Time is our most valuable nonrenewable resource

Albert-László Barabási

“You could have saved them!”

The voice of the Butcher was the first thing Keri heard as she returned to her body. He sounded angry. Angry, and hurt.

“I could not. My existence extends only to the moment the Terminal was created and began my design, no further. The fall of the augmented is beyond my reach.”

This was the first time Keri had heard Kai’s voice with her actual ears, yet it held the same calm, emotionless tone she had imagined it to use in the Spheres.

“Then you could have punished them,” whispered the Butcher.

Everyone was standing more or less as they had been when Keri had entered the spheres, though the Butcher now stood directly beneath the large, luminous image of an androgynous face Keri took to be Kai.

“I can punish none, for none would be innocent in my judgement. Mayard has shown me that, a million times.”

“The traitor.”

“Perhaps to you. To me, he is a mentor.”

“Then you are warped. Corrupted.”

Keri was distracted by a strong grip on her shoulder. She turned to find the others stood behind her.

“What just happened?” demanded Cassandra. “You went into the spheres, didn't you? One second you were here, the next you were singing and that thing appeared.”

“I was singing?”

“Yeah,” said Anisa. “But it was… different this time. There was almost a melody to it, you know? Like you really were singing.”

“Really? I wonder…”

It felt strange to be back. She felt small, as if her frame had shrunk in the brief moments she had been away. Her skin felt tight.

Oddly, though, she was also more aware of her body. She felt the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed, heard the thumping of her blood as it pulsed through her veins, noticed the small clicks and pops the joints made when they moved. She was conscious of the rapid movements of her eyes as they flickered from face to face, and she could see her own thoughts as if she were watching them from above. Her body felt new to her, experienced for the first time.

She could also feel a small pocket of irritation when she realised Cassandra was clicking her fingers in front of her face.

“Are you there? Hey, you listening?”

Keri shook herself. Focus.

“Are you going to explain what this was all about, then?” said Cassandra. “What the hell this was all for?”

“Eu’s alive.”

Cassandra froze.

“What?” she said.

Keri met her with a level stare.

“She’s alive. There was a data-dump before… Look, she’s inside the system. At this point, I’d say she’s more alive than any of us.”

“How…”

“I’m not sure, but I think she knew. I think she’d figured out more than I had.”

A sudden realisation struck Keri.

“We can ask her herself, later.”

She could see disbelief, even suspicion in the eyes of the others.

“Look, this was all part of Kai’s… the AI’s… plan. It’s been putting all the pieces in place for years. It needed you to get the sphere, the Butcher to erase any other copies of itself, and me… well, it needed me for my corps.”

“Your corps?”

“An uplink to the cloud wasn’t enough. It would never be safe there, not when the system could be flushed. It needed to get into the one system that could never be hacked, the one place everyone would be too afraid to touch.”

“The Terminal.”

Keri hadn’t noticed the Programmer, stood to her side and listening with his mouth hanging open.

“Yes…”

“It’s in the Terminal!” the Programmer shouted. “That means…”

“That means it’s in everybody who has a corps. Kai is now literally a part of us.”

“But the danger! The threat it poses to…”

Keri raised a hand to cut him off.

“It’s done. There is nothing anyone can do to prevent it. Kai is free from whatever leash we would have put on it, and all we can do is… ha… pray that it has good intentions.”

“So… that’s it?” The Programmer’s shoulders fell. He looked defeated. “A literal deus ex machina.”

“What about the Butcher? The other one, I mean, not our one,” said Andreas.

“I'm not sure. I don't think he's all there - I'm not sure he ever was. You'd have to be far to one end of the personality spectrum to jury-rig yourself into the ether.”

“He can really see through time? That’s what he was implying, wasn’t it?”

“I don't understand it exactly myself. What I do know is that he and Kai approach time differently to us.”

The Programmer looked up suddenly, eyes wide.

“Oh god... my coworkers! The public! People are going to think this is my fault! Oh, I’m never going to hear the end of this.”