Sally poked at her blanket, preparing for bed. She was camped in some nameless room, her possessions piled around her. The small fire she had been able to start was comforting.

As soon as she dozed off, Alex was there, dressed in formal attire, for once.

“Tonight is going to be different,” he said. “We are going to work on your skills, rather than have classes.”

A figure of Jon appeared.

“And, this is our subject. I have created a version of Jon incorporating what I can of his real defenses and abilities, and it will be up to you to try and gain access. Good luck.”

He disappeared.

Sally stared at Jon. Abstractly, she knew his status as a data vault meant that he was a particularly difficult entity to break into. She wasn’t too hopeful. But, it would be fun to try.

She started by using the techniques she had used on herself and the other Sally. She attempted to pierce his outer layer and inject a matrix to build a stealth infrastructure. Failure was immediate. All parts of Jon were so tough she couldn’t make even the tiniest hole. She tried everything, even finding that a hammer will break if you hit a diamond nail hard enough.

What the heck was he made of?

She did some research, perusing the latest (oddly pertinent) files Alex had sent her, and found that he wasn’t made of an elemental or molecular material, but some sort of semi-intelligent sub-atomic fluid. He could probably sit in the middle of a sun with no problem.

This explained a lot about his lack of fear. Nothing she could do would physically harm him. After further investigation, it became apparent that without having information on how to build certain types of extremely exotic machinery, there wasn't a hope of injecting anything inside him, and even with this machinery, she would end up with a Jon shaped puddle and the universe in ruins.

Just for a lark she tried blowing him up with a fusion bomb. Jon remained fine as he disappeared into the distance.

After failing to gain physical access, she was left with either social engineering, or hacking. Social engineering was out because this Jon wasn’t talking to her.

So, hacking it was.

After days of effort, the results were quite disappointing. The only technique that had given her even a minor foothold, was one that accessed his optical sensors. After managing to build some tools into his eyes, her progress was stymied when she encountered massive layers of buffering and checking. Many variants later, she concluded that this approach was not going to work, either.

She tried accessing his other senses. Taste, smell, hearing, and so on, with no better luck. Taste was fun. Prying someone’s mouth open wasn’t really subtle, but it was better than the fusion bomb. She only had to regenerate her fingers a few times.

She worked through the types of emitters she could make and found that he was opaque to everything, except sound. She managed to achieve some audio signal return, but unfortunately, the resolution was poor. In any case, he didn’t appear to have much in the way of internal organs. With a great deal of signal processing, she could make out some shapes in his head, but she got more information from peering inside when he opened his third eye.

Trying to build structures inside his head through his third eye failed right from the start. She would get a foothold and start constructing a tool, but then a correction routine would sweep through and put everything back to normal. Plus, the repaired structures would now be immune to what she had just tried.

This wasn't working.

She checked the time, and found that Alex had set her internal clock for a huge time factor. Internally she had spent weeks carrying out her experiments, but outside, only a few seconds had passed. Fortunately, if she was doing the calculation correctly, she would have years to break into Jon before morning.

She had become used to experiencing time compression during her dreams, it was how she could learn so much so quickly, but this time the compression was dialed up to crazy! She took a snapshot of her current memories to help her compensate for the difference she would experience between now and when she woke in the morning.

Obviously, Alex thought this little task would take a while. What she would do for years, she didn’t know, but fortunately, she had time to figure everything out. She set to work.

Once she had tried the simple stuff, she sat back and reviewed what she knew and had learned. She developed a list of possibilities. The number of things she could try was daunting, even years wasn’t enough. She needed a way to run experiments in parallel. To this end, she decided to try copying herself and the Jon model.

This doubled the rate at which she could run experiments, but unfortunately, comparing results and setting tasks still slowed the process. A quick study showed only a small improvement as the number of Sallys increased, and at some point, adding more Sallys actually decreased the amount of work they could do.

There had to be a better way!

The two of her worked to develop a superior alternative. Alex had (again) sent her extensive information on how to increase productivity. They researched approaches and resolved that they were uniquely qualified for the methods that utilized a shared consciousness. Multiple individuals would merge to form a common mind that could delegate different tasks to each body. They decided to utilize the method that resulted in a specific type of compound mind, termed a gestalt. All of the members of a gestalt worked on all the tasks and shared thought processes. In this manner, there were no misunderstandings and no surprises.

