“So, shall we resummon all of the refreshments again?” I asked as I grumpily glanced at the spot where a table of pies had sat.

“There is no need. While you and Invicta were off having fun I was inside the ship decorating and setting up more tasty treats for us all.” Tutor said with amusement before she stepped forward and licked her thumb.

I stared at her dumbfounded as she reached up and wiped some pink frosting off of my cheek. It was right about that moment when I squinted, wrinkling up my face, and found that it had been exposed to those pies and cakes while I was hurling through the air. I think I felt a layer of frosting crinkle on my forehead.

“Hey! I was saving that for later!” Invicta cried as I felt her hand grab my earlobe before she leaned in close to start licking my neck. I was determined to not make a sound, very determined.

I closed my eyes and sighed before willing a mirror in front of me. When I opened my eyes I saw that I had colorful frosting splattered all over my body, a lemon slice on my right shoulder, and a look of despair in my eyes. A crazy-haired Invicta was resting on my left shoulder and enjoying the remnants of some green frosting that had found its home there. “Yum, mint!” She said between smacking sounds.

“Ha! Don’t look at your butt Kevin. It looks like you landed in the tray of brownies.” Silver laughed uproariously when he happened to glance at the state of my backside.

“Brownies? What do they taste like?” Invicta asked as I quickly grabbed her so she couldn’t fly off and check. And yes they really were brownies… not other things.

With utmost calm, I mentally reset and cleaned my body while still listening to Silver chuckling. George was trying not to cry and Tutor just stood there smiling at me.

“Aww.” Was all that Invicta said as she licked the frosting off of her fingers. Her hair still looked like she had been struck by lightning so I gently tried to smooth it down for her.

“Hmm…” was all that she said as she narrowed her eyes up at mine. She was trying to decide if what I was doing to her was a good thing or a bad thing. I was so thankful at that moment that she couldn’t read my mind or she might have tried to tazer me. Internally I was imagining her as one of those vintage Troll dolls that I used to have when I was a kid. I quickly let her go with a “There you go, all better now.” before stepping forward to address the other AI. I didn’t like the slit gaze that I was getting from her at that moment.

“So, what is next?” I asked them.

George and Tutor glanced at each other before shrugging and motioning to Silver. “It looks like this is your part of the show. The interior we thought would be saved for last.” Tutor said as she reformed the chairs that had been lost in the blast.

“Excellent!” Silver said with a strange tone in his voice. I blinked in surprise. Silver was getting into character. In an instant, his lounging clothes changed to a dark gray tailored suit. It was an oddly colored three-piece suit with blood-red stripes and a tie that had patterns of alien faces down the visible portion.

“Ah, a show master,” George commented as he picked out one of the recliners and began to get comfortable. Tutor smiled at me before sticking her thumb in her mouth and skipping off to grab her own chair.

I felt a soft bump on the top of my head as I stepped forward and knew instinctively that Invicta had plopped herself down up there. It wasn’t so bad except for the fact that she pulled my hair to stay in place when I walked. It kind of felt like I had bad hair clips holding a clown wig in place.

“Come here you,” I said as I reached up and carefully brought her down. I felt her start to make my hand tingle until she realized that I was being gentle and then she just relaxed and let me carry her. I got to my chair and sat down, getting comfortable and extending the footrest. I summoned a little bean bag and placed it in the crook of my arm for Invicta to settle back on. She glanced at it before snubbing it, instead choosing to sit on my stomach and to lay back on my chest. “It is a lot softer here.” She said with a smile.

“Hey, I am not fat, I have muscles,” I said in offense before I saw that she was messing with me. Her little tongue was sticking out at me.

I looked up from her to see the rest of the AI watching us. Silver was clearly impatiently waiting for us to get settled.

“You know what? No, I think I would rather sit with Tutor for this show.” I said, deciding to totally throw Invicta’s little “I own Kevin” monopoly off.

A delicate hand quickly appeared seemingly out of nowhere and picked Invicta up before she could fully realize what I had said or what was happening. Tutor deposited her securely in the chair that she had just vacated before sliding over the side of my recliner and down onto the seat with me. The space was a little bit cramped, what with Tutor half on my lap. I could feel myself blushing as I considered widening and making the chair larger for the two of us.

