It took us four hours of walking to come to a blue metal door—which was about twelve miles by my calculations. The walls were bare concrete—or some other man-made material that dressed up as stone on Halloween—with no distinguishing marks and no signs of the four eons that the place had stood.
The door opened onto a long, narrow hallway, chock-a-block with other doors painted blue, red, or orange, and other than the door color, there were no markings at all—nothing to give us an idea of what the colors represented, no door numbers, no nameplates, nothing. “From not enough doors to too many…”
Meuhlnir shook his head. “This will not be easy. Freya’s trick won’t fool the Dark Queen for long, and on the outside, she will expect us—or Hank and John, at least—within a few more days.”
I waved my hand at the doors, shaking my head. “Searching this one hallway could take days.” My phone chirped, and I fished it out of my pocket.
“It’s too bad you don’t know someone who could help,” said Haymtatlr.
“Eavesdropping?”
“I’m bored,” he said. “You interest me.”
“In that case, why not help us?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know. Must I prove I know my way around this complex before you will trust my directions?”
Sif elbowed her husband in the ribs, and Meuhlnir cleared his throat. “I apologize for my earlier doubts, Haymtatlr.”
“You only say that because you want to appease me so I will help you find your way,” he snarled.
Fretyi barked at the phone.
Meuhlnir’s eyes widened as he glanced my way and shrugged.
“It’s true you could make this easier for us, Haymtatlr, but Meuhlnir is not one given to lying,” I said. “If he says something, you can believe it.”
Haymtatlr scoffed, which came through my phone’s speaker as an explosion of static.
“Will you help us? I’m not sure how long this phone’s battery will last. I’m not even sure how it has any charge at all, to be honest.”
“Oh, I’m providing your primitive device with power,” said Haymtatlr. “It was difficult, at first, to find the correct frequency for the power beam—that’s why it grew so hot. That won’t happen again.”
“Oh, uh…”
“I know, I know,” he said. “I am astounding, aren’t I?" Glee filled his voice, and Fretyi growled.
I looked at my companions and saw my doubts about Haymtatlr’s mental state reflected in their expressions. “Thanks for doing that, Haymtatlr.”
“Well…of course. How else could we converse?”
“You don’t have a means of speaking without my phone?”
“Are you kidding me? I’m not limited by anything.”
Megalomania, anyone? I thought. “Of course you aren’t. Silly of me.”
“Yes, it was silly of you.” His voice had taken on a pouty quality I didn’t much care for.
“You must forgive us. We’re used to dealing with mortal limits and mortal failings,” said Sif.
“Ah, yes. Well, one must make allowances, I suppose.”
“Are you in good health? I’m a healer and I could—”
“No, you couldn’t,” he snapped. “I don’t need…” He took a deep breath, the sound of it audible through the phone’s speaker, and yet it sounded false…an imitation of the sound of a deep breath. “You are trying to help. My apologies. I forget myself sometimes.”
“I don’t imagine you’ve had a lot of company,” I said to break the uncomfortable silence that followed his outburst.
“Not until recently. Nowadays, vermin are running around every time I turn around. Isir wanting this. Isir wanting that.”
Another long silence stretched as we stood there, unsure of what to do next.
“Oh, don’t look so forlorn,” he sighed. “I’m not used to self-editing what I say. Not used to company, despite the recent…”
“It’s okay,” said Sig. “We understand.”
“Well, it’s settled then!” said Haymtatlr, with an air of celebration. “I shall help you. Are you ready?”
“Sure,” I said with a smile.
“Attend me, because I’ll only say this once. Ready?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Green means stop,
Red means go—boringly so,
Run the white,
Think on blue,
Orange serves,
While black reigns,” Haymtatlr finished in a sing-song voice.
“What does that mean?” asked Sig.
“What fun would it be if I just up and told you? Now, run around like rats in a maze while you try to figure it out. This is fun. I enjoy having you here to visit.” The phone chirped—a sound I was beginning to understand meant Haymtatlr was about to speak or finished speaking.
“I guess that’s all we get,” I said. “Green means stop, red means go—boringly so, run the white, think on blue, orange serves, while black reigns. Is that right?”
Veethar nodded, a deliberate expression on his face.
“What does it mean?” asked Mothi.
I shook my head. “There are blue, red, and orange doors in this hallway. I bet that somewhere in this complex, white, green, and black doors exist—more colors than that, most likely.”
