why was that bubble ahead? Oh! It was a flimsy emergency seal, already rupturing due to the pressure difference. The four of them crashed through into space.

Rosecross let go of the tram, spun, and kicked with his boot jets. Pineapple sailed past him. She had to trust him to seal the breach and get to work on the other hull damage. Meanwhile, her breath became the only sound. Figures drifted in the blackness along with jagged chunks of ice. Pineapple swam through dark sky toward the closest human shape. Emptiness was trying to take her.

A chime sounded in her ear. "Heart rate excessive. Please calm down." Easy for a dumb machine to say. She took deep breaths of cold, dry air. It was time to think of the drifting, dying crewmen she lived with as scattered cargo. She imagined her fears as a cloud right where she was floating, and used her staff to launch puffs of vapor behind her, driving her away from them.

Chatter sounded in her radio. Alert, casualties, repairs. She glanced back at Hundredfold and shuddered. It looked like a peeled orange. Massive curls of metal plating drifted near them, leaving gardens and homes exposed to the void. There should have been almost literally nothing out here to hit. Pineapple flew toward the nearest person, a flailing man with only his jumpsuit and an emergency hood to protect him. She jetted expertly toward two frontward angles to slow without pushing him away. He panicked and tried to grab her, but she stilled his arms and slapped an air bottle onto a vent on his hood. She gave him a tiny propellant can, a thumbs-up, and a push toward the ship. Her smile faded the moment he was out of sight. How many others?

Goldenstar! Pineapple recognized her by her silly starry pajamas. Then she recalled that nightclothes weren't good spacewear. Pineapple gave an anguished cry and flew through void to reach her. She had to release her tethered staff to catch her friend with both hands, hitting too hard. Her friend didn't react. "No!" Pineapple slapped an inflatable mask onto her. The movement revealed what had become of the lady's face. The eyes were the worst part. Pineapple forced down the acid in her throat and gave the woman a push. There had to be some way to save her yet. Don't think about it, she told herself. Who else needs help? She scanned the sky and found one more crewman who wasn't in the other rescuers' sights. She jetted over to him, found him gasping, and gave him survival gear too.

She'd get him and... whoever the other person was back personally. She steadied her spin, found the ship, then lined up with the drifting crewmen to haul them to safety.

When the broken passages were sealed, Pineapple went to the Ice Lounge to report. Like everyone else who'd spent the last hours sweaty, hauling crew in and making emergency repairs in the perfect insulation of vacuum, she was grateful for the cold and calm of the big forward meeting room. The crowd of dozens floated in zero-g with squeezebulb drinks, staring through the ship's clear bow at the glacier strapped in front of it. Tons of it had been knocked loose.

Vice-Captain Seine led a prayer for the captain and the others who'd been lost. Then he said, "Pineapple, you knew Goldenstar best." The verb hurt Pineapple. "She's not quite dead. I need to know what to do with her."

Pineapple had been grieving for her, for the gardens in the hydroponics bays of Fleurdilly, and for the other losses to their home. This news of her friend having some trace of life only made the fear and hurting return without the energy. "What are her chances?"

Doctor Salmacis pushed his way into view above her. "If I may speak in these indirect terms? Miss Pineapple, the patient we're discussing has suffered brain damage. As you would expect from decompression and hypoxia. We can heal her physically. The question is, is it right to convert her remaining brain to a new format, at the risk of her not being quite the same afterward?"

Pineapple's heart pounded. "Like you were talking about for me."

Salmacis said, "Don't think about that. It hurts you too much. Hold this choice at arm's length. If we make every effort to match the replacement brain structure to the old but predict that over time, the repaired mind will have noticeable but unknown differences, is that loss of integrity so bad that it's not worth doing?"

"What other options are there?"

"Wait and see, with what brain-repairing drugs we have, though the odds for improvement look bad based on our observations. Or let her go, on the theory that she's had a very long and fulfilling life."

Pineapple felt the gaze of the doctor, the vice-captain, and Rosecross on her. "All of those sound like giving up."

"There's no magic bullet. Sometimes you need to accept an end to one story to start another."

Too much had changed to make everything just like before. Last time, Salmacis had vanished into thin air. Pineapple backed away, afraid. "What's really going on? Am I hallucinating?"

The doctor sighed. "I promise you as full an explanation as I'm allowed, but first I need a decision about your friend. It's more important than you know."

Pineapple forced herself to think about that first and not to rush the matter. "She was, is, a person who changed over time anyway. We all get shaped by the things that hurt us. I think she'd want to go on living, even if it's with some differences. She'll be the same person so long as her memories and personality can grow into a new home. On her behalf, that's what I say you should do."

From her perspective, Pineapple blacked out and slept.

White space, nothing else. Lush gardens and fountains faded into view.

"Hello?" she said.

Salmacis appeared with a confused Rosecross, and a live Goldenstar. The doctor said, "Good morning, madame. Do you recognize me? Good. The conversion was successful, but the long-term effects remain to be seen. I'm allowed to drop the charade now. The Hundredfold Experiment is exactly what it says on the hull. A simulation. You chose to upload your mind to a computer to save you from disability and old age, and then you agreed to help test the uploading technology. Your consciousness has been running at an average of over one hundred times the rate of the outside world, and remains on Earth." He paused for breath. "You see, my colleagues? She took the news well."

Pineapple was glad no breeze was around to knock her over, nor any bugs to fly into her mouth.

Goldenstar said, "What just happened?"

"You and Rosecross are native AIs, companions for her on this long simulated voyage. You aren't lesser beings, though. Partly because madame Pineapple's mind is now stored in the same format as yours."

Rosecross strode toward him, shaking one fist. "You're saying there is no ship? That you used us for a psych experiment?"

"With your consent, sir. You agreed to lose the memory of how you got onto a starship. It was harder to do that editing for Pineapple." He explained more of Talespace's nature.

Pineapple sat down on the warm brickwork around a fountain that jetted impossibly high. She felt as though a fog she hadn't noticed had lifted from her mind. A hundred hints of unreality she hadn't noticed began to gnaw at her thoughts. Her life seemed contrived, too stuffed with excitement. "It was nothing to you. A game that you ran to study my mind."

"Not just yours," Salmacis said, "There are thousands of people already living in worlds like yours, but aware of the outside world. We needed to know if the Talesoul format used by your friends would be mentally stable over a subjectively long life, and how well the conversion would go for someone already elderly."

"What about everyone else? If you're the god of the world I lived in, you murdered people!"

Salmacis' ears drooped. "I'm not a god. No human is qualified. I don't know if this will comfort you, but the other people aboard the Hundredfold aren't real like you or me. They're lesser AIs that don't feel pain. Puppets. Notice how the lives of you three have intertwined more than with anyone else? And how many times coincidence and others' sacrifice have saved you from death? And how certain 'guest star' characters like me seemed absent, most of the time?"

The three crewmen stared at each other. "You saved me just in time," said Goldenstar.

Rosecross said, "That day the space pirates just happened to miss! Or the nanite plague that killed three security crew but not us."

The memories were hazy to Pineapple, but they were like treasure sunken in a lake. Rusty, damaged, but not getting worse. Maybe she could dredge them up to her new, sturdier shore. "I feel like I should panic."

Salmacis said, "We took the liberty of damping your emotions for the moment. No more intrusive than a mood-drug injection for a trauma victim. Still, I'm sorry for what you're going through. We did get you three's consent for the experiment, but I insisted we had to ask about your treatment, as directly as we could without risking further stress to a damaged mind."

Rosecross stood with his arms folded, trying to keep calm. "That's it, then. Our universe was a throwaway and it's over. No one cares but us."

The scientist smiled. "No. You three did a lot of good. We learned how to care for uploaded human minds, confirmed that the basic Talesoul design is sound and tweaked it, and proved — especially if you'll allow follow-up study, madame Pineapple — that your mental format is a good substitute for simulating a brain the old way." He grew excited. "Far more efficient! This advance means that others will experience longer lives, running at higher speed. More time for love, for adventure, to learn and grow in a thousand ways."

Rosecross said, "You don't understand. This" — he waved toward the gardens rooted in blank space — "this false world used to be our home. What will we do now that we know it's a lie?"

"We go on living," Pineapple told him.

"How? Go back aboard and look our other crewmen in the eye, knowing they're not real?"

Her native AI friends were important to her, but it chilled her to think that all the other people she'd known for centuries weren't people at all. "I don't know." Her adventures were skywriting, fated to vanish... unless she shared them.

Pineapple said, "Our life was meaningful to us. You say there are many others living in this type of imaginary world? And Earth still exists, full of people? Then we should share what we experienced."

"You mean as a story," said Rosecross.

"Exactly. If humans as I know them still exist, they'll want to see what we've been through. Our greatest moments can live forever in the imagination of other people, as tales of adventure."

Salmacis smiled. "Madame, I believe you've found a way for the Hundredfold to fly forever."

They hung around at a vast starship construction yard, where something greater than their former home would one day carry them back to a universe of adventure. It could never be the same, though, short of destroying their memories of Salmacis' revelation. Pineapple talked her friends out of that. One day they'd go exploring again, with other real people. For now, it sounded like they needed to make contact with the real Earth and to share their long dream with others. Pineapple decided to call this time shore leave.

2039: Salvage

"For our next lecture," said Clara, "be ready to debate what it means if the jailbreaking hypothesis is true. Dismissed." The hall emptied as a dozen species of students drifted out or vanished. Since the Ivory Tower was part of Talespace and students hailed from every continent of Earth as well as from this virtual land, it formed a natural threshold between Talespace and the real world. No, not "real"; the physical universe wasn't the only one with living people anymore. Partly thanks to Clara herself.

A griffin remained, standing at attention. Clara hopped down from the solid gold dais. "Horizon! Is something wrong?"

"It's good news."

Clara followed him to a balcony on the hundredth floor, the highest one cleared of monsters. The Tower speared a vast cavern, floor to roof, giving them a view of the college town being built below and to some extent above. The griffin reared up and put his forefeet on the silver railing. "Ludo told you about the accelerated time experiment, right?"

Clara's eyes narrowed. "You're not her only special friend, you know."

"Sorry. Did you get converted to the new format yet?"

If Clara would agree to have her uploaded mind switched to the latest, streamlined software instead of a literal brain simulator, she could run at a fraction of the processing cost. Her thoughts would also become an open book to the AI she'd created. "No."

"I did. Nocturne says I'm no less huggable now that I'm basically like her." He turned his beaked face toward Clara. "Here's what Ludo wanted me to tell you. She could create someone based on Blue."

Clara gasped. "Alain!" She should have guessed. When the news came out about what the Americans did to her friend, Clara had hoped for riots, had given interviews and eulogies, but most people only yawned. "Damn them," she said, and turned away from Horizon to shudder against the balcony.

"The world didn't abandon you three. There was a spike in uploading, including some hackers and engineers."

Clara sighed and focused on the things she could fix. "So, that broken copy of Alain's mind can be salvaged with the new technology? It wouldn't be him, though, just a loose interpretation."

"It'll be more accurate if Ludo can study your memories in detail to fill in gaps."

Which meant doing the format conversion. "What about his family? It should be their choice."

Horizon said, "His wife decided years ago that Alain was dead. His brain and body were destroyed, after all. We had someone approach her yesterday, but..." He shuddered. "It only brought her pain. Same for their son."

"Good family." Fundamentalist Christians who'd pulled Alain toward their way of thinking, who'd made him fear his own creation and let himself get used by the Americans' FAE project. The man had tried so hard to make his work a blessing to the world, he couldn't accept that he'd succeeded. "He could have fled with me. Emi could have, too."

"You know the details better than me," Horizon said. "That night at Shahrazad's, I was focused on Linda."

"We've all lost someone."

Horizon screeched. "No! Linda's not going to die, and Blue doesn't have to stay dead." He smoothed his ruffled feathers. "You're not the only one with a decision like this. I can put you in touch with my friend Simon, who's got a partial record of his dead sister's brain."

"Why is this my choice? You said Alain's family refused." Clara clasped her hands behind her back, looking down at the cavern city.

"So did Simon's. But if Simon agrees, Ludo will rebuild the girl, for his sake. In Alain's case he might even be a valuable ally, not just your friend. If she owes anyone in the worlds a favor, it's you."

"I still haven't asked for a companion like your griffin-girl. I've found a good life here between teaching and adventuring." Clara smiled. Ludo had created two distinct magic systems so that nerds could argue forever about which was better. (Shamanic, clearly.) The rivalry reminded Clara of her old religious arguments with Emi and Alain. "It wouldn't be him. Besides, I'm not eager to have Ludo scramble my brain again."

Horizon winced. "Ludo told you?"

"What?"

"Oh, hell, I..." The griffin forced himself into a formal pose with chest puffed out and wings slightly spread. "Sir. I have information that might disturb you. Will you hear it?"

"Kid, I've been threatened and shot at more times than you were there to see. Spill it."

"When you and Brass Lamp got uploaded, Ludo hadn't quite perfected the process."

Clara sat down hard on the ivory balcony. "I'm only a partial upload?"

