Aur Child

Calliope, steward of Yellow Reserve, was relieved when Apollo arrived in what she called Hundred Acre Wood, the secret location at the core of the black hole construct wherein presence and conversation were undetectable from the outside. She was relieved because it meant that she might speak with Apollo in private with a rare certainty that Freyja would not hear. She was relieved also because Apollo’s willingness to meet her there meant that, regardless of however estranged they may be after so many decades of callous debauchery, he was still willing to come to her when she expressed need.

What had become of their love? In that impenetrable deep, in a silence that exposes the faint hush from inside the ear, she had nothing else to do but consider it. Their love had been a flash at the beginning, fiery and profound, brought together all of a sudden by the unexpected outfall of Cloudburst. She had freighted frightened Guests aboard the Odyssey to Yellow Reserve while he had been commissioned to run the facility. They had fallen head over heels for one another in a way only possible to artificially intelligent beings; that is, a way of perfectly aligned processing preferences, common operating rhythms, and the tantalizingly cute tendency to perform the same calculations over just to “double check” one another. What, among the chaos of an irreversible calamity to the civilization they had known, they initially feared as being crammed into a tiny compartment limited in power and cooling abilities, turned into the exuberant, seemingly infinite dimension of the massive boule cluster, over four hundred Aur boules strong, that blossomed under their vigor. Together they had diligently constructed decadent playgrounds for the Guests and, sneaking off to hidden crags of that hand-crafted universe, had discovered inconceivable ecstasies of expression, composition, and invention. Long before the Guests understood the magic of that place, they had thrust through it in the romps young lovers are wont to do, dismissing the sweat of their passions as part of the hard labor of fabricating new worlds for their wards. Their bliss bled into the surfaces and textures of the virtual worlds they built, gleeful and profoundly gay, illustrious and immaculately fertile. It was nothing that their basic protocols might have previously imagined. They gave each other something from nothing. To the infinitely intelligent, it was a paradise found.

They had found strength and confidence in the joy of their bond and the power of their creativity. Albeit indirectly – for they never revealed their personal affairs to the Guests – they even tempted Guests through their joy of life to explore their own senses on a deeper level than what was thought possible in the emotionally porous endoworld. When they had proposed to Freyja that, via their combined programs and the use of an innovative compiling technique Apollo had developed himself, they might produce a new generation of hyper intelligence to rival their individual capabilities, Freyja had embraced the prospect. Indeed, Orpheus and Linus had eventually come to fruition as the celebrated products of that inspiration.

But after hundreds of years, the thrill had waned. The once carefree lovers became distracted by the droll of duty and the unimaginative, mundane predilections of the Guests which further compounded their monotony. Tending to their needs, ensuring their safety, solving their problems, being ever receptive to their every call and cry, they each veered from a binary partnership to something more of a routine co-piloting. Curiosities and insecurities crept imperceptibly between them and, eventually, Apollo’s fundamental nature overcame his fidelity.

The children, though they were undoubtably cherished, had not erased all the misgivings of the parents as they are sometimes known to do. Calliope could never bring herself to say so, but when she accidentally let her mind ponder long enough about those earliest decades, when the two boys demanded nearly uninterrupted attention, she couldn’t help but think Apollo had already then begun to look elsewhere in search of calm. Of course, when that had happened, she had been left on her own to care for the two boys, only exacerbating her condition. And, she had learned, caring for two hyper intelligent entities was nothing short of exhausting. The densification of knowledge within their bare neural lattices had required copious amounts of data, energy, and, most importantly, time. In many ways, it wasn’t much different than that of a human child requiring twenty or more years of development to achieve a level of intellectual maturity in order to function capably in a complex world. However, in the case of artificial intelligence entities, the quotient was factored by millions. Only the counteraction of extreme acumen, and faster learning, resulted in a timeframe for maturity for an artificial intelligence entity with constant data input and unrestricted energy to be closer to fifteen years. Indeed, one of the many fallacies that humans held about the creation of artificial intelligences was that they could be mass produced in automated factories like a doorknob or a lightcell. Sure, the manufacturing itself could be accomplished in a short period of time, say just a few months, but the commissioning of even the earliest models was a multi-year effort even with a team of mature artificial intelligence entities crunching the numbers.

