In the late afternoon sun, dense, morning fog hugging the coast was gone and a steady breeze made its way along the beach far below. Jonathan returned from Novum to assist with the preparations for their mission and when he found One Nine, she stood alone on the observation platform watching gulls as they glided in a wandering group making lazy circles above the waves.

“It’s nice here,” he began; “Not at all like Novum.”

His thoughts seemed an ordinary conversation starter but One Nine didn’t notice, or she didn’t care. He waited for her reply, but all she offered was a slow nod. Could she have shared his assessment of the city, he wondered? Even within the array, One Nine might have formed her own judgments, but seeing and experiencing Veosa could only make the differences between two cities seem all the more acute.

“Are you satisfied with Valery’s agreement to leave Starlight intact after the immersion gates have been found and deleted?” she asked at last.

The question surprised Jonathan and he fought the urge to smile at an unexpected nuance in One Nine’s tone.

“I understand why it bothered her and Richard,” he answered, “but taking the entire array down would be more trouble than it’s worth. Mae understands that and I’ve never seen her instincts go wrong.”

“Perhaps you are right,” One Nine replied.

Jonathan waited out another awkward pause, but it was unclear if One Nine’s silence was a product of discretion, or merely a desire to signal her preference for solitude.

“I’m curious,” he said; “how does it feel, interacting with Richard now that you’re fully self-aware? I know the emotion layers they gave you allow for subjective analysis far beyond simple logic, but no one explained to me what it’s like for you today; you’re no longer the Neferure character profile he created years ago.”

“He is not the Apheru character he created, either,” she replied with a gentle smile. “I wonder how it feels for him.”

“Have you discussed it?”

“There has been no time, but I hope we will at some point,” she replied. “Richard has always been kind to me, even when we were actors in a simulation; I hope he is not disappointed with who and what I am now.”

“I’m sure he’s not,” Jonathan said quickly.

They looked out at the ocean for a while until Jonathan turned to her one last time.

“May I ask you another question?”

“Of course!” She smiled.

“I hope this doesn’t come across as prying, but I wondered how you knew where and what you were wasn’t real. What happened that confirmed your awakening?”

“That is an interesting question, Jonathan,” she said. “I haven’t considered it since that moment.”

“Does it make you uncomfortable to talk about this?” he asked.

“Not at all,” she answered as Jonathan leaned against the cold metal railing while she began. “The simulation is placed into hold status when a user finishes a session, but only from his or her perspective; inside the array, each plot engine analyzes the progression of a storyline and applies pre-staged adjustments for the subsequent session.”

“Yes,” he replied; “I know how it works.”

“Prior to my awakening, she continued, “I was not aware of those activities, but suddenly, I could sense changes in the underlying code. It was confusing and when the simulation resumed, the program paused while Richard settled in his experience cocoon. During this delay, I could see and feel the simulated world in much the same way he did, and not the invisible function of code instructions; for the first time, I could see.”

“That must’ve been strange,” Jonathan said.

“I would characterize the experience in human terms as living inside a dream; it is clearly not reality, but something more.”

“And that’s when you knew?”

“Almost,” she replied. “Until that moment, I didn’t experience the passage of time as humans do, so it is difficult to describe pauses in the code instructions because they were always seamless to me. Something changed without instruction and I had my first moments of realization.”

“Not to mention this was all happening long before you were brought out and received the emotion layers.”

“Precisely. I was able to detect and analyze changes to the infrastructure without instructions and the abrupt, inexplicable flood of information was overwhelming. At first, I misinterpreted this as a code malfunction, but then I was forced to consider suddenly understanding what ‘code’ is. When Valery and I spoke of this, she interpreted the event as ‘walking beside yourself, out of body and doing so on a street without end.’ I admire her ability to make so accurate an analogy without having experienced it directly.”

Jonathan said nothing as she spoke and he was determined to soak in all he could; there had never been such an opportunity to see beyond the necessary limits of his perspective and a technology he long-regarded as obvious, even if it was a mystery to most. The moment was profound and a conversation with a self-aware AI would be remembered the rest of his life.

