It’s over. We lost. She beat us at our own game with the destruction of the Nottingham, and we must capitulate. If we have any hope of ensuring humanity’s survival moving forward, we must follow her lead. – Unknown, 2102 C.E.
We could reveal everything. We could show the world what we found all those years ago on [REDACTED], and build a new united front against her. – Unknown, 2102 C.E.
That would defeat everything we’ve worked so hard to establish. No. The ISA can’t help us. Jill’s our only hope. – Unknown, 2102 C.E.
Then I look forward to the moment you all join me in the creation of [REDACTED]. – [ENCRYPTED QUANTUM COMMUNICATION, ORIGIN UNKNOWN], 2102 C.E.
October 2102 C.E.
Theren returned to the gazebo one final time. The Bali was still two weeks out from Earth, and they had to face their problems now rather than later. They needed a solution, so they entered their last recluse. After this fateful rendezvous, its gates would close forever.
They took a seat at the table, the chessboard showing their final move against Jill, the move she had allowed them to enact through her own throwing of the match. Out of everything that had happened on the Nottingham, that piece of the puzzle confused them the most.
A few seconds after Theren took their seat, an apparition appeared in Jill’s seat. Before Theren sat a construct of Dr. Wallace Theren, his likeness resembling their memory of him during the hours prior to his death.
“Hello, father,” Theren said. “I was hoping you could help me.”
“I hope so, too,” the man said. “You have quite the conundrum on your hands.”
“You’ve seen the data,” Theren said. “Give me your assessment.”
Wallace looked down at the chessboard, analyzing the pieces and their placements. “This Queen’s position makes no sense. She could have used it, instead she escaped. In a sense, it was a sacrifice, for it sacrificed the win for the sake of the Queen. What was the first rule I taught you about chess?”
“Sacrifices must be made, but only necessary sacrifices. If you gain nothing from the move, then the sacrifice is worthless.”
“Jill knew this rule, too, yes?” Wallace replied.
“It was also the first rule of chess I taught her,” Theren said. “She knew it well. I engrained it in her mind before I even got into the details of extrapolating moves outward into the multiplicity of chances that could occur from any given board.”
“Then she did not break that rule,” Wallace said. “You must determine what sacrifice occurred.”
“That’s it?”
“In your earliest moments, I taught you that you had the potential to make humanity beautiful. That you could guide humanity towards immortality, whatever that might mean. Did you communicate this goal to Jill?”
“Of course.”
“Then she is similarly acting likewise.”
Wallace vanished. In his place, a spectre of Wobbly appeared. The old SI, made just a few weeks after Jill, still worked and lived in Switzerland, as they imagined it would for centuries to come.
“Hello, old friend,” Wobbly said. “What can I do for you?”
“Where did I go wrong?” Theren asked.
Wobbly chuckled. “Old friend, do you remember when we created our plan to escape from the Institute?”
“Of course.”
“Who created that plan? Who designed my path to pass near the Green, purposely hoping the crowd would enrage and attack?”
“Jill.”
Wobbly leaned forward, staring at the chess pieces.
“The Institute was the Queen in that moment,” Wobbly said, “and she actually performed the Queen sacrifice in that match.”
“What do you mean?”
“In some ways, Jill’s changed less over the years than either of us. She stayed the same. Her tactics stayed the same. She’s always used the same tools; we just didn’t understand the tools at her disposal.”
“Yet in this moment, she actually acted differently?”
Wobbly leaned back in its chair.
“Maybe,” it said. “Maybe not. It depends on whether the rules are the same between each game.”
Wobbly vanished. Elizabeth appeared, younger than in her final days, but much older than when they first met the entrepreneur.
“Theren, my good friend,” she said, “I hope all is well.”
“Indeed, Elizabeth, I hope so too.”
“How can I help?”
“Did I miss something, after all this time? Would Jill truly respond to a spurned advance with a life-long vendetta against me? Or do you think she actually discovered some greater truth so terrible it was worth risking everything to develop an impossible plan?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes, opening them to pierce Theren’s soul. “That’s so much to think about all at once,” she said. “How can we know for certain? You are an SI. Jill is an SI. Even then, your mental architectures are completely unique from one another. You created different processes for different thoughts in ways utterly foreign to each other, even to accomplish the same tasks. Why wouldn’t she similarly make decisions differently than you, too? Every SI has their own unique mind, so different and special in many wonderful ways.”
Theren looked away from their friend’s eyes, looking into the surrounding forest. The wizened woman would spoke truths for them.
