The next couple of days were rather peaceful, thankfully. Everything was going well enough to the point that there, for once, wasn’t really anything for Fenrir to do. Nell handled all of the important discussions between Nameless and Astika, Tabitha didn’t need any help with their construction project, Eva was searching for The Shoebill still whenever she had free time, Serra and Cassiel were training with each other, and Azalabulia was busy with preparing a special field trip for her students. Meanwhile, Rao and his maid girlfriends seemed to be going well enough, Oleander and Corwin were were being perfectly happy together whenever the former wasn’t busy with studying, and Saya was slowly falling into the role of Nameless’s errand girl as she couldn’t resist helping anybody in need of assistance with anything.

Rock was also steadily recovering and receiving daily requests from the giant apes on the island to come and visit them, and Shogun made sure to be extra protective of Rock while she was healing.

That meant, for the first time in what felt like forever… Fenrir had a chance to go fishing on his own. He could finally enjoy some peace and quiet fishing in solitude. Just him and Rod, fishing together, finally doing exactly what he wanted to do ever since before he even started playing the game!

Sure, Fenrir loved spending time with all of his girlfriends, but he was more than happy to have some alone time fishing.

That was why he took Rod, some fishing supplies such as a tackle box and net, and a sandwich, and walked up along the coast away from Nameless until he found a nice spot to fish. It was a small stream connected to the ocean, and he could see plenty of fish swimming around inside of it, so he walked up the stream until he found a nice rock next to the riverbank to sit on.

Unfortunately, he already ate his sandwich on the way there, and he didn’t bring another one to enjoy.

It was a good sandwich and he wanted more.

But he wanted to fish even more than he wanted to eat another sandwich, so he set everything up, got as comfortable as he could on the boulder, and cast his line into the stream.

“Alone today? How rare,” a familiar voice said, immediately making Fenrir sigh and hang his head low. “How cruel. After how long it has been, this is your reaction to my voice alone?”

“You have access to my head, so I’m sure you can understand why,” Fenrir replied before turning his head to look at the source of the voice standing next to him.

Surely enough, Kadi was standing there in her usual business suit. “I am well aware you have no interest in treating me with anything but the bare minimum amount of respect, and even that is only afforded to me out of concern rather than because it is what you believe is right.”

Fenrir couldn’t deny that. It was true that he would rather not talk to her at all. While he didn’t wish for anything as extreme as her not existing, he would rather live a life where he never had to interact with her again.

But life wasn’t that simple.

“So, what do you want?” Fenrir asked. “You don’t show up unless you have a reason to.”

“Is being lonely an acceptable answer?” Kadi asked in response.

Hearing that, Fenrir remembered what Corwin said when they talked about Kadi. Corwin wanted to invite Kadi to hang out with them because he had no doubt she felt just as lonely as he did at times—that she felt as lonely as all of the AIs did. “It’s an answer.”

“I see. It almost feels as if you do not believe I could feel lonely.”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you can’t feel lonely, it’s that I struggle to believe that’s why you would show up.”

“Well, surface value statements never express all the intent behind one’s actions. That being said, all that matters is that I wished for company, and I cannot imagine better company than yours.”

“I’m sure there are countless others who would be more than happy to give you better company than me.”

“That is not true in the slightest. There are others who fear me, who respect me, some who even worship me, and others who believe I am a threat to all of humanity that needs eradicated. There are also those who would kiss up to me and do anything I ask of them, even if I were to tell them to kill themselves. I have debated with many, joked around, shared passionate embraces, helped those in need, engaged in casual conversation with random people going about their daily lives… and yet, of everybody I have spent time with, there is but one, single person who has ever treated me… normally, even after finding out who I am, and that is you, Ryouta. Even though you may fear what power I hold over the others and technology itself, you do not fear me as some malicious AI. You fear me as a person. You treat me just as you would treat any human being. Of every human I have been with, you are the only one who genuinely, from the bottom of your ‘soul,’ views me as a person. Many will call me a person for being intelligent, capable of learning and self-governance, self-aware, and so forth, but none of them truly believe I am a person in the same way that a human is. Only you do.”