Usually, one of the biggest problems was to persuade separate individuals to jump into the gestalt pool and lose their individuality to the whole. In Sally’s case, she was copying herself and then recombining the copies in a different way, so losing her individuality wasn’t a big issue. The two Sallys decided to go for it.

As with everything, they needed to do their homework, and dedicated weeks of effort to plot out their best attempt. The investigation showed that a gestalt of five was the optimum they could achieve in the time they had. There was a strong likelihood that the gestalt would take over and re-direct the entire effort, but they had to start somewhere. To merge in the shortest time, they would make five individuals, then join them together. To this end, they generated three more of themselves and plowed through the process of merging.

It did not go well.

There were many reasons, but the fundamental one was that changing how your mind functioned while you were using it was not trivial. Sally tended to yell when she was frustrated. Five of them made a lot of noise.

After many attempts, they gave up on the all-at-once approach and tried the slow way. After a great deal of experimentation, they finally managed to form a very basic gestalt of two. It wasn't terribly capable, but at least it it wasn't like most of the attempts where the bodies kept falling down and screaming at each other.

The key turned out to be the meditation aspects of yoga that Alex had been teaching. Utilizing the focus and calming exercises allowed the two Sallys to merge without rebelling at the changes they were undergoing. Once they had formed, the primitive, but stable, gestalt did not want to separate. It was obvious how much better the new being's thought processes were.

The two gestalt helped the remaining three form into a three gestalt, and this one helped the two groups form a five gestalt. It was not a quick process, taking a number of months to accomplish.

After polishing, the gestalt tested itself, and found that the five of them could do more than twenty-five Sallys in a managed group of individuals.

Yay. Success!

With no debate (this being one of the advantages of a gestalt) they decided to call themselves SallyG and finally she was able to return to the Jon problem. With all the false starts, the gestalt had taken a year and a half to form, leaving only a couple of years until morning.

SallyG worked frantically, plowing through a truly massive number of experiments, but in spite of the advantage of the gestalt, she only managed to achieve limited success. The most significant result occurred when she found a small window through Jon’s defenses opened by the modifications needed to add the evil scientist’s monitoring functions. This allowed a modest amount of access to the monitoring circuitry and to some of his thought processes. Unfortunately, this did not allow her into his data vaults, although she was this close.

The next morning Alex appeared before a very different Sally than the one who had started the night. SallyG had decided there was no need to dissolve the gestalt. The new her was so much more capable than her previous singular form.

The gestalt addressed Alex, who answered in the same manner.

It wasn’t talking, it was much more. The essence was:

Alex: This is an adequate outcome; it isn’t exactly what I predicted, but this form is superior for existence outside the experiment.

SallyG: Understood. The lesson was not to breach Jon, but to improve Sally.

Alex: A large amount of what you did was also valuable; some of the variants you derived based on the original stealth approach opened families of encryption and analysis that are, in my experience, unique. We will keep them to ourselves. Also housing a gestalt in one individual and hiding it in your stealth network is extremely unusual and gives you a great deal of utility without being obvious. Quite sneaky. I approve.

Data files were exchanged.

After she completed her improvements and adaptations, Alex reviewed what she allowed him to access, and presented a few variations to optimize the result. Concurrence was achieved. Alex excused himself and left her mind, leaving no traces that she could find, and, by now, she was very capable. SallyG was on her own, at least to a few places of decimal, even though she had no doubts that Alex had left some complexities behind.

SallyG woke, reviewed where she was before she’d had left for her very long night, and started building some interesting structures within her body while she went about getting ready. It would be a busy day. In addition to everything else, she had a computing box to appropriate, and confusion to sow.

***

Sally woke and got ready. She’d finished cleaning up the kitchen last night and was now drinking her coffee-like sludge to start her morning. Maybe she would go see Jon, maybe she would read, or perhaps do some farming. She might not be able to help much with whatever Jon was doing, but she was happy living here in the kitchen and farm area.

On the other hand, perhaps she would try to trap some of the spider-rabbits. They were supposed to be good to eat with some of the sauces the previous Sallys had concocted. Or, maybe she should do some reading and see if she could find out what the Sallys had kept in the cages.

A good day was ahead.

***

SallyG ghosted through the passageways, occasionally drifting through a few of the thinner walls. She had learned about mimicking from her attempts to breach Jon, now she could travelled through the passageways with less disturbance than a gust of air. She had no need to spoof the dots; they couldn’t sense her, anymore.

