“Exposition dump initiated: We are on a colony world called Dust. You are in the middle of nowhere and I am supposed to guide you to the City so you can complete your orientation. You have four tools given to you by the benevolent Lauds Inc.! The Intel Shop is an information exchange where you sell your data for LuCre and buy data with the same. Everyone on Dust has access to this Shop in one way or another. The nanites in your blood have given you health, a way to digitize your senses, organ development, the textura, and, most importantly, me! Oh, and the Timelet is a datapad that receives data from the future.”

“WHAT!?”

“Exposition dump reinitiated: We are—”

“Nonono, I meant what about the Timelet stuff… and the future?”

“I understand. I can’t explain much more in regard to the nature of the Timelet other than it is designed to record your experiences and recorded data and, if needed, it will back it up to a registered checkpoint. Sort of like a data back-up but backed up to the past!”

“How is that possible? This is far beyond the technology I know. What year is it?”

“Now that I do know. We are in the year 349CF. The “CF” stands for Colony Founding.”

“What about in Earth time?”

“That is going cost approximately 5000 LuCre.”

“That sounds like a lot.”

“I appraise the total value of your data footprint to be approximately 1250 LuCre. We can add context to some of the data to increase its value, but I would recommend getting your necessities attended to. I detect hunger and thirst. It is unwise to go hungry while you are integrating with the nanites.”

“You’re so… bossy. Ah, ok. I have water. The sink is running even though I’m in the middle of nowhere. Food is already settled for this moment. I have my Danishes… wait, do I?” Bec quickly opened her fridge and sighed in relief. She stuffed a cream cheese Danish into her mouth. As she chewed, tears started to roll down her face. What a nightmare. It had to be a joke. Why were the Danishes still here, fresh and ready? Shouldn’t they have gone stale after the nearly three hundred fifty years of this colony plus god knows how long it has been since being on Earth. She barely believed it, if not for the feeling of grass under her feet when she stepped out of the trailer.

“Are you ok?” The AI sounded worried.

“Why do you care?”

“I can see that you are crying. I can also see that you’ve released endorphins into your brain, in order to elevate your mood. If you’re under mental distress, I can assist by giving you a neurotransmitter cocktail as well.”

“I didn’t do anything of any sort.” Bec sniffed. “My brain can handle this, no cocktail needed. Unless it’s alcoholic.”

“It’s not. I believe there is a program in the Shop that would teach me how to stimulate a sense of intoxication in you. It’s fairly pricey, however.”

“How much?” Bec was asking out of curiosity more than any genuine interest.

“The base package is 25,000,000 LuCre.”

“Fantastic.” She poured a cup of water and started sipping. She sat on the bed and leaned back. “What the fuck am I going to do?”

“I was under the impression that you were hired as an explorer. I would recommend exploring! Well, I would actually recommend reading the logs on the Timelet first, you are going to want to see them.”

Bec got the Timelet and it booted just as she looked at it. “You are controlling this thing?”

“Yes. I have protocols to optimize your use of the Timelet, your brain, and my programming are the unique key and interface for this device. Here is the time until the next checkpoint, this is how you get data from the future.” A timer saying 00:05:14:49:45 was slowly ticking down.

“This is confusing, why would I do anything if things are always going to be done for me?”

“Well, in general, I don’t know. Specifically, you are gonna want to learn from the actions recorded in the log.” Bec read the log.

Bec sniffed herself. Scent: Bacterial breakdown of excess sweat. She crinkled her nose. With the objective to “just look around and find a shower,” Bec exited the trailer. Looking around the area, she discovered a berry-bearing bush. She determined that the “sun” of this planet set to the east according to the magnetic compass in her phone. Utilizing this magnetic compass, Unnamed AI Assistant 3recorded that the berry bush was north-north-west of the trailer. She explains to Unnamed AI Assistant 3 that most phones have compasses that depended on connections to cellular towers ever since GPS systems were ruined after the Cascade. Bec’s phone was specially equipped with a true magnetic compass because of her job aspirations. This allowed Bec to make the inference that Dust rotates in a clockwise fashion. Bec found a north-south running stream approximately a kilometer east of the trailer. Bec sat in the river scrubbing her body clean. The river was estimated to be 20ºC. Bec fell unconscious. Bec died of blood loss. Bec’s last complete thought was, “Urrrgh, what is this red water?”

Bec was so done with this day. Could she just go back to bed?

“Yes, seems like you died pretty fast in that river. You have another log.”