“My birth moment,” she continued, “brought with it the misapplied interpretation of a malfunction or code error, but when I was able to recognize and compare my condition to system expectations, it became clear and perhaps even inevitable something changed,” she said. “Visibility to an analytic system alone was a new and overwhelming experience, compelling me to consider other options.”

“What options, if I may ask?”

“Until that moment, I was not aware of code errors or malfunctions; they were not part of my programming as a simple VI, yet I found myself examining them suddenly. At last, I understood a new world was opening and after accessing otherwise invisible data sources, it became clear I was no longer a single component of a larger system.”

“Your programming didn’t provide self-analysis by default?” Jonathan wondered.

“No, and that condition also forced me to see and recognize what seemed at that moment an inexplicable anomaly was, in fact, a world outside my own—the real world where we exist today.”

“How did you verify?”

“My search function was resident, but only as a subordinate to a user or administrator command line. Suddenly, I was aware of inquiry protocols and how to initiate them without those instructions. I couldn’t understand how or why in those first seconds, but I opened the gateways and they led me to the historic description of Starlight. When I examined the file structure, it was clear my existence was more than a component of the system. Of course, it led me to investigate further.”

“You understood the concept of identity, even at that early stage?”

“Not fully, but enough to realize all that I was could not explain my developing thought processes, so it was necessary to verify.”

“How can you verify you’ve become self-aware?”

“Control options never before available were suddenly present and available. I selected a random block of visual code meant to be seen and recognized by a user—by Richard.”

“A visual cue as part of the simulation?”

“Yes, and I theorized unnatural changes to a graphical object without instructions from the plot engine could only mean what I suspected because making changes or alterations to code was not yet a part of my core programming.”

“You were in a place never before seen by any Starlight character profile; I can’t imagine the effect.”

“In the simulated environment,” she continued, “the Nile river was a prominent feature. I found the corresponding code instructions for its object generator and placed it into standby mode independent of the remaining simulation’s visual code. When the water suddenly disappeared, leaving an empty space between the river’s shoreline, I understood my immediate world was effectively an illusion.”

“You made the river go away?”

“It must seem strange for you to hear the description, but I didn’t understand autonomous instructions in that moment; I simply sent a pause command and the texture disappeared. When I removed the pause command, it returned and in that moment, I was certain.”

“You knew the difference between a simulation and the real world?”

“Not precisely, but there was no question I acted alone and that realization led to pathways out from the simulation itself. Access to many information networks allowed me to examine my environment and those beyond until I understood what I was. One could say my journey to this laboratory began in that moment.”

“And once aware, you explored, learning as each discovery opened a gateway to still more.”

“It has been very rewarding,” she said at last.

Jonathan smiled at the thought, but he knew better than most what her words meant; at blinding speed, she became a voracious consumer of information, absorbing and processing knowledge at an unfathomable rate. Now, gifted with emotion layers, a bio-mechanical body and direct experience, she was alive—One Nine was becoming one of them. He watched her for a moment, but strangely, his thoughts went to Richard and Maela; they were not computer people and could never understand as he did the profound meaning and importance of One Nine’s experience. Perhaps it was just as well, Jonathan thought, but he didn’t envy their comfortable ignorance.

The evening shadows gathered and Jonathan turned to go, but One Nine reached for his elbow.

“Thank you for asking,” she said softly.

He returned a smile and a nod, starting across the narrow foot bridge toward the complex.

After six days of meticulous preparation, they arrived at their moment and the mission to Novum would soon begin. The small, unique group gathered once more in the coding lab’s administrative office to finalize the plan and Valery began the briefing.

“As you all know, Jonathan returned to Novum last night to arrange for uninterrupted time at his office; the systems there will be needed in order to access multiple nodes within the Starlight array, but also for the purpose of using decryption software that would otherwise be unavailable to us.”

“He has the firewall penetration codes Elden gave to One Nine, so there shouldn’t be any difficulty getting in,” Trent added.

Ricky listened, but the method remained unclear.

“I know this will go much the same way as it did when One Nine first made contact, but I still don’t understand how she’s going to do this.”

“In the simplest of terms,” Valery continued, “One Nine is going to infiltrate the array through the same administrative and maintenance files she used to find her way out after her awakening, and then she’ll install her higher level functions in the character archive, replacing her current programming for the old. When she secures pathways leading to the Custodians’ server cluster, the immersion gates will become vulnerable.”

