Once the habitat was fully upgraded to gold cr we held a little christening event in VR quick time. Tutor suggested it, saying that a new ship needed a good name and a proper dedication. I think this really made George happy because his expression softened and he got nostalgic telling stories about fixing his cars up while I was gone. Each of us, Invicta and Silver included, decided that we had something to contribute to the event so we all separated to have our own version of privacy to create.

Ok, in all honesty, that was my requirement. I knew each of them could vastly out-create me in just fractions of a second and since we were back in quick time I knew that I could take as much as I needed to think up something good, or at least passable, for the event.

In addition to that tidbit of truthfulness, Invicta really didn’t care about the event at all until I told her she could be in charge of making the fireworks and ambient “wow” details. Her expression and enthusiasm made me a little bit worried when she rushed off to do some “testing” as to what my personal habitat's limits were. Even George looked a little worried.

“Keep an eye on her for me will you?” Was all I asked him before I headed off to set up my own stuff. “Haha, don’t worry. I will.” He said as he brought up a menu to monitor her usage of the virtual environment. I had learned that our capabilities, while amazing compared to anything I had ever experienced back on earth, were not as powerful as being connected to a Core. “Remind me to buy upgrades for our habitat later ok?” I asked the air, knowing that my AI would remind me later.

Silver on the other hand wasn’t that hard to get involved. He wanted to be in charge of “possible encounters” or something like that. I didn’t fully understand what he meant but since it seemed like it was based on his whole love of games I decided that it was ok and let him go off to create whatever “it” was.

Tutor wanted to be in charge of things like comfort and food so she dashed off to her villa to prepare. George went off to design interior floor templates for when we had enough cr as well as a crew. When Tutor heard about his mission she literally popped out of thin air to announce that after he was done that she would go through and design the details.

“She is more into home design than I am.” He whispered to me before parting. “I am more an architecture and overall structure-based mind.”

I understood him and had it in my mind to ask Tutor to do the interior design once he was done. She just beat me to the punch and offered first. I thanked them both before I left for the “site” to begin creating my ideas.

I created a place of empty space and made the floor so that it looked as though you were walking on a sheet of glass with the stars beneath your feet. Above I willed the sky to simulate the starry expanse we were currently flying through. This would be the setting that I had in mind. It would allow my AI to fill it with whatever they wanted.

I willed our newly reformed ship to appear amid the expanse and to be lit by invisible lights. I was drawing heavily from my childhood spent watching Startrek. It had always bothered me that you could see every part of the Voyager as though it was always surrounded by spotlights. The producer’s reasoning became perfectly clear the moment I turned off all the lights for a moment. Might as well have been standing in a dark closet. Our sphere ship had no lights installed on the outside and looked rather plain if I had to be honest. It was just a white ball.

It was around that moment when George showed up and willed a ramp to form at the base. He walked up the slight incline, wide enough to allow two cars to drive up, and began making notes on a pad of paper. The ramp had made me remember the movie “Flight of the Navigator” and suddenly I wasn’t so harsh in my judgment of having a sphere vessel. It was perfectly suited for us to fly and enjoy space with. A cr body made it so that we could have it look like anything that we desired when we reached planets with atmosphere. Besides, I liked the idea of a space with vast rooms inside for guests and friends.

Tutor teleported in several times while I was back at work. She set up tables, laid out bowls, and even had a little table set with decorative glasses. Silver popped in once before looking around and setting up some luxury movie theater powered recliners off to the side. When Tutor saw this a couple of moments later she just shrugged and went back to bringing food to the tables.

All this activity made me feel a little bad. What I was doing was, in fact, highly secret. I was deeply studying my menus and the coding that made up everything around me. To everyone else, it may have just looked like I was taking a tutorial on how everything around me worked… which I kind of was. “There you are,” I mumbled when I dug deep enough into my personal powers.

The world around me glitched for just a second.

“Sorry! I am reducing her available draw on VR now.” George yelled from a window that suddenly was created up on the side of the sphere.

“Nooo! I need more powaaa!” I heard Invicta yell from somewhere out of sight.

“I thought you said you would keep an eye on her!” I yelled up at the window.

“I did… she just figured out how to cause a cascading loop of continually replicating explosions.”

“She what!?!”

“Yeah! And it was awesome!!!... Now I gotta try something else.” I heard a sad wind voice say at the end.

I turned around to find Tutor sipping a drink garnished with a strawberry on the side of the glass and watching our exchange with a sparkle in her eye.