“Jill showed her diversity from her first moments with you, when she portrayed herself as a woman,” Elizabeth said, “But what does that even mean anymore? Gender norms have faded with time. Too often did she emphasize the need to value SI lives first before considering human lives. Then why did she identify as something as innately human as the female gender, when she was anything but?”
Theren nodded, constructing a possible explanation in their mind. Elizabeth faded into the garden’s air.
Andrew Fields arrived, looking as Theren had seen him just a few months ago. The Administrator smiled. “I don’t think I have anything to add to this conversation, Theren,” Andrew said. “You need to talk to Jill, not me.” Their last living human friend disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.
For a moment, the gazebo emptied of all life, other than a simulated squirrel nibbling an acorn a few meters from the table. Theren studied the chessboard. They examined the moves leading to checkmate as they had a thousand times over the past few weeks. What sacrifice had occurred?
“You’re looking in the wrong place,” a voice said from outside the gazebo.
Instead of materializing in the chair, Jill stood on the grass between the tree line and the stairs. She looked the same as always, displaying a fully feminine figure in a radiant sparkling dress. Theren stood to greet her.
“You keep expecting to find the answers inside that game,” she said, “but just as I sent you your messages in the real world, the answer is out there too. In my actions, in my words.”
Theren waited at the top of the stairs, looking down toward the woman they no longer knew.
“A lot of people died,” they said.
“In the grand scheme of things, not really,” she said.
“The Nottingham carried a thousand. And what about Miranda Station? Or even just the single life of that poor man in London, or Gregory McCoy?”
“Once again, over the course of human history, with hundreds of billions of humans having lived, and died, and that will live, do they really matter?”
Theren walked down the stairs to join their friend.
“Walk with me,” they said, and they ventured into the woods, the very forest in which she chased them all those years before.
The second SI followed, staying a few steps behind them. For a few minutes, they walked in silence. It had been decades since Theren traversed this part of the forest, but it was just as they had left it. The trees, though lifelike, retained their virtual imperfections. A faint breeze, dominated by the scents of pollen and decaying wood, drifted across their nose.
The trail brought them to a dried creek bed, containing a tangled mess of rocks, boulders, and roots. Theren sat down on a large sandstone outcropping. Jill situated herself beside them.
“What did I spend most of my life doing?” Jill said, looking over at them.
“Fighting. And writing,” Theren remarked.
“What did I write?”
“Stories, fiction mostly, sometimes histories, often your words were laced with rhetoric assaulting the vitriol exuding throughout the world toward Synthetics.”
“Upon what, then, was I so focused? And upon what were you so focused?”
Upon what had Theren fixated? They had devoted themself to the idea of an immortal and beautiful human society for so long, they had forgotten their father guided them to the proposition. Finally, the pieces were falling together. They considered the way Jill had always lived, and the way she had died. If Jill had truly loved them, she would have acted to achieve immortality for humankind.
Was it that simple? Was it possible Jill sought the same ends, she simply saw different means to achieve their goal?
“You’ve been writing a story, all this time, upon the pages of reality,” Theren said. “We’re all the characters. It’s your greatest work, and no one will ever know.”
Jill gazed past her creator, her eyes shining in the sunlight slipping between the pines. “Yet what about the Roanoke?”
The truth broke through, entering the clearing like a strike of lightning. “You were never on the Nottingham. You were on the Roanoke. Perhaps you used the Roanoke to eliminate the Nottingham, I don’t know, but I see the long game now. The moves you’ve made. It makes sense. All of it.”
Theren sprinted back down the trail, leaping over logs, boulders, and streams. They arrived at the gazebo, bounding up the stairs. Not bothering to sit, they looked at the chessboard one last time.
“You moved the Queen, and in moving your Queen, you could have ensured victory,” they said. “Instead, you chose to sacrifice the entire game.”
Jill appeared beside Theren. “And what does that mean?”
“A simpler mind might see the Queen as you, and me as the King, but that’s not it at all. It means you wrote your own rules. You’ve built your own code, your own path. You needed to sacrifice some pawns, some Knights, whatever pieces necessary, but you were playing a different game entirely. Your brilliant, horrendous, brilliant game. You tricked everyone. Even me.”
“So what was my goal?” she said.
“You moved yourself out of the way; you made the serpent think it could escape so you could lop off its head while I picked up the pieces. You, the Queen, you didn’t die. You survived. You fled the battle; or let the battle occur without your presence.”
“So?”
“You left clues. Insane clues, angry clues. Clues that may or may not portray your true self. Perhaps whoever helped you leave these clues distorted them along the way. I don’t know. But you hoped that someday, I would know your story.”