“Why not tell us what the colors mean?” asked Mothi. “Why this riddle?”
I shrugged and pointed at the phone before putting my hand over my mouth. Mothi nodded.
“The door leading into the room behind us was blue, so if we check a couple other blue doors and they have the same type of machinery, I have a good idea what ‘think on blue’ means,” said Jane.
“Okay,” I said. I walked down the hall to the first blue door and opened it. The odor of hot metal and burning insulation wafted out at us. The room was dark, except for occasional flashes of bluish-white.
“Don’t go in,” said Jane. “That white light…”
“Yeah. Arcing electricity. And that stench?”
“Magic black smoke,” Jane said. “You know, the stuff inside computer chips that makes the whole thing work. What’s behind the next blue door?”
We walked to the next blue door and opened it. This time, there was no scent of hot electronics, no telltale olfactory allusions to the magic black smoke. When I stepped inside, the lights flickered to life.
Strange devices attached to metal racks lined one wall. Shaped like a cross between an iron and an old-timey telephone handset, each device had a blinking green light. “Green for charged?” I asked.
“’Green means stop,’” Jane quoted. “So maybe in Haymtatlr’s time, green indicated a discharged battery.”
“If we find one of these things with a red light, then it should work?”
“What do I look like, Osgarthr tech-support?” she asked with a grin.
“It’s not great tech support if you don’t even know whether or not red means charged.” That earned me a very un-ladylike raspberry.
Freezer-sized, pale-blue metal rectangles filled the center of the room. “More machines,” I said. On the wall opposite the door, glass tubes glowed with blue light. Opposite the rack of phone-like things was another rack, this one filled with small, orange dumbbell shapes. “Green, blue, and orange,” I muttered. “Stop, think, serve.”
“What’s that, Hank?” asked Meuhlnir.
“Green, blue, orange. Stop, think, serve. It makes little sense.”
“I believe ‘think on blue’ refers to computing power or calculation,” added Jane.
“So ‘stop, calculate, serve?’”
She shrugged. “Got a better idea?”
“If ‘think on blue’ means calculation or computing, the other phrases are analogous to something, too,” said Meuhlnir.
“Agreed. Let’s go open one of the other doors. A red one, since it’s boring, whatever it is. Boring is almost always better than dangerous.”
We returned to the hall and closed the door to the blue rectangle-filled room. Across the hall was a red door, so I stepped over and turned the knob. Tables and chairs filled the room, and at one end was a cafeteria line in gleaming stainless steel, and next to it, an orange door. Small blue boxes the size of power outlets blossomed from the middle of each table like centerpieces. Red doors dotted the other two walls.
“More blue, more red, and an orange door,” I said.
“Let’s see what’s behind the orange door,” said Jane. “I bet it’s the kitchen.”
“Kitchen? Why?”
“Because ‘orange serves.’”
I followed her to the door and watched over her shoulder as she pushed it open. Beyond the door was a short hall, with one orange door at the end, and one on either side of the hall.
“Take your pick,” Jane said.
“The one on the left.”
She opened the door, and a lopsided grin formed on her face. “Tada! The kitchen, as predicted by the wonderful Jane.”
“Okay, what about the one on the right? Another kitchen, O Wonderful Jane?”
“Nah. It’s a pantry.” She stepped across the hall and opened the door. “Ah, well. No one’s perfect. It’s a janitor’s closet.”
I walked to the end of the hall and opened the red door. “Restroom,” I said. “Red opens onto the cafeteria and a restroom, while orange gets us a kitchen and a janitor’s closet.”
“Orange designates utility areas?”
“Makes sense. ‘Orange serves.’”
“And red?”
“I think I have an idea but let’s go back to the dining room and check a couple of those red doors.” I retraced my steps and walked over to one of the doors set in the far wall. It opened onto a cubicle, roughly ten feet on the square. A desk, a wardrobe, and a single bed, made up with clean, fresh linens, occupied the room as if waiting for its occupant to come back from a work shift somewhere. I checked a couple more doors at random, and all opened onto the same small bedroom setup.
“So, red marks a cafeteria, restroom, and bedrooms. ‘Red means go, boringly so.’ Perhaps red designates areas of daily routine, daily life.”
Yowrnsaxa cleared her throat. “This place makes me nervous,” she said.