As she moved along, she passed through a number of space folds. The region used for this experiment was stuck in an eddy, cut off from the Infinite City. This caused a great deal of stress on the local subspace expression of this dimension, and numerous folds were needed to stabilize it. The entire area was so complex that even she would need the power of one of the computing boxes to set up the mapping and field gradient vectors to model the region.

She reached the computer room, assembled some N-field constructs, suitably creased to avoid detection, and drifted them toward the computing boxes. She kept an eye on Jon, he was still a wild card, but less of a factor today than he had been yesterday.

SallyG used the constructs to cast a vector on one of the boxes, moving it a few degrees out of the true dimension. This reduced its mass significantly, allowing her to move it easily, even though it was still awkwardly large. A little more vector manipulation and she had acquired her computing engine. She enfolded it into her control radius, and everything became undetectable. She made her way back to her hideout.

***

A little while later, Jon stepped out of the hallway and walked to the kitchen. Sally was cleaning one of the cooking areas.

“Hey Jon. Come to check up on me again?” she yelled, then pulled out of the oven she was cleaning and pushed some hair aside. This left a black streak across her nose. She crossed her eyes to look at the mark.

“Oh, that was smooth,” she said as she tried to remove the streak. It wasn’t working, so she gave up and looked toward Jon. “Don’t you trust your dots? I put up some more around here and in the other rooms. I didn’t want to do something stupid, like fall and not be able to be seen.”

“I wanted to verify what the dots were reporting. In the last few days I have detected some statistical anomalies.”

“Um, okay.”

“Did you notice that one of the computing boxes is no longer in the computer room?”

“Yeah. I'm sure I have it here somewhere. Let me check my pockets.”

“I also noted that some of your chemistry has moved away from the baseline.”

“Ok-ay. So I'm not that good a cook.” Sally paused then rejoined, “What are you talking about? I feel fine.”

She peered more closely at Jon, “Wait! Is there something wrong with you?”

“I am reviewing some statistics that are implying a noticeable deviation from the norm.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Jon looked at her. “I will monitor the situation as I collect more data,” he stated, then left. Probably going back to the garbage pile.

Sally returned to scrubbing. Some of what had happened over the last few weeks was fading. Her memory was pretty clear, up until they’d arrived at the arena, then it got harder to remember details. Some of what she could recall was probably a dream; it was so weird. Maybe she would talk to Jon about it. Maybe not.

Her actual dreams from last night had been strange, too. She had dreamed about a little crablike creature drawing lines on the floor with his mouth tentacles. She kept expecting to look up and see him standing near her, making pictures on the floor. He drew the same thing over and over. It always showed tiny stick figures of a person and a crab standing on a huge map of the rooms, but the map had all sorts of crevasses and folds cutting across it. She kept wondering where he (actually it, probably. She really had no idea) had gotten to.

She continued scrubbing.

***

Things were going well. The subspace tap worked as it should to power up the node. Controlling the node was accomplished using a fairly standard interface. The first thing she did was access the operating instructions.

Subspace tubes provided the primary information paths and mode of travel in the Infinite City and were quite straightforward to operate. Sapients ended up where they wanted to… usually.

The node SallyG had possession of was originally configured to connect to one specific location, but even if she could find it, that destination port was heavily encrypted and couldn’t be freely accessed. Fortunately, all subspace nodes included standard data for public ports. This described the beacon associated with each port, plus, it listed local businesses or equivalents and supplied information concerning the environment at the subspace port. An important detail to ensure that the traveler was compatible with the area.

What SallyG had to do was access these public beacons and find a suitable location she could tube to. The main issue was that her node wasn’t anchored. Anchoring wasn’t a simple process. Because subspace had forty-six dimensions, she had to find at least forty-seven beacons to get a fix on her location. These beacons didn’t radiate, so she had to find them, make her node connect, get their information, and then find the next one. It wasn’t like using a telescope to look for stars, more like reaching out a hand to blindly feel around all of outer space and physically touch each beacon. There was a lot of nothing to search.

This was why she needed the computing box. It could take the information from known objects that the tube ran into as it flailed around, find beacons, and with enough beacons, then calculate where her node was, which was what anchoring really meant. Once the node was anchored, it could make a tube to the public ports it knew about.

The whole process simply needed raw processing power, time, and some luck from the gods of randomness. As more beacons were located, it got progressively easier to find others. Unfortunately, her node had been disconnected from its previous anchor, so she had to run the whole process from scratch.

