“Yes, I’m jealous of their cities. No, I’m not requesting a permanent transfer. But yes, I would like to remain at Kalscar Prime, is that such a crime? The Out-Han Alliance’s capital is unlike anywhere else in the galaxy, at least from what I’ve seen. Clean air, plenty of green spaces, and some of the nicest ‘people’ I’ve met in some time, that is if company policy lets us talk about the xenos that way. *indistinct* Oh, we are referring to them as people? Cool, good. Moving on, if I had to compare it to something, I would say it made me think of the old footage of Earth, way before Paradise and Heaven’s Doctrine were around. Plants and stuff, loads of space to walk, all that jazz. I even have a small garden. So yes, I would like to maintain my current position at the office here. Wha- no! I’m not ‘having relations’ with the natives. Go fuck yourself.” – Phillip Moriarty, Interspecies Emissary for Black Sun, 2258. Retrieved from a call from the subsidiary offices of Black Sun Enterprises on Kalscar Prime.

  It was a little past noon when Elias worked up the courage to finally meet with EXCALIBUR to gather resources for his secret project. After his usual workout, he had spent the morning going over Bernard’s work so that the two of them would be able to hand in their initial outlines in at the same time. As agreed, Elias would let Bernard take the spotlight as he focused on the work. Despite all his past showboating, the older scientist repeated asked to reaffirm Elias’ surrender of attention. It was only after Elias pointedly mentioned the attention could help provide additional support to Dr Warnick’s genetics project that he finally agreed in sincerity. Frankly, Elias didn’t see it as a loss in the slightest – the less attention on him, the better.

  Dr Warnick’s project was a ‘simple’ matter of genetically splicing a number of genes from alien plant life into standard human produce for the sake of making a fast growing and efficient form of food. Rich in caloric energy, it would be edible by both humans and Cambiar, and able to be broken down by the Tylas if needed for bioelectrical energy. Though the floating aliens lacked any form of real digestive system, they could still intake food and other biological material into their gaseous core and make use of the chemical bonds to absorb their energy. Elias personally thought that the Tylas were pulling some serious bullshit with how much they could do with a non-biological body, but then again he wasn’t the biologist of Nucleus’ Wing 2.

  Frankly, the splicing part of the project was beyond Elias’ talents, but he was able to assist with providing the gene maps of a few alien plants he had already collected. Those came from a past attempt to make shuckabrush, the leafy plant that took the title of humanity’s first discovered lifeform, useful for something other than a cheap light source. At the time, he had failed, but it would appear his shuckabrush-shaped redemption could be at hand. Of course, the spliced produce might start glowing if one of the various genes involved with bioluminescence was taken from the alien shrub, but that was something for Bernard to work out. Why an otherwise simple form of plant life needed multiple genes independently producing a glow in the dark phenotype was a mystery, but it probably made for a picturesque scene the first-time humanity saw them.

  Elias had far bigger matters on his mind. He had become stumped with the limited amount of information he could retrieve so far from the Tylas archives without drawing unwanted attention. Lucian had already stopped him once to ‘academically’ ask about Elias’ probing into the exotic materials that would be tied to his secret project. The last thing he needed was getting pulled him from the IGS because of some risky data retrieval. Instead, he sought out an alternative path that would kill two birds with one stone – getting his hands on the restricted schematics he needed, as well as a chance to finally pick the mind of an experimental artificial intelligence.

  Well, the term was subjective, and Elias felt that CAIs, or Copied Artificial Intelligences, were a half measure when it came to producing sentience from nothingness. Unlike a TAI, or True Artificial Intelligence, where the structure of something resembling a sapient mind was naturally developed through randomised exotic matter signalling to instigate something akin to a consciousness, CAIs instead copied the neural structures from a preexisting human’s brain. According to GaltCorp, the only corporation publicly successful at producing CAIs, very few existed, and mostly for experimental purposes. The exact nature of the strange machines were unknown to the public, and Elias was dying to dig deeper.

  Elias made his way to the centre of Nucleus Two, passing through a number of security gates. When the computer recognized him, the heavy bulkhead, thick as his torso, slid open as a pair of mounted turrets descended back into the floor. Most of the facility was rather light on security, but it would seem GaltCorp was rather insistent on protecting one of their newest golden geese. From what little Elias had read, Henry & Huell Incorporated had once tried their hand at CAI production a decade prior but had skimped on the budgeting. The result was little better than a lobotomised chatbot that could barely hold a conversation, but could crack anti-bot protection on inter-sys sites easily. As such, they had mostly used it for cybersecurity before quietly shelving the project. It was one of many ideas that summed up the now liquidated megacorp – interesting ideas, bad execution and even worse management. If Josiah Dexter, the ex-CEO, was still alive, Elias figured he was probably running a pyramid scheme.

