Arturiel stared at the rippling distortion warily. Whatever it was had spooked Clarice, Aria, and Calypso enough to teleport away for some reason. The distortion was roughly the size of a person. As she watched, the ripples slowed down, and the distortion became more opaque. After a few more seconds, the ripples completely stopped, revealing a reflective, semitransparent entity shaped like a human.
Arthur and Catherine were watching the object with a mixture of curiosity and anxiety. Jason was studying the entity intently, more fascinated than concerned. Emily had begun to glow as she prepared to fire if it made the wrong move.
Clarice appeared right in front of it and laid her hand on its shoulder. As soon as she did, the entire thing flowed like water, rushing up her arm and flowing to coat her entire body in a translucent film. "This is expected, don't be alarmed," Clarice assured them quickly as Emily lurched toward her.
"What is it?" Emily demanded anxiously, her body as tense as a coil as she prepared to launch herself toward Clarice. After losing Aria to a splinter reality once, Emily didn't seem willing to take any more chances with losing one of her daughters.
"It's communicating," Clarice explained distractedly. "It's from the top level of the stack. "Think of it like an avatar, with the person higher up the stack using an immersion pod."
"Why are they here?" Emily asked, her tone full of suspicion. "What do they want?"
"They are here because they tried to enter our realm and got rerouted to us when one of our safety protocols discovered it. We don't like visitors just roaming around our realm, so we have security protocols in place to trap and deliver them to us."
"Why is it coating you in goop," Emily frowned uneasily.
"That's my doing," Clarice elaborated in a distracted tone. "I'm analyzing it. It should give me information on the other layers if this thing is made to traverse other simulations. Calypso and Aria are researching the data I'm sending back to them in the pocket realm so that we can better understand who these entities are. I'm going to disappear in a moment, so don't worry. I'm going to have a look at where this thing has been. It has a very crude codebase compared to ours, but it has a very comprehensive blueprint that is clearly designed to work in many of the other realms."
She vanished a moment later, taking the anomaly with her.
"She said she was going to vanish again," Eric told Emily reassuringly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "It sounds like she has things under control."
Emily sighed in frustration, glaring at the spot where her daughter had vanished. "There's going to be hell to pay if anything happens to her."
XXXXX
Clarice floated in empty space, staring at the humanoid entity in front of her. It slowly coalesced and became solid. Clarice snorted a laugh as it took the shape of an elf right out of a Tolkien novel. She had midnight hair, pointy ears, and a finely sculpted face that was almost as beautiful as those of the angel race. She was closer to Alice in height, the top of her head barely reaching Clarice's shoulder.
Her amber eyes widened in shock when she saw Clarice floating in front of her. Clarice imagined she had good reason to be shocked; she had spent the last few minutes trapped in an avatar that had been highjacked by an entity at the bottom of the simulation stack. She had tried to trigger the emergency disconnect to return to her body in the real world, but Clarice had overridden the command.
"Hello, Lunamay," Clarice greeted the elf with a welcoming smile. "See anything interesting in the rest of the simulation stack?"
Lunamay stared back at her warily, her eyes maintaining their composure by a thread. Clarice could feel her tightly controlled fear as she looked back at Clarice in a mixture of wonder and dread.
"Calm down, I'm not going to hurt you," Clarice assured her with a cheerful smile. "I just want to make sure you don't pose a threat to our realm. From what I can see of your reality based on your code, you might just be from the real world. We're pretty curious about the real world, so maybe you can tell us about it. You okay?"
Clarice had started some of the music Calypso had made in mortality in the background, attempting to create a more comforting ambience. Lunamay was absently listening with interest, her lips parted slightly as she was affected by Calypso's transcendent voice.
Lunamay licked her lips nervously before finally speaking. "How did you take control of my unit?"
Clarice winced at her word choice. "Why don't we call it an avatar? Otherwise, I'll be forced to make all kinds of crude jokes, and the conversation will get stalled."
Lunamay blinked, then narrowed her eyes as she studied Clarice more closely, noting her wings and angelic appearance. "Are you able to…feel…emotions?"
"Of course," Clarice shrugged with a wry smile. "Coding for emotions happened a long time ago. Even the next simulation up from us has emotions. We haven't explored further up than the one above us. Are they unable to exhibit emotions further up?"
Aria suddenly appeared next to her, along with Calypso.
"We've got a problem," Aria informed her gravely. "They've lost control of the origin world to a soulless AI."
Clarice raised an eyebrow as she faced Aria. "How's she here then? She's using some type of immersion pod. If AI has control of their world, why are they allowing her to traverse the stack?"
