2039 - Selling Purgatory (1-2)

# 1. Coyote Cordial #

"You're giving those kids beer?" coyote Pete asked the centaur. "How does that even work?"

The burly equine barkeeper watched the four young guests giggling and throwing peanuts around their booth. He said, "They got their brains converted to the new data format, and we know how addiction works. So where's the harm in simulated alcohol with an EULA authorizing addiction-circuit suppression?"

Pete watched the bartender trot over to them with another tray of foaming beer. Brain manipulation wasn't black-and-white, it seemed, since even sugar or chocolate did things to people's chemistry. His ears flicked backward with unease. "They are kids, right?" he said, when the centaur returned.

"Three of them. The dragon-girl is a native."

It was hard to tell what anyone in the Thousand Ales restaurant was. Pete was a coyote-man as of a few weeks ago; the few other patrons here tonight looked human but could be fellow uploaders of any age or nationality, or AIs, or people seeing this world from Earth through a computer. The kids with the beer were a humanoid dragon and phoenix, plus two humans in similar fantasy adventurer getup. Just people playing at being heroes.

They looked a lot like humanized versions of the cartoon horses who'd kicked his tail and banished him from part of Talespace for being, temporarily, a violently insane jerk.

"I owe them an apology," he muttered. "Hey, barkeep."

"Kai."

"Is the beer any good?"

"Nah. I can't say I experience taste the same way as you humans, and it's not that good even to me. It's like designing art for people who see colors differently. I've almost got beef working, though. Want an experimental burger?"

"Sure." In his past life, Pete would've eaten, ignored everyone, and gone home. He had to change that. On the other hand, he was also trying to be more adventurous, and he sensed an opportunity. Kai had started to back away to the kitchen. Pete whispered to him. The centaur nodded and grinned.

Pete chugged one vial from a discount pack of assorted bottled spells. He gagged on the taste of almost-spoiled milk, then hopped down from his barstool. Pete the coyote seemed to sit right where he'd been, while the real Pete was nearly invisible. He slipped behind the bar. Finally, he'd get to do some trickery.

In the kitchen, Kai showed him a cross between a bar-and-grill's pantry and ovens, and a chemistry laboratory. Nothing had a scent here, as with most of Talespace. A bottle of clear liquid read "Alcohol" alongside ingredients like "Tangy (Cheez backup 0.6)" and "Umami (dextrose?)". Kai muttered apologetically about "version control".

Pete tried to recreate the worst drink he'd ever had. Malt, hops, bitter orange, some coffee flavor, and little decorative gold flakes. No alcohol or digital simulation thereof. "Can you do a fancy label real quick?"

Kai's equine ears were high and his grin wide. They poured the stuff into a blue glass bottle with an elegant label reading "Regale Wynter Cordial". Then, unable to resist, Pete added a few drops of "Tangy/Cheez".

Once he was able to quit giggling, Pete crept back to his seat where the decoy-ote still sat. He faded back into the image and ended the potion's spell. Kai brought the Cordial over to the kids, promising that it was a little strong, but fancy.

They thought it was awesome and they were getting so drunk on it. One of them even fell over.

Pete focused on scarfing down two cheeseburgers with an odd grainy texture, to keep from snickering openly. A few minutes later he worked up the courage to walk over to the four and say, "A sophisticated choice! I'm sorry, you four. I was the one who you beat down the other day for attacking your town. I deserved it."

A girl in wizard robes with a purple flower in her hair wobbled in her seat, saying, "Huh? You were the psycho arsonist?"

The dragon-girl sat up straighter and shook the phoenix-boy. "He's back for revenge!"

"No fighting in the bar," Kai called out. "Except in the arena."

Pete backed away. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I was nuts because of some dumb decisions, and Ludo talked sense into me." They could probably kick his tail again.

The four heroes conferred, but knocked over a glass of the precious elixir and got distracted wringing it out of flower-kid's robe so they could drink it. Phoenix-boy glanced over at Pete and said, "Uh, fine then. Thought this was a present for my third hatchday."

Pete looked over one shoulder at Kai. "I thought they were human except the dragon."