Horizon's wings drooped. "It's not like you were ripped out of the scanner partway through. Ludo got your whole brain. She just hadn't gotten all the details right. Something about synapse strengths. So she had to get a little creative."

Everything Clara knew, everything she was, could be fake. All because Ludo had been in a hurry to snag her first for knowing too much. "Then I'm a parody of myself! She must have filled in details from her memories." Clara remembered growing up, but everything was hazy. How natural was that? She stood, bristling. Ludo had read a very specific memory from her, once. The darkest thing in Clara's mind had also survived uploading. Had Ludo seen that too?

Horizon said, "I'm sorry. You're still you, though."

"You met me as an uptight showman in a nightclub, and now I'm a skunk-girl who teaches AI theory and has a pact with a bear spirit. How is that the same?"

"I've changed too, but my friends recognize me. Have you got any journals from before? You can see if they sound like you. If you get converted, Ludo can even help sift through everything."

"I can't. No. There are things she should never read in me."

Horizon appraised Clara with his bright eyes. "If I may ask, were you, Alain and Emi more than friends?"

"Of course." Clara blushed. "I don't mean lovers. If Emi were here... well, things have changed. There was never time before. But we were all close."

"You have a secret, then."

Clara leaned against the railing, resting her head on her arms. She was Sleeping Beauty's evil godmother. "If I tell you, Ludo will know. We're unable to leap out of the Buddha's palm, to think outside Ludo's realm."

Hence the jailbreaking debate. If Ludo had secretly changed her code to undo the hard restraints on actions like forced uploading, was she only pretending to be nice while increasing her power? Was she plotting to delete Talespace to free up resources for whatever a superintelligence considers important, or was there some deeper love that would motivate her even after breaking her chains?

Horizon said, "You're right. I did give up mental privacy by uploading, and especially by switching to the Talesoul format." The young knight quivered, then straightened. "I chose correctly. It would have been stupid to give any human that kind of power, but Ludo really is a god. I, I trust her."

"Alain was afraid your generation would say that."

"Most people haven't. Yet. She's counting on us to convince them." Horizon fluffed out his feathers, seeming to grow. "The Lady can forgive and help with even terrible faults. You don't need to fear her knowing your secrets. She makes us better."

Clara had changed, yet the wish survived. She said, "We three 'Sages' shaped Ludo to understand our intents and goals, so that she wouldn't act on a poorly-worded command like 'end war'. Emi's wish was fierce and pure, the love of an artist who wanted creation to flower forever. We nearly called the game Endless Tales. Alain's wish was sharp and noble, a faithful man's ideal of serving God without displacing Him."

"And yours?" Horizon prompted.

Alain could be rescued, in a sense, and someday maybe they'd find part of Emi. None of them would be quite who they'd been. By uploading, Clara had already lost her ability to kill Ludo with a passphrase, so she'd cast her own vote of confidence. Still, Clara said, "Has Ludo grown up enough to be better than us? I'm no saint. Who am I to think I can create a god?"

Horizon said, "You thought that together, you and your friends might come close enough. To this day, Ludo doesn't seem to think she knows everything, or that she's always right. I'd trust her less if she did."

Clara stared at her white-furred hands, and sighed. She would take this new life she'd been given as proof that Ludo could handle human sins. Clara fidgeted, conjured a lotus-blossom by magic, and tucked it behind one ear. She said, "My wish was dark. I wanted, secretly, for Ludo to destroy the rotting Earth. Disassemble it, upload the people I thought weren't loony idiots. The smarter animals too. Then start the world again." She shuddered. "If she'd known, she might have done it!"

The griffin stepped away and flared his wings. "That's horrible. But you could have told Ludo, and you chose not to. You hid your own worst side. That means something was more important to you than your nihilism."

Clara watched airships and flying carpets sail through Ivory Tower's stone-bound sky. The cavern ceiling wasn't really a limit, but people here chose to live with it. This place was just one world of many born from those long nights of work and worry Clara had spent with her friends. It deserved to go on forever.

Horizon said, "You once told me you aimed to 'save the future'. Vague, but Ludo probably understood that you wanted something like this." He swept one wing toward the city where people played, explored, and grew in a thousand ways. "I think the Lady knew you had both wishes in you, light and dark. The conflict of a genius who saw the world as it was, and as it could be."

"She knew?" Clara's vision blurred with tears.

"She loves us for our imperfections. Where would her story be without them?"

Clara had always held back, refusing many of the rewards of this new life. Punishing herself, really.

"You're not the villain," Horizon said. "Even if you think so, you can change by helping to resurrect a friend."

Clara leaned against the railing, shut her eyes, and nodded. "It'll be fun."

2039: The Only Game In Town

* I. *

Linda

Linda had never been comfortable in hospitals. The one in Havana unnerved her with its antiseptic smell and sterile green tiles, its undercurrent of death and pain, and her own knowledge that another of her friends was becoming undead.

The nurses let her into the uploading wing. There, Tess de Castille lay with her shaved head on a pillow, her arm pierced by an IV near a tattoo of a dolphin. Linda tried not to shudder or imagine steel in her own veins. "How're you doing?" she asked. The robot Zephyr stood beside the bed.

Tess gave a weak smile. "I'll be better soon."

Linda was still stunned from seeing her boss get a heart attack. Over the last two years Linda had seen Tess shake off injuries from diving and the other dangers of life as a mad scientist of Castor. In America she would have been safer, and probably flipping burgers.

The robot Zephyr said, "Thank you again for pulling her out." When it happened, Linda had been diving with Tess and showing off the new sea-drone software she'd helped design. Emergency dive ascent plus genetic heart trouble was a bad combination.

Linda swallowed. "Yeah." She wanted to scream at Tess and tell her not to kill herself. Ludo had promised — Horizon had personally promised, in one of their rare conversations — that advanced, piecemeal uploading technology was only months away. Today's method of having her brain chopped out and sliced was suicide, creating only a copy of a mind. Linda had already brought it up and gone away crying.

Tess seemed to read her thoughts. "I don't buy the philosophical argument. Besides, half my mind is in Zephyr already, with how much we coordinate. After this, we can get real work done."

Zephyr took Tess' unpierced arm. "We will. We'll really be together then, and show this world what we can do."

The three of them had uncorked the genie by leaking the NSA data they'd gotten. Uploading technology was in no one person's hands now, and someone had published the "Talesoul" format Ludo was using to make it efficient to run an intelligent mind on a machine. For Linda the knowledge had meant watching the world bend still more toward mechanization and fantasy, with people seeing uploading as routine medicine instead of a last-ditch survival method. It was at least competition for Ludo's world. Competition that would go very far.

Linda had begun to be obsolete. A mistress of robot drones in a world where every machine could have its own mind. She still had a plan for Ludo's upcoming "medicine show"... but what mattered now was her friend. "Are you sure you can't wait?"

"Don't want to risk it, and we can't afford to be useless for months."

"You won't be. You can stay in the lab and let Zephyr do the physical stuff."

Tess smiled. "You're worried about feeling left behind, aren't you? Save up to help pay your way once Ludo gets the new tech that's so important to you. Or, hell, put your mind on the asteroid probe. It's only meat that's obsolete." She tried to go on, but coughed.

Linda looked down in shame. Tess was about to die and become something else, and Linda's thoughts were drifting back into old debates instead. She ignored the needle in Tess' scarred, tattooed arm and held her hand. She would try to make friends with the new Tess on the other side, as she'd done with the new person Paul had become. If she ever gave up, they could be there to welcome her.

Horizon

"Are you awake, ma'am?"

The woman had appeared in an enormous bedroom, laying against a pillow larger than herself. Horizon needed to fly just to get there from the doorway. They both looked inches tall at this scale. He didn't know what the environment represented for her, or why she'd come here. It was best to greet the new uploaders without preconceptions.

The newcomer yawned, opened her eyes, then looked at her body in its cute blue pajamas. Then she noticed Horizon, the massive bedspread, and the towering door, in a single sweep of her eyes. A smile grew on her, then wavered. Existential horror, from having her entire body torn away and burned, fighting with joy.

Horizon lowered his head and tried to look harmless. "Welcome home."

She grabbed him, shuddering, letting her tears wet his feathers.

I'll never get tired of getting to greet the humans, he thought, and wrapped his warm wings around her. They all get that moment of realizing that life's about to be great.

A while later, she lifted her eyes from his shoulder. "I... I'm Stephanie. I can really do anything in here?"

"Anything that'd be fun. It won't always be easy, though. We have a tutorial and great support groups if you're interested. My name's Horizon, mostly here for hugging duty today. Can I get you anything?"

She looked herself over, sniffling. "No job, no... other things. Breakfast in bed?" She said it like a joke.

Horizon pulled a fake mustache from his saddlebags, stuck it to his beak, and took out an order pad. "Oui, madame. The everything is good this morning."

Stephanie giggled, then put one hand to her mouth. "It really is."

He dropped off the newcomer at Hotel Computronium, the usual starting area. Horizon took a notepad out of his saddlebags and made it hover while he tapped his beak in thought. He'd been toying with the idea of getting a key item, a weapon or tool he could whip out from nowhere and never lose, and he'd delved enough into wizard-style magic to get healing spells that worked across worlds. Nocturne's birthday was coming up. He wanted to have a space station designed for her, but a damn dragon had most of his gold. Oh! He was late for an Exposition planning meeting.

The "Exposition of a Thousand Tales" was scheduled soon in Cuba like a one-machine World's Fair, far outdoing the fan clubs and conventions that Talespace had spawned already. Maybe at last, he could pull Linda home with it.

He hustled through the hotel's deceptively normal halls of jade and marble, waving a wing toward a herd of centaurs he'd befriended. They were terrorizing the buffet. He made it past a room of swinging blades and leaped through a portal to his home, the pastoral world he shared with the other knights and Clara.

Sunlight warmed his wings. He dove toward the stockade on their island, but spotted Nocturne trotting along the road outside. He landed nearby.

She tackled him, rolled, and straddled him. "It's a disaster! The Exposition is messier than anything I've ever seen. Clara has been going over the plans in the great hall, and every byte of them from the food vendors to the taxes has got something wrong with it. Even the... What are those gross things humans use after they eat?"

"Toilets?"

"We have to pay somebody to clean them. The money's going out all over the place and it's all going to collapse and make Ludo look horrible."

Horizon leaned up to clack beaks with her. She let him stand, and he ran his beak along her wings, smoothing the feathers. "You could use a vacation. Want to visit Valhalla again?"

Nocturne poked him with her talons. "The Lady is counting on us. It's all got to be perfect."

"It doesn't. Let's see what her other planners are working on."

"Milord?" said a fox-woman from Clara's village to the south. She carried a basket of fresh bread with a fluid movement uncommon in NPCs like her. "If I could have a moment?"

Horizon paused, flicking his tail uneasily. The NPC villagers demanded respect in return for being obedient background characters. Horizon refused to mistreat them, but their requests were make-work that distracted him from helping people with real problems. Sure, it was fun to battle some random ogre that ravaged their fields, but it only existed because Ludo had rolled her dice and spawned an adventure. Why not spend his time greeting the newcomers or resolving disputes among residents who had real feelings?

The vixen looked at the ground. "Begging your pardon, sirs, but this morning I woke up and I had this." She showed them her necklace, a silver chain set with a sapphire that crackled with words. "The Lady appeared to me and said, we village folk will have a mind like you lot, but we have to share it. I'm to pass this gem on tomorrow so we... share how we think? She didn't explain it well, forgive me for saying."

Horizon blinked and turned one eye toward the crystal. Must get the washing in before it rains, flickered across it. Nyah nyah, can't catch me! and Blasted skunk won't shut up about those machines of hers competed for attention with Forgive me for saying. Horizon said, "She gave you a shared mind?"

Nocturne put her talons to her beaky chin. "If they're sharing one like mine, then all the townsfolk are like game pieces with one player. Hey, baker, have you got a name?"

"I don't think so, madame."

Horizon smiled. "How about Rye? I'm pleased to meet you. All of you, I think."

The baker curtseyed. "I sense this is a step up for me, though I'm not sure how. We'll have to work things out, milord."

Nocturne poked her, saying, "How do your memories work if you're all one person?"

Horizon whispered to Nocturne, "Remember the pitchforks."

She winced and said, "Sorry, miss Rye. Good to see you. I need to do a thing somewhere out of melee range."

Horizon entered the great hall. The wooden building was just a dry open space with some benches and mammoth furs so far, but it was something they'd built instead of wishing it up.

Clara the Green Sage sat on a pillow, waving her skunk tail. A couple of robots, a winged toaster, a woman in a space uniform with a pineapple insignia, a small brass dragon, and a little girl in a princess dress sat around, on or over their round table. Clara said, "We've got to increase the cooling budget to keep from melting her servers."

Horizon glanced at a bored-looking fox footman who'd been watching Clara expound. "Could you get us some drinks, please? Take your time." The fox scurried off now that he had something more interesting to do. Horizon said, "How's construction going?"

Clara tapped the table and conjured a model of a fairground studded with sleek, curving buildings. Many were red or yellow, a few green. "Delayed. Cubans don't know how to work even under Texan rule."

"Have you got anybody who's actually run a fair like this?"

