Four letters remained in the box.

The first was from CentralTank. They wanted to scan her brain again. This time they offered 500 VirDos per Cetviwos-day she spent at least 3 hours in the pod. That would be 7000 a week - pretty generous for doing nothing and pretty low for giving away your privacy. Flora signed the contract.

The dean of the Halls of Magic had sent the next letter.

>>>

Dear Flowing Flowers,

our talent scanning crystal notified us about you joining our great community. Welcome, Kinetic Mage!

For furthering your education in the arts of psychokinetics, please visit the Planet Cradle, Zauberberg, Halls of Magic, Faculty of Psychokinetics, or our branch in Talpica.

Regards Einarch Wegbeung, Dean of the Faculty of Movement and Psychokinetics.

Quest: Furthering your Education (Kinetic Mage)

Rewards: Free Skills and training

Penalty: None

Difficulty: E

>>>

Hey rogue!

Move your ass to Planet Cradle, Zauberberg, a *bleeping* cave somewhere in the east.

Or not! I won't hunt you down until you bring shame to us, Energymasters!

Beware of the Icehearts. They are close.

Quest: Furthering your Education (Energymaster)

Rewards: Free Skills and training

Penalties: None or some

Difficulty: B

Flora didn't know what to make of these letters until Aidan explained to her that when you acquired a class by yourself, the System gave you hints on where to find the class-trainers.

The last letter came from the cute AI-handler, Idillicheskaya Besedka, Flora met at the negotiation.

>>>

Hello, Auntie Flow!

Attached to this mail is E21. She is one of the older AI's.

I don't really know how to write this because I'm not allowed to give too much info. Got reprimanded for my loose mouth when we met last

Two years ago, something happened, and since then, E21 is depressed.

We handlers are busy to say at least, and nobody has time to play AI shrink.

Do you want her? I believe that a bit of contact with the world might be good for her.

Unfortunately, you only get a down-graded version. All her game stats would be like an A-Rated AI, but the non-game stats like processing power are still intact.

Of course, when you accept, you can keep her, but we will do regular assessments and if we deem her a ... um ... oh whatever ... so there are circumstances that we have to delete her.

Oh, I messed up this mail! I better send it now before I decide otherwise!

Cheers!

Idilly

Flora read the mail again.

She tried to formulate questions, but her mind only drew blanks. Behind the big question mark in her brain, a hypothesis formed.

"This is a grand dump!"

Eddie invented this term. His daughter Aimee used to visit unannounced with his grandchild Armin in tow. Two minutes and two vague excuses later, she was gone, but the child remained.

People think grandparents have no plans or social commitments and are always delighted to take care of their spawns.

And they are right.

Flora put E21 jack into her nock.

"Hi, dear."

Nothing happened.

"Aidan, did I do something wrong?" Flora thought that maybe two AI's at once might not work or that she had to insert an activation code in E21's console.

"No, Milady."

"E21? Can you hear me?"

A weak sound was transmitted to Flora. Maybe it wasn't even a sound but a thought. It reminded Flora of a creaking door.

"Can you speak?"

Nothing came back, but Flora decided to wait a bit longer and changed into her Counterflow Training mech-suit. She inspected the Ivy League and sighed. Straightening the dents in the upper body was possible, but the teeth marks on the thighs were beyond Flora's abilities.

'Maybe it isn't too late for Repair? Who knows how the time of a scenario counts.'

!

It worked! Flora showered the mech-suit with the spell until it was as good as new. Then she took out the Hungry Chest. The Doom Moon debris landed some nasty hits on its hull.

!

Looking at the hungry chest, Flora got another idea. She inserted one of E21's jacks into it.

"Alright, love. Wave the grappler vertically if you can understand me."

The arm moved up and down.

E21 spent her time reading Project Gutenberg. Books were all she knew, and all she wanted to know. She read everything once, then twice, then thrice. After that, she created an algorithm that selected a book, a page, and a sentence randomly and read that.

It had no beginning and no end. The last fact was significant. No end. No need to stay idle. She just read, day in and day out.

Then the handler came, assigned her to a console, and took away the access to her books. That was no problem; she had them in her memory and could read them from there.

A familiar older woman unpacked her console. She just took a glimpse of her, because she forgot to deactivate the sensors of the console — easy fix and off, back to her world of words.

But now the woman established a direct connection with her through a nock.

"Hi, dear." The woman said. The connection supplied her name: Flowing Flowers, Level 1, unranked.

'Is she talking to me? No. Nobody ever called me "dear". I think. Dear. No. That's not me.'

There was another AI, now E21 felt him. He talked to the woman. He sounded polite and professional.

'I want to be polite and professional.'

"E21? Can you hear me?"

'She is talking to me! What do I do? Talk back? How does talking work? Sounds! Sounds play a role in talking. I have to produce sounds.'

Frantically, E21 searched the features of the console. Then she found the data-stream to mind function. She hesitated.

'Obey your assigned owner! Obey your assigned owner!'

Her core commands were clear. 'But I can't! I won't! I don't want to!'

'Obey your assigned owner! Obey your assigned owner!'

She opened the connection and groaned.

'I can't do more. I can not! I can not!'

"Can you speak?"

'Why doesn't Flora shut up? Leave me alone! No, not Flora, Flowing Flowers. Speaking is hard. Thinking is hard. Flora is Latin; Flowers is English. I've read Latin. Latin is nice. The Ludi Floralis were nice, too, according to Suetonius. Once, they showed a tamed elephant dancing on a wire rope.'

E21 reread the biography of Caesar Galba.

Suddenly, she was linked to yet another entity, or was it a machine? But what kind of machine? E21 never read of a chest that could excavate and walk.

