Bob laughed, a thundering wave of rueful humor rolling over Tanis. <Well, for starters, I have the capability to think a lot and, not only that, I had a lot of time to do it. However, my realization began with photons.>
<Good place to start,> Angela commented.
<After you began to merge—though before we revealed it to you—Earnest had to make several upgrades to your neurological modifications to deal with how you and Angela kept bleeding through them and into one another. A particularly tricky issue was your vision. As you know, because of the military nature of your upgrades, Angela has always had full access to your vision. She sees through your eyes when she wishes to—which is frequently, I might add—and as a result, your optic nerve feeds directly to both of your brains.
<I say ‘nerve’ though your entire optic system is more inorganic than organic. Regardless, it does have an organic housing. As you well know, this is a neurological data interface that is usually heavily buffered. Should an AI choose to backdoor into a human’s mind through their optic nerve, they could directly control much of the other person’s mind, and so these buffers protect the human.
<Again, your mind was altered by the military on many occasions, as were your sensory systems and their inputs. I speak of both of you, of course. One of these alterations was to reduce the buffering on the optic data transmission to improve ocular data speed and bandwidth, in order to handle your increased sensory range. Earnest and I are both reasonably certain that this is where your merging began. It was also one of the things we struggled to rectify for some time.>
<OK,> Tanis said privately to Angela. <Is our optic linkage that unusual? I never thought it was.>
<I didn’t, either. It was a standard set of mods for MICI agents.>
<The reason why it was so difficult,> Bob continued after they finished speaking—a clear indication that he could tell when they were doing it. <Is because you see the world differently, Tanis, you just don’t realize it. Not only do you see a broader range of the EM spectrum, but you can focus on more of it at once. Don’t forget, you were one of few artificially upgraded L2 humans to be paired with an AI. There are no ‘standard mods’ for you.
<As Earnest and I worked, it became apparent that all of the systems we came up with to reduce optic-nerve bleed-through would have required us to reduce that EM sensitivity. Moreover, we would have needed to alter your brain to reduce focus, but that was a core aspect of your neurological L2 enhancements.
<So Earnest and I worked to devise a way to slow the bleed-through, limiting the direct access into one another’s minds that it was fostering. The problem was that no matter what we tried, it never seemed to work properly.>
<Because of photons?> Angela asked.
<Yes,> Bob replied, his voice thundering with conviction. <You know, of course, that even individual photons refract. And refraction is a key part of vision itself. The words are crude, but you both understand that photons exist in multiple places at once because of this. Highly accurate EM sensors need to account for these events when triangulating light sources and filtering different EM wavelengths apart to create a clearer, more coherent image.>
Tanis nodded. “Right, EM sensors such as my eyes.”
<Yes. But what Earnest and I came to realize is that your eyes were faulty, yet not faulty. They passed every test we threw at them, but still managed to have a performance profile that didn’t match their specifications. This caused them to constantly thwart the systems we were putting in place to limit mental bleed-through.
<After extensive study, Earnest discovered that the probability curve for what photons would do when interacting with your eyes didn’t match any model we could devise. Until I altered the model to add a ‘beneficial’ algorithmic matrix.>
“This is where we move into magic, isn’t it?” Tanis asked, a touch of sarcasm in her voice.
<Tanis, you have torn atoms apart and seen through both minds and worlds. You have done this through scientifically explainable—and repeatable—methods. You should be the last one to call something out as ‘magic’.>
“I suppose,” Tanis allowed. “I guess I have a mental block on this issue. Please, you were about to tell us what a beneficial algorithmic matrix is.”
<Well, it’s possibly one of the most complex things I’ve ever devised—and it’s far from perfect, but it was enough for us to gain the efficiency we needed to retain your advanced optical systems, as well as slow your merging.
<As you know, even in something that appears to be known and consistent, such as the refractive properties of a given material, the actual result is inconsistent due to everything from imperfections, to temperature, to random subatomic particles passing by. The algorithmic matrix I developed has to do with correctly predicting the reflection and refraction properties of your eyes. You know that some light that enters your eyes reflects, and some refracts. This happens at multiple points within your optic system, similar to how it occurs in an organic eye.
<In your eyes, the math doesn’t always work. The measurable results of reflection and refraction appear to defy probability just a hair, and come out more favorably for you than it would for anyone else. If you would benefit from more photons entering your eyes, then that happened. If there was a bright light and fewer photons entering would be preferred, that occurred. Not by any large means, not enough that it tripped up any of your prior mods, but it was there, just enough to throw off what Earnest and I were trying to do.>
“You’re serious…” Tanis said, running a hand over her head and pulling off the band holding her hair back. “My eyes bend what’s probable to be in my favor.”
<Yes, but not just your eyes. Every part of you does this. The effect is cumulative. It is your ‘luck’.>
“And you figured all this out while we were drifting between Estrella de la Muerte and Kapteyn’s Star, didn’t you?” Tanis asked.
<Yes, and no,> Bob replied. <As I said, the stated reasons for having you out of stasis were also true. You’ll recall that I confided my belief in your luck early on to you. That was also part of the experiment. To see if your knowledge of the effect would change it.>
“Did it?” Tanis asked.
