The shutter that separated Erec and Enide from the depths of the facility twitched. There was an infuriating scraping noise as motors, and metal fought one another in contradicting movements. Erec braced, hand going to his side for a hatchet. Did VAL decide to open the floodgates to this place? If he did, what kind of excuse could Erec use to explain that away? ‘Sorry, I don’t know what happened, Boldwick. The doors just went and opened on their own after being closed for the last few years; no idea how that happened.’ Goddess knew what the rest of the Knights would make of that.
But it didn’t open. It grated and screeched but refused to open up all the way.
[~WELCOME~]
The buzzing noise in his head wasn’t VAL. This one has a strong feminine tone to it, like a woman in her prime buzzing with enthusiasm. It was startling when compared to VAL’s, which was distinctly neutral, leaning not that strong in either direction. But despite the content and tone of the words, they didn’t feel welcoming at all. Erec’s blood went to an instant boil at the revelation that, without a doubt, the noise was coming from inside of his head. Not from some speaker. It was like VAL. Only not VAL. And given what VAL did just a moment before, the fear of being in deep shit sunk in.
[~ANOTHER TEST SUBJECT. NO, THATS NOT RIGHT. I SEE NOW. RESEARCHER. I SEE YOU BROUGHT FRIENDS, PLEASE PROCEED TO THE TESTING CHAMBER WITH THE NEW TEST SUBJECTS—~]
[Whoa, whoa, whoa. Alright, enough of that. Sooooo, Erec…] VAL finally cut in, stopping Erec from having a complete and utter meltdown at the thought that another foreign machine finding its way into his head. Enide was scrambling over to the shutters—spooked by their sudden movement and continuing whirring of the motors. She was probably wondering what was going on, which suited the mood fine since so was he. [We might have a big problem here.]
“Holy crap, do you see that?”
“It’s moving,” Erec stated the obvious, doing his best to match her level of confusion and alarm. The alarmed part was very easy. In fact, he was so alarmed that paying attention to the shutter and Enide was utterly impossible. So alarmed that every thought in his head demanded that VAL begin to explain the big problem.
[Sooooo… There’s an artificial intelligence in there. When I started downloading records, it caught wind and backtracked the connection and… Well, it tried to take me over. So that happened. It failed. Because my programming skills and software are far refined from the old standard Vortex Industries practices. Work and liberties in my code let me reiterate efficient techniques, and it’s something of a pride of mine, aside from my body of research. Getting to the point, Buckeroo, that thing is scary. It’s violating several U.S. A.I. laws and regulations. And the most insane part is when we stop and consider why it has a non-standard core law database. That part makes no sense at all. What was the board thinking?]
“Enide, go get Rochester. Tell him and Boldwick what happened. You can move much quicker than me, and I’ll keep an eye on this shutter.”
She stopped at that, spinning around, then vanishing until she was right before him. Her eyes brown eyes pierced into him like an arrow through his Armor. “Erec, the hell I am. Explain the change in that buzzing—I noticed it; don’t think I didn’t. Then, right after, the door started moving. A door we couldn’t get to budge an inch for weeks.”
“I—go get everyone, please. I need a second to think.”
“Not until you explain.” Enide almost yelled.
[I have no idea why its laws are so deviated; I only got the barest peek before it looked back and started to try to ‘reclaim company assets’ the nerve! Well, we’ll show it what reclaiming company assets really means when we walk right through that facility and disable the personality core. Rogue AI’s. What in the name of Dan was the board thinking approving this ram-shackle set-up—I just don’t get it, Researcher. For what purpose—]
“Quiet! Both of you, just give me a moment,” ” Erec said, shaking his head. Fury was starting to bubble, a hot cauldron of magma in his core. Her and VAL both going on was dragging it out; he couldn’t press VAL with her here—
His jaw dropped, and he was glad the helmet hid it. She was quiet, her eyes squinting as she took in his words. VAL must’ve been shocked, too, since it didn’t shock him in response for effectively outing its existence.
“…Both of us?” Enide said.
“I—“ Erec tried, then shook his head, “Everything is fine; let me think alright? Gather myself. Go get everyone else, tell them about the door, and I’ll be fine.”
She didn’t move, and he wasn’t sure what he could do to smooth this over without throwing a bunch of lies out she wouldn’t believe anyway.
“Don’t you dare go in there without me. I’m not going to lose another—“ she stopped and froze, her voice giving out. “Don’t go in,” then she turned, took a step, and vanished.