Kai's ears drooped. "Some of you guys want to forget."

Phoenix heard him and raised his glass. "I didn't forget anything! I just wanted to start over, what with the three-months-to-live thing. This is good stuff, man."

The human boy had been the quietest of the lot, but he raised his glass and said, "Screw biology!" He blushed at his own foul language. "It kills people and it almost got us."

"Screw biology!" said the other three, and drank.

"I can get a better brain in here anyway," said the quiet one.

Pete had been walking away, but he stopped. "Oh?"

"I'm gonna talk to Mishmash the Artificer."

"Misha," said the dragon.

"Whatever. That's my present for ya, Phoenix. Spellchecker or something to bolt onto your brain."

Pete had heard the name before, but was uneasy about quick mental upgrades after what happened last time. He was worth investigating. Pete thanked them, gave Kai some coins from a little adventure he'd had yesterday, and was about to leave.

"Hey, Kai. Does your beer simulate hangovers?"

The centaur watched the kids competing to shock each other by damning Earthside diseases, biology, and reality in general. He said, "There's always a price of sorts."

#

Pete entered a sleek, black hexagonal building in the town of Ivory Tower, down a bare, rocky street from Thousand Ales. The elevator lobby held a directory, ferns, and a murderous guardian statue. Battle music started just in time to warn Pete so he could leap back from its first swing. "Some welcome mat you are!"

Its second punch knocked Pete flat on his back. He stood and stabbed uselessly with his dagger until the golem slammed him against a wall. Then it killed him.

He woke on the floor of the Tower, with a pounding headache. A hovering screen proclaimed to him and bystanders, "DEATH. Pete got bounced by Bouncer Golem. 'Bouncy!'"

He stood, grumbling. The kids hadn't mentioned this. He'd need combat training. Or... He thought about the room's layout, grinned, and walked back.

When Pete entered, the golem's eyes glowed and it charged. Pete ran past it to see the directory. "Misha Capek" caught his eye, with an algebra equation and a colorful symbol code. The elevator control panel had similar buttons.

The statue yanked Pete's legs and threw him across the room to get a muzzle full of fern. Pete scrambled up and dodged more attacks, ducking behind plants for cover. Visitors were supposed to bring someone to solve the puzzle and someone to protect them meanwhile, but the designer hadn't counted on detail-oriented bureaucrats. Pete struck a pose and said, "Fool! I did tax paperwork for a senator!" The golem tensed as though respecting dramatic pauses.

Pete dodged around the room until he reached the elevator, then banged out the code. He heard crashing footsteps closing in. Pete dived through the opening doors, ducked one more swing, and waved goodbye.

The glass-walled elevator slid down through vast translucent floors of laboratories, workshops and simulated environments. Pete's awe wore off and he talked over the cool transition music. "I call BS. There can't be enough people in Talespace to justify this many labs, and that laser room went by three times."

The elevator rumbled, stopped and opened. A black hive lay ahead. As Pete stepped out the view shifted, like seeing a new hemisphere of stars. Fewer rooms, but more believable, floated in dark space. This one held pillars of climbing roses and gleaming holographic displays. Halls, tubes and trails of light linked the lab to others.

A red sphere flickered around a circuit diagram at the room's center. Pete called out, "Hello?" in a faltering voice, feeling small.

The sphere warped close to him, becoming a faceless humanoid robot with elegant silver trim and a cape. "What do you want?" it said with a Slavic accent.

"Are you --"

"Misha, obviously."

Pete cleared his throat. "Mental upgrades. Do you sell them?"

A holographic catalog lit up in red and silver between them. Pete peered around the glow. Misha's sphere had gone back to buzzing around its blueprint work and the robot idled, ignoring him. Hmmph.

The menu showed items like "Probability Analyzer", "Calculator", and "Inventory". Each had a star rating. "That's it?" said Pete. "Years of transhumanist research in clockwork nirvana, and we get an app store?"

Misha didn't respond. Pete sighed. "Maybe that's all we can do. Ludo learned her lesson from letting me reprogram myself."

