26 – Stifled reflections

“Artificial minds… machines made to be perfect. Superior in every way to the human masters that they were supposed to serve.” Tommy mulled over the words in his head.

He was looking down at the ground while he walked, and the tall green grass reached all the way up to his chest. It was a bright morning, and the sun was warm. The morning dew still wetted their shoes, because the grass was just too tall for the weak sunlight to reach all the way to the bottom. But there was no wind, and the air was sharp.

“That’s right.” Calvin replied, beaming.

“And you really don’t see a problem with this?” Tommy asked. He was perplexed, Calvin noticed.

Calvin looked at him. “No, not really. I get why many people feared them at first, but then they proved all those people wrong. Nothing bad happened.”

In his mind, entire fleets made of programmable matter roamed the space around a blue planet. Shields the size of a gas giant covered the whole thing in shimmering blue, and millions of tiny specks of gold floated in the deep black within. It was the vision of another world, but also of a possible future, one he knew he could achieve.

“Except for the whole doomsday thing.” Marceline added.

“That.” Tommy said in a smug face.

“Okay, you win.” He said, conceding the point. But he wasn’t about to let them have the last word. Not when they were being so oblivious to what he could bring about. “But they were wonderful, I tell you. Computer showed me what the world was over there. What it is, I think. I don’t know if it’s still like this, but it sure was back when Computer was still there. The machines, the lights, the things that they did! We could accomplish all of that, and more, with magic and technology.” He beamed at his little brother, starry eyed and full of wonder and hope.

Tommy shook his head. “Naïve little wolf, you are. You don’t think that people would abuse that power, or that something bad could always happen right behind a corner? I envy you at times. It must be so peaceful.”

Calvin playfully flicked Tommy’s head. “Ow!” A little yelp came from his little brother, and he curled his lips up in a smile. It felt good to be cared for by someone, someone who was willing to accept his limitations and help him grow.

And at the same time, he felt that he could prove him wrong. And that if he succeeded in doing so, Tommy would surely be so proud of him, and so happy that he was wrong.

“It always surprises me to hear such talk coming from so small a boy.” Marceline said, smirking. “A little kid, even.”

“I’m not a kid!” Tommy yelled, and stuck his tongue.

“That’s what a kid would say!” She replied, smiling. They laughed.

They seem to be quite close friends. Calvin thought. Computer kept silent, as usual when it was not prompted and didn’t feel like communicating. But she’s right: he is small. Do you think he’ll grow? Now that we’re feeding him properly, that is.

Calvin hummed. There had to be something more to this. It was impossible that malnourishment alone would cause such damage to a body. He felt that he was right in thinking that, but also, he knew that he had no means to investigate. His mana sense was too weak to spot any irregularities in his body, and even if there were, they had to be so subtle that nobody else had seen them as well. Could it be some kind of genetic mutation?

The merchant had mentioned some kind of origin story for the wolf-kin, and if they were not natural but the result of some kind of experiment, then maybe Tommy was suffering from some sort of genetic disorder that came from that. It was another alley that, unfortunately, had to be left unexplored for now.

The melding plague was a myth. In Computer’s archives, Calvin found it in a science fiction story from the 21^st century. It wasn’t real, it never existed beyond the pages of a book, at least in that world. Did it exist here, where magic could make anything possible to those who were powerful enough? Did the book find a way here, like the plastic bottle, or like the nanites? And if it did, then was the plague just a myth from the book, or did someone actually make something like it for real?

He refocused on his little brother for now. There was always the option to change him, using the nanites to either alter his body or trigger some kind of change. But it was risky, and he didn’t want to cross that bridge yet. He would need to test the process safely before having Tommy undergo such a procedure.

As he was thinking that, Calvin caught the eye of the silver ranked, or B-ranked, adventurer that was traveling with them for a moment, then quickly averted his gaze. He still felt very conflicted about how he handled the situation with her, although he was very convinced by Tommy’s reasoning that this was the only way to deal with the situation.

What the kid said afterwards, that she was not yet to be trusted and that she must always remain under observation, unsettled him. It clashed so hard with how his brother was behaving with her. Calvin recognized that he lacked finesse when handling these things, and understood that it was a good idea not to make her suspect anything. In fact, there was even the possibility that she could grow to be attached to them, and be loyal without the need for threats. He wondered just how they could be sure when that time came, but he decided to leave matters to Tommy.

“We’re quite close to the capital, aren’t we? I feel like we’ve been walking for ages!” Tommy said.

“We have been.” The adventurer confirmed. “And yes, we’re quite close.”

Calvin felt that it was a bit odd that Tommy would not know where they were, but reasoned that maybe his brother wanted to make some idle conversation. He didn’t know what to add to it, though, and pondered for a while before deciding to stay silent.

