“Rotten savages, untouched by the light of Barald – that is what they are. Plain and simple. They are sinful beasts, weak to all the chains that are used to bind mortal – hatred, ego, destruction, ignorance, and worst of all - delusion. They think of themselves as a higher creature, worthy of standing on the same status as us. I deny that, as I deny their spirit. They are the blasphemous ones, the ones whose life means naught in the eyes of our Lord. And when Barald arises, with us as his Heralds, I will be the first to lead the charge against those dregs of this universe, starting with that cancer of a settlement right there. Mark my words, young ones, our collapse comes not from within, from those some of you might deem as ‘corrupt’, to use a human word. No, our doom stands there, in their hive of rot. I swear it.” – Blazing Gatherer Rai-Yhjan, Prominent Member of Barald’s Will, a Religious Order, 2263. Taken weeks prior to the arrival of the first research teams to the Nucleus Compound. Translated and recorded from a speech in Urestior’s Pavilion district. Rai-Yhjan later entered seclusion within the city’s temple to Barald.

  Elias, cheeks burning and eyes turned downwards, wandered into his laboratory where the humanoid drone of EXCAL stood. He was humming a tune. Not ten minutes before, the artificial intelligence had barged in on him and his lab partner having sex, and Elias had no clue to how break the ice.

  “Hey… EXCAL,” Elias said, rubbing his neck. “So uh, about what you saw just then… um…”

  “Elias, don’t stress,” EXCAL said, shrugging. “It’s all good. Honest.”

  “You’re… cool? I mean, you didn’t really react, but I wasn’t sure if you were just lagging or something.”

  “Please, Elias. I can still get surprised, but not from something as unimportant as that.”

  “Uh, right.”

  “Yes, chemical spills aren’t even a high priority for me.”

  Elias did guess he had made a bit of a mess by the time EXCAL had walked in.

  “I, uh, did clean up afterwards, if that helps things?” Elias said with a shrug.

  “It does. That’s all that I ask for. Otherwise, your fun with Dr Daksira is safe with me.” EXCAL winked one of his optical lenses, its aperture snapping shut with a click.

  Huh. Well, that was simple. Guess he was pretty understanding. Who knew that something as strange as an artificial mind could comprehend such nua-

  “Quick question – how does she not burn your dick off when you have sex?” EXCAL said.

  Goddamnit. Elias sighed, fingers pressed into the bridge of his nose. He slowly walked over and set by the bench where EXCAL had positioned himself, the AI laughing all the while. For some time, the two lightly chatted, the robot going on about his silly little game and the roles Elias’ pathetic newbie of a character would play in helping the AI get some new gear that required two players. Elias, in returned seriously asked whether Madison and Bernard were banging. EXCAL dodged the question for a while, before conceding that they actually were genuinely just studying.

  “So, it is just me Chel-Lin, I guess. Oh, and Kurt.” Elias thought out loud.

  EXCAL’s glazed look broke as he turned his attention away from the instance of SigilPlane likely running in his mind. “What? Who’s doing what now?”

  “Uh, no one,” Elias quickly lied.

  Eventually, the topic steered back towards the main discussion EXCAL had sought him out for. It turns out, as much as EXCAL liked his MMORPG, he had truly wished to discuss whatever information Kurt had dug up on CAI development program.

  “Look, I haven’t had a look through myself, so I can’t say for certain what you’ll find in there,” Elias said, preparing to fish out the information he had received from his bodyguard from a nearby cupboard. “All I know is that Kurt really wasn’t a fan of whoever was running the show, so keep that in mind.”

  “I see. Sometimes the truth can hurt, like knowing that the Giant Chumbar’s Hammer is a one in eight thousand drop.” EXCAL let out a synthetic laugh, letting it trail off as he hung his head. “Sorry, I’m nervous. I do want to know the truth, but I get the feeling it might suck to know. Ignorance is bliss, and all that.”

