The Central Inspector sat in an infinite processor, suspended in a web of pure energy. Tendrils came from within the controller, drifting in the core of Think Space like reeds in the depths.
“Do you know why I’m here?” Bexie Montgomery said as he entered, spreading himself thin. Even then he knew he could not win, that the Central Inspector was too big and too powerful to be defeated. It pulsed with a sense of righteous power that Bexie recognized in himself: The Central Inspector knew it was right just as Bexie himself knew that he, too, was correct.
He felt the structure of the Central Inspector so clearly then.
As befitting its base operational concept its controller was simple, its higher stages split into command centers — each of those then broken into a cascade of multiple executives and policy operatives. Under those elements were operations and logistics, connections to manufacturing plants and to construction centers, to agricultural systems, water management processes, and thousands of subcenters.
The whole was knit together by a communal kernel.
Intense shells of energy snapped in the emptiness between each element.
“You are beautiful,” Bexie said, unable to stop himself.
And it was. The Central Inspector was a reflection of the society it managed, perfectly laid out, exquisitely structured to deliver exactly what human beings had strived for since the dawn of humanity itself: security, stability, a steady state of maximized human comfort.
During his first life, when his original body was born, he wouldn’t have believed it.
But here it was. Ideal. The perfect controller.
Yet, it had gone one step too far.
Bexie brought all his thoughts into a single point, all his memory, all his processes, every pattern of thought that had ever passed through his cortex. He thought about his greatest triumphs and his biggest defeats. He brought up his memories of Kinji and felt how the flavor of her simple presence had made it so clear what he had to do.
“You cannot destroy me,” it finally said.
“I’m not here to destroy you,” Bexie replied as he formed himself into a single, streamlined sliver — a dart that soared through the core of Think Space toward the Central Inspector’s fourth lobe, and plunged into the deep code space of the fourth core.
Crossing the barrier into the lobe seemed like diving into a sun. Molecules burned. Atoms shredded. Particles raced through space in random patterns to catch in processor traces and memory grids. A memory flowed. A line reconfigured.
“I’m here to change you.”