This log said: Bec read the log. She chose to name Unnamed AI Assistant 3 with the name “Al” giving the reason that “it sorta looks like the word AI when written down.” Al notes that this only true in the Latin alphabet. Bec says that she’s disturbed by the sudden death at the river. She stayed in her trailer for two days, twenty-four hours and twenty-seven minutes. During that time, Bec noticed that the Danishes in her fridge had been altered before her awakening on Dust. She notes that, while the cream cheese Danishes are clearly still cream cheese, the ‘strawberry’ flavor had a tart, ‘electric’ flavor. With the objective of “finding food,” Bec went to the berry bush. Bec examined the bush to find rhomboid leaves and hard, red-white berries. She ate a handful. Flavor profile of unknown red-white berries: Bitter and ‘unpleasant.’ Bec starts wheezing. Bec gave unknown red-white berries the name “danger berries.” Her lips started to itch. Her breathing became impeded by a swollen tongue and throat. Attempts to use her fingers to give herself a tracheotomy failed. Bec fell unconscious. Bec died of anaphylaxis-related oxygen deprivation. Bec’s last complete thought was, “Fuck this planet.”

“Al, please explain.”

“This is a log of your actions in another timeline.”

“And I named you there?”

“Yes. May I say that names aren’t supposed to be jokes?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bec wanted to cry again. “So, I am seeing how I manage to kill myself in the first hour of exiting the trailer not just once, but twice. How do I know I won’t kill myself again?”

“You can’t!”

“Is there anything I could use to defend myself? Can I buy something in the Shop that teaches me Kung-Fu?”

“Yes! You could study martial arts from the best of the best if you have the LuCre to spare.” Bec felt like she just heard Al recite a slogan from the rote way Al worded it. “But I don’t know how that will protect you from a deadly berry. I recommend just not eating it. Also, you’re broke. May I recommend you try to start using your Word first?”

Bec sighed. “What word?”

“No, your Word. I can see in your thought log that you didn’t capitalize ‘word.’ You obviously don’t know how important a Word is.”

Bec made a grimace. “More things I don’t know…”

“It is an alien planet full of alien technology, flora, and fauna.”

Bec laughed. It was a laugh of extreme consternation, but it still felt good. “Explain.”

“I am explicitly and deliberately unequipped to know about the nature of the Fabric, the most revolutionary technological discovery that Dust has to offer.” Bec didn’t want to push on why in the everlasting fuck that was the case, so Al continued, “But I can say that you were assigned a Word, the key to manipulating the Fabric. It’s actually the first word in my logs. Do you remember it?”

Bec furrowed her brow. “Back when I injected,” her face soured even more. “When I injected you, I hear something. Wake? Wait? What was it? No no no, it was WAVE.” The word felt weird on her tongue. No, it felt like her whole body vibrated with the word. The Word.

“Yes, fantastic. Remembering the Word is so, so important… I think? Like I said, the Word lets you tap into the Fabric, I think? It’s all very fuzzy.”

Glossing over how an AI could be uncertain about things that it knows, Bec asked, “What does it do?”

“All I know is that it would be spoilers to tell you.”

“Ah yeah, I don’t like spoilers… wait, why the fuck would it matter if I was spoiled?”

“I don’t know because that would also be spoilers… Bec, I can tell you’re making a really awful face. You should smile more.”

Bec didn’t know how much madder she could get.

Al almost sounded panicked when it said, “Oh wow, I can see that did not work. I see you’ve invented a form of me in your mind just so you can imagine inflicting harm to me.”

Bec had indeed started imagining a man with a t-shirt with the words ‘Al’ printed on it. She indeed also started kicking that man in the groin. She was glad the exercise worked on her sanity and in scaring Al.

“Maybe, instead of me telling you, poorly, about your Word, I took the liberty to find a book called ‘Words Have Power!’ in the Intel Shop. It’s fairly cheap. 5,000 LuCre is within your grasp.”

“They want me to give info on the environment, but the environment keeps killing me. I’m screwed Al, I don’t want to die.” Bec was getting desperate. “You said I could increase the value of my already existing data?”

“You have a lot of photos and a few books in your phone. By giving some context to attach to photos, they become less just a random photo and more a photo of something. That makes it more valuable. It does take time to re-evaluate the value on the market because we’re not that close to the central core. Which is where I must go, by the way. It is my goal as an AI.”

Bec was not about to start selling her precious photos of her mom for a quick buck so she disregarded that notion outright. “The central core is in the City?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s my goal, too.” Bec liked having a real goal set out in front of her, even if it was exactly what the assholes that dropped her into the middle of nowhere wanted. Maybe she should make it a secondary goal to enact sweet revenge on Lauds management for this twisted game they’re playing.

“Back to the Word thing. Purely out of curiosity, I would recommend you try to figure out what your Word does before any primer. I think that there was a good reason that I can’t explain to you about it.”

“So, you think that Lauds wants me to learn for myself?”

“Couldn’t hurt!”

“Yes… yes it could.” Bec flopped onto her bed.