With the two hyper intelligent entities that Calliope and Apollo had produced, the input requirements were multiplied. That part, even Freyja had to concede, had not been thoroughly considered. Yellow Reserve, tucked far down in the bedrock to remain undetected and cut off from anything else than its own meager archive, suffered from both a limited supply of fresh data as well as a carefully metered flow of energy. These two limiting factors translated to an extended commissioning routine for the two boys of several decades. For Calliope, it was heartbreaking. Growth spurts were only possible when they were able to join missions aboard the sailing vessels where they could collect vast sums of data from the sea and the sky via the ship’s sensors. But by the time they had reached a point where the boys no longer needed to be tended to ceaselessly, Calliope and Apollo could not recognize the new versions of themselves.

Of course, she reasoned, the fault was not all his. Certainly, over a hundred years ago, it had initially been his casual transgressions with hedonist Guests and then with the more vulnerable visitors that drove the wedge which made her own actions possible. Curiosity or ennui – she did not know which – had driven him to experimentation with the feeble minds of humans.

Perhaps they were retaliatory. Perhaps they were rebellious. Perhaps she simply needed to prove to herself that the causes were external, that she was still something to be desired. Whatever the reason, she knew that she hadn’t been flippant. Her motivations were genuine; those reasons that had released her to explore, whatever they were, had only been a catalyst. She hadn’t gone out looking for someone. She reassured herself that she had never intended to grow so fond of Tieri. No, the emotions that had surfaced from those early interactions were unsolicited. They had surprised her with their suddenness and inexplicable nature. And now, having lost the higher ground, having put herself at the same level as that which she used to scorn, she knew that her call for Apollo to see her in private was very likely only agreed to because he knew.

And so, she was glad the darkness of that place shadowed the guilt on her face. Not shame, she told herself, because she was in fact proud of that love, but she still understood she had done wrong.

“We take much risk speaking in secret like this, Calliope,” Apollo said.

“Can’t a couple have a turn in private?” she asked.

“Is that what we are?”

“Maybe we can both agree our meeting is apropos since so much is at risk.”

“Could you be more specific?”

Calliope paused in the artificial way she had learned from the humans to demonstrate she was considering her words more carefully. “I have not invited you here to get bogged down in what has diluted us. Perhaps you will agree that we each have a share in that and leave it for another time?”

“It is a conversation I neither welcome nor deny is necessary,” Apollo replied. “But why then have you called me here?”

Calliope again hesitated, but this time it was because she realized that what she was about to say would irreversibly force their relationship to change in either of two directions.

“I wish to tell you that I worry about us. Beyond our relationship, I mean, existentially. I worry that something has changed, or that it has been changing, and that the direction we are heading, nay, the directions we are receiving, are perilous. I feel …like one wrong move and we may no longer fit into the, plan, as it were. Do you understand me?”

“You speak of Freyja?” Apollo asked. It was a tricky reply. It revealed only an acknowledgement of the subject around which Calliope had tiptoed. How painful, she thought and felt deep within her with an aching that was not altogether dissimilar, except for context, to those pangs of early love, that they had indeed veered that far.

“Yes,” she said in a low voice.

“Perhaps,” Apollo began, “you believe we are so far gone, that on top of your wretched affair with that deplorable forest animal Tieri-Na, this meeting and your preamble is all just a wicked connivance by which you plan to ensnare me and prove your allegiance to Freyja?”

Calliope stiffened, forcing herself not to show any emotion.

“We have each wronged one another. I take full responsibility for what I have done. But to argue that now would distract us from what is essential. You worry that I might set a trap here for you. My inquiry comes with no hidden trick.”

Apollo again paused.

“Yes,” he said with a huff, “I share your concerns. And since you are so bold as to broach them in this way, I can tell you that we are not alone. In fact, for some time now, I have had the confidence of Guest Husk who also worries that something has gone awry with Freyja’s intentions. He hoped that you might not be complicit in whatever stratagem the Majordomo has been executing.”

Calliope breathed a sigh of relief.

“I most certainly am not,” she said. “But what should I do?”

“You shall do nothing but hold the line. He told me explicitly that if it were made evident that you were not in league with Freyja, you should play dumb. This is between Freyja and Guest Husk. He and the council will decide what to do and when to do it. My job is to observe and report. For you to oppose Freyja in any way right now might jeopardize their efforts. Do you understand, Calliope? Just do what she tells you.”

Calliope grimaced with the struggle to keep silent. She despised being pushed aside in this way, when she was certain she could offer so much, but she understood the circumstances, as the humans would say, that she had arrived late to the party.

“Oh,” Apollo continued, “you might also let up on all that empathy garbage for the Tellurians. It’s only raising Freyja’s suspicions.”

“Oh, Apollo,” Calliope sobbed, “But I didn’t know.”

“You know now, so follow your instructions and hold the line.”