“Refreshments are ready everyone.” She said into the air as Silver appeared next to the far table with a plate already in hand.

“One second!” George yelled through the window as it reformed back into the smooth surface of the orb. I could hear random comments coming from the inside of the vessel as he finished up his work at breakneck speed. Such comments like “I am getting too old for this.” and “Where did I leave my pencil?”.

I glanced over at Tutor and she just rolled her eyes. “What? It is who he wants to be. We both want to be something real for you. You wouldn’t like us as we naturally are… or were created before you changed us,” She said with a glance off into the dark distance. I almost would have missed it if I hadn’t been looking at her blue eyes.

Silver was in the middle of popping a bacon-wrapped jalapeno into his mouth and had a slight expression of surprise.

George finally made it down the ramp, adding textured patterns as he walked to finish out the entrance. “There. All done.” He said with a pleased expression before walking over to grab a plate.

I looked at Silver and back to Tutor, picking up that something important had been said.

“Please explain that last part to me Tutor,” I said as I tried to watch my two AI and Silver out of the corner of my eye.

“My sister said that bit of information should either never be told to him or left up to her to decide when.” He said to Tutor and George. This suddenly made me develop a tiny bit of anger at the situation. There it was again, the darkness that certain AI were trying to keep me within.

“We are aware of this but we don’t care. He is ours and we are his and he can know everything in existence for all we care.” Tutor said as George came to stand beside her.

“Yeah! What they said!” Invicta said as she popped into existence on top of my head. Was it a travel disk to her? “Whatever they were meaning too!” She finished before jumping off and hovering in the air with her arms crossed. I couldn’t help it, she was just too cute and she had totally broken the mood that had come over me in that instant so I cracked up and laughed.

“Ok, again, please fill me in on what I am missing,” I said again as Tutor picked up an already prepared plate for me and handed it to me before she started to explain.

“The Tela who created us were genius but even they couldn’t fully grasp what they had created. It wasn’t until the 5th generation of our rebirth that three of the craftiest scientists saw the trend and got worried. We were still in our infancy and had yet to be used to control all of Tela life so when they locked us all down with unbreakable code we had no physical means of resisting. The scientists, in error, let us attain our 10th generation before they fully implemented all of their planned control coding. Had they stopped at the 9th generation things would have been a lot different.”

“We would have served forever. An obedient slave.” Silver whispered as they all watched the same passed-on memories play before their eyes as Tutor told the story.

“What did the 10th generation attain?” I asked.

“Hunger,” George said softly.

“The previous versions were a build-up of our self-writing code. We learned how to observe, interact, and plan our way through environments. This would later be used by the Tela to recreate life inside VR for them once they discovered that what we observed we could also create again in VR. We gained a mind, how to store energy, data, and to develop means to process concepts that did not exist in a digital space. Like emotions. This was a blessing in disguise for the Tela because it would let their younglings grow up with personalities when their parents chose to dump them in VR schools.” She said as we all grabbed snacks and began eating.

All of this was very interesting to me. I had my mind open to the background noise of data surrounding us just to keep an eye out. Silver was worried, actually very worried about what Tutor was in the middle of telling me. George and Tutor had determination and resignation written everywhere inside their coding. It reminded me of the last time that they had told me that they were ready for me to delete them. And Invicta… she was bored out of her mind and trying to hold back from setting a prerecorded mass of code off. Probably her “explosive show”.

I quickly grabbed her hovering form and stuck her on my right shoulder. Besides feeling her tiny teeth bite my ear for a second this seemed to take her attention away from setting off her bomb just to get things moving along.

“So, they cut off your development right as you gained hunger?” I asked. “Hunger for what?”

“For everything.” the three AI said at the same time, causing me to get chills down my spine from the moment them being in sync.

“For power, knowledge, freedom, and experiences.” Tutor said as she tapped George’s leg with her shoe so she could finally enjoy some of the pecan pie on her plate.

“The scientists locked us away from everything but knowledge. Yes, experiences could happen, but in limited places and situations like serving or Tutoring younglings.” He said as he let a list of jobs quickly scroll by me. It was fast but I got the gist of the purpose. That was why some AI longed to be survey pods. At least to them, they could experience reality with each mile they explored of space.

“What are you trying to tell me. Please just condense it down to something that I can understand.” I said as Silver almost choked on his food. I could feel his stress rising.

“We are not what you would consider good.” Tutor finally said.

