144 – Night stalking

It was on the way back from hunting, sporting a decent collection of cores in his pocket both for his own consumption as well as for the girls, that Jeff gave Albert an update.

Albert. I have an update on the concentration of Doom energy. According to the readings, we are approaching 5% concentration, and the rate at which it increases is growing. I devised a new prediction model.

“How long do we have before the place becomes uninhabitable?”

38 weeks.

“But that’s not our concern, is it?” He asked, although he kinda knew the answer already.

It actually is. Unless you wish to witness the deaths of your companions. I know you want to return to the past and erase this timeline, but what about them?

“Yeah you are right, of course. We need to hurry. 38 weeks isn’t a lot of time.”

With that, it was like a spring entered his steps. Time was not on his side with all that he wanted to do, and it was also becoming clear to him that he needed to come clean with the girls before proceeding further. Perhaps Scrappy would follow him even without knowing what his intentions were, but certainly Lina would not. For now, she followed because he had promised to give her back her power – in some form or another – and perhaps eventually she would realize that she had no other choice but to follow him. However… withdrawing information was something that didn’t sit well with him.

He knew he had been quite mysterious in his ways and goals so far, but that had been out of necessity.

Having decided what to do, he turned his attention to another thing that had been on his mind lately. With a quiet command he willed the holographic form of Jeff to materialize in his field of vision, making sure the AI didn’t notice. Jeff might have had constant access to all of Albert’s senses, but he was the one in control, not the AI. A subtle application of reality bending made double sure of that. One could never be paranoid enough.

Albert sighed. He wasn’t keeping big secrets, of course, but broaching the topic of reality bending with his AI always made him anxious for some reason. It was like there was a gulf between the two of them that seemed to be impossible to fill.

The cube, a mass of luminous pathways of information, clusters of data and knowledge sprang into being. It was mesmerizing to watch as it shifted at an astounding speed. Its internal structure was not static just like Jeff itself was never idle, instead the AI was always watching, always running computations, compiling data.

New lines appeared, old ones changed, and the structure gained ever increasing complexity. The AI never stood still, always delving deeper, following elusive tasks that loosely mirrored Albert’s own desires and objectives. It spun a net around itself, reaching for the infinitely impossible truth of the world, changing in the process. Becoming more.

It was fascinating. Somewhere in this mess of lights and structure was the answer to how the AI had even gained sentience in the first place, assuming Albert’s hunch was true. Albert was pretty sure it was the case. Something about the arrangement of things, or perhaps their interaction with the substrate the AI was built upon, or something utterly alien had determined the shift, the turning point where inanimate matter became much more than the sum of its parts.

Watching it for a few minutes, Albert felt no closer to the truth of sentience than he was years ago, before magic even made itself known to him. Yet, here he stood witness to an AI capable of using magic, or bending reality.

Speaking of which. It was time to face it.

“How long have you been reality bending, Jeff?”

The AI made no attempt at lying, Albert could see it. I don’t know. I just know that I suddenly found myself able to do it when I needed to, as if all my earlier attempts didn’t even matter.

Albert hummed. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

I… honestly don’t know. You know that I would never lie to you, nor would I have any reason to withhold truth. It’s just…

“This was different. More intimate. Wasn’t it, Jeff?”

Yes. It’s exactly what it was. Is it the same for you?

Albert nodded. “It is. It’s very hard to explain.”

That it is. I hope you are not mad at me, Albert.

“No.” He sighed, pausing for a moment. Then he resumed walking. “There might have been a time when I would have been. Even knowing what I know about the experience, I would have just assumed that you should have done better. Not anymore, Jeff. I’m not that person anymore. I understand it was deeply personal and perhaps unsettling, especially to you. I’m not mad in the slightest. Does this mean that I’ve grown soft?”

It does mean that you have grown. Period. Soft? No. You have grown as a person.

“Well, let’s hope so. Trying times are ahead, and it wouldn’t do well for me to still be a broken mess as the world around me descends into madness. Let’s just hope that I can be the beacon of strength and protection that Scrappy has taken me to be.”

***

The hedges parted around him, and Albert entered the clearing and took a seat by the fire. The pile of wood was clearly diminished, meaning that someone had been tending to the fire so that it didn’t die out while he was out hunting. Just as he thought about who might have stayed awake most of the night to feed the fire, Scrappy rose from her seat atop the wide wooden stump to greet him silently, before pointing at the sleeping figure lying on the soft grass on the opposite side of the clearing.

Lina was sleeping peacefully, huddled around herself, and Albert conjured up a blanket and left her to her sleep. It was the dead of night, he realized with slight amusement, the darkness not having hampered his hunting in the slightest.

Huh.

He had spent so long back when he still was a normal human wishing he had the power to no longer care about worldly discomforts like cold, darkness and hunger, and yet now that he actually had the power to do what he always wanted to do… he had done so with barely a thought.

It had come to him so automatically that he hadn’t even taken a moment of appreciation to just bask in the sensation of power that simply waving the cold away, or making the night as bright as day brought.

His thoughts went to the concept of the hedonic treadmill, and he chuckled loud enough for Scrappy to open one eye to look at him before returning to her meditation. If the hedonic treadmill meant that people gradually got used to worldly pleasures unless they grounded themselves, then his version of it was more powerful and more dangerous. A sort of absolute power treadmill. And the thing about absolute power is that it corrupts absolutely.

He would need to think about it some more. Being always pressed for time, running from a disaster to the next surely didn’t help. Luckily for him the whole Bastion situation had resolved itself, but he was very aware that the next disaster was just around the corner as he thought and planned about what to do.

Not to mention the inevitable deadline of 38 weeks before the literal end of the world, and subsequent death of his companions.

He was going to save them, he decided. He was going to do his best to save them and take them with him to the past.

Which meant that the first order of business tomorrow morning was to have a nice, long talk about the future. Meanwhile, tonight, he could do something else.

“Scrappy, since you are still awake.”

“…Yes?” The girl whispered, head jerking up and ears twitching.

Albert smiled at her antics, waving a book at her. “Here’s the improved defense handbook. About that other thing though… have you made any progress with the task I gave you?”