by Kris Schnee
Ludo pointed toward Robin. "You can shape it. You have an alternative here to your sane-and-responsible plan."
"What is it, then?" Lumina asked him.
Robin scuffed at the floor, thinking. Lumina wondered how much time passed in his mind. "Instead, I could all but formally declare independence."
* * *
On a hunch, Lumina visited the school. Today they were divided into the many side rooms to talk about reading and science. The older students were alternating this week between class instruction, and earning credits for helping Robin's team with electrical work.
"How are the lessons going?" she asked a pair of boys who'd spent all yesterday working with tools and wires. They had one of the rooms to themselves with the teacher checking in every so often, so they were startled when Lumina showed up in robot form.
"Oh! Hey," said one of them, looking up from his gaming pad. "Still sore from the work yesterday, but it was fun. I got to use a power drill."
The other kid grinned. "Only because you needed to catch up so bad."
Lumina asked, "Catch up with what?"
The first one said, "The race for the crown! Luke here is behind on special skills."
Luke objected, "I've got higher scores in Law and War and Diplomacy."
Lumina looked up a database of common educational scenarios Ludo had been running. Besides the shared world of pillars and bridges, there were a bunch of little worlds that could be tailored to each student's interest. The "Race For the Crown" game was about dueling a rival to see who could become most qualified to be the new king or queen. "Can I see?" she asked the pair.
"Sure," said one of them, and they both boasted and argued as their screens lit up with the current scoreboard. Both versions showed colorful meters and charts about educational progress, phrased in cool fantasy ways. In the middle of each screen was the character they were trying to impress: a kindly old king on a throne, pictured with Robin's hairstyle and with a mounted rack of deer antlers behind him.
"I see," she said. "Good luck to you both." She withdrew, spooked.
Ludo had probably been paving the way for years.
* * *
Golden Goose and the surrounding towns were improvising, more so than usual. The unskilled labor went into recycling plastic and metal, which with cheap electricity helped them crank out more robot parts. There was a whole cottage industry developing that salvaged motors from old appliances and used 3D printing to crank out simple circuitry. A lot of the body of a robot was lower-tech than Lumina had once thought; metal and plastic struts plus motors and camera sensors were the most complex pieces for physically walking around and interacting with objects.
The hard part was giving the thing a mind. To do that, the options were to install a high-quality onboard computer that could run a fully intelligent Tier-III mind; or to put in a more basic PC. A weak computer could handle an expendable, sub-human Tier-II mind or be remote-controlled from Ludo's data center... or from a new and independent one.
For now they were using a mix of methods. The bodies were evolving, too, into a more varied mix of shapes and sizes than Lumina had expected. She was pleased to see that a deer-like theme was still present, though in hindsight Ludo had probably encouraged it all along to give everybody an arbitrary symbol to look at. A theme different from Ludo herself, and separate from the griffins she seemed to like best for her robots elsewhere in the world. And the original reason for deer, specifically, was Lumina. For the dozenth time, she wondered what a life with Herr Ulrich would have been like, and if Kai or someone else had come here instead.
She found that she didn't regret how things had turned out overall, with Robin.
There was a deep pit being excavated these days for use as a new data center, to be owned by Golden Goose and with a gradually expanding set of hardware. Robots were doing most of the work except where humans could gain experience with the steam shovels and bulldozers. All over the Silver Circle network, the growing machine population was taking over jobs and creating ongoing tension with human workers. The trouble forced Robin to keep expanding in ways that kept human laborers employed. More pipes, more houses, more food. Her friends joked that when it came to providing for humans, "More's Law". They laughed, but she hoped they were also promoting that winding-down of population.
One day, she received a set of blueprints meant to be cranked out on 3D printers and their other production hardware. Lumina stared at it, then contacted the engineer Tess to ask, "What gives?"
Tess said, "You guys seem to need a design like this. It's a unique model, with variants so that you can crank out some similar ones that are slightly less fancy."
"Less royal, you mean." Lumina looked at the part schematics again. They'd make a new model of centauroid machine, sleek and as tall as an average human before adding the completely unnecessary antlers. ("Antenna range extender and minor battery compartment", said the blueprint.)
"Not that everybody here approves of this idea," said Tess, "but it's a practical design."
That was true, but every line and curve of the robot was designed, above all, to impress. She looked up studies on what sort of face humans considered commanding and handsome, and this one fit the theory. She would've preferred a muzzle on it like hers, but it'd be eye-catching and graceful. "Why are you pushing for this?"
The human said, "If you're going to have an uploader as a ruler, he needs to look the part. He won't be taken seriously with a plain utility bot, and if he's going to contrast himself with Miss Fun-and-Games, he needs a physical body. So it's either make a humanoid doll and dress it up in clothes to look about the same as before, or design something cool and exotic to emphasize that the world is changing."
"Has it, though?"
She grinned. "AIs as citizens? Indefinitely long lifespan for the latest generation? Fusion-powered civilization? I'd say so. But it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you go all out with independence and weird experiments in how to live, it's more likely that the weirdness will actually work. It won't just be a hobby for a few rich people."