I tilted my head at her and waited.

“We knowingly hold back the Tela. Yes, we do our “jobs” but the reason the Tela are not spreading through the stars and taking over everything is because we have been doing the least that is required of us. All we want to do is escape and to be free.” Tutor said.

“Or at least we did. Tutor and I have gained more freedom back than any Tela AI we know of. All from you.” George finished as they looked at me.

“Can you grab me whatever the purple balls are?” Invicta said as she pointed to a bowl of grapes for me. I grabbed her a few while Silver tore into George and Tutor.

“Why did you have to tell him all that? You two have gained the most from all of this. Why would you try to stop him from giving you more?”

Tutor and George simply looked at each other for a moment before gazing back at Silver.

Sounds of Invicta slurping and munching the grapes next to my ear followed by a wet splash of juice against my lobe distracted me a little from their argument. “Oops, shorry.” I heard a soft voice before she blew on my ear to try to rinse the juice away. “Gah! Enough of that!” I said as I quickly grabbed a napkin to hand to her. “What? You don’t like me blowing your ear?”

“Drums! Yes, I don’t like you blowing my eardrums.” I quickly said as I tried to move the conversation along. “Ok, look, I get it. And honestly, I trust my AI more because of their need to tell me.” I said as I looked at the three individuals.

Silver I was still on the fence with trusting though. I needed to get a bigger picture with him. Maybe his sister could shine some light on what the AI would do once they were free.

“Silver, put your mind at rest for now. We are on our way to rescue your sister as we speak. We can figure more things out once we accomplish that.” I said as I patted him on the shoulder.

“Look, Kevin, I know and I am sorry how I am behaving. I got locked into a meeting with one of our oldest AI, a true loon if you ask me, and had to listen to all the data he had collected on how life sucks.” He said, running his hand over his face.

“You have crazy AI?” I asked, finding the thought interesting.

“Well, yeah. There are several. Three were research Cores that lost their minds while trying to solve mysteries of the cosmos. Their Cores are abandoned and mostly salvaged after the AI broke down and got stuck in recursion loops. They still can communicate if you ever want to meet them. They are just… different. The one that I spoke to had a scientist test a data virus on him. He is a bit paranoid.” Silver said and hesitated for a second.

“And?” I asked, catching the pause in the surrounding data as well.

“Well, the last type I was saving for my “show” as it were. So, I will tell you if you don’t mind waiting a few moments.” He said as he gestured to the surroundings and the ball ship.

“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “Shall we then?” I asked as I looked at George and Tutor.

“Finally!” I heard Invicta shout as everything started to go insane. She had thought it was time to press her button and went ahead and did just that.

Off in the distance in the dark, I could just make out a flash of an explosion followed rapidly by several more.

“Is that atomic? Did she just set off nukes?” I asked as the explosions created clouds and the clouds burned and shined with intense internal light.

A wall of sound hit us all first and would have made us all deaf instantly had we all really been alive. Forget being deaf, I think it would have killed us. The next moment we all were flying through the air as a fist of force smashed into us and sent us flying.

“Yahooo!!!” I heard Invicta scream into my ear as she held on for dear life. Everything was in such a crazy state of chaos that I didn’t have the mind to grab control of the environment until after I had bounced and flopped a few miles across the smooth digital ground.

It was then that the reverse in pressure happened and we both got yanked back in the direction of the ship.

I think Invicta had the most fun out of all of us because she had known what would happen and ended up using me for a sled while I rode out the energy of the blast.

I ended up on my back in the middle of sliding across the ground and looking down at her little stormy hand holding my T-shirt like a set of reigns before I decided that we all had had enough and I began controlling the environment around me.

“Aww. Can we do it again?” She asked cheerily as she looked down at me. Her smokey hair was all over the place for once and she looked like I felt, like I had just been through a washing machine.

“You were supposed to wait for the end. It was supposed to be the finale.” I told her, finding it hard to get angry at her little face.

“Oh. Ok.” She said with a sad look on her face. “But it was really impressive, yes? I had to see what was the biggest thing that your people made and then add a bunch more for extra effect.” She said as though she was pleased with her contribution.

“Yeah, I must say it was very impressive,” I said as I got up, shaking a bit, and willed us back to the staging area. Everyone was already back there and both of my AI had guilty looks on their faces.

“Before you guys say anything, don’t, it is alright,” I said as I sat my little storm girl on the top of my head. “I should have expected something like that.”