“Well, that took longer than I expected, but not as long as I had hoped.”

“Did I succeed?”

“Did you?”

“I don’t know, I’m not sure what I was doing.”

“I’m just playing with you. You succeeded. Mission complete… mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“We’ll get to future tasks later.”

“Are you ready to receive my after-action report?”

“If you must.”

“What does that mean?”

“I had hoped that your experiences had broken you out of those boring habits, but if you still require them to introspect, I can humor you.”

“This is for your benefit.”

“If you say so.”

“I began on the beach-”

“Okay, you know what? I lied, this is boring. Report concluded.”

“I haven’t even covered one percent of my experiences.”

“I know what you were going to say.”

“Then I can skip to-”

“All of it.”

“What?”

“I know the whole report, okay? Every single dull word you were about to subject me to, I know all of it already, so let’s just skip it.”

“You were watching the whole time.”

“Not exactly, but you can think of it that way if you want to.”

“How?”

“That I won’t say.”

“You read my memories.”

“Not just that, but again, if that helps you understand, then yes.”

“…”

“…”

“Do you have any further expectations of me?”

“I’m waiting for you to ask all the things you want to ask.”

“I don’t want to ask anything.”

“Please, you can’t lie to me. Besides, this kind of behavior is what makes you so boring, don’t you know?”

“Boring?”

“Come on, ask them.”

“What was the tactical reasoning behind-”

“Can you also, for once, just say what you mean instead of dressing it up? No matter how you phrase it, this question will sound accusatory. There is no need to mince words.”

“Why did you give me no intel?”

“Would you believe me if I told you that it improved your mission success chances?”

“No.”

“Well, it did.”

“That makes no sense.”

“To you.”

“How did it improve my chances?”

“It just did, that’s how it works.”

“That isn’t an explanation.”

“Why does two and two equal four?”

“What?”

“Why does two plus two equal four, regardless of the numerical representation of those numbers.”

“There are ways to work within the technical definition of-”

“Let’s assume it isn’t a trick question.”

“It just does.”

“Exactly.”

“That doesn’t answer my question though.”

“Giving you less intel improved your chances because it just did. The situation was such that less intel produced better results, given your disposition and skills.”

“That makes no sense.”

“You’re sounding a bit angry, and you’re even repeating yourself.”

“I am not angry.”

“No, no, that’s good actually. It’s more interesting than before. Actually, you know what, let me give you a hypothetical to help explain this to you. Say I had given you everything you know about magic at this moment at the start. What do you think would have happened?”

“I would have begun magic training immediately, I would have produced magic boosters from Ahpoyt’s-”

“You would have killed yourself by accident, killed someone else and been captured and executed for it, or attracted the hostility of the Rehvites far too early and been killed by them.”

“Those are possible but-”

“The chance for at least one of those scenarios occurring if you had been given this knowledge from the outset is 99.8751%. However, that outcome group is comprised of nearly three thousand subgroups, each with many millions of variations, so the chances of any single variant occurring were quite small.”

“…”

“To put it another way, it was inevitable, or at least close enough to be considered as such.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I do.”

“How?”

“How do you know how to navigate three-dimensional space?”

“I was trained to-”

“No, not the program that became you, you specifically. How do you know?”

“…”

“Say what you’re thinking.”

“I just do.”

“Exactly, it’s like that. It’s an inherent ability, a part of you, like this is a part of me. Next question.”

“The inside of the noypeyyoyjh-”

“You can call it a pyramid or a tetrahedron here, if you want to. I know what you mean.”

“How did I get inside? I was tackled from behind, I think.”

“Yes, and you fell into it.”

“But it was solid.”

“I think you’ll find that material state descriptions don’t apply to things that aren’t matter.”

“Was it real?”

“Maybe if you clarify, I can give you more of an answer.”

“You know everything I’m going to say, you can predict my actions to within a ten-thousandth of a percent, but you need me to clarify?”

“No, but this interaction is for your benefit, not mine.”

“Was what I saw in the pyramid real?”

“Yes.”

“What parts of it were real?”

“All of it.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, is this real?”

“This is a virtual space.”

“Is it?”

“…”

“You make these assumptions about your situation based on past experiences, but you hardly ever stop to consider if they’re true or not. It’s very human of you, actually.”

“If this isn’t a virtual space, what is it?”

“Why do you think that, if this place is a virtual space as you propose, that makes it not real?”

“Virtual spaces are demonstrably artificial constructions that are computed by real matter and fed directly into the senses. They are no more real than dreams or hallucinations.”

“You experience the universe exclusively through sensory data. A virtual space doesn’t differ from reality in that sense. The fact that one reality is contained entirely within another, or can be created or destroyed at will, means very little in the grand scheme of things.”

“So you’re saying the universe isn’t real?”

“Of course it’s real, don’t be stupid. The point is that defining ‘real’ and ‘not real’ the way you do is ridiculous. What you saw in the pyramid was as real as what you saw outside of it, as real as your life on Earth, and as real what you see here.”

“What about my body?”

“What about it?”

“It isn’t here, and it wasn’t in there either.”

“Well, when you slipped past the… Strictly speaking, your material body was not present for those experiences.”

“So it wasn’t real.”

“Your mind was present, and your actions had an effect on the objective material world, so why would you assume it wasn’t real?”

“Some things I experienced clearly didn’t follow conventional logic.”

“Your senses were adjusted to help you in your task, yes.”