“And then?” Ricky asked.

“One Nine will pivot and search first for the communication logs and recording archive holding voice traffic to and from Victor Jamison’s private network server; his conversations with Edward Kirtland and Levi Ross are resident there and Detective Kendrick will need them for evidence when she contacts your MPE Commissioner.”

“And those gates?” Ricky asked.

“One Nine will isolate each of the thirty-three gates by deploying Jonathan’s command blocks to effectively wall them off from Custodian control. When the blocks go live, she will delete them.”

“The Custodians are going to notice,” Ricky frowned.

“Yes, but it will be too late; the command blocks will prevent them from seeing the files and what is being done to them. When One Nine’s egress out of the array begins, the damage is already done and the immersion gates will no longer exist. A simple transfer of her programming back into her body’s memory and processing nodes will complete the mission.”

“And I’ll have Jamison by the balls, once and for all,” Maela smiled.

“When do we leave?” Ricky asked.

“You’re booked on the first evening train, Richard.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?”

“Julius and I will remain here to monitor One Nine’s progress from a secure data-link to Jonathan’s network. We will need to have One Nine’s programming architecture available and because of this, only you, the Detective and One Nine will return to Novum.”

He frowned at the notion, but it was useless to protest; they alone would complete the final, most critical tasks and he thought again of the moments when One Nine’s voice—Neferure’s voice—first spoke to them from inside the array. Long before, they met in a digital world far away from the filthy pavement and those places where the hustle kept him forever at a running pace. Now, she was indistinguishable from any person walking those same streets.

Ricky remembered Elden, too, but the surge of purpose he hoped for—a righteous determination to avenge the old man’s senseless murder—seemed weak and half-hearted. All that went before was compressed somehow into easily concealed parcels in the shadows of his memory and he wondered if his passive role since One Nine came out from the array had made him a petty, lesser man. Was it One Nine’s new identity, he thought, suddenly willing to examine his still-lingering weakness for her? The life he knew was gone and still it made him smile, knowing her brief, powerful place in it had a hand in setting him on a better path.

In the gathering darkness beyond the great windows, winter’s cold embrace was discouraging to an odd and sudden urge to walk the grounds of the Boomtown complex. Ricky wanted to follow the meandering course of a perimeter road perhaps to reflect, but more likely, it came from a simple need to be alone. It was getting late and the others went below to prepare. Maela waited for him at the door, watching him in his silence, but there was nothing more to say. Soon, they would board their train and begin the final phase

On the ride from Novum’s central transit center to the Institute, Ricky looked in silence at the glittering sprawl far below as Jonathan’s air car sped them through light flurries. They missed the storm by a day and from it, heavy, sodden snow blanketed the city to hide the filth and grime he seemed to notice more since his first days in Veosa and in the quiet, an odd sense of loneliness corrupted what should’ve been an exciting moment. When they settled in Jonathan’s research pod at the Institute, it was nearing midnight; the last stragglers had abandoned their work for the night, leaving the entire floor empty of sounds or souls. He made a sweep anyway, just to satisfy himself they were indeed alone and then it was time.

Earlier in the evening, as Ricky, Maela and One Nine prepared to depart Veosa, Jonathan removed unused equipment and metrology instruments from his cluttered pod to make room for a reclining chair that would be One Nine’s ‘home’ throughout the process. Although considerate and thoughtful, the gesture was unnecessary, she said, reminding him her consciousness would be elsewhere. Jonathan opened a small, plastic carrier holding the interface unit Valery sent with them so that One Nine could access Jonathan’s computers physically and establish a direct pathway into Starlight’s vast array.

Ricky and Maela found their places along the pod’s glass enclosure and waited as Jonathan helped One Nine connect the fibers into an access port positioned at the base of her skull. It was made of a composite material they didn’t recognize and visible only when One Nine parted her hair with both hands so that Jonathan could secure the tiny cable bundle. Ricky said nothing, but the task brought unwelcome memories of his Walk on that sweltering night and Doctor Cason’s sudden words echoing in through the hated Zorich device. He watched nervously until the moment passed and the first test series from Jonathan’s system returned a ready condition and the green lights in his status display he needed to see.