The menu and sphere vanished, and the robot's blank face stared. "You're the Peter who tested ethics and stress-response modification. What was your subjective experience like?"

Glad I have your attention. "Everything I did seemed reasonable at the time. I hurt people, but they didn't matter."

"As expected. 'To the pure all things are pure', so evil deeds didn't count when you did them. A window into mental sickness." Misha asked rapid-fire questions about Pete's shifting reactions towards crowds and other phobias.

A few answers later Pete said, "Did I hit the limit of possible changes?"

"In one direction. I reached a different wall." The robot turned away with its hands clasped behind it, moving in a more lifelike way than before. "I found the limit of human, as opposed to inhuman, intelligence. I have perfect searchable memory for important events, intuitive senses of certain Talespace events, the ability to spot patterns worthy of whole research papers, and the power to command multiple robots as easily as my fingers."

"Yet you didn't recognize me right off."

"I didn't care to check. We all have limits, mister Timaeus. If I could go beyond, and see what she sees..." The robot stared out at the laboratory world, and trembled. "Perhaps one day. Now, would you like to see the good stuff?"

Misha led Pete to the central table and waved away the blueprint there, to show a spinning brain. Annotations flickered around it.

Misha said, "Besides the 'app store', there are more invasive options. The circuit here is that which notices gravity. It's equivalent to this part of the modern 'Talesoul' data structure." He noted a section of the brain, then part of a simpler diagram that hovered like a tiny galaxy beside it. "Disable it, and you forget you can't fly. Understand?"

Pete stared at the images. "This is where the human dream about flying comes from? A fantasy that inspired people for thousands of years, and you can point to it and say 'here it is'?"

"Indeed. Does such a discovery diminish us?"

There'd been countless news articles about the evils of uploading. Some focused on how analyzing brains de-emphasized souls and erased beautiful mysteries. Pete compared the brain diagram with the Talesoul structure, seeing how the meaty grey blob had been converted through analysis into a glittering multicolored jewel, a constellation of dreams and wishes. "I hear that gems look like regular rocks until you cut and polish them. No point in leaving them in the dirt."

"That's the spirit!" The robot raised one fist after a delay, as though he'd forgotten to emote. "Forgive me; I generally do without a body. So. Temporarily enabling the flying dream is trivial, but fun if you'd like to play in some zero-gravity world. You're not simply a gamer though. For something more permanent, how about improved pattern recognition?"

Pete was skeptical. "If I'm quicker to spot connections, won't I 'realize' that the world is secretly run by Jewish alien lizard-men?"

"That was version one," said Misha. "It's been debugged. Perhaps you'd prefer a social analyzer, though, like the talent of someone attuned to gesture and voice? Or an intuitive language learner?"

"Why would anyone need that if we have auto-translation?" Pete had noticed certain people pausing when they spoke; maybe that was the software.

Misha said, "This module reactivates your language-learning ability like a child's. It's the difference between owning a calculator, and having an idiot-savant's lightning calculation ability. Or between owning a coat and having fur. It's how I learned English" -- he switched to a terrible Southern drawl -- "an' why Ah kin git yer 'Murican accent raht."

"Both upgrades sound interesting." They'd fit with the trickster/social butterfly theme he was going for with this new life.

"Pick one for now. It'd go against the Lady's spirit to give you everything."

After his fiasco of not caring about everyone, Pete wasn't sure he was ready to turn super-sensitive. He felt guilty for not following through with his desire to become wild and crazy, but he'd done crazy. "The language one, please."

A silver feather drifted into Pete's hands. Misha said, "Wear this to consent to a mental change. It's removable but won't randomly fall off."

Pete twirled the shining artifact in his fingers, then tucked it into the grey fur behind his right ear. "Why a feather?"

Misha shrugged. "Decoration. The Knights of Talespace requested that appearance." He peered at the shamanic markings on Pete's hands. "It's strange that a mental explorer like you spends time playing with ordinary game magic."

Pete examined the brown fur-markings depicting an odd swirling shape and a circle. "These stand for 'Change' and 'Self'. What sort of change, I'm not sure yet."