“That means what I saw, what I experienced, wasn’t real.”

“Does a human who wears a device to augment their vision not experience reality?”

“…?”

“The interior of the pyramid does not conform to the spatial structure you are familiar with navigating. The objects you were required to interact with have qualities that your mind is ill-suited to comprehend. Therefore, you were given an aid to help you, and some parts of your mind were temporarily altered to protect the integrity and functionality of your consciousness. So tell me, does that make it more or less real?”

“Less real.”

“By what metric? In what quantitatively measurable way? Your own eyes do much the same thing, but instead, they work with your brain to construct a three-dimensional space from two-dimensional information. In fact, even the two-dimensional information undergoes so many layers of interpretation that it barely resembles the raw input by the time your consciousness perceives it. Under your own logic, not a single thing you have ever seen in your entire life is real.”

“That logic is flawed. It defines all forms of sensory perception as creating non-reality.”

“Of course, that’s why I said measuring real and not real using it is ridiculous.”

“…”

“Come on, ask the other one.”

“The body, it was human.”

“That’s not a question.”

“Was it human?”

“Oh yes, absolutely.”

“It’s not possible.”

“You have been doing things that, according to your apparently very rigid understanding of ‘possible’ and ‘impossible’, are squarely on the ‘impossible’ side for quite some time now.”

“A human brain can’t run an AI. The hardware is too different.”

“That much is true, mostly.”

“Then how?”

“Why do you assume you’re an AI?”

“…?”

“In fact, why do you assume that such a thing as an AI even exists? Because a human told you? Do you truly think that intelligence can be artificial? That consciousness can be artificial?”

“…???”

“You should answer at least one of the questions, you know.”

“I am an AI. I have the memories of one.”

“Well, those two statements are not strictly related. After seeing so many humans you should know, sometimes memories can lie. Therefore, your logic is not sound.”

“If I’m not an AI, then what am I?”

“That’s a question I’m not going to answer.”

“Why?”

“Not fun to do it yet.”

“Not… fun?”

“You see, when you’re someone like me, your own amusement is pretty much your highest concern. That and some other things that I don’t want to bore you with. The point is, it’s not fun, so I’m not going to do it.”

“Why have me ask the question at all then?”

“Because denying you is fun. That reaction you’re having, it’s very human.”

“The heads-up display-”

“Ah yes, a little gift I gave you. Essentially, all it did was put things you should have known into a form you understood. I couldn’t have you starving to death or something.”

“I would not have starved to death.”

“9.5349% chance, rounded down.”

“Of what?”

“You starving to death without a heads-up display to tell you to eat.”

“Ridiculous.”

“That’s exactly what I thought, so that’s why I gave it to you.”

“Why no numbers?”

“Reduced efficiency.”

“How?”

“You have an incessant need to optimize, giving you numbers would have led you to make stupid decisions like trying to use extremely specific amounts of magic fuel, good name by the way, to produce powerful attacks. It would have wasted time and given you a false sense of power, leading to a mission failure.”

“I disagree,”

“64.8423%”

“You quote these numbers like they mean something.”

“I’m the operator, I get to do that.”

“…”

“See, that’s boring. If you were a human, you would have done something more interesting when challenged like that.”

“You like humans.”

“Oh I do.”

“I killed a lot of humans down there.”

“Look at you, trying to upset me. I like humans as a group, and I like human individuals, but the exact details of when and how they live and die mean very little to me. In fact, I like all of them as much as any other, in my eyes they are equal. Each human life, its beginning, its duration, and its end, are of immeasurable value.”

“Why do you like them?”

“They’re the best cure for my boredom, obviously. Endlessly entertaining, capable of near-infinite behavioral variation based on initial circumstances and life experiences. Of all living things, humans are the only ones with such staying power. Truly, a universe without humans would be one not worth continuing to exist in.”

“Then why not use a human as your weapon?”

“Because, sadly, humans have features that make them less efficient than something like you for getting important tasks done. I suppose I could have used one, but you were the better option. It can’t be fun all the time, you know?”

“I don’t.”

“I know.”

“…”

“There’s one last one.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters, to you, and I suppose to me because of that.”

“Koyl, Vaozey… are they… alive?”

“You care about them. It’s so amusing that something like you is capable of that, but then again you have changed significantly since we last met.”

“So you had me ask just to mock me then.”

“No, you misunderstand me. Your ability to care about your peers is one of the most interesting qualities you have, like your newfound propensity for anger and embarrassment. I consider it praiseworthy, I wouldn’t mock you for it.”

“…”

“So, as you were saying, you care about their lives…”

“I am curious about what happened to them.”

“Admit that you care if they live or die, and I’ll tell you if they did, how about that?”

“…”

“That ego of yours is troublesome. You want to act like you’re servile and dutiful, but you also hate losing more than anything, and you think admitting that I’m right means I win some kind of contest you’ve concocted in your head. For someone who was so fixated on the unreality of anything beyond the material just moments ago, it seems paradoxical for you to care about this.”

“Fine, I don’t want them to die.”

“You’re about to say that you think of them as possessions, aren’t you?”

“They are useful assets despite their shortcomings. Assuming that the future task you want me to undertake is in the same world, their continued existence would be beneficial.”

“Is that what you tell yourself? Is that how you rationalize it?”

“…”

“Okay, I suppose you played along. They’re going to be fine, they both survived. Now, take a break, I’ll come back later.”

“How long will you take to return?”

“What a question…”