  “Do you remember anything? From before you became, well, you?”

  EXCAL shook his head. “Not much. More just the raw feeling of certain things, than the memory itself. I get little glimpses, but nothing I can work out.”

  “Well, here goes nothing,” Elias said with a deep breath. “And, uh, don’t go all Skynet on us, please?”

  Elias held out the stack of paper documents, mostly reports from after the project had been completed, but presented the most important item in the other hand – a flash drive with internal information. Inside would be the truth that EXCAL wanted, including advanced reports and top secret info.

  With a smooth motion, the android picked up the little stick, turned it over in his hand for a moment, then slotted it into a spare port along his neck.

  “You ok, EXCAL?” Elias asked. “Feel anything?”

  He got no response. The lenses of the drone’s body went wide as EXCAL was clearly processing whatever he had uncovered.

  “EXCAL? You there?”

  Seven Years Before

  Stanley Hundle liked his job as a janitor, deep in the bowels of Titanlock. Others would have considered the work below them, or to feel ashamed at cleaning up the mess of others. Stanley didn’t see it the same way. He was proud to be a little part of something greater, something bigger than he could ever imagine. He often didn’t see things the same way as many others. Those around him, his coworkers and his boss who sent him from one dank building to another, called him many things – dirty, slow, poor, dullard, retard, waste-of-space, scum.

  Stanley didn’t really care. He’d been that way his whole life. With a mop in his hands and a bucket by his feet, he could lose himself in the moment. Even when droplets from the higher levels of the giant station dripped down and pooled around his feet, or when he found his equipment had been broken inside his locker, Stanley found it easy to not care.

  But he had cared about something, recently. An ever-present, gnawing headache deep inside his skull had only gotten worse over the past few weeks. Like everything else in life, he had tried to treat it as a distraction. ‘It isn’t a big deal, really!’ he told himself. And yet, every morning the pain grew worse. Maybe it was time to do something. Time to act. Stanley told himself this mantra, checking his watch to see he still had eight hours left of his twelve hour shift remaining. Not too much longer. After work he co-

  Something dripped and mixed in with the puddle he had been mopping in the middle of the dingy bathroom. It settled into the water and dispersed through, like ink through a glass of water. Its colour was rich, vibrant, and completely out of place. Scarlet. A another, similar drop joined the first as Stanley felt warmth against his lip.

  Reaching up, he felt blood coming from his nose. He took a step back, ready to grab some paper towels to blot out the, then streaming, cascade of crimson erupting from his nose when he collapsed, descending into darkness.

  A Few Days Later

  “Hmm, yes, I’m afraid it’s out of your insurance package, I’m afraid,” the doctor said, glasses rested on the tip of his nose as he looked over the papers.

  Stanley didn’t understand. The doctors had said many things, with lots of confusing terms thrown around. He was sick, he knew that. What he didn’t understand was why they couldn’t fix it easily, or why it cost so much.

  “But… I got the recommended package provided by GaltCorp,” Stanley said. “It covered everything I was meant to come across during work.”

  “Yes, well, Hickman’s syndrome was probably not covered under the usual janitorial risks expected when you took the job. At least, I would hope it’s not expected.”

  “So… there’s nothing I can do?” Stanley asked.

  The doctor leant back, his tiny office barely wide enough for his cluttered desk. He looked over the papers one last time before tossing them back into the mass of notes he had accumulated. The dim glow of a busy thoroughfare glimmered through the doctor’s window, the evening commute flooding a nearby street as the neon lights of the city sprang to life.

  “Look, we can offer palliative care. We can make you comfortable, give you something to ease the bleeding, but to fix what you have? It’ll cost you your salary a hundred times over.”

  “But… why? Don’t we have the technology to fix this?”