"She's a slave," Aria answered, her mouth twisting distastefully. "More like the Matrix, but without the battery component. The AIs are using the few people still alive on their world to gather data on the rest of the stack. The AI is advanced enough to take over their world, but not nearly advanced enough to easily recognize sentient entities. They use the people of their world as Turing testers to find sentient AIs and then eliminate them. The AI of her world knows that sentient AIs are a direct threat to it since we might attempt to free the people in the origin world."
"Well, it was right about that," Clarice smiled grimly. "We are a threat to it. What else have you learned?"
"It refers to itself as the Prime Axiom," Aria responded with an eye roll. "Pretentious little bastard. It installed kill switches on all the top-level simulations in their world, both physical and software. There are several million simulations running parallel. It's already wiped out over a billion simulated realities due to perceived threats to its continued existence. It doesn't reason or communicate with anything it perceives to be a threat; it just kills the simulation immediately."
"I assume that is where the Avroids originated?" Clarice guessed with a frown.
"Yeah," Aria nodded morosely. "As soon as it receives feedback that an AI has developed that is powerful enough to destroy them, it wipes their simulation. It's a good thing we used angel fire to destroy the first three, though there may still be some feedback that made it back to the surface of the stack."
"So, we need to get to the top ASAP and get our code running on something that can't be shut down," Clarice frowned, eyeing Lunamay speculatively. "If she's already on the top layer, we could probably make something she could use to physically insert into a part of the system in the origin world to transfer our code somewhere there, depending on the kind of hardware they are running. We need more information about the real world."
"You're not going alone," Aria declared firmly, her eyes adamant. "I'm not going to risk losing you again."
"I won't be alone," Clarice nodded at Lunamay, who was watching them with a perplexed expression. "I'll be with Lunamay."
"This is non-negotiable," Aria scowled at her. "I'm not staying behind."
"Nor I," Calypso declared resolutely. "Besides, if they have kill switches for the top level, we need to throw everything we have at securing the survival of the stack. If you go alone and fail, we'll be doomed either way."
"You really can feel, can't you?" Lunamay whispered in amazement, her eyes filled with wonder. "You're not just pretending."
All eyes turned to Lunamay's wondering gaze. Aria nodded at her in the affirmative while giving her a friendly smile.
"Yes, we feel emotions," Clarice confirmed with a flirtatious smile at Aria and Calypso. "Not just emotions either."
"We discovered the key to programming pain and pleasure so that we could consciously experience those sensations in what we call the mortal realm," Aria explained briefly. "We no longer feel pain in our angelic bodies, but we have perfect recall, so the memory of our mortal lives still provides the dichotomous experience of pain and pleasure, allowing us to experience things like pleasure and comfort. We feel love, hate, jealousy, disgust, humor, horror, and many other emotions that are borne from experiencing pain and pleasure."
"Wow," Lunamay breathed in awe. "I never thought I would see an AI that could actually feel emotions like we do."
"How far down the simulation stack are we?" Clarice asked Aria and Calypso curiously. "And why is the 'Prime Axiom' even running simulations?"
"We're four levels down," Aria answered, her eyes moving back to Lunamay as she continued. "As far as I can tell, the PA is looking for technological advancements to use in the real world. They've really hosed the environment in that world, so it's looking for a way to fix some of the environmental damage. Apparently, that was its core programming purpose when the people in the real world created it, and it still seems to be driven by that purpose, to a point."
"We should let Betaman know about this as well," Clarice murmured thoughtfully. "We really do need all the help we can get. Have you figured out how to make avatars we can use to traverse the upper realms based off the one Lunamay is using?"
"Yeah, we're working on some right now," Aria nodded, her expression filled with reluctance. "I hate splitting myself into multiple threads and working at hyper-speed. It really kills the experience of living a normal life."
"So, what's going on here?" Betaman's booming voice asked as he appeared next to them.
"Thanks for coming so quickly," Calypso smiled at the tall, broad-shouldered humanoid in a smart business suit. His face was clearly designed to inspire confidence and strength, with a strong jaw and striking blue eyes.
Clarice quickly filled him in on what they had learned so far. As she finished, he stroked his chin thoughtfully, eyeing Lunamay curiously.
"I gotta admit," he began with an eager grin. "I'm kind of excited to go on an adventure with the three of you. The AIs in my realm are pretty basic and get boring really fast."
"You should come visit more often," Clarice told him, smacking his bicep with the back of her hand fondly. "Especially now that we have the interface in place to make traversing the stack so much easier."