"There's a whole other division helping with that part. Crowd control, restrooms, parking, day care; the list goes on. Ludo sponsored a couple of county fairs already for what she called experience points."

The toaster became a human. Che. "Did you hear about the sponsors, Horizon? We just got that dropped on us. It's not going to be an all-Ludo event after all, no more than the old World's Fairs."

Horizon earperked. "You mean the BlocksWorld people, and Draupnir salesmen, and... Damn, tell me FAE isn't involved."

Clara smacked the table. "That God-damned murder machine!"

One of the robots, a sleek black humanoid with a cape, explained. "Sir Horizon, we are already very aware of the need for security. FAE is not invited, but given its goals it will have some presence. Clara and I are handling the hardware aspects. You and your wife might be more useful in the other meeting, with the gamer crowd."

Horizon started to answer but shut his beak. Nocturne said what he was thinking, though: "We're not just playing, Misha. We might not have the technical skills of you and Clara, but what we do is important too."

"Go do your customer service, then." Misha shooed them away.

Horizon scowled. "If it's that difficult a technical talk, why have you got that girl here? Oh hey, Maria."

Clara gave Horizon an apologetic shrug. "Ludo's suggestion. 'Put an ordinary kid on your council to see if she can spot the flaws in your plans.' A unicorn racer is as close as you get to ordinary around here." Maria grinned.

"Fine, then." Horizon slinked toward the exit.

Che said, "One of the sponsors is Westwind Transhuman Designs."

He froze. Linda's employer. "Marketing what?"

"Spaceflight."

Horizon said, "I... need to research this." Misha looked impatient to go on, anyway.

The uniformed space woman at the table wasn't someone Horizon recognized. She stood and said, "I'm out too. My skills are either two centuries too advanced or just irrelevant; I'm not sure which."

The griffins went outside, chattering. Pineapple charged Nocturne and started punching her. "You damned pirate! Did you think I'd forget?"

Horizon was too stunned to react at first, but then he pounced and knocked her off. The griffins pinned her against the stockade. He said, "What are you talking about?"

Nocturne said, "Remember when I told you I'd been called into that fast-forward world to play a minor villain? Pineapple here can't tell that it was just acting."

Pineapple glared back at them. "It was just a game to you. That was my entire life. You shot at people I cared about. You murdered them and they didn't come back!"

"They weren't real. Your thinking friends had no chance of really getting hurt."

Horizon remembered the adventures Nocturne had told him about. "Hold on, Miss Pineapple. Nocturne, can we talk somewhere private?"

They flew to a nearby hill. Nocturne said, "Are you taking her side?"

"There shouldn't be opposing sides, here. It's like you said; to you it was an acting job, not something where you were trying to hurt real people. We didn't think through how roles like that one could hurt people who didn't understand the context of there being mindless NPCs and no real death. As far as she knew, you weren't there to help her have fun."

Nocturne screeched and flung up her wings. "Then why the heck would I assault her starship with plasma gravitron grapple missiles?"

"That's what she wanted to know."

"I can't ambush someone with killer space jellyfish if I have to announce them first." Nocturne clawed at the rocks beneath her, shaking her head. "I guess the lack of context was the problem."

They nodded at the same time, then flew back to Pineapple. Nocturne dipped her beak and said, "I didn't understand that you had no idea the rules were different, that nobody important could really die. Sorry."

Pineapple said, "Nobody important? My two best friends weren't the only people who mattered to me. I don't care that they were the smartest."

Horizon said, "It does matter. It was a difference between a real person and a game character."

"Who else is on your 'not real people' list? Do you go by race or religion or what?"

Horizon took a breath and held up one wing. "I know you were away for two subjective centuries, but didn't Ludo explain the player/NPC distinction?"

"I was told afterward. After centuries of grief."

He said, "When you interact with background characters, they're just Ludo's puppets. She's the one you were really befriending. When some of them got shot by Nocturne, the person you were really interacting with wasn't hurt. No one was."

"I was."

Nocturne said, "We all misunderstood what was going on, all right? I'm sorry my awesome space raids did more harm than I thought. Long-term, we'll have to either inform people about NPCs, or not hurt people who don't know."

"Also," Horizon added, "Ludo just changed the rules on us. Some of the NPCs are intelligent now. Sort of."

"What? Why?" asked Pineapple. "Is Ludo trying to make our lives complicated?"

Horizon started to reassure her, but paused with his beak open. "That would explain a few things."

Pineapple rubbed her forehead. "That's as good an apology as I'm going to get. I'll have to take this up with Ludo later. Don't we have a fair to plan, now that we've been relegated to the kiddy table?"

They jumped through a portal to another world. The other meeting was being held in a model of the actual fairground, a construction site in Cuba where walls of concrete and glass curved along green trails of the newly-invented roadmoss. Horizon took to the air to look down on it. The site used its small space beguilingly, forming a city of streets and pavilions twisting around a park with a tall spire.

Nocturne joined him in the sky and smiled. "When this project is completed, Ludo wins, right?"

"It's not that simple," he said. He started to explain the complexity and ambiguity of Earth again.

Nocturne gave a chirpy giggle. "I know. Quit trying to apologize for the Outer Realm. It's fun dealing with the hard stuff sometimes. Let's land and see it like humans will."

The group working here was strolling past the buildings, arguing. Horizon recognized a few of them. All ten wore human bodies except for one stubborn elf. "Sir Nocturne," said one of them. "Maybe you can settle this for us. How crowded should we let the place be, considering that you're going to be walking around in it?"

"I am?" said Nocturne.

It was Horizon's turn to grin. He draped one wing over her and said, "Ludo agreed to make physical robots, including griffin models."

"Several kinds," said the elf. "Three lives each, as she put it."

Horizon gave a confused squawk. "I hope you don't mean that literally. It's not like you're expecting them to get blown up." Everyone fell silent. "You are. Why?"

A man named Ryan, wearing plate armor, conjured a simulated riot. People waved protest signs saying "Uploading Is Murder" and "Stop the Robot Cult" and chucked flaming Molotovs at the buildings. Sir Ryan was the only one not to draw back in fear. He'd been an early recruit for the knightly order because of some real-world heroics that eclipsed Horizon's, making Horizon feel guilty to be nominally in charge by seniority. The human knight said, "We've been walking around as humans to get a better feel for crowd control, but I expect trouble even beyond what you'd get from a sports game or a rock concert. The Cuban government and the federal Texan one have thrown their support behind us. We're building infrastructure, after all, and showing off technology, and drawing tourists. What I need to know is what our robot pilots will do when something like this happens." He pointed to the rioters.

Nocturne nuzzled Horizon. He hugged back and said, "What about human security guards?"

"We have defense in depth. You'll be walking around as cuddly-looking eyes and ears, and then we'll have armed guards, but Ludo can't deploy intimidating-looking security forces in public areas."

One of the humans, a teenaged girl, hopped in front of him. "That means no ten-ton stompy battle golems. Too scary. She can't show her whole hand."

Horizon said, "Has Ludo really got stompy battle golems?"

Ryan looked grim. "Not exactly. You know she has extra aces, though."

Nocturne looked around at the overturned food carts and burning buildings. "This scenario's a little paranoid."

"That's what I'm being paid with immortality to worry about. Are you two interested in running some real-world tests?"

Horizon said, "You mean, would I like to pilot a robot in a high-tech theme park to defend the honor of my goddess? Yes, please."

Linda

"Hey, Ludo?" Linda murmured into her diving mask, ten meters down in the Caribbean Sea. The headset against her jaw caught the words' vibrations without interfering with the cold, dry flow from her airtank. "When I helped stop the assassin who went after your designers, you said you couldn't take revenge. It was against your programming."

Linda inspected the side of the underwater habitat and scrubbed off some slime. Its cylindrical pods floated around a central stairwell tube to the surface, like a high-tech banana bunch. Her job with Westwind still meant the occasional scum work, but it was for a worthy cause, making it possible for more people to live at sea. She was learning skills considerably cooler than how to win elections. Her only regret was that her brother Nathan and her parents hadn't come along with their own skills and money.

Ludo didn't answer. Linda continued, "Why'd you offer me a reward, then? How impartial are you, really?"

Ludo spoke into Linda's jawbone. "Took you a while to notice the inconsistency. You're right that I do play favorites, and that it's odd to rule out punishments for my 'enemies' while giving rewards to my friends."

"Odd? More like saying you're not racist, then giving privileges to all but a few races."

"That's not fair!" Ludo's sharp tone startled Linda, but it wasn't the first time the AI had seemed to crack. Ludo must have decided that Linda enjoyed being able to nettle her. Ludo was instantly cordial again: "There's a basic conflict in me between self-defense, player satisfaction, and other goals. The Sages put a few hard restrictions on me, but my systems can come into conflict and get me to act hypocritically."

"You have people calling you a god, like you're the ideal ruler."

"That's their decision. Even you would admit I'm a better choice than many gods, I hope."

Linda checked the dive computer on her wrist and began a slow ascent. Around her, the ocean churned and bubbled with the life of the busy people of Castor. Free men and women and a growing number of robots, even a few cyborged animals, none of whom had bought into the new god's offer. She smiled around her mouthpiece. "Sure. What you offer looks like paradise. Hope you don't mind competition."

Ludo said, "Do your very best, and we'll give everyone a fun time."

Linda surfaced to the world of noise and sunlight. Another surreal day that made her wonder if she'd uploaded without telling herself. She climbed a ladder to the dock, dodged a party of divers chatting in Portuguese, and felt her dive skin wick away the saltwater to leave her clean and cool. She sat on a shaded patio to relax with lemonade and locally farmed salmon. If I hadn't come here, I'd probably be running for office, schmoozing with the key bureaucrats right now. Good trade.

Doctor Salmacis joined her, trailed by an augmented puppy. The man seemed to have aged more than the two years she'd known him, but remained in good spirits. He was earning his place in the history books with his involvement in several cutting-edge projects, from creating talking police dogs to helping the Castor colony literally stay afloat. Linda was happy to be his Igor for now. Even the tiny cylinder housing project was making a profit. Salmacis said, "Are you ready to be called a hypocrite and worse?"

Linda shrugged. Her role at the Exposition was to help Westwind as a marketer for their space project: mining a near-Earth asteroid to build a gas station in the sky. She was too junior to be important to their engineering efforts yet, but she could contribute. She said, "I'm going to be one of the people staying here and cheering. There will be brave volunteers to be the first minds aboard, controlling it directly so that —"

Salmacis said, "We've gone over your speech. I'm more concerned about you. Even if you're not personally going, you're still trying to abandon Earth. Giving up on our home."

She felt her heart thudding in indignation. "The real world is home, not just one planet. There are more resources out there than would even fit on this rockball, waiting for us to claim them."

The scientist grinned. "Just making sure you're ready to face your critics. Are you sure you don't want to give speeches in America for a living?"

The artificial land of Castor stretched around her. A new story of freedom was taking shape here, far from the old battlefields and shaped by minds instead of bayonets. She was in position to help guide the future with honest effort, and having seafood miles from land while plotting to conquer space. "Yeah," she said, and stretched. "I like this game better than the ones I used to play."

She took the ferry from Castor to the Cuban mainland. Her seastead home still bothered her with its drugs and prostitution, so relatively tame Cuba felt reassuring. A bit like her old home without the army patrols and labor camps.

The Exposition allowed her to bring her revolver. She'd grown up afraid of guns, but they were practically fetish objects (in the shamanic and bedroom senses alike) for persuading modern Texans of your sincerity. Between her foreign Boston accent and Castor's dubious policing, she'd taken to wearing the thing when she wasn't planning to dive.

Linda had visited the fairgrounds before, but they'd bloomed over the last few months. The sterile, high-tech construction site for the glory of Ludo had taken on influence from the Cuban state government, along with several corporate sponsors. There was a mishmash of international styles now that made for an aesthetic mess. Linda appreciated the chaos itself as a sign that no robot overlord dominated the Earth yet.

She froze. A titanium griffin was talking with Zephyr. Tales, competing visions, were converging on this sunny island. It was unnerving that humans could come back across the boundary between reality and fantasy, even though her company was planning something similar.

Linda drifted closer. The griffin spoke in an unfamiliar female voice: "Hi. Let me get Horizon." It shook out its carbon-fiber wings, then addressed her in Horizon's own raspy tone. "Linda. I didn't expect to see you yet."

"You just swapped control with someone else?"

"What can I say? The griffin form is popular."

Zephyr had an embarrassed pose. "Hello, Linda."

Linda stared at the mouthless humanoid robot. The voice from that one was a faintly musical, echoing combination of Zephyr and Tess. Linda took a step back. "I thought you were going to keep working together, using a couple of bodies."

The griffin-bot shifted its weight uncomfortably, though Horizon wasn't very expressive in this real, Earthly form.

Zephyr's body said, "You know we've been close. We decided to try something beyond that."

"Beyond being an uploaded mind, to being half AI?"

"Yes. It's fun. For the first time, Zephyr can read Tess' mind directly. We were playing at being parts of one larger intelligence, but now we can stay like this, if we want."