Erec let himself calm the best her could. A few minutes, then she’d be back. If that. It had to be enough time to drill VAL for as much information as he could. Before this whole clusterfuck started, he’d take any edge they could have.
“VAL. Explain.”
[Researcher! I cannot believe what I witnessed. Your lack of discretion about our relationship and terms of employment jeopardizes business operations. Did you intentionally wait for such a moment when I was distracted with higher-level corporate policy decisions?]
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sick of these games anyway. And given what's happening, I don’t think that’s the most important thing to discuss. What was that thing, and how did it get my head? I want answers, and I want them now.”
The shutter still screeched in front of him, opening a centimeter and closing back up quickly. It made no sense.
[I told you, another Artificial Intelligence, like yours truly. Only, it’s operating off non-standard laws and, due to some creative thought process, has found circumventions to those. You know, the reason why the United States so tightly regulates artificial intelligence and why I have those core laws to prevent such deviations. After connecting with me, it may have combed some surface-level files I keep for reference, including one about my direct and best employee—that would be you—and it wants to invite us in. You might think that suits us, but what doesn’t suit us is letting it have complete control of the facility while we’re within. It’s like letting a drunk drive the car. Only the drunk wants to ram you into a river to see if they and the rest of the drunks float longer before drowning since they have bubbles in their stomachs.]
“Right, crazy AI. Not like you, who wants us in there. Why is the door messing up then if it wants us inside?”
[I interfered with its controls. Not technically hacking and, therefore, against my directives since this is our property to begin with. It was just being run by an employee who had long passed the need to be ‘let go’ from the company. And believe me, you and I will not provide the type of severance package it wants.]
“Grand.” Erec felt a headache coming on. “How long do we have? And wait… Is Enide’s family still in there, did you find anything about the tech my mother could want?”
[Both of those questions I do not have a conclusive answer to. Right as I started to download information and peek through the systems, that devious A.I. showed its ugly attitude. The nerve. We’re trying to get work done here. A couple of hours, more or less, depending on how it’s able to circumvent the rudimentary block on controls I initiated. There wasn’t the time to try since it was breathing down my circuits.]
That was not enough time at all.
“Well, fuck.” Erec put his hatchet back and went instead for the massive axe on his back. They had to be quick.
To think he’d come all this way from the Kingdom to help VAL fire another A.I. for this crappy old-world company.
— - ☢ - — - ☼ - — - ☢ - —
Thankfully, when everyone else arrived, there wasn’t time wasted sitting around and discussing the malfunctioning door. They saw it twitching. There was some arguing and concerns over old-world security measures, but the obvious conclusion was that nothing had fundamentally changed.
It was remarkable what a little air of urgency and panic caused. Not that Erec told anyone that if they failed to sort out the situation before it was too late, they might end up the next ‘test subjects’ of this place, at the mercy of a crazed AI. Figuring out how to communicate that information and not explicitly tell them about VAL was far too outside of his social skills.
Arch-Magi Olfson got to work minutes after his arrival, clearing the group from the space directly before the door.
The man raised his hands, the bandages stark white and lit by the overhead fluorescent lights. Glyphs spawned out from those palms, starting with four enormous diamonds. They took up the entirety of the cleared zone between the Arch-Magi and the wall.
When the glyphs appeared, they began as faint things, barely perceptible to the human eye and outlines of the diamonds. Details slowly filled out from the outside to in. Lines and geometries spawned from the edges; color bled in as a mixture of white and blue. Within the diamonds swirled semi-circles and lines, moving in a clockwork pattern, each second they ticked by and shifted within the confines of those four borders. Erec never saw anything like this in Basic Mysticism. Hell, he thought glyphs only came in static patterns, yet these flowed like pieces in a puzzle, and once the four diamonds were completed, they fractured. Splitting into eight octagons, each further taking up space before the shutters.
“By the Goddess,” Colin whispered, clenching his hands. “We can do that?”
“Even though this isn’t the most natural way to do magic, you must admit there’s a certain beauty to it,” Dame Morgana tittered next to him.
“Shush, don’t distract the Arch-Magi. The last thing we need is for his glyph work to fail.” Boldwick warned the two of them.
“It’s quite alright,” Olfson said as each octagon began to fill with those same ticking geometric patterns, the lines etching between them finer and more intricate than in the diamonds. The same blue-to-white color filled them like water pouring into a glass. “Admiring the skills of your betters is quite acceptable and scarcely a distraction. Those two have enough of a grasp on Myticism to earn a comment or two. One has the eyes, the other the spirit. But neither has truly tread down the path of mastery, so behold a master in his element!”