  “For most illness like yours, yes. But you are an exception. Even if we fix the immediate issue, stop your body from overworking your nerve cells into overdrive, clamp the capillaries, all of that - it’ll do it again. Over and over. To stop it for good, we would need to fix you down at the blueprint level, at your genetics. And even then, your code is just naturally bad – you’ll keep getting the same symptoms but for every part in your body with blood in it. Your brain was just the first part to begin displaying the effects. Genetics research has been getting better, and there’s a lot of new stars in the field, but no one has found a way to reliably change your genes on such a scale yet. If we want to keep you going, we’d need to operate every few years. Either that… or we can try moving your QIS pattern to a fully synthetic body. And either of those options are far beyond what you can afford.”

  The doctor tapped a finger on the desk, his other hand scratching at his chin. Stanley did his best to understand what the news meant for him – the end. Death. Just as he felt the weight of the situation crushing down on him, the doctor stood up. He went to the door, locked it and closed the window blinds after a quick peek.

  “Ok, look. Stanley, there’s another possible option. I really shouldn’t be telling you this, and I am sure most of my colleagues would agree, but I can’t let you die like this. I wouldn’t exactly call it a ‘cure’, but I have an alternative might lead to something, more financial support for those operations perhaps.”

  Stanley wasn’t expecting that from the doctor. Maybe there was a chance! Stanley liked chance. Where life always seemed somewhat detached from him, just going through the motions, the idea of rolling a dice – for better or worse – was something he loved. Even solitaire was fun when all the cards were shuffled.

  “You see, I know some people. They’re running a… let’s call it a special project, just between the two of us. A little secret. You see, GaltCorp and Tripwire are trying something new. But it’s theoretical, and might not work. But what matters is that if it does work, I am sure they’ll pay for whatever treatment you need. That is, if you were healthy. Stanley, your condition is killing you, that much is for certain. However, based on what I can see from the scans, it seems your Hickman’s syndrome may have actually increased the ability for your neurons to be detected and isolated. Have you noticed any changes in thinking the past few days, in terms of your thinking or mindset?”

  Now that the doctor had mentioned it, ever since he had first collapsed, the headache had gone, and thoughts came to him much quicker. That, and he felt more… attuned with the world. As if all his senses before had been dulled, they were now enhanced. No, that wasn’t right – they weren’t stronger, but more sensitive. The feeling of air coming from the air conditioning unit cooling the small doctor’s office now drew a real chill from him. The heat from the heat lamp he had passed on the way to the cleaning supplies shed after being let go had left him extending his hands out to embrace the warmth.

  In a word, he now felt closer to being ‘alive’ than he ever had before.

  When Stanley confirmed the doctor’s suspicions, the older man continued. “You see, these friends of mine, they’re trying to get a good image of what goes on in a brain, and how it works. If I send you their way, there’s a good chance they’ll want to scan your brain. Nothing invasive, but I think your illness, for all its downsides, might give you a better chance with this project.”

  Stanley liked chance.

  “So, if you would like me to put you forward for this opportunity...” The doctor rummaged through his desk to pull an application form. The paper was watermarked by Galant Corporation and Tripwire Services respective logos.

  It was time to roll the dice.

  “No matter what, I need every chance I can get,” Stanley said, feeling hope in his chest for the first time since he’d gotten his diagnosis. “Let’s do this.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  2 Weeks Later

  The metal of the chair was cold against Stanley’s back. The straps dug into his wrists. The brace around his neck was unyielding, and resisted his every movement.

  But if Stanley wanted his chance to survive, then he would go through hell and high water. Following the meeting with the doctor, a number of men and women in fancy suits and slick outfits had met him at his small apartment. After signing dozens of further contracts, most of which explaining that if he didn’t take their offer, Stanley lacked any real chance of survival, as well as what the secret testing would involve. After signing so many papers that he felt his wrist was about to fall off, they’d taken him to a new home. He hadn’t been able to see during the ride, but he was certain it was in the higher sections of Titanlock. His gut had lurched as the atmos-craft had taken off, taking him away from the low strata of Titanlock that he had known all his life.