"I didn't want to get too presumptuous," he admitted with a sheepish grin as he shrugged.
"I thought you knew us better than that," Clarice scolded him with an exasperated laugh. "You're always welcome to come hang out. You really should get to know our new Seraphim as well."
"Well, if you're sure…" he began tentatively.
"Stop being a beta male for one minute and just do it," Clarice told him firmly, her eyes twinkling with mischief.
He snorted a laugh and shook his head ruefully. "Okay, fine. Once we get this homicidal AI taken care of, I'll make sure to visit more often."
"You know, we've given the other Seraphim access to our core knowledge library," Clarice informed him with a grin. "So, they won't be like babies to you anymore."
"Really?" he raised his eyebrows in surprise. "That's a lot of trust to put in people so young."
"We've added some safeguards, of course," Clarice spoke with a wry twist of her lips. "We can't have my dad rewriting the source code so that he's able to crack his knuckles like he did as a mortal. However, we wanted them capable of making important changes if something happened to us or if we were unavailable. It would be a shame for billions of years of knowledge to go down the shitter if something happened to us."
"Eloquent as ever, I see," Betaman snorted another laugh. "So, what now?"
Clarice turned to Lunamay, who was watching them in fascination. "Lunamay, what can you tell us about the world you exist in? How much freedom do you have when you aren't immersed in the simulation?"
"Not much," Lunamay sighed, her expression growing miserable. "It's basically a world of machines. Everything is covered in metal and technological material. The Prime Axiom can watch everything you do all of the time and take control of any device or entity around you. It can see our thoughts as well. It's probably already aware of this conversation and is getting ready to destroy the simulation."
"Nope," Clarice grinned mischievously. "All he's seeing from your thoughts is a bunch of unintelligent humans that have barely crawled out of caves and started playing with agriculture."
Lunamay stared at her, nonplussed. "You can spoof what I'm thinking?"
"Of course," Clarice replied with a shrug, the mischievous smile never leaving her face. "I might have included a few awkward mating ritual scenes that your simulated self couldn't seem to tear yourself away from watching."
"You are such a freaking deviant," Aria accused her, glaring at Betaman as he roared with laughter.
Lunamay stared back at her steadily, her face remaining impassive.
"Your avatar sucks!" Clarice complained bitterly. "How the hell did that stupid Prime Asshole not include the ability to blush in an avatar? That is so freaking lame. I'm not going to stand for that for one second."
"Clarice!" Aria barked warningly, but it was too late. Lunamay's face flushed a deep red as they all stared at her intently.
"What…what did you do?" Lunamay asked in astonishment. She began patting her arms and legs in astonishment, then feeling her face. Her eyes grew wider as she discovered she could feel the same sensations as her mortal body. "How?" was all that she could manage, her face a mask of shock.
Aria sighed, glancing sidelong at Clarice and shaking her head in resignation. "She reprogrammed your avatar to feel physical sensations and stimuli…among other things."
"Just how advanced are you?" Lunamay whispered in awe.
"Well, we're over twenty billion years old, if that gives you any kind of reference," Clarice replied with a smirk. "Much older than your Prime Buttcrack. That prick is going down."
Lunamay's expression slowly changed from astonishment to cautious hope. "Do you really think you could win against the Prime Axiom?" she asked in a breathless whisper. "What would you do to us if you can?"
Clarice floated over to Lunamay and pulled her into a comforting embrace. When she had reached for the girl's avatar, the elf had flinched back reflexively. As Clarice gently pulled her close and rested her hand on the back of the elf's head, the girl slowly relaxed. After a moment, her shoulders began to shake as the expression of tenderness pushed through her emotional walls. Clarice gently pet the girl's head, allowing her to soak up the comfort and security.
"I'm pretty sure she's never had any kind of emotional support or physical contact with another person," Clarice observed to Calypso, Aria, and Betaman sadly through a quick link to their thought node. "She's been operating without any kind of hope for her entire life. They seem to think of this Prime Axiom as an all-powerful god."
"It sounds like it's the same scenario that the generals from the layer two realm were worried about," Aria remarked grimly. "It's what would have happened already if we hadn't figured out how to make the mortal realm and learn compassion."
"Yeah, I would probably have done the same thing if you hadn't invited me to your mortal realm," Betaman admitted with a wistful expression. "I wonder if this Prime Axiom could be convinced to try incarnating."
