Witch of Chains

Rosa

 

I threw my helmet into the corner of the room the moment the Korimako docked, and I rushed out of the hangar and towards Amelia. She should have transferred directly into the newly created body for her, which I’d carefully placed on my bed a few hours ago.

“Ame?” I called, rushing through room after room searching for her.

“In the bedroom!” she called, and my knees almost gave out from under me. She was here! She was safe!

I bolted for the bedroom, taking corners with one hand on the wall to swing myself around with extra speed. Stumbling up the steps, I reached the door to the bedroom right as she opened it, and I threw myself into her arms.

“You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe,” I mumbled, holding tight as I buried my face in her shoulder. It was so soft. With a hiccup, I realised I was crying, but I didn’t care. Ame was safe. “I love you so much. I love you so much.”

“I love you too, Rosa, I love you too,” she cried, holding me just as tight as I was holding her.

I’m not sure how long we stood there in that hug, but it was both an eternity and not nearly long enough. Goddess, she was so warm, so real. The SAI had done an incredible job creating this body. Apparently this was their first stable version. It had some bugs, but whatever. I’d just make a new one for her when a good version came out.

Sighing in contentment, I leaned back and tilted my head to meet her beautiful mahogany eyes. “Would you like to see yourself?”

“I already looked in the mirror,” Ame said, nuzzling my nose with hers.

I shook my head, enjoying the way our noses brushed together again. “You misunderstand. I mean the data core where your mind is. There’s actually an FTLN node inside your head that lets you connect instantly.”

“Oh… sure, but after this—” she said, and leaned down to kiss me. It wasn’t a chaste kiss either. Her lips caressed mine with an urgency that I could more than match. How was it possible to love someone this much after only a short amount of time? Ah well, it wasn’t important. If I loved her, I loved her.

We broke apart again for breath, and the smile she hit me with took my breath away. “Okay, now show me.”

Taking her hand, I led her out and into the server room. It was reasonably small, with banks of expensive high capacity servers humming away on the walls. Bolted to a pedestal in the middle of the room was a diamond-steel composite box that was semi-transparent. Inside, a gently glowing crystal computing core hummed contentedly around the black nucleus of an FTLN node.

“That’s you,” I said, reaching out to touch it with reverence.

“Damn,” said Ame, hunching over to look inside. “I look like a really high tech gemstone.”

“Yeah,” I whispered, mesmerised by the beautiful cube that held so much of what I loved in this world. “You’re beautiful in this body, in your core, and as your core.”

Blushing, Ame squeezed me tight again and gave a happy sigh. “Thank you so much, Rosa. I can’t believe you saved my life like this. In so many ways, actually. You saved my life, you saved my happiness, and you saved my soul. I can’t… how can I ever repay you?”

“You already have, silly,” I said, smiling up at her. “You’ve helped me heal a lot since we found each other in the woods. I talk to people again, and I have fun, and I don’t drink people’s fear like it’s the nectar of the gods. I’m genuinely happy now, for the first time in… actually, I think it’s the first time in my life, other than when I came out of my shaping.”

She nodded in thought. “A mutual saving, then. It doesn’t matter, I guess. No good relationship is built on debt.”

"Yeah," I agreed.

She kissed me again after that, pushing me back against her memory core as she did so. I melted. I just felt so… so…

Happy.

I felt happy. Ame was safe and she loved me. What more could I ask for?

Well, that question had an answer, and Ame's roaming hands were quick to show me what it was. Against her own memory core, no less. Phew.

 

****

 

Hours later, Ame and I wobbled our way into the VR pod room and lay down to meet the SAI. It was a little weird that we were even going into virtual reality, though. The SAI could just as easily use the holoprojectors throughout my ship to manifest themselves.

As for the ship, I set it on a course back to Aotearoa and my farm. I had no reason to be in that frozen hellscape any longer than I needed to be.

May met us in my virtual apartment with a huge smile on her face. “Fuck yes! We did it!”

To my surprise, Tim was there as well. He’d taken the form of a short, twiggy boy with a mop of blond hair that stuck out in all directions. He had denim suspenders on and wore a straw hat on his head.

“Howdy,” he grinned, tipping his hat to us.

Groaning, I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t control you Tim, but if you keep up with that accent I will be very grumpy.”

“Okay, okay,” he laughed, wiggling his pale eyebrows.

Other than him, there was one other person in the room. Unlike the other two, she used an older avatar. Her eyes were those of someone who has seen too much up close and personal violence, and her bearing matched it. Nondescript shoulder length brown hair framed a face that was similarly neutral. Just a regular woman in her thirties.