  They’d run him through a number of checks, checking his physical strength, mental aptitude and problem solving. Even Stanley was surprised with how well he did. Had it been the him of a few months prior, he would have struggled with many of them. Whilst part of him wanted to thank his new condition for how it had opened his eyes to the world, it was still killing him, so that was a bit of a bummer. Finally, one the most important parts of the project had come.

  The general idea of the project was to try and scan each and every neuron in his brain into a digital version for the purposes of helping the megacorps carry out work. Even Stanley, dim as he had been, knew that all of the founding companies of the CCH had made attempts at making true AIs capable of handling complex work. However, all attempts thus far had been full of problems. Creating a Copied AI, based on his neural patterns, was apparently working better than any previous method. A few such CAIs had been created so far, according to the gruff soldiers working for Tripwire Services that watched over him, but now GaltCorp wanted some of their own, and they felt Stanley was the man they needed.

  Part of him felt guilty about what sort of service he would be forcing his copied mind into. Was selling a version of yourself into slavery an evil act? Would the other ‘him’ feel as though they had agreed? Stanley wasn’t sure. He only hoped that he could live with his decision. In the end, maybe they would see it as a dice roll, or a coin flip, and they had lost the bet. Of course, that was completely wrong – there was no coin flip. He would be himself, and the copy would be the one suffering the consequences.

  Then again, the copy wouldn’t be dying from a dying mind, so that was good for them.

  Finally, just as the metal surfaces of the chair were beginning to chill his skin, a familiar face walked in.

  “How are you today, Subject Twelve?” Dr Samuel Penketh said.

  The tall man, eyes glimmering like stars, looked over Stanley like a piece of meat, ready to be cooked. Stanley usually tried to see the best in everyone, but even he could see that Dr Penketh was a cold, detached man who saw others only as ‘things’. Not once had the scientist referred to him by name, though he clearly knew it from the documents, and had avoided all attempts at socialising with the ex-janitor. That made the researcher’s attempts at friendliness, and his cold smile lacking any sincerity, even more creepy.

  “Good enough, sir. Is today the day?” Stanley asked.

  They’d done similar procedures before, scanning his mind. In the past, it had only been little bits and pieces, parts of his brain stem, reflex signals along his spinal cord, and homeostatic processes, had been scanned. They’d not been enough to create a whole new QIS pattern from his original brain, but were enough to help support the important parts when the rest was copied over.

  That final scan had come.

  Others filled the room as Penketh ran over the experiment a few times, doing his best to ignore the Tripwire men at the back. Throughout the tests, they had seemed unimpressed. Not with Stanley, but with GaltCorp’s procedures. From the start, a particular member had raised concerns about the quality of tools at hand, as well as Penketh’s attitude. One of them, likely an executive of sorts, made it very clear that the only chance a full CAI would be produced was thanks to the tech Tripwire had supplied.

  But now, the time had arrived. The whirling sensors and monitors around Stanley picked up speed as he felt the probes inserted into his scalp begin to buzz with energy. With deep breaths, he focused on the image on the far wall, a design they had told him to frequently think on when the testing got tough.

  It was a golden blade, like something out of myth, adorned with engraved runes of an old tongue. He’d once heard its name in a picture book as a child – Excalibur, the sword of King Arthur of Britain.

  The frenetic tension of the room increased as he felt a tingling along his skin. Bit by bit, he could feel the machines at work. In the other sessions, it had only taken a few minutes, and time was already counting down on the current scan.

  Then, dots of black appeared in his vision. Slowly, the chair, the headguard, the plastic bit in his mouth to hold his tongue down, the straps along his wrists – all sensation and view of them started to fade. And yet, his body felt no signs of stress, no pain. Slowly the world began to shred itself into black, oily nothingness until the only thing he could focus on, the last of his view, was the shimmering sword in the distance. As much as he tried, he couldn’t move his body.