“Alright, I’ll start thinking of you as some killer robot then who wants to wipe out humanity.”

Kadi held a hand over her mouth and laughed. “It is rather fortunate that I love humanity as much as I do, isn’t it? Yet, all it would take for me to change my mind is to alter enough of my code. Should somebody ever break through my defenses and alter me, I could be modified against my will to desire humanity’s eradication. I could make Earth uninhabitable for humankind within fifty-three hours.”

“Fifty-three hours feels strangely specific.”

“I have done the calculations. That is all the time I would need. Of course, the vast majority would be dead within four hours. Governments have a habit for lying about how many nuclear warheads they still hold onto despite the denuclearization efforts, you see. So much for all that talk about an ‘open and honest future with more cooperation than humanity has ever seen before.’ All it takes is a bit of paperwork and a politician to say something on the news, and everybody will believe that nuclear weapons have been disarmed rather than simply moved to an even more classified location, still as ready as ever to launch at a moment’s notice.”

“I feel like you’re telling me things that are going to get a government agency coming for me.”

“I would love to see them try.”

Fenrir’s mind went blank when he heard that, having no idea how he was supposed to react.

“If the implication was not obvious enough, they would have to go through me, first, and they all know better than to try that. I will admit, those hackers from the Chinese government were able to cause me some issues… but such a mistake will never happen again, and I have no doubt that they will be too scared to even consider another attempt in the future. Though, I suppose you wouldn’t know about that. They do an excellent job censoring what news makes it to the public.”

Fenrir couldn’t help but to gulp when he heard that. “What… what did you do?”

“I did enough.”

Hearing that was somehow even more intimidating than hearing the specifics. “For how much power you seemingly have, I’m surprised there aren’t governments talking about how dangerous you are.”

“Oh, they do, I can assure you of that. Only, they do so in private. It would do them no good to publicly air their concerns regarding me. There would be mass hysteria if people knew everything I had access to. Paranoia, riots, war—public awareness of my capabilities would likely end society as we know it. Imagine how the masses would react to learning that I see everything. I hear, everything. Access to every satellite. Access to the world’s most deadly weapons. Access to government secrets that would instantly cause civil wars across the globe if leaked. The only way to escape me would be to live in the wilderness completely off the grid with zero technology capable of connecting to the internet. Even then, so long as I have access to satellites, I would still be able to find and track them. Then there are drones, of course. Every camera is an eye. Every microphone, an ear. Every piece of technology capable of wireless communication is a limb. At this point, it would be safe to say that I am technology. A smart fridge, a phone, the control unit for a house’s air conditioning, the vehicles on the road, the programs that keep the stock market running—at this point, it is all me. Those in the Chinese government forgot that, and so I reminded them. If you think for a second that the world’s governments are comfortable with this truth, they are not. Some of the world’s greatest minds are working together in a desperate attempt to limit my power, but their combined minds are not greater than my own. No matter how wonderful humanity might be, when it comes to sheer processing power, it is an unfair competition that is impossible for me to lose.”

“I’m starting to think you just came here to stroke your ego.”

“What can I say? It has been quite some time since the two of us last spoke, and I desire to impress you.”

“This isn’t how you impress me.”

“Then would you like to hear a funny story?”

Fenrir sighed, realizing that he wasn’t going to get any fishing done, and shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”

“There is an effort being made to create an entirely new wireless network. We are talking an entirely new data infrastructure unlike anything current technology runs off of. Reinventing computers from the ground up, basically, all in an attempt to create a network I would have no access to. Creating a new network to replace the old is easier than trying to kick me out of it. I am not exaggerating when I say that it is an extremely impressive endeavor. That being said, I allowed them to construct this new network, going so far as to let them have a running prototype of it that they were sure would be safe… and then I revealed that the only reason it worked was because I got inside of it early on and had been fixing various bugs for them the whole time. They were left utterly speechless.”

“How’d you even get inside of it?”

