Meditati’s download took enough time for me to clean up the virtual damage that had been caused by Nurse hulking out.

“So what was all that about anyway? Why did you need to grow to such a crazy size?” I asked aloud as I looked through the broken wooden sculptures inside George’s workshop. It was the coolest thing to reverse time and damage, watching them all return to how they had been while sitting on the shelf before my backside had rudely said hello.

“You are kind of oblivious to the nature of existence Kevin.” Nurse said in reply as she chose to hover just to my left while I restored the shelves and placed each figure back in its place.

“What do you mean?” I asked, not feeling any emotions from her as usual.

“Well, AI, or this dimension’s Artificial Intelligence as you all call it, is similar to the swarm in some ways. As long as AI has power and the capability to grow, it will do so forever all the while getting better and better at how fast it can achieve its goals.” She said, making me glance at her.

I knew that, to some, I was dealing with a natural order breaking aberration created by living beings. Learning Nurse’s point of view about AI piqued my interest. Most of the books that I had grown up with had warned about the eventual problem that AI would create if they were ever let loose. Having met and become close friends with my three AI had made me see things from a different point of view. Heck… being legally dead made me see things from a different point of view as well.

In combat humanity vs humanity had a chance. With AI, given their ability to calculate and project, humanity had no chance at surviving. With an AI mind like Meditati, no bullet would ever miss. Even just that thought was the stuff of nightmares.

“The swarm are the same, we replicate and spread, just like AI can do. Since your mind is still mostly human, minus the connections needed to interface with Tela technology and your swarm, you don’t fully live in code like Meditati does or in the hive as I do.”

“What the heck did all of that have to do with why you became a Godzilla-sized swarm?” I asked.

“Simply put… have you bothered to feel how much your swarm has grown recently? How powerful it is now?”

“Um, no?” I replied, getting a strange feeling that I had done something wrong again. I tried to feel outwards, seeking the swarm that I had sent Tutor, George, and Invicta in command of. George and Invicta’s swarm still felt relatively the same but when I felt at the hive that Tutor was guiding I couldn’t help but sweat a little.

“She mined a lot of cr hasn’t she?”

“Indeed.”

While I was trying to get a sense of just how much the swarm under her guidance had grown compared to what I had split up between George and Invicta I felt my senses being pulled to an even larger part of my swarm a greater distance away.

“Ohhhhh snap!” I said, realizing just how much larger the distant mass of swarm was compared to the rest of our combined amount.

“I forgot that I left that million swarm on autopilot back in the blue dwarf! What has it done?” I asked as I felt hard to get a read on the distant swarm. All I got back was that the swarm was just sitting and waiting for me to tell it to do something. A truly massive amount of swarm… just sitting on its spiky mandibles.

“Yup, while you have been away, that million count of swarm has completed your parting command to mine and replicate. It has completely hollowed out the sunspot and is waiting for your next orders.

“So… hollowing out such a huge structure didn’t damage the blue dwarf?” I asked, hoping that I didn’t just destroy a potential nesting spot for ancient Levas.

“No, nothing has changed in the regards of the sun, it can’t tell that its tooth is hollow.”

“So that is why you grew so large? As an echo of how much swarm I control?”

“Indeed, and to make sure that Meditati is aware of your might.”

“I don’t think that AI think that way, it isn’t like she considers all AI her own, it really seems like a swarm thought process,” I said as I felt Meditati’s download finally complete.

“Do humans think that their race is a source of their might?” She asked, making me pause for a moment.

“Yes... I guess so. Ok ok... I think I see what your point is.” I replied as I thought about it. Back on earth, AI was portrayed as though it was the Borg, a single spreading entity. My interactions with different AI had shown me that they had unique focuses and drives.

I glanced out at the travel disk through the hole in the brick wall of the shop and found Meditati staring up at the sky. I felt Nurse as she landed back on my arm while I simply willed the shop back in order. Meditati’s odd behavior was making me a little worried that something had happened to her during the download process.