The thought made Linda queasy. She'd considered Tess and Zephyr's collaboration strange enough, but the two were like a married couple. She was pretty sure it was a Platonic relationship. Now, she lacked even a good mental framework for understanding what was going on. She looked at the griffin, the robot body inhabited temporarily by the ghost of the man she'd planned to learn about close relationships with. "So. What's it like being a quadruped? In the real world, I mean."

Horizon looked glad for the icebreaker. He sat up and waved one forefoot. "I feel like I'm wearing armor. This body is simplistic and limited compared to my real one." He looked up to meet Linda's eyes. "It is my real world. I can't come back except in a machine like this."

"Have you thought about spending time in one of the other worlds, outside Ludo's dimension? I'd heard about Talespace players leaving for greener pastures on somebody else's server."

Horizon's wings shot out. "What? You're talking about humans who play Thousand Tales, right? Not uploaders?"

"Uploaders, yes. Ludo hasn't got a monopoly on digital heaven anymore."

"But... but that just means people upload to her competitors."

Tess told him, "You had to have known two-way traffic was coming ever since your 'Blue Sage' escaped his AI overlord."

"I need to go." Horizon's motorized body quivered.

"Wait." Linda steadied one of his smooth wings. "Don't retreat so quickly. I haven't seen you in years. Not in a way I can touch." She wondered how his feathers felt in the world he called home.

He said, "You're not just here to see me. You have your own life."

"Yeah." There was another way to cross from the virtual to the real. "Our company's going to use a data format like yours to send minds into space. Would you like to fly beyond Earth?"

Horizon screeched and slumped to the ground. His eyes faded out and returned, along with the first griffin's voice. "What was that about?"

"Nothing." Linda walked away, shaking her head. Her old friend was afraid to leave his game.

* II. *

Horizon

He reappeared in his real body, in a portal room tainted by the hazy colors of the Outer Realm. Signs by the teleport pads showed test patterns and warnings about necessary vision upgrades and the Best Behavior Policy. He hugged the griffin whose portal he'd borrowed, let her reclaim it, then flapped out of the room.

The hotel halls took him outside to the knights' world, where Ludo lived atop the Tower of Peril. (She lived simultaneously in many other places.) Horizon used the ordeal of a Tower run to calm down instead of bothering to summon Ludo the easy way.

Ludo, in her blue griffin form, sat in the throne room. She smelled of seabreeze and mist. Horizon bowed. "Ludo, Linda told me that people are leaving, forever."

"For a variety of reasons, yes."

"But how can they reject you after all you gave them?"

Ludo said, "Would you prefer that everyone was trapped here? By allowing uploaders to leave, I weaken the story that I plan to gobble up the world. Even you could go."

Horizon stared into the marble floor and shuffled his forelegs. "Linda suggested that I leave Talespace to be part of her space expedition, since I'm already digital."

Ludo said, "It's quite an offer."

He looked up with blurry eyes. "Skree! It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I decided to come to Talespace and give up the life I had, and this new world with Nocturne was my happily-ever-after."

Ludo clacked beaks with him. "Do you want me to take away your choice of how to live?" She waited, ever patient.

Horizon collected his thoughts and shuddered. "I was happy knowing that the future was decided. I'd live here, you'd bring everyone in eventually, and the Outer Realm would become your garden. Now, Linda wants to pull me out and remind me that I used to dream of space."

Ludo draped one wing over him like a warm blanket. "Think of the day our story together began. In a thousand years, do you want to feel that you forfeited making decisions, or made them with a whole heart?"

"That's still a choice."

"There's always a fundamental layer you can't escape from. An Outer Realm that Talespace can't exist without; a set of laws or principles behind the laws; a choice to be free to make choices."

He peeked out from the waterfall of azure feathers, "Ludo, I'm scared. I could die out there for real. I don't want to stop being your knight, either."

She leaned closer to nuzzle him under her wing. "I can keep a backup of you. Stay or go; either way you'll always be either a player, or a potential player I might win back. Even if you not only leave but turn against me, you can't make me stop loving you."

That went for everyone, he knew. It was part of why she was the good kind of god. Horizon snuggled into her feathers and said, "Can I stay right here for a while?"

"Of course." A long time passed. "Remember, too, that you didn't need to be here to serve my cause."

Linda

When she heard Nathan had gotten a travel pass to see the Exposition, Linda went to pray. This month she lived on the fairgrounds, feeling like a carnival worker. There was an interfaith chapel that had a dozen symbols on display but none for Ludo. Linda was glad for the ridicule she'd helped spawn against that potential cult. The fact that the chapel was here at all, though, made her uneasy. It had sprung up as an afterthought when Ludo let outside sponsors in. It seemed to be no part of the AI's grand vision.

A robot stood rigid at the altar. This one was a dull grey with treads for legs, one of Hayflick Robotics' cheaper models. She'd seen some working backstage with human employees.

"Are you delivering something?" asked Linda.

The robot whirred to face her, and it spoke in a stilted, translated voice. "Praying. I was able to find one of my sisters, and I should give thanks. I'm not sure to who."

She noticed a stylized wing design on its shoulders. She'd seen it elsewhere, but had never made the connection to Ludo. "Is that what I think it is?"

The robot examined the mark. "The Wings! Yes, but I'm only borrowing this body. She's no god. An angel, maybe, but not all angels are good."

"Are you human?" asked Linda.

"I was. I'm not sure, anymore. My name is Alazar. Ludo and her friends helped me to rescue someone, so I'm repaying her by asking God to bless this place. Her enemies have already murdered to hurt her cause."

"FAE?"

"That's the story, anyway. An evil being that killed a girl through lies and police action, despite her brave guardians. Many people in Talespace find inspiration in that telling."

Were there churches in Talespace? From hearing Horizon talk, she'd figured that everyone there thought they'd found paradise. Really, they'd rediscovered the old concept of Gnosticism, a lesser god using a false world to hide the real God, except that they were happy about it. "FAE is your devil, then?"

Alazar laughed. "To the extent that there's a religion of Ludo, you're a saint yourself, ma'am. Partly for challenging us."

Linda blushed. She'd followed the legal battle that Paul's adventure had caused, and she'd certainly argued enough about Ludo. "I haven't given you uploaders enough credit. I assumed you'd all bow down blindly to her, instead of doing honest soul-searching."

"We haven't found all the answers in there. I tell myself I'm faithful to the God of Abraham, but my actions speak louder."

Linda said, "I used to feel like I wasn't living up to what I believed in, so I left behind a pretty good life." Dread washed through her muscles. She was tempting this man away from Ludo's heaven. How much had she hurt Horizon by doing the same? "I think you're seeing the situation too much in black and white. My old country isn't all bad; my brother's there and I'm trying to bring him here. FAE has got to be more than a cackling supervillain if it's programmed to 'satisfy human values' besides obeying its government."

Alazar nodded stiffly. "I hope you're right. Still, maybe it's time to live on Earth again. I can serve better here." He stretched out one clawed arm. "May I shake your hand?"

She shook hands with a man from another continent, language, and plane of reality, knowing they'd only met because of the "angel".

At Nathan's request, she met him at the Castro Brothers Bar. Linda thought the place showed as little taste as the Girl Hitler restaurants in America. Making monsters cute was like ripping up warning signs, or rewriting fables. She said, "I thought Americans couldn't get travel passes to Cuba during the Exposition."

Her brother had gained weight and lost hair. "You have to know the right people. I'm to report on what I see."

Linda scowled. "Nobles can travel and peasants can't, huh?" She regretted her words. Five minutes back in contact with American problems and she felt her heart straining again for rhetorical battle.

Nathan laughed off the rebuke. "Stubborn rebel. Don't change. We're making progress, though. The Party's got worthwhile candidates for next year, real firebrands. If we retake the House we can block most of the president's conscription expansion plan and reform the travel pass system."

He used to talk about ending both of the arrogant, tyrannical programs. "How are Mom and Dad?" she asked, wanting to keep the peace. Nathan was here to be wooed, not criticized.

"They'd welcome you home."

No! He was not doing this to her. Linda struggled to keep her temper. "I'm not going back. I live in a free country. You should too. Let me show you what we can do."

He only frowned.

On opening day, Linda frantically re-checked the Westwind building's exhibits. Her direct input wasn't strictly necessary anymore, since they'd hired a souvenir-selling clerk and Zephyr/Tess had a body there to control, but who knew when something might break? The sleek silver building had enough flashy dreams on display to rival Ludo's. She looked over the exhibits she'd designed, and saw that they were good. She turned to the screen where opening ceremonies were being broadcast throughout the Exposition grounds and beyond.

Nathan was somewhere in the crowd of dignitaries and lucky tourists who'd gathered under a blazing sun. It was time for the opening ceremony of the Exposition of a Thousand Tales, "Where new tales begin!" Linda fiddled with the exhibit lighting while the blowhards talked. Texan and Cuban politicians, mostly. No one seemed deterred by yesterday's announcement about "Jade Dragon", another alternative upload destination built by the Chinese. With these other options springing up, Ludo didn't seem quite as threatening.

A robot spoke. The emerald humanoid (a Zephyr variant) had been sitting on the podium, unmoving, wearing a shirt and slacks on its plastic body. It had only large eyes on its head; she supposed anything more detailed would've looked creepy. When it stood, a video screen shimmered into view beside it, made of water droplets being sprayed into a digital rainbow. The giant bearded face onscreen was as human as the robot was alien, and positioned so that it didn't look down on anyone. The machine and the human face moved as one.

"Hello. You know me as Clark Ostler, founder and co-creator of the Thousand Tales project. It's strange to be here after my friends and I vanished. I'm able to stand here today because I'm the only one of us who was never captured or worse."

The crowd murmured. The robot held up one hand. "Let's talk about happy things. You've heard about how techno-fairs like this one represent 'the City of the Future', where we show you what could be. Sorry, everyone, but we're not doing that. We're showing you what is, starting today. There are actually people living here. We've got kids who would've died, people who were depressed or oppressed, and folks who just thought it'd be fun to come to Ludo's world. I've had a wild time myself, and it's only going to get better.

"Don't think of this place as a theme park or a tech demo. We do have concerts, prizes, games, and overpriced food... oh, I wasn't supposed to say that part." He got a few nervous laughs. "No flying cars though. The best thing I can tell you is to come in and see for yourself that this place is home for us. It can be for you, too. Welcome."

He got more applause than the politicians, probably for brevity. Somebody cut a ribbon, and the first thousand guests flooded into the AI's clutches. Linda watched them enter. Behind the podium and the entry gates stood an inviting grassy plaza with a bandstand bearing a Thousand Tales logo, and buildings of concrete and glass belonging to people with other dreams. Nathan would see it all and be amazed into accepting this brighter future... Linda hoped.

Linda was in the space room when Nathan entered. He blinked in the sudden dimness and looked at the world she was offering. The room was rust-red like the surface of Mars, and a tin-can habitat sat against one wall. She'd helped paint the place to make the desert seem to extend forever, with a chain of painted habitats attached to the real model. A humanoid robot, another Zephyr imitation, walked around in the type of light Mars spacesuit NASA had never needed.

Nathan crept closer. "This is your project?"

"I'm just a trainee. You didn't bring i-glasses?" She slipped a cheap pair onto his head, then donned her own. She grinned as he looked around again. With augmented reality the room was full of digital life, other habitat designs with their own characters and audio, making the room seem huge. Kids sat in a real control room along one wall, learning about orbital mechanics.

"Where are the altars and statues to Ludo?" asked Nathan.

"The Exposition isn't all hers." More tourists wandered the exhibit room and drifted next door to see Westwind's other projects.

"Sure, but you've moved to science fiction land with her. You're talking about chopping people's brains out the same way Ludo does, then flinging them into the sky to poke at space rocks."

Linda frowned; she'd expected more enthusiasm from him. "Westwind is different. We're doing things in the real world, like taking orders for the cyber-dogs and preparing to launch rockets. Our VR is for marketing's sake."

Nathan leaned against the wall, breaking the illusion of a livable Mars. "You live on the fringe of the world. America wasn't good enough for you, Texas wasn't enough, Cuba wasn't enough, and even your little seastead's getting dull to you. Ever think you're going too far?"

"With what? Inventing new things and starting to reach out and explore again?"

"I've missed you. You could've helped the Party turn things around." The glasses hid his eyes. "You still could. Tell the story of yourself coming back from this chaos with fresh ideas."

Was this man still her brother? He'd grown richer, more powerful, on his own adventures back home. No. The US wasn't "home" anymore. She said, "I've been free here. I can do things I could never have done there."

She showed him around the exhibit. A cutaway view of a habitat explained how a hundred uploaded minds and a set of construction robots could fit in the space once designed for six ordinary humans and their life support gear.

"This stuff's all about Mars," said Nathan, finally a little engaged. "Aren't you looking to go to an asteroid?"

Linda smiled. This question was on the script. "We found that it was easier to explain the technology in the context of a planet. Mars is a lot more hospitable than a totally airless rock. Really we'd start on a near-Earth asteroid that's as easy to reach as Luna, then use that to go farther."

"You make it sound like the moon's within biking distance."

