12 Miles Below

“Tell me you’re joking.” Aztu said, looking shocked.

“Swear to the gods I’m not.” I said, hand on my chest.

Telling her about my misadventures with Drakonis, the Odin and Garyroamers down here hadn’t been the shocking part. Apparently from what she’d told me, intelligent species were somewhat common underground. But most were primitive, or so fundamentally different they lived in a separate world from us. Odin and the rest of the intelligent species in this particular section of the stratas were more of an anomaly. Likely the most high tech species she’d encountered yet.

And the reason behind that anomaly was what actually shocked the protofeather here. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Aztu said, “It’s more that you’re describing a golden age AI. Even humans were afraid of their own AI’s and kept a tight leash all the way past the apocalypse.” She tapped her elbow, as if agitated. “Hmm, not quite the best way to bring the lesson home, put it this way: Tsyua merged and took command of one for seven seconds before the AI core was physically destroyed and in that time she ripped damage into Relinquished so permanent, that’s still in effect today.”

She paced around, before lifting a hand and summoning what looked to be a glowing outline of a box. All so she could sit down on top of it and continue to ponder. “It’s just… wow. A golden age AI like that is still alive to this day. Hiding away from all of us. So much we could learn from her.” Her head stayed looking down for a moment before looking backup, mouth making a small frown. “But if such a powerful relic exists, why hasn’t the Icon done anything about the world at large?”

I gave an awkward cough, as the airlock door behind us flashed green and opened up. “I think you might be overthinking some things. Greatly overthinking. How to explain… She gave us customer support when Drakonis and I talked to her.”

“Eh? Customer support? You were trying to buy something off the golden age relic the first time you talked to her?”

She hopped off the box, and walked into the airlock, waving me to follow behind.

“She’s in charge of some kind of luxury spaceship cruise-thing.” I said as I ducked under the digital opening and passed through to the comms section of this terminal. “Rich people would book a passage to go visit the moon and she’d ferry them over.”

Aztu frowned as she walked through the catwalk and hallways of the not-airspeeder. “She’s a customer support representative of some commercial thing from the past?”

“Unfortunately.”

We both came to a stop as the catwalk led out to a more open section of the terminal. Here, it wasn’t airspeeder anymore, more like an opened doorway to a nestled platform where the digital sea was wide open before us and a small mountain of sediment covered our view from the other side. And at the other end of the platform was something really weird. Leaning against the side of the sediment wall, was a massive skeletal body. Skull leaning backwards, mouth wide open as the empty eye sockets looked far above without any true target.

All across the platform I could see shimmering data streaming to and from the ruins of a dead giant, all collecting up into it's skull mouth. “Huge departure from the airspeeder motif.” I muttered looking over the giant.

“This terminal used to have a generic AI in charge of tasks. Looks like the processing computers it ran on died a while back leaving just the body behind.” Aztu walked over to the dead giant, standing about as tall as the skull itself. “The data lines here all patch through where the AI would have filtered them for content. Looks like your Icon did some work here. It's artificially connected."

Aztu stared up into the ceiling of the terminal next, following where the lines of data were streaming to and from. "I don’t know if this AI died from natural causes, or if your Icon here is a bit more predatory than you think."

I thought back on the Icon and her speech patterns. And the three hundred watt forced smile, along with recommendations to hide from machines ten minutes before we even knew they were here. “I can’t really see that personally. She seemed very skittish and cautious to me.”

"Well, it's been dead for too long, all traces I could use to sniff out the truth are long gone. I’ll still be on watch for anything suspicious. Given the size of the body here, the AI wasn't an insignificant entity.”

"Does that mean you're also not as powerful as you seem?" I asked, since Aztu was about my height.

She laughed, "For most programs out in the digital sea, size is king. Even the more intelligent programs out there can't help but puff themselves up as wide as they physically can get. Who you should actually fear the most out here, are programs that appear far smaller, while you know they should be far bigger. That means they can both modify their size, and have the wits to make that choice. Relinquished for example."

She had been a massive giant. Her hand wide enough to grab the entire terminal I was hiding in, and yanking it wholesale out. Just her eye was three times my size. But once we had reached her domain, she'd turned into merely a giant woman.

How powerful was Relinquished then?

I walked up next to Aztu, “And talking about her and golden age AI, how intelligent is Relinquished herself? Last I met with her was frankly terrifying and it felt like she’d had everything figured out.”

The protofeather gave a low chuckle. “She's clever. But her intelligence depends on if she’s aware of a blindpoint or not, and if she’s following her own plans or someone else’s. Part of the reason I came here. Cough up the data?”