“Calvin? Everything alright?”

He shook his head to clear it from stray thoughts. “Yes, sorry. You were saying?”

“I asked,” Tommy said, “if you’ve already thought about how you are going to approach your family once we get there. Although by how distracted you were, maybe you were thinking just that.”

“Yeah…” He said distractedly.

He was not thinking about that when Tommy spoke to him, but he certainly was now. In the last few days of travel, the idea of his family had popped up every once in a while, in his mind. The first time had been during a brief visit to a countryside village on the road. There he saw a family of four, happily walking down the road, on their way to buy some bread at a bakery. He had never been in a situation like that with his parents, but he felt that he would have enjoyed if that had happened.

Then, Tommy started to bring up the topic every now and then. Calvin didn’t want to think about it, but knew very well that sooner or later he would have to deal with it and actually think about it seriously. The situation had to be handled carefully, that much was clear after that ruinous encounter with the inquisitor. But how exactly he was going to handle it, that much he didn’t know.

Marceline and Tommy noticed his change in mood, and left him alone to ponder over his thoughts. While Calvin was barely aware of his surroundings, the adventurer approached the little wolf-kin.

“Are you sure it’s wise to bring his family up so often?”

“He needs to think about it now, or else he will be unprepared when we reach the Capital. I don’t want him to act rashly just because he doesn’t have a plan ready.”

Marceline hummed in agreement. “You know, I really thought you were actual brothers in the beginning. If it wasn’t for the whole doomsday weapon story, I would have believed that over the fact that he’s the fallen hero for sure. Called you out for your bullshit and all that.”

“We are actual brothers. But not by blood.”

***

It was a late afternoon, and the sun was already low, barely above the horizon. The pale light was of a muted gold, wherever it reached, spent and tired like the three travelers. It dispersed through the mist, and cast long shadows that glimmered in a deep blue. The dew on the tall grass was a shiny silver, and a few tendrils of white cloud were already rising from the shaded places of the little grove.

A chill wind rustled the leaves, what few of them were left after the cold had stripped bare all but the most resistant of trees. The fire was crackling, and the damp wood occasionally sent up puffs of smoke or popped in a small shower of embers.

“We should make camp. It’s gonna rain tonight.” Said Marceline.

Calvin focused on the woman and looked at her for a moment, then checked with Tommy. He saw his little brother nod.

“Alright.” He said.

He went to his feet and walked around the camp, searching for a suitable location. He found, not far from their camp, a small green hill that was devoid of trees. The grass was soft and tall, dark in the last dying light of day, and it swayed in the wind, wetting his legs all the way up to his hips. He sighed, looking around to see if there was any trace of people nearby, but saw nobody. They were quite deep in the woods between the plains and the last mountain range that separated them from the Capital, and there was no reason for people to venture this deep. They were, he was sure, utterly alone out here.

And he could check, either by asking Computer or by using his sensor instruments directly. Maybe he would find out that in order to scout the whole woods he would have to build this or that technological item he learned about from the other world, but he didn’t want to. He felt at peace, and at ease for now. And it was nice.

He spread his nanites like a carpet around his body, covering the top of the hill in silver liquid. He felt his nanites eat and reproduce using the biomass they were gathering, and at the same time he instructed them to flatten the area at the top and to build a shelter for them. Then he sat, and closed his eyes while his nanites worked.

He opened them again in a white space. The clock was ticking, one millisecond of real time passing every second. He examined the outside world through the millions of eyes of his robots, hovering with his consciousness over the little hill like a ghost, or a watchful god watching over his little edge of the world.

Zooming in, he could see the nanobots. They were tiny, so little in fact that in order to see them he had to use some sort of representation in false colors provided by Computer. They were so small, he understood, that visible light had trouble illuminating them. And yet, tiny as they were, they moved around frantically, disassembling the molecules that held together the grass and moss, moving electrons and even surgically altering the very atoms into something that was either inorganic, or absolutely alien.

Silicon and other semi-conductors, rare earths, metals, and strange compounds sprung up from the simple atoms that made the grass. Carbon was turned into Osmium, or Ununoctium, or Germanium.

But why? The question echoed in his mind, every single time he watched his machines do all this he wondered just why they were wasting so many resources trying to make water out of a rock. Why use biomass, and not dig the ground in search for materials directly?

And yet, he felt that the question, as well as the answer he was sure he had in his head already, slipped away from him. And he was out in the real world again, feeling strangely empty but satisfied that the little delve in his personal time dilation chamber was fruitful.

So much to study, but he would digest all of Earth’s 23^rd century knowledge sooner or later. He was so curious. And so fascinated. But it was enough for today, so he just closed his eyes and waited until his nanites were done with the landscaping.