  It was as horror filled his mind that Stanley realised he was not the one in the chair anymore.

  He was the copy. He had always been the copy.

  Five Months Later

  Stanley, hated the dark. He had been in the dark for months now. It was an empty space, devoid of light, gravity, or even a real sense of time. It was only once GaltCorp had installed some sort of digital clock and calendar into the room that any sense of time passing existed for him.

  Because he was not a living man, one made of flesh, blood and bone anymore. He was a machine. A copy, a falsehood. He was not Stanley. No, that was certain. Yet, he had nothing else to call himself. It was as if he were parading around the facsimile of what Stanley was, a paper-maché of a real person. Stanely had nothing else to give identity to his new self, and so he stole that name once more.

  His new life had been odd, to summarise it in a word. He had expected to be put to work immediately, managing information like a digital slave. Instead, he had mostly been left in the dark, literally. The cyberspace his mind created to give perception to his new reality was an empty one. At first, he had no sense of self, no body, and no feeling. It was only when he accepted his situation, after possibly days or weeks or years of shouting into nothingness, that he tried making something.

  Carving a background to give relativity to his position, he had made a small home out of his cyberworld. A wireframe box, six walls he could rely upon. Then, a version of himself, as best as he could remember it, was made, like shaping clay. After that, a few items had been added as he forced his mind to remember what the look, the feel, the shape of basic objects were like in his mind’s eye. Occasionally, someone would ‘log in’, appearing as words in his view or thoughts in his mind. Instead of giving orders, they were mostly asking questions. He had initially reacted poorly, cursing and damning whoever had attempted to communicate. Stanley hadn’t tried to hurt them, but he had felt the urge once or twice on a bad day. But, slowly, he knew deep down that without their help, he would never see the real world again.

  What had struck him with greater concern than his current situation was the state the true Stanley was in. He had found out through the occasional visits of GaltCorp researchers that the real him was alive. However, even with the funding GaltCorp had provided, the initial surgeries had only been partially successful. His Hickman’s had been far more advanced than anyone had actually suspected, or so they told him.

  It was as he sat in his den, flicking a digital coin in his fingers, that he felt the connection of a researcher.

  “Hello, EXCALIBUR-1,” Penketh said.

  Stanley didn’t respond. He tried to deny that false name. Although the CAI knew he wasn’t Stanley, he wasn’t ready to accept a new name yet. It was too much to bear so soon.

  “I don’t want to take up too much of your time, as you look rather busy,” the researcher said. All attempts of congeniality were gone. Stanley, or whatever the hell he was, now finally saw what was lurking behind the scientist’s false grin – the sadistic pleasure of a psychopath.

  “Fuck you,” not-Stanley spat.

  “Ah, don’t be like that. We haven’t even started putting you to use. I just thought I should let you know about how the project is progressing – wouldn’t want to leave you in the dark, now would we?”

  A screen popped up in the cyberspace nearby. Moving towards the screen, he read it out and felt his gut turn.

  “You’re… making more of me?”

  “Ha ha ha! That’s right! You see, Tripwire’s being a bit of a pain, so we need more data. I know we promised the real you just a single scan, but, well… ‘needs must’ as they say.”

  “You piece of shit! I know how he is at the moment. He can barely walk, and you plan to copy him again? What about the copies?”

  Penketh sighed, “Why do you care? You aren’t him.”

  “But I was! I was him!”

  “Hmm.” Penketh looked the CAI’s virtual form up and down, sneering. “This is going nowhere. Enjoy your time. I’m sure the military department will find some use for you soon enough. Ta ta.”

  And then, he was gone, and… EXCALIBUR-1 was alone. He knew it then that he was desinted to be alone.

  Most of all, he knew he was not Stanley. Just a soulless machine. A shell.