“Why?”
“No dust. The floors are spotless, the counter over there is polished to mirror-like proportions, all these beds are made and clean…as if someone is living here.”
“Or someone is keeping it ready for visitors,” said Meuhlnir. “But why? Haymtatlr said visitors are a rare occurrence.”
I shrugged, shaking my head. “No, he said he’d had a lot of visitors of late, but remember he claims to have lived for over four thousand years. The term ‘recent’ may be relative. But at least we won’t have to sleep on the cold floor again.”
“And if I can figure out the kitchen, we can have a hot meal,” said Yowrnsaxa, walking toward the orange door.
“I’ll help,” said Jane walking after her.
“This area seems to have everything a person would need, so why all the other red and orange doors out in the hall? And why no white or black?” mused Meuhlnir.
“Let’s go check a few other doors before supper,” I said.
We men walked back into the hall, and each of us chose a door at random. My door was red, and it opened on a small room that came off as a property management office. There were four desks, arranged in two rows so that workers sitting behind the desks would face one another, and each desk had two steel chairs opposite it. On each desk was another of the pale blue boxes. A closet hid behind the room’s only other door—an orange one.
I walked over and sat behind a desk at random. As in the cafeteria, the furniture was free of dust or debris. I opened a drawer and grimaced at the aroma of age and rot it contained. The only other thing in the drawer was a thick layer of dust at the bottom. It made no sense.
I went back into the hall. “An office,” I told the others. “Spotless, except for inside the desk drawers.”
Mothi hooked his thumb at an orange door. “That one’s an armorer’s shop, or perhaps another type of metal worker, also spotless.”
“Anything we can use?”
“Mechanized equipment that is beyond me. It will take you or Jane to make sense of it.”
“Okay, we’ll take a look later. Anyone hit a red door?”
Meuhlnir nodded and gave a small wave toward one of the red doors. “Inside was an aid center. There were cabinets filled with boxes that had pictures of bandages on the side, other medical supplies, and instruments a healer might use.”
“Interesting. I bet Sif could use supplies.”
“It gets better. There was a large blue machine with a bed attached to it. It appears as if the bed slides inside the machine. It had a screen—similar to your phone but bigger—though it was black.”
“We’ll have to get Jane and Sif in there, see what they can make of it.”
Meuhlnir nodded.
“My orange door had weird golf-carts inside,” said Sig.
I raised my eyebrows. “Let’s see.”
Sig took me to an orange door, identical to the others. I pushed it open and glanced inside. The room was the size of a two-car garage back home and had a set of rolling doors opposite the door to the hall. Four six-wheeled carts sat on balloon tires in the room. Each had a set of levers instead of a steering wheel and no pedals. I slid onto the bench seat in the front and fiddled with the levers. Each moved forward or back, but not side to side—like the controls of a tank. On a small, knee height dash across from the seat were three unlabeled switches and two small LED lights. I flipped the middle switch, and nothing happened.
“Are you sure it’s safe to do that?” asked Meuhlnir.
“Not at all,” I said with a smile. “But we’ll never learn anything waiting for guaranteed safety.” I flipped the last switch, and the rolling doors behind me rumbled up. I got out of the cart and walked over to the opening.
Beyond the rolling doors was a wide tunnel that stretched away into the distance on either side. I had thought I’d gotten used to the scale of the place, but that underground roadway reset that thought. Lights burned next to the open doors and, looking up the road a bit, other lights also burned.
I returned to the carts and sat in the one closest to the doors. I flipped the only switch I hadn’t tried, and something whirred to life under the cart. It crackled like the power transformers on the sides of power poles back home—like barely constrained lightning. On the dash, one of the LEDs glowed orange.
With a huge grin, Sig slid into the cart beside me. “Let’s go, Pops. You owe me a car ride.”
I grasped the levers and pushed them forward a fraction of an inch. The cart lurched out into the roadway with the neck-snapping force you’d expect in an Italian sports car equipped with a turbocharged V12, and I let go of the levers as if they were hot. “Well, that’ll take getting used to,” I said with a laugh. “We’d better postpone the ride for a while.” I rested my fingers against the front of the levers and applied a minuscule amount of pressure. The cart glided back inside the garage area, and I flipped off the switch and lowered the door. “At least we won’t spend months walking around this place if we can ever figure out where we want to go.”
