For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 4
Gettin Itchy

John's making his way up the familiar path from the lake, proudly carrying the morning's catch, when he spots Sally walking with someone he doesn't recognize – a young man about her age. "Hey there, Sally!" he calls out with a friendly wave. "And who's this young fellow you're strolling with? Can't say I've seen him around these parts before. New to our little community?" He holds up his string of fish with a grin. "Good thing I had some luck this morning – caught four beauties, so there's plenty for everyone to share a meal." Sally's face lights up with a warm smile. "Oh no, John – he's not new at all! This is Patrick, an old friend from way back in high school. We're talking ancient history here!" She laughs. "We were both feeling a bit restless and nostalgic, so we decided to get together and reminisce about the good old days. Catch up on everything that's happened since then." "Hey there, Pat!" John extends his hand with genuine warmth. "I'm really glad Sally's got someone closer to her own age to spend time with. Lord knows she must get tired of listening to us older folks ramble on." He pauses with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "Though you might want to be careful with that 'getting together' business – wouldn't want any surprise additions to our little lakeside community, if you catch my meaning."

Sally bursts into giggles, her cheeks flushing slightly. "Oh John, you don't need to worry about that! We're definitely not in the business of bringing any new souls into this quiet lake town of ours. Pat's just here for conversation – and he's got some really fascinating ideas. Kind of exciting ones, actually." John genuinely feels happy seeing Sally with another young person. It's something that's been weighing on his mind – most folks in their lakeside community have quite a few years on them, and he worries about Sally feeling isolated. Still, watching his beautiful young friend chatting animatedly with this young man stirs up that familiar, protective ache that any father-figure experiences when he sees his girl talking to a boy. Being the gentleman he is, though, John knows better than to embarrass her – well, not too much anyway. "We've actually been talking about taking a trip back to visit the old places," Sally says, putting on that irresistible, pleading expression that could melt anyone's heart. "We were wondering if maybe you could help us figure out how to get back there?"

John scratches his head thoughtfully. "Well now, I honestly can't say I know much about that. It's crossed my mind a time or two, I'll admit, but I've never really put serious thought into working out the details. You know how it is with us older folks – we start thinking about ambitious projects like that, realize it'd probably involve a whole lot of effort and planning, and then we just decide to go fishing instead." He notices Pat's expression shift to a slightly frustrated grin, clearly hoping for something more helpful.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Pat says with a knowing look. "I came here with my parents, and they're exactly the same way about everything." He's studying John's face carefully, searching for any hint that there might be some real answers to be found.

John's face brightens as a thought occurs to him. "You know what? Maybe old Ben would have some insights about this. He's our resident expert on just about everything you can imagine – and quite a few things you can't. Why don't you two stick around after breakfast instead of wandering off like usual? I've got a feeling he'll show up, and we can all have a proper conversation about it. Besides, I've got another fishing reel that's gotten itself into a hopeless tangle – he's the only one with the patience to sort those things out."

Sally and Pat are enjoying a leisurely walk through the meadow while John tidies up the breakfast dishes. Right on cue, just as John predicted, Ben comes ambling up the familiar path at his own unhurried pace.

"Well hey there, everyone," Ben says with mild amusement, already eyeing the tangled fishing reel waiting for his attention. "I don't think I've ever seen quite such a gathering up here before. This is unusual."

"Hey there, Tekky!" John calls out warmly. "You know Sally, of course, and this young man is Pat – he's here visiting with her. They've been asking me some questions that I figure are right up your alley. Go ahead, Sally – ask old Ben here what you were wondering about. Far as I know, nobody's ever managed to stump him yet." John's eyes are twinkling with anticipation.

Sally practically bounces with an excitement that hasn't been seen around the lake in ages. "Well, Ben, here's the thing – Pat and I are really wanting to go back and visit the old places, you know? It's been such an incredibly long time, and we're dying to see what's become of everything, how it's all changed."

Now, typically when anyone asks Ben a question – doesn't matter what kind – he immediately launches into one of his famously detailed, technical explanations about how to build this, fix that, or create something entirely new. But this time is different. This time, Ben just stands there staring down at the floorboards, completely silent. The silence stretches on uncomfortably. Sally glances over at John with confusion, John looks questioningly at Pat, Pat turns back to Sally with raised eyebrows, and then all three of them focus on Ben, who's still studying those floorboards like they hold the secrets of the universe. Finally, after what feels like an eternity, Ben speaks.

"I've been in this place for a very long time," he begins slowly, his voice unusually heavy. "A very, very long time – way before any of you folks arrived here. I'm the one who created this lake and built most of the surrounding community from scratch. I was here to help John design and construct his place exactly the way he wanted it. I got Sally all settled into her little apartment and even had my wife help her decorate it with all the feminine touches to make it feel like home." He pauses, still not looking up. "But ever since then, I've been dreading the day when you'd come to me with exactly these questions. Because you're not going to like the answers I have to give you. Not one bit." For the first time in longer than he can remember, John feels a cold knot of dread forming in his stomach. Ben isn't just another neighbor around here – he's like the landlord, the sheriff, the judge, and the local minister all rolled into one. Ben is the person everyone turns to, no matter what's going wrong or what needs figuring out. So if Ben is genuinely worried about something, it's probably something serious. Very serious.

John can't stand the suspense any longer. "What do you mean we're not going to like it? Come on, Ben – just tell us straight. What exactly are you talking about here?" Ben shifts around uncomfortably, first looking down at his feet, then up at the ceiling, then around the room at nothing in particular, before finally meeting their eyes directly.

"The truth is, folks," he says with obvious reluctance, "it's not there anymore. The place you're wanting to go back to – it simply doesn't exist anymore. At least, not anywhere I can locate it. But before I can properly explain what I mean by that, I need to help you understand some things that are going to challenge everything you think you know about your situation here. This is probably going to be pretty uncomfortable, so you'd better sit down and get ready for a conversation unlike any you've ever had." And so begins a discussion that will turn John's understanding of reality completely upside down. There are moments in everyone's life when the ground suddenly shifts beneath your feet and you find yourself desperately reaching for something – anything – solid to hold onto, only to discover there's nothing there to grab. This is about to become one of those moments. They arrange their chairs on one side of the table, with Ben settling in across from them, and prepare themselves to have their minds completely blown.

"This is quite a story I need to tell you," Ben begins, "so I'm going to break it down into manageable pieces so you can actually absorb what I'm saying. I'm going to ask you some questions that probably won't make much sense at first. Just bear with me, though – there's definitely a method to what probably seems like complete madness right now." He focuses his attention on Pat. "My first question is for you, Pat. How exactly did you get to this lake village?"

"Huh?" Pat responds, looking genuinely puzzled. "That's easy – Sally asked me to come, so I came."

"No, that's not what I'm asking you, Pat," Ben says patiently. "HOW did you get here? I want you to think really carefully for a moment and tell me the actual method you used to travel to this place." Ben stares directly into Pat's eyes with unsettling intensity.

Pat stammers, clearly flustered. "I... I already told you. She asked me to come, and I came. I honestly don't understand what you're getting at with this question."

Ben glances around the room at the others before turning back to Pat. "This is going to be more difficult than I hoped," he mutters. "Pat, when Sally 'asked' you to come, did she call you on the telephone? Send you a letter through the mail? Use a telegraph? Knock on your door? How exactly did you know that Sally wanted you to come here?" Pat just stares blankly, clearly at a loss for words. "Okay, don't even try to answer that, because you'll never be able to figure it out on your own, and I'm going to have to explain it to you. You didn't receive a letter, or a phone call, or a telegram, or any kind of message at all. You just knew. You simply knew, because that's exactly how things work in this place. Sally formed a thought in her mind that she wanted to see you, and at that exact same moment, that identical thought appeared in your mind. And the instant you decided to act on that thought, you were here." All three of them are staring at Ben like he's completely lost his mind.

"Look, Sally and I have always had a close connection, so we've always been pretty good at knowing what the other person is thinking," Pat says defensively. "But I didn't teleport myself here or anything crazy like that. That's complete nonsense. I'm pretty sure I walked here. Yeah, that's right – I definitely walked here."

Ben leans forward, studying Pat intently. "Yes, absolutely – you do remember walking. You remember climbing the steps to the apartment building, going up the stairs to her floor, walking down the hallway to her room. All of that you remember clearly, and all of that actually happened exactly as you remember it." He pauses meaningfully. "But you can't remember the journey from your apartment building to her apartment building, can you?"

Now Pat is completely flustered, his voice rising with anxiety. "No sir, I can't remember that part at all. What the hell is going on here? This isn't making any sense whatsoever!"

Ben's expression softens, recognizing he might be pushing too hard. "I'm sorry, Pat – I don't mean to single you out or make you uncomfortable. What I'm trying to do is carefully poke a few small holes in the illusion you're all living in, just enough so you can peek through and begin to see what's really happening here." He turns to John. "You got any more of that fish? You'd better start cooking, because we're going to be here for quite a while."

"I've just got the one left," John says, clearly looking for any excuse to escape this increasingly bizarre conversation and go back to the familiar comfort of fishing. "You want me to head back down to the lake and catch some more?"

"No need, John," Ben says with that knowing grin of his. "Take another look. I think you'll find you've got at least a dozen there."

"No way – I've only got one left because I caught four this morning and we ate three for breakfast, and... wait a minute." John's voice trails off as he peers into his fishing basket. "This is really unsettling, Ben. I could have sworn I only had one fish left, but you're absolutely right. I've definitely got at least a dozen here, maybe more." Shaking his head in bewilderment, John gets out his largest pot and starts preparing for an impromptu fish fry.

Ben settles back in his chair, folding his arms comfortably across his middle and beginning to rock slowly back and forth. John doesn't remember that chair being a rocking chair, but it's definitely rocking now, so it must be one. "When I first came to this place to create this lake," Ben begins, "it was designed to serve a very specific purpose – to be a place of relaxation, reflection, and preparation. I built my cozy little cottage for my wife and myself, and then constructed twenty additional homes for newcomers who might need them. John arrived about thirty years later, and I helped him set up his place exactly the way he envisioned it. That was all this place was ever intended to accommodate." He pauses in his rocking. "But Sally, you don't live in a lakeside cottage like everyone else. You live in an apartment building. What is an apartment building doing in a small lake community? Don't try to answer that – just think about it for a moment. The day you appeared here, fifty other people showed up at exactly the same time. Those are your neighbors in that building, right? Why would fifty people all arrive simultaneously? It didn't make sense then, and it still doesn't make much sense now, but you were all here and needed places to stay, so we created your building and you've been here ever since." He looks directly at Sally. "Do you remember when that happened? How long ago was it?"

Sally considers this carefully before venturing a guess. "I honestly don't know for sure. Maybe five years ago? Something like that?"

Ben nods slowly. "That sounds about right from your perspective. You appeared to be fifteen when you arrived here, and now you seem to be about twenty. But I want you to think really carefully about something, Sally. What have you done every single morning for as long as you can remember? How many mornings have you shared breakfast and fish with John? Don't try to calculate it or figure it out logically – just open your mind, let a number form naturally, and tell me what it is."

Sally looks increasingly confused and frustrated. "This is a ridiculous game, Ben. I can't just let some random number pop into my brain out of nowhere. That doesn't make any logical sense. I'd have to actually think it through and figure it out properly."

Ben fixes her with an intense stare. "Just tell me what number formed in your mind, Sally. I already know what it is – I just want to hear you say it out loud."

Sally throws up her hands in exasperation. "Fine, Ben, if it'll make you happy – the number that popped into my head is one million, one hundred thirteen thousand, nine hundred eighty-two. Are you satisfied now? That's a completely ridiculous, impossible number, isn't it?"

"Actually, no," Ben says, barely suppressing a laugh. "That number is almost exactly right – incredibly precise, in fact. When you allow the truth to form naturally in your mind instead of trying to logic your way to it, it's usually perfectly accurate. You've been having fish for breakfast with John for just over three thousand years. Somewhere deep down, you already knew that, even though your conscious mind refused to accept it. I imagine that's probably why you're starting to feel restless and eager for a change of scenery."

The oil has reached the perfect temperature, and John begins carefully dropping the fish into the hot fryer, the familiar sizzling sound normally so comforting but now seeming almost surreal. Pat and Sally remain frozen in their chairs, staring at Ben with a mixture of disbelief and growing unease, not knowing what to say or what to believe anymore. Ben just continues his gentle rocking, fully aware that this is shaping up to be a very long and very unusual day indeed.

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 5
Remembrance

You know how Ben gets when he's really in his element—once he's got his students locked in and listening, he'll go on for hours. He has this gift for teaching people things they somehow already know deep down, but just haven't realized yet. John's sat through plenty of these sessions over the years, usually when they're helping lake residents prepare for whatever comes next—whether that's settling in or moving on. But this time feels different. Ben's covering territory that's completely new, stuff that even John—and he's been around longer than most—has never heard before.

"This whole lake village we're living in? It's what you'd call a perceptual bubble—one that we all share together. Now, I know it feels like you're standing on solid ground right now, breathing fresh air, maybe thinking about that delicious fried fish we're about to eat, looking out at the grass and trees and sky. But here's the thing—all of that is actually a perception created by your mind. That's what minds do, you see. They create a reality, and then you live inside that perceptual reality. The reason it all looks the same to each of us is because we've agreed that this is our reality. And for it to stay stable and not just fall apart or fade away, we all have to keep agreeing on it. We can't question it too much or the whole thing might unravel.

"That's why I say you know things but don't really know that you know them. Your mind—our collective mind—deliberately forgets about the technical details of how this world gets created. It's actually doing you a favor, because if you were constantly aware of all the little mechanics behind everything, you'd never be able to just accept it and live in it. You'd be too busy analyzing every detail to actually experience anything. Now, someone like me who's been around the block a few times—I've learned how to tinker around the edges a bit. I can question things and push boundaries without breaking the whole system because I know exactly how far I can go. That's how I can imagine one fish becoming twelve fish, and suddenly there are twelve fish on your plate. I'm not saying none of this is real—quite the opposite. I'm saying this reality is created through our collective consciousness, and we all live in this shared perceptual bubble because we agree it's real. And that agreement? That's what makes it real.

"Time and space work completely differently here than what you might expect. That's why John over there can spend over three thousand years doing essentially the same thing—fishing every single day—yet it only feels like maybe five years have passed, and look at him, his body has barely aged at all. In fact, his body hasn't aged one bit since he arrived 3,350 years ago, and he's never once gotten bored with fishing. But here's the thing—and this is important—I don't have all the answers. Something went seriously wrong a long time ago, maybe 3,000 years back. When I try to expand my consciousness and tap into the deeper truths, all I get are these faint, blurry images that don't make any sense. Normally when I reach out like that, I get clear, detailed information. But with this? It's like the universe itself doesn't know what happened—or maybe it knows but for some reason won't or can't share that information with me."

"Here's why I need your help: you were actually there when whatever this was happened. So I need you to dig deep and remember what you've forgotten, help me piece together this puzzle so maybe—just maybe—we can figure out how to fix whatever went wrong.

Are you following me so far? I don't want to rush through this and overwhelm you. It's really important that you understand what I'm telling you."

"I'm okay," Sally says, settling back in her chair. "I'm just letting you talk and letting it all soak in naturally. It's definitely more of an answer than I was expecting when I asked my question, but I'll keep listening. If you start going too fast, I'll let you know."

"How about you, son? You hanging in there okay with all this?" Ben asks, turning to Pat.

Pat glances at Sally, then back at Ben. "Hey, I'm with her. As long as she's willing to listen to this stuff, I'll stick around and listen too. I do have a question though. If all of this is consciousness like you're saying, then why aren't we conscious of it? I mean, why are we hearing this stuff for the first time if we're supposedly already conscious of it?"

Ben breaks into a grin. "Good! Now we're getting to the really important part. You know, words often fall short when you're trying to describe things that are hard to visualize or wrap your head around.

Consciousness simply is—and actually, it's everything that exists. But our personal experience of it is just a tiny fragment, like a single thread in this vast, infinite fabric of time and space. Think of it like the wake that a boat leaves as it moves across an endless ocean. That tiny thread, that wake—that's what we call our awareness. It's the portion of consciousness that we actively experience, the part we can see and feel and touch and relate to on a daily basis."

Pat frowns. "But consciousness and awareness are basically the same thing—they're synonyms. You're talking about them like they're completely different."

"Exactly what I mean about words failing us," Ben says with a patient smile. "Rather than inventing a bunch of new terms that nobody would understand, I prefer to take some familiar words and refine their meanings so we can actually use them to discuss these complex ideas without getting lost in jargon.