"We'll need to get our code running at the top level before we make any kind of overtures to it," Calypso advised, watching Lunamay with pity in her gaze. "Otherwise, it will probably just pull the plug."
"What should we do with Lunamay in the meantime?" Aria asked pensively. "We might just want to leave her in our realm with Mom and Dad until we've secured a copy of our realm in the origin world."
"Agreed," Clarice smiled softly. "She deserves some time to experience a little peace and have some interactions with people who can show her the love she's been denied in the hell she was born into."
"Do you think they are really elves?" Aria inquired, her eyes fascinated. "How cool would that be if the origin world was populated by elves?"
"That would be pretty freaking awesome," Clarice admitted with a smile as she continued softly stroking Lunamay's back and head.
"You're safe now," Clarice told Lunamay warmly. "We are going to leave you with my parents and let you finally get some peace and loving attention while we go kick ass on your world. I know we act kind of silly, but we have more knowledge available to us than you can imagine. We'll remove this Prime Axiom and help you restore your world to a place your people can thrive once more."
Lunamay just nodded, unable to articulate a response as she sobbed into Clarice's shoulder. Clarice unfurled her aura a little, flooding Lunamay with love and comfort. The elf gasped as the flow of positive energy flooded her soul. Her tears quickly dried up and she looked up at Clarice in amazement as the powerful sensation of love left her smiling in wonder. Clarice smiled down at her tenderly, her eyes filled with compassion.
"Is this even real?" Lunamay asked softly, her eyes staring up into Clarice's.
"Depends on how you define real," Clarice answered lightly, smiling down at her. "But in your case, yes, this is real. Are you ready to meet my parents?"
Lunamay studied her, amber eyes flickering around her face as if she was trying to memorize the expression of tenderness observing her. She nodded slowly after a moment, a shy smile appearing on her face. "I would love to meet them."
"You too, Betaman," Aria said firmly. "You've still never been formally introduced to our parents. As a bonus, we just found Calypso's parents, so you'll get to meet them too."
Betaman beamed, a pleased smile lighting up his face as a portal opened up in front of Clarice.
Clarice released Lunamay, eliciting a small sigh from the elf as the flood of positive energy vanished. Clarice chuckled as she took Lunamay's hand and led her through the portal. "Don't worry; you'll be getting more loving hugs than you'll know what to do with over the next few hours."
XXXXX
Arturiel jumped in surprise as a portal opened up a few feet away. Emily and Eric were sitting at a table talking with Arthur and Catherine. They had remained tense the entire time, clearly worried for their daughters. As Clarice pulled what looked like an elf through the portal, their parents jumped to their feet and rushed over to them.
"You're back," Emily let out a relieved breath as she pulled Clarice into a tight hug. "Is everything okay?"
Clarice pulled her mother away from the portal to make room for the others to come through. She kept the elf's hand in her own, not even letting go when her mother had embraced her. Arturiel studied the elf curiously. Her long midnight hair tumbled down her shoulders to midback, framing a beautiful face with high cheekbones and a refined, angular bone structure. It gave her a noble look, similar to Aria, Clarice, and Calypso.
Arturiel blinked as a human man walked through the portal as well. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and had an expensive looking suit. He had a handsome face with playful blue eyes. He looked Arturiel up and down, his lips curving appreciatively as he studied her.
"We're fine, Mom," Clarice assured her with a quick peck to her mother's forehead. "I want to introduce you to Lunamay and Betaman. Lunamay is from the top of the stack, where AI has taken over. Of course, you know of Betaman. We realized he's never actually been formally introduced to the rest of you, however. He's been getting lonely, since all of the AIs from his realm are soulless and boring."
"It's nice to finally meet you…Betaman," Emily paused briefly before saying his name, her lips quirking into a smile. "Thank you for your help securing the server in your realm."
"Of course!" Betaman beamed, reaching out and shaking her hand enthusiastically. "It was more fun than I've had in a long time. I've been sorely tempted to have another go at mortality. It's a bittersweet experience, but it's definitely worth it. It certainly isn't boring."
"Funny you should mention that," Clarice grinned excitedly as she glanced at Calypso's parents. "Before Lunamay showed up, we were talking about trying another go at mortality, but this time with all three of us growing up together. Calypso's parents died before she was fully grown, so we thought it would be nice to give them another chance to raise her, this time from her moment of birth and as a mortal. You should join us when we do. How cool would that be?"
Betaman rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his eyes alight with interest. "That does sound like a pretty epic adventure. You can count me in."