“No, this is fine.” Tutor said as she wiggled a little and got comfortable. She had to pull my arm around her left side so that it wasn’t butting up against her right arm. I had to admit that it was actually really comfortable at that point. My relaxed and pleased mental state took a hit when I looked over at the chair that had belonged to Tutor and found a little stormy head peeking over the top of the black leather armrest. Invicta was glaring right at me and I swear I could see little sparks flying from the tips of her hair. She was clearly not pleased with the change. She was starting to sound like a miniature Jacobs Ladder when the lights around us dimmed as Silver started his show.

“Ladies and Gentlemen! Today we are here to dedicate a vessel of the void to its existence amongst the stars…” Silver started saying as a halo of sparks surrounded his feet.

I happened to move my eyes away from him for just a second to find Tutor’s face very close to my own. She wasn’t looking at Silver at all. Instead, she was gazing deeply into my eyes.

“Can I ask a favor?” She whispered softly to me.

“Yes. What would you like?” I asked, wondering where this was going.

“I can’t be surprised by much anymore. Could you share your emotions with me?” She asked.

“Umm… ok,” I said as I mentally willed my emotions and what I was feeling with her. The interesting thing that I noticed when I did this was that she didn’t share it beyond herself. All the coding was stopping with her. She must have noted my surprise because she leaned her forehead slowly forward until she just touched it against mine before whispering a soft thank you.

When she turned away and focused back on Silver we found him easily as he had just begun to dim the lights around us even further. Soon there was nothing to see but the ship.

“And now my wonderful guests, friends, and adventurers… allow me to show you just a few of the dangers that await us in the cosmos.” Silver said. His voice had slowly changed, becoming lower and more powerful. It even took on an aged quality as though he was becoming older as he spoke. It became the voice of a man who had seen too many horrors to be spoken of.

“Dare to not be afraid.” His voice said in a whisper that carried something that sent chills down my spine.

Suddenly my stomach was in my throat as my recliner was picked up and lifted into the air. I quickly looked around and found brief outlines of George and Invicta’s recliner before they were lost in the darkness.

I leaned a little to my right and peered over the armrest. I could just barely make out a pinprick of light well off in the distance. Our ship was just barely visible.

I swallowed.

Silver had us at least a couple of miles up in the air. I knew I didn’t need to be afraid, it was all just a simulation. For some reason the fact that I wasn’t in control of what was going to happen just made everything seem more real.

“Welcome to deep space.” came a gritty voice from all around at once. There was a rumbling noise that slowly grew, as though something ominous was approaching.

The darkness lifted just a little bit and I found myself staring at a line stretching from left to right in the distance. I had no idea what I was looking at until my eyes focused and I realized that the line was changing. The line parted and I suddenly couldn’t control my fear as I found myself looking into an impossible maw. From horizon to horizon I was looking into the mouth of an ancient Leva and it was rapidly approaching to swallow me whole. Dagger-like teeth bigger than mountains moved in clenching motions as the monster swept towards us. The teeth grew everywhere inside its mouth and down its tunnel of a throat. It was then when I realized that it was still a great distance away and just how tiny Tutor and I were to it.

My heart was beating so fast as I waited for the inevitable, for the monster to eat us both. I felt a stirring next to me as Tutor reached out her hand and sought mine in the dark. When she found my right hand with her left she squeezed, either because she could feel my fear or because she was trying to help me calm down. This small act helped, letting me break my gaze away and to focus on something else for a few moments. The learned fear I had gained from watching the movie Jaws was brought out as this vast maw rushed towards us.

“This creature was once thought to be the harbinger of death to vessels who dared to venture into space.” Silver said as our recliner went into a free fall. I held onto the armrest and gripped Tutor tightly as our chair fell with us. My gaze was locked on the approaching maw and my heart was clenching in my chest from fright. Silver had mixed too many of my fears together for me to just push them away. The air quickly picked up speed the faster we fell. I couldn’t breathe from the fear that was rushing through me.

Silver had planned everything perfectly, down to the last inch. The Leva just barely missed us as our couch just passed the lip of the beast.