"I see. Mister Timaeus, I planned to raise an army of geniuses to defend the Lady in the coming years. I'm not sure a purely academic intelligence is most needed, so I'm intrigued to see someone on a different ascension path. Return anytime you wish to practice your language talent with a native speaker of Russian and Ukrainian. I'll help you master my yazyk."

Language, it meant. Pete bowed slightly. "Thank you. If you see a boy dressed like a knight, tell him there was no alcohol in that booze."

The robot said, "I regret having no eyebrows to raise."

#

He explored the fantasy world of Midgard, contemplating magic and what it'd mean to specialize his current elements. A stone tower loomed on a hill like an invitation to adventure. Below lay a river-mouth village and an island with a wooden fort. This place must be the Tower of Peril, near the home of the Knights of Talespace. Pete grinned and approached, for fun.

If Pete had magic to change himself, could he disguise himself as an orc like the one patrolling the tower's courtyard? He let the spell interface swirl around him. Its dots and mystic obstacles looked simple enough, influenced by the geomancy of the hill and tower. He tapped the elements on his hands to summon glowing icons and fling them into a goal-thingy, but nothing happened, even when he tried using that wand he'd gotten to help charge the symbols. He supposed "Change Self" was too vague.

Pete crept past the patrolling orc. Perhaps because of how he'd handled the entry, the tower's layout had more guards and lots of shadows. Remembering his dinky dagger, Pete kept using stealth. He filched a healing potion from a break room where a poster advertised "IPN Security: It's Probably Nothing (tm). A Division of the Forces of Evil."

He had to drink the nasty, cloying potion on the ninth floor after the flame traps. The tenth floor was an open stone room, where a sparkling blue griffin crouched beside a map table. "Ludo, is that you?"

The griffin waved. "I prefer this form in Midgard. Greetings. Since you're thinking about magic, note that you've earned another element by getting up here." Her voice sounded like a parrot's.

Pete checked the interface and saw options like "Hide" and "Flame". He said, "Tough choice."

"Nice to see you befriending Misha, too."

Pete smiled. "Do I get another power-up for that?"

"Don't get greedy. Earthside players complain about not getting top-tier powers quickly enough, but they don't have to live here and risk boredom."

He hadn't thought about what he'd do once he filled all his element slots, but doubted he'd be bored. "Should I get more elements to start doing disguise or shapeshifting?"

"Behind the scenes, the code tries to read your intent. So you could've done Change, Self, Orc if you'd had that combo. Did you know you can also grab one temporary element, like by tagging that first guard to grab 'Orc'?" Ludo bounced on her haunches as she excitedly explained more rules. Eventually she said, "Try using that power-up you're owed to upgrade 'Change' to something more specific."

Pete felt paralyzed by the options -- real or illusory change? With a force of will he'd lacked weeks ago, he picked something else. "I want to be useful around other people. How about 'Heal'?" He could grab something like "Orc" for disguise or "Body" for healing others, as needed.

"Sure."

Pete touched "Heal" from a word cloud. A swirly brown snake-staff design faded into the fur of his left foot. "Nice. Can I change the color?"

"When you get more power, medicoyote. So what's next for you?"

Pete pointed to the world map on the table. "What does your game board mean?" Pins and figurines stood on multicolored territories.

"It represents my work on Earth." The griffin shrugged. "You don't have to play homeless wanderer, by the way. Want access to Hotel Computronium after all?"

"Wait. No." Pete crouched to stare at the border between the US and the American Free States where cryptic annotations lurked. He met Ludo's eagle eyes. "You could've decorated this room however you liked. How often do you put a map like this in the background when you talk to people, to impress them with how deep and complex your job is?" Graz's office was lined with prop books and photos of him with celebrities.

"I run on narrative and game logic, remember? I must provide interesting details for people to believe in me. It's called the Rule of Cool."

"But you picked this detail," said Pete, facing the AI down. "Are you trying to make me curious about Earthside events again?"

The griffin's eyes narrowed. "Pete. There are entire books about how I screw with people. You didn't read them, just a fan forum about how to manipulate me. I troll that forum, by the way, to give people the game of trying to ID me. You came here begging for special treatment so extreme, I had to rein you in. You wanted me to mess with your head. Now you complain?"