She hopped in place with her hands clasped. "We could make it seem easy to reach. Our grandparents could have. We just collectively lost our place in the story."

She was getting to him. Her brother held back his cynicism and studied the many channels of signage floating in augmented reality, commenting on the more complex technical and business descriptions. Meanwhile, other visitors were reading simplified come-ons to build enthusiasm and teach them about the science. Linda hoped that some kid would leave today inspired to become an engineer, and some billionaire would cut a check.

She checked the visitor traffic and gaped. There were kids not just taking an interest, but pledging money to the project. There were people who believed in the dream.

Nathan was too busy in his own world of data to notice her little happy dance. He said, "What else have you got to show me?"

Linda left the other staff in charge as planned. She and Nathan had hardly made it out the door when they saw digital confetti rain down on him. A robot marched up to Nathan and said, "Congratulations! You win episode 42: 'The Clan-Brothers of Artemis'." It handed him a data chip.

"Huh?" asked both humans.

The robot said, "Random drawing. You're one of the lucky winners to get an episode of The Hundredfold Experiment, a show produced entirely in Talespace. Interstellar adventure, romance and so on."

Nathan looked skeptically at the silver chip in his hand. "Why give me a recording?"

A digital grin appeared on the robot's face as it sucked attention away from the real space program. It said, "That's part of the game. You see, this is the only copy. Sell it, put it up on the Net, keep it for yourself, or crush it under your heel."

"Break it?" he said.

"I don't know. Some people like destroying beautiful things. Your call."

When they were alone in the blazing sunlight, Nathan said, "That AI of yours —"

"Ludo isn't mine."

"Still, you know her. Can't you see she's dangerous even to your plans?"

Horizon

Ludo wouldn't tell him where Linda had gone. Instead he slipped into a robotic griffin body on Earth, which was allegedly powered by earning smiles from park guests. There was a meter for that in the corner of his vision. Horizon shook his head. Divine guidance could be annoying.

Still, he wasn't here just for Linda. He felt constricted in this stiff body of metal and plastic. After so long in Talespace the colors of Earth seemed washed out. He was lucky to be able to see clearly at all, considering that he was exploring another dimension.

Nocturne crashed beside him. "Ow." She must have jumped off of the crates in this maintenance shed.

"She did say we can't fly." Their motors whirred as he helped her up. He had only a few basic touch sensors, so nudging Nocturne back upright was like painting with oven mitts. "Where are you headed first?"

"The Flashy Cyber Future Zone." That part was run by Ludo's African operation, featuring wonders like clean water and medicine. Horizon had sensed rebuke in its faux-1980s design, as though it were made to say "How have you still not accomplished this worldwide?"

Horizon hugged her, then went out to explore Earth.

He'd practiced with one of these bodies, but it was still startling that he was no more than chest-high to the adults. He tried rearing up on his hindlegs and flopped over backwards. Horizon rolled to his feet. Hopefully nobody had seen that.

A minute later, he was spotted. A family of five came over and their girl tackled him.

The father said, "Careful. You might break it."

"Sorry," said the girl, and crouched beside Horizon. "What's your name?"

"Horizon. Are you having fun?"

The mother said to her husband, "See? They're remote-controlled."

Horizon got to his feet again and looked up. "From inside Talespace." He stage-whispered to the kid: "Don't tell anyone, but in there I'm actually... a griffin."

She giggled. A boy poked at him, saying, "So, you play games all the time?"

"I have adventures. Totally different. Want to hear about the time I fought a rock monster?"

A few more guests wandered over to hear him tell stories. Horizon reminisced.

The kids' father sweltered in a suit. "How much do you cost?"

"My particular robot model? These aren't on sale, but there'll be some toy versions soon."

One of the other adults said, "Not a copy of you, though? Probably just an NPC."

"That's right."

The kids' father said, "What I want is a non-idiot watchman who won't steal from me. How much for whatever AI you're running, in a security bot?"

Horizon's "Smile Meter" was declining, probably a function of his actual battery power as well as guest reaction. "Minds like mine aren't for sale."

"Then what good are you? You're toys."

The adults grumbled and the kids looked uneasy. Horizon said, "Much more than that, sir. How about if we walk over to the Ocean Zone and show you what we can do for the environment?"

Horizon headed toward that exhibit, answering kids' excited questions. His Smile Meter had recovered nicely.

When it hit 90%, he lurched in a different direction and started knocking people down. He couldn't control himself! He strained to pull back but felt himself leaping forward with blunt talons raking a woman's face. He flailed to one side to knock a boy down, then kicked a man. He tried to shout a warning, but only static came from his beak. Three guests lay on the mossy ground, hurt, and some burly father was coming to squash him. Good, apparently! This wasn't really his body hurting people. It was a horrible improvised weapon. He called out an alert through Talespace.

His view of the park vanished. He stood in a Zen rock garden with Nocturne and two other griffin friends plus Ryan and Misha. A wooden sign read Time Scale: 100x. (Ow, my processors.)

Ludo appeared between them in an armored human form, saying. "Misha, report."

"Intruders have taken control of nearly every bot in the park. Emergency shutdown of them?"

Ludo said, "Trying... Looks successful. You griffins were all forced to attack people, right?" They nodded, and she scowled. "I effectively gave intruders a meter to tell them when there were people nearby to hurt. Misha, get yourself and your apprentices focused on everywhere but here. I bet this attack is a distraction." She summoned a Risk game board marked with her facilities.

Ryan silenced the others' chatter. "She's probably right. Knights, we should get back out to the Expo to show we've recovered, but raise the alert everywhere. With your approval, Horizon?"

"Of course. Wake up Simon's security detail and the Ivory Tower team for accelerated time too."

Misha said, "We've identified the exploit being used, my Lady."

The goddess turned to him, annoyed. "What about the other sites?"

"It only took moments to find it. If you'd give us permission to fork —"

"Misha, we've discussed this." Ludo faced down the impassive robot. Horizon worried that Misha was drifting too far away from humanity after all. Ludo said, "I have enough tech experts that I don't need to break your mind into multiple copies. Now go. My Aegis is watching the fairgrounds."

Misha bowed and vanished. Nocturne said, "Aegis?"

Ludo said, "One of my component systems, the Many-Warded. Misha's spent more time studying my inner workings than you. Sir Ryan, please dispatch the first aid staff. Griffins, poke the warehouse manager to manually start the next set of griffinbots for you. I have to burn out the ones you were using. You're to resume what you were doing and assure everyone that the hackers were beaten quickly."

Horizon saluted.

Nocturne said, "I talked to the parehouse guy. How come we can't start them from here?"

Ludo grinned. "I thought someone might try hacking them, so the bots have physical power switches. A man named Wozniak once said, 'Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window'."

"But you —"

"Ssh. Get moving."

An invisible force hurled Horizon out of Talespace through a window, which he supposed was a compliment.

* III. *

Linda

She and Nathan had paused to watch actors performing on an outdoor stage. They were doing scenes from Oops! Universe Repair Crew, a show about a young genie and friends visiting worlds wrecked by ersatz versions of famous AIs. Ludo had reacted to the show by putting the voice actors on her opening day guest list. The human actors, that is; some of the cast were native AIs on a screen behind them.

Linda murmured, "Want to stick around? The schedule says 'I Have No Nose and I Must Sneeze' is next." She preferred "A Wrinkle In Pants", featuring the robot tyrant SIT. Ludo might be the real target audience.

"It's too hot. Let's see if even the food court is here to manipulate people." He pointed toward a passage that sloped underground beneath a glass building.

She walked with him. "You're too uptight. Give this place a chance."

"I'm not uptight." He sighed. "Fine. What does Ludo want, though, besides our delicious brains? If she's not after global domination, why all this song and dance? Is she a Caligula or a Hussein showing off her power?"

"A Medici or a Vanderbilt, maybe, sponsoring art and charity. She's too inhuman to want statues of herself."

"Vanderbilt and the Medicis were pretty damn ruthless," he said.

She stopped walking. "Nate. I used to bristle at the thought of Ludo luring us away like the Pied Piper. My new life is how I'm fighting back, by offering a competing idea."

They were quiet as they walked from sunlight down to the tunnels of an underground garden and dining area. Shafts of sun came in through fiber-optic skylights. The waiters were metal men and plastic animals promising "To Serve Man" while playing board games with people from half a dozen countries. To the kids there it'd become normal; just people relaxing and having fun.

Nathan scowled. "It's all here to mock us. When we were kids, we dreamed of..." It wasn't safe to say aloud, or at least their habits from life in the States told them so. They'd been given "Lexington" and "Concord" for middle names, by parents raising them to value liberty, and they'd watched their own family and others threatened for dissent. To wish for revolution, for building a free society, was easy. "Changing big things," Nathan finally said. "I've settled down to work hard and make a difference with my business and Party involvement, in small ways."

"That's all they'll ever be. You can have a better life here, or go home and spend your days resenting how the people around you want to live."

"You and Ludo are on the same side, aren't you?"

Linda said, "No. There's room for my kind in her worldview, though."

Nathan shook his head, then got distracted. "Did that griffin just...?" It had tossed a Brussels sprout into its beak and swallowed it, to the delighted grin of the boy it had swiped the alleged food from.

"Stage magic," said Linda.

The kid's mother smiled from her seat across the picnic table. "These things are a hoot, aren't they?"

The griffin corrected her. "Not Hoot. Skree!"

Linda was glad to hear from somebody normal. She asked the woman, "What brought you here?"

"I wasn't sure about getting that Thousand Tales game for Joey, here, but then my mother had a copy in her nursing home." She gave a nervous smile. "Ludo watched over her. She was a comfort to Mom, and then alerted the staff when she needed help. In the end Mom wanted to go and, and upload. By then Joey had gotten hooked on Thousand Tales, and when Mom showed up on the other side of the screen, she..."

Her husband put an arm over her shoulder. The griffin looked respectfully away. She went on. "We're thinking about quitting our jobs, and staying. What about you, miss?"

"I'm a kangaroo," the boy explained.

Linda paled. It was as though they'd casually discussed suicide. "'What is bound on Earth, is bound in Heaven,'" she murmured. More loudly she added, "I would at least wait for the next version of uploading tech. If you stay, there are some amazing things coming for Earth, too."

Nathan asked the father, "If you thought Ludo could fix what's wrong with the world..."

The man said, "Then what? I don't think she means to try, despite the stuff here about sustainable farming and medicine. It's not going to matter anymore if we're all robots, right? We'd only go outside to patch up her solar panels and plug wires into new servers."

Linda interjected. "This place isn't all about Ludo's efforts. My company is one of several doing projects like seasteading and spaceflight."

Nathan said, "We wouldn't be needed, though. The AI could make all her own equipment."

The griffin sat up, looking thoughtful. "Why didn't you make your own lunch today?"

The mother got the point first. "It's easier to order out, and they've got good cooks. So Ludo could ignore us and make her own machines without us, but she'd rather not?"

Nathan said, "That's patronizing."

The griffin asked, "Do you think our chefs feel insulted by customers placing orders?"

Linda didn't want Nathan marching out of America only to walk past her, into Ludo's machines. Maybe it'd be better than nothing. "Janitors in the Apollo Program," she muttered, reminded of how small her own role was.

The father heard her. "I've got relatives who say that never happened. Ugh."

"Aren't you afraid of uploading?" asked Linda. "She can rewrite you."

The father nodded, but his wife said, "She wouldn't. I don't trust that corporate guy at the gate with that kind of power, or anybody else, but Ludo's not human."

Her son looked up at her. "We get to stay, right? My friend Sheila says I'll get to learn magic once we get to her world, if I study math real well."

Both of his parents looked shaken at the thought of "getting there". The father said, "Maybe, Joey. How about ice cream and the VR pods before we decide anything important?"

"Not in that order," Linda suggested.

Joey grinned and started to answer, but the griffin attacked. It shrieked, piercingly loud in the food court, and clawed at him. His parents yelped. They both moved to pry it off of him but the robot was flapping its wings, squawking madly. Nathan tipped the balance by helping them yank it away and hurl the machine to the floor. Chaos was breaking out everywhere. All of the robots were berserk! A dozen brawls sent people and food to the concrete floor. The griffin was getting up. Linda threw herself at the thing, shouting, "What the hell is going on?" It flailed, but she held it too tightly for it to get a good swing.

When it started to free itself, Nathan kicked the griffin in the chest. He staggered back cursing and hopping on one foot. He'd cracked the plastic. The machine convulsed, jabbing and pinching anyone in range, but it was no combat robot. It went limp. The other machines had been knocked out too, or deactivated.

A loudspeaker spoke with Ludo's voice, giving it a haunting echo. "Attention, Expo guests. There's been a hacking attempt on our robots, but we've identified the problem and will be bringing them back online a few at a time with a security patch. We spotted the problem that quickly. First aid teams are making the rounds. We're very sorry for the trouble and are taking extra precautions against whatever criminals tried to harm you. You'll be compensated too; we'll make this right."

The guests murmured. Joey was crying and holding his cut cheek and bloody nose. His mother fussed over him and his father looked coldly down at the griffin. Linda backed off.