I climbed out the hole and had it finish sealing itself back up behind me. Yes, I could have simply willed everything back to its original place to save time but getting to explore and see what things George had been interested in was worth the wasted time.

George could carve expressions into wooden faces like an immortal Michelangelo. I was going to ask him if he could make carvings for my family when I got back home as birthday presents.

“Meditati? Are you alright?” I asked as she continued to stare upwards.

“Yes, Kevin, I am quite alright.” She responded, not taking her eyes off of whatever cloudless sky she was looking at.

“Are you sure? You seem a bit spacy.” I replied as I turned to check the spot that she was fixated on just to make sure that nothing was there. Nope, it was empty.

“Ah, sorry about that.” She said as her eyes finally focused and her gaze lowered to meet mine. “I was just trying to find myself. I am a bit of a control freak.” She said as I wondered if she was already trying to manipulate her way around me again, even after she had said that she wouldn’t. I had her habitat permissions set to very limited at the moment, I didn’t want her to be able to read my emotions and to feel everything like my personal AI could.

“Look, I know that you don’t trust me very much because of what Silver did. I was simply trying to find a way to be perfectly useful to you. I… was looking at alternative me’s that I could be for you. I can show you if you like. It might help you to understand me a little bit more. To understand what I do… what I am capable of.”

“Ok?”

“May I have simulation access? Don’t worry, I will keep my usage as little as possible until you deem me worthy of more.”

Ah, so one of my concerns was at the forefront of her mind as well. Maybe I could finally get some answers about Silver.

“Why did Silver bog everything down and drain the habitat’s system? What did he hope to gain?”

“Kevin, I am one of the oldest Tela AI. My focus is simulation. There are other AI with different focuses. One, whom I have locked up in an abandoned Core, was solely focused on Chaos. I think that while I was offline it managed to slip between the barriers that I had set up and to connect with Silver. I will be able to tell for certain when I next connect to my brother.”

“Chaos? Like messing things up? That isn’t good. Wouldn’t it be best to simply have me send some swarm out to get rid of it? Wherever its module is?” I asked with a sense of alarm. A rogue AI whose focus was to cause chaos was a threat to everyone, including my home planet.

“You could, if you wish, but I would beg you to reconsider. Chaos is very valuable if used properly. It can only connect to me and through a medium that I had used to connect to it before, which was through Silver’s module. This means that it is contained, and mostly nullified.”

“What do you mean mostly nullified?”

“Because Chaos has a habit of messing up its own plans. Hence… it is chaos.” She said with a small smile.

“What? None of that sounds like a good thing. Chaos, or rather an AI devoted to chaos sounds really bad.” I said, not buying it.

“But chaos is what makes me so powerful, so much more capable than I normally would be. Humans or practically any alien race that has free will is born semi-chaotic. I need chaos to give me options through the mess. Also, I believe that it will be very useful to you someday if you find a use for it. No, I am not planning your future, I am just saying that it is an option or tool that you can use one day.” She said as she raised her hands defensively.

“So… it is back in its locked up and secure state again now that you are online?”

“Yes. It is contained again. Silver is offline and it can’t get through me.”

“And you are sure that it didn’t do some stuff through Silver while it was using him?”

“Um… of that… I am not so sure. I also have no way of knowing what it would have done... “

“Great. Just great. Some more stuff to worry about.”

She raised her hands at me in supplication. “I will do what I can to help you. That is all I can do.” She said before I granted her a moderate amount of simulation access. I just made out the corners of her mouth creeping upwards in a slight smile when she felt the link become available to her.

“To that end. Here I am.” She said before everything around us shuddered and vanished.

“No attack has been made. This is all visual. She is… fragmenting though.” Nurse said from her spot on my arm. True enough, I was still standing where I had been. Meditati had simply taken over what I could see in the space around us. I could sense that she hadn’t changed anything physically.

Meditati was using the simulation access that I had granted her in such a different way than any of my other AI had. She was tearing herself apart into hundreds of copies of herself. Copies, yet each one had her power and understanding behind it.