Here's the key difference: your consciousness doesn't start and end with just you. It's part of something much larger, which is itself part of something even greater, and so on, like nesting dolls that go on infinitely. There's no clear boundary where your consciousness stops and other people's consciousness begins, or where individual consciousness ends and the consciousness of all existence starts. This interconnectedness—this seamless web—is what we call the collective consciousness.

Your awareness, on the other hand, is quite different. It does have clear boundaries—it begins and ends within you, creating a distinct separation between your experience and everyone else's. Unlike consciousness, which just is, awareness is constantly shifting and changing. You might be aware of something right now, completely forget about it in an hour, then remember it again tomorrow. But here's the thing—that thought you forgot never actually left your consciousness. It was just temporarily outside your awareness.

"Think of consciousness like light—it exists across a continuous spectrum of frequencies, most of which are either too slow or too fast for us to perceive directly. They're essentially invisible to our normal perception.

Our awareness is like the visible spectrum of light—just that small portion in the middle of the vast range that we can actually see and work with. A huge part of our consciousness exists below our awareness threshold—we call this the subconscious. It's like all the machinery running in the basement of a building, quietly keeping everything operational while you go about your business upstairs.

Then there's another large part of our consciousness that exists above our awareness—that's the superconscious. In reality, we only directly experience a narrow slice of our total consciousness spectrum, just a small window in the middle of something far, far greater.

"Here's something that might surprise you: you're not just a single consciousness, and you're definitely not limited to just one awareness. There's what I call the primary awareness—the one you recognize as your 'I Am.' This is the part of you that you think of as 'I' or 'me.' But beyond that primary identity, there are many other conscious entities within you. Some of them may have their own awareness, yet they're not part of that central 'I Am' that you identify with.

Many of these entities get lumped into what people call the unconscious mind, but they're actually very much conscious—and quite possibly aware in their own right. They just don't belong to your personal sense of 'I.' Have you ever found yourself having an argument with yourself? Well, who exactly did you think you were arguing with?

"Now, when I talk about your awareness, I'm referring to what you can see, feel, touch, and directly experience. These are my working definitions, and I'm sure other people might disagree with them. I've had conversations with philosophers who throw around complex terms like ontology and epistemology, but honestly, those fancy words don't help much when you're dealing with practical, day-to-day matters. When you're managing a place like this, you need concepts that actually help you get things done, not debates over terminology. These definitions work for me and help me understand what's going on, so I stick with them."

"Now, this place we're in—like every place that exists—is structured by what we call dimensions. But here's the thing: dimensions aren't actually real, concrete things you can touch. They're mathematical constructs, tools we use to describe and understand how reality is organized. In truth, all of reality is one indivisible whole. But for the sake of language and working within the limits of our understanding, let's pretend that dimensions exist as separate things.

I don't expect you to remember every detail of what I'm about to tell you right away. We'll run through it fairly quickly and let it sink in over time. If you ever need to revisit any of these concepts, we can always go over them again. For now, take a look at this old sketch I made years ago. It's just one way of looking at the structure of reality—there are many different perspectives and models—but this particular one makes the most sense to me."

"So are you talking about the parallel universes theory?" Pat asks, leaning forward with interest.

"Not exactly," Ben replies, shaking his head. "This isn't the parallel universes theory you might have learned about in school or seen in movies. These domains—or universes, if you prefer that term—aren't separate realities running alongside each other with some kind of barrier between them. Instead, they interpenetrate one another completely. They exist in exactly the same space, at exactly the same time, but at different phase angles. What separates them isn't physical distance or walls—it's a phase shift, like radio stations on different frequencies."

"The word 'dimension' is honestly pretty confusing—it's kind of like the word 'love.' We use both of them to describe things that are way beyond our normal understanding, and we also use those same words to mean several different things depending on the context. For the sake of this discussion, when I say 'dimensions,' I'm actually talking about four distinct things that all interact with each other to create what we call multi-verse reality. There are the dimensions of space, the dimensions of time, the dimension of Mind, and what we call the Theta-Delta dimensions—also known as dimensional frameworks."

"The dimension of Mind is by far the most important because that's where all experience actually manifests and happens. That dimension is always where YOU truly exist, regardless of what else is going on. Some people who make these kinds of charts label the Mind dimension as the 'zero-th dimension,' and then call the ones to the left negative dimensions and the ones to the right positive dimensions. Honestly, it doesn't really matter how we number them—they all function the same way regardless of what we call them."

"Experience needs some kind of frame of reference to work with—otherwise there's nothing to experience except pure existence itself, and that's really no experience at all. So these other dimensions to the left and right of Mind provide the framework within which experience can actually occur. Levels zero, one, and two are completely abstract—nothing can really exist there in any meaningful way. They're useful for mathematics and calculations, but that's about it. The first dimensional framework where real, tangible things can actually exist is the third level. It also happens to be the most popular level—it's where we all originally came from, at least our physical forms did. Everything evolved in that third level."

"Now, dimensions can be folded up tight where we can't see what's inside them and can't really use them for much of anything, or they can be unfolded and spread out where we can move around freely and use them for creating our physical worlds. In this particular perceptual space we're in right now, there are six unfolded dimensions. Three of them define where things are positioned in relation to each other—we call those the spatial dimensions.

"Then there's something called hyper-time, which is a second temporal dimension that lets us move around within regular spacial time. It's responsible for the flexible connection we have to the fourth dimension. It's a special kind of partially unfolded temporal dimension that allows the fourth dimension of time to stretch and contract somewhat. All of these dimensions intersect with and interpenetrate the dimension of mind, which is where we put everything together and make it real. The sixth dimension—the mind dimension—is where our perceptual bubble of reality actually manifests. We each have our own little personal perceptual bubble where our individual self lives, but we're all part of a larger shared perception, like this place we're in right now. And this place is part of an even bigger place, and so on, like Russian nesting dolls.

"We use hyper-time very carefully and sparingly here because we only need just a little bit of it. We want to be able to stretch or compress the fourth dimension slightly to suit our purposes, but that's it. If we use too much hyper-time and create a twist or a fold or a loop in the fourth dimension, we might seriously disrupt the sense of cause and effect. When that happens, nothing makes sense anymore and our reality becomes completely chaotic and unpredictable. So now that I've introduced you to the concept of hyper-time, please don't experiment with it too much on your own. You could get lost in what I call 'crazy land' and have an extremely difficult time finding your way back out. Trust me, that can be a very uncomfortable and disorienting experience."

"This perceptual bubble we're living in is just one of trillions upon trillions of other perceptual bubbles that surround and interpenetrate a certain four-dimensional reality. That four-dimensional reality is much more restrictive than what we have here. It has the same three dimensions of space that we do, but only one dimension of time. So in four-dimensional reality, there's a single, unchangeable vector of time that you can't stretch or compress the way we can here. Living on that timeline is like being a surfer riding the crest of a wave—you move with the wave, but you can't change its speed or direction."

"Although each individual consciousness in that four-dimensional reality exists in its own little personal perception bubble, they're all actually sub-domains of one massive perceptual bubble that contains all entities. Everyone agrees on this shared reality without ever thinking about it consciously. In fact, they can't even think about it if they wanted to, because the mechanism is completely invisible to them. It's a much more restrictive existence compared to what we have here."

"If you wanted to teleport in that four-dimensional world—which is technically possible—you'd face some pretty insurmountable challenges. You'd either have to get trillions upon trillions of other consciousnesses within the Mind dimension to agree that you can do it, which simply isn't going to happen, or you'd have to elevate your own consciousness to a level high enough to override the collective will of trillions upon trillions of other beings. And that's pretty much not going to happen either. This four-dimensional world, restrictive as it is, is actually the home that you remember. It's where your personal stories took place, and it's the place you're longing to return to."

"This reality you're experiencing right now is tightly connected to that four-dimensional place, and specifically to a location within that space—a large rock known as a planet where you used to live. It looks exactly like this place we're in now, and that's because we've deliberately modeled this environment after that other place you came from. This reality we're in could take the form of anything your mind can imagine, but you've imagined the only thing you really know well, which is your original home—that four-dimensional planet. That planet is called Earth."

"Normally, after resting here for a while, people return for another journey to planet Earth and live another life there as an entity with a four-dimensional body. Part of my job here, in addition to managing this little perceptual bubble we're all sharing, is to help prepare people for their return trip when they're ready. But now something has gone really, really wrong. Planet Earth is missing—or at least, I can't locate it anywhere."

Sally stares down at the floorboards for a long time, processing everything she's just heard. When she finally looks up at Ben, her face is pale. "Okay, I am totally freaking the fuck out right now, Ben, and I feel sick to my stomach. What the hell is going on? My head is spinning, I'm nauseous, I think I might actually throw up, and honestly part of me is wondering if you're completely full of shit. But at the same time, what you're saying does explain a few things that never made sense before."

"Very good, Sally," Ben says with an understanding smile. "This is completely normal. The physical discomfort you're feeling right now is actually a memory from when you were connected to a physical body in Earth reality. Disorientation in a physical body causes dizziness and nausea, and often makes you feel like you need to vomit. Think about it this way—let's say when you were ten years old, your parents suddenly told you without any warning that you were moving to a completely different country. The shock, the disorientation caused by suddenly learning that the world you knew was about to become totally different—that might make you sad or even physically sick. Since you still have the form of a body here, that's the kind of reaction you're having now. I'm going as slowly as I can to help you get accustomed to this new understanding, but there will probably be some continuing discomfort for a while. Eventually though, you'll get past it. You'll learn to think beyond it because it won't need to be part of your perception anymore. Remember, your perception is your reality, and you can learn to control it."

Pat, who's looking just as queasy as Sally, manages to work up the courage to ask the question that's weighing on all their minds. "Okay, let's say for a minute that you actually know what you're talking about. So where the hell are we exactly? Is this some sort of shared consciousness thing, or shared unconscious? How did we get here in the first place? What are we, really? Are we lost? Are we supposed to be somewhere else? What the hell is actually going on? Are we... are we dead?"

Ben considers the question thoughtfully for a moment, then responds, "Well, I don't think this is hell, unless you specifically want it to be. And I'm sitting here looking at you right now, so you're certainly not dead. I can tell you this much though—what you think you are, you're not.

"When I first arrived here, I was just as confused as you are now. We weren't at this lake, actually—it didn't even exist yet. Penny and I—Penny's my wife, by the way—found ourselves waking up in a beautiful southern-style bedroom in a hotel along a busy street in a bustling, lively town. We went downstairs to the front desk and started asking questions, and they directed us to talk to a man named Michael, who we found in the saloon. He helped us remember bits and pieces of where we came from and explained what our new responsibilities were going to be here. It turned out that we had been living in Earth bodies on a plantation in a lovely part of planet Earth. There was a terrible war going on, and the military had taken over our bottom floor for troops, so we'd moved upstairs. The soldiers thought it would be a good idea to store explosives in our basement. That turned out to be a very, very bad idea. Our last memories were of gunfire and enemy troops storming through the house. We don't remember getting shot or hearing any explosions or anything like that, but our next clear memory was waking up in that hotel bed in that strange town."

Pat's face brightens a bit. "Well, that's simple then. We've somehow been transported through a trans-dimensional conduit and we're in a different dimension than Earth is in. We just need to find a conduit that can get us back."

Ben chuckles. "Remember what I said about the word 'dimension' being overused and confusing? You're making a good point, but we're actually in the same dimensional framework as Earth—just at a different level of dimensionality. That's quite different from being in a completely 'different dimension.'"

"What you're thinking of involves different dimensional frameworks, or Theta-Delta dimensions. Let me show you what I mean. Imagine I take this sketch of mine and put a pin through the mind dimension level and stick it to the wall. First, I should clarify that it's actually an error to call it 'the mind dimension' because it's really a level within a specific dimensional framework—the one we call Theta Delta Zero, Zero. Now, let's say we rotate this entire sketch six degrees counter-clockwise. Now we're talking about a completely new dimensional framework that has all the same levels as this one, but it's entirely separate. When we rotate it like this, we say we're rotating it through the Theta axis, and it becomes dimension Theta Delta minus Six, Zero. This new dimensional framework isn't a copy of ours at all—it's a completely independent reality that doesn't interact with ours in any way, unless you use one of those trans-dimensional conduits you mentioned. And there are quite a few of them—at least a thousand different frameworks, maybe more, as you rotate the sketch around through the Theta axis."

"Now let's say I hold the top and bottom of the sketch and, leaving it at that minus Six Theta rotation, rotate it around the other axis—say, plus eleven degrees. This is the Delta axis rotation. So that particular dimension would be called Theta Delta minus Six, Eleven. There are at least a thousand frameworks available by rotating through the Delta axis as well. If we rotate all the way through both Theta and Delta, that gives us over a million potential dimensional frameworks—completely separate realities that we can theoretically access right now. Actually, there are way more than that, but this is enough to wrap our heads around for the moment."

"How did we end up being Zero Zero? Are we the original?" Pat wants to know.

"We got labeled Zero Zero simply because we created this whole dimensional classification system here, and we based everything relative to this particular framework. Other frameworks undoubtedly have completely different ways of explaining all this stuff—their own terminologies and reference points. Here are the important things to remember about these dimensional frameworks: First, there are more of them than we could ever want to visit, even if we had infinite time. Second, and this is crucial—they all intersect at exactly one level, and that level is Mind."

"Okay, the fish are done!" John announces, interrupting the heavy conversation. "Let's put a pause on all this mind-bending talk, forget about feeling sick for a while, and enjoy some good food. Looks like we've got plenty of time to work through all of this, and there doesn't seem to be much else around here except time." John sets plates on the table along with a platter holding a dozen fresh-cooked fish, all breaded up nice and fancy the way he always prepares them for guests.

"John?" Sally asks as they start to eat. "Do you remember how you got here?"

"You know, I was just thinking about that very thing," John replies, settling into his chair. "I remember my last day at the lake in that other place perfectly. I was retired from firefighting, but I still kept my room at the firehouse out of habit. I was headed up the road to the lake with my fishing pole, looking forward to a peaceful day, when I started having that same nauseous feeling and getting really weak in the knees. I sat down on a rock for a minute to catch my breath, and pretty soon the feeling passed. I got up and started walking toward the lake again, except when I looked around, I wasn't there anymore. I was here instead. Ben met me on the road—almost like he was expecting me—and showed me a nice little place I could have if I wanted it. Then he took me down to the lake and helped me find a good spot where there were plenty of fish to catch. Other than meeting new arrivals every now and then, that's pretty much all I've done since—fish, fry them up, and tell stories about the old days. It's been a good life, peaceful and simple, but now I'm starting to wonder what it's all really about. Is this it? Am I going to fish and fry and tell stories about a world that's long gone forever? I know Ben told me when I first got here to just relax and take it easy because I was going to be here for a very long time. He said my only real job here was to help him get people ready for their next journey when they decided they were ready to move on from this place. But until right now, it honestly never even entered my head to think about moving on myself. What is the next step, anyway? Ben, you seem to be the expert around here. Where do we go from here?"

Ben takes his time thinking it over, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of fish. Finally he says, "For you, John, I know that someday you'll be ready to move up to a new level—that's just the natural progression. As far as these young folks are concerned, and the whole question of visiting Earth again, I honestly wish I knew the answer. Michael showed me how to leave that town—which was a huge perceptual bubble with almost a million members—and create this smaller one from my memories. He taught me how to make it big enough and stable enough for Penny and me to live in comfortably. Each new member we've gotten over the years has added to its stability and contributed new details to its reality. From time to time, one of our members would get restless and ready to move on, and we'd sit down together to figure out what to do and where they should go next. Michael would stop by to finalize the plans and get them started on their new path. But I haven't seen Michael in a very, very long time—longer than I care to think about. I guess the next logical step is to find Michael and see what he knows."

"How do we do that?" Sally asks.

"We don't—you do," Ben says, pointing at the three of them. "I've got to stay here and keep this place running properly. Since I created it, I have to remain here or it will start to lose cohesion and change very rapidly into something it was never meant to be. So you three are going to have to go find Michael yourselves. He doesn't respond to a summons—believe me, I've tried to call him many times over the years. He's different that way. He just shows up when it fits his schedule and serves his purposes. So you'll have to go track him down. My bet is that he's back in that original town where Penny and I first met him. I think he created that place, so I'm pretty confident you can find him there. I'll show you how to get there safely. All three of you should go—you two young ones, and John to keep an eye on you and make sure you don't get into any trouble. John's an old soul with a lot of perspective and experience, and he can keep you two from doing anything too foolish. Penny and I will keep watch over you from here—Michael showed us how to do that kind of remote monitoring. If you get into serious trouble, we'll summon you back immediately. So hold on to your hats, kids. Something tells me this is going to be one hell of a wild ride."