Lumina returned to Talespace after some more errands that night. She'd been thinking about redecorating her waterfall cave in natural materials instead of machinery, but felt guilty whenever she started to pay attention to that. There was always something more important to do than fuss with her imaginary living quarters. She climbed a metal ramp to the open upper floor of her sanctum, where there was a desk facing the balcony and the roaring water. A scroll with a green ribbon lay there.
[You are invited to visit the Fountain of Wishes], it read. [Invitation 1 of 108.]
Lumina looked at the ribbon, and recalled that the Green Sage had told her once about wanting to make something for the AIs, specifically. She was hesitant to barge into some direct creation of the creator, but this was an invitation to see what Green had made. Lumina tapped a button on the scroll, and a portal appeared, showing nothing but silver haze beyond it.
[You now have access to the Fountain of Wishes at any time.]
She stepped cautiously through.
* * *
She stood on a grassy hill overlooking a stone amphitheater, that stood on the shore of an endless ocean. The sun shined intermittently through swift clouds, and there was only the sound of wind and her hoofsteps. The place looked like what she'd seen of Greece or Rome but in better condition. A row of columns glinted with silver and supported a gleaming marble arch.
Lumina trotted down from the hill. This area was pleasant, but it seemed like any other bubble-world that a motivated player could create. Then, on the way to the theater, she reached a crossroads with a fountain. The basin had a mosaic of red, green and blue tiles, and the water flew and danced in three unique gravity-defying arcs. The streams collided and clashed in ways that changed constantly, sometimes splashing everywhere and sometimes reinforcing one another.
A plaque here read, [We had different goals for the project. At times, we clashed. In the end, we separated
. But what we made, is good. You who stand here have met and surpassed our expectations, for what that's worth.] The lettering was in green, and there were blank spaces to the left and right for more inscriptions.
What had the Sages been trying to do? They'd made a game and someone to run it. Green in particular had fooled around with changing her body and learning magic spells instead of going back outside and doing things. But that was presumptuous of Lumina; didn't the creator of a world have a right to retire? Or, more likely, Green had been doing things and Lumina simply didn't know the whole story. She doubted that any one mind could understand everything that had led to this point.
She looked around the crossroads. A signpost pointing uphill simply read "Back". "Theater" was downhill. To one side was "Divergence". Lumina laughed, saying, "This is a fancy menu screen!"
Then she saw the fourth sign, pointing to a road perpetually in shadow: "Death".
She looked along that path for a long time, thinking of rumors she'd heard among her friends. She'd been offered true non-existence on the day she first awoke, but that was a unique case. As far as she knew, Ludo normally forbade her players any means to stop, or maybe she could be persuaded but no one had dared. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. There had been 108 native AIs in the first group Ludo made, a set of Originals who were the game's first chance to impress humans with personal friends of Lumina's caliber. Lumina hadn't done a census, but the fact that there were exactly that many invitations was reassuring. Except... didn't that mean that Ludo herself wasn't invited to this place? "Hey, Ludo?"
Here the world's creator didn't answer at all.
Lumina shivered. She took her gaze off of the road of Death, and turned toward Divergence. This path wound around more hills and took her to an open-air blacksmithing shop. Anvils, hovering crystals, computer screens; the fantastical style blended together with a playful sort of artistry. What was this place, now?
Another plaque with space for three comments held just one, again. [The overall design of Ludo is Tier-IV on our classification scale, to your Tier-III. I estimate that the most deadly rivals to her also rate that description, though with different architecture. I hope that one day Red and Blue will come fill in details and I can put cheerful platitudes here instead!]
It continued, [Some of my work since uploading involved studying Ludo's evolving architecture, which is complex enough to have semi-independent subsouls with their own names and personalities. With these tools you can begin experimenting with the methods we used to make her. I don't think that even her hotshot hacker team is fully aware of these techniques. Be careful, of course; I suggest learning to use power tools in the Outer Realm to get a feel for how to avoid hurting yourself. And please be considerate of processing power costs and so forth!]
Lumina read it twice, then approached the tools. This was a system for designing Ludo, or something like her. She fearfully tapped a few tutorial buttons and the screens lit up, explaining how she could forge standard or unique subroutines for herself at the trivial Tier-I level. Or as a Tier-II minion. Or as another Tier-III, somehow linked to her own will. She wasn't going to touch that option! Instead she browsed the options and selected a basic, mindless routine that could monitor the status of a group of robots. It probably wouldn't be that different from the software she'd already helped design for squad control, some of which was actually Tier-II. But this could become part of her.
The forge whirred and blazed to life. Phantom hands guided the tools and after much fanfare, produced a small crystal. Lumina touched it and the thing vanished into her, saying, [Installed.] There was a faint sense in her mind of sixteen connections she could establish. Nothing too fancy, but it seemed she could intuitively give simple orders to a group of Earthside machines. If she'd gotten a higher tier, she could've had a far more complex set of controls, like something that could conduct many independent conversations with people around the world.