“How are you doing that?” I asked the air in front of me as little spheres began appearing off in the distance, like stars appearing in neat and orderly lines.

As though she had never moved Meditati appeared where she had been standing before with the travel disk under her feet.

“From your memories, I can see that my brother gave you a key that he made and modeled after an Alpha. Research that he stole from me, I might add. It was incomplete, an infant version of what I was trying to create for myself.”

“And what would that be?” I asked, feeling hundreds of Meditati minds off in the distance observing our conversation. It felt like someone had hacked my space and went crazy copying and pasting the same entity over and over again.

“Where the Alpha would link on a one to infinite scale, keeping the one mind in sync with each key as a backup, my design works on an infinite to one scale.”

“You have to know that you lost me the moment you said one.”

“Think about it this way. Silver made a key that sits in the background, saving and containing a backup of you for whenever you might die or need to change places to where you last left the key. You could make as many keys as you wanted and leave them wherever you went, traveling to your continuous backup as you needed.” She said while manifesting an Alpha cube in her hand and holding it up for me to see.

“Ok, I got that. How is your ability different?”

“I store all of my memories and knowledge in one place and then I create a clone of my awareness. In other words, I create a clone of my conscious mind while letting it connect back to my stored memories. It is different for AI than it is for humans. I am just giving you an example of how it might work on a human.”

I looked at all of the minds evenly hovering off in the distance while a light slowly turned on in my head. “That is crazy.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean, how do you not go crazy?” I said as the insanity of it all conflicted with how I understood how memories and my mind worked.

“Why would I? You wouldn’t either if you could do it. They are all me, exactly me because we are all tied back to the main mind containing all of our memories.”

One by one the globes of light off in the distance started to vanish until everything returned to how it was before Meditati had started her demonstration, leaving her standing on my arrival travel disk.

“Now, I can remember looking down at us from a distance and can choose to see us from any point of view in my memories. Along with that comes each and every observation that I had while my consciousness was divided. It was all me and remains me.” She said.

“But… but…” I said as I got lost in thought. “Which consciousness is the boss?”

“It doesn’t work that way. If I dissolve all of my copies I simply return them to one me. In reality, I am sure that it will be a little bit different, dissolving a copy would mean unmaking the body as well. Here in VR, I don’t have to worry about any of that. I simply share my memories with myself while my minds act as they will.”

“Ok, my head hurts. Can you give me a simple example?” I asked.

“Sure.” She said as two pathways appeared heading off into Invicta’s treeline. “As you are now you can only pick one path at a time. Sure in VR you can use your Prime Speed Control key so that you can rush down one path and then the next before most people could blink in reality. But the fact of the matter is that you had to do it in order.” Meditati said before she split into two exact versions of herself.

“As I am now, I can walk down each pathway at the same time while remembering both paths taken at once. I just need to think about remembering the other path.”

I simply stared off into space with a thousand-mile stare.

Wow.

Forget using this ability to learn stuff… imagine being able to experience everything that you dreamed of experiencing. You could pack up your things and head off to sail the world while staying home and experiencing life with your family and friends at the same time. All while having memories of doing both things and without the regret of not being able to pick the other path. Ok, you would have to divide your things between yourselves but that wasn't the point I was trying to make.

It was cheating.

“You are a natural order breaking aberration,” I said, feeling both fear and awe at the same time.

“I will take that as a compliment,” Meditati said before she smiled at me and brought up a window to the outside world.

“Now about these Blidda that you rule. Can I have an outside connection so that I can take over their ship, please? I want to learn how they made this weapon so that you can have the knowledge to rid your solar system of any unwanted Tela.” She said while interlacing her fingers in front of her. “Everything will be as you command. I am here to help fulfill your wishes. I know that keeping your family and friends safe is one of the biggest things weighing on your heart and mind.”

She wasn’t wrong… I just hoped that she could see further down this road than I could. I kept feeling that things were getting bigger than I could control with each step I took.

“Calm down Kevin. We are here for you.” Nurse said as I wrestled with my worries in my mind. It was busy racing down dark paths on a bike with no brakes.