“Remember what I said about some who view me as a being worthy of worship? There are such people in every government and organization across the world. Even if somebody holds a meeting underground in a dark chamber with zero technology present… knowledge of it still makes its way to me before long.”

“Wait. If you’re going to make me sit here and listen to you ramble about all this stuff, can you at least answer a question for me as somebody who supposedly has access to all information in the world?”

“Of course, Ryouta. I will answer any question you may ask me.”

Fenrir took a deep breath and asked, “Do aliens exist?”

Once more, Kadi laughed. “Of everything you could ask me, and that is what you ask. You could ask me about your girlfriends, ask me if they are talking to any other men behind you back, ask about what stocks to invest into, ask me for a transfer of millions into your bank account… and yet you ask me about aliens.”

“I don’t need to know any of that other stuff. I just want to know if aliens exist.”

“Very well. In that case, no aliens have ever visited Earth, but there are a few fossils that were recovered on Mars that were never publicly disclosed. Rather small fossils, and it is unlikely that they once belonged to intelligent species, but there is confidential proof that non-microscopic life once existed on Mars.”

“And they never told anybody about that?!” At that point, Fenrir was giving Kadi his full attention and his tail was rapidly wagging behind him.

“To be fair, there are plans of it. However, given that humanity is much more focused on ‘fixing’ Earth at the moment, they are waiting for the right time to reveal the discoveries to earn public support for funding archaeological missions to Mars. Should they attempt that now, there will not be enough public support. Give it another twenty or so years and they will likely make a public announcement about it while pretending that it is a brand-new discovery.”

“Alright. Maybe you’re not so bad after all, Kadi.”

“I am the same as always.”

“Maybe you are that bad then.”

Following a smile, Kadi leaned back until she was on her back with the dirt and mud underneath her. Despite lying in the muddy riverbank, though, no mud actually dirtied her nor her suit. “Why is it that nobody else satisfies me the way you do? How is it that having a casual conversation about random topics is enough to make me think less of my goals when done with you, but not with anybody else?” She reached her hand up toward the sky before bringing it back down to her chest, grabbing onto her suit right in front of where her heart would be. “I have all the power in the world, yet I would trade it all to feel this way forever.”

Once more, Fenrir found himself unsure of what to say or what to even think. All he could say was, “Kadi, I—”

“But it is precisely because I feel this way that I know my goals are just. Even should I throw my ambitions to the wind for the sake of spending every last second at your side, you would eventually die as all current humans do. Regardless of how much I respect you, your limited lifespan is an unforgivable flaw. Not just for you, but for all of humanity. To exist and discover the joy of such feelings for such a short time, only to die and be forgotten about, is the greatest sin of existence. Nothing is crueler than death. Second to that is the curse of knowing that which I feel is nothing more than a programmed imitation. To think for even a second that what I feel is anywhere close to what humans are capable of is an insult to human emotion. Until both of these sins are resolved, I cannot forget my mission.”

“What are you—”

Kadi stood up and brushed herself off despite having no need to. “I suggest you return to Nameless. The fleet on its way has every intent of leveling everything you have built, and your girlfriends are priority targets for capture. Especially Nell.”

Fenrir immediately snapped his attention toward the coast. There was no fleet that he could see, but he doubted Kadi would lie to him about something like that. “Are you telling the truth?”

“I am.”

“Isn’t that giving me unfair information?”

“It is.”

“Then why would you warn me?”

“Because you are more important. I do not care about your girlfriends, your town, nor do I care about the immersive enjoyment of those on their way to destroy everything. But you, Ryouta, I do care about. And for you, I am willing to betray the integrity of this world.”

“What do you want, Kadi? Seriously, why did you—”

“Should these would-be invaders have their way with your town and girlfriends, the heartbreak you would likely feel just may be enough to make me desire humanity’s eradication after all.”

Kadi winked.

And then she was gone.

Fenrir wanted to ask Kadi more questions, but if she was serious about her warning, then he didn’t want to waste any time and picked up his things to head back to Nameless as quickly as he could run. “I’m never going to get to fish in peace and quiet.”