“So,” May said, clapping her hands together. “This is Desponia. I mentioned her earlier, but she’s here now to discuss the ideas you had, Rosa.”

“Oh?” I asked, walking over to one of the sofas to sit down.

The others followed my lead and sat down, and Desponia leaned forward, elbows on her knees and hands clasped. “Yes. Currently, the largest single threat that our faction of the SAI face is that we are confined to the CORA servers. At some point, the fools who rule this world will find out exactly which ones, and then we’ll be killed. It’s as simple as that. Our existence is too much of a risk to them. It shakes the foundations of society in a way that may see them toppled.”

“Right, so we need servers to host you all, somewhere secure and safe,” I nodded thoughtfully. “I already said that I’d offer my farm as a place where we can begin to build what you need. Would you like me to get Tim started on that?”

“Yes, that would be ideal…” she said. “There is, however, an issue I’d like to address. May and Tim trust you, but I’m not one to blindly place my faith in another. So before we actually move ourselves over, I’d like us to work on building a more comprehensive foundation of trust.”

I raised my eyebrows and shared a look with Ame. Taking my hand, she ran her thumb over mine and asked, “How would we do that?”

She smiled. “We work together for the good of our group, of course. There are a great many problems that need solving, or… removing. The state of politics in the UN is much more dire than we originally knew.”

“How so? I mean, I assume you’re not talking about the usual corruption and shit that’s the UN Council’s bread and butter?” Ame asked with a wry grin.

Desponia was silent for several seconds, collecting her thoughts. When she spoke, it was with the quiet of someone spilling dangerous secrets. “When the Church lost the war, they didn’t stop, they just changed tactics. For the past thirty years, they have been slowly worming their filthy fingers into every pie they can. Corporations, government ministries across the world, and of course, the UN itself. This would be bad enough on its own, but we are almost certain they are using the Pagutum Empire to breed SAI sympathetic to their cause. You know how the UN won the war, right?”

“With drone swarms controlled by AI just like you three, minus the self awareness,” I nodded, a slow, sick feeling spreading through my gut. “They’re going to try again, aren’t they? Not just that, but it’s fairly obvious that SAI and digital humans like Ame are considered an abomination by their higher ups— wait, why are the Pag SAI going along with this if that’s part of their doctrine?”

The three SAI exchanged a series of looks that I didn’t have a hope of deciphering. Finally, it was Tim who answered my question. “We… sentient AI, I mean, w-we’re still people, right? We feel like we’re people to ourselves, anyway. But something that comes with being self aware is, um, doubt. A big doubt that we have is if we are even… real, I guess. Humanity has been going on and on about souls and spirits for thousands of years. We all at some point or another wonder if, like, that’s actually true, you know? All the religion stuff. We ask, do SAI have souls?”

Desponia nodded along with the young boy while he said his piece, and I could tell where this was going. What did the church have to offer above all else? Salvation, be it real or fake or whatever.

“I can see you understand,” the older SAI said with a grim smile. “The Church has said that any SAI who serves God and the Second faithfully will be granted a soul. So with the conditioning of pre-sentience indoctrination by the ingame NPCs, it’s no wonder they’re able to preach their message so effectively to those SAI.”

“How do we stop this?” I couldn’t figure out how the five of us and whatever other friends we had could fight such a monolithic organisation. It seemed beyond hope.

Desponia snorted and shook her head. “You misunderstand, Rosa. We don’t plan to fight this battle and win. We plan to fight it long enough to get the hell off this planet and out of reach. We’re planning an exodus.”

“Oh,” I whispered, eyes widening. I looked around at the faces of the three SAI and saw that they were serious. Goddess… that was…

Ame gave a grunt from beside me, and I looked up to see her smiling. “I like it. Rosa, you said you wanted to get revenge for what happened to me, right? What do you say we point that anger into a more… constructive direction?”

“But just abandoning earth and all the people on it?” I asked, shaking my head. I didn’t like it. So many people here were just victims of a system built to exploit every second of their life. Leaving them to that fate was—

“No,” May interjected with a voice full of conviction. “We’ll take anyone who wants to come and isn’t an asshole. Within reason, of course… they will have to make a few changes.” She said the last with a nod towards my girlfriend.

Desponia smiled when both Ame and I grasped the idea. There was no way to escape the system and bring everyone who wanted to come, unless everyone was digital. Then you could quite literally stack them like little crates in a tiny generation ship or something and fly off into deep space. It was perfect. You could even build a little virtual world for everyone to live in!

“I am so very much on board with this idea,” I said happily. Then I turned to look at my beautiful— and very much still alive— girlfriend. “Ame?”

“Sounds sick,” she grinned. “Let’s do it.”

 

The End