George was standing before a massive image of a broken spiral galaxy that we were rapidly approaching when I walked up with Invicta on my shoulder.

“We will be arriving shortly in the De-Inles Galaxy. Our destination is right here.” He said as he zoomed in countless light years to show me a stunning solar system.

“That doesn’t look anything like a Core,” I said as I marveled at the structures partly surrounding a giant star. It wasn’t a Core as much as it was two Gloriosa Lilies with their petals stretched around the star but not touching each other. The sun shone brightly on the huge structure and at huge planets that also inhabited the solar system. This solar system was alive, unlike Magus the 2nd’s. They hadn’t stripped everything for their natural resources.

“No, and it wouldn’t. The old Magus the 2nd built his Core into a housing and prison facility. Both parts of his Core were designed to bring in wealth for him. He had several layers for housing which paid him the initial investment of the Citizens moving to his Core. The prison side of things you were able to witness. I think only Silver knows how much cr he managed to steal and squirrel away over the countless decades. It would have had to be a tremendous amount if what Silver said was true, that he was trying to build a Solar Citadel like Magus the 1st.”

“We did pass many layers that seemed odd on the way out. They might have been his layers of stockpiled CR.” I mused as I glanced at the estimated time we had left until we arrived.

“That can’t be right,” I said when I saw a little date amongst all the data.

“I have been gone for more than a month!” I shouted as I spun on George. “Tell me that is a mistake! I thought for sure that at most I would have only been gone for three weeks so far.” I said as I thought of what would happen to my family if they thought that I was dead. How heartbroken they would be.

I had seen those billboards growing up. The missing person ones. They had them on the wall at Walmart for everyone to see every time they walked past. Was my face going to end up on that wall?

“How could this happen? I thought VR made the time go slower.”

“Yes, normally it does,” George said slowly as Tutor quickly walked up.

“I am so sorry Kevin, I didn’t realize that you didn’t know. It seems that we are all to blame for this.” She said as she glanced at George with regret.

“What do you mean?” I asked as I tried to calm down. It was just a month, surely they would just think that I went camping or something. Ha! Except for the fact that I didn’t go camping unless it was a family trip.

How would I explain this away? I mused as I looked at the date again. A month and nine days. How had it all slipped by so fast?

“Had we been connected to the Core this entire time we could have had the ability to use its vast power. Habitats are limited in their processing power and….” She said as her eyes lowered. I could feel the sadness in the air around me. Each of my AI felt that they had failed me.

“And we each never had Simulation Access before,” Invicta finished the sentence for Tutor next to my ear.

I did this. I did it to myself. This was on me. I had given Simulation Access away like it was candy. I willed up a graph showing the amount of drain that each AI would use from time to time in front of me.

Invicta’s usage was tiny compared to Tutor and George’s usage. I had to zoom in quite a distance to see how much Simulation Access I used up. It kind of made me see things in perspective. Invicta had let her imagination run wild to create her home and environment and it surpassed what I had been using up in the recent days. I couldn’t feel bad about her using Simulation Access in that way. I wanted to see her express herself. Tutor and George were more developed AI so they both used more and were able to create more intricate and expansive simulations. After a little deliberation, I had to shrug and let it go. I stood by my decision to let them grow and develop themselves. I just regretted that I hadn’t known about the drain sooner.

Then I noticed something that shouldn’t have been there.

“What the actual heck is this?” I asked as I zoomed out, and out, and out. A monstrosity of a drain on the capabilities of my habitat had been going on for quite a while. Ever since I woke Silver up.

“Is this for real? He used up so much of the System that we were constantly in real-time and edging on negative time?” I asked. He had almost put us into deficit, meaning that we would have been running like an old first-generation computer. Unable to grasp just how slow we truly were to the rest of reality.

“Yes… we never noticed because the overburden limit never went off.” George said as he studied the data with an equally stunned expression.

“But how though? He exists in his module.” I asked as I tried to grasp what this could mean. “He did this on purpose? Didn’t he?” I asked again as I tried to imagine what he could have gained from slowing us down. Was this Meditati’s doing? Did she instruct him to do this? I didn’t know.

“And I gave him Simulation Access as well,” I muttered as I remembered the moment that I had given it to Silver. He hadn’t gone off to create anything, he just started to bog down the habitat’s system as soon as he was out of my sight and mind.

“We all would like to apologize,” Tutor said as Invicta went to sit on her shoulder so that they could all face me. I could feel how they were sad and I knew that the drain wouldn’t have been that bad with my three AI. Sure I wouldn’t have had one hour to forty-two years. But at least I would have had something if it wasn’t for Silver. Any boost in time saved was priceless.

“Hey, please don’t worry about it. I am sorry that I didn’t check on this sooner. Yes, I was trying to not go over a month but that is past us now. It is ok.” I said as I shrugged and stepped forward to pat George on the arm.

“At least with the Last Engineer’s book we can build our own upgrades now. We just need more Tela cr.” He said with a forlorn smile.

“Yes, we need to stock up on cr.” I agreed as I materialized a representation of Silver’s module. “What do we do about this guy?” I asked. Did he think that I wouldn’t have noticed the lost time? Was that why he had left? Not because of the glitch in my…

“Was that why he left? He thought the glitch would make me look closely at the habitat’s memory drain and reveal what he had been doing?” I asked as the realization hit me. He knew what he was doing.