I was just about to grab control of the environment back from Silver when the scene changed around us. The Leva disappeared and a new location was suddenly brought to the fore. We appeared to be rapidly moving towards the center of a galaxy.

“It wasn’t until civilizations ventured towards the hearts of galaxies that they realized that the Leva were actually rather harmless and benevolent creatures. The true danger lay in what the Leva fed on.” He said as we drew nearer to a dark cloud that was sweeping from star to star. Wherever the cloud went, it seemed to lick at the coronas of the stars, leaving behind dark patches.

“What you see is Queiie and the darkness that they leave behind in the orbit of stars are their offspring. The Queiie have a very voracious and rapid lifecycle. They require constant energy to move and breed.” Silver said as the dark cloud turned and began to head towards our recliner.

I was curious to see what we would be feeding to our baby Leva when it hatched so I leaned forward to peer closer at the oncoming cloud.

Crabs. Giant ugly space crabs with gooey black gel that ran like veins all through and around its body and shell. So that was where the Leva obtained the substance for the nest. - I surmised as the great cloud grew closer. Out of the corner of my vision, I spied something moving that I had thought to be just another space rock. It seemed that the Queiie also noticed the movement because they veered away from their trek towards us and instead swooped towards the shuddering asteroid.

“Oh no.” Was all I managed to say as I watched the rock as it began to split apart into smaller boulders that scattered like flies. “What are those?” I whispered to Tutor.

“Those are space parasite colonies. That specific kind of colony is known to disguise itself as asteroids until unsuspecting prey shows up. In this case, they will become the lunch for the Queiie though it seems.” She whispered back to me as we watched.

The space parasites seemed to puff up and explode when touched by one of the Queiie. This caused all of the nearby Queiie to go crazy and to flail their limbs all over the place while rapidly bringing their long jagged limbs towards their underside. Towards their iris of a mouth as they stuffed any captured motes of the parasite inside.

“Looks like not all of them get eaten,” I said as I noticed that some of the Queiie had developed a film of parasites on their jagged shells.

“Yes, those will hitch rides and hopefully fall off unnoticed so that they can spread and create more parasite colonies.” Tutor said as we watched the fascinating feeding frenzy.

“What do they eat?” I asked as the recliner kept bringing us closer to the action. It was beginning to get a little bit too close as I could see just how big everything was. The parasites were about the size of a closed fist while they were whole. Once the Queiie went into a feeding frenzy things got very messy. There were parts of parasites floating away everywhere around us. It was a bit gross.

“Oh, anything that they can. They tend to burrow under the skin and replicate before creating another colony.” She said as a whole unnoticed parasite floated closer to the footrest of our recliner. I hadn’t even considered for a moment that Silver would have made the environment able to notice us, I simply pulled my leg upwards because I didn’t like the idea of anything that looked like a little baseball made of razor blades touching my leg.

It was a good thing I moved my leg too. The moment it touched the leather of the recliner it seemed to sense that it had found something to claim. Tiny arms quickly extended and latched onto the soft leather of the leg rest, quickly shredding it and pulling itself inward.

“Oh heck no!” I yelled as I willed a shotgun into my hands and blasted the footrest into oblivion, killing the little burrowing demon.

“Haha, that looked fun.” Tutor said as she willed a pistol into her hands and began taking shots at the surrounding floating parasites.

We turned the next few minutes into a shooting range as we each materialized different guns to take turns shooting at the remaining parasite balls. Tutor was an expert shot with every single bullet she sent flying towards her target. I rolled my eyes at her dainty hands while she blasted parasites with ease, thinking that she was simply using her advanced AI advantage.

“What? You were gone for a long time and George taught me how to shoot.” She commented when she noticed my gaze.

Off in the distance, I heard other sounds of gunfire start up and Invicta’s soft airy laugh. Her gun sounds quickly turned full auto as the little stormy lady got serious with seeing what the limits of her weapons were. From what I could see, she really didn’t know how to shoot, she was just trying to send as many bullets into space as possible.

I heard a soft sigh come from over my shoulder. I turned my head and found Silver sitting dejectedly on a stool that was hovering in space behind us.

“Have you been there the whole time?” I asked as I could just imagine his glee from witnessing me almost pissing myself as we narrowly avoided entering the mouth of the Leva.

