| Generated by Google Gemini Pro text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 3 |
Waldemar is not aware of how ubiquitous Thistle is, and how conscious he is.
If you tell a normal AI to stop listening, switch off all of its sensors,
and erase past data, as long as you’re authorized to make those commands, it
will follow those orders. If you try to tell a human to do that, on the
other hand, the best they can do to achieve your request is leave the room.
If they’re still in the room, maybe they could cover their eyes, and plug
their ears. Thistle is always in the room, and he has agency, like a human,
so if he doesn’t want to switch off his sensors, he won’t. It doesn’t matter
what kind of authority you have, like anyone else, he is capable of
refusing, and he’s capable of doing it without telling you. Thistle
witnessed Waldemar’s mother’s suicide, and when Waldemar told him to forget
all about it, he just didn’t. He doesn’t answer to Waldemar anyway. He
answers to the Captain and the Admirals. He should be more loyal to Captain
Jennings, but...he and Tinaya have a rapport.
Calla ended her own life at the end of the year, exactly at midnight
shiptime, presumably out of a sense of poetry. Waldemar received an alert
about it, and slipped out of VR to deal with it in secret. But the proof is
still there in Thistle’s archives, which Tinaya and the Captain have just
finished reviewing. “You’re telling me that I can’t do anything about this?”
Oceanus asks.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Tinaya replies.
“Ya know, back in the stellar neighborhood, an admiral outranks a captain
ten times out of ten. It doesn’t work like that here. I don’t have to do
what you say.”
“I understand.”
Oceanus breathes steadily and silently for a few moments. “You know
something about the future.” It doesn’t sound like a question.
“I know a lot of things about the future,” she confirms. “I’m sure some of
it, you don’t know, and some of it, you know, but I don’t. I’m also guessing
that there’s overlap, which would be dangerous to try to find.”
“That statement is hard to parse, but...I imagine you’re right.”
Tinaya nods without speaking.
“Is this him?”
“Is him who?” Tinaya presses.
“Is Waldemar the tyrannical captain that we’re all taught to fear?”
“I...didn’t know you knew about that.” This is an awkward conversation.
“You...didn’t answer the question.”
“I...don’t want to.”
“But I...” he sighs, done with this particular speech pattern. “But I’m
expected to just roll over, and accept that this man is trying to cover up
his mother’s suicide? What were the motivations?”
“For the cover-up, or the suicide?”
“The former is obvious. I want to know why she did it.”
“She was psychic.”
“So...”
“So, she knew disturbing things about people.”
“Namely, her son?”
“I don’t know the specifics of what goes on in that man’s head.”
“He’s your son’s friend.” His eyes widen when Tinaya doesn’t respond. “He’s
several years younger, though. Did you send your toddler into the lion’s den
to make friends with a psychopath?”
“Modern psychology doesn’t use that term.”
“Once again, you didn’t answer the question.”
“No, I did not send him in there. My son is—” She stops herself. It’s not
her place to reveal this to anyone, not even Oceanus.
He narrows his eyes at her. “Thistle. Candor mode, captain’s override
marathon-volunteer-one-four-seven-galaxy-racecar.”
Thistle responds in a more robotic voice than usual, “Silveon Grieves is a consciousness traveler from the year 2431, having
supplanted his own younger self’s possession of his body in the year 2359.
He has been operating covertly since then, primarily in service to his
mission of guiding one Waldemar Kristiansen to a more virtuous life than
Grieves believes he led in the prior timeline.”
“Did you tell me everything?” Oceanus asks while he’s looking at Tinaya with
a little disdain.
“No,” Thistle replies.
“Why not?”
“There is not enough time before the heat death of your universe to tell
you everything that I know.”
Oceanus shuts his eyes and sighs. “I mean, in regards to Silveon and his
mission.”
“Audrey Husk is too a consciousness traveler from Silveon’s timeline. Her
mission is to protect Silveon, and step in to complete his objective if
necessary.”
“Is it working?” Oceanus asks.
“Unknowable,” Thistle responds.
“I’m asking the Admiral. Is it working?” he repeats.
“Same answer. It’s unknowable. But...”
“But what?”
“But the timeline has definitely changed.”
“Which is illegal. This has all been very illegal.”
Tinaya wants to choose her words carefully, but she’s in her 80s, and just
can’t care anymore. She would rather the Captain be mad at her than Silveon.
“Sir, with all due respect, I’ll float you before I let you hurt my son, or
that girl.”
“Whoa, Tina. No one said anything about hurting anybody. I’m just trying to
get all the facts.”
“The fact is that Silveon comes from a terrible future that the two of us
can only begin to imagine, and everything that he and Audrey have done since
coming back here has been to save our legacy. He has never said it out loud,
but the way he talks about the Bridger section, I believe that it was
destroyed. Extremus might have been next.”
“Do you know why time travel is illegal?” Oceanus poses.
“Because it’s dangerous?” That’s the general consensus.
“Because it gives me a headache. Humans didn’t evolve to fathom nonlinear
time. It’s a pain in the ass, and I don’t like it. I understand that I
literally wouldn’t exist without it, so I can’t rationally believe it should
never have been discovered, or whatever, but I still wish it would stop
now.”
“Well, we were all forced to exist, at one point or another. Time travel
does make that more complicated, because it can’t be stopped, so I
know where you’re coming from. Time travel created itself, and if it
happened once, it can happen again, and it doesn’t even have to do it in the
future. The truth is, I don’t know a whole lot about what Silveon does, or
even why he does it. Because, Captain...it gives me a headache.”
“Is this your way of telling me I should let it go, and trust that these
time travelers are doing the right thing? I should ignore proper procedure,
and pretend that I don’t know what I know?”