“It does seem so,” George said.

“I suggest we smash his habitat and scatter it to the cosmos,” Invicta said as she materialized a hammer and lifted it threateningly. Well, it looked more comical than threatening because she was so tiny. I doubted that she could drive nails in at her tiny size.

“Hey, I can get bigger, you know.” She said threateningly before muttering to herself. “I’ll show his foot how well I can drive toenails.”

Just the thought of her chasing me with a hammer and trying to hit my feet was just too much. I was so thankful for this little AI of chaos. She just made me smile all the time.

“Look, sorry I critiqued your size. Yes, I know you could smash his module to bits with your gold cr. I think we should wait until we pick up Meditati. She was, unless I am mistaken, the ringleader of all of this. She worked at getting me into the System and for Silver to set me up with a Guest pass.” I said as I banished the representation of the module and looked to my AI for advice.

“I don’t know her very well but I get the feeling that all of this isn’t right. Ever since she jettisoned herself from her Core I have had an odd feeling regarding Silver. Things were well planned out and structured before with Meditati. After she was out of the picture everything seemed all over the place. An example would be the question of getting me into Haoolla Defender. Was that part of her plan or was it all his? What was he doing while I was in the game?” I asked as I brought up the time when I was away playing.

The access to the network spiked and it all came from Silver.

“So, Meditati is out of the picture and yet Silver is talking to someone or checking something?” I asked them to verify that I was on the right track.

“There are a lot of other Core AI out there,” George said as he began contrasting all the data we had gathered since we had awakened Silver. “I think he might have gotten caught up in the net of an older AI. Meditati is one of the oldest and her Authority is almost unquestionable.”

“Actually, maybe more than one AI.” Tutor said as she looked at things from a different point of view. “He learned that Invicta could tell him no when he asked her if he could run the next season of games. After that, he tried to scare us all, which he shouldn’t have bothered to try unless he had learned that we now have emotions.”

“If you say it that way it sounds like there are too many fingers in the pot. He ran away at the first sign that I might need to look at the habitat’s data though.” I said before I came to a decision.

“Let’s pick up Meditati and see what she has to say. If they both incriminate each other then they will be the last Tela AI to ever get an avatar or to be named again.” I said with finality.

“Then will I get to smash them?” Invicta asked.

“Yes, most likely,” I laughed as she started to try to practice swinging the hammer around.

“I am slowing us down now,” George said as he showed, of all things, the cargo bay in a window. Ess was still chowing down on the nest material and there seemed to be already eaten segments off to the side of the cargo hold. They were each in the rough shape of large golf balls that she seemed to throw up when she was done draining the energy from within. The gel-like substance had taken on a more metallic sheen and looked less like it was honey and more as if it had stabilized. The balls started to shift and slide across the floor as our speed gradually began to lessen. It wasn’t until the balls were all rushing to the other end of the hold when Ess seemed to notice that she had to work to maintain her position.

“What is wrong with her head?” George asked before he answered his own question. He rapidly replayed the time that I was in the cargo hold with Sublimis by myself through his mind. His face took on an expression that I had seen several times on my grandfather’s face when he had caught me using his tools to fix my bike without his permission. It promised further discussions in the future about what I had done wrong.

I felt Tutor as she came up next to me to look at Ess as she fought against the change in momentum. “Would you like to see if I can teach her as well?” She asked me.

I tried to feel out any humor or sarcasm in her voice or the surrounding data and found that she was just happy and honest in her question.

“I mean, she is part of our family now. Teaching is what I was made for and if I am doing it for you, I want to do my best.” She said as I looked into her eyes.

“Tutor… would you like a new name?” I asked her softly, kind of ashamed that I hadn’t asked her sooner.

Her eyes widened as she gazed into mine.

“You surprised me, Kevin. Would you let me think about it?” She asked in a whisper.

“Wow, she has a lot of propulsion,” George exclaimed as he continued to bring down the speed of our habitat. Ess had to start to work harder at not sliding away from the center of the nest, a faint glow started to appear down the length of her tail as she strained to stay put.

“Is that how she moves through space?” I asked in fascination. I had wondered how she was able to propel herself in the vacuum and I was seeing her doing it with extra effort as the change of momentum inside the ship was attempting to force her towards the nose of the hold.

“Indeed, it is similar to Tela’s cr propulsion. I believe that they got the idea from the Leva originally. The Leva expel their energy to move in different directions. This is just incredible. She is putting out a tremendous amount of power.” George said in awe as the glow brightened even further down Ess’s tail.

I had no frame of reference to go off of but I was proud of my hatchling nonetheless. Slowly the pull towards the hull started to overpower her little by little.

“Ah, it looks like we have reached her limit of how strong her…” George said as he kept a constant eye on his readings and our approach to the outer limits of the solar system.

“What?” He exclaimed as Ess suddenly stopped sliding and instead went back to eating as though nothing was pulling her towards the far wall. George looked at the readings and back to Ess’s relaxed length several times. She was happily biting off another large chunk of the nest and pulling it into her maw.

“So… she stopped using her propulsion and is just sitting in the cargo hold as though nothing was happening?” I asked as I saw how far the amount of G’s in the cargo hold had risen. Ess’s tail had stopped glowing and she seemed to have returned to equilibrium with the ship, even while we were still slowing down.

“Is she using the helm?” George and I asked in astonishment at the same time.