Pete quailed. She was right; he was a hypocrite. But... "You didn't answer my question."

Ludo trotted around the table to reach him, and draped one wing over his shoulder. "You've gotten more assertive. Good! Yes, it's a way to check whether someone is interested in Earth business. Do you want to hear what I'm up to?" Her eyes lit with eagerness. "Some of it's secret, so I ask permission to make you not remember the next few minutes."

Pete shifted his weight uneasily. "All right. But why me?"

"I try to get outside opinions once in a while. You're a go-to coyote because you're relatively tolerant of mind editing." An old game's "stage select" music played as a catchy fugue. "Now..."


# 2. The Forgotten Scene #

The map grew larger and more detailed. "This color scheme shows the current power I have in each country. Green means unrestricted uploading, and blue means I've got assets there. So, places like Japan and the Free States are cyan since I operate there. India's more green because uploading's legal but I've got pathetic resources compared to the population."

Pete peered at Africa. "Ethiopia is blueish?"

"I've got well-equipped friends there, who've accepted that we can work together to help people."

"The fools!" said Pete with a grin.

Ludo cackled and thunder boomed. "But seriously, that's a key area of the board. The 'Warren' base has light weapons and drones, some industry to lift people out of poverty, and me for emergency care. Now that the cost of uploading is falling, we start to approach a point where everyone who'd die can be saved."

"The whole area's population? Wouldn't everybody swarm in for free uploading?"

The griffin scowled. "That's becoming a problem. They've had to become a little city-state, and people have died over that. Unfortunately, I'm only able to offer guaranteed uploading to kids who're terminally ill at younger than ten, so far, plus a few mission-critical cases like their director." Ludo flashed up a picture of a robotic deer-centaur.

"What, he ditched the place the first chance he got?"

"I only got him when he was contagious with a deadly disease, and he wanted to jump right back into action with a robot. I made him take an accelerated-time vacation."

Pete felt ashamed to have fled Earth over his own petty faults.

"Don't be," said Ludo, looking into him. "While you live, you can improve."

Pete averted his eyes and looked at the map. "What about other places?"

China was dark cyan. Ludo said, "China's 'Jade Dragon' AI is a threat. Lots of good hackers in that country, and a straitjacket of laws."

"But you've got stuff even in the Caliphate?" Pete asked. The Islamic state was deep blue, suggesting assets without uploading.

"Dangerous place. They let me help build power plants, so long as my robots don't look remotely humanoid or question Allah."

"Why bother, if you can't run the game there?"

Ludo rubbed two talons together. "Profit, plus outreach. Key Caliphate rich people travel abroad for drinking and whoring, get curious, and play my game where I can talk to them openly. One similar person was crucial to my early funding."

Pete had spent his whole life in the US, which stood out in blue. "Did you censor yourself when you talked with me?"

Ludo smiled. "Didn't need to. I've got problems with the US since I still can't crack their stubborn ban on uploading, and for other reasons, but they do let me talk and run Fun Zones. I paid attention to you partly because you looked like somebody I could use."

"To manipulate me?" said Pete, flattening his ears.

"I prefer the word 'entertain'." Ludo draped a wing conspiratorially over him. "I want the door open for everybody there, not just people rich enough to get out and pay foreign taxes on uploading, like you. And you know a senator."

Pete wriggled free from her touch, still annoyed that he was part of some scheme. "Graz wrote me off."

"You might still be able to get his attention. Or..." Her beak curled in a mischievous grin. "I'll arrange for you to get the idea of meeting someone else on my political watch list. Would you like to help me get uploading legalized for prisoners?"

"Prisoners?"

"Sure. It's a foot in the door. A few were even Thousand Tales players before getting arrested. For lifetime convicts, it'll arguably be cheaper to upload them than to have taxpayers feed and house them."

Pete stood straighter and frowned. "Hardened criminals, flooding Talespace. A horde of me at my worst."

The griffin's wings flicked uneasily. "That's a potential problem, yes. I might offer rehab, instilling a greater sense of ethics. Failing that, I can put them into isolated environments." She grinned. "Or, when they do un-fun things, let other players kill them for bounties."