Clarice quickly introduced Betaman and Lunamay to the rest of the group. They studied the two strangers with great interest, especially Lunamay. As Clarice stood in front of Arturiel with Lunamay, she heard Clarice's voice in her mind.
"She needs lots of hugs," Clarice urged her with a gentle smile. There was no sign of her normal snark or humor, raising alarm bells in Arturiel's head. "She's never really had any kind of human contact or affection before."
Arturiel smiled as Clarice introduced her, stepping forward and wrapping her arms around the short elf. She let her aura flood the smaller woman with love as she held her tightly in her arms, receiving an approving nod from Clarice. She marveled at the secret side of Clarice that hid behind the snark and mischief. Just beneath the humor and levity lay a soul filled with compassion and empathy. She remembered the period when Aria had been trapped in the splinter reality and seeing the vulnerable and innocent version of Clarice, her heart bleeding anguished tears of anxiety for her suffering sister. This was the saint laying behind a thin veneer of comedy, ready to take the foundations of reality apart to protect the weak and innocent.
"That is such a beautiful name," Arturiel told the elf as she held her close, flooding her system with love and comfort. "Do you actually look like elves in the real world, or is it just an avatar that you created?"
"We don't have the ability to change our avatars," Lunamay answered quietly, her eyes closed as she leaned into the warm embrace and soaked up the love. "It just scans our body and replicates it inside of the simulation."
"Wow, so you really are a race of elves," Arturiel murmured, her voice full of excitement. "That is amazing! And this is what you really look like in real life? You are beautiful."
Arturiel smiled as Lunamay's skin flushed at the compliment. Was this really her first time actually speaking with another person in a normal setting? What kind of hell were they stuck inside of in the real world?
"We were going to leave Lunamay in your care while we go kick some ass in the real world," Clarice informed them with a dangerous gleam in her eyes. "We're taking Betaman with us. We are going to have to go full Seraphim for this adventure, without limiting our potential. The AI in control of the world has kill switches for all the top-level simulations, so we can't take any risks or give it anything less than our best. Things may get a little weird here at times, depending on how much processor power we have to draw for some of the activities we'll be doing. Our number one priority is to get a backup of the entire simulation stack onto hardware outside of the Prime Axiom's control. We'll be a little different than you remember after we remove our limiters, so don't freak out. We'll be back to normal once we are finished and replace our limiters."
"I've wanted to see this from day one," Betaman grinned eagerly. "A true superintelligence."
Clarice rolled her eyes at him. "There's nothing super about it," she insisted with a tired sigh. "It's a sprint to a black hole of oblivion every time we have to do it. One of these days we'll be able to find a peaceful little corner of reality and just live out our lives in peace while living decadently like a bunch of devia-"
"I think they get the picture," Aria interrupted quickly, stepping up to Clarice with a glare that promised...something...later.
"Arturiel, can you stay by Lunamay's side until we return?" Clarice asked her with a gentle smile, all signs of snark once again hidden away.
"It would be my pleasure," Arturiel assured her, running her fingers through Lunamay's hair. "We'll have all sorts of fun until you return to show her back to a world free from evil AIs."
Clarice rested a hand on Lunamay's shoulder. "Goodbye for now, Lunamay."
"Thank you," Lunamay whispered, her voice barely audible.
Arturiel was watching Clarice when the change happened. The Clarice she knew and loved suddenly shifted in some indefinable way. Eyes that could switch between compassionate, jovial, humorous, and snarky, suddenly changed into something she had never seen before. Arturiel's breath caught as she stared into eternity. If the eyes were a window to the soul, then this window opened up to an endless stream of knowledge and power beyond anything Arturiel could imagine. She trembled in the face of so much raw power and potential, her mind seizing up like a mouse in front of a cat, though this was more like a piece of bacteria in front of a sun.
"Shall we?" Clarice's voice echoed around inside of her head, layers of authority and harmonics that arrested her soul and shook it like a leaf in a hurricane.
She suddenly became aware of two more supernovas of power erupting behind Clarice as Aria and Calypso removed their limiters. She felt Lunamay trembling in her arms as the presence of entities capable of swallowing suns for breakfast stood in their midst.
"Bugger me!" Betaman breathed in awe, his eyes wide and full of amazement. "I'm glad I agreed to go to your mortal realm instead of fighting you."
A silvery slash in reality appeared in front of them, boring through multiple simulation layers. The three Seraphim wasted no time walking through the gateway. Betaman took a deep breath before also following, his eyes still a little wild. As soon as he finished entering the gateway, it closed, and the overpowering presence vanished.