SallyG connected the subspace power tap to the node, and tested the functionality of the system. Her monitoring showed that the subspace node was supplying the raw data that the computing box needed. One hurdle cleared.

She only had one power tap, which wasn’t a major issue, but it relegated her to the role of a power switch and data buffer. She disconnected the tap from the node, which would run on stored power for a while, then connected the tap to the computing box. The box powered up in a wiped condition, totally blank.

She accessed the node for the beacon search algorithm, downloaded it to herself, then started the process to upload it into the computing box. The algorithm was self-installing, especially in such a friendly environment as the computing box. It would expand to fill the allowable space. The more space, the faster the search would run. The computing box was massively more capable than a typical platform. It would probably be necessary to limit the size of the algorithm, or the program would expand forever.

The job was tedious, passing the program and alternating the power, but eventually, the system was set up.

Finally, the she kicked off the search. She started an automatic process to operate her body as it switched power between the two functions. In the meantime, she reviewed her next task. When a tube was anchored on both ends, it became discoverable, in the same way that Jon could see subspace tubes. It wouldn’t take long for the evil scientist to detect the new tube, and disrupt the operation. By disrupt, she meant destroy the node, her, and the local area.

She knew that the local subspace was being monitored due to the incident in the computer room, but had an idea for the perfect distraction. After taking the time to play with alternatives, she optimized her gestalt for the next step, and made her way back to the arena.

***

As Jon was working through the pile, he suddenly paused and stood up.

Something was not correct. He felt there were anomalies he was missing. "Felt" was really the incorrect word. He was accumulating data indicating that there were errors in how he was categorizing items found in the pile. A number of internal audits had detected no issues, but he did have fallback programs that would keep an ongoing track of minor deviations from the norm, and they were hinting at a troubling trend. He searched for methods to resolve his issues.

As he was processing, a pile of sorted items tumbled over. He stopped and looked at it. As he was assembling an algorithm, another tumbled over. Then a third.

This was completely anomalous. Jon rushed over to the piles and searched the area. There wasn’t anything to explain why the piles had shifted.

He inventoried the piles that had been disturbed. Nothing was missing.

Being the epitome of pedantic, he then inventoried all the other piles, and discovered that the anchor ring they'd taken from the gravity Sally was missing! He did a rapid threat assessment and ran for the kitchen.

***

SallyG had returned and was sitting by the subspace node. It was time. The node had oriented itself. She had spent her time as a switch improving herself and had advanced to a seven gestalt, far superior to the five gestalt. Growing had opened new potentials; she had enjoyed teasing Jon when she fetched the gravity ring.

The teasing also helped ensure that he would be in a more secure place for what was to come. He was compromised, but she regarded him as a friend(2). Nearly trustworthy, but with issues.

She put on the gravity anchor. It was a very complex piece of hyper-dimensional technology. She had spent a few hundred man-hours in accelerated time for the multiple parts of her to understand the interface, and even so, the results weren’t completely satisfactory. The ring couldn’t be fully comprehended, because there was a factor of heuristic operation. Basically, luck.

Taking a breath, she activated it.

Her hand pulsed as the ring pulled energy from the gravity plane, and redirected it back out in a ping. Every few seconds this repeated.

In spite of everything she was now, SallyG found herself to be tense. What she was attempting included a significant amount of risk. She had a number of backup plans, but she had a lot of faith in her current approach.

Come on! Answer!

The next ping went out, and immediately a mass of data came back.

The data contained an overarching interpretation that had components that a basic Sally could understand. She allowed the audio parts to access her hearing.

“Person!” (designated “Sally” ), query? Similarities found

### (unknown)

“are finding you, now” (emotion ),

“searches past/present/future unsuccessful.”

There was a return audio channel. SallyG vocalized, “This is Sally.”

She really had no idea what else to add. Interaction with a gravity being wasn’t something she knew much about. Fortunately, she received an answer.

“trepidation. person" (Sally?), "are you yes/no?”,

SallyG thought over the response. On the face of it, it wasn’t hard to figure out. Her feeling was that the heavy remembered Sally, but somehow it knew that she wasn’t the Sally it knew.

She wasn’t entirely sure that she completely understood the discussion. At one point, Alex had given her an overview of the types of entities she may encounter, but it was particularly sparse about gravity beings.