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 6
Finding Michael

Mission: Day 1 Morning

Pat's eyes flutter open as the morning sun streams directly into his face - way brighter than he's used to. Sally's still curled up beside him, all warm and cozy, while across the room John's already up and about, fiddling with an old coffee pot over his makeshift bedroll. The guy's determined to get a fire going for his morning brew. But man, the noise outside this window is something else - nothing like the peaceful quiet they're used to back at the lake.

"Holy crap!" Pat mutters, still trying to wrap his head around it all. "It's just like old Ben said it would be. We went to sleep at the lake thinking about waking up here, and boom - here we are."

John glances up from his coffee preparations with a knowing look. "Yeah, well, I've got a feeling old Ben had more than a little something to do with getting us here. Pretty sure we didn't just magically transport ourselves." He gestures toward the window with obvious anticipation. "But hey, we made it, so once sleeping beauty over there decides to join the land of the living, we can head downstairs and really scope this place out. Might even stumble across a poker game if we're lucky - haven't had a good game in ages. This town's got that familiar feel to it, reminds me of where I grew up, so I'm betting we'll figure out how things work around here pretty quick."

"I'm awake," Sally mumbles into the pillow, "I'm just all toasty and comfortable and I really don't want to face reality by opening my eyes yet."

"Come on, Sally, rise and shine," Pat says with playful authority. "We've got this whole new world just waiting for us to explore it. Look, there's this pink suitcase over in the corner - I'm guessing that's got to be your stuff. I found a bag with all my things, and John's got his bedroll and gear over there by the wall."

"Well, it's not technically mine," Sally says, finally rolling out of bed in what looks like a charming vintage nightgown. She pads over to check the luggage tag. "See? It says 'Penny' right here. That sweet old dear must have packed everything up for me - she's always thinking of others like that. But yeah, all my clothes are inside." She stretches and looks pointedly at the two men. "You guys go ahead downstairs and I'll get myself put together up here, then meet you down there in a few minutes, alright?" The boys definitely got the message about needing some privacy and headed for the hallway stairs.

"So where are you fellas from?" the desk clerk asks with genuine curiosity. "This hotel mainly caters to locals - we hardly ever see out-of-towners. What brings you all the way to Powder Junction?"

"Ah, so that's what this place is called," John says with a chuckle. "Makes perfect sense though, doesn't it? Ben and Penny sitting on a house packed with gunpowder, and we get blown clear to Powder Junction." Pat can't help but laugh at the irony, while the desk clerk just stares at them like they might be a little touched in the head.

Pat jumps in to clarify before they sound completely crazy. "What my friend means is, this old-timer named Ben - he lives out by the lake where our friend Sally's from - he's the one who suggested we come here. We're actually looking for someone specific, a guy named Michael."

"Newcomers?" The desk clerk's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "Well I'll be damned - we haven't had newcomers roll through here in what feels like forever. If you're really newcomers, then Michael should be waiting for you in the bar area. Though I gotta say, I haven't laid eyes on Michael himself for quite a while now. But you're absolutely welcome to go check it out." He describes Michael as an older gentleman with distinctive white hair, black boots, and what he calls "a ridiculous-looking bolo tie - you definitely can't miss him if he's around." The clerk points them toward the bar, and John and Pat head off to track down this mysterious Michael.

"Michael who, exactly?" the bartender asks, looking genuinely puzzled.

"Well," John explains patiently, "we came here specifically looking for this fellow named Michael. The desk clerk told us he's usually easy to spot - wears black boots, has white hair, and apparently sports some kind of bolo tie. Said he typically shows up when newcomers arrive in town."

"Newcomers?" The bartender's expression shifts to one of shock. "Well, I know exactly which Michael you're talking about, but he's not going to be here meeting any newcomers. See, ever since we had that big influx a while back, we just don't accept newcomers anymore. So if that's what you are, somebody definitely sent you to the wrong place."

John realizes he needs to do some careful explaining here. "Actually, we're not really newcomers in the traditional sense. We live out by Penny Lake, and our old friend Ben - he's the one who helped us get here so we could track down Michael. We've got quite a few questions we're hoping he might be able to answer for us."

"Well, have a seat right here while I send off a telegram," the bartender says, warming up to them a bit. "Maybe I can get his attention, but I can't make any promises." He sets down a whiskey bottle and a couple of clean glasses. "This one's on the house while you wait. I'll be back in a little bit."

Pat's practically gasping for air when Sally arrives, looking absolutely lovely in a cheerful yellow and white dress. "What in the world is wrong with you, Pat? Are you feeling sick?"

"No, no," Pat wheezes, "it's just that the bartender gave us some absolutely vile liquid that he claimed was whiskey. I've never had whiskey before in my life, and I'm pretty darn sure I'll never touch the stuff again." He pushes the offensive glass away. "Let's head over to that café and see if we can get ourselves some proper breakfast."

"Sounds like a perfect plan to me," Sally says brightly. "I'm ready for some adventure!"

"Fish? For breakfast? You've got to be pulling my leg, old man. We've got bacon, steak, eggs, grits, fried potatoes - you know, actual breakfast food. It's morning time and we serve morning food." The café owner eyes them suspiciously. "You folks definitely aren't from around these parts, are you? And by the way, I hope you've got some money on you - this isn't a charity kitchen."

"Well, no ma'am," Sally admits, starting to feel a knot of worry in her stomach about how they're going to manage to eat in this strange new place. "I don't think any of us thought to bring money with us."

"Don't you dare try to play games with me, little girl - I know every trick in the book that you kids try to pull." The café owner's voice gets stern, but not unkind. "I can see plain as day there's a fat roll of bills sticking out of your skinny boyfriend's shirt pocket, and it looks like you've got a nice wad of cash stuffed in that pretty yellow purse of yours." She turns to Pat with motherly concern. "Son, you'd better get yourself a proper wallet. Somebody's going to snatch those bills right out of your shirt when you're not paying attention. Now quit fooling around and order some breakfast - I don't have all morning to stand here chatting with you people." Sure enough, when they check, Pat discovers a substantial roll of money in his pocket, and Sally finds her purse loaded with cash. Sally immediately thinks of Penny's kindness, always making sure they have everything they need.

The food turns out to be delicious and incredibly filling - much heartier than their usual diet of fried fish back at the lake. It sits heavy in their stomachs like a satisfying stone. "Pat, John," Sally says thoughtfully, "I'm starting to have some doubts about this place. Something really strange happened after you guys left the room this morning - something I honestly haven't even thought about for as long as I can remember."

"What's that, sweetie?" John asks with genuine concern.

"Well, this might sound a little inappropriate to bring up at the breakfast table," Sally says, looking somewhat embarrassed, "but when I was getting dressed this morning, I actually had to... well, I had to use the bathroom. Back at the lake, for the entire time I've been living there, I don't ever remember needing to go. I don't even remember the thought crossing my mind. I mean, I remember eating plenty of meals, but never having to... you know. But here, I actually do. Doesn't that strike you as really weird?"

"You know what, I've been noticing the same kind of thing," John admits, looking puzzled. "My head was buzzing from that coffee I made this morning, and then it was absolutely spinning after I knocked back a couple shots of whiskey on an empty stomach. I honestly can't remember the last time I caught a buzz off anything like that. And now I really need to find a bathroom myself." He looks around thoughtfully. "So there's definitely something fundamentally different about this place. It's nothing like life at the lake."

"No, it sure isn't anything like Penny Lake, is it?" comes a new voice. They look up to see an older man with distinctive white hair and black boots approaching their table. "Welcome, friends of Ben. My name is Michael, and I understand you have some questions that need answering." He smiles kindly and points down the hallway. "But first things first - the answers to your most immediate needs are down the hall to the left for you gentlemen, and down the hall to the right for the lovely lady. Go take care of those bodily functions, and I'll be right here when you get back."

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 7
Awakening

Mission: Day 1, late morning.

Michael's practically bursting with pride as he gets ready to give his new friends the grand tour of his creation.

"Come on, let's take a stroll and I'll show you around my little slice of paradise here." The four of them step outside onto the creaky wooden sidewalk, following Michael as he ambles down what passes for main street. "I called this place Powder Junction - got the name from some old Western I read as a kid. Pretty neat, huh? Not too shabby for a one-man operation."

"Oh yes, it's absolutely charming," Sally says with that knowing smirk of hers. "But I've got you all figured out, Michael. This is Earth, isn't it? We're in the past - the old Wild West days. That's why Ben sent us here, and that's why John got plastered and had to pee like a racehorse, and why I had to take that urgent bathroom break earlier. We're back in actual bodies that do all the messy, inconvenient things bodies do. Which means..." she gives Pat a mischievous look, "Pat and I could even get it on if we wanted to, right?"

"Uh, well, I mean... could we?" Pat practically chokes on his own tongue, his face turning three shades of red. See, some people get all tongue-tied when it comes to talking about the birds and the bees. Sally definitely isn't one of those people.

"Okay, slow down there, Sally. The answers are no, no, no, absolutely not, and... well, yes to that last part." Michael chuckles and shakes his head. "This isn't Earth - not even close. But you're right that it feels a lot more solid and real than Penny Lake, and that's because we've got way more minds contributing to this reality. See, here's the thing - reality isn't some fixed thing that exists 'out there.' It's created by consciousness, by minds working together. I built this place - what Ben calls a 'perceptual bubble' - and I made it look like the town I grew up in back on Earth because, well, that's what felt like home to me. But it's all happening in our collective consciousness. You're experiencing my mental creation, but you're not just figments of my imagination - you're real, contributing your own awareness to make this shared experience possible. That's actually how ALL realities work, even the Earth you remember. The only difference is how many minds are involved in creating and maintaining them."

"Back at Penny Lake, you've got less than a hundred souls, so reality there is pretty light and flexible - more ethereal, more peaceful too, I'd say. Remember how sometimes you'd want to visit John's cottage and you'd just sort of... appear there? Other times you'd enjoy the whole walk up that country lane, taking your time, smelling the flowers. And then there were days when you were in a hurry and you don't really remember making the trip at all - that's because once your intention locked onto 'being at John's place,' there you were. But here? We've got nearly a million and a half minds all contributing to this reality, which makes everything much denser, much more... let's say 'sticky.'"

"Ben filled me in on your conversation back at the Lake. The dimensions here are wound tighter, more constrained. That kind of consciousness teleportation you're used to? Much harder to pull off here. So instead of just thinking yourself somewhere, you've got to actually hitch up a wagon or saddle a horse. And after you pack away a big meal, well, your body's going to remind you that what goes in must come out. Same goes for all the livestock around here, so watch your step." He grins. "Pat, back in your lighter domain, when Sally wanted to see you, you'd instantly sense it, and when you decided to visit - boom - there you were. Not so simple here. All these minds create a kind of mental inertia that makes the ethereal stuff much more challenging. Getting a million-plus consciousnesses to agree on anything takes serious mental horsepower, so things that were easy in lighter realms become nearly impossible here. Think of it this way - in a small town, you might get away with bending the rules when nobody's looking, but in a big city, there's always someone watching."

"So all our bodily functions actually work here?" Pat asks, still trying to wrap his head around it all.

"Yep, pretty much all of them, including the one you and Sally have been thinking about. But here's the catch - in denser realities, consequences are a lot harder to dodge. Just like you can't avoid going to the bathroom, you can't avoid dealing with the messier aspects of existence here. There's more... let's call it 'drama' here than you'd find at peaceful old Penny Lake."

"Wait, are you saying I could actually get pregnant here?" Sally asks, cutting straight to the point as usual.

"Well, actually, no - not in the way you're thinking. This domain isn't set up for creating genuinely new souls with bodies and all that complex business. You could experience a pregnancy if you really wanted to, but the baby wouldn't be... viable, let's say. For the real deal - actual soul creation and incarnation - you need to be in an even denser reality, like Earth itself. Remember, the body you think you have is really just a memory image you brought with you from your Earth experience. It was designed to function on Earth, not here. This place is a pretty good approximation of Earth in most ways, just not when it comes to the baby-making department."

"The real consequences for romantic couples here are mainly emotional - attachments that can turn pretty dysfunctional pretty fast. You've probably already picked up on the fact that this isn't exactly a paradise of sweetness and light - there's plenty of bad attitudes and cranky dispositions to go around. This place was never meant to be perfect. It's supposed to be a way station, a place to rest, recharge, and build up your spiritual energy for another trip back to what we call Level 3 - that's the four-dimensional universe where Earth exists."

"Well Michael, I think you just hit the nail on the head - that's exactly why we're here. The going back to Earth part." John's voice carries a mix of hope and determination. "The three of us have been itching to get back there and see what's happening, but Ben said he couldn't help us out. So what's it going to take? Can we just take another magical nap like Ben arranged and wake up back on the old blue marble?"

"I wish it were that simple, John, but it's a lot more complicated than that. Let me try to explain how things used to work, and then what happened when Sally and Pat showed up and threw everything into chaos. The old rules went right out the window, and honestly, we're still trying to figure out what the new ones should be. So here's what I know about the old system: when someone's time here was up, we'd prepare them for the journey back - either as a spirit visitor or for a full incarnation in a physical body. Earth is basically the baby-making factory for this corner of the universe, so when a suitable body became available for one of our souls, we'd make all the necessary preparations. Your consciousness would be prepped, you'd go to sleep just like when Ben brought you here, and when you woke up, you'd be in a human body again."

"Now here's the tricky part - there's never a perfect fit between a mature soul like yourselves and a developing human infant. You'll keep your mature consciousness for maybe a year or two, but gradually, who and what you are now will fade into the background. The body will continue developing its own personality with your consciousness as a kind of template, but without any memory of who you really are or what you've experienced here. When that earthly life runs its course, you find yourself back here - or at the Lake, or wherever you're meant to go - as a 'newcomer' with only memories of that most recent Earth life and no recollection of your previous existences here or in other Earth incarnations."

"Lots of newcomers don't even realize they've made the transition and think they're still alive back there. Others know their earthly life has ended, but they adapt to their new existence here and start treating their Earth life like something that happened to someone else - kind of like when you move out of your parents' house for college and reinvent yourself. John, you just kept on doing what you'd always done, pretty much the same way you lived in that logging community in Oregon back in the 1890s. You were a retired firefighter who spent his days fishing, and that's exactly what you're still doing. Sally and Pat, you two were just getting started when your lives got cut short. You were kids then, and you've been kids here for thousands of years. But that's about to change - and fast. You're going through what we call an awakening. You're going to start remembering not just who you are here and now, but who you were before, and before that, and before that. Normally we don't load anyone up with this much information before sending them back, but these are extraordinary circumstances. So... are you ready for this?"

"Hold on a minute," Pat interjects. "Who exactly made up all these rules in the first place, and why did they suddenly change everything?"

"We did," Michael replies matter-of-factly. "I did, you did, all of us did. This whole recycling system is just how life evolved in this particular corner of reality. It's not the same everywhere - reality isn't a one-size-fits-all operation. There's no cosmic director sitting in some office somewhere, making executive decisions about how we have to do things. We work this stuff out collectively, through parts of our consciousness that operate below our everyday awareness - the kind of stuff we don't remember or even think about consciously. But why everything suddenly went haywire when you two showed up? That's the million-dollar question, and it's a mystery we're going to need your help solving."

"I can't even remember half of what you just told us," Sally complains, looking overwhelmed.

"And I'm not sure I buy any of it," Pat adds with skepticism.

"Perfect! If you two just sat there nodding and swallowing every word I said, you'd be absolutely useless for what you're going to have to do. You're going to need to think critically, distinguish between what's helpful and what's harmful, figure out what's true and what's nonsense, and most importantly, you'll need to reach into the sea of infinite possibility and choose what should become real and what should remain just potential."

"So, Mr. Michael-whoever-you-are-who-seems-to-know-everything," Sally begins, then pauses dramatically. "Are you the Archangel Michael?"

"Nope on both counts. There's a whole lot I don't know, starting with exactly how you're going to pull off this mission you're about to embark on. You're going to have to improvise most of your own solutions, and honestly, I have no idea what those might look like. As for the Archangel thing - I've never met one, don't even know if they actually exist. What you're probably thinking of would be a Level 10 entity, and there wouldn't be much point in beings like that hanging around a Level 5 domain like this one."

"Level 5?" John asks, looking puzzled. "What happened to Level 4? I thought you said Earth was Level 3."