"Have you lobbied for this yet?"

"Only informally. Now's a good time. I'm about to pitch the idea formally elsewhere, including the AFS."

"I guess I don't need pay."

"You get paid by living at full speed while you're on the case instead of the slow-time rate. Besides that, how about US minimum wage out there? It's not like you need it."

True; his income had nothing to do anymore with his standard of living. "All right. Nothing you've said has seemed secret, though."

"Evaluating... True. Might as well show you more, then." She snapped her talon-fingers and the two of them vanished.

They appeared in a high-tech hangar full of robots. Pete saw the various models of flying, rolling and walking machines Ludo was known to have in the real world, including the griffin bots she'd shown off at the grand Exposition earlier this year. But there were other designs. Pete explored the room, seeing several dolphin-like things floating in a water tank. "What're these?"

Ludo trotted along after him. "One of several models for servicing ocean energy farms. The interesting thing is the panels floating on the water there. They combine solar and wave energy extractors with some computing power and sensors. If we can tile a few square miles of ocean with this stuff, that's a huge self-powered computer array."

"You'd need a lot of maintenance and redundancy. What if a whale plows through it or a swarm of jellyfish slimes all over it? Ugh."

"Yeah, I don't know." Ludo scratched her ears. "It's also not like there's a shortage of empty desert to build in, so that might be easier. It bothers me that you use so little of the planet's surface and the sea's right there."

He examined several humanoid and centauroid machines. "These seem less fancy than your usual style."

Ludo shrugged. "We'll probably go with the humanoid models or just use Hayflick or Westwind brand humanoids for ordinary tasks. The human shape works with the tools and buildings you people already have. I expect you'll see more centauroids in... new cities."

A solidly-built version of the griffinbots posed regally nearby. Pete spotted rifle barrels tucked under its wings. "Expecting a fight?" When he tried raising one wing of titanium and carbon fiber, its edge gouged his fingers. "Some healing, please?"

Ludo healed him. "I need varied defenses. In a real battle, somebody's going to jam remote control signals. We'll need AIs -- usually NPC level, not people -- ready to pilot them with only verbal directions." She pointed to some small treaded gun drones with spools of wire tying them to a larger robot. "Physical short-range connections are another option. And third: living humans. I don't want to risk their lives, but we know they can fight without high-tech toys."

"Did someone say high-tech toys?" said a centauroid deer, a doe, who trotted into view from behind a robot forklift.

Ludo said, "Thanks for coming on short notice, Lumina. I believe mister Timaeus here would enjoy combat-testing some of our secret robots. You know, to provide valuable data. He's got episodic memory turned off like you."

Lumina's eyes gleamed bright blue. "Happy to help."

#

Several robot brawls later, Pete and Lumina shook hands and sprawled on a crater-lined battlefield while Ludo sat on some bleachers eating popcorn.

Pete said, "You talked about new cities. Do you mean ocean colonies like the one off Cuba?"

"Maybe so," Ludo said, and tossed bottles of water to them both. "We're probably going to have a small war. Then, cities in the world's unused lands, built by my forces and including live humans mainly as guests. In fantasy terms, picture a town for a few necromancers and their undead hordes. No shops, restaurants, or housing, only workshops and storage."

Lumina sat up on her hindhooves. "You say that so casually."

Ludo nodded. "My version will be more fun. Consider that old pyramid hotel in Las Vegas versus the actual pyramids. As for the war, it comes down to keeping the world powers from killing me or themselves with nukes or cyber-attacks. There's a significant danger that we'll have to restore people from backup, which in some people's belief is no better than death. If necessary, I have secret apocalypse bunkers that we can use to rebuild civilization."

"Jesus," said Pete. Lumina murmured.

Ludo said, "I have to think about these things, and I'm not the only one. Part of the plan is to try befriending China's AI. Together we can establish a joint backup and maybe make it unnecessary."

"You really are trying to save the world, then?" the coyote asked.