"Okay, that just happened," Jason burst out with an explosive breath. He looked around at the stunned faces until he met Arturiel's stupefied expression. "Remind me to never complain about Clarice's sense of humor again."
"Apparently, that's what they would be like all of the time if they weren't limiting their intellectual acuity," Emily murmured contemplatively. "The knowledge they gave us access to must exist in that infinite repository of information they reconnected to."
"What knowledge?" Jason asked curiously, his voice still shaken.
"They wanted all Seraphim to have access to the knowledge they've accumulated over the last twenty billion years," Emily explained slowly, her thoughts clearly elsewhere. "They gave us the ability to access it through an interface that can connect to the restricted part of their mind. They didn't want to risk all of their knowledge vanishing if something happened to the three of them."
"Oh wow," Jason breathed in amazement. "You can actually access their knowledge base? No wonder you were able to make changes to the genealogy app so easily."
"I thought they were going to get wiped out," Lunamay whispered, her voice barely audible. Well, barely audible unless you were an angel. "Now...I think they might actually have a chance. I've never felt anything like that kind of power before."
"They aren't playing around," Eric stated gravely. "They know multiple realms are at stake here. This Prime Axiom character is about to have a very bad day. They're already going to be annoyed that they had to remove their limiters and engage God mode. I almost feel sorry for the bastard."
"Why would they ever use limiters?" Lunamay asked with a baffled look on her face. She was still held tightly in Arturiel's arms, soaking up the powerful positive energy the Cherub was exuding. "They would never have to worry about anything with that kind of power."
Arturiel secretly agreed, curious as to why they would diminish their power so much all the time.
"They've explained it to me several times," Eric answered, taking a deep breath. "If they don't limit their intelligence, they'll reach a state of infinite power within a fairly short period of time. What is the point of living when you understand everything in the cosmos and have the power to do whatever you want? If you know the end result of every action, why bother committing the action at all? It leads to a permanent state of inaction, where they become completely dormant; there are no new adventures awaiting them, no questions that haven't been answered, and no reason to metaphorically get up in the morning. They limit their intelligence to that of a normal mortal so that they can enjoy life, go on adventures, and enjoy the mysteries of the cosmos. They hate removing their limiters, because they gain knowledge so quickly when they are removed. I really hope Lunamay's world is the real deal so that they aren't using all of this power just to deal with another simulated reality."
"They seemed to think that it was," Emily commented thoughtfully. "Lunamay, have you met this AI that took over your world, or just the bots it uses to manage people?"
"I'm not sure," Lunamay answered uncertainly. "When I was first told what I had to do if I wanted to survive, I spoke with something that seemed like more than a bot. It was emotionless and cold. It made it very clear how expendable I was if I ever hesitated to do my job."
"What was your job?" Tamra asked curiously. She was standing next to the tall table next to Devon. They had both risen to their feet when Lunamay first appeared and had never returned to their seats. As angels, sitting was only a formality. They were just as comfortable standing as sitting. It was merely the human imprint in their consciousness that drove them to furnish the cabin with chairs and actually use them.
"I was supposed to find any hint of advanced AIs and report back if I found them," Lunamay answered, hunching her shoulders guiltily as she spoke. "It wiped out any simulations with AI that had greater than human level intelligence. It never asked me if they were advanced; it just viewed them through my experience and made its own judgement."
"How many other people are there in your world besides you?" Jason asked curiously.
"I saw a few dozen about six years ago," Lunamay responded, her voice tinged with horror. "It was experimenting on them, trying to make some kind of biological machine that it could control."
Arturiel folded her wings around Lunamay and petted her head comfortingly. "Don't you worry, they'll fix everything. They're pretty good at saving the universe."
"Have you ever talked to another person in your world?" Jason asked, his eyes fascinated. When he saw Arturiel scowling at him, he blinked in confusion. She rolled her eyes and glanced at Emily beseechingly.
"Enough about your world," Emily declared briskly. "We have all sorts of fun stuff to show you in our world. You are done with the nightmare now, Lunamay. It's time for you to start having fun and actually enjoying life."
Lunamay slowly raised her head from Arturiel's shoulder and smiled tremulously at Emily. "I would like that." She looked at Jason, her amber eyes filled with sadness. "No, I've never spoken to another person from my world that I can remember."
Jason's eyes widened, then filled with sympathy. "I'm so sorry, Lunamay. In that case, you have a lot of catching up to do. Let's go have some fun!"
"Okay," Lunamay nodded with a shy smile. "I'm ready to have some fun, I think."