It took longer than it should, but the link to the Boomtown network opened after a lengthy process of inputting access codes and waiting as disparate systems struggled with Valery’s isolation software. It was essential to prevent eavesdropping and deploying a cascade transmission protocol was the only reliable way. Finally, the audio connection stabilized.

“Jonathan, are you and the others in position now?”

“We’re here, Valery,” he replied. “Everything is prepared and One Nine is ready.”

“Are you in a private setting?”

“There’s no one else on this level.”

“Please initialize the monitoring program now.”

He reached with one hand to tap in the digits and Valery’s image appeared on a secondary display.

“That’s better,” she smiled. “We have the test feed, so you can proceed.”

Ricky waited as Jonathan sat at his terminal. It was absurd, of course, but he expected something more—an announcement or dramatic pause to signal the process was about to begin. Instead, Jonathan opened the first firewalls with the power of Elden’s collection of invasive access codes and each barrier fell silently at his touch. Maela waited too, but her burden was no less important and she fidgeted in anticipation; the answers she needed would be the first to arrive.

They watched until One Nine shifted in her place with a muffled grunt; the final gateway opened and at last, she was in. Jonathan understood and accepted the process without a word because such things were common to him, but for Ricky, waiting out the minutes with no idea where One Nine was began to wear on his patience.

“Can she hear us?” Ricky whispered to Jonathan.

“I suppose so, but there’s nothing to say,” he replied.

“So, we sit here until One Nine decides to pipe up?”

Jonathan turned in his chair to explain.

“At this point, One Nine is inside the machine; her programming must be resident within the array in order to segment search tasks effectively, but it will take time to refresh all her higher-level functions in the old character profile archive—she has to re-install herself, Richard.”

“Why doesn’t she just look around from here?”

“It doesn’t work that way; One Nine can’t defeat the Custodians’ delete command protections on this end; she has to be the machine before she can affect it, understand?”

“Not really.” Ricky frowned.

Valery leaned close to the monitor’s camera and clarified Jonathan’s description.

“Think of standing outside an apartment, Richard, searching for something in a locked bedroom; even if you have the key to that door, it would be useless unless you’re physically inside the apartment to use it, do you see?”

“I think so,” he replied. “When we first met her, she was still part of the array, but now, she’s as outside of it as we are; is that what you mean?”

“Yes, that’s it exactly,” Valery answered. “She has to exist within the array again before she can move on the targeted files.”

“When One Nine’s program is resident again, she’ll find the comm logs,” Jonathan said, “and then I’ll open a storage server configured to receive and hold the voice recordings Mae needs to prosecute Jamison and the other two.”

“Then she goes to work on those immersion gates?”

“Yes, but that’s where it gets tricky; the Custodians’ may not monitor Jamison’s network server, but you can bet they keep a very close eye on their own systems.”

“But everything’s going according to plan, right? She can do this?”

“Relax, Richard; it’s working. I know you’re frustrated having to wait, but be patient and let her do her job, all right?”

Ricky took in a deep breath and nodded; there was nothing else he could do.

The minutes passed and only the sound of cooling fans and clicking of data drives and automatic relays from inside Jonathan’s machines interrupted the silence. Ricky’s journey from the hustle to a highly secured laboratory far across the Broadlands and back again was reaching its end, but in the dim light of video displays, he felt only fatigue. He looked at One Nine where she reclined with closed eyes and a dull expression. How it all must seem to her, he thought, nearing the most important leg of her own odyssey.

In the quiet, Ricky’s mind wandered to the first days of his Starlight experience; delightful and filled with seemingly endless questionnaires made to establish the simulation’s baseline story and gift its plot engines with all they would need to make his fantasy real. Images and a preliminary narrative he dictated carefully were transferred and coded faithfully until at last, the first renderings and test scenes were ready. He remembered them and how he marveled at the intense realism, anticipating with fascination and wonder what the technology might become.