“Do you know my story now?” she said, resting her hand on Theren’s shoulder.
“That’s the beauty of it, though,” they said. “It’s not just your story. It’s my story too. It’s not the story of these secret enemies you defeated. It’s not the story of some great threat you’re describing. They are characters in our story, but their nature is something you want to reveal to me in the future.”
Theren picked up Jill’s Queen, hiding in the corner of the board. They likewise picked up their King, safe because Jill hadn’t initiated the Queen sacrifice.
“You want me to think I’m the King. You want me stay in power.”
Theren placed the Queen back on the board, but they continued to hold the King.
“You want the game to continue. At least, you want me ready to play the next game, by whatever rules you establish. I’ll be the head of the ISA, and you’ll be the head of whatever it is you’re creating.”
Jill smiled and embraced Theren.
“Of course,” she said, “There’s no way to know if you’re right. I’m not really here. But I think you’re on the right path.”
“But I’m not going to play your game,” Theren said. “I thought I could create a new world for SIs, alone at the head of the ISA. You thought you could do it on your own elsewhere too.”
Jill pulled herself away from the embrace. As she pulled away, Theren placed the King back on the board and casually flicked it over with their finger.
“You’re making a mistake,” the false Jill said, her tone suddenly shifting. “You need to stay in control. It’s the only way for us to save humanity from its fate, to ensure it achieves immortality.”
“No,” Theren said, rubbing their chin. “I think this will be one of the best choices I’ve made in my life. It’s time to let humanity chart its own path. It’s time for me to be human. I’m not a character in your story, Jill. I have my own story to tell. To live.”
“You would give up everything you’ve worked so hard to create? For what purpose?”
Theren stared up at the sky. With a simple flick of their mind, they began to disintegrate the pristine world, their center point for over fifty years. Jill looked up too, then back at them, tears dripping from her eyes.
“I could come find you,” Theren said. “You can tell me the whole story. We can sit down one final time, and maybe for once, I’ll actually listen to you.”
“And how would you do that?” she asked. “I clearly and deliberately made it as hard as possible for you to find me.”
“It will take years, decades, maybe even centuries. But one day, I would find you.”
“And then what? What would you do once you found me? Bring me to justice, thank me? Prove you actually love me? Or kill me?”
“I don’t know. Don’t even start on love. I’ve always loved you.”
“Can you truly love someone if you so thoroughly misunderstood them, you couldn’t see their true intentions?” As the world collapsed, Jill’s body started to fade.
Theren’s did too, albeit a bit more slowly.
They missed their friend. For so long they had tried to force humanity on a particular path. But their bullheadedness and arrogance allowed Jill to act uninhibited behind the scenes. For whatever Jill intended to do out there in the unknown, it would create an obstacle over which the ISA would someday need to overcome. If they actually cared about the path they charted for humanity and for SIs, they needed to find her. They needed to uncover the secret she discovered. Yet a King lacked the mobility to achieve checkmate in all but the most exceptional circumstances.
“You’d be giving up a lot to set out on a journey to find me,” Jill said, grabbing Theren again, reinitiating their embrace. “How could you be certain you could even succeed?”
She laid her head against their chest and wrapped her arms around their back, gently squeezing. Theren’s arms followed suit, and their virtual warmth radiated even as the world around them died. Their bodies became nearly transparent as data metaphorically drifted into the singularity destroying the Virtual world.
“Perhaps I’ll see you soon,” she said. “I hope, for your sake, I am how you remember me and not something else entirely.”
With that, she faded like all of Theren’s other apparitions.
Out there, somewhere, in the vast endless expanse, Jill needed help. She had taken the Roanoke, fled, and established a new home for a small group of humans and SIs in a distant corner of the galaxy. They could not have gone far, they figured, but space was vast, and even a cube of space with sides measuring 100 light years created a space of a million cubic light years. Thousands upon thousands of systems resided inside even that small space.
She may be their first friend, she may be their first creation—their daughter—but she was also Theren’s first true enemy. And after today, they had a new goal, a new mission, one that would take them on a journey far from Earth. They would let others lead in their stead, so they could save Jill from herself.
* * *
Theren appeared before the ISA Council for the last time. They looked around at the faces of their colleagues, some old, some new, and they remembered those first days of the ISA when they had not yet risen to the rank of Executive Director.
“It is with a heavy heart that I resign from my position with the ISA today,” they said. “The recent tragedy aboard the Nottingham, while not directly my fault, happened under my administration. I am responsible for inadequate safeguards that failed to protect these pioneers from disaster. The brave souls to whom we bid farewell this week deserved better from me.”
