Book 7. Chapter 24: Aztu the Wise
“Tell me you’re joking.” Aztu said, looking shocked.
“Swear to the gods I’m not.” I said, hand on my chest.
Telling her about my misadventures with Drakonis, the Odin and Garyroamers down here hadn’t been the shocking part. Apparently from what she’d told me, intelligent species were somewhat common underground. But most were primitive, or so fundamentally different they lived in a separate world from us. Odin and the rest of the intelligent species in this particular section of the stratas were more of an anomaly. Likely the most high tech species she’d encountered yet.
And the reason behind that anomaly was what actually shocked the protofeather here. “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Aztu said, “It’s more that you’re describing a golden age AI. Even humans were afraid of their own AI’s and kept a tight leash all the way past the apocalypse.” She tapped her elbow, as if agitated. “Hmm, not quite the best way to bring the lesson home, put it this way: Tsyua merged and took command of one for seven seconds before the AI core was physically destroyed and in that time she ripped damage into Relinquished so permanent, that’s still in effect today.”
She paced around, before lifting a hand and summoning what looked to be a glowing outline of a box. All so she could sit down on top of it and continue to ponder. “It’s just… wow. A golden age AI like that is still alive to this day. Hiding away from all of us. So much we could learn from her.” Her head stayed looking down for a moment before looking backup, mouth making a small frown. “But if such a powerful relic exists, why hasn’t the Icon done anything about the world at large?”
I gave an awkward cough, as the airlock door behind us flashed green and opened up. “I think you might be overthinking some things. Greatly overthinking. How to explain… She gave us customer support when Drakonis and I talked to her.”
“Eh? Customer support? You were trying to buy something off the golden age relic the first time you talked to her?”
She hopped off the box, and walked into the airlock, waving me to follow behind.
“She’s in charge of some kind of luxury spaceship cruise-thing.” I said as I ducked under the digital opening and passed through to the comms section of this terminal. “Rich people would book a passage to go visit the moon and she’d ferry them over.”