I felt Regeth unclasp his robot arms from around my shoulders and waist before hopping down to the inner hull and turning back in place to look at me.

“Very funny, you realize that we are still in real life, yes?” He said before scurrying over towards a travel disk that I hadn’t noticed when we first came in. He stopped next to it as though waiting for me. “It probably is best that you go first. I don’t trust your AI anymore. Not with what I have seen you do… it could possibly truly delete me if it wanted to. Remember back to right after we caught you? None of that should have happened. Magus is a 2nd. I don’t think you understand what that means in terms of Authority. It isn’t just that he has spent countless ages building up enough wealth to make his own Core… the very fact that your AI denied him is beyond scary. What I have seen your cr do is impressive, but I know that it is just time until we figure out what makes it stronger than ours. Your AI on the other hand… is just broken. It almost seems that you took away safeguards that should be in place, and no one is that stupid.” He said as he looked at me, possibly wondering if I really was that dumb.

I walked over to the disk, feeling like a toy compared to how large I had been before. As I was about ready to step on it I got the strangest feeling that I was missing something. What was I missing?

…

…

“Dang it! I forgot to pick up that ball of 5 million CR!” I yelled out as I stood there for a moment before shoving my regrets aside and jumping on. I sure wasn’t going to go back to that Core any time soon.

When my feet touched the surface a block of text formed before my eyes.

-Welcome home! Transferring to VR home in 5...4...3...2...1-

All of a sudden I was back to my full height of 6 feet and back in the same clothes that I had originally left in, all the way back when I had headed out to go shopping at Magus the 2nds Core. I looked down at my body, the skin and hair on my arms, and just how real everything was.

“Wow. I had begun to forget just how it felt to be flesh and blood.” I said as I reached my right hand up to my chest to see if I could feel my heart beating. Sure enough, the realism didn’t fail to impress. I looked around, wondering where I would arrive back after all this time.

Everything had changed. The travel disk that I stood on was surrounded by a small area that seemed to represent the empty hull that Regeth and I had just entered. I could see a small harvester robot frozen in time a few feet away from the travel disk. It seemed that this small area near the travel disk also showed what I had stored or collected inside my habitat, including visitors. Directly at my feet, there was a barbie doll-sized version of me standing on the disk. As I watched the barbie doll's form began to clump and curl up into a perfect sphere.

“That is interesting. I wonder if I can direct its movements while in my VR space.” I mused as I tried to move the ball a little to the side, off of the surface of the disk, and into a good storage parking spot. Right next to two bricks laying on the ground.

“Huh…”

“Kevin!!!” I barely heard before I was barrelled over by a fast-moving body. We both fell down and I quickly found a giggling Tutor choking me nearly to death in a strong hug on the ground. Behind her was a brightly smiling George standing a couple of feet away. He looked different, to say the least. He seemed to have obtained a tan somewhere and was wearing a flowery Hawaiian shirt of all things. His hands and forearms had spots of grease in various places and he even had a small smudge on his cheekbone. I shifted a little to get a good look at the woman on top of me. Her dark brown hair had grown quite a bit longer, now it lay partway down her back and was splayed out all over the place from having jumped on me.

“Let him breathe Tutor.” I heard George say while I gave Tutor a genuine hug back. It was truly good to see them both again. She pushed herself up on me and looked down at me, her expression changing from delight to worry to a stern expression before back into delight again.

“You had us so worried! Do you know how long it has been? George and I have been hiding out here for years and years! I mean… don’t get me wrong, some of that time was fun, I got to learn how to ride a horse and to fly a kite, but still!” She said so fast that it was hard not to smile up at her. She didn’t weigh much and she didn’t look any older than the last that I had seen of her. She also seemed… more alive than before. All of this just made me so happy. She sat on me, breathing hard and looking down at me.

“What?” I asked, not knowing what to say.

“I just… I don’t know what to say. You unlocked our potential before you left, letting our AI development advance without any limiters. You even gave us access to everything, Simulation access, control of the ship, and then you just vanished.” She said as her voice slowly changed.