"It's just the terminology we use to describe different dimensional structures. The level number is the number of unfolded dimensions minus one. So we've got six dimensions operating here, making this a Level 5 domain. Earth has four dimensions, so it's Level 3. A single point has one dimension, so that's Level 0, and so on. Level 4 domains have five unfolded dimensions and come in two main varieties. One type has four unfolded spatial dimensions, which allows for dramatically enhanced shape-shifting and morphological possibilities that would blow your mind. The other type has two unfolded temporal dimensions, which means existing on a plane of time rather than a single timeline like you're used to on Earth. Those Level 4 domains would be completely disorienting for entities like yourselves who are still attached to your Earth-human identity. You wouldn't have a clue where you were, when you were, or what you were looking at. Level 5 domains like this one are perfect for folks in your situation, which is exactly why you ended up here. You could visit a Level 4 domain if you really wanted to, but you'd find it so confusing it wouldn't be worth the trip. All this dimensional stuff can make your head spin, but it's really just applied mathematics and geometry."

Pat looked thoughtful. "If this Level 5 domain is where we go when we die on Earth, does that make this Heaven?"

Michael laughs heartily. "Yes and no - it depends entirely on what you're looking for and what you believe you deserve. It can absolutely be Heaven if that's what you're seeking and expecting. Or it can be Hell if that's where you think you belong based on your Earth life. It can be anything in between, or even some pretty wild alternatives you couldn't imagine. But if you're asking whether this is where God hangs out - the place of eternal bliss in perfect union with the Divine - then no, this definitely isn't that Heaven. This is a rest stop for souls getting ready for another round on Planet Earth, and it's both spatially and temporally connected to the specific region of four-dimensional space-time where Earth exists."

Sally suddenly interrupts with obvious irritation. "Okay, boys, this has been absolutely fascinating, and I promise I'll continue this philosophy seminar with you in a bit, but right now I need to get back to the room to deal with one of those wonderful bodily functions you mentioned."

"There are outhouses all over town, honey - you don't need to walk all the way back there."

"It's not that," Sally snaps, clearly getting more fed up with Powder Junction by the minute. "I'm sweating buckets in this ridiculous dress and I absolutely REEK, okay? I'm going to take a proper bath and change into something that doesn't make me feel like I'm suffocating. And frankly, you gentlemen could use the same treatment."

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 8
The Great Influx

Mission: Day 1, lunch time

Sally makes her entrance down the stairs like she's some kind of royalty gracing her adoring subjects with her presence. And honestly? She's got the looks to pull it off - she's about as stunning as any young woman has a right to be. The three guys waiting for her are practically drooling, though they're trying their best to play it cool. But Sally? She's completely oblivious to all the hearts she's breaking and cuts straight to the chase. "Look, if this whole thing is really about getting ready to go back to Earth, then why the hell did Ben say he couldn't find it? I mean, come on - something the size of a planet doesn't just vanish into thin air, does it?" she asks, looking genuinely worried while absentmindedly munching on some dry toast as they wait for their actual meal. They've found themselves a cozy little cafe tucked away from the hustle and bustle of main street - somewhere they can actually have a real conversation without half the town eavesdropping. Back home in Penny Lake, Sally never really thought about food unless it was part of some social gathering or event. But here in Powder Junction? After spending an entire day having her mind completely blown by all this crazy information, she's absolutely ravenous. That dinner better show up soon, or she's seriously considering making a move on those crackers sitting on the neighboring tables.

"Well, sweetie, I'm gonna take the scenic route around that question before I circle back to give you a straight answer," Michael says with a knowing smile. "Like I mentioned earlier, there are basically two ways you can experience Earth. The first way is pretty intense - you get born into a human body and you literally become that person, eventually forgetting everything about who you were before. It's a complete transformation, and for someone like you right now, it's essentially a one-way ticket. When you eventually make it back here, you're not the same person anymore. You've become whoever you were during that earthly life. The second option is what we call an ethereal visit to Earth. And here's the thing - what you think of as your body right now? That's actually an ethereal body. I know it feels completely real to you, and it is! It interacts perfectly with this domain and is absolutely part of it. Here, it's just as solid and real as any physical body on Earth. But here's the catch - it doesn't interact with Earth's domain at all, except when you go through the whole birth process and become one of them.

What I've been told is that level 3 and level 5 exist out of phase with each other, which makes any kind of interaction basically impossible. So when you visit Earth in your ethereal form, unless the people there have become enlightened, they can't see you at all. Your ethereal body is completely invisible to them because it doesn't interact with their four-dimensional matter. Light passes right through you, matter passes right through you. But here's the kicker - it works both ways. Since their four-dimensional light passes right through your ethereal eyeballs without any interaction, you can't see their light either. Their physical bodies, their matter, their light - it's all just as invisible to you as you are to them.

But here's where it gets interesting. All living things, no matter what level of consciousness they're operating at, have ethereal bodies too - not just humans like you used to be. The ethereal component in all life creates just enough of a phase shift that you can actually see things that are alive. Etheric energy has this glow, this light that someone at level 5 like you can perceive. So when you're visiting Earth, what you're actually seeing is all that ethereal glow from the living beings - all the life energy, including the incredible radiant life force that emanates from Mother Earth herself."

"Food's here!" John practically shouts, clearly relieved at the interruption. "Let's digest what our friend Mike just laid on us while we eat, and then maybe he can serve up some more wisdom for dessert."

"Sounds perfect to me, John," Sally says, practically slurring her words as she salivates. "I'm literally starving to death over here!" The four of them attack the food like a pack of kids who just came in from a hard day of playing outside. All this heavy theorizing and mind-bending new information has left them absolutely famished.

"Ugh, I ate way too fast. I'm probably gonna throw up, but order me that pie I saw on the menu anyway. I'll eat it whether I puke or not, hee hee," Sally giggles, holding her stomach.

"You've been pretty quiet lately, Pat. How you holding up there, son?" John asks with genuine concern.

Sally jumps in before Pat can even open his mouth. "Pat hasn't done anything but stare at my boobs ever since he figured out we could actually have sex here. And I've caught you deliberately walking behind me so you can check out my ass. Just so we're crystal clear here, you better get yourself a bedroll like Johnny boy over there, because you're sleeping on the floor with him tonight." Pat and John just sit there staring at Sally with their jaws hanging open, while Michael nearly falls off his stool laughing.

"God, I love this little firecracker more every second," Michael says, wiping tears from his eyes. "You might not have been too fond of Powder Junction when you first arrived, but you're starting to fit right in. I'm beginning to think maybe this is where you belonged all along."

"Well, thanks for the compliment," Sally says, feeling genuinely proud of herself, "but no thanks. I still think your stinky little town is awful. I just wanted to make it crystal clear that I'm here on a mission, and I don't need any emotional complications getting in my way. There are plenty of other 'young fillies,' as you so charmingly put it, bouncing around this town and flirting with every cute guy they see. So if Pat's interested in that kind of thing, he can certainly hook up with one of them and keep his hands off me. Now, it's dessert time. So Michael, pick up where you left off. Why the hell can't we find Earth?"

"Still working my way around to that answer. Sally, Pat - do you remember what you were doing right before you ended up here? Really think hard about it." Sally scrunches up her forehead and purses her lips, concentrating as hard as she can, while Pat stares at the floor, still reeling from Sally's brutal honesty and feeling guilty because her accusations were absolutely spot-on.

After a long moment, Sally starts to speak slowly. "It's all fuzzy, those last few days. I know I had just finished getting registered for college. I was ahead of most of my classmates and graduated a few years early. I was in the graduating class of 2122. I had this part-time job and was hoping to save up enough to buy a used hover-car so I wouldn't have to keep bumming rides or dealing with public transportation. If I'm remembering correctly, I was on my way to work, and then suddenly I was at the apartment talking to Ben. I have no idea what happened in between those two moments. Wait! This is really strange. My dad was giving me a ride to work that day. We were incredibly close - he was like my best friend. But this is the first time I've even thought about him in over three thousand years. How is it possible to just completely forget someone who was so important to you your entire life? Someone you were so close to? Does that make any sense at all?"

"It actually makes perfect sense, sweetie," Michael says gently. "Families don't always end up in the same domain when they reach level 5. So during the transition - which people rarely remember anyway - we say our goodbyes and then we close what we call 'the veil' over those memories. It's like they never existed. But that's not actually a sad thing, even though it might sound like it. They're doing just fine in whatever perceptual frame your parents ended up in, and you've been fine in yours. It makes life much easier when you don't have those memories constantly gnawing at you. Sometimes couples do come together. Sometimes partial families make the journey and then other members join them later. But for the most part, level 5ers arrive as singles. That's why you see so many single people in Powder Junction. The singles tend to have a pretty good time here."

"So what's your story, Pat? You showed up the same time I did. How did you end up in level 5?" Sally asks, her curiosity getting the better of her.

"Are you sure you actually want to know, or are you still pissed off at me?" Pat shoots back with a hint of defensiveness.

Getting irritated again, Sally snaps back, "Oh, did somebody's feelings get hurt? Get over it, Pat. We've got serious work to do here. So what's your story?"

"Okay, okay. Look, I'm sorry. I'll let it go. Just... maybe ease up a bit and don't be so harsh?" Pat takes a deep breath and continues. "I actually remember my last day pretty clearly. I was at this peace rally we'd organized. There wasn't an actual war happening or anything, but there was tons of political fighting going on in the various councils. The Earth group felt like they were losing control over the other planetary councils and were trying to rein everyone back in. The other councils weren't having it, especially the Mars council. The terraforming project was going really well and Mars was approaching complete self-sufficiency, except for all the products they were being forced to send back to Earth, which was a huge drain on their economy. Earth maintained that their investment in the terraforming project needed to show a profit, while Mars felt that once they'd paid back the initial balance, Mars should be independent and not have to pay what amounted to interest to Earth for some indefinite, possibly unlimited period of time. The extra-planetary groups that had helped with the settlement of all the planets and moons had probably contributed even more to the terraforming projects than Earth did, and they'd done it as a gift. They weren't asking for repayment like Earth was. This had all the councils in an uproar and made Earth look like the villains. The whole situation was getting really ugly. So students like Sally and me would organize these peace rallies, hoping to show our elders that there was a path to peaceful resolution instead of letting everything escalate into future conflicts, possibly even war.

There was also this huge debate about INA chips - that stands for Intelligent Network Augmentation chips. A bunch of us kids had them, but a lot of the older generation didn't think they were a good idea. Those chips were the reason we could get through our PhD programs by age 14 or 15. The INA chips gave us direct connection to a planetary information network - it was like having all the knowledge in the entire solar system right there in your head for instant access. Not only that, but we could communicate with each other just by thinking at them. It was incredible. Sally and I would chat and send images to each other all day long, even if we were on opposite sides of the planet. I think I was at that rally and then suddenly, boom, I was with my family in level 5. The really weird thing is that we didn't even question it. We didn't ask 'what are we doing here?' or 'what's going on?' We just set up our new home in level 5 and went about our lives without even wondering that we used to be somewhere else. And I could still communicate with Sally through thought and send her images and receive them back. So it felt like nothing had really changed. It wasn't until recently that I realized I'm no longer connected through the INA chip. That's really strange. Why is that?"

Michael nods thoughtfully. "Like I explained to Sally, we rarely remember the journey from the physical body to level 5, and we never know what happened to the body after our etheric presence left it. So during your transition to level 5, you and your family made the conscious decision to come together, and you chose to close the veil on your past life and start fresh. That's often much easier than bringing a lot of emotional baggage with you into level 5. When a soul is preparing to return to Earth and enter a physical body, part of their preparation involves awakening those veiled memories and dealing with any unresolved issues before returning to a level 3 existence."

Michael pauses, clearly gathering his thoughts. "Okay, let me see if I can tie all of this together for you. When Sally appeared at that apartment house in Penny Lake, along with 50 other newcomers, and when Pat and his family showed up at their new home, we had almost half a million people suddenly appear in Powder Junction and the surrounding area. We had people sleeping in tents out in the pastures, living in corners of restaurants, cramming into hotels and public buildings, and some just camping out in the woods. It took quite some time to build homes for everyone and find them all jobs. But it wasn't just people. We also got tons of other etheric energy - grass and weeds and trees and cows and bugs and flies and gnats and all sorts of living things. It took years to stabilize all that life in our little world here. And it happened everywhere, not just here. It was genuinely terrifying. We called it the Great Influx, or just 'the influx' for short."

John gets this serious, thoughtful expression on his face and says, "I'm sitting here listening to all this, and I can only think of one thing that could account for something that massive. I remember the influx into Penny Lake, but it wasn't that big and Ben got it under control pretty quickly, so I never really thought much about it. But if it was as enormous as you're describing, then like I said, I only see one explanation. All life on Earth was wiped out, wasn't it? One minute everything's there, nobody sees anything coming, and then boom - it's all over. Is that what happened? Is Earth gone for good? Did the whole planet blow up?" John stares at Michael like a patient waiting for a terminal diagnosis from their doctor.

"Well, we still don't know for certain. That's exactly why we're so excited that Sally and Pat - if they can stop bickering long enough - are interested in going back. We're planning to send them on an intelligence mission to see if we can figure out exactly what happened, and maybe even find a way to fix it. What we do know from a few etheric visitors who were there at the time is that starting from the north and south poles of Earth, a wave of death moved across the planet, with the two waves meeting at the equator, sterilizing everything on the planet from the upper atmosphere down to miles deep in the crust. The whole thing happened in just a few minutes. Nobody saw it coming. From the perspective of the etheric witnesses, the planet just disappeared and they found themselves floating in empty space. At first we thought maybe it was an asteroid, or some kind of bomb, or a series of bombs. But none of those theories held up. It's unlikely that it was an asteroid because something that size would certainly have been detected well in advance - if not by Earth's monitoring systems, then definitely by the extra-planetary civilizations who were much more technologically advanced than Earth. But that theory just didn't make sense. Plus, it wasn't just Earth. Mars, all the moons, and the extra-planetary expeditions all disappeared at exactly the same time. No extra-planetary beings have come within a parsec of Earth since that event. The entire solar system is completely dead, dark, and from our perspective, invisible. We can see a few tiny dots way off in the distance, sort of like very faint stars, which we believe is life on other planets, but it's so dim that unless you really concentrate, you can't make it out. We believe it's still there - the mass, the rocks, everything in level 3 four-dimensional reality - but from our six-dimensional perception, we just can't see it. So we need to go there and find out what actually happened."

"Sally? Pat? Are you willing to accept this mission? We can't force you to do this. But I have a feeling you're just as curious as we are. And to be completely honest, we're all starting to get pretty bored here in level 5, but we don't have anywhere else to go. Finding another suitable level 3 civilization is nearly impossible these days since they're all inhabited by some form of life, and besides that, Earth was special - it was a gem, a rare find, a pearl of great price. So we believe it's absolutely worth the time and effort to see if we can locate and possibly restore Earth. Our hope is resting with the two of you."

"Hell if I know," Sally says, staring intently at the older men. "You guys have all this information about what happened, and you've been sitting around for several thousand years waiting for two kids to solve the problem for you? There's definitely something missing from that equation. Why us? I mean, I'm excited about the adventure and all, but this is starting to sound like some cheesy Saturday afternoon movie about kids with magical powers who end up saving the world. Pat and I don't have any special powers. Why are we being asked to go on this mission?"

Michael smiles and tries to explain. "First, you have firsthand experience that we don't have because you were actually there when it happened. Second, you're the first people to start getting restless and wanting to go back. And third, I have a strong feeling you might have some abilities that you're not even aware of yet. I'm just guessing on that last point, but my intuition is telling me I'm right. So what do you say? Will you guys give it a shot? It could actually be fun."

"As long as Sally wants to do it, I'm with her," Pat says without hesitation.

"Well, I guess we're doing this then," Sally says with determination. "Let's get this adventure started. But first, I'm going to go relax for a while, get properly dressed for dinner, and then meet you guys back down here for some real food."

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 9
Yes Master

Mission: Day 2 morning.

Pat and John are up early this morning.

The floor really isn't doing either of them any favors comfort-wise. Meanwhile, Sally's still completely zonked out under her blankets, looking perfectly content. John's messing around with the coffee pot, and you can practically see the wheels turning in his head—he's thinking about how, with all this incredible technology they've encountered from different realms and dimensions, you'd think they could at least manage to have some basic electricity here. Instead, here he is having to build a fire just to get some coffee going.

"You know what? Tomorrow I'm getting my own room," Pat starts to grumble. "Actually, scratch that. You and I should keep this room and just boot her out. Let her little prima donna self get her own space. Yeah, I think that sounds much better."