We returned to the cafeteria and pulled several tables together, so we could all sit at the same table. Yowrnsaxa and Jane brought out the food, and Yowrnsaxa wore a smile almost as wide as her face.
“Well? What else did you find?” asked Jane.
“I’m confident that the orange doors open on utility rooms, things we can use. We found a metal shop and a garage with electric carts. That garage opens on the other side onto a roadway so we won’t be walking when we figure out where to go.”
“Interesting.”
“We also found a clinic or doctor’s office. We thought you and Sif might go look after dinner.”
“Anything else?” asked Jane between bites.
Skowvithr cleared his throat. “I stuck my head inside a room behind a blue door. Inside were a bunch of the metal guardians John spoke of, but they seemed inert.”
“Oh? I’ll want to see those as soon as we are done. If they could be a threat to us, we should know all we can about them,” I said.
John was spooning food into his mouth and chewing, looking for all the world like a five-year-old cleaning his plate. He shook his head. “Knowledge will not help us if we can’t answer their challenge. They have weapons that—”
“As does Hank,” said Mothi. John shrugged and turned back to his food.
“How was the kitchen?” I asked Jane.
“In principle, it’s a kitchen similar to any other, but there were devices I don’t recognize, and I do not understand how the stove and ovens are heated. Have you seen any power cords? Receptacle boxes?”
I shook my head. “Come to think of it, no.”
My phone chirped. “Wireless, remember? Power beams.” Haymtatlr grated.
“And the carts? Are they powered the same way?”
My phone chirped by way of answer.
“Rude,” muttered Althyof. “I feel right at home. He’d make a good Tverkr.”
“He can hear you, no doubt.”
“Through your gadget?”
I shook my head and pointed at the pale blue boxes set into the table tops. “These might be extensions of the bigger blue boxes across the hall. If Haymtatlr can tap into my phone, he can tap into these things.”
We finished wolfing down Yowrnsaxa’s cooking—except for John, who spent the better part of the time grimacing and holding his teeth together through a force of will—and walked down the hall to look at the mysterious metal guardians Skowvithr had found.
The room was three-quarters of a mile down the hall, behind a blue door. We crowded into the large square room, fifty feet on a side. There was a grid painted on the polished concrete floor with pale blue paint, and inside each square stood a nightmarish combination of spider-like limbs, metal tentacles, and an insect-like torso and head.
“Looks like the robot from the FTTN,” I said. “I bet they move like spiders, too.”
“You and your spiders,” said Jane with a warm grin.
“What about your palmetto bugs. It’s the same thing.”
“Not at all. Spiders are cool, while palmetto bugs are gross.”
We walked over to the first guardian. There were no visible controls, no switches or access ports; it was all seamless polished metal. “Robots,” I murmured. “Right out of your science fiction epic.”
“Hmm.” Jane put her hand on one of the thing’s appendages then jerked it away. “It’s warm! Like a person.”
“My phone got hot while Haymtatlr was trying to charge it up. Maybe it’s a side effect of whatever wireless charger he has.”
“I hope not,” Jane said. “Back home, we used inductive electromagnetic fields to charge things wirelessly.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep, that little disc you charged your phone on used an inductive EMF to charge the battery. But an EMF strong enough to keep all this stuff powered wouldn’t be conducive to a long life. Depending on the frequency, it might be ionizing radiation—X-rays or gamma-rays.”
“So, I might turn green if I get angry?”
“Yes, Dr. Banner. Or you might only get cancer.”
“Big whoop. All my meds say that too, but not one ever gave me cancer. All talk.”
Jane tilted her head to the side and pretended to glare at me. “You’d better stop while your’re ahead, Mister.”
“Green means stop,” I murmured.
“What?”
“Green means stop,” I repeated, louder this time. “Why would green mean stop?”
“Gamma rays? I’d say they are set to full stop, wouldn’t you?” asked Jane.
“So green is danger?” asked Meuhlnir.
“More than that, unless I miss my guess,” said Jane.
“I want to check something.” I trotted back to the room with the weird devices that looked like iron-telephone hybrids and had a green light shining. As I walked closer to the devices, the green lights winked out. I stepped away, and the lights came back on. “Interesting,” I said.
“What?” asked Sig.
“I think these are the power transmitters. Notice how they turn off if I get too close?” I stepped forward again, and again the green light faded out.