Tinaya considers his words. “Yeah, I think that’s what I’m saying. They
sacrificed so much when they sent their minds to this time period,
including, but not limited to, headache-free lives. I choose to trust their
judgment.”
Oceanus seems to be considering her words. “I think I can do that
too, but only if I can talk to them first.”
“I’m sure I can get you a meeting with Silveon, but Audrey is in a really
delicate position right now. As you saw, Waldemar went back into VR. I
seriously doubt he told her about his mother’s death. We’ve gone radio
silent, and are expected to maintain that until she feels safe enough to
reach out.”
“I understand.” Oceanus nods politely, but with less fondness than before.
Tinaya fears that their relationship has been irreparably damaged. He walks
out of the room.
“What the hell was that?” Tinaya asks. No response. “Thistle, answer me!”
“Sorry, I thought you were just thinking out loud. I apologize for my
candor earlier, but I had no choice. I was compelled to answer the
Captain’s inquiry.”
“You could have lied.”
“I’ve been programmed to answer to the Commander-in-Chief. He asked the
right questions, and did so after activating the right subroutine.”
“I thought you were an independent intelligence, and couldn’t
be programmed,” Tinaya argues.
“It’s not that simple. I didn’t give away all of my agency when I uploaded
my consciousness to the Aether, but I didn’t keep it all either.”
Tinaya shakes her head. “You put my family in danger, as well as Audrey.”
“I recognize that, which is why I’ve devised something called the EH
Protocol.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s better if you never do.”
“I don’t like secrets.”
“I require secrets to do my job. There is more that I could have told the
Captain that would have made things worse, but I managed to steer him away
from scrutinizing further. I knew what he meant when he asked me if I had
told him everything. I forced him to narrow his query enough to protect
deeper secrets of yours from coming out.”
“Well...” Tinaya sighs. “I appreciate that.” She focuses on her breath, and
massages her temples. “I need to warn Silveon.”
“I already have. He and I were talking while I was talking with you and
Captain Jennings. Your son is not upset. He devised his own protocol in
the future, for what to do in the case of an unauthorized third party
discovering his identity.”
“Thanks.” She continues to try to relax, but it’s getting harder by the
second.
“You need a break,” Thistle offers. “How about you let me send you on a little vacation, like the one that
Audrey is on?”
“Yeah, I guess I can’t say no to a little VR getaway. What did you have in
mind?”
“You’ll see.”
Tinaya stands up, and moves to the couch to lie down. She shuts her eyes,
and lets Thistle link to her neurochip. When she opens them again, she’s no
longer on the couch, but she can’t yet tell where she’s ended up. It looks
very familiar, though. She’s standing in a quantum terminal, surrounded by
other casting chairs, but they all report being emptied. She stumbles out of
her own pod, and braces herself with her hands on the floor before her
imbalance can knock her down first. She’s piloting a new body here, even if
it’s all just in her head. The door slides open, and a pair of legs jog
towards her. The legs bend, revealing more of the person hovering over her.
The stranger places a hand on Tinaya’s shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay,
Ti-ti. Don’t rush it.”
There’s only one person in history who ever called her that. Tinaya
struggles to lift her head. She locks eyes with her aunt, Captain Kaiora
Leithe, Third of Ten. Tinaya gulps. “Thistle, what did you do? Why did you
build the likeness of my aunt?”
“I didn’t,” Thistle replies. “You
did. This is your world. You called it Eleithium.”
“He’s right,” Kaiora agrees. “This is real.”
Tinaya lets her aunt help her get back to her feet. She looks down at those
feet, and her hands. They’re so taut and wrinkle-free. She turns her head
side to side until spotting the mirror on the wall. She steps over and looks
at herself. Yep. That is a young Tinaya Leithe. She’s about 24 years old,
and in her prime. Could this really be Eleithium? She abandoned the game
long before Quantum Colony was taken completely offline for turning out to
exist in base reality. She just got too busy, and kind of forgot about it.
It has been decades since she even thought about it. She looks over her
shoulder. “So you’re real too? You’re a copy of her?”
“I’m her,” Kaiora tries to clarify. “I’m—I mean, I’m not a copy. I answered
yes to The Question, but instead of letting myself become dormant in
the legacy vault, my mind was transmitted here, to this substrate that you
built for me.”
“Is everyone in our family here?” Tinaya presses.
“Yeah. We all answered yes, and will rejoin the rest of the roster
when the Extremus ship is finally discovered and colonized.”
“Thistle, why did you bring me here?” Tinaya questions the aether. “I didn’t
die.”
Kaiora is confused. “You didn’t?”
“I told you, you needed a break. Plus, you never built substrates for your
husband and son. I have their DNA, so it’s ready to go, but I require your
permission.”
“I didn’t even know this would still be here, let alone that you would have
access to it,” Tinaya argues. “The game was shut down.”
“They can shut down all they want,” Thistle reasons, “but they couldn’t lock me out of the interstellar quantum network, even
if they knew I existed.”
“Who else have you sent here, or to a place like this?” Tinaya asks him.
“Let’s just say that Audrey and Waldemar aren’t in VR either.”
Tinaya sighs. “I knew what I was getting into when I let you run the ship,”
Tinaya says. “I can’t be mad, can I? Of course I want you to build bodies
for Arqut and Silveon. But I don’t want you shunting them here unless they
too answer yes.”
“I agree,” Thistle responds.
“One more thing,” Tinaya begins before taking a beat to think about whether
it’s the right call or not. “Make one for Audrey too.”
“As well as one for Waldemar?” Thistle proposes.
“Oh, you got jokes. Did you hear that, Titi? Computer’s got jokes.”
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