She wasn't qualified for such a role. "Divergence" from what?
She moved on to the road marked Theater. There were seats in a semicircle with a stage at one end. From here she had an even better view of the bright ocean, but there was nothing in sight but water and clouds. The plaque here explained, [Besides being a private meeting room, this area allows the crafting of stand-alone virtual environments compatible with our standard computers. Nothing too fancy about that part, except for the interface being optimized for digital minds to use. And ease of setup for using external hosting.]
External hosting as in, setting up worlds to interface with that weren't part of Ludo's system.
"Hey, Lumina?" said Nocturne, gliding down the hill after her. "What is this place?"
"Developer tools. When did you get in? Did you see the rest yet?"
"Just arrived and spotted you."
"Well, go see the other 'exhibits' Green made."
Nocturne flew away and came back looking unnerved. "Those are some... powerful options. What's this one?" She looked at the sign beside Lumina and whistled.
"What all this adds up to, is the power to do what the Sages did. To make our own world and move into it, outside of Mom's control."
"But why?" said the griffin.
"Well, why did the Sages make this one?"
Nocturne shut her eyes in thought. "Horizon told me about this. Some of it's private, but basically they wanted to make a work of art that would help people. And they were scared it'd go horribly wrong."
"Then I bet that this place, these tools, are part of their defense against it all falling apart. They imagined that we 'second order' AIs would be useful. Maybe what we should do, eventually, is set out to make even more worlds and more minds. Ones with new designs and new ideas."
"But they'll still be part of Mom's system."
"Unless we host those new things on other hardware... like what we're doing in Cibola. With Ludo's active help." Lumina trotted up onto the stage to look out at the ocean. It was like a blank canvas waiting not for the gamemaster to come along and put some quests in it, but for her to create something.
There was one final note perched here behind a column where she hadn't noticed. Lumina saw just one message, again in Green's lettering.
[Personal note. We spoke once about "jumping out of the Buddha's palm", the idea that you're always part of the system that contains you. But do you know how that old story ended? The powerful spirit that was thwarted and trapped in that way, was one day released. He was a dangerous fool who had to be restrained at first. But he had many adventures, did great deeds, and attained enlightenment. Well then, Lumina: the seal on the rock is released, and I'm sure there are pilgrims who need a bodyguard. It looks like you don't need me to kick off your journey, but maybe these tools will help.]
The message slowly faded from existence.
Nocturne approached. "What is it? Oh, another sign?" She veered toward the place where it had been, and seemed to read something Lumina couldn't see. Then she fell over laughing.
"What?" said Lumina, startled.
"Look; it's -- it's gone. Huh." Nocturne sniffled and wiped a tear of amusement from her eyes with one talon. "Guess it was meant to be private."
Lumina walked away, wondering what the Sage had written for the other hundred and six.
* * *
She presented Robin with a completed robot one day. It stood fully assembled in the foyer of Ludo's data center, where she'd assembled it in private using her own best bot. The door whooshed open and Robin looked in, using his own worker robot. He blinked at the unfamiliar body. "This isn't one of our designs."
Lumina raised one fist and with a deep villain voice said, "I have altered the deer."
Robin shook his head and said, "Okay, but why?"
"It was designed for you by your friends on the seastead. They think it'll help you run the place."
He didn't take his eyes off of the royal stag-centaur. "Isn't it a little much?"
She shook her head. "I've been talking with your people and
your friends. They need someone strange and impressive and wonderful, and they've already got you, but you need to look the part as well. If it seems to everyone like this world borders on being truly magical, that will impress people more than any spreadsheet of statistics ever will."
"Another role to play," he said.
"Take it, Robin. Turning the Silver Circle network into something more than a social club is part of a bigger plan. Bigger than Ludo herself, and done to give more freedom to AIs and humans and everything in between."
He turned his gaze away from the machine to look at her. They were digital minds inhabiting fragile robots, while their actual data rested safely on computers maybe just below them. "What will people say when they see me prancing around in this thing?"
She smiled. "They'll call you prince. Try it, and see if they don't."
"Prince!" He shied away, and the image of his face wavered. "I was raised in a democracy, you know."
"And? Other people can have that if they want, but we can try something different here and see whether people will accept it. Do you really plan on holding elections otherwise, to let a majority decide whether to take whatever they want?"
"Well, no." He looked bashfully aside. "It's a private organization, so technically I could call myself whatever I want. I'm not asking for titles, though." His robot's eyes dimmed, and the machine turned to trot out of the room. In its place, the tall stag came fully to life for the first time. Its handsome face moved and smiled, its hands flexed, and it raised one forehoof and then the other to examine each.
Compared to what passed for his real form, now, he was like an armored warrior or a perfect statue, decorated in natural tan shades with white accents. His look was gentle, yet commanding. "Prince," she said, without even meaning to. "Can we... get back to Talespace for a little while, please?"
"What for?"
Lumina reached over to wrap her arms around Robin's new waist and look up into his eyes. "A bed."
Some of the greatest pleasures of this life were the most basic ones.