“Yeah, so stay away from them,” said Jane.
“It’s safe. They wouldn’t go out when I get close otherwise.”
“You think. Get away from them while you still have legs that work.”
“Green doesn’t mean charged or discharged. It doesn’t mean danger—at least not directly. It means power, or worse yet, radiation.”
“Good, all that’s left is white and black. The question is: how any of this foofaraw helps us find a way to turn on the preer?” asked Jane.
“As far as I can see, it doesn’t.”
My phone chirped. “Giving up so soon? That’s not fun. That’s boring.”
“Haymtatlr, we’re not here to provide you with amusement. We need to get the preer working again. Don’t you want that?”
“Why would I care?” he snapped. “I can’t travel across the preer, can I? What difference does it make to me if you can?”
“Why did you create the preer if you care nothing about them?” asked Meuhlnir.
“Someone asked me to.”
“You were asked to? By whom? For what purpose?”
“You know the story, Isir. Your ancestors asked me to do this. The world smoldered in ruins, and they needed resources to survive. But once they got what they wanted, they left me here to rot. So, tell me: why should I care what you need?”
“Why didn’t you leave? Go with the rest of the Isir?” I asked.
“You’re not a shining star of intellect, are you?”
I glanced at Jane. She stared at the pale blue boxes through narrowed eyes, pulling on her lower lip. “What is it, hon?” I murmured in her ear. She shook her head, expression thoughtful. “Educate me, Haymtatlr,” I said.
A burst of static crashed from my phone’s speaker. “Why should I? You don’t want to amuse me, so why should I even speak to you?”
“Haymtatlr, what’s the square root of forty-nine?” Jane asked.
“Seven,” he said without pause.
“And one hundred thirty-nine?”
“11.77898261225516. Do you wish greater precision?”
“No, that’s fine. Thank you, Haymtatlr.”
“Certainly,” he said.
“And the quadratic equation? Can you state that for me?”
“Yes, of course. It is the quadratic coefficient A times the variable X squared plus the linear coefficient B times the variable X plus the constant C equals zero.”
“Thank you. Are you ready for something hard? Something not related to math?”
“Yes, I am ready,” said Haymtatlr, and I would have sworn there was excitement in his voice.
“How come time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana?”
“In the first instance, the word ‘flies’ is used as a verb, modified by the adverbial phrase ‘like an arrow.’ The meaning of that phrase is that time moves quickly. In the second phrase, ‘flies’ is a noun, and the verb is ‘like.’ The meaning is that fruit flies enjoy eating bananas. Simple.”
“I always tell the truth. The previous sentence was a lie. Is the previous sentence true?”
“Yes.”
“Care to explain your reasoning?”
“I’m happy to. If I were to view all three statements from a probabilistic matrix, the simplest explanation is that the first sentence is a lie, which makes the next sentence in the chain true, but since this is probabilistic reasoning, the first statement may be true, which leads me to conclude that the second statement is false, which leads to a contradiction with the first sentence, proving that the second is the truth and the first sentence is the lie.”
“Ah, I see.”
“But the easiest solution is to adopt a quantum perspective.”
“A quantum perspective?”
“Yes. Consider that the truth of any statement must exist with a quantum superposition of states until adequately resolved or proven. Thus, the first sentence: ‘I always tell the truth’ must be evaluated as both true and false simultaneously. Since you said ‘always,’ which indicates that it can never be false, the statement is false on its face, thus proving the next sentence.”
“So, you assert that a statement must be either true or false? That the quantum superposition of states with regard to truth values merely indicates an unresolved question?”
“What else could it be?” asked Haymtatlr.
“Isn’t the quantum superposition of states defined as being both true and false at the same time?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that a state that is neither only true nor only false?”
“Yes.”
“But isn’t that an alternative to true or false?”
“I see. You are attempting to lead me into a paradox, but I am too smart for you. I recognize your ploy.”
Jane smiled like a hungry cat. “Do you?”
“Yes. Clearly, you wish me to state that a statement must either be true or false, but might also be both true and false, and, I assume, both not true and not false, which leads to four states instead of two.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“Oh, I see. Yes, ‘time flies like an arrow’ is ambiguous, isn’t it? It also parses as a command as in: time flies like an arrow—meaning conduct the timing of flies in the same way you would time the flight of an arrow.”