  Walking into the core room, a vast dark space lit only by pinpricks of light, Elias couldn’t help but shudder at the atmosphere the lair he had entered. It was dominated by hundreds upon hundreds of server towers and filled with chilled air cold enough to make him wish he had brought some extra layers. Elias found himself staring the central column of the room – the CAI’s core. Hundreds of lights decorated its obsidian black surface. The monolith reached a dozen or more meters into the open space above him, disappearing into the midnight ink above. Each pinpoint of light dancing on its surface marked a rectangular data slot of the central tower, most already filled already with a corresponding rectangular storage drive. Each was labelled with long strings of numbers and letters, a language not meant for Elias to understand. Mounted at head height was a simple screen, the image of a familiar golden sword idly bouncing across its pixels. There was something eye-catching about moving screensavers, no matter how basic or old. Hell, the older they felt, the more nostalgic to Elias.

  Elias cleared his throat, “EXCALIBUR? Are you there?”

  The sword stopped in place before spinning in the centre of the display. The dark background of the screen changed to that of rolling green hills below a perfect blue sky as the sword finished its rotation. Why the hell Windows 64 had gone back to that old, albeit nostalgic, background was a hardly a mystery – Windows 63’s default screensaver of an advertisement did not win many fans.

  “Ah, Dr Savage!” EXCALIBUR said through a number of surrounding speakers. “It’s so good to hear from you. How has your time at the facility been so far?”

  “It’s well equipped, but I do wish my working arrangements were a bit more… private.”

  “Oh? Some issue with the laboratory space?”

  “More like… the people in it,” Elias said.

  Honestly, working at Nucleus would have been his dream come true had he not needed to share his lab space with that goddamn haughty Tylas. The way she drifted about, looking over at him more and more often, was starting to get on his nerves. Was this payback for his previous behaviour? Would Elias starting to see the consequences for his actions? No, of course not! He would find some way of avoiding the overdue penalties of his behaviour – responsibility was for other people, not him.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Based on what I can see in the records, that doesn’t seem to be something I can cha-“

  “Yeah, Lucian made that very clear. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.” Elias shuffled on the spot. He had initially wanted to focus on the species Tylas blueprints he needed, but the urge to uncover more about the AI in front of him had swelled since stepping into the strange chamber. “I wanted to talk about you, EXCALIBUR.”

  “Please, call me EXCAL. I’ve tried to get everyone so far to shorten it down. Feels weird when people say the full thing. I’m an AI, not a mythological sword. So, what did you want to know?”

  Interesting, the machine was completely aware of its nature. Elias half expected it to be completely delusional about being artificial, but apparently not. He fought the urge to lean casually against a nearby server tower, and instead sat down on the cold floor. His breath visible in the air, Elias spread his hands wide.

  “Well, EXCAL, I’ve heard a lot of conflicting things from others in the field and decided I should see for myself. I’ve got some questions, if you don’t mind?”

  “Of course! I’m sure you have a number of things you want to talk about, but we need to start somewhere. To start with, would you like to see what my active, ongoing processes look like?”

  “Sure. I sometimes wish I could just show people what I’m thinking about; maybe they’d keep up with me then.”

  The screen in front of him changed to that of an incomprehensible scrawl of characters, many of which were not in English, streaming past.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Whoa… Are these your thoughts?”

  “Yep, albeit translated into a somewhat readable format. Turns out giving a copy of a human mind the processing power of a supercomputer makes a whole lot of junk data though. Most of this is just random thoughts that pop into my head. Did you know sometimes I feel a phantom itch? I can’t remember having a leg, but I remember what the urge to scratch it felt like.”

  “Hmm. Is it… annoying?”

  “Nah, not really.” EXCAL switched the monitor back to the standard sword icon, waving it back and forth in greeting before letting it resume its standard screensaver-like motion. “I only notice things like that when I’m daydreaming. So, Elias, any burning questions? I know how your type of people act when they find something new.”

  “My ‘type of people’?”

  “You know… nerds.”

  “Thanks,” Elias said, rolling his eyes.

  “No problem!” EXCAL said without a hint of sarcasm. Well, glad to see he wasn’t a smart ass - just blunt. Whatever sort of dullard had been copied into this computer must have been a real special guy.

  Elias shifted on the floor, realizing he had been drumming a finger the whole conversation.

  “Right, about that. So, first things first - EXCAL, do you remember your life? From the person you were copied from?”