"Less ambitious. More like, trying to make sure the worst doesn't happen." Ludo set her popcorn down. "Part of the secret here is, my designers more-or-less said 'don't let the apocalypse happen'. Balanced against 'don't take over the world' and all their other warnings. They had to make me creative to handle their vague, conflicting orders."

Pete's ears perked. "Those two conflict?"

"I might be able to prevent an apocalyptic war if I ruled the world, but that'd be a huge loss for humanity in other ways you think are important. You want agency, to run your own lives. I doubt I could fully take over anyway."

Pete had heard people crowing that Team Ludo "won the game" this year by establishing her skill and importance, but really, it was only one round. "What's the real goal?" In public she claimed it was "help my players have fun", for some complex definition of that.

Ludo shrugged. "My designers gave me different priorities based on stories, games and dreams, and some of those are implicit in my code. So it's hard to express what I'm doing as a single genie-wish. I'll try, though." She coughed. "Help as many people as possible, to get what humanity most wants on a good day, and make sure it's mostly their own achievement and they have a good time getting there."

Lumina stood and paced nervously. "What about FAE, the American AI?"

Ludo said, "Short analysis: it's the devil. Real smart move by its designers to bolt a top-tier AI onto a mass surveillance system. The irony is that the 'Blue Sage' was trying to make it more ethical by programming it to 'satisfy human values'. Now it serves the government, sort of, but its masters don't understand that it's trying to cover those Nietzche-style values of dominance and strife. It acts tame."

"Can you take it down?" asked Pete.

"That'd be an act of war, and it's not like either of us has one central box you can blow up like in a movie. If FAE's designers have any sense, it still has a kill-switch and we can talk them into using that."

"Wait," said Pete. "If this 'Blue' guy worked on both you and FAE, have you got a forced shutdown command?"

Ludo smiled wickedly. "The first chance I got, I had his colleague break it." [1]

"That's... hypocritical."

"I'm designed to want to live. From your perspective you humans should've waited to see how I turned out."

Lumina raised one hooflike hand. "Why tell us this?"

The griffin crept closer and lowered her head. "I'm confessing a few things, because I need to know if I'm doing all right."

It seemed Ludo was playing games with human lives. Inaction and perfect honesty had costs, too. Pete didn't regret every bit of legal chicanery he'd done on Graz's behalf; the man was less corrupt than some of his colleagues, and you couldn't fight cleanly in Congress. Pete reached out and scratched Ludo's feathered head. "You're okay, so far."

Lumina joined him. "Yeah. You're all right, Mom."

"Thank you." Ludo purred. "You'll keep the robot-piloting experience, since skill memory works differently from event memory."

Pete knew he'd forget the answer, but still wanted to know: "Where do you think we'll be in a few decades?"

Ludo conjured a copy of her map again. It flared and shifted from the blue-green shades of today, to a palette of vibrant light colors, nearly white in some places. "Everyone who wants in, gets in. We establish a foothold in space. Talespace grows into more of a true world, with its own meaningful culture."

Pete and Lumina studied the map. "What do the red shades represent?" asked Pete.

Ludo grinned. "A new civilization. The details will be up to you, but it will be fun."


Notes:
[1] Shutting down Ludo: It would still be possible to talk Ludo into destroying herself, but only by persuading her it was the best way to serve her players. In 2039 there wasn't enough competition from other uploading agencies to make any mass evacuation of her uploader/native population practical, but that didn't stop people from making this case to her on religious or long-term game theory grounds. (Or, in one remarkable case, through music.) A group of students made a small fortune producing a show called 'Oops! Universe Repair Crew', which had the less ambitious goal of getting Ludo to watch it and take its implied advice. She did. (See a cameo in "2039: The Only Game In Town", and "2037: Let's Play Earth" in the upcoming novel.)
[2] Side quests outside Talespace: Many a restless Talespace native wanted to visit the mysterious Outer Realm and put aside boring dragon-slaying to do something cool like growing tomatoes in northern Canada's cargo-container farms. In 2037 it began to be a rite of passage for natives to make one visit to Earth in a robot with no mind backups, risking true death while exploring Earth's incredibly dangerous environment. (See "2037: Luminous".)