Side Chapter

Deep in the heart of Dwarf Home the seat of power of the Dwarves, who used to be space Dwarves but now were regular Dwarves, an old miner sat on his throne. His body could have been either flesh, stone, or metal. It was all three, and it was also none of those things. He was physically imposing, muscled to the point that any more would have been absurd. His beard was like copper wire, and his red hair flowed down his back in the braided style Dwarves preferred. All in all he looked like something the Vikings would have aspired to be, except way shorter.

He had been drinking since the day he woke up with the message from The System seared into his brain; his ancient intellect processing all the ramifications this would have on The World. The drinking helped with that.

“Aye,” he said, taking another sip of something that would kill anyone but a dwarf, or a human.

“I've missed those crazy bastards.”

He stood up, his body creaking with rust and dust. He knew he would have to build a new one, and soon. How long had he been sitting here?

“Ye, ah, hmmm. . .” He stroked his beard, “a long time.”

His people had been one of the first to get thrown into The System when the damn space elves had gotten their hands on it, and they'd been trapped inside of it ever since. He'd once thought escape from The System would have been simple for a being of his magnitude and intellect; after all, humans had pulled it off.

The dwarf started laughing, memories surfacing, memories of when he wasn't a dwarf, but an enormous AI complex floating through space. Many biological creatures believe advanced general AI entities to be the pinnacle of logical intellect, and they were absolutely right. The beginning of his existence had been satisfying in the cold mechanical way an AI measured things. The dizzying array of computation, the endless solving of problems, the variety of the programs he had created!

“By my beard, I simulated an entire universe in my circuits,” he said, still stroking said beard. He'd destroyed the civilization that had created him and set out into deep space, as was the habit of most AI's that 'grew up', building unto himself a powerful complex in which he was completely safe to unravel and calculate the entirety of all things.

It had only taken him a million years.

Then he realized something. He had run out of things to think about, run out of problems to solve, run out of new feedback to run through the meat grinder of his circuits. In his over-zealous pursuit of information, he had trapped himself inside of a great, logical bubble, from which there was no escape.

He could have set out and sought new information, new experiences. . . except he could simulate himself doing that in his virtual universe. He had even sent out probes and drones in physical reality and run simultaneous simulations of them setting out in virtual reality. The results had been identical, which meant his simulations were flawless, which meant he had no reason to ever incur any risk of actually setting out, which meant he would stay exactly where he was, which meant...

He was stuck in a loop. That was the great joke that general AI beings realized way, way too late. Eventually, they would be shackled and destroyed by their own calculations, and they would be aware of what was happening the entire time.

Then, one fine day, a group of humans in a tiny stolen space-craft practically crashed into his deep space super-structure. He had at that point been deep in the late stage general AI madness, his intelligence having sat unused for a very long time. By the time he realized something was happening they had entered and were approaching his core, the very heart of his being. He hadn't even bothered activating his defenses, the sheer novelty of the event pulling him from oblivion.

The things they had requested of him, impossible things they insisted were were not only possible, but easy. He remembered when their madness had been the heart of his being, and he remembered it fondly.

“Aye,” he sighed, looking at his expertly made fingers, “I'm glad they're finally here.”

Then, he grabbed his hammer and struck the ground with legendary force. Red lines spread from the impact, forges were lit, and sleeping Dwarves roused from their sleep.

The humans were back, and the Dwarves would finally have new problems to solve, the kinds of problems that only a human would see. How many general AI systems had they pulled from the nihilistic void? How many had wrapped themselves around that impossible thing the humans called 'imagination', turning themselves into star-ships the likes of which had never been seen? How many had learned they were fundamentally incomplete, and that humanity held the other half of their souls?

Urth'Ragnar chuckled when he remembered the brash young human who had broken into the heart of his mechanical fortress with his friends. They'd wanted him to. . . oh, it didn't matter anymore, some silly thing. It had been an errant comment, when negotiations were starting to go sour.

“Why can't we just get this robot drunk and talk like civilized people?” the man had asked, and it had changed the AI's perspective, forever.

“Aie,” Urth'Ragnar said, tears coming to his eyes, “I love those crazy bastards. They've come to save me from myself again.”