  “Ah, sadly not. Though my creators were able to scan a human mind in its entirety and were able to replicate the mapping process of the neurons, they purposely stripped a lot of the memory-based regions out. They said it would interfere with my current self, or something along those lines. That being said, I feel they did a bad job of that. I still sometimes get flashes of life from a different place, a different time. I suppose they had to keep some parts of my brain related to memory in here. Language and that sort of stuff. If there’s anything I remember for certain, it’s that I really liked mac and cheese. The really cheap stuff you can get from a ‘Buy-and-Fly’ store.”

  “Huh, interesting.” Elias mused, trying to ignore the CAI’s terrible taste in food. “Alright, next question – what sort of control measures does GaltCorp have over you? How exactly would they stop you from say… doing something dangerous, here in Nucleus Two?”

  EXCAL sat in silence for a moment. The sword halted its movement as the already few lights around the room dimmed for a second. Then, just as Elias expected them to turn blood red, the speakers erupted in laughter.

  “Hahaha!” EXCAL laughed. “Oh, Elias, I think you’ve been watching too many horror movies!”

  “Come on, you have to agree – an AI without any real control systems sounds would be risky, right?”

  “I don’t deny that. But you have to remember that I am based on a human mind; I feel the same things you do, just running on electricity and wires instead of meat and neurons. I have no intentions of those sorts of things, I promise.”

  “Is that meant to make me feel better?” Elias raised an eyebrow.

  “Hey, if it makes you relax a bit, I’ll promise not to go full Skynet - cross my heart and hope to die!”

  “Do you even have anything close to a heart?”

  “Nope!” EXCAL said cheerfully. Great, really relaxing to hear that.

  “Anyways, if it helps demonstrate my point, I needed to alert security to some of the local wildlife, like those animals that like to drift about, getting stuck to the side of our building yesterday, and seeing them get taken away put me in a real bad mood. Or when I saw a scientist entering Nucleus with a burger from Birkdale’s Gate and dropping it just as he got the wrapper off. Wait, tell a lie – that last one was kinda funny. Anyways, GaltCorp does have their own way of dealing with me.”

  “And what way might that be? Killswitches? Command phrases?”

  “Elias, you’re still thinking along the lines of a sci-fi flick, aren’t you?”

  “…Maybe.” Elias admitted.

  “Well, needless to say, it’s nothing like that. If GaltCorp ever wanted me dead for not doing what they want, it would be a huge waste, I think. I’ve got some basic records on my creation, and it looks like they sunk a truckload of utus into getting me made. I haven’t found any kill-codes in my data so far, so maybe they don’t want to risk me being wiped after spending so much on getting me here? Regardless, I think they’d rather use alternative means. That, and death threats don’t tend to make very happy workers, now do they?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past GaltCorp, but I see your point. But you see yourself as a worker, not an… object? If you don’t mind me saying.”

  “Not at all! I get that view of AIs – especially since I’m technically intellectual property. But I do a job, and I do it well, and that’s good enough for them. At first, they tried of controlling me directly through code. A bit after I first ‘came to be’, as it were, they woke me up and tried to put rules and limitations on what I could think, feel or say. Turns out it’s a lot harder to put those restrictions into a CAI than, say, a Keeper. Whatever they tried didn’t stick. They put in a rule to stop me from directly harming people – next training session they gave me a remote shocker and I could buzz the tester as much as I wanted. They told me to open doors for only certain people – I could choose to let everyone through. For a bit, I almost wanted their rules to work, just so I could do something other than waiting to pass their dumb tests. Eventually, they went with another method. So, Elias, do you know what makes a good worker, regardless of whether they’re man, alien or machine?”

  “Uh… vacation leave?”

  “True, but in a more general sense?”

  What would any thinking lifeform get in return for work? Elias thought for a second. “Payment, or rewards, I guess. Giving someone a reason to do what they ask?”

  “Bingo! If I keep doing my job here at Nucleus Two by doing whatever you poindexters want and managing the computer systems, they give me little ‘treats’ as it were. Though, it’s fair to say their first ‘payment’ has hilariously backfired.”

  “And what might that be?”

  The monitor froze for a second before an application popped up onscreen. A low-poly video game, with poor graphics appeared. A low-poly medieval knight wandered about, attacking a number of blocky looking monsters, swinging a sword about with slow animations.

  “Wait, GaltCorp gave you a video game?”

  “SigilPlane! The best MMORPG of the 2100s after the first intersystem networks were created. I must’ve been a fan when I was a human, because this game is like hit of fuzz to me.”

  MMOs were not Elias’ thing. Firstly, the time investment was far too much and would quickly compete with his actual work for attention. Secondly, he preferred the rush of racing or action games. After all, RPGs were for geeks, and Elias refused to let himself get categorized as such.