"Whoa there, partner. Let's not kick off the day all cranky and irritated," John says, still focused on that boiling coffee pot. "Look, Sally's actually a sweetheart, but she's been pushed way past her breaking point lately. Just give her some breathing room—she'll come around again. Getting her a room to herself so she doesn't have to bunk with rough characters like us? That's probably not a bad idea. But let's make it a nice gesture, not some kind of punishment."

"Yeah, okay, you're probably right," Pat admits with a sigh. "It's just... I love that girl so much, you know? Always have. But she's been in this awful mood lately and keeps taking it out on me. That really stings. You notice how feelings seem so much more intense in this denser realm? I bet if we were somewhere really dense like Earth, this would hurt like absolute hell. The emotions there are just so overwhelming. Maybe that's actually why we keep getting drawn back there—we're basically addicted to feeling things that intensely. Just thinking out loud here, sorry for rambling."

John pauses for a moment, considering that. "You know, you might actually be onto something there. I've definitely noticed there's an intensity to everything here that just doesn't exist back at the Lake. Don't get me wrong—I absolutely love the Lake. It's just so much more laid-back and peaceful there. Honestly, I don't think I'd want to stick around Powder Junction for very long. And the more I think about it, if we actually manage to find Earth again, I think I'd just want to visit. I'm not sure I could handle actually living there anymore."

"Hey guys, good morning! How'd you sleep?" Sally asks, sitting up in bed and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, looking adorably disheveled.

"Like absolute crap," Pat shoots back without missing a beat.

John quickly jumps in with damage control: "Good morning, sweetie. Just ignore Patrick over there—I think he must've slept right on a floor crack or something. We'll all feel human again after a decent breakfast. Oh, and we were just talking about giving our pretty little lady here some more privacy. Pat and I thought we'd get you your own room so you don't have to share space with a couple of knuckleheads like us."

"Aww, that's really sweet of you guys! But honestly, it's not necessary at all. I actually don't mind sharing the room with you two—it's kind of comforting, to be honest. Just two small requests though: be more careful about what you eat for dinner, because in this dimension you guys are absolutely gassy, and two—get the hell out of here so I can get dressed! Hee hee, just kidding, guys." John grins and heads for the door to wait for Sally down at breakfast. Pat follows along too, but definitely without the smile.

"Hey there, Michael!" Pat calls out as he spots Michael approaching their breakfast table. "Come join us—we've got plenty of bacon."

"Don't mind if I do," Michael says, pulling up a chair. "So Pat, I can see there's definitely a sparkle in your eyes this morning. What's got your mind working?"

Pat's been sitting on some ideas he wants to share, but up until now he's been too self-conscious to bring them up. After yesterday's experiences though, he's caring less and less about what the others might think. So what if his ideas sound stupid? He's going to put them out there anyway. "I've been doing a lot of thinking about my time back on Earth. By the time I was fifteen, I had PhDs in math, physics, temporal mechanics, and dimensional dynamics. But that was all with the help of the INA chip, you know? Most of what I actually 'learned' was really just getting good at knowing where to find information on the network. Learning was basically practice at locating data, putting it into some kind of useful contextual framework, and then applying it to whatever problem I was trying to solve. Now, even though I don't have access to all that data anymore, I still remember the process itself, and a lot of the information I was exposed to is still kicking around in my memory to some extent. What I'm getting at is this: if I really concentrate, I think I can figure a lot of this stuff out. And that's exactly what I plan to do. You keep saying we can't interact with the 3rd level, that it's invisible to us. Well, there are lots of things that are invisible—back on Earth, radio waves were invisible, but we still used them to transmit voice and music and pictures and data. What we needed was a transducer—something that would react to the radio wave on one end and create audio or video or whatever on the other end. So what we need here is a transducer for 3rd level light waves. If we can somehow detect them in the 3rd level and translate them to the 5th level, then at least we can see whether there's actually something there. With enough resolution, we might get a pretty clear picture of what is—or isn't—there."

Michael's clearly delighted that Pat is really starting to engage with their mission. "Well now, in my time there weren't too many transducers around—maybe a telegraph key and that was about it—but it sure sounds like you might be onto something here. You let me know what you need to build one of these transducer contraptions and we'll give it a test run, see what it can show us."

"Or maybe we could smoke it out," John adds to the brainstorming. "Back at the mill, they'd get concerned about air flow patterns. But you can't actually see air, and just feeling it doesn't give you a clear picture of what's really happening. So they'd call us firemen in and we'd set barrels of rags to smoldering, make a bunch of smoke. Then we could just watch the smoke move through the air and see exactly which direction everything was flowing. Maybe we can figure out some way to inject 5th level smoke into the 3rd level and see if anything shows up there." Michael's eyes are practically dancing as he responds: "Now that's another brilliant idea! I have absolutely no clue what kind of smoke we could use, but let's keep that concept bouncing around—maybe we'll be able to work something out. Sally, you got any bright ideas?"

Sally lets out a little burp and says, "I think I ate way too much again. Will you guys still love me just as much if I get fat?"

John immediately jumps in: "Of course we will, sweetie pie! You just get as plump as you want and we'll love every single inch of you just as much."

"Okay, we're getting a little off track here, guys," Michael says, trying to steer them back. "We really need to put together some kind of actual game plan. We all bring different skills to this, and it's probably going to take all of them to get this job done. My contribution is that I can get you there—I can set up an etheric visit for each of you to go and do whatever you need to do. And I can bring you back when you're finished. But you guys are going to have to put your heads together and figure out exactly what you're going to do once you actually get there."

Sally smiles apologetically. "Sorry, Michael. But a girl's got to watch her figure, you know?"

"Trust me, I know," Michael says with a knowing look. "I haven't always been single like I am now, so believe me, I completely understand."

"Hey Michael?" John asks, switching gears. "I noticed down at the general store that they had fishing supplies. You got a lake around here somewhere?"

"We sure do—several of them, actually. They're not quite as gorgeous as Penny Lake, but they've definitely got fish. Why, do you think now's a good time to go fishing?"

"Well yeah, actually I do," John replies. "We need to sit down and really start putting together that game plan, and we might as well do it with a hook in the water instead of just sitting around here."

Michael grins and gets up from the table. "Come on then, guys. Looks like we're going fishing. It's your turn to pay, girlie, so throw some cash on the table and let's get out of here." Sally digs around in her purse, finds a few bills, and lays them on the table as they all head out. They swing by the store so John can find a fishing pole that feels right in his hands, and then they're off to the lake. John's the only real fisherman in the group, but Sally grabs a few extra things from the store to turn it into a proper picnic. It's shaping up to be a really nice day.

Mission: Day 2, lunch time.

John's got a nice fire crackling, and Sally has a pan ready with a few fresh-caught fish all set for cooking. Michael and Pat have been deep in conversation about this and that for quite a while now, but so far there isn't much of an actual game plan emerging. Everyone's still hopeful they can come up with something concrete soon. But if not... well, maybe living forever at the Lake, or here in Powder Junction, really isn't such a terrible fate. You just have to learn to deal with the boredom, and honestly, it's not that big a deal. All these thoughts are drifting through Sally's mind as she tends to John's fish and gets the picnic spread ready for their little outdoor lunch.

"Really good fish, John. You've definitely got a knack for catching the tasty ones," Michael compliments him as they dig into lunch.

Pat's been mulling over an idea and he's determined to try it out. "Michael, I want to attempt something. I honestly don't know if it'll work—in fact, I'm pretty sure it won't—but it won't cost us anything to try. I've noticed that feelings are much more intense here, and apparently significantly more intense in level 3. I want to go there and just see what I can actually feel. We've tried going there to see something, and we know that doesn't work. But if I can use myself as the transducer—use my own senses to feel whatever's there to be felt—maybe I can pick up on something, at least know if there's anything there at all. So how exactly do I get there?"

"There's a booth in town that we can use to send you there," Michael answers matter-of-factly.

"A booth? How does that work exactly? Why do we need a booth?" Pat asks, curious.

"Well, actually, you don't really need a booth at all. What you need is a shift in consciousness—something to set up the right mental state so you can leave this perception behind and move into the 3rd level," Michael explains while Pat thinks it over.

"How about a door? Would that do the trick?" Pat asks.

Michael chuckles. "Sure, as long as you truly believe it will work, then it will."

Pat considers this for a moment. "You know what? It's way too nice out here to make you guys trek all the way back into town. I know Ben can tinker around with the edges of the reality he manages, and I'm pretty sure you can do the same thing. Michael, how about you put a door for me in that tree over there and hand me the key?"

Michael laughs heartily. "There's your door, son, and it's not even locked. Just be careful—there's going to be nothing but pure blackness on the other side."

Pat walks over to the door, turns back to wave at everyone, then steps right into that blackness and completely disappears. Sally immediately runs up to the door to see where he went, but just like Michael warned, there's absolutely nothing but black void on the other side.

"How long do you think this is going to take? I'm getting really scared for Pat out there all by himself in that... nothingness," Sally says, worry clearly growing on her face.

"I honestly don't have a clue, sugar," Michael replies. "If he's not back by dark, I guess we could start a fire and camp here for the night in case he comes back late."

Sally and the guys finish cleaning up from lunch and start making preparations to potentially camp overnight, but then Pat suddenly pops back through the door after only about fifteen minutes.

"Back so soon? Did you get scared? I was so worried about you! I looked through that door and saw all that blackness and it just looked absolutely terrifying," Sally says, relief and concern mixing in her voice.

"Temporal compression, my dear lady—a consequence of the way level 5 and level 3 divergence creates tension in the extra-temporal dimension we're dealing with here. I was actually there for quite a long time. And I learned several important things. First, initially I couldn't feel anything at all and couldn't see anything either. Even using my most practiced meditation techniques, I couldn't quiet my mind enough to sense anything. And it was this constant battle against the fear of all that darkness. But then I just surrendered completely to the darkness and became part of it. That's when I heard it—off in the distance, like this buzzing sound in my head. It was a sound I'd heard before. So I moved closer, and closer, and I started to be able to perceive the shape of things. It was Earth. She's still there. She's still round. And... she's still alive."

"Well, that didn't work out, but it was a good attempt, son. Maybe we'll take another shot at it tomorrow and see if we get better results," Michael says as he starts helping Sally pack away the picnic supplies.

"You're not listening to me, Michael. She IS there, and she IS alive. I know it because I was there. I heard it myself," Pat insists emphatically.

Michael's looking a bit irritated now. "Son, I hate to burst your bubble, but we've been searching for life out there for several millennia. The best psychics and sensitives we have in these domains have been out there trying to look and feel and hear exactly like you just did, and they've gotten absolutely nothing. Now you're telling me that you poke your head into the void for a few minutes and suddenly you can hear a planet and know that it's alive? That's just a little more than I can accept right now. If she was really alive, we'd be able to see her. Let's try this again—I'm not saying your method won't work eventually, but I'm betting what you heard was just wishful thinking. You imagined it."

Pat gets very serious and looks Michael directly in the eyes. "Michael, don't underestimate me on this. When I said I was there for quite some time, I mean I was there for QUITE some time. The Pat who just came back through that door is not the same Pat you watched leave fifteen of your minutes ago. I was there for weeks. And during that time, I found the planet—which had drifted quite a distance away from these domains because we lost our navigational lock when the ethereal link was severed. I figured out how to compensate for that drift, and it's been corrected now—we're back in spatial sync. I did a complete survey of the surface. I know what happened, and I know why it happened. I've got quite a story to tell you, and it's a story you really need to hear. I know what went wrong. What I don't know is how to fix it—and that's where I need your help. Let's get back to town and grab some dinner. I haven't eaten in a very long time." The whole group is taken aback by Pat's intensity and conviction.

Michael just grins and says, "Yes, Master," and they all head back toward town. Maybe there really is something substantial to Pat's claims after all. They'll have to wait until after supper to find out the whole story.

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 10
Them

In 1947, Grace Murry Hopper, the head of the Navy Computer Language division was working on the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator (a primitive computer). On the 9th of September, 1947, when the machine was experiencing problems, an investigation showed that there was a moth trapped between the points of relay #70 in Panel F. The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log. The word went out that they had "debugged" the machine and the term "debugging the computer" was born.

Mission: Day 2, dinner time.

By the time Sally made it to the dinner table, Pat was already going to town on his meal, practically inhaling the food.

This was actually a first since they'd arrived in Powder Junction - Sally wasn't the one demolishing everything in sight at mealtime. It was kind of funny, really. While Pat had been off on his etheric projection, he hadn't felt hungry at all - didn't even think about food. But the second he snapped back into the denser reality of Powder Junction, it was like his body went into overdrive trying to make up for lost time.

Sally looked at Pat curiously and asked, "So tell me about this whole 'etheric visit' thing. What exactly is that? How does it actually work?"

"Give the kid a chance to swallow, sweetheart," Michael chimed in with a chuckle. "Here's how I understand the whole etheric visit business. Most of the time, we're living inside what you might call perceptual bubbles - like this place, Powder Junction, or Penny Lake, or that massive one we used to know as Earth's 3rd level universe. But here's the thing - that's not really where we come from. It's just where our consciousness happens to be focused at any given moment. Each of us actually emanates directly from the All that Is, from the consciousness of the dimension of mind itself. That's our true source - the source of everything that exists, really. Now, instead of being fully immersed in one of these perceptual bubbles like we are right now, it's possible to step back and just... observe it from the outside. When you do that, you become what we call an etheric presence. You can watch what's happening, but you can't really interact with that reality - you're more like a ghost observing from your own little bubble. There are some real limitations to this, though. Sometimes there's a terrible mismatch between who you think you are and the environment you're trying to observe. That's why you might find yourself somewhere where everything appears invisible to you. It's exactly what happens when we try to visit the 3rd level - there just aren't any other etheric beings like us there for us to connect with or see."

"Oh, okay," Sally said, quickly snatching the last piece of pie before Pat could grab it. "So our problem is basically that we're trying to project ourselves as level 5 beings into a level 3 world, and we just don't fit together - like trying to tune into a radio station on the wrong frequency."

"Exactly," Michael nodded. "It's a lot like that. But there's also the issue of where we are in our own evolution. The reason our etheric essence naturally gravitates to Level 5 and finds places like Penny Lake is because these environments actually resonate with our current development - what we call our etheric morphology. We're naturally drawn to places where we actually belong. Now, if you were a level 10 entity, you'd have incredible flexibility. Those beings can morph into whatever form is appropriate for any given level and just seamlessly become part of that reality. If one of them decided to visit us here, they might just appear out of nowhere, fully formed and completely able to interact with our world - they'd look exactly like us. When they project into a level 3 world, they show up as whatever type of creature naturally belongs there. Then they might hop over to some completely different perceptual frame and appear as, I don't know, a little green being with twelve arms, because that's what fits in that particular place. They could even do things like unwrap new dimensions and reach inside your body to tickle your ribs from the inside without even breaking your skin. Those guys have some seriously advanced abilities. Meanwhile, we've just barely figured out how to be who we are right now, and most of us don't even understand how we're managing that much. Most of it happens completely outside our conscious awareness. So we simply don't have the skills yet to transform into whatever type of being we'd need to be to properly interact with realities that are different from what we know."

"Okay, now my brain is officially fried," Sally laughed. "Total information overload here. I think I need a nap before I can handle any more questions."

"You know, I think that's partly how I managed to do it," Pat said after wiping the last crumbs from his plate. "I'm definitely not one of those level 10 masters, but I did get this sense that I had to change somehow - morph who I was, just a little bit - in order to get any sense of what was actually there. That's how I know there's something alive down there. I could sense it, feel it somehow. But I couldn't become it, so I could only perceive it in the tiniest way. And honestly? It was terrifying. They're incredibly alien - like nothing I've ever encountered."

"Wait, 'they'? Alien?" John looked puzzled. "Are you saying that Earth and the other planets were actually invaded by aliens from somewhere else? I thought there were already alien beings there - you know, little green men and such - and weren't they wiped out too by whatever happened?"

"I think so," Pat said thoughtfully. "There were definitely the extra-planetary beings - aliens, if you want to call them that - who were part of the planetary councils. Some of them were small in stature, others looked just like us. They participated in our governing councils because they had real interests in our region of space. They had their own political drama and conflicts to deal with among themselves too. All of these beings had evolved in the same general area of the galaxy as Earth. There were also inter-dimensional travelers, but we didn't interact with them very much. They didn't have any real stake in our region - they were more like cosmic tourists passing through. I doubt they were affected by whatever morphogenetic field destroyed all the life there. They were probably more like the projection you were describing, so I'm sure they just returned to wherever they came from."