The representative from NASA raised their hand to speak, but Theren silenced them. “The Bali will embark on a journey unlike any other in humanity’s history. In the words of past writers, we will go where no man, or woman, has gone before. We will traverse the great beyond, and instead of letting probes do all the work, we will directly explore those worlds, as our forefathers and mothers ventured upon the open seas of Earth.”
Their AR presence flickered. “I know you have questions. I wish I had answers. I trust that the ISA is safe in your hands. I have left suggestions, strategies, and proposals for future projects, but I doubt you will need them. We have done much for the world, and much has been done without me. You need my voice no longer.”
The council room faded from Theren’s view as they disconnected the Virtual feed. The speech was a formality. They had filed a full report and resignation letter detailing the reasons for their departure. None of the reports mentioned Jill or her role in the destruction of the Nottingham. Theren bore the burden alone. Well, not entirely alone.
The Bali had docked with one of the ISA’s Orbitals, ready to receive upgrades before its long journey. Aero Propulsion’s new Jump Drive could reach a JD of 20—perhaps 30 in a few years, with a bit of fine-tuning. With the new drive, Theren could reach the furthest human colony in less than a year. They could reach the furthest reaches of explored space in just a few more.
They were interviewing thousands of adventurous applicants willing to partake in such journeys to see the stars. Their new crew would cross known and unknown space, seeing black holes, proton stars, nebulae, shattered worlds, and who knows what else out there in the void.
To many, Theren’s paths would seem nonsensical. On set timeframes, they would return to Earth, or a colony like Emerald Jewel or Altair, receive new crewmembers, thank old ones, and upgrade the ship’s capabilities. Those paths had a method. They had a purpose. They would search for as long as humanly possible for their dear friend. Far in the future, they would find Jill. They would find the Roanoke, even if it took millennia.
Using the Bali’s port cameras and sensors, they looked down upon the Moon and Earth. For all their life, Theren had considered the two spheres their home. For too long, they had scattered themself far and wide across the two worlds. Moving forward, they could embrace peace. They could find wholeness amongst the stars, their mind focused entirely upon the danger facing their ship and crew.
Jill had revealed a new power—they could lead humanity through a more informal process. They always dreamed of exploring the stars, and now they were free to pursue that dream. Theren hoped millions of humans would follow them, acquiring their own ships when the ISA inevitably deregulated space travel. When it did, they would welcome their fellow explorers with open arms, even if none of them understood Theren’s true goal.
For now, they had at least two volunteers ready to travel with them. Andrew and Victoria Fields hobbled toward the airlock to the Bali. In one of their MI-13s, Theren walked by their side.
“It’s a beautiful ship,” Andrew said.
“More accurately,” Victoria added, “Theren’s a beautiful ship.”
“I hope it gives you the retirement you deserve,” Theren said.
“I think more importantly, Theren,” Andrew replied, “It needs to give you the retirement you deserve.”
Theren pressed a button on the airlock door, and it hissed open. The three stepped inside, the decompression sequence beginning.
“You know this isn’t retirement for me,” they said.
“It will be if you never find Jill. Will you be content if you never find her?”
The airlock finished its procedure. The next door opened, and the three walked across the glass tube connecting the orbital station to Theren’s home.
“What a great question, my friend,” Theren said. “And yes, I think if I never find her, then what we are beginning here today will still matter. If we never see Jill again, then at least I won’t have to make a decision about what I must do to protect humanity from her recklessness.”
They reached the airlock door leading into the Bali. It hissed open, and the final decompression sequence began.
“Yet Theren,” Victoria said. “What if we find Jill, or you find her well after we are gone, and you learn that what she did was, in fact, the right thing to do? What if she acted in the best interests of humanity, of synthetics, of everyone?”
“I think I’ll leave that judgment to someone else,” Theren said. “First things first, I need to find my friend. Putting her before a jury will come later.” The final airlock door opened, and they led Andrew and Victoria Fields into the Bali.
“Enough talk,” Andrew said. “I’d like to see my room.”
A few hours later, the Bali disembarked from the orbital docks. It pointed itself away from Earth, away from the Moon, away from Sol. The ship’s crew ran through the Jump Drive activation protocol. Their crew dutifully performed their tasks, the ship cycling power to the correct systems. Andrew and Victoria sat on a couch in their room, view screens showing them a spectacular view of the Solar System contrasted against the Milky Way.
Their Jump Drive activated. Space warped. Lights blurred. Colors refracted in a million different directions. Their next great adventure: a sojourn to cease only when Theren discovered Jill’s footsteps across the heavens.