I felt a probe of data come my way, a request for a memory of mine. It looked exactly like one of the data lines streaming from the skull’s mouth, only more directed and isolated to certain timestamps. It was rather easy to intuit and packaged well, so I shook hands with the program and felt a copy of my memories detach and float back to Aztu.

“Ah.” The protofeather said, nodding. “We’re in trouble.”

I felt a chill go down my spine at that. “I was really hoping you’d tell me she’s just dramatic and made everything look more ominous than it really is.” ＲÁŊȱʙËṣ

“Relinquished is smarter than the average human, and faster in thinking. She’s not dramatic just for the sake of it, she’s forced to be that way. If she wasn’t, we probably wouldn’t be talking right now at all. She lost because she had too many curses weighing her down, either imposed by Tsuya or by her original creators. Shackled up, and blind to a lot of things, with all the computing power in the world unified under her soul.”

She waved a finger at the platform, and a few shapes appeared. A box of some kind along with a woman in the center, blindfolded. The statue walked around the room, searching for tiny rodents to stomp down with her heel. “To her, fighting humanity is like fighting small rats in pitch darkness. She can crush them easily, even predict where some would jump to if she becomes aware of them by either feeling them out or hearing them squeak, but she knows she’s missing sight to really find all of them.”

Another smaller statue appeared, this time on the woman’s shoulders. It reached through and whispered in her ears. The statue of the woman turned and smashed a fist into a rat slowly crawling further away from her side. “She can’t fully see herself, but she can get someone else to do that for her. That’s what I mean by it depends on if she’s the one plotting or if it’s someone else.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I thought she was too paranoid to trust anyone else?”

“She should have been.” Aztu said, clapping her hands and having the small manifestation vanish, all save for the tiny figure whispering in the woman’s ears. That statue floated in the air, unmoving. “My youngest brother was unfortunately very gifted at strategy. And being able to successfully weasel around Mother’s blind spots was something that required strategy. I’m assuming she's fried the minds of anyone who was less clever than A57 when it came to circumventing Mother’s blind spots.”

“Abdication.” I said, realizing who the little statue was in the picture. “The one who’d been killed off a while ago from what Wrath’s archive dive brought out.”

“Funny name he picked, very brooding.” Aztu said, grabbing the tiny whispering statue and examining it closer. “Guess no matter how intelligent one gets, we’re still Feathers deep down and can’t help ourselves.” She patted her chest next, letting the statue float away and dissolve back into sediment. “Technically speaking, I should have popped over to you in the guise of something else. But, well, got too excited. Bad habit. Keep it a secret from everyone else, if you would.”

“I’m not going to slip that kind of info to Relinquished.” I said, voice firm. She could torture me, and she had before, but I’d lie, obfuscate, gaslight and mislead without a shred of shame if I got caught again.

“I know you won’t.” Aztu said. “And likely if Relinquished catches you again, chances are good you won’t survive long enough for any kind of interrogation to happen. I don't think she needs you anymore in whatever plot she has.”

Well, that was morbid. “You think she’s following a pre-made plan of some kind?”

“Without a doubt. She does need to foreshadow how she will win, that’s part of her operant conditioning. That she’s started to do that now means whatever she’s got cooked up is coming soon.”

The digital sea above me looked far more dangerous than before. Out there was Relinquished, in this very same domain. “What do you think she is cooking up?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be this spooked.” Aztu said, giving a shrug. “The real problem is that I can’t tell if she’s trying to find a way to unshackle herself, following one of A57’s old plans, or just completely involved now in the drama between you and To’Wrathh, simply because of her nature. All I know is that you should keep yourself prepared for all three possibilities.” She turned to me and put a hand on my shoulders. “And if you could, I need you to really sell your performance next you see To’Wrathh, because it’s very likely Relinquished would immediately tune in to watch. So prepare yourself to act surprised and ready to fight little To’Wrathh, and improvise whatever happens next.”

“She did stab me through the gut once. Not sure you know that.” I said. "I do have some gripes to deal with."

Aztu laughed, “And somehow you’re still alive right now. I take it she made it up to you?”

A pulse came out of the protofeather and metal plates of all kinds started to manifest around her. Shapes of triangles mostly, along with a few squares, all inscribed with different fractals. They started to flow around her, as she rose to float in the air higher.

“What are you doing?” I asked,

“I’ve got the Icon’s coordinates from all the data streams here while we were talking. I’m setting myself up ahead of time.”

That got me feeling a little worried for the Icon. I was about to drag a protofeather into her home, and while I was reasonably certain Aztu here wasn’t an enemy, I also didn’t know how she’d react to a golden age AI like the Icon. “What’s with all the plates?”