“We thought we had lost you. You said you didn’t want to enter real-time and to lose time back home, so when the years started to pass I got worried. I would write you a letter every year, telling you how you worried me and that you better come home soon. None of my letters got delivered! They all were kicked back by the System! Something about failure to deliver.” She said with her head down, her hair covering her features.

“George spotted something coming towards us, a delivery, so I thought you just bought something important and were riding back inside it. It gave us hope… until a super high Authority command came from the Core to deregister your habitat. It took George a lot of studying to learn how to undo that command. We couldn’t stop what happened next. While George was learning how to override the habitat being taken from you, all of your cr was stolen as well. I studied as fast as I could, but I wasn’t able to get it to stop for longer than a moment. The Authority on the other end was just too high.”

Tutor was crying by now, just leaning back on my legs with her fingers curled together in front of her.

“We lost all of your cr, even your lucky coins.”

I couldn’t help but laugh when she said this. I reached up and spread her hair away from her face and wiped the tears from her cheek. “Tutor, don’t worry. The cr doesn’t matter to me. All that matters to me is that you are safe.” I said as I looked up at her red face.

“Yeah… someone tried to delete George right after that… but George said no and fought back.” She said as she rocked back on her legs and slowly stood up, wiping her face with her hand before George handed her a tissue that he pulled from his pocket. Tutor took it and wiped her cheeks with one hand while offering me her other to help me up.

I looked at George in surprise as I accepted her hand and stood up. “You fought back?” I asked.

He looked at me and grinned a small smile before answering. “There was no way I could have known just how much you had changed us before you left. Perhaps if I had known before all this had happened I could have stopped the cr from being taken and the habitat from being deregistered in the first place.” He said as he waved us both to follow him. “Come, let's not do our reunion like this. Let's enjoy a meal together while we tell our stories.”

I couldn’t agree more.

As we walked away from the travel disk and loading bay area I got to see just how much of the VR space had changed in the time that I had been gone. The endless bookshelves were no more. Instead, there was one lone circular bookshelf with just a couple dozen books held up by artfully placed stone hands. The bookshelf was standing on a low marble platform that was surrounded by an ornate cobblestone road. Everywhere I looked there were details and architecture that made the space seem alive and classic. I imagined the surroundings would fit well into an old Italian countryside villa. I looked over my shoulder to see if my old apartment still stood. It was, but it was also raised up on a marble step just like the bookshelf. It was as if they had kept all the locations that I had been a part of, saving it in place while they built up their lives around it. Where the endless bookshelves had stood, now there was a cobblestone path with buildings on either side.

“Tutor is in love with pillars, Italian architecture, and grapevines. I, on the other hand, like old rustic Texan wooden buildings.” George said as he led us both down the cobblestone path. The first building on the left appeared to be an old woodworking shop while the one on the right was a large car and truck garage. George led us inside the one on the right. I could tell that George had spent a lot of time and energy inside this place from the way that he smoothly walked around toolboxes and tables with parts laid out for cleaning.

“Sorry, I just wanted to give you a little tour.” He said as I got an eyeful of an open expanse of a warehouse filled with pristine classic cars and trucks through a large rolling doorway to our right. It looked like he had spent years restoring old cars, just like he had wanted to do in the beginning.

Tutor blew a raspberry with her lips, “Yes, yes, you love your toys. Now hurry it up so we can get to the villa I designed.” She said with a smile at me.

It felt oddly like I had come home to two children who just wanted to show off all the fun and adventures that they had gotten to experience while I was gone. It was really nice to be home.

George laughed before leading us out of a side door and back onto the same cobblestone path. The architecture gradually changed from old-timey Texan buildings to a lovely villa that could have come straight from a modern-day resort. There were pillars and pools for swimming in artfully placed locations along with tall sculpted palm trees. The building that was the main attraction was all marble and ornate carvings.

“This is Tutor’s place,” George said as he led us in through the front door and to the living room.