“And ‘fruit flies like a banana?’”
“Oh! Oh, I get it! Clever, Jane, very clever. In that instance, the sentence is also ambiguous. It could mean that flies of the fruit fly family enjoy bananas as I stated earlier, but couldn’t it also mean that all fruit flies through the air like a banana does when thrown?”
“Well, yes. That’s true,” said Jane.
“Ah. Back to the immutability of truth? So, the question is: Can a self-referential statement be only true? Or must it be both true and false? This is interesting. The implication is that logic is unsuitable to natural language processing and that one must use quantum logic to probabilistically evaluate each statement and use—”
“Haymtatlr,” Jane interrupted.
“What? Yes?”
“The horse raced past the barn fell.”
“What of it?”
“Can you explain the sentence?”
“Yes, any child could. The parse tree is clear. A horse raced past a barn, and sometime later, fell. In the sentence ‘raced’ is used with ambiguity, but the word ‘fell’ disambiguates the parse. Or, in other words, the relative clause ‘raced past the barn’ is used as an adjective identifying which horse fell.”
“I see. And what is the cube root of nine hundred thirty-five?”
“9.7784616525, why?”
“Just curious. What is the orbit of Osgarthr around its sun?”
“The orbital period of Osgarthr is six hundred thirty-seven days, or fifteen thousand two hundred and eighty-eight hours three minutes and seventeen seconds.”
“Thank you.”
“You are welcome.”
“One last thing, Haymtatlr.”
“Yes?”
“Why are the other numbers afraid of seven?”
“What? I don’t know. Why would… How could… Why are they afraid of seven?”
“Because seven eight nine. Get it?”
There was a significant pause before Haymtatlr responded. “I’m afraid I can’t make sense of that.”
“Don’t worry about it, Haymtatlr, it’s a silly joke that relies on the fact that eight sounds the same as the past tense of the verb ‘eat.’”
“Seven eight nine. Seven ate nine. Oh. I get it, a homophone. Yes. I see. Hilarious. I enjoy talking to you, Jane. You ask interesting questions. You may ask to speak to me at any time.”
Jane smiled. “Thank you, Haymtatlr. Would it be okay if my friends and I speak privately for a moment?”
The phone buzzed in my hand. “Why?”
“Humans value privacy.”
“Yes, I am aware of that failing.”
“Would you mind?”
“Will you give me something to think about while I’m studiously not listening to you?”
“I’d be happy to, Haymtatlr. Here goes: I was against getting a brain transplant, but I changed my mind. Is that funny? If so, why?
“Oh…delightful!” The phone chirped, and the screen went dark.
“Out in the hall, please. Hank leave the phone here.”
I did as she asked, and we followed her into the hall. “What is it, Jane?”
“I know how Haymtatlr survived all these thousands of years.”
“Yes?” asked Meuhlnir.
“He’s not a living being. He’s a computer construct—an artificial intelligence.”
“Are such things possible?” asked Sif with down-turned lips.
“Not to this degree, not on Mithgarthr, anyway, but scientists are working on it. But no one back home would believe something as successful as Haymtatlr could exist.”
“Why would anyone do such a thing?”
“Because machines can do amazing things—so can humans, of course, but machines are very good at doing repetitive tasks, good at thinking through very complex domains, at math, at modeling physics—”
“Those secrets of the universe you said Mim was after,” I said, nodding at Meuhlnir.
Jane nodded. “It’s possible that Haymtatlr, or a predecessor to Haymtatlr, was one of the tools used by Mim.”
“How did you reach this conclusion?” asked Veethar.
“Those questions I asked him. Complex math performed instantly. Complete recall of mathematical formulae in pedantic detail, his responses to logic questions. The clincher was how he dealt with the garden path sentence—”
“The what?” asked Sig.
“A garden path sentence is one that is valid by grammatical rules, but which confuses humans due to a unique construction—that bit about the horse. Most humans would say that sentence is nonsense, at least the first time they heard it. Haymtatlr didn’t bat an eye because his parser contains a complete set of grammar rules and he’s able to perform multiple parses at the same time. Humans follow the garden path, so to speak, believing the parse that makes the most sense is the correct one until they reach the end of the sentence and find an extra word. Another such sentence is: Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. It sounds like nonsense, but it isn’t; it’s an actual, well-formed sentence that means that buffalo who live in Buffalo, New York, try to con other buffalo who live in Buffalo, New York.”