“Well, can’t quite walk around looking like a Feather in front of any program and I can’t change my features directly.” The plates whirled around her now, before settling around hovering over her figure. She looked more and more like some kind of metal golem, shadow and darkness leaking through the plates. Soon a few more floated around her head, enshrouding her in darkness. Only the glowing blue eyes of hers could be seen through the entire amalgamation, in the form of a large nearly flat triangular hat covering her top.

“Unlike you humans, programs can and do get hacked.” She said, voice deepening slightly. “Golden age or not, if Relinquished beat her down and rip out her history logs, I aim to appear as just another third party AI from the digital sea. Randomly assembled sentience that came about over time. Hundreds of thousands of them out there, without factions. Call me a digital nomad.”

“Nomad sounds fine to me. Uh, just try not to hurt her?”

Aztu laughed, “I’m only dangerous to things that attack me. And I do give programs a few chances in case they make a mistake.”

“Okay. Good. Just making sure. Anything else I should know?”

“Oh we’re not yet leaving. You’re going to be the one to navigate for us. It’s a good time as any to start teaching you the ways of the digital sea.” Aztu said giving a dark chuckle, pointing over at the open ocean above. Or rather, having a few dozen plates all float in what looked to be a hand. “Traveling is dangerous. There’s a good amount of predators out there that consume each other and then subsume segments they find useful.” She looked down and then to the walls around us, the two glowing orbs of blue affixed to the sea beyond. “And of course, building and architecture can also be taken, not just programs. Reach above yourself with a hand and tell me what you feel.”

I gave it a shot, raising my hand up into the air and trying to feel for something. Only floating sediment slipped through my armored hands.

“Not physically moron,” Aztu laughed, “Use your mind. Feel your surroundings. The occult is will manifested, or rather better to say the occult is susceptible to will and thought. Use that. Humans are naturally better at it than artificial souls are.”

With a quick shrug, I let my arm back down and tried again, this time trying to reach out with my soulsight. Tapping into the same kind of occult sense I’d grown used to. My will filled the small platform, then extended out.

Until I hit a wall. Quite literally. I frowned, probing at it a bit more. Like smooth marble, except transparent. And all above us. Like a transparent ceiling?

“You found it. That’s what’s keeping this terminal hidden from the outside so that we can stand out in the open like this without issue.” Aztu said, nodding. “From above this entire place looks like sediment and mite made chaos. Take a snapshot of it, could come in handy later.”

“Snapshot?”

“It’s all data in different arrangements.” She lifted a hand out, plates following behind and masking the actual hand and fingers. The floor extended upwards, forming into a small throne. Then it warped into a barricade. Before finally turning into a statue of herself. “Manipulating environments is a bit more involved, so we’ll start with copying parts of it and manifesting it into the world directly. Go back to that upper ceiling, study it until you know how it looks inside your mind’s eye.”

I focused on the ceiling's structure, letting my mind trace over its contours. At first, nothing happened except feeling like I wasn’t doing the right steps. I swapped tactics a few times until I hit something that felt right. I don’t think I really understood it fundamentally, more like trying to memorize a math equation by quickly flashing light on it and calling to mind the little snapshot of fading memory, but I could tell it was working with each attempt to understand what was above me. The patterns became clearer, more defined, until I could practically feel the code and sediment required to make something like this.

“It’s fragile. " Aztu said, nodding at my progress. "You’ll notice every fiber of its construction is built to deceive and hide. This would make for a very poor wall. It also can’t move, and needs to be setup first. But it’s permanent, which means once it’s set up, it’s there regardless of if you’re around or not. Not all buildings and structures are like that. Congratulations on passing your first lesson: Steal everything. And I mean everything. There’s no such thing as bolts in the digital sea, it’s all fair game.”

Some part deep down inside me felt like I’d seen the world for the first time in a beautiful new light.

Aztu didn’t seem to realize, continuing with her lecture. “You generate things by taking the floating sediment and weaving it into the pattern you picked up. Go ahead and try to recreate the glass screen above us at a smaller scale.”

I started doing two things in rapid succession. First, I materialize the glass plane I’d learned from the terminal, seeing it appear in front of me backwards. It looked like a mound of sediment covering geometric cubes. But I knew on the other side, I’d be able to see clear through it.

The second thing I tried doing was stealing Aztu’s floating plates, copying what I could of them. Until something utterly beyond me in scale and power clamped down on my willpower and dragged me upwards by my collar.

“You’re exactly as bold as I’d have thought you’d be.” Aztu laughed, “But, unfortunately, if you want to learn some of my secrets of combat, you have a lot more left to learn.”

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