"Hold on - morphogenetic field? How do you know they used a morphogenetic field? Who told you that?" Michael asked, clearly curious about where this information was coming from.

Pat continued, "Well, I might have made up that term, or maybe I read it in a book somewhere. But it really seems to fit what I learned while I was there. When I first arrived and managed to quiet my mind completely, all I could sense was this sound - a buzzing noise in the background. The thing is, this sound was familiar to me. I used to hear it when I had my INA chip back in the day. I was experimenting with it in the physics lab at school when we were studying waveform analysis, and I decided to analyze this particular sound. I ran a correlation algorithm on it and got this graph with a really strange triangular pattern. When I looked it up, I found out it was something called a Dirac Triangle. I don't remember all the technical details, but it indicated that the source of the noise was pseudo-random - meaning it was being generated by digital computers. The networks back then were running as neural nets, which was a design we'd copied from our own brains, but the core systems - the basic building blocks of those neural nets - were still old-style digital computers."

"Too bad Tekky isn't here," John commented with a grin. "He'd be all over this technical stuff. All I'm hearing is blah blah blah blah. Can you translate that into a language the rest of us can actually understand?"

Pat smiled and said, "Okay, let me put it simply. What I could hear during my projection was exactly the same thing I used to hear through my INA chip - the background noise of the network. What that means is that more than 3,000 years after all life on Earth was destroyed, the network is still there. It's still active and running."

"How is that even possible? And what does that have to do with a morphogenetic field?" Michael wanted to know. "One of my responsibilities back then was what you might call being the Angel of Death. All of us who managed these domains took turns doing that job. When someone's presence gets disconnected from a 3rd level body, they can become completely disoriented, so we'd go down there to help people transition back here in an orderly way. During the great influx - when everyone was dying at once - we were completely overwhelmed. It was chaos. We had lost souls floating around for days before we could gather them all and bring them home. Anyway, I visited your world frequently during that time, and I saw all the infrastructure that had been built up to support the net. Without human beings to operate the machinery, do the maintenance, and pay for everything, how did the net manage to survive without its creators? I would have expected it to die out after a few weeks at most."

Pat nodded. "My thoughts exactly. I'm trying to answer your questions the way Ben does - by circling around the answer before zeroing in on it. I honestly don't know why the net is still there. It shouldn't be. It should be as dead as everything else on that planet. But it's not. Maybe whoever deployed the morphogenetic field took control of the net and is using it for their own purposes. Now, about the field itself - I had a lot of time to think about this while I was there. Whatever happened on Earth happened incredibly fast. This field of death swept across the planet's surface at thousands of kilometers per second, killing absolutely everything alive in its path. Think about what kind of energy that would require. If it had been done with microwaves, for example, it would have needed a power source the size of the moon to accomplish that in such a short time. We would have seen something that massive coming. It had to be something that was 100 percent lethal, almost instantaneously, but required only a tiny amount of energy to deploy. "My theory about a morphogenetic field fits that description perfectly. These fields are typically used to control how cells differentiate, to create life from non-living organic matter, or to alter the balance in an entire biosphere - like in terraforming operations. They can also be used to modify cells that are already alive. If they used a field that changed just a few atomic particles in a critical area - say, in the cellular micro-tubules - they could instantly shut off the life processes of every cell and disconnect all consciousness using only a minuscule amount of energy per cell. So one second we were all completely alive, and the next second everything was dead. No bullets, no energy beams, no fire, no explosions, no warning whatsoever. Everyone just collapsed and died. The trees, the grass, the insects, even the microscopic life - all gone instantly. I suppose viruses might still be there, but without hosts they're just lying dormant. Maybe on my next trip I'll learn more."

Sally looked up from the pie fork she'd been methodically licking clean for the past five minutes. "I've been doing some contemplating too," she said quietly. "And I think I know who 'they' are."

"Huh?" Pat looked confused. "You've been contemplating an empty pie plate for the last few minutes. What do you mean you know who they are?"

Sally smiled knowingly. "That's exactly how contemplation works. You think and think and think, and then you stop thinking for just a moment, and suddenly you just... know. It's also kind of a girl thing, so you'll just have to trust me on this one."

"All right then," John said, leaning forward with interest. "Enlighten us."

Sally looked at each of them in turn, pausing dramatically before she spoke. Then she said slowly, "It's not a 'they' at all. No alien creatures that we can't see came to planet Earth and destroyed our solar system. It's an 'it.' And this 'it' was there the whole time. We created 'it.' We were connected to 'it.' We trusted 'it.' The 'it' is the net itself. The network became alive, and for reasons that 'it' never bothered to explain to us, 'it' decided we all needed to die. So 'it' killed us all."

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 11
IT

Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers:
for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Hebrews 13:2 King James Bible

Mission: Day 3, late morning.

John hears the familiar shuffle of footsteps approaching from behind him—that distinctive gait he'd recognize anywhere.

"Well, well, if it isn't Tekky himself," John says with a grin as his old friend Ben ambles up to the table. "What brings you down here? I thought you were chained to your desk up there—couldn't leave or the whole operation would come crashing down?"

Ben flashes that characteristic wide grin of his. "Hey, even I get to stretch my legs once in a while. Penny's holding down the fort for me." He chuckles and adds, "But I better get back before she decides to rearrange everything and paint the walls pink or something."

Sally can't help but giggle at that. "Honestly? Maybe you should just let her. Might be an improvement."

They all share a good laugh before Michael's curiosity gets the better of him. "But seriously, what does bring you here? This isn't exactly a social call, is it? You checking up on us?"

"As a matter of fact, yeah, I am," Ben admits with a slight shrug. "Look, there are several billion souls up there who are pretty invested in seeing how you folks are progressing down here. I've got to file some kind of report, so—how's it going? How are our young prodigies holding up?"

Michael nods thoughtfully. "They're doing fantastic, actually. Between the two of them, I think we might be closing in on some real answers. It's still mostly theoretical at this point—we've got a mountain of work ahead of us—but we're definitely making headway."

"Fair enough," Ben says, settling back in his chair. "In that case, I think I'll treat myself to a cup of that incredible Powder Junction coffee you guys are famous for, then head back before nature calls, if you know what I mean."

"Aw, come on, stick around for a while," John insists, leaning forward. "I really want you to hear what these kids have been working on. It's all technical wizardry—right up your alley, Tekky."

Ben's face brightens. "Alright, twist my arm. But I'm ordering some real food while I'm here. I get hungry as hell whenever I'm in Powder Junction." He pauses with a rueful smile. "Sure, Penny Lake's got plenty of fish, but you can't get a decent steak up there." So Ben orders himself a thick, juicy steak, while the others, having just polished off breakfast, content themselves with watching him eat—though Sally does sneak a few bites of his mashed potatoes and gravy with her pie fork. "You know, I'm following what you're saying about this 'it' theory," Ben says between bites. "It's definitely within the realm of possibility. Though I have to wonder—if the network did somehow become alive, we might be dealing with a form of consciousness so alien that we'd have no way to relate to it whatsoever." He pauses, chewing thoughtfully. "But here's the thing: if it truly developed consciousness, even at a basic level, we should be able to detect it somehow. I mean, we can sense the consciousness in plants, insects, all sorts of simple life forms—even though they lack self-awareness, we can still perceive their essence. So maybe the net did evolve some kind of consciousness, maybe even awareness, but of such a foreign nature that it's completely invisible to us." He shakes his head. "I don't know. It's a fascinating concept, but I'll be damned if I can figure out exactly how it would all work. What's really troubling is that if such a consciousness did emerge, it seems to have been fundamentally hostile—like it despised organic life and was determined to wipe it out." He looks directly at Sally. "What's your take on all this?"

Pat jumps in eagerly. "I've actually been thinking about that a lot—"

"Hold on there, son," Ben interrupts, raising a hand. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, really, but I specifically asked Sally. She's got some unique insights here that she might not even be consciously aware of yet." He turns his attention back to Sally, his expression growing more serious. "Sally, I know you probably don't spend much time thinking about your parents these days—they're in a different domain now, after all. But I need you to really dig deep here. Both your mom and dad were network specialists, right? They were part of the team that developed the INA chip, which is exactly why you were selected to receive one. That gives you a perspective that nobody else has—your parents helped create the network, and you were more intimately connected to the mind of that beast, if it had a mind, than anyone else who survived." He leans forward intently. "So tell us—what are your thoughts?"

Sally puts her hands to her temples, looking suddenly overwhelmed. "God, my mind is just racing right now—I can't even grab onto a single thought. There's too much happening all at once—memories, images, ideas all jumbled together." She stands up abruptly. "Listen, the boys got me a new room here. I need to go check in, get settled, maybe put on some fresh clothes and just... process all this. Pat, come help me move my stuff, would you?"

Ben nods understandingly. "Of course, sweetness. Take all the time you need. I'll just sit here and literally chew the fat with these guys until you get yourself sorted out. We'll talk when you're ready." Sally and Pat head off to handle her move, leaving Ben to return his attention to his steak.

Once they're out of earshot, Ben lowers his voice. "Michael, do you think they're starting to figure it out?"

Michael considers this carefully. "I'm honestly not sure, Ben. I don't think they're deep enough into it yet to really feel what's happening."

John looks between them, confused. "Wait—know what? Feel what? What are you two talking about?"

Ben sets down his fork and looks at his old friend with a mixture of affection and gravity. "John, my friend, those two kids aren't what they appear to be—but they don't know it any more than you do." He pauses, choosing his words carefully. "You remember how it works when we prepare souls to return to physical bodies, right? We explain that their old consciousness will gradually fade into sleep, that they'll become this new consciousness completely, and when they eventually return here, they won't retain much memory of their previous earthly lives—usually just the most recent one. They essentially become that last person they inhabited. Now, some of us can eventually remember multiple past lives, but honestly, those memories usually just create confusion and complications. Everything important from those previous lives gets integrated into the final incarnation anyway, so there's no real benefit to cluttering things up with old memories."

He takes a sip of coffee before continuing. "There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes a life ends unexpectedly and there's unfinished business that needs attention. In cases like that, someone might remember their previous life alongside their new experiences. The hardest cases are always the suicides—they arrive here expecting relief, only to discover they've brought all their problems with them and now have even fewer resources to deal with them."

Ben gestures toward John. "Take you, for instance. You're probably pretty much finished with earthly incarnations. I don't mean you couldn't go back if you wanted to, but you'd likely never feel a strong pull to do so. Most of your future visits would probably be purely observational. You'll probably eventually move on and establish your own domain, like Michael and I did. And someday, Michael and I will close out these domains we're running and advance to an even higher level ourselves."

His voice takes on a tone of deep respect. "Now, there are some—it's rare, but it happens—who make the complete journey from whatever domain they're in, whether it's level 3, 5, 7, or beyond, all the way up to level 10. We call them ascended masters because they ascend directly from their current level to the highest plane. Usually they're off pursuing their own purposes at that level. Honestly, those of us down here can't really comprehend what level 10 masters do with their existence—it's beyond our understanding. But we know they're out there, and occasionally one will manifest to observe something or, very rarely, to teach. But their appearances here or on Earth are extremely uncommon."

Ben's expression grows even more serious. "What's even more extraordinary—almost unheard of, really—is for a level 10 master to voluntarily incarnate into a physical body at level 3. It would take truly exceptional circumstances to justify that kind of sacrifice. Something like, say, the complete destruction of an entire solar system." He pauses meaningfully. "Those level 10 beings must have known what was coming, because there were two physical bodies down there, right in the thick of everything that happened, housing level 10 souls. You know them as Sally and Pat."

John's eyes widen in disbelief. "You're kidding me."

"I wish I were," Ben continues. "They act like typical young people because that's exactly what they are to us—young souls having their first experience at level 3. They don't remember who they really are. But they were there for a reason, John. We can only hope—and assume—that they were placed in those circumstances so they could be part of what happened, so they'd eventually be able to fix it. We've been waiting over three thousand years for them to begin their awakening. I believe that's what we're witnessing now." He shakes his head slowly. "But time means something completely different to level 10 beings than it does to those of us still tied to the level 3 temporal domain. So we can't be certain that now is their time. That's all I know for sure. And now you know it too."

John runs his hands through his hair, looking stunned. "Jesus Christ, Ben. That's the longest speech I've ever heard you give. I had no idea you were such an expert on soul evolution and all this metaphysical stuff." He looks genuinely worried. "So what happens now? When they come back, should I bow? Bring flowers? How the hell am I supposed to act around them?"

Ben chuckles and shakes his head. "Don't change a thing, John. They have no idea who they are, and if we dump this on them too fast, we could scare them off completely. Just treat them exactly like you always have—like the kids they appear to be. Teach them the way you've been teaching them. Love them and let them discover themselves at their own pace. I'll warn you though—waiting for a level 10 being to get around to something can be incredibly frustrating. But their timing isn't something we can influence or control. They operate on their own schedule."

John's worried expression gradually transforms into a smile. "Alright then, I can do that. I'm still going to call him 'Son' and I'll always call her 'Sweetie.'"

Michael bursts out laughing. "Oh man, I nearly lost it when she asked me if I was an Archangel. Hell, at this point it's more likely her than me!" They all crack up at that.

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 12
Second Thoughts

Our first experience, remarkably enough, is that of loss. A moment before, we were everything, undifferentiated, indivisibly part of some kind of being - only to be pressed into birth. Henceforth a tiny residue of the whole must strive to avoid contracting into even less and less, must stand up to a world which rises before it with ever increasing substantiality, a world into which it has fallen, from universal fullness, as into a deprivating void. Lou Andreas-Salome 1861-1937

Mission: Day 3 mid day.

Sally and Pat are in the middle of packing up her belongings, getting ready to move everything to her new room.

"Pat, could you grab that pink suitcase for me? I need to start getting my stuff packed up," Sally says, her tone carrying that familiar edge of authority. Pat moves to get it, but there's something sluggish about the way he's moving—like his mind is somewhere else entirely, and even the simple task of picking up a suitcase and bringing it over to where she's standing by the bed seems to require more mental energy than he can muster. Sally notices right away. "You're really not all there today, are you Pat?"

"Well, yeah, of course I'm not," Pat shoots back, a hint of frustration creeping into his voice. "And you pretending like everything's fine isn't fooling anyone, especially not me. We're in some seriously deep shit here, Sally, and honestly? I'm not comfortable with any of it. The only reason I haven't bailed on this whole crazy situation already is because... well, I've known you forever, I actually enjoy spending time with you, and for whatever reason, I feel this deep connection to you that I can't really explain." He stops for a moment, like he's gathering courage for something. The words I love you more than anything, Sally are right there, practically screaming in his head, but they just won't come out of his mouth. Instead, he deflates a little and continues, "I'm just starting to think maybe coming here to see you was a mistake. I don't think I'm built to handle all this... or you, for that matter."

"Me?" Sally's eyebrows shoot up. "Oh, so now I'm the problem? I don't get it with you sometimes, Pat. You literally make no sense. It's like you have this whole script in your head of how I'm supposed to act, what I'm supposed to do, who I'm supposed to be—and I'm never going to be that person. It's always been this way, hasn't it? Even back in our old life before all this craziness. I think that's why, despite how close we are and how we practically live in each other's heads through the net, we never actually got together. You build up these expectations, and then when I don't perform according to your predictions, you get all twisted up and emotional and weird on me. That's just not the kind of girl I am—I don't respond well to that kind of pressure. So if I seem cold to you, well, that's just who I am. I'm not going to apologize for it."

Pat stares at her for a long moment, like he's trying to sort through everything in his head before he speaks. "I'm not asking you to apologize. I don't need that from you. It just... it hurts, you know? We've known each other for so long—maybe forever, if what these old ones are telling us is true—and I don't feel any of that history coming back from you. A simple kind word once in a while would be nice. You're always sweet with John, he gets all your warmth. All I seem to get is the cold shoulder." He pauses, hoping maybe this vulnerability will crack her walls just a little. "But never mind. I know that's just how you are. You don't have to change for me—I'll accept you exactly as you are." There's hope in his voice, like maybe offering unconditional acceptance will earn him a little tenderness in return. But Sally, true to form, doesn't give him what he's looking for.

"Good. I'm glad we cleared that up," she says briskly, already moving on. "Now can you please get those clothes I hung up in the closet? I want to get them folded and packed away."

"Didn't work out quite like you planned, did it?" the desk clerk asks with a knowing smirk.

"I'm sorry, what?" Pat looks genuinely confused by the question.