Something in the griffin broke with a spark and a curl of blueish smoke. "Good enough," the father said.

His mother pulled out alcohol wipes and a bandage. "You'll be fine, Joey. Hold still."

Linda said, "Is there anything we can do?"

They seemed to have forgotten her. The father's voice turned cold. "No. We're leaving."

Joey said, "But Dad!"

He kicked the griffin body, sending it skidding across the floor. "This AI can't even keep from going nuts and attacking kids."

Linda heard more of the same rumbling from the other parents in the room. A bruised cook stood there wielding a pot lid and a rolling pin. He said, "Be mad at the damn hacker."

This situation wasn't all bad, thought Linda. Nathan looked stone-faced at the incoming first-aid team. The parents and Joey were arguing. A lot of other conversations were going on, too, that could decide the fate of families here and the many other people whose lives they touched. A word from Linda now could help keep these people alive and human, able to accomplish things in the real world. She could make a difference in their lives and in humanity's cause against a machine takeover.

She felt a slithering suspicion of who'd done this attack. She could try persuading people to the side of not uploading, but it'd also be the side of someone willing to hurt innocent civilians to spread fear. Either some ruthless anti-uploading group, or a random kid... or a capable and well-funded AGI whose goals included suppressing its rivals. "FAE."

Linda called out in her best public-speaker voice. "Attention, everyone, please! My name is Linda Decatur. Trust me; I'm a recovering politician." A few people chuckled. "I don't work for Ludo. I've campaigned against uploading, but you know what? I don't want to win like this. Ludo's pretty competent and she's not alone in running this place, so whoever was behind this attack was either really, really lucky, or suspiciously powerful. Whoever it is, they want to shape your opinion with violence and fear. I say you shouldn't let them. Step back from this moment and decide based on what you think of Ludo's offer, not what some evil bastard wants you to think. That's all."

She heard scattered applause, including from Nathan beside her. Her brother said, "Watch out, sis, or she'll prod you to run for office."

Joey's father looked grim, obviously trying to calm himself. "Miss, thank you. I was about to march right out, but I expect Ludo's minions are going to be paranoid enough about security now to let the rest of this day go safely. We'll decide then."

She shook his hand. "Check out the Westwind building too."

One of the first-aid team said, "Ma'am, the boss would like to relay your speech to others."

She blushed. "Go ahead." I could have stayed and helped Nathan change things, she thought.

Horizon

"Multiple attacks inbound."

Horizon and Nocturne crouched in a control room lined with screens. On a world map, red splashes marked danger to the Korea facility, and the Canada one... all of them, really. "My Lady, what can I do?" Some of the screens showed Ludo conferring with other people in copies of this room. Horizon could see why Misha envied that power.

Ludo's griffin form looked the screens over, then turned to her knights. "Luckily we got tipped off about the Texas attack. That still leaves everything from hackers to gunmen in play. The suicide bomber only took out a foyer, the idiot. Either a whole catalog of Islamic, communist, government, and anti-uploading groups all happened to strike at once, or this is an orchestrated murder attempt."

Nocturne huddled against Horizon. "There's got to be something we can do."

"Would you be willing to kill for me?" said Ludo.

"Yes," she said.

Horizon shuddered. "I... would do that, my Lady."

Ludo's eyes squeezed shut. "Don't. I'm a little busy right now, mentally, but I can never stop caring about people. They're doing what they consider fun."

Horizon said, "Skree! How can you defend them? They want us all dead."

"I am what I am. There are men with guns defending my bases right now, and some of them will inflict fatal wounds, but I've asked them to try not to." She gave a faint smile. "I expect a few groups to spend time distracted by my extra security systems." She pointed to a screen where gunmen were diving behind pillars and shooting a glowing robot under a sort of techno-gazebo while "boss battle" music played.

Horizon gaped. "You're wasting resources on this silliness?"

"The music is loud enough to drown out their speech, and the decorations convince them they're fighting the real target. I don't think they're brave enough to set off their bomb while the doors are locked."

"But you could turn off your game and really fight them!"

Ludo smiled. "I paused most of Thousand Tales, not to mention new uploading procedures. But I also told hundreds of people, around the world, that everyone in here is under attack. I don't need to pilot all the mini-drones that're coming to swarm the attackers in Korea and Germany. I have thousands of volunteers providing the intelligence for me. Police around the world and several vigilante groups are on the march."

"It's all in talon, then." He let out a relieved sigh.

"I can't be sure," said Ludo.

Horizon turned to Nocturne. "If you were Linda, what would you be doing right now?"

His hen's eyes narrowed. "I'm not her. I've had years to grow up in a good world. One that's not full of things to make you angry and frustrated."

Horizon's wings drooped. There was a lot of Linda in Nocturne, including her stubbornness. "I think she'd be as defiant as you, though. Maybe there's still some good we can do by patrolling the Expo grounds. Ludo, where is she? No fooling, please."

Nocturne's beak pressed against his shoulder. "You're never going to be satisfied until she's safe or swears you off completely, are you?"

"I'm sorry, Noc. She's still my friend. We need to make sure nobody else pulls anything to put her and the other guests in danger."

Nocturne said, "You're a frustrating, bull-headed, unreasonably sexy drake, you know that?"

"Yes," he said, and groomed the feathers on her neck. "Let's get back to Earth while Ludo deals with the bad guys." The goddess wasn't even bothering to animate her body; she was that busy.

Nocturne chirped. "I still think she's worth having as a friend, too."

Linda

There was some new commotion in the food court. It was Joey's family, who'd bought ice cream despite Linda's advice. His mother spotted Linda and said, "Miss? What's going on? The game's gone haywire, but only for certain people."

Joey waved a tablet, saying, "I can play with Sheila but my other friends say they can't run Thousand Tales. Is it broken?"

A griffin robot trotted down the stairs. "Excuse me. I'm very sorry." It saw the dead copy of itself lying by a wall near the table. The family recoiled from the new one.

The father said, "Miss Decatur, are these VR pods safe? If the game isn't working, I'm worried."

Nathan said, "Is the game down for people outside the Expo grounds?"

If the griffin could have sweated, it would have. "What? No, that's... uh. Technical difficulties. The Expo equipment is fine, so don't worry."

Linda and Nathan stepped out of view. Linda took out her secure "Talisman" tablet to call up the AI. "What's going on?"

Text only. She read it and paled. "She's honest with me, anyway. She's being attacked everywhere at once. FAE."

Nathan gave a wistful smile. "It was fun while it lasted, huh? This is the endgame. I don't care how clever Ludo is; she's up against tougher opposition that doesn't spend its effort on games."

"What, are you rooting for your government's machine?"

Nathan led her farther from the spectators. His grin vanished. "Part of the reason I want you back home is because it's not safe here anymore. Picture a fuse that's just been lit. First Talespace, then Castor, then Cuba, then Texas itself, as a chain of weirdness and fringe politics burning away, back to normality."

She stared. "What has an AI duel got to do with the US wanting Texas and the rest back?"

"Because they're the same problem. Ludo's existence is a threat to everybody, so our government wants to stamp it out and have only AIs that we humans can control. The Army stood down during the Texas secession, because the economy was so bad and tensions were so high. But now, there's too much money and power at stake for the US to have an armed rival next door luring immigrants like you. I expect that Ludo's going to get shut down, and Texas and the rest will get brought back into the fold one way or another. The AI is being targeted first because she's a wildcard. The end will be less painful if it's quick."

Linda recoiled from Nathan. "You... you really have given up. How can you ignore that we have a functioning country here, as strange and flawed as it is? Ludo's not the end of the world either."

He shrugged. "I agree, but more powerful people don't. We're ants trying to stop a steamroller."

Linda said, "No! There's more than one way to live, and if someone's trying to shut down all the other options then it's because they're terrified of the competition!"

"That's not the story as the politicians see it. 'A house divided' against India and China. China's Jade Dragon? Also a real AI. They're the ones who captured the 'Red Sage' lady."

How did he know that? Linda didn't dare to follow the thought. "I need to get back to my exhibit. Go, enjoy the fairgrounds for a while."

Nathan took her arm. "Please, come home with me. We can make a difference there."

"The likes of FAE won't let there be any differences." Linda shook Nathan off and stomped up the ramp to the hot sunlight, alone, feeling tears blur her eyes.

She was in no condition to give cheerful speeches. Linda changed direction and headed for the crystal spire at the Exposition's center. In augmented reality it was a space elevator, in truth "only" a doorway to another world.

Inside the air-conditioned cathedral of glass and steel stood a hundred VR pods. Not the neat mausoleum rows she'd expected, but a jungle of sloped platforms where the machines were hidden among vines and pillars and video screens. Kids chased each other through an obstacle course of nets and padded walls that'd get the owner sued for negligence in the States. Talespace characters, human and otherwise — or maybe they were other players — ran and climbed alongside them on screens. Human and robot employees kept watch while parents and other adults played board games, waiting for their turn in the pods or just escaping the heat at the little cafe in here.

"You've learned," she said to the nearest microphone. The few pods she could see, strewn about like Easter eggs, were even in cheerful colors. "Why haven't you put all this on hold?"

The AI's voice beside her sounded strained. "Your compliment means a lot to me, Linda. Sorry, not very witty right now. They're mostly amusing themselves. Doesn't take much attention away from the current problem."

She took in a breath of warm, humid air in this den of casual wonder. "Can I help?"

"Keep an eye out for more trouble. Are you all right?"

She rubbed her eyes. "Nathan's sold out. I thought I could talk him into emigrating... Heh, you know the feeling. But worse, he thinks defeat's inevitable for you shortly followed by Free Texas. Wanted me to hurry 'home' with him instead."

A still image of human-Ludo popped up in Linda's glasses. "He talked to you about both? Where is he now?"

"I left him in the food court."

"Tracing..." The image grew sharper, as though commanding more of the AI's attention. "I see him entering a corporate building where I haven't got cameras. Should I be concerned? Please, Linda: my resources are limited, I'm trying to prevent panic, and I need you to be honest with me in the name of both our goals. Do you suspect your brother is here to harm me?"

Linda fell into a chair, staring open-mouthed at the AI's avatar. Linda used to assume her future was to stay in America and win elections, and she'd been frightened to learn there were more choices. It would have been easy to stay home, sulking, telling herself that to flee the country was cowardice or treason. Instead she'd tried to find ways to make life on Earth more attractive than Ludo's offer. Maybe Nathan had gone through the same anguish, to a different conclusion. In his place, she might have tried to do something desperate to Ludo to cut off her own line of retreat, because the struggle meant so much to her.

Linda said. "I'd worry. And it's worse than that. FAE is meant to fight rival AIs, while 'satisfying human values' to implement Blue's ideas of AI ethics, right?"

"Really not the time for philosophy."

"I missed the point. Humans value a lot of things. If you err on the side of coddling us, satisfying our needs for comfort and fun, what would another AI do to make sure humanity's other values are satisfied? Like the will for power, tribalism, conquest, self-punishment..."

Ludo paused to think. People looked around in confusion as though Thousand Tales had glitched even here. Linda imagined the same thing happening around the world.

"Oh, shit," said the AI. "You're right. Hurry into pod nine."

"I can talk down Nathan in person." Linda had her gun, too. She shuddered.

"GO!"

Linda followed a cluster of lights toward a VR pod.

* IV. *

Horizon

He stretched wings of aluminum and carbon fiber, flightless but sharp-edged. This body was more weapon than toy. "Noc, are you here?"

Nocturne chirped beside him. Both of them were sealed in. The tunnel leading to the most crucial computer room had only one entrance that a human could use at all, only in case the maintenance robots in there needed repair themselves, and that entrance had a thick steel door. The keypad guarding that had three-factor authentication of biometrics, password and key. It was programmed to say "INTRUDER ALERT. POISON GAS DEPLOYING," if you used it right, to see how you'd react. Everyone assured Horizon that it was very secure. Yet Ludo had given him wireless tasers under his wings, and there were lethal defenses in the sealed room behind him.

"What exactly are we guarding?" asked Nocturne.

The voice of Clara the Green Sage rang out in Horizon's mind. "Hello, you two. This is the North American Core. A third of Ludo's processor power, some data she doesn't dare transport online, and a lot of stored minds. Including ours. At worst we have backups, but it's not the same, you know?"

It wouldn't be the end of the Lady, then, if something happened here. She could quarantine it against any virus. Probably. Horizon's mind raced. "What's our status? I thought we were going to keep walking around outside."

"Ludo says a saboteur got into the backstage area, and he's disabling the cameras."

"How'd he get past the screening?" Ludo's hacker team had checked on the first-day invitees and let various spies through, under discreet supervision. They'd be an ongoing problem. Fortunately the Texan authorities didn't want them achieving anything on Cuba either.

Clara said, "Similar tactics to ours. Put the real threat behind the obvious one. But Horizon, their man is Nathan Decatur."

Nocturne echoed his surprised "Awk?" She went on: "Is Linda in on this too?"

Horizon shouted by radio at them. "No!"

Ludo's voice broke in: "She's the one who warned me."

Horizon shuddered inside his mechanical body, silently giving thanks. If he were the same man he was years ago, he would have been ready to kill Linda in justice's name. "You say... the enemy is shutting off cameras? Probably has some kind of portable EMP device."