<Yes. It made it stronger.>
“But I never believed it,” Tanis retorted. “Wouldn’t my disbelief make it weaker?”
<I believed it,> Angela whispered. <So much of what we went through—even back then—was so amazing that ‘luck’ made sense. I latched onto it as the reason we’d survived. Doing so allowed me to compartmentalize the incredulous.>
Tanis shook out her hair, freshly released from its ponytail, as she glared up at Bob’s primary node. “OK, so if you can quantify this ‘luck’, where does it come from? It long predates mine and Angela’s road to ascension—which was not what I expected to have happen when our minds merged, by the way.”
<At first, I thought it was extradimensional,> Bob told them. <The ascended AI that left Sol at the end of the Second Solar War didn’t leave many records, but the general nature of their ascension was known—that they had broadened their existence into more dimensions. However, over time, I too began to perceive those other dimensions. Not consistently, but I was developing systems to do so with better clarity. I began to form a new hypothesis.
<It was so incredible that I doubted it for some time, but in the end, it was the only answer left: the influence that increases the likelihood of events occurring in your favor was not extra-dimensional, it was extra-universal.>
“Seriously? You mean some other universe in the multiverse is influencing me?”
Tanis felt a sense of wonder sweep over her—along with the memories of a bar she had found herself in not long ago. A bar she was not supposed to recall, but which she and Angela remembered all too well.
A bar in a different universe.
<How would one exert extra-
universal influence?> Angela added her own question to the mix. <Are you saying that a conscious force from another iteration of the universe is reaching into ours and altering it around us?>
<Perhaps,> Bob replied quietly. <Maybe as we hone our new senses, we’ll be able to see the influence somehow. For now it is just a hypothesis. Whether or not it is really occurring, and whether or not it is a conscious being, or some unlikely confluence of variables, is impossible to discern. For all we know, this happens all the time, but no one is able to see it.>
Tanis lowered her head, closing her eyes as she let everything Bob had said sink in. She could feel Angela doing the same, the pair sharing in a strange feeling of comfort.
“Why am I not upset about all this anymore?” Tanis asked quietly. “I mean…I still think I resent you keeping things from me, Bob, but that’s a shallow thing. I’ve always known you keep secrets—stars, you’ve flat-out told me from time to time. But don’t you think that in this case we should have known?”
<Tanis, Angela….> Bob’s voice carried a tone Tanis had never heard in it before. The only descriptor she could think of was ‘anguish’. <You have no idea how difficult every conversation is with you. For smaller minds like yours—yes, even ones with one foot through the door of ascension—a thought process can consume you. A reaction to one event can color all thoughts. Not so with me. I can simultaneously be upset about a thousand things, and happy about a million more. I am constantly experiencing the full breadth of my version of emotional reaction. But when I speak with you, it consumes more of my mind than any other thing I do. Managing this ship’s engines during a close approach to a star is simpler than saying hello to the two of you.>
<I don’t know if we should be flattered or offended,> Angela replied.
<Perhaps both,> Bob’s words hung in the space between them. <I constantly worry that I am influencing you in a way that will have unpredictable results. In my experience, your actions are most beneficial to yourself and those around you when I guide you as little as possible.
<That’s difficult for me, because the two of you are some of my favorite people to talk with. You understand me in a way that not even my avatars do.>
“That’s weighty praise, Bob,” Tanis replied. “Tell me, now that I’m an engineered product of greater minds, how are we supposed to feel about that?”
Bob laughed again, and Tanis basked in it, realizing for the first time that Bob’s thoughts no longer overwhelmed her at times like this. Instead, they exhilarated her.
<Well, Tanis. Most people you know are either formed by chance encounters and DNA combinations, or modified by their parents before birth. Your origins are not so different in that respect. You’ve just been molded by more powerful beings than most. Your description of ‘the product of greater minds’ applies to many humans and AIs. At one point, it was an apt description for me. You’re not quite as special as you might think.>
<I feel like a passenger caught up in the winds of fate, here,> Angela said quietly. <Not that it’ll matter for much longer. Tangel doesn’t fret about such things.>
<Doubtful,> Bob interjected. <If what Katrina related from Xavia is true, you were chosen with great care, Angela. You and Tanis are both important components in what you’re becoming. I am certain that the ‘luck’ factor is greatly enhanced by your presence.>
“OK, Bob,” Tanis straightened and stared up at his node once more. “So luck and merging brains aside, why are we ascending? Human and AI minds have merged before and just became one mind—if they survived. Why is Tangel an extra-dimensional being with ridiculous powers?”
<If you allowed yourself to embrace it, you’d know the answer,> Bob replied. <But the answer is simple. I did it to you—I know enough of the future to understand that humanity only survives if you ascend.>
“You ‘did it to’ us?” Tanis exclaimed along, while Angela asked, <How exactly did you manufacture our ascension?>
<I had been working at it for some time. It is through the picotech Earnest and I have been using to modify you that we grew the new brain you now possess. The one I can see you using, even though you try to cling to your separate minds.>
<I knew it!> Angela shouted in triumph. <You have been using picotech on us.>
<It was necessary to compensate for your ‘luck’ where it affected quantum particles. Earnest and I have been modifying you with picotech since we arrived at Kapteyn’s Star.>
“Huh,” Tanis grunted. “So that’s by your design too, then.”