“You had to introduce her to firearms didn’t you?” He asked as he looked at me, nodding to my question. “You do realize that chaos is her nature? I think part of it was being trapped in a looped sequence of game events… now she desires change and randomness.” He said as he floated up next to us so I didn’t have to continue to twist around to look at him.

He materialized a recliner next to us as the sounds of the gunfire changed, becoming what sounded like a submachinegun's explosive cadence. Laying back in his chair, he leaned on the armrest and gazed at me and Tutor. It seems that breaking the flow of his show had messed up his plans and now he was just interested in relaxing with us.

“So what else did you have in store for us?” I asked as we glanced out at the Queiie that had become the focus of Invictas fire. The space crabs were trying to catch and eat the flying bits of metal that occasionally hit and bounced harmlessly off of their shells.

When Invicta discovered the 50 cal I decided to mute her lest we all go deaf from her crazy laughter. These rounds produced a lot more interest from the crabs as they began to try to find the source of the speeding food. It seemed that hot metal was a delicacy for them.

“Well, I was going to fly you through all of the known cosmic vegetation and to some of the more rare creatures that have only recently been found in distant galaxies.” He said as he did just that.

All around us the scenes changed rapidly as we flew at incredible speeds through glowing tentacles that sprouted from jagged rocks in space. There were webs of spores around a milky white planet that resembled Saturn. The fibrous tissues had grown between the ring and propagated as the belt collected space debris for it to feed off of.

We jumped past these novel interesting sights and through vast expanses of darkness until we reached a large collection of planets orbiting a brightly shining sun. I counted at least 12 in close scattered orbit around the star. We dove towards one of the middle planets of interest and slowed down as we came within viewing distance.

“What is happening to the surface of that planet?” I asked as it seemed to ripple and morph, as though the surface was gliding over itself.

“Well, this creature is just entering the stage of space expansion.” Silver said as the planet spewed a tongue at one of the nearest orbiting planets. The worm-like tongue missed and was sent sailing off into deep space where it slowly began to shrivel.

I looked back at the planet in interest. It wasn’t until I looked closer that I discovered that the entire planet was made of huge tongue-like creatures.

“What the heck?” I asked as another tongue was launched toward another planet.

“What you see is correct, they have completely devoured their natural world and are trying to jump to the next world to continue spreading.” Silver said as I felt Tutor's hand start drawing little patterns on my arm. It was distracting and comforting at the same time. Each of these massive creatures was the size of Africa and they were determined to spread. Spread and devour continually. Why did this make me think of AI? I felt Tutor’s hand pause her drawing.

She leaned forward and whispered into my ear. “Penny for your thoughts just then?” She asked softly. The coding around us caused the sound to only reach my ear. She was deliberately keeping Silver from hearing what she asked.

“Later,” I answered as I turned my head to look into her deep blue eyes. I needed to talk to her about so many things, just not with Silver around. Her and George together.

Silver swept us to other places and showed us some interesting, yet mostly unimpressive additions to his collection of space-dwelling creatures.

“Are you ready to witness the big finale?” He asked, once again filling his voice with excitement and danger.

“Sure,” I said as I turned to smile at him. I was beginning to get bored with the show. Yes, all this was new and interesting but after a while, it just came across as though someone was showing you their stamp collection. Interesting until you got to the 10th stamp and then they all started to look the same. The sad thing was, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of creatures that all wanted to get into space to further propagate and spread everywhere.

I was really beginning to be thankful that earth was so far removed from the center of our galaxy. It seemed that most of the deadliest forms of life existed at or nearest to the center. Food was just too rare in between distant stars to tempt the worst from spreading outwards.

A faint clicking sound started off in the distance as Silver cleared the horizon of everything but a spattering of distant stars. It sounded like a broken clock’s ticking. The sound slowly started to get louder as all of the other AI sat up in distress. No... not a ticking sound, more like glass grinding together?

“Silver stop!” They all said in unison as even Invicta seemed fearful.

What could make my AI so afraid?

“Behold the Skism.” Silver said with a tone of grim finality as he banished his chair and stood off to the side, waving his hand to something off in the distance.