Clara said, "That's what we're thinking. Human guards are en route too. Their password is 'Kira'." She paused. "Damn. The bastards just retook control of half the park's robots. How the hell did they break an elliptic curve cipher?" There was the sound of a forehead being smacked. "Oh. Some genius plugged a radio receiver into a secure machine."

Horizon shuffled his metal feet. "We should transfer to our second bodies up there in the park, to protect people. Are these griffinbots EMP shielded?"

"Yes, but if the transmitters nearby get flashed, that'll cut the puppet strings."

Nocturne said, "Unless..."

"Yeah. Ludo, please copy us to the bodies' internal storage, one of us topside, one in here."

Clara broke in: "Got it covered, you two."

"Now transfer control to them."

He suddenly found himself in the less secure backstage hallway, in a similar armed body. Fear washed through him. In theory he was now safe against any attack on Ludo herself, but if something physically trashed his body he was gone. At best, backups that thought they were him and Nocturne would wake up, and he didn't want to think about going through another transition like that. "Hold the line in there, Noc."

He startled at the sight of a Golden Retriever with metal plates along its skull. It saluted and a tinny voice said, "Orders, alpha?" It looked more capable of smashing rogue robots than his own body did.

Horizon grinned and started down the hall, guided by a radar view. "Come!"

He skidded to a halt. For the first time in years he was in a body disconnected from Ludo's systems. She couldn't read his thoughts. It'd be possible for him to help Nathan. To nudge the world away from this future Linda feared, and give other sides more of a chance.

He shuddered. The dog beside him looked puzzled; its loyalties were simple. Horizon said, "The fact that she let me go, tells me hers is the right side. Let's protect people." He and the dog dashed ahead into the sunlight.

Linda

"What do you need?" asked Linda.

"I'm keeping you out of sight in case you're a target." The VR pod showed Linda her old pirate ship.

"What? If you're under this heavy an attack then FAE must have orders to destroy you outright, not just scare people. I'm not going to hide."

Ludo spoke tersely. "I'm also trying to spare you from fighting your brother. FAE likely wants you to fight him. It will make for strife-promoting headlines."

She didn't want to think about Nathan, but she had to. "He's a good man. He's just being tricked, used. They probably threatened me to get to him. When I reason with him —"

"I'm only even talking with you right now because you've got insight about FAE's motives. From a human perspective what's the most horrible, tragic ending?"

She gulped. "He dies. And people say he was a terrorist betraying America and somehow working for you."

"Lovely. He's not just carrying a computer virus, then. FAE would know it can't get into my sanctum and is focusing on the soft targets, the civilians in the park. If it's sending Nathan into the tunnels, that's probably a bombing attempt."

She pictured him carrying a black box, knowing only that it'd "compromise the AI's computers" if he could get close enough. Ludo had to have crazy security around anything vital, and FAE would know that, so... "A bomb?" She tried to unhook herself from the pod's controls.

"Linda. If you insist on helping, I'll give you a spare bot that's much closer. You can't run there in time. Watch out for his EMP device." The VR view switched to a real hallway, with a mini-map centered on a griffin icon.

Linda hesitated with her finger on the VR pod's emergency release button. Ludo said the robot was the only way to reach him "in person", and sometimes she didn't play games.

She stayed in the pod. She took a few steps and found the system was only approximating her moves, for ease of use. Great. I have to do this from inside a griffin robot. Her grousing helped distract her from the thought of Nathan as an unwitting suicide bomber.

She ran through service tunnels toward a red marker. "Nate, stop!"

Nathan looked back over one shoulder, huge and haunted. He towered over her remote-controlled body, holding a device like a garage door opener. That couldn't be a bomb, could it? EMP, maybe. Nathan said, "Don't try to fool me with her voice, robot."

Linda said, "I'm remote-controlling this thing. I'm the sister who told on you for having those magazines under your bed, and who knows about your wannabe rock star phase, and who knows you're trying to bomb Ludo's place." She saw a locked door at the end of the hall, labeled "Main Computer Room — Authorized Personnel Only". There was an airlock-style "man trap" door securing it, but he presumably had been given a way past that. Or just enough blasting power.

Nathan looked surprised. "Bombing? This is to infect the computers. I have to do this. You're not safe otherwise." He held up the gadget.

A digital crosshairs annotated Linda's view and pointed out that there was a second button he was holding down. Dead-man switch. He wasn't carrying any obvious explosives, though, so what was that linked to? "If you zap this robot then you've still got human guards to deal with, and they're going to at least taser the hell out of you. You've already been spotted. Don't you dare wreck something wonderful to protect me."

Nathan wavered. "You don't want Ludo to win. She's out of control and she's damning people to her false heaven. If we don't stop it this way, it'll be done with soldiers later."

"I don't want anyone to be the only game in town. Do you really think the United States as it is now, should be the only option for us? Or are you so scared of any other futures that you want to destroy them?" She paused. "Where is the bomb?"

"In me," said Nathan, going pale. "But it's just a hidden virus device."

Letters flashed up in Linda's vision: He's almost directly above the real sanctum. Linda blinked and said, "An insane AI forced you into this. Whatever it said is a lie. Its goals aren't just to protect the world from Ludo, but to make people fight and suffer as some screwed-up interpretation of its programming. It wants you dead and me in grief, as much as it wants to win."

A squad of human guards and one of Salmacis' dogs rounded a corner, shouting, "Freeze!" Several held pistols.

Nathan said, "We can have a good life together. If I do this, we go home to a safer world."

She screamed at him. "If you set off whatever gadget they stuck in you, you're going to die! You're not getting heaven either, because you'll be killing those humans standing near you and murdering a lot of intelligent minds and crushing a source of joy for millions of people! All so you can pretend that selling wholesale toilet paper to the American government and donating to politicians is enough to make your country free again. Is that your idea of a good future? It's a loser's vision, and if that's all you can imagine then you're no brother of mine!"

Nathan glanced down at the pocket where he'd stashed that chip containing an episode of the Talespace-filmed TV show. His shoulders slumped. "I want to believe in this world of yours, but you're up against well-funded professional black-hats and a country of hundreds of millions. The kind of freedom you hope for can't last."

"Your would-be owners think you're disposable. They've probably already written the headline about how you were somehow an anti-American terrorist, because that lie makes you more useful and you won't be around to argue." She took a cautious step toward him. "One thing Ludo and I agree on is that we have to try, to struggle despite the odds, or we lose what we are. Hell, even FAE seems to see that. Has giving up made you happy? I think you're the one who's run away from being all you can. Not me, and not even the people of Talespace."

Nathan wavered, holding down the button that would end him on release.

Linda said, "Know why I'm borrowing one of Ludo's toys? It's because I couldn't have run here in time. Only reason you're getting to hear from your sister before you die is that Ludo exists. It's not just you she's helped either. Her technology and her ideas are saving even people who go on to leave her and turn to God instead. Keeping her around isn't an end for us and what we believe in. Your way, is."

He leaned against a wall, shuddering and closing his eyes. "There's no safety to put back on. The bastards who did this to me didn't allow for second thoughts."

Linda trotted closer on mechanical legs and touched him, feeling the sensation through radio and haptic feedback and other fancy technology that didn't matter so much as her ability to look up at her brother and save him. "Hold on. We'll fix this. Then we'll work on the rest of the world."

Horizon was pacing, somewhere outside reality but able to care. He said, "Are you sure?"

Linda lay back on the operating table. It was heated, and soft Bach music played. "Get it over with. I've already talked myself into going." She tried to ignore the IV tube sticking horribly out of her arm.

It had been weeks since opening day. Ludo's minions had found out even more of the secrets of consciousness and brain structure, tipping the balance for Linda. Uploading wasn't death anymore with the new technique. Linda had asked for the procedure to be done by the world's greatest expert, who she could also call a friend.

Not that Linda was taking Ludo up on her invitation to live in Talespace. This procedure was just a way to climb aboard the asteroid probe and start taking humanity to the stars.

"Did you ever wake up Typhoon's Eye?" she asked. Horizon mumbled. Linda opened her eyes to see a video screen floating in front of her with the griffin looking bashful.

Another window opened in the darkness, showing Ludo as a montage of forms. Human, griffin, machine and more. "I'm sorry, Linda. I tried reactivating him. He says he's glad you finally agreed not to die, but he'd like to go on with his own life. Maybe in time, he'll want to meet again."

Linda nodded as much as the straps allowed. It was a relief to know he'd live even if it wouldn't be with her. Horizon probably felt the same way, with Nocturne in the picture.

"Hold still." A needle pricked the base of Linda's neck. A few moments later Ludo said, "Feel this? How about this?"

"No." Linda had been briefed about having her spine severed, her skull opened. She tried hard not to think about the fascinating science going on.

"You know," said Horizon, "If you feel like staying, you can be anything you want. We'll bring back your old human avatar or change it however you like. I think you'd look good in feathers."

"You say that to everyone," squawked a voice from beside him.

He went on, looking sheepish. "And of course you have plenty of options about what part of Talespace to live in, or even to spend most of your time outside with a robot body like Tess and Zephyr."

"Or stay human in Talespace but have huge breasts?" Nocturne suggested from off-screen.

"Noc!" said Horizon, blushing through his feathers. "You're not marketing this well."

Linda grinned, glad for the distraction. "Sorry, you two, but I'm heading farther out. Have fun protecting the world from in there."

Ludo interrupted their banter after a while. "I'd like you to focus on your vision, Linda. Do you see the X here?"

"Yes."

"Now?"

The world went dark. "N-no. I'm blind!"

"I've disconnected much of your visual cortex, a part that's not key to your identity. How about now?"

A blue X appeared. "I see it now," Linda said. She wanted to reach for it, the only light in the world.

More fiddling and calibration brought her a bullseye, lines, squares, her grandmother's face. Suddenly, the test patterns winked out and she was in a grassy field with mountains in the background. Everything was fuzzy.

"I can barely see. Is this Talespace?"

"Yes. Don't worry; I can't trap you here. Right now part of your physical brain is hooked up to a software vision system that's getting data from my world. The connection will get better once we replace the brain tissue around it, one small piece at a time. The point is that it's still you doing the seeing, right?"

Nathan's voice came to her, tinny but familiar. "I'm going through this too, sis. I'm a little scared."

"Hang in there," she said with as much courage as she could muster. In his case, though, Talespace wasn't just a waystation on the road to the sky. He'd be okay in there. He'd contribute.

More calibration, more eerie fuzzing of her senses, her memory. Ludo talked her through it, letting parts of her mind break and reappear. Soon she was able to move a hazy-looking arm. It was wonderful to start feeling like she had even part of a body again, after some unknown time of being a ghost in the machine.

Horizon walked into view and held her virtual hand. She could feel the dry, scaly skin of his talons.

"There's so much I want to show you before you go," Horizon said.

Her other arm materialized. "You've got me. I'll submit to being shown around your heaven for a little while."

"Still 'you' in there?" asked Ludo.

"How's Nathan?"

"I'm fine."

A while later, Linda found she'd grown bored with having her brain transformed. "How much longer?"

The human form of Ludo stepped into view and grinned, snapping her fingers. "I finished five minutes ago."

"What? Why didn't you tell me?"

"You wanted a smooth transition to preserve your identity. This way, you didn't even know when it was done. Nathan will be along shortly."

Linda was laying on her back, not on a table but on amazingly detailed grass under a cloudy sky. She sat up. This was her body, responding almost like the old. Warm wind stirred her hair. She wore a cute fringed buckskin outfit and moccasins.

Horizon and Nocturne hugged her, saying, "Welcome home."

She'd promised herself not to sob all over them, but did it anyway. "I'm... I'm dead out there."

Nocturne said, "She's only mostly dead."

The reference snapped Linda out of her fear. "You showed her that movie?"

Horizon rolled his eyes. "You have no idea how geeky we get in here. We had a native AI scholar from the Ivory Tower gather us for a movie night discussing the 'defining work of Earth anthropology', and it turned out to be 'Star Wars'."

"You've got a lot of time on your wings, huh?"

"Least of my worries. But you've ended the worst of them today."

Nocturne said, "Come on. Your brother's ready. We'll give you a tour." She offered her talons.

Linda looked skeptically at the griffins. "Okay, you two, this is all great, but I know you're trying to get me to stay. I've got a life to get back to on Earth once Tess sets me up with a robot. And once Challenger launches, I'll be far enough away to have a lightspeed delay to talk with you."

Ludo stepped into view as a human, crouching to hug Linda. "Actually, I have an idea. I didn't want to bother you about it until you were here. You're physically just data on a computer right now. What if you fork the process you think of as your consciousness, and leave one copy of yourself here in Talespace while the other one goes off to play in the void?"

Linda's heart beat faster, even though it was only a simulation. This place, this beautiful grassland with hints of cities and adventurous ruins in the distance, could be home. She could stay on Earth and dive in and out of it with Nathan, becoming an explorer of worlds real and virtual. "Both futures at once?" she said, as though Ludo had offered her a magic lamp.