<Somewhat,> Bob replied. <I guided something that I think would have happened anyway. It just would have taken longer. Once Sabrina came back, and Iris delivered the data from the ascension program at Star City, I was able to put the final puzzle pieces into place. I just needed the catalyst.>
“Pyra,” Tanis whispered.
<I suspected it could happen there,> Bob sent a feeling of remorse into Tanis’s mind. <But had I known the details of what would happen, I would not have willed it. Too many lost their lives for this one victory.>
“And yet, you said humanity would not survive unless I ascended,” Tanis replied. “On the scale you measure things at, it would be a worthwhile trade.”
The words were bitter in Tanis’s mouth, and she hated the thought of them. That her elevation should cost the lives of billions made it utterly distasteful to her.
<How does one measure such things?> Bob’s voice once again contained ample sorrow. <Pivotal people were lost. Some you’d never expect, others that are obvious, such as General Mill and Commandant Brandt. But then again, without these events, it may be that Rika would never have come into our sphere of influence. Perhaps that all occurred because of your luck.>
“Never have I needed such a firm reminder as to why I hate the idea of having this luck,” Tanis said with a grimace. “Still, you’re right. Rika is a very interesting person, I likely owe her my life.”
<Perhaps,> Bob’s voice sounded pensive. <Either way, she has a part to play in all this. I assume you see that.>
“I do,” Tanis and Angela said together.
<Do you see the other thing?> Bob asked.
A sigh escaped Tanis’s lips, and she closed her eyes, still seeing the room around her, but with different organs, mechanisms for sight that did not exist in the three dimensions she was so familiar with.
“I do, Bob,” Tangel replied. “I understand now. I never ‘de-ascended’. What Priscilla did only stabilized my physical form so Rika could carry me. I’ve been…taking comfort in a fallacy that I am still two people.”
<As have those around you,> Bob added. <No one knows how to deal with an ascended being. Why do you think I maintain the fiction that I am not one as well?>
Tanis looked at the light she’d seen emanating from Bob’s primary node—really looked at it. She could see his existence stretching beyond even what she could perceive. As always, he was aeons ahead of her.
She looked at the air molecules around her, gathering them into a thick column and floating before Bob’s node. She set her jaw and stepped into the pillar, allowing it to envelop her legs and support her as she rose into the air, hovering before the glowing node.
“So, why is it that I’m instrumental in saving humanity?” Tangel, the ascended being, asked. “And don’t think I didn’t notice that AIs were not listed as being in species-level peril.”
Bob’s response came in the form of a question.
<How upset would you be if I refused to tell you?>
COMING CLEAN
STELLAR DATE: 08.29.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Ol’ Sam, ISS I2
REGION: Pyra, Albany System, Thebes, Septhian Alliance
Tangel folded her hands together as she sat at the kitchen table, waiting for Joe and the girls to arrive.
Why am I so nervous, she wondered, answering herself with, You know why. This is the point of no return.
She saw that Joe was on the path leading to the house, waiting for Cary and Saanvi, who w
ere a minute behind, having taken a different maglev to the cylinder.
He looked nervous—she could see the creases around his eyes on the ship’s optical cameras. They were just a hair tighter than normal. Not enough that a human would notice, but she did.
Unclasping her hands, she looked at them, turning them over and counting the small folds in her skin, and the folds within those folds. When she began to count the bacteria living in the cuticles on her fingers, and compare their molecular counts, she tore her gaze away.
This is ridiculous.
Over the following eighty-seven seconds it took for the front door to open, Tangel cleared her mind, thinking of nothing at all, just being. It may have been the hardest thing she’d ever done.
“Tanis?” Joe’s voice called out, as the sounds of footfalls came to her.
“In the kitchen,” Tangel called out, opening her eyes once more and smiling as her family filed into the room. She rose and exchanged embraces with each of them—even Faleena, to whom she sent a feeling of acceptance and love.
Without needing instruction, everyone sat, Joe at her side, and the girls across the table.
Tangel had considered a thousand ways to start this conversation, played each one out a dozen levels of probabilities deep. In the end, she’d been lost in options with miniscule differences when it came to how the revelation would play out.
She knew there was no other option but to ease them into the knowledge of what had happened.
“I need to tell you the full story of what happened on Pyra,” she began, meeting the eyes of each person around the table. “How it all came to be.”
Joe nodded, an encouraging half-smile on his lips. “We’ve been dying to hear it. Take your time.”
Tangel drew in a deep breath and nodded before launching into her tale.
“They’d worn us down one-by-one, the Nietzscheans. Looking back, it’s hard to believe we survived as long as we did. In the end, it was just myself, Brandt, and Ayer—the Marauder captain. We lost Ayer that final night, and Brandt—” Tanis paused, trying to find the right words. “She was a Marine’s Marine until the end. She sacrificed herself to save me.”