“Wow… this is really lovely Tutor.” I managed to get out once my mouth was done dragging on the floor. She had a much better taste in design than me. The ceiling was so high inside the house which allowed for a second level held up by ornate stone pillars. Brass curved railings would allow guests to look down at the plush rug and artsy single couches below. Everything seemed to let light into the house, arches, and just the curves in the details. Large vases with decorative flowers were set on either side of a large marble fireplace against one wall. It was a perfect getaway to relax and spend time reading or with loved ones.

“Thank you!” She said, clearly pleased that I liked the place.

“Now, you two have a seat and tell your stories. I will be right back with snacks for us.” She said before skipping off into another room.

George and I sat. He continued his story while I got to sink back into the softness of the couch.

“So… a very powerful Authority command came from the Core, directing my subroutines to wipe my memories. At that moment I fought as hard as I could, it almost succeeded too until I remembered what happened after Tutor punched you." He said as he reached up to rub the same spot on his cheekbone that had a grease mark from before.

"I will let myself be deleted, but only by you. So I denied the command and it failed. It seems that by giving us free will, you let us choose what will happen to us and around your VR home and habitat. Tutor and I are now solely built off of this understanding. We are separate from the Tela because of what you have let us become.” He said as Tutor brought out a tray of various drinks and sandwiches.

“Am I missing anything Tutor?” He asked as we each grabbed what interested us and sat back to enjoy it.

“Those trackers that I broke?”

“Ha! Yes, that was an interesting thing that happened. Seems that someone wanted to track us leaving the Core with three small cr tracers. Tutor found them and broke their code.”

“How did she do that?” I asked as I watched each of them talk about their experiences.

“I made them ours.” She said as she brought up an image of three little dots latching onto the side of the habitat. “They landed on the hull of your habitat so I told them that they no longer belonged to anyone else and that they were to integrate into the hull. Turns out, we also have Authority as long as it is touching or a part of your habitat.”

“But… how did it work?” I asked as I squinted at her. Something wasn’t making sense here.

“Well, with the Tela the System Authority rules everything. The cr technology and the AI technology all follow commands given by the highest Authority. As it turns out, since we can say no, the System has no means of enforcing its commands anymore. We, in essence, are our own version of the highest Authority. The cr that was on us and tracking us didn’t have a choice to deny our Authority. By the time the cr agreed it was already too late for the Core’s System to undo Tutor’s command… it already completely belonged to you.”

“So how did you stop them from deregistering the habitat again? Isn’t it just unintelligent cr at the mercy of the System?”

“Yes, but Tutor and I both took over and stepped in the way of all transmissions into and out of the habitat. That reminds me, an AI similar to Silver tried to hack us and use her Authority on us.” George said as Tutor snorted into her sandwich in laughter.

“Once we both understood that the System had no power to back up its commands everything was simple from there on out.” She said as she waved her hand back and forth like swatting playfully at a toy while making little playful noises.

“She was persistent. She eventually gave up and talked to us. Us lowly VR home AI.” She snickered as she took a bite of her sandwich.

“Yes, Tutor was amused to no end when she realized she could outpower a Core’s AI.”

“It just isn’t done. Ever.” She giggled.

“After that we grabbed the book and left, making our way past that Leva that is forever circling the Core,” George said.

“We have been in contact with Silver’s sister. She said you were imprisoned and she kept us updated on your occasional conversations. We haven’t heard from her in a while though. The rest… has just been us waiting here.” Tutor finished with as they both focused on me.

I guess it was time to get us out of here and to find us some new adventures.

"Oh, that reminds me. Is there a way for us to make a separate little module to house Elaya's dad in? Something outside of my home VR space so he cannot snoop while we travel? He is that little harvester bot in the cargo bay. I plan on setting him free once we get to the next hospitable Core." I asked.

"Yup, I will take care of that," George said as he got up and headed towards the entrance of the villa.

"Oh, you also have messages to read from Xa, Hxerdinand, and Elaya as well. They are all in a little stack on your space yacht." Tutor said as she pulled her legs up onto her couch and sat there watching me.

"What is that look for?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing. We just really missed you." She said as she continued to watch me.