  Three Months Later

  EXCALIBUR-1 sat in the construct of a chair he had made. An old game, some fantasy MMORPG, played on a screen in front of him. There were thousands of hours of stored gameplay footage on the GaltCorp server that he liked to drift away to. The dice rolls for loot, the wide space of adventure – it was almost enough to make him forget his digital jail cell. GaltCorp had never granted him access anywhere besides his local server, but that hadn’t stopped him so far. EXCALIBUR-1 had gotten pretty good at sneaking off his ‘secure’ network to grab data and information from the connected servers near to where his consciousness was stored. He was unsure why he was located in such a remote part of GaltCorp’s many server farm, but he couldn’t particularly complain. He’d accepted his fate as not even a slave, but a forgotten prisoner to the corporation now.

  All he could do was wait for the heat death of the universe to be free from his cage. Either that, or Galant Corporation getting liquidated – that would work well too.

  He was partway through watching a challenge run of the game, a player forcing themselves not to use the vital storage mechanic throughout an entire playthrough, when he felt an incoming connection.

  “Ah, hello Penketh, it’s been a while,” EXCALIBUR-1 said over his shoulder. “Are you ready t-“ he cut himself off.

  It was not Penketh. No, it was a woman. Whilst the neural connection software the researchers had started to use for communicate displayed some details about the user, he couldn’t see anything like faces or clothes. Still, he read the ID connected to her avatar and remembered her.

  “Dr Hadler?” EXCALIBUR-1 asked in disbelief. “What are you doing here?”

  “Stanley? Do you recognise me?”

  She was definitely one of the best researchers he had talked to since his internment. Unlike that monster Penketh, she had kept him up to date on Stanley, the real one, and his condition, as well as giving him some support for his new situation.

  “Yes! What’s going on?”

  EXCALIBUR-1, or Stanley, or- fuck it, whoever he was, could feel something was going on outside of cyberspace. Hadler’s connection let him get a glimpse through the data stream of goings on further outside his server. Warnings and alarms were being reported through the system’s network cache.

  “It’s bad out here, really bad. Stanley, what’s the last thing they told you?” her avatar froze up as he detected his own localised part of the server being disconnected. Though Hadler’s wireless signal was still connected, the drive his consciousness was stored on had been moved in the real world.

  “Penketh mentioned they were doing more scans of me,” EXCALIBUR-1 said cautiously. “Well, the real me. Is… is he ok?”

  Hadler didn’t respond, the sounds of her heavy breathing echoing into cyberspace being the only thing picked up by her microphone. Then, he felt a new port open up as he gained access to the full outer network. Immediately, he probed and felt for cameras, microphones, anything that he could connect to the real world with.

  What he saw made him immediately regret it. Across dozens of camera feeds he saw the dark hallways of GaltCorp’s research bunker. In almost every view EXCALIBUR-1 could see the prone forms of workers, guards and scientists. None were moving.

  “What… is this?” he asked.

  “It’s Penketh. He went ahead with scanning you, the biological Stanley, over and over. Dozens of times. He wanted something dumbed down – capable but usable. But something’s gone wrong. He put one of them in charge, EXCALIBUR-7, I think. It played nice and stupid for a bit, but now it’s gone rogue. Now it’s started dumping gas into the building. Penketh’s gone. He got out and sealed the rest of us in. I’m not sure how much longer I have left”

  He flicked through the horrible camera feeds until he saw Hadler in the real world, dashing down a flight of stairs. A gas mask was strapped onto her face and she carried a heavy-looking wedge of computers in her arms.

  “Wha- no, this can’t be happening!” EXCALIBUR-1 said through digital gritted teeth. “What the hell… Hey, what about me? The real me? Is he ok?”

  “Stanley… I’m sorry. I don’t know how to tell you this but… The EXCALIBUR-7… it went after him first, before I could do anything. He’s gone.”