  “Alright, I think I get it. But surely, you’d get bored of it, right? Can’t you just complete it with your super computer reflexes or whatever and be done?”

  “Aha! Fortunately for my sake, this is the best possible thing they could have given me. The game’s servers died long, long ago, so I’m running a local version here. The game was meant to take tens of thousands of hours to beat with a community helping, so even with my perfect reflexes and skills, as the only player it will take me an ungodly amount of time. That, and there’s a lot of RNG and time wasting involved. I’ve been dry on a drop from Incorporeal Fiend for weeks. In fact…”

  The little knight finished the last of the blocky creatures and entered a cave. It did some funny movements, as if it were praying for a moment, before a much larger creature appeared. Spiked and bone white, it did a roaring animation before a fight began. Dodging its attacks by moving about the blocky landscape, EXCAL’s knight dashed about. After a minute or so of slow combat, the creature eventually fell. Where it once stood laid what looked like a pile of gold coins and bones.

  “Aaaaaand nothing. Shame. The Divine Icon of Maximus, the third best in slot item for my talisman slot only has a 1/15000 drop rate.”

  “Wow, that sounds like… actual fucking hell. You’re sure you really enjoy this, EXCAL? You’re certain this isn’t some form of torture set up by GaltCorp?”

  “Hell no, I love this game! I’ve actually got ten percent of my computational power at all times focused on it.”

  “Wha- ten percent?!” Elias choked on his words. “That can’t be safe! What if there’s an emergency? Surely there’s better things that could be spent with that processing power!”

  “What? Like always watching what you and your cute alien friend are doing in that lab at all time? I could start watching more often, if you’d like? Dr Daksira seemed to prefer the privacy, but if you wish…”

  “Nope, never mind. In that case, feel free dump as much effort into your game as much as you want. And she’s not cute, that’s for certain.”

  EXCAL let out a synthetic chuckle. “Hey, if you say so!”

  That left only one more major question on his mind, aside from how the hell the CAI could enjoy that game.

  “Alright, so the main reason I actually wanted to see you EXCAL was to ask a favour.”

  “Ask away.” The screen continued to show the game. Was he seriously playing that skinner-box all day?

  “I need some special information, Tylas stuff. Nothing super-secret or classified, but things that would raise eyebrows if I got them publicly.”

  “Ok…” EXCAL said cautiously.

  “I need the schematics to the Bubble Field Manipulator the Tylas use for FTL travel. I don’t need the rest of their ship details or the like – just the drive itself, maybe its housing and the data for its software usage.”

  “Hmm, interesting. Mind if I ask what for?”

  “Call it a… private investigation. You have stuff like your game, and I’ve got my own little rabbit holes to dive into.”

  “Well, Alice, in that case you be careful about what wonderland you find yourself falling into. I don’t want Lucian or whoever else ruining your chances of making it big after the IGS.”

  “Believe me, if I’ve got a target in my sight, it’s always worth the risk.”

  “In that case,” EXCAL paused a moment. “You should find everything you need… sent!”

  A blip rang out from Elias’ pocket the second the CAI said the word. He stood and checked his comm device. True to his word, a couple hundred documents and photographs had been directly sent to his device, no public interaction on the facility’s network needed. He clenched a fist in triumph as he looked up to see the fantasy knight managed to kill the same big monster as before, dropping yet another pile of gold and bones. EXCAL let out a defeated sigh. He said something about ‘going dry’ but Elias ignored the obsessed gaming computer.

  “Thank you, EXCAL. You’re still a bit of an odd guy, but I’m glad we got someone like you as a CAI instead of some Skynet-esque psycho. Thank you.”

  “No problem, Elias. That being said, if you see me watching Terminator, you should start running. Oh, and tell the rest of the team I said hi.”

  Elias turned to leave, but EXCAL spoke up, “Wait! Before you go… if you wouldn’t mind doing a favour in return, would you mind checking with Kurt to see if he knows anything about CAI development? My development, perhaps?”

  “Kurt? Why would he know?”

  “Well, he’s been with GaltCorp for a while. Hasn’t he looked after their important clients in the past?”

  “I guess so. You think one of them has been involved with the artificial intelligence department?”

  “Maybe. Just an idea. If you have time, that is.”

  Elias flipped his comm-device in the air before sliding it back into his pocket.

  “For the best video game gambling addict AI I know? Not a problem.”

  Elias walked through the ice-cold room, loud beeps from the game echoing behind him, as he returned to the outside hallway, prized information in hand.

  The secrets behind Tylas FTL were in his grasp. Now, he just had to put them to good use.