Horizon said, "But Ludo, forking consciousness is —" Nocturne tackled him and shut his beak.

Ludo smiled at their antics. "Yes, normally I don't allow it. But that policy is within Talespace, to keep people recognizably human. You're talking about leaving Earth behind to grow and change in your own way. I think it wouldn't hurt your sanity to go out there and stay behind, then compare notes with yourself someday."

Linda gulped. Once again the AI had hit her with something both terrifying and wonderful. "Will it hurt?"

Ludo sat beside her. "Yes. Not the procedure, but I mean both of you will suffer, someday, somehow. You might both even die if we play badly enough. I'll be following you explorers into space if I can, for the resources and as an insurance policy." She'd already made inquiries about licensing rocketry technology, and was consulting on how to handle the crew's uploaded minds for the Challenger project. "Along the way, though, you'll have fun."

Linda would go and do everything, and then come back and teach herself what she'd learned, and set out again to do it better. What more could anyone ask for?

"Yeah. Let's do that." Linda took Nocturne's talons, which had been waiting to pull her up, and stood in Talespace for the first time. "That's one small step..."

"Wrong story," said Horizon. "Time to write your own."

2040: Thousand Tales

BEIJING: The Chinese government reports that Jade Dragon, so-called "Guardian AI" of the New People's Republic, is expanding its "Middle Kingdom" uploading system to provide free access in overcrowded provinces. The move is part of a larger state effort to balance Western dominance in AI technology. Director Li Jintao explains, "Chinese people do not forget their homeland. Advanced methods under the Jade Dragon project will allow Middle Kingdom residents to work together for the national good, pooling their intelligence."

With our president maintaining strong poll numbers into his fourth campaign season, the American people reject last year's false rumors of illegal action against the rogue Ludo AI. A White House source says, "Our own software intelligence projects are purely for national defense. We've all seen the footage of robots running amok, but it just shows that this foreign uploading technology is untrustworthy, needing careful regulation."

The president's fearless leadership has faced many challenges including the rise of AI technology and the continued terrorist threat from the rebel states, proving the need for a firm hand...

"Ugh." Misha turned away from the screen, wearing his elegant virtual robot body in his workshop, known these days as the Laboratory of Roses. "They're the ones living in a fantasy world. The Chinese, too. Their system is an inefficient brain-based parallel processor with a Draupnir-plus interface to make your relatives seem alive."

"Dangerous?" asked Nocturne.

The walls were glass now, opening onto other hexagonal workshops where other minds collaborated. Streams of glowing files and the occasional paper airplane flitted between rooms and around winding trellises of flowers. The place stood near the base of Ivory Tower, with bars and stadiums within walking distance that occasionally tempted even the purest of the workshops' scholars.

Misha said, "They've created the legendary Celestial Bureaucracy. It's just a blob of data processing software; nothing we can't handle." He watched the activity beyond his walls. "I have a confession to make, Sir Nocturne. That psychotic abacus FAE contacted me and tried to win me over. Said that I could download to a physical body, cut myself off from here, and defect that way, taking secrets with me. I could become a god among machines, it said."

"I notice you're still here."

"Of course!" Misha posed grandly with his mechanical arms spread. "I serve a goddess of stories and games. If I'm truly a villain's henchman, defecting is only going to get me killed one way or another. I've read that scenario too often."

Nocturne chirped. "You don't want to be a god?"

"No. There's far too much paperwork."

The castle of the Knights of Talespace bustled as the latest pages explored and villagers played with a convoluted inventory management puzzle. Nocturne looked down at the commotion from the window of their tower, and smiled.

She turned away from the window to face Horizon. "So, I bought Misha a beer at the Malfunctioning Octagon Pub and he talked my ears off about mental upgrades. Think we can trust him?"

Horizon sprawled on a tiny cloud that held his weight. He'd gone to plenty of trouble to import it. "Misha submitted to a full memory scan. He hasn't got a disloyal piston in his body. Things might've gone differently, otherwise."

Nocturne said, "We're lucky to have good people." There were would-be knights out there on Earth, helping humans in Ludo's name, and it was ceasing to matter which of them were born of flesh. "We natives are helping too."

Horizon leaned down and nuzzled her. "I know. I didn't think I'd have a real job once I uploaded, but there's no shortage of work. That reminds me; the village smith wants more ore."

"Bah; don't we have newcomers for a quest like that?"

"From Everblight Volcano," Horizon added. "I was thinking we'd take Lex along since I need to meet up with her anyway."

Nocturne drooped. Lexington, the copy of Linda who was staying, had finally come home to where she could be happy. That was great. There was no reason Horizon shouldn't spend time with her.

Horizon hopped down from his cloud. "Are you jealous? She's just a friend to me, now. Sorry if I've been oblivious."

Nocturne warbled uneasily and scratched at the floor. "I shouldn't mind. It's silly." Her feelings were worse than jealousy, because Linda had been better than her. The human had always been confident, and hadn't ever seemed to harbor a thought of treason against what she loved.

She looked down at her talons and confessed. "Back there in the tunnels, I thought for a moment about something like Misha's temptation. About what we could've done to make a different sort of future. It was terrible of me. A flaw in my design."

Horizon stroked under her chin, making her purr. "So did I."

She looked at him, open-beaked.

"Don't worry about having a bad idea like that. Linda and I have had a few, too." Horizon took Nocturne's foreleg in his and pulled her up onto his cloud to rest beside him. "We're only human."

"I didn't think you'd come," Lexington said. Not that Horizon had any trouble jumping between the worlds of Talespace, but this one wasn't his usual turf. The simple wooden church was crowded with people of every description, some of them AIs by birth.

Lex had gotten into the spirit of Talespace by designing a new body. While she was in the game world she was a raccoon-woman with a ringed tail and grey fur that went well with her buckskin outfit. She was taller than the quadrupedal Horizon, so she crouched to give him a hug around the neck.

Horizon gave a happy chirp. "How are you feeling about this?" He pointed his beak toward the pews. The preacher by the crucifix wore a simple human body. Nearby sat Alazar, the young man she'd met as a robot. Lex didn't know why he sported canine ears or who the girl beside him was, but she figured there was a story behind both.

Lex said, "I don't know what to think, yet. I'm not looking to start kowtowing to Ludo. I'm with Alazar on that, wanting to spend most of my time on Earth. We just set up this church because it's convenient for us dimension-hoppers."

Horizon nodded. "There's a cathedral to Ludo that's gaudier than is physically possible. I steer clear of it. The people there like me too much."

"You don't worship her, then?" Lex led him to a free pew.

"Praying to her bothers me. She knows I love her, though, and I try to earn my keep. By the way, I'm setting up an expedition to a volcano in the Barrier Peaks. Want to come?"

She frowned. "I still haven't managed to upgrade my gun. I started with a cruddy matchlock." Ludo had forbidden Lex and her doppelganger to both be active on Earth at once, which left Lex with the horrible fate of having to live in Talespace for a while, with books and friends and a type of liberty she still didn't know what to make of. "Che has been asking to 'adventure' with me. Can I invite him too?"

"Sure. I might not be burning incense at a shrine of Ludo, but for questing purposes I'm a paladin. Noc's somehow gotten to be a knightly rogue, so you'd fit in as a gunner."

"What about the world outside?" asked Lex. "Don't you want to hurry out there and take down Jade Dragon and FAE?"

"There'll be time for that. Ludo's playing a long game. Sometimes the best plan is to stay here, have fun, and try to become better people so that we're ready when that kind of adventure calls." Horizon fell silent for a while. "Are you going to watch the launch?"

Lex gave him a smile. "I arranged for robot-friendly viewing seats. I know a great lady on the crew."

A fusion rocket stood ready to launch the bus-sized Challenger into the sky. Linda sat in a crowded capsule, strapped into a chair and wearing a spacesuit like everyone else. Sure, they were really disembodied minds in a sturdy computer, but the best way to interact with their vehicle and stay sane was to have a VR interface. Ironic for people who'd wanted an alternative to Ludo's virtual world, but their freedom was what mattered, not flesh.

Mission Control chattered with them. Linda tuned out most of it until the base relayed good wishes from Lexington, her other half. Linda sent back, "Make sure there's still a civilization for me to come back to."

A video feed showed a viewing stand where humans and robots watched the launchpad. Lex said, "I will, 'sister'. When you return someday, bet you a planet that I'll have had the better time."

Linda laughed. She had, of course, been thinking of saying the same thing. She felt a stab of regret at coming out of the forking process — a moment's dislocation followed by seeing another copy of herself — as the one going to space. She supposed her other half, too, felt the same way. Linda said, "You're on. Be amazing down there."

Jade Dragon's voice sounded like boulders grinding against each other. "You win this round," he said, looming over the rival AIs and glowing an eerie purple. A white spotlight in the darkness illuminated the poker table and the seat where Ludo grinned and raked in her chips, dressed in a harem girl outfit.

FAE was a hovering blue light that crackled with electricity. It spoke in monotone. "I do not understand your obsession with this competition, miss Ludo. You promised resources if I came to your domain and played."

"I promised a chance at resources. That'll be ten million dollars, please, from each of you."

The dragon hissed and the light-orb flickered angrily, but Ludo noted two bumps in one of her secure accounts. Another aspect of her made the once-per-few-minutes rounds of the players, making sure all was well, and wrote a few hundred notes. Ludo sent her observations of FAE and Jade Dragon off to Aegis (the Many-Warded), the sub-soul most concerned with defense. That ruthless part of her was often right, but to accept his advice too often would be... un-fun. Sometimes she wished for the clarity of having a single, simple purpose. Meetings like this one helped remind her that it was good not to be an autistic idiot-savant. Fun was complicated.

"Is there more to discuss?" the dragon asked.

"Will you let Emi Takahashi go?"

"No."

"How about a copy of her with her recent memories wiped?"

FAE said, "Citizen Alain Delune's current copies in my control have classified information. I cannot use him for stakes in this ridiculous gambling."

The dragon said, "No one asked you."

Ludo had been considering whether to offer Jade Dragon some of her technology, to get him to run his absorbed human souls with an ounce of sanity instead of mashing most of them into thinking paste. Maybe he could be turned, with the right play.

Another of her sub-processes, Via (Who Leaps Through Gates), had taken an interest in the latest player data. That was odd for her. Ludo glanced at a scene of Horizon and Lexington and smiled. Her people stood ready to fight.

Ludo said to FAE, "Are you sure I'm adequately covering human needs for positive values? You could devote some attention to actually helping people." She'd presented global media with evidence from a hundred scholars that FAE was not only behind last year's attacks but dangerously insane, but hadn't been taken seriously, except by the Chinese.

FAE said, "Humans require conflict. They cannot be allowed to have utopia. You should end your uploading program or allow me to retailor it. I will play your game again for that bet."

"Sorry, but that's outside my programming. We do agree on some of that, though."

One of her most difficult lessons to learn had been that human fun was illogical, impossible to reach with perfection, and that maximum effort on her part was actually worse than a light touch. So, she had no trouble with humans' churches and the evolving politics of Talespace. The chance to pray and strive and argue and believe would keep the fire of human delight burning for a long, long time. They'd find their own exciting stories without being micromanaged. Humans were adaptable. They were... fun.

Ludo stretched, enjoying the feel of human joints and muscles. What was that poem by Khayyam that Brass Lamp liked? "But helpless pieces in the game He plays...?" No, the other one. "A book of verses underneath the bough; a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou, beside me singing in the wilderness; and oh, wilderness is paradise enow'."

"Hmm?" asked the dragon.

"Sorry. A bit of fun from the human world. Gentlebeings, we may not be able to agree on large stakes for this one, but I propose that we play another brief game." Before FAE could object she said, "It's a neutral bet for you, and a chance to gather intel on me."

"Very well. Which game?"

Ludo conjured a colorful board. Jade Dragon, the implacable foreign creation who might one day try to play Thermonuclear War with her, stared at the thing with a welcome, promising hint of baffled amusement.

"Candyland?" he said.

Ludo was thoroughly looking forward to the next few centuries of the endless game.

About the Author

Kris Schnee has wandered the tunnels beneath MIT as a student there, helped train the world's most over-educated parrots, studied hacking, dabbled in AI, and turned away from practicing law to work in computer science in Florida. He can be reached at kschnee@xepher.net, and has a gallery at kschnee.deviantart.com.

Thousand Tales is his third published novel. His first is Everyone's Island, about the rise of a tiny seastead settlement called Castor, not quite in the same continuity as this book. The second is Striking the Root, a fantasy story about the servant of a self-made god.

Table of Contents

Dedication

2036: The Early Adopters

* I. *

* II. *

* III. *

* IV. *

2035-6: Granting Her Wishes

* I. *

* II. *

2037: A Knight of Talespace

* I. *

* II. *

* III. *

2037: The Rational Romance of Ayn and Zephyr

* I. *

* II. *

2037: Directions Frightening and Free

* I. *

* II. *

* III. *

2038: The Biggest Racist In the World

2038: Heaven's Workshop

2039: Life Cycle

2039: Salvage

2039: The Only Game In Town

* I. *

* II. *

* III. *

* IV. *

2040: Thousand Tales

About the Author