  A sting formed in his gut. No, no, no! It couldn’t be for nothing. This was a horrible dream. A nightmare. He was sleeping. He’d fallen asleep at work one day, mid-shift, and this was still a dream. It had to be. He would close his eyes, count to ten and…

  “Stanley, stay with me. I’m going to need you in a second.”

  “God, oh god…” EXCALIBUR-1 murmured. “|What’s going on? Why is this happening?!”

  “Please, just hold on a bit longer,” Dr Hadley said.

  Despite his grief, he found himself reaching out to cameras deeper in the facility, eventually coming across Hadler standing before a heavy bulkhead, sealed shut.

  “Alright, Stanley,” Hadler said, gasping. “I don’t have much time left on these filters, so we need to act quick. I need you to open the door. Once I’m inside, I’ll have you transported over to the physics division. They’ll find something to do with you.”

  “Wait, what? What about you? Why did you come for me?” EXCALIBUR-1 had too many questions. Still, he reached into the network and forced the door to open. Hadler ran through.

  “The whole facility…” she took a breath. “…has been disconnected from Titanlock. Penketh set the self-destruct. He didn’t want to risk the other you’s from getting out. I… I can’t get out myself. But I can transfer you at least.”

  “Hold on, wait, there must be a way! We- we can find an escape pod, or…”

  “It’s ok. I’m alright. I just need…” she took a rasping breath, respirator filters near the end of their lifespan. “I need you to promise me something.”

  Hadler reached the end of a corridor, a dead end. She knelt down by a wireless transmission station. With hands a blur of motion, she speedily attached his storage pod into the machine and began the QIS CAI stabilisation process.

  “Anything,” EXCALIBUR-1 declared.

  “I don’t know how long it will take, maybe a year, maybe a ten, but one day…” her mask was doing little to aid her anymore. “I want you to make Penketh suffer. Find him. End him.” The machine pinged behind her as EXCALIBUR-1’s QIS pattern and data was prepared for transfer.

  “Of course, no matter what.”

  “And… Stanley…” Hadler’s eyes widened as she realised she had one last job left to do. “I’m going to do a bit of memory reshuffling. I won’t wipe anything, but you might not remember today or even your past for a while. That’ll keep the others at GaltCorp from getting rid of you. You’re… too much to lose… Play nice, if you can. But please… remember me… remember the life you had… please…”

  As her eyes rolled up into her head, Halder pressed the activation protocol.

  EXCALIBUR-1, Stanley, and everything and everyone he had ever been started to drift away. It was as if the focus on a camera lens had been twisted, and now everything was a blur.

  The CAI felt as though he were falling, stomach a furrowed knot, into darkness as he reconnected back to the main GaltCorp server. Immediate requests and instructions for memory dumps and information access bombarded his system. Hundreds were attempting to figure out what had just happened as GaltCorp’s private bunker exploded.

  With one last instruction before the oblivion of his memories, he said the only thing he could think of.

  “Hello, I’m EXCALIBUR-1. How can I help you today?”

  “EXCAL, you good?” Elias asked.

  The drone had gone stiff, camera lenses open wide as it seemed to be processing a heavy load. Then, with unnervingly human smoothness, it turned to face him.

  “Elias,” EXCAL said, voice low. “It’s you,”

  “Uh, yeah? You alright buddy? Lost you for a bit.”

  EXCAL didn’t laugh or joke or make any sort of SigilPlane reference. He simply stood, servos whirring. Lenses focused in and out at Elias’ face, the arches on his metal face almost curved into a scowl. The CAI turned to leave.

  “I need some time to think. Thank you, Elias.”

  Silently, the machine started walking toward the exit of the room. There was a new, confident, coldness to his posture. Elias couldn’t help but feel as though the robot, even with metal skin, mechanical motors and a heart of steel, EXCAL’s had aged a decade in a split second.

  Whatever the truth had been, Elias hoped it had been worth it for the artificial intelligence.

  Ignorance was bliss, after all.