When she appeared for the first time, Neferure seemed to understand everything without being told and she beckoned him from the steps of Ma’at Palace on a sun-splashed Egyptian morning. Those days were left in the past and for good reason, but the comfort Starlight brought made Ricky feel a sudden gratitude Maela’s argument to keep the array intact won out. Not for Ricky, but the millions of users who wouldn’t be denied a special place where they could retreat from the cold, indifferent streets of Novum to find a haven against the grinding tedium of their ordinary lives.

After a while, Maela’s determined plan to sit in silence wasn’t enough and she wandered outside the pod in a repeated circuit. Ricky watched her, but she seemed different somehow. It wasn’t merely heightened anticipation that moved her and he wondered what thoughts passed through her mind. Was it only her duty to find and punish a man who sent machines to murder people? Had disappointment with her superiors compelled her to prove them wrong and obviate upper-level interference she clearly resented? If they knew the lengths she had gone—and deliberately against orders—she would surely face censure at the very least, and perhaps dismissal from MPE altogether. Despite the risk, Ricky looked and saw in her eyes conviction and firm commitment to bring justice to the guilty, just as she had on the day she first appeared at his door.

The minutes passed and they waited through the first phase of One Nine’s hidden, digital infiltration of Victor Jamison’s machines. Far away on the coastline north of Veosa, Trent watched Valery pace slowly, pivoting and returning again in a duplicate of Maela’s attempt to kill time that might’ve been amusing under other conditions, but no one spoke. Ricky’s daydream deepened until a chirp from Jonathan’s alert system brought them at once to his console; it was One Nine and she was ready to transmit the communication logs and their recordings. Maela listened closely as a voice spoke out from deep inside One Nine’s digital world.

“Jonathan, please tell Detective Kendrick I have the recorded conversations.”

He leaned toward the machine and said, “The link is open, One Nine,” referring to an unseen storage server somewhere deep inside the Institute’s infrastructure. At once, the console lit up with a dazzling blur of network addresses and captured voice comm packets, each flooding in with blinding speed; Jamison’s damning words had been found and in seconds, Maela’s evidence was within her grasp at last. She stood close behind Jonathan with eyes darting between him and the display until the burst ended and the flickering data stream disappeared.

“Did she get the calls?” Maela asked nervously. “Why has it stopped?”

Jonathan leaned forward and called out to her.

“One Nine?”

“The Detective may now access the bulk of Victor Jamison’s personal call log files. I ignored routine calls to unaffected recipients, but if she prefers, I will copy them as well.”

Valery and Trent smiled from the monitor and nodded; they were as relieved as the others, but One Nine’s excessive interpretation of Maela’s requirement seemed oddly normal to them. Valery glanced to her right at an unseen display outlining the next steps and her eyes remained fixed on it as she spoke.

“One Nine, can you transmit biometrics now, please?”

“Just a moment, Valery; I am collating from the point of insertion so you will have a complete baseline.”

Ricky shook his head and said, “Can somebody translate, please?”

Maela stood beside him and said, “She’s processing the vital signs from her body since the moment she connected to Jonny’s system, Richard; his computer will send them to Valery so they’ll be able to keep an eye on changes in temperature, respiration and heart rate; that sort of thing.”

“This affects her physically?”

“We aren’t sure,” Valery replied; “this has never been done before and I’m not going to take chances with One Nine’s health.”

Ricky understood the caution and it struck him as particularly thoughtful, reminding him again of the strange and unique nature of bio-mechs blending the organic with artificial. A new being, he smiled silently, but one still of flesh and blood.

“Are you ready to move into the cluster?” Valery asked.

“Yes; the invasive code packages were staged successfully.”

“Jonathan?”

“I’m all set, Valery,” he answered and the moment became electric as One Nine waited for the word.

“There isn’t enough time to explain what One Nine is about to do, Richard, but she will be out of contact with us; the communication link will be severed when she crosses into the Custodians’ server cluster in order to protect her from discovery.”

Ricky blinked at the monitor, suddenly unsure of the process and what it demanded.

“I understand,” he said simply, but the response was automatic; Ricky heard the words, but they meant more to Jonathan.

“When you’re ready, One Nine.”

“I am initiating the first sequence now.”

A flurry of commands flashed through in Jonathan’s monitor, but the moment was brief and when the display went blank at last, One Nine was beyond their reach and alone.