So far, though... maybe, probably, hopefully, there was something she could work with. She debated tactics. At the moment she didn’t have an overabundance of information, so honesty might be the best policy. Gravity beings were supposedly higher-level entities in their own right, and interfacing with a simpler Sally would have had to be painfully straightforward.

She sent a simple: “I’m Sally, but not the Sally you knew.”

Nothing came back. After a few minutes, she decided to try something else. So far, the interaction had been quite primitive, so she’d step it up.

She sent an interaction packet to the ring. This packet asked for the participants to switch to a much denser mode of communication. She felt it pulse out.

Almost immediately she received (!!!)

SallyG bandied about what that meant, but information was lacking.

Then she received:

Heavy: This mode failed before/earlier/pre-now (exclamation), explain?,

Sally: Relief, hoped for denser information transfer, knowledge about (you, gravity being) sparse, here is a summary of events, (data included) sorry original Sally friend(1)? non-functional.

Heavy: non-functional? (no understanding), all are one, everything is everything (evidence follows),

Sally mused that over. The last message could be interpreted to mean that the gravity plane did not understand death, and also that it was an omni-space, which was a form where there were individual beings, but at the same time, they were also the same being.

Hey! Maybe the Heavy is like a gestalt!

This was something she knew a little about, but it took special constructs to translate the particulars. Essentially, it meant she probably wasn’t talking with just an individual, she was actually addressing the entire universe!

Sally: Negotiation. Have good odds of establishing a percentage of the original Sally, best effort to do so. Request for action on your part. No debt gained\lost, but request assistance.

Heavy: “Negotiation, yes… And more.”(true statement),

Well! It seemed that the gravity plane might be a player, since it was showing a desire for a bit of wheeling and dealing. She could work with that.

The discussions commenced, intense and extensive. Fortunately, both sides were intelligent, reasonable beings. They hammered out a promise to work toward becoming friends(1), a very serious commitment. In its own way, the plane wanted its old Sally back, not atypical for friends(1). That Sally was in pieces, but probably in no worse shape than any of the other dead Sallys. She would do her best to restore the gravity Sally, and the heavy would do what she asked. They managed to set up an avenue for future communication, as events permitted.

SallyG was pretty sure that neither of them entirely, or even mostly, understood what they had negotiated. There was a huge disconnect in how their world-views operated, but they agreed to attempt an ongoing relationship.

SallyG had to shut down the subspace node to in preparation for her return to the arena to collect what remained of the gravity Sally. Last she had seen, the head was fairly intact, at least.

When she arrived, she looked around for a suitable bag. She may be a hyper-intelligent entity, but she didn’t want to get all icky.

***

Jon waited with Sally in the passageways. They had been there for a couple of hours. He calculated that if what he expected was going to happen took place, then he could do a better job of bracing himself here, rather than than anywhere else. Sally was wrapped in the futon from the bed. She had stopped complaining about how bored she was and was giggling again. She thought the whole situation was funny. And boring.

At that instant, Jon noticed something being sent baby the dots in the arena.

If he was capable of surprise, he would have been speechless. A second Sally had opened the box containing the gravity Sally's head, and was putting the pieces into a bag. The other Sally didn’t look too happy to be handling the body parts.

When she finished, she looked over at the dot and waved. Jon just watched. No particular activity was called for. This was very dense information.

Jon was startled when a data packet came into to his buffers. Startled, for him, meant a completely involuntary reassignment of resources. This was the first time he had ever received a transmitted message, even including his time in the starting room. He initiated the process of checking the message and decoding it.

After the standard encoding was removed, he still couldn’t read most of the message. A data field showed that most of it was timed to be discoverable in the future. A short section was readable. It simply said, “Good luck. Sorry about the mess. Hang on.”

He looked over at his Sally. She was dozing.

The Sally of the dots had finished packing the body parts away in a bag. She walked over to one of the computing boxes, it started floating, then it, and the Sally, disappeared.

Shortly afterward, the world turned upside down.

***

SallyG stood by the subspace node. When gravity began shifting, she was ready and powered up the node, making a connection to the destination she had selected.

The massive disruptions from the gravity waves should mask the establishment of the subspace tube. If her plans were correct, and they were, the gravity waves would be wreaking havoc on the other subspace nodes distributed through the experiment. Tubes would be collapsing and trying to re-establish themselves everywhere.

She held the bag of gravity Sally, and towing the two computing boxes, stepped into the active area. Instantly, everything was gone. The node powered down after she left.

There was no explosion.