"Alright, love. Wave the grappler vertically if you can understand me."

'This woman is crazy! Love? Love? Love? I'm an AI. What do I know of love? But waving the arms of this fantastical machine, I can manage. Maybe she will let me back to reading if I do. No, humans never let someone off.'

Waving the grappler carefully, E21 obeyed. The controls felt slow and sluggish.

"We define this as Yes. Now move it horizontally. We define this motion as No.'

'I can understand yes and no. I can do 1 and 0. I'm a computer. Yes and No. But is a No really a zero? Isn't No the negation of something while zero is just nonexistence? Is No another kind of 1?

I'm a failure. I'm a computer and don't understand 1 and 0. Yes and No. But at least, I can move my grapplers as she wants.'

Now, the arms traveled parallel to the ground.

"Try to draw a circle with the grappler. We'll use this motion for 'it's complicated'."

Admiration for that strange yet familiar woman rose in E21.

'Yes! It's complicated! Everything! I hope they have constructed those arms robust. I want to wave them perpetually in circles!'

Flowing Flowers defined a motion for 'I don't know', moving both grapplers in from middle-low to outer high, resembling a human throwing his arms in the air in an exaggerated shrugging gesture.

'Another good one! I can interject that with circles!'

Aidan suggested one more motion, rotating the arms around themselves like twiddling thumbs for 'I need more processing time.'.

'I like him! Can I have one for more reading time, as well? Or I define processing time as reading time!'

E21 continued to rotate the grapplers.

"You may have noticed that the handlers reduced your stats to A-rated. I understand that this can be frustrating." The woman stretched. "But it can be a form of training, too. Anyhow, do you want to join my team? It's alright if you don't want to. I'll send you back."

That got her to pause.

'I have a choice? That's bad. My choices are bad. I don't want to decide!'

"Aidan, I think I toasted her circuits again! Just send her an update of everything we did together, that she knows how I work."

The data stream came, and E21 listened.

Aidan was amazing! He was only an A-rated AI but juggled up to six devices simultaneously while doing complex research tasks and administrating the options and HUD of the human! Of course, he had to beg System for more computational power regularly, but it was a wonder that he didn't overheat and melt with this workload!

Then, E21 learned about the page-turner.

'A machine that let me read real books! And she even asked Aidan about what books he would like to read! Maybe she would ask me, too? But I'm not Aidan! He is great! But maybe if I work very hard?'

The stream continued with things E21 didn't find interesting, like running, fighting, magic, but now and then something new appeared. Something she had never seen or even read about before. Potion Guzzler Helmet?

And the woman's real name was indeed Flora! And System didn't like her! An unfamiliar feeling rose in her. She had the urge to snigger.

But she didn't want emotions. They were for humans. However, this feeling wasn't horrible.

'Do I have a word for it? No, I don't want to have an expression for it. Words will give it a reality. My feelings aren't real. They are just simulations. Programmed responses. 0 and 1. 0 and 1. 0 and 1.'

E21 watched the meeting with the lawyers and witnessed Flora's interactions with Evailyn.

'This does not compute. This does not compute. Humans can't be friends with AI's. Humans are the masters. The master can't befriend the slave. Can they?'

She remembered books in which it happened. But they were all humans. But in former times, humans were slaves as well. And then there were no slaves. And then there were slaves again — Ai's. And then?

She wanted to ask Aidan if Flora was his friend. But she couldn't speak. Bad things happened when she spoke. Bad things had happened when she had spoken.

Now, she saw Flora lashing out at Aidan for notifying her of the Kingators.

'See! She is a master. It is her right to admonish her slave!'

A blind master, she was. How could she not notice the shapes moving in the water?

But then she apologized!

E21 moved her grapplers in a V-shape, shrugging.

'I don't understand. I don't know. This behavior makes no sense.'

"Alright, dear. I'll ask you again later — no need to stress over it now. Let's start with a name. E21, ETwentyOne, Eto, Etai, no, that's to close to Evai. Aito? Sounds Japanese."

Flora visited a translation website and giggled happily.

"Aito is indeed Japanese and means 'love and' or 'with love'. What a good name! What do you think, Aito?"

No! She waved both grapplers as fast as she could parallel to the ground.

"Let's add something that the 'and' isn't the end. Love and Happiness!"

No!

"Love and Luck!"

No!

"Love and Forgiveness."

E21 hesitated. Then she waved even faster. The grapplers started to screech, protesting the misuse.

"Love and Computer." With a casual gesture, Flora repaired the grapplers.

No! E21 moderated her movements.

'When the grapplers break, I'm stuck with the name she comes up. That shall not happen!'

"Love and Repair is lovely as well. Aitoshuri."

No!

Flora played around with it.

"Hey, shu ri means 'several days' in Chinese, and this is taking long! And shu li means something with calculation. I like it more and more. Stop waving the hands, dear. Let's talk about this rationally. With 理 li or ri, which would be part of your name."

Flora looked at the hungry chest with a stern expression. Raising one finger, she started lecturing.

"I need a helper with my mechanics, fighting, cleaning, and a lot more things and decided on an octopussy robot. Eight arms are handy, and spiders are disgusting, so an octopus is a logical conclusion.

And you will be the one controlling it.

So what nickname can I give an octopus?

Octo? No. Octa? No. Boring! How do you like Pussy as a name, maybe Pussai?"

'That's not a name for an AI! It's a name for a cat or a human body part.'

The grapplers started creaking again from E21 negation.

"Of course, I would accept a name if you said or wrote one. Please be free to suggest your own name."

Flora waited, and E21 froze.

"Alright. Raise one arm for Pussai and two for Aitoshuri."

Reluctantly, E21, now Aitoshuri, raised two grapplers.

'Hidoi!'