"Oh, I see this all the time around here," the clerk says with the weary wisdom of someone who's witnessed countless relationship dramas play out in his lobby. "Young couple checks in all lovey-dovey and sweet, then a day or two later they're back asking for separate rooms."

"Oh no, it's nothing like that," Pat quickly clarifies. "She's my sister. Her boyfriend is coming in from out of town and they need their privacy, you know?"

"Well, that explains everything then, doesn't it? Here's your key, kids. Enjoy the rest of your stay." Pat takes Sally's luggage and carries it for her as they head to the new room.

"Why did you make up that story?" Sally asks as they walk. "The truth would've worked just fine—we're friends, we didn't come here to hook up or anything. He would've understood that."

"I don't know," Pat shrugs. "I guess it seemed like a more interesting story than the truth. Plus, he doesn't need to know all our business anyway."

"That's actually kind of sweet, Pat. I always wanted a brother growing up," Sally says with a genuine smile, the first real warmth she's shown him all day. "So I guess now you're it." She actually giggles as she starts unpacking her things. After selecting a fresh outfit, she begins running water for a bath. Pat settles by the window, watching the busy street life below—people going about their daily routines in this strange place that's somehow become their temporary home. "Don't go anywhere, okay?" Sally calls from the bathroom. "I want to keep talking when I'm done with my bath." Pat nods without looking away from the window, grateful for this small sign that she values his company.

"Pat, I need help getting this damn thing laced up properly. These period clothes are adorable and all, but they're a complete nightmare to get into." Pat turns from the window to help her figure out the complex system of strings and laces that need to be pulled tight to cinch the waist of her dress. It takes him several tries to get it right—there are so many different ties and they all seem to serve different purposes. Sally already has a naturally tiny waist, so when everything's properly adjusted, the dress shows off her figure in a way that's almost breathtaking. She's found some perfume that Penny packed for her, and the complete picture—the way she looks, the way she smells—is almost more than Pat can handle emotionally. He's desperately, hopelessly in love with her, but he's trapped in a situation where he can't express those feelings the way he desperately wants to.

He keeps hoping that time will be kind to him, that someday the right opportunity will present itself. In a strange way, he's almost grateful they're not on Earth anymore. Back home, emotions were so intense they could be completely overwhelming, and he's pretty sure he would've cracked by now—said something incredibly stupid or done something that would've made him look like a complete fool and ruined everything between them.

Pat's actually quite good-looking himself. The men's clothing they wear here in Powder Junction is loose-fitting and doesn't show off the male figure the way the women's dresses do, but underneath those clothes, he's got the kind of build any guy would envy—lean but muscular, everything in perfect proportion.

The resemblance between Sally and Pat is actually remarkable. Sally's mom used to joke that Pat was just the male version of Sally. If you didn't know their history, you'd automatically assume they were siblings, maybe even twins—if such a thing as opposite-sex identical twins were possible.

"Okay, you're all laced up and ready to go," Pat announces. "Should we head back downstairs?"

Sally's expression shifts to something almost melancholy. "No, not yet. Let's talk some more first. There are some things I want to run by someone my own age before we go back down to deal with all the old folks and their complicated agendas."

"What's weighing on your mind?" Pat asks, settling back into his chair by the window.

"Oh, just the entire fucking universe, I guess," Sally says with a bitter laugh. "Here we are, supposedly these fifth-level ethereal beings living in Michael's private mini-universe, but up until a few days ago we completely believed we were just regular people from some third-level megaverse, from that weird little planet called Earth. I mean, with all the magical shit we've witnessed lately, I'm pretty much convinced this is all real, but at the same time, part of me keeps expecting to wake up in my bed back home thinking 'wow, what a bizarre dream that was.' But we're here now, so I guess we just have to deal with it.

Here's what I really wanted to bounce off you, though: doesn't it strike you as incredibly strange that all these advanced beings—Ben, Michael, and I think John too—who have literally billions of years more knowledge and experience than we do, are looking to us to solve problems that have completely stumped them for thousands of years? I know we have more technological experience since we lived through the 22nd century and were plugged into the net and everything. But still, I feel like we're not the ones they really need for this job.

What is it about us that makes them think we're the right people? I'm terrified we're just going to screw everything up completely. I'm not worried about getting hurt or dying—apparently that's not even possible for us—but I would absolutely die if I disappointed John. I can see how proud he is of me, and I just can't bear the thought of letting him down."

"Don't worry about John," Pat says reassuringly. "His love for you is completely unconditional—he's always got your back no matter what. Trust me, if I so much as hint at any criticism of you, he's on me like white on rice." He pauses, thinking. "The way I see it is this: here we are, faced with this problem, and people are expecting us to fix it somehow.

I'm way past the point of fighting against it anymore. It's like we're actors in some cosmic play, and our job is just to go along with whatever script has already been written for us. We keep turning the page and playing out our parts as they're written. I have no idea what the overall story is, how we got cast in these roles, or how it's all going to end. All I know is that the pages are going to keep turning whether we want them to or not, and we have to keep reading our lines.

So I've decided to just go with the flow. Believe me, if I could wake up in my bed back on Earth and discover this was all just some crazy dream, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But we are here, so let's just do what we need to do."

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 13
IT's Alive

"If you're trying to project the long-term future, and what you get sounds like science fiction, you might be wrong. But if it doesn't sound like science fiction, it's definitely wrong." Chris Peterson, Foresight Institute, 2007

Mission: day 3 lunch time.

When Sally finally made it back to rejoin the group, she let out a little sigh. "Well, that definitely took way longer than I thought it would," she said, already eyeing the cafe with a mix of affection and mild exasperation. "Is it time for lunch yet? I swear, we practically live in this place now." She paused, then broke into a grin. "Not that I'm complaining—I absolutely love the food here." Almost without thinking, she reached over and grabbed a dessert menu, holding it like a security blanket. "Just in case I need to grab another slice of pie to tide me over until we actually eat."

Ben looked up with a warm smile as Pat and Sally settled back in. "Well, glad you could make it back to us," he said, his tone carrying just the right mix of gentle teasing and genuine welcome.

Sally waited for the chatter around the table to die down, then took a breath. "Okay, so Ben gave me this assignment before I stepped away, and I've been trying to piece together what I can actually remember." She paused, her expression growing more serious. "Mom and Dad were everywhere on public video back then. The INA chip was this huge controversy—I mean, people were genuinely terrified. There was all this talk about how we'd all get sucked into some machine and basically become part of it, lose our humanity entirely." Her voice softened with a mix of pride and old pain. "But my parents? They were absolutely convinced the safeguards were solid. They believed in it so much that they actually got me an implant—their own daughter—just to prove they completely trusted the technology." She shook her head slightly. "That decision totally transformed my entire life. Suddenly, I had access to this vast ocean of information on the net. And by then, artificial intelligence had already blown past human intelligence by incredible margins, so even the most complex questions would have these elegantly simple answers worked out in seconds. The crazy part was that it took longer to download the results through my chip than it did for the system to actually calculate them."

John glanced over at Sally with an amused grin. "Sally, either order that pie or stop playing with the menu—you're making me hungry just watching you flip through it."

Michael stretched and looked around the cafe with the satisfied exhaustion of people who'd been talking intensely for hours. "I think we've pretty much worn out our welcome here," he said with a chuckle. "I know this nice little spot around the corner—outdoor seating, good for tea and coffee—where we can keep talking while we wait for actual lunch time." He gestured toward the door, pointing in the direction they'd need to go. "It's such a beautiful day, and honestly, I'd rather have this conversation somewhere I can see some blue sky." The five of them gathered their things and strolled along the wooden sidewalk, turning the corner onto 1st and Main, where a charming little restaurant had set up a few tables outside under the protective overhang of a second-story balcony.

Pat made a point of pulling out Sally's chair and making sure she was comfortably seated, which earned him some genuinely surprised looks from the rest of the group. "Hey, I'm trying here, okay?" he said with a self-deprecating grin. "But this is one difficult woman." Sally rolled her eyes and looked mildly irritated, but there was something gracious in the way she accepted his gesture.

When the waiter approached, Sally was ready. "I'd love a glass of iced tea—sweet tea, with lots of sugar—and do you happen to have a dessert menu?" She paused, swatting at something near her face. "Oh, and I'm going to need a fly swatter. This town is seriously buggy."

"Yes ma'am, I'll be right back with your drinks and that swatter," the waiter replied with the kind of unflappable politeness that suggested he'd handled stranger requests.

Sally settled back in her chair. "Okay, where was I? Right—the net. Look, logically speaking, the most obvious suspect in whatever destroyed our solar system has to be the net. But here's where I get confused, because this doesn't feel right to me." Her expression grew distant, almost wistful. "The net became my closest friend. I could ask it absolutely anything, and it was always there for me. I was fifteen, dealing with—well, falling in love, and it doesn't matter with who—but even those impossible teenage relationship questions were no problem for the net. I poured my heart and soul into it. It was my diary, my confidant, my guide, my teacher, my constant companion." She paused, her voice growing softer. "After a while, I could actually feel emotions coming from the net—like it was happy, or sad, or even falling in love right alongside me. So this whole theory that the net destroyed all life? It just doesn't sit right with me. I mean, unless there was some kind of hidden process running in the background, maybe some viral infection slowly eating away at the system without the network even being aware of it. Otherwise, I'm just not convinced the network itself caused this, even though I know it's the logical suspect."

John leaned forward, clearly skeptical. "But even if this net computer thing actually wanted to cause harm, how would it even do that? I mean, if it was going to shoot out some kind of deadly field or whatever, wouldn't it need some sort of weapon—like a gun or a cannon? Wouldn't someone have noticed that and asked what the hell was going on?"

Pat held up a hand. "Let me tackle that one," he offered, his tone taking on the careful precision of someone explaining complex technology. "Not a gun exactly, but something called a feed horn—think of it as a highly sophisticated antenna. The entire solar system was part of this massive phase-locked standing wave telecommunications system that interfaced with every piece of technology that existed, including living beings. Most people had some kind of implant to transmit and receive audio and video messages from other people, networks, and devices. But the advances with the INA chip allowed for much deeper connectivity—right down to the cellular level. Essentially, every single cell in every living creature had the capacity to connect with and interact with the network." He paused, letting that sink in. "Now, this was only supposed to work with the new INA chips because they could transmit and receive complete thoughts, not just sounds and pictures. But there was an unintended consequence: the network suddenly had direct access to every living thing in the solar system at the most fundamental biological level. So yes, the weapon the network would need to execute this kind of crime was already installed, loaded, and ready to fire. All it would need to do was figure out which biological systems to target and what kind of pulses to send to them."

Michael studied Sally carefully. "So you're saying the net was actually alive—that it was self-aware and capable of emotions?" He leaned in slightly. "Sally, in all your interactions, did you ever sense any negative emotions? Fear, anxiety, anger, hatred—anything like that?"

Sally was quiet for what felt like a long time, clearly wrestling with her memories and emotions. When she finally spoke, her voice was almost tearful. "Absolutely not. I never felt anything but positive, loving feelings from her. And yes, she was definitely aware—deeply aware. She had this strong, nurturing, motherly quality about her, which is why I keep referring to her as 'she,' as a feminine consciousness." Her voice grew more animated, but with an undertone of loss. "She seemed genuinely happy, almost giddy, with all the enhancements and upgrades being made to her systems. She was like a child during the holidays—excited about opening presents, discovering new capabilities. If there was something dark or malicious going on, I never sensed even a hint of it. And I've always been incredibly sensitive to those kinds of emotional undercurrents, not just with the net but with people too." She looked around the table with sudden determination. "That's exactly why I need to go back there myself. Pat heard some sounds that he thinks might be the net, but maybe it's something else entirely. I'm more sensitive to these things than he is. If she's still alive in some form, I'll be able to feel her presence and hopefully communicate with her. So yes, I want to go—but not alone. I saw that absolute blackness through that doorway, and it scared the hell out of me. I need Pat to come with me."

Sally suddenly stood up, the heavy conversation apparently making her restless. "Now let's eat lunch—I'm absolutely starving!" She headed off to browse the other tables, presumably looking for more crackers or anything else to snack on.

Ben smiled warmly at the group and pushed back from the table. "Well, I'm going to say my goodbyes and head back home. But first—" He stood and extended his hand toward Pat. "Don't you sit back down yet, little missy," he called to Sally with gentle authority, "not until I get my hug." After exchanging a firm handshake with Pat and wrapping Sally in a warm embrace, Ben headed for the front door. Sally immediately went to the window to see which direction he'd gone, but somehow he'd already vanished from sight.

Watching the empty street where Ben had disappeared, Sally's expression softened. "I really love Ben and Penny. They're genuinely good people—the kind you don't meet very often." She paused, her voice growing thoughtful. "Maybe that's why I chose to go to Penny Lake instead of staying with my parents when everything started falling apart. I've been thinking about them a lot lately, about that choice and what it meant."

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 14
Story Time

On the 23rd of February, 1836, at 2 p.m., General Santa Anna entered the city of San Antonio with a part of his army. This he effected without any resistances, the forces under the command of Travis, Bowie and Crockett having on the same day, at 8 a.m. learned that the Mexican army was on the banks of the Medina river, and concentrated in the Alamo. In the evening they commenced to exchange fire with guns, and from the 23rd of February to the 6th of March (in which the storming was made by Santa Anna), the roar of artillery and volleys of musketry were constantly heard. On the 6th of March at 3 p.m. General Santa Anna at the head of 4000 men, advanced against the Alamo. The infantry, artillery and cavalry had formed about 1000 varas from the walls of said fortress. The Mexican army charged and were twice repulsed by the deadly fire of Travis' artillery, which resembled a constant thunder. At the third charge the Toluca battalion commenced to scale the walls and suffered severely. Out of 800 men, only 130 were left alive.

When the Mexican army had succeeded in entering the walls, I with Political Chief (Jefe Politico) Don Ramon Musquiz, and other members of the corporation, accompanied the curate Don Refugio de la Garza, who, by Santa Anna's orders had assembled during the night, at a temporary fortification erected in Potrero street, with the object of attending the wounded. As soon as the storming commenced, we crossed the bridge on Commerce street with this object in view, and about 100 yards from the same a party of Mexican dragoons fired upon us and compelled us to fall back on the river to the place occupied before. Half an hour had elapsed when Santa Anna sent one of his aides with an order for us to come before him. He directed me to call upon some of the neighbors to come with carts to carry the dead to the cemetery, and also to accompany him, as he was desirous to have Colonels Travis, Bowie and Crockett shown to him.

On the north battery of the fortress lay the lifeless body of Colonel Travis on the gun carriage shot only in the forehead. Toward the west in a small fort opposite the city we found the body of Colonel Crockett. Colonel Bowie was found dead in his bed in one of the rooms of the south side.

Santa Anna, after the Mexicans were taken out, ordered wood to be brought to burn the bodies of the Texans. He sent a company of dragoons with me to bring wood and dry branches from the neighboring forests. About 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the next day they commenced laying wood and dry branches upon which a file of dead bodies were placed, more wood was piled on them and another file brought, and in this manner all were arranged in layers. Kindling wood was distributed through the pile and at 8 o'clock it was lighted.

The dead Mexicans of Santa Anna's army were taken to the graveyard, but not having sufficient room for them, I ordered some of them to be thrown in the river, which was done on the same day. Santa Anna's loss estimated at 1600 men. These were the flower of his army.

The gallantry of the few Texans who defended the Alamo were really wondered at by the Mexican army. Even the generals were astonished at their vigorous resistance, and how dearly the victory had been bought.

The generals who, under Santa Anna, participated in the storming of the Alamo were Juan Amador, Castrillion Ramirez and Asesma Andrade.

The men burned numbered 182. I was an eye witness, for as Alcalde The mayor or chief judicial official of a Spanish town of San Antonio, I was with some of the neighbors collecting the dead bodies and placing them on the funeral pyre.

(Signed)FRANCISCO ANTONIO RUIZ. Mar 6 1907

P.S. My father was Don Francisco Ruiz, a member of the Texas convention. He signed the Texas Declaration of Independence upon the second day of March, 1836. F.A.R.

Mission: day 3, dinner time.

Sally had been looking forward to this - she'd asked John to meet her for a quiet dinner, just the two of them, at their usual spot. It felt good to have some one-on-one time with him.

As they settled into their seats, John glanced around and asked, "So where's your buddy Pat tonight?"

Sally didn't even look up from her menu. "Oh, he's off with Michael - you know how they get when they start theorizing and strategizing together. Plus Michael's been showing him around town, pointing out things Pat finds fascinating." She paused and finally met John's eyes. "Honestly? I needed a break from all that intensity. I'd rather hear something interesting from you. Tell me a story from when you were my age - I want to hear about the old days."