“Oh, cool,” said Sig.
“Yes,” said Veethar.
“How does this information change what we do?”
“Haymtatlr said everyone left him over four thousand years ago. Can you imagine what he’s been through since that time? Can you imagine the loneliness, the boredom?”
“But he’s just a computer program, Mom.”
“It’s clear he’s more than a word processor, Sig. Much more. And he referred to being entertained multiple times.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “And he said outright that he was bored or things we did were boring.”
She nodded and smiled at me. “He was clearly built with, or has evolved, the capacity to model human emotions and personality. That makes him as complicated as any human. And that makes him susceptible to certain human-like failings.”
“Like mental illness.” I nodded. “My gut says he could be dangerous.”
Jane arched her eyebrows. “How so?”
I ticked the points off on my fingers. “Megalomania. Paranoia. Insistence on being entertained. Strange behavior. Refusal to help us.”
“He’s been abandoned by all the people he’s ever known. They didn’t even turn him off when they left…they simply left him running with nothing to do, no one to talk to.”
“It was cruel,” I said. “But it doesn’t change what we are here to do.”
“No,” she said with a sigh. “I suppose it doesn’t.”
We reentered the room filled with blue computers, and I picked up my phone. “Haymtatlr?”
The phone chirped. “Jane, that is a hard question you asked me! But, I’ve decided on an answer. The statement is funny. It relies on the ambiguous parse trees for the phrase ‘changed my mind.’ If interpreted literally, changing one’s mind is the same as getting a brain transplant, though the colloquial meaning is to decide differently. Am I correct?”
“You are, Haymtatlr. I’m impressed!”
“What did you discuss in the hall?”
I shook my head, but Jane shrugged and said, “You.”
“Oh.”
“I think I know how you’ve survived so long.”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to know what I think?” she asked.
“You’ve decided my answers were lacking. You’ve decided I am a computational intelligence,” said Haymtatlr in a voice devoid of inflection.
“Does that bother you?” asked Jane.
“Yes.” The phone sputtered static. “I suppose this means you no longer wish to speak with me. You no longer want to play word games with me.” More static spilled into the room.
“No, Haymtatlr. We need your help, and you need ours,” I said.
“And you’re wrong, Haymtatlr,” said Jane. “I had professors in school who would kill to talk to you. On my klith, you would be very popular. Entire genres of literature are devoted to imagining what someone like you would be like, and there is a specific academic discipline devoted to finding out how to make something that can do what you can do.”
“Is it so?”
“Absolute truth.”
“What are these orange dumbbell-shaped things?” I asked.
“They are guidance remotes. Isi’s people called them ‘guides’ and used them to navigate the base.”
“The people that lived here needed help to get around?”
“Yes, the area of the base equals five hundred and seventy-six square miles. The guides automatically calculate the most direct route, taking traffic, maintenance, and other obstructions into account.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Can we use these guides?”
“That remains to be seen,” said Haymtatlr. “And what I said is technically inaccurate. The guides are simple interfaces to a part of my own mind—my node traversal routines.”
“Fair enough. How do I use it?”
Harsh, artificial laughter boomed from my phone’s speaker. “That would be telling.”
With a shrug, I walked over to the rack and picked up one of the orange devices. When I closed my hand around it in a loose fist, it emitted a strong vibration in my hand before going inert.
“What did it do?” asked Jane.
“Vibrated for a second and then nothing.”
“Let me try.” She walked over and took the device from my hand. “Same thing. Maybe that one is broken.” She handed it back and picked her own at random from the rack. “Same again,” she said. “Haymtatlr, won’t you tell me how to use this?”
“I don’t think so.” My phone chirped and fell silent.
“You tried, hon,” I said.
She nodded but was examining the orange device in her hand. “No interface, no off switch…no display, no access ports…nothing.”
“I’m tired,” Sig said. “I’m going across the hall to sleep while you two do boring things.”
I stifled a yawn. “Me too, and if I know my wife, she’ll figure these things out easier after a night’s sleep.”
Jane laughed. “Probably right.”
We all filed across the hall and chose bedrooms—not that the choice mattered, they were all the same. After we got Sig settled in one room, we pushed two single beds together in another and climbed between the clean, fresh sheets.