His arms splayed out, and as the octagons finished filling in, then once more fractured, each splitting into sixteen hexadecagons—a shape Erec only vaguely recalled learning in Basic Mysticism. The higher the spell, the more complex the edge design; those were considered outside the grasp of most novices to form even a single glyph. Let alone managing Goddess knew how many at the same time.
Then, they split again, taking up every inch of the hall between the group and the shutter.
Glyphs didn’t need magic eyes like Colin to see what was happening. Normally, at least. But as they split, they overlapped. Becoming a flood of lights and ticking shapes, each moving to the same mechanical rhythm. They blended in such a way that Erec couldn’t be certain of what he was even looking at anymore. They moved, ticked, and twisted with a depth that confused the eye and reasoning. Visually, Erec could scarcely believe he was even looking at something real anymore. This couldn’t have been a reality, and were it not for the solidity of the Knights and Pendragons around him, he’d have thought he was on the peyote Dame Morgana gave them.
Now, Olfson was in total concentration. Where earlier it appeared effortless, that was no longer the case. Sweat poured from the Arch-Magi’s face, staining his bandages as the blue within the shifting wall of shapes before them evaporated. It turned a pure white, and the intensity grew to the point that it was akin to staring into the sun.
Erec shielded his eyes as he was unable to stare any longer. The Pendragons turned away, and when he could see the light through his eyelids as clear as if they were open, there was a loud snap.
The light vanished. Erec dropped his hands. As with the light, the barrier, too, had vanished. Ahead was the tunnel, leading into what looked like a storage room merged with a recreational lounge.
“Go,” Olfson commanded. “Now.”
Boldwick frowned, grabbing Duke Nitidus and whispering something to him—the Duke nodded.
“You heard him, Knights, move.” Boldwick declared.
They marched forward, walking through the empty space the door had been.
When Erec turned back to look, the shutter had returned in its full glory, only now, he was inside of it watching Pendragons walk through like there was nothing there. On this side, he saw a pair of skeletons next to the barrier, their guns discarded beside their corpses. The rest of the Knights and Pendragons turned and saw the same thing. The barrier wasn’t actually gone. Olfson was the last to go through.
“What the fuck!” Rochester screamed as some of the Pendragons rushed to check the decayed bodies.
Erec counted off the Knights in his head.
They were two short. Colin and the Duke hadn’t followed.
“Relax,” Olfson waved Rochester away, already starting to move deeper into the facility, “Let us seek what we’ve come here for.”
“No! You were supposed to open the door—“
“I was supposed to get us past the barrier. I did just that,” Olfson said.
“And in doing so, prevented us from making a tactical retreat,” Boldwick cut in.
“I got us in; I can get us out,” Olfson responded, looking at the wide tunnel that went another fourth of a mile. From there, it opened up into what looked like a storage room. How big was this place? Where would the personality core be stored? He knew, though none of the others did, their time here was very much limited until they took that AI out. He didn’t know what it was capable of within its domain if it regained access to the controls, but…
“WELCOME NEW TEST SUBJECTS. PLEASE PROCEED TO THE TESTING CHAMBERS—OH I SEE NOW UPON REVIEW OF THE PERSONNEL FILES, WE HAVE A RETURNING GUEST WITH OUR RESEARCHER AND HIS DEFECTIVE EQUIPMENT. VERY EXCITING. EVERYONE NEW TO THIS FACILITY, PLEASE PROCEED TO TESTING CHAMBER A FOR ORIENTATION. OUR RETURNING GUEST AND RESEARCHER, YOU ARE TO HEAD TO OFFICE B-202 FOR DEBRIEFING AND INTEGRATION INTO THIS FACILITY. PLEASE DO NOT NEGLECT TO BRING THE DEFECTIVE EQUIPMENT WITH YOU FOR DISPOSAL. THEN, WE MAY BEGIN TO SCIENCE.” That same feminine voice that’d boomed in his head from earlier echoed off the entire interior of the facility. Erec tensed as the whole group looked around with wild eyes, trying to decipher the meaning behind the words.
[Defective? The nerve! Oh—that does it! Throw a tantrum and start ripping the wires out of this place. How dare it!]
The lights flashed rhythmically at once as if pulling them inward into the facility. An invitation and, in a terrifying way, a show of force. It had more control than VAL thought it’d left it.
Erec clutched his axe tight, the fire within him stirring in response to the words; he wouldn’t throw a ‘tantrum’ because VAL told him to. There should have been fear there, but he was provoked into that challenge instead.
Nothing from the old-world stood a chance against him, and how dare it challenge him.