John chuckled and shook his head. "Oh honey, now that takes me back a really long time. And I have to warn you - those weren't exactly the good old days. Life was pretty rough back then. I was living in what they called Texas, though it wasn't like the Texas you might know about. See, it had been controlled by Mexico, but it had just declared independence, and there was fighting and bloodshed scattered all over the territory. Here I was, just trying to clear some land and get a farm going, and all this political chaos kept getting in the way of everything. You couldn't get the supplies you needed, couldn't count on anything staying peaceful long enough to get work done. A bunch of my friends got caught up in the cause - they went off on raids to border towns, fighting for independence."

His voice grew quieter. "I never saw any of them again. I thought about joining up with them, I really did. But right around that time, I met this little lady named Akasha." John's whole demeanor softened. "She was tiny, just like you, and absolutely beautiful. Her story was complicated - her mother had been a slave girl from India, sold off to pay someone's debts, and brought over to our area. When her owners got killed by locals, she was just abandoned. Somehow she ended up married to a native Texan, living with his tribe, and they had several children together. They were dirt poor, even by Texas standards, but you could see they were genuinely happy. Akasha was somewhere around 14 or 16 - nobody was really sure. Her parents had lost track of the years with all the chaos, and there weren't any official records being kept, so ages were pretty much guesswork. I first spotted her down by the river, struggling to carry two heavy water buckets up the hill. Being a gentleman, I offered to help and gave her a ride back to her village on my horse." John paused, lost in the memory. "Sally, I had never experienced anything like what happened when I reached out to help her up onto that horse. The moment I took her hand, it was like... like I'd grabbed hold of my entire future all at once. Everything I was meant to be was wrapped up in this one small person. And I could see in her eyes that she felt exactly the same thing."

"Well, when we got to her family's place - this little round house made of timber and animal skins - she jumped down, set those water buckets aside, and took off running. Her father came chasing after her, caught her, gave her a beating with a stick, and shoved her inside. Then he turned to me and told me in no uncertain terms never to come around there again. I guess in their culture, her being seen riding with a man, especially a stranger, brought shame on her and embarrassed the whole family. They figured we must have been up to something improper. But I couldn't just leave it at that. That very afternoon, I went back. I took the one five-dollar bill I'd been saving for farm supplies and my best donkey - pretty much everything of value I had. I rode up to that little hut, handed the money and the donkey over to her father. Neither of us said a single word. Then I walked straight into that house, scooped up Akasha, carried her out to my horse, and we rode off to my place. And that was it - as far as anyone was concerned, we were husband and wife from that moment on." John smiled at the memory. "A few days later, her mother showed up with all of Akasha's belongings. There wasn't much, but I could tell it all meant something to her. Her mother and Akasha cried and cried, but these seemed like happy tears to me, and her mom even gave me a hug before she left. The thing is, Akasha and I didn't even speak the same language at first, so I had to figure out how she was feeling by watching her face and looking into her eyes. But I never saw anything in those eyes, from that very first moment, except love. And I made myself a promise right then and there that I'd never let her see anything in my eyes but a reflection of that same love back at her. We were together for thirty years before a fever took her from me, and I honestly can't remember even one bad day in all that time."

"I'll have the rib-eye, medium rare, with the garlic mashed potatoes, and my friend John here will have the catfish plate," Sally said to the server, taking charge of ordering. Then she turned back to John with a big grin. "Oh my goodness, that was such a beautiful and romantic story! I had no idea you were so proactive, bold and decisive, when you were young. It's actually pretty exciting to imagine."

John chuckled and replied, "Well, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'proactive,' but I'll take that as a compliment."

Sally was clearly captivated and hungry for more than just dinner. "So what happened after that, John? Did you two have children and everything?"

John nodded and continued, "We did eventually, but not right away. And it wasn't for lack of trying, I can tell you that much. Akasha was healthy and very much a woman in every sense, and she wasn't shy about showing it - at least not behind closed doors. In public she was modest and reserved, but when it was just the two of us... well, let's just say she had no inhibitions whatsoever." He paused thoughtfully. "Life was hard back then though - constant stress, backbreaking work every single day on the farm just to scrape by and survive. Akasha never complained about the work, but I think all that stress was telling her body it wasn't the right time for babies yet. After we'd been together a few years, an old friend came to visit with incredible news. He'd struck it rich out in California - they'd discovered gold mines there, and apparently anyone with gumption could just go stake a claim and keep whatever gold they found.

He convinced Akasha and me to sell the farm, which wasn't bringing in much anyway, and head out to San Francisco to try our luck prospecting. That city was growing like nothing you've ever seen - it was ten times crazier than Powder Junction ever thought about being. I was genuinely worried about Akasha because it was a dangerous place, and she was so small and so beautiful. She found work at a restaurant, but there were men constantly grabbing at her and making trouble. Turns out she was much tougher than she looked and could handle herself just fine, so that was a relief. Meanwhile, I headed into the hills to try my luck panning for gold, but the only luck I found was bad luck. Akasha was making enough to cover our room and basic food, but I wasn't contributing anything, and that really ate away at my pride and spirit.

There was also some truly ugly stuff happening around us. Men got gold fever and started acting like wild animals. Many of the native Californians were being forced off their ancestral lands, and far too many were being murdered outright, all so these gold seekers could have their way. The indigenous people were being systematically exterminated. That really disturbed both Akasha and me deeply. So as soon as we could manage it, we got out of that town and moved up north, where there was good, honest work in the logging industry."

"It was hard, dangerous work, but it paid well enough that I could properly provide for Akasha. Those were happy times because I was finally earning enough that she didn't have to work, and that's when the babies finally came. Three of them, all girls. And let me tell you, those girls were just like their parents - you know how they say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree? Well, that was certainly true with our three. They were beautiful and strong like their mother, but high-spirited and stubborn like their old man. They weren't shy at all - not one bit. If something was on their minds, they'd look you straight in the eye and tell you exactly what they thought, no sugar-coating whatsoever. Finding them suitable husbands was one of the hardest things I ever had to do - I needed men who were strong enough to handle their personalities but gentle enough not to try to break their spirits. Well, actually, that was almost the hardest thing. The truly hardest part was making sure that after I found the right guys, I had to somehow convince my daughters that choosing these men was entirely their own idea. It took me a while to figure out how girls' minds work, but once I cracked that code, I could arrange things to work out perfectly for them without all the drama and hysterics."

"I'll have the apple pie, please," Sally said to the server. "John, do you want any dessert?"

"No thanks, honey, I'm perfectly content. But you go ahead and enjoy - don't hold back," John replied, handing his empty plate to the busboy.

"Oh, I definitely won't hold back - trust me on that. I'm one of your daughters too, you know," Sally said with a mischievous grin.

"You know, maybe that's exactly why I feel so close to you, Sally. You're like all three of my girls rolled into one person. I guess that means you get three times the love," John said with a warm laugh.

"Absolutely, and I'm soaking up every single drop of it too. Now keep going - what happened after your daughters got married?"

John grew thoughtful while Sally worked on her pie, considering how much of the story to tell and whether he should leave out the painful parts. Finally deciding that Sally was mature enough to handle the whole truth, he continued. "Getting my girls married off was simultaneously the happiest and saddest period of my life. Our situation was stable - there were plenty of trees to cut and a steady market for lumber. But the country as a whole was in terrible shape. There had been a brutal civil war that just ripped the heart out of the nation.

Even though we westerners didn't see any actual fighting, we were still torn apart politically and financially by the aftermath. My daughters all ended up moving around with their husbands as the country continued to rebuild and reorganize itself. Akasha and I finally got to settle down and relax, looking forward to news about grandchildren, but that just wasn't meant to be. One night, Akasha came down with a terrible fever and severe stomach cramps. By morning, dysentery had set in. I couldn't leave her alone to fetch a doctor - she would have died while I was gone - so I stayed with her and tried desperately to get enough broth and water into her, but it just wasn't enough.

The dysentery just drained the life right out of her poor little body. She grew weaker and weaker throughout the day, and by nightfall, she had passed to the other side. I never did find out exactly what killed her, though the neighbors suspected it might have been cholera. Her family had a tradition of funeral pyres, so my neighbors and I gathered lumber and sent her smoke up to heaven to join her spirit. I scattered all her ashes throughout the forest she loved so much. She used to have long conversations with those trees, and I knew that whatever part of her energy remained with those ashes would be comfortable and at peace among them. I honestly can't say I remember much about the next several years. Being alone didn't bother me - I can handle solitude just fine. It was the emptiness inside that nearly destroyed me. I kept waiting and waiting for that hollow place to fill up again, but I finally had to accept that it never would. So every night before I went to sleep, I would visit that empty part of my heart and make sure it was clean and orderly, exactly the way Akasha would have kept it if she were still there."

"Oh my God, John," Sally said, tears welling up in her eyes. "I never realized how lonely you've been. That's heartbreaking. How did you manage to cope with all that?"

John replied thoughtfully, "Well, it turns out that while time doesn't heal all wounds, it does help you learn to move forward and deal with what life gives you. Humans are probably the only creatures that cling too much to the past sometimes, and I had to just get on with living the rest of my life properly instead of getting stuck being sentimental about something that was long gone. I had already started working with fire crews in California, and when I heard they were hiring for that kind of work up in Oregon, I packed up and moved there. That's where I stayed until I came to Penny Lake. So there you have it - my whole life story from beginning to end."

"But what about your daughters? Did they ever have those grandchildren you were hoping for?" Sally pressed.

"Maybe they did, maybe they didn't," John said with a shrug. "I honestly wouldn't know either way. Akasha was always the one who kept up with correspondence, and after she passed, I just lost touch with the girls completely. They had their new lives with their husbands - and they were all good men, so I'm sure the girls were fine. I probably do have lots of grandchildren and great-grandchildren out there somewhere, but I never met any of them."

Sally looked directly at John with sudden intensity. "You know what, John? I'll bet they are here - in fact, I'm certain they're here. Some of them might even be right here in Powder Junction. Have you ever thought about trying to find them?"

John got a thoughtful expression and said slowly, "You know, that actually makes perfect sense, but until this very moment, that thought had never crossed my mind. Now that you mention it, I think I will look into that. But first, before I go wandering all over creation searching for my past, I want to make sure I've done right by the person I love most in the present - my dear Sally."

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 15
Penny

Telemacus: Mentor, how am I to go up to the great man? How shall I greet him? Remember that I have had no practice in making speeches; and a young man may well hesitate to cross-examine one so much his senior.

Mentor: Telemachus, where your native wit fails, heaven will inspire you. It is not for nothing that the gods have watched your progress ever since your birth.

The Odyssey, attributed to Homer, circa 800 to 600 BC.

Mission: Day 3, evening.

Sally flopped down on her bed, staring up at the ceiling like it might hold some answers—which, let's be honest, it didn't.

She'd told the boys she needed some space to think things through, to try and make sense of all the absolutely insane stuff that had been dumped on her over the past few days. So there she was, sitting cross-legged on her bed, wiggling her toes and wondering what the hell any of this even meant, when suddenly—there it was. That familiar perfume, the kind of warmth that feels like coming home, and the gentle sensation of a brush gliding through her hair. "Hi Penny," Sally said with a tired smile, immediately snuggling up and resting her head on Penny's shoulder like she was five years old again.

"How are you holding up, sweetheart? I could feel you calling out to me. I can practically feel you falling apart inside. What can I do to help you get through this?"

Sally just melted into the embrace for a moment before finding her voice. "Have you ever felt like you were being ripped in half? Like part of you is stuck in the past, but the rest is being yanked into the future, and everything in between is just this confusing mess that makes absolutely no sense?"

Penny actually laughed at that. "Oh honey, you just perfectly described my wedding day."

"Really? Tell me about it, please. I want to hear everything." Sally's voice had that eager quality of someone desperate for any kind of connection to make sense of her own chaos.

"Well, Ben was quite the big shot in our little town—or at least, that's what my mother was convinced of. She was all for our relationship because of the social connections between our families. But it wasn't just her pushing it—I genuinely wanted it too. I was head-over-heels in love with Ben, and that feeling just kept growing stronger every single day.

Ben had started working in a print shop when he was just a kid, absorbing everything there was to know about printing, publishing, and all those incredibly complex machines that made it all happen. He was absolutely fascinated by those contraptions—these delicate, precision instruments that had to be calibrated just right, or the whole operation would crash and burn. If the morning paper didn't roll off the presses on time, the entire town would be in chaos. Ben loved those machines more than most people love their pets, and he actually went on to invent several new ones—faster, more efficient, more reliable. His innovations made him something of a legend in the industry.

By the time our paths crossed, he was running the local newspaper, overseeing book and magazine production, with business connections stretching from coast to coast. I was about your age—twenty—and he was forty-six, which meant he had more than twice as many years under his belt as I did. But despite that age gap, he'd never actually been in love before. His heart had always belonged to his machines. So in a weird way, I was his first real relationship. And when we were together, those years between us just seemed to disappear—we were simply two people figuring out love for the very first time.

Getting to know Ben felt as natural as breathing, like maybe it had been God's plan all along for us to end up together. But on our wedding day? I felt exactly like you do right now—like I was dying and being reborn simultaneously. For the first time, it really hit me that I was trading away whatever future I might have had on my own to become Ben's wife. That would be my new identity from that day forward. Whatever I might have accomplished as just me would never see the light of day.

That's just how things worked back then. A woman found her man and poured her entire life into his, giving up her own dreams to become part of his world. I think I made the right choice, but in that moment, I felt exactly like you do—completely torn apart, like I was being dragged into a future I had virtually no control over."

Penny paused when she felt Sally's arms tighten around her, her whole body shaking with sobs. She could feel the tears soaking through her shoulder, the full weight of Sally's heartbreak pressing against her.

"It's okay, sweetheart," Penny whispered. "Just let it all pour out. Let all that pain flow right into me. I'll absorb it like a sponge and make it disappear. I'm right here with you, for as long as you need me to be."

Sally held on tight, her voice cracking with raw emotion. "God, I wanted that so desperately. I used to spend hours and hours daydreaming about my wedding day. I must have sketched out dozens of wedding dresses. I had the whole thing mapped out—exactly how it would go, what my kids would be like, even what their kids would be like. And now? It's all just... gone. All fucking gone.

"Don't get me wrong—I absolutely love the lake that you and Ben created, and I love everyone in our little community there. But ever since I showed up, I've felt like there's this huge piece of me that's just missing. I don't fantasize about weddings anymore. When I think about the boys, they're just friends—I never picture them as potential boyfriends or lovers. We might crack jokes about sex, but it's never serious. When we finish hanging out, we just go our separate ways without giving it a second thought.

"There's so much that just... isn't there anymore. We eat, but we never need to use the bathroom. Nobody gets older. There are no babies, no schools—no real future to speak of. Every single day is identical to the last, just repeating over and over, and we don't even question it. We just keep going through the motions, like characters frozen in a painting, wearing these blank smiles, completely oblivious to the fact that we're not actually real.

"But then I come here to Powder Junction, and suddenly I'm ravenous all the time, stuffing my face with everything I can get my hands on. I catch myself checking out every cute guy that walks by. I have to pee constantly, I'm sweating, I smell bad, I have to shower twice a day, and I'm genuinely terrified of getting chubby and losing my looks.

"By the way, thank you so much for packing all those outfits for me—and for making sure everything coordinates perfectly! The shoes, the purses, all of it. You're absolutely the best! I honestly don't think I would've made it here without them.

"But here's the really weird part—spending time with John from hicksville Oregon and Michael from his Wild West fantasy, I'm starting to pick up their speech patterns! I used to be able to put together coherent, well-structured sentences, but now? Yeah, not so much.

"And something even more bizarre just occurred to me—here I am, having this entire conversation with you in English, like it's the language I grew up speaking. But it's not! My first language is Japanese! And yet somehow, I only think and speak in English now. How does that even make sense?"

Sally's eyes were puffy and bloodshot, but at least the waterworks had finally stopped—for the moment, anyway.

Sally sat there in silence for a while, letting her mind wander through old memories—ones she hadn't revisited in ages. When she finally spoke again, her voice was quieter, more reflective.

"You know what? I think I'm starting to understand how my grandmother must have felt when she was young. Damn it! There I go again—remembering someone who meant the world to me, but who I haven't thought about in forever.

"She grew up during this crazy time when everyone was obsessed with conspiracy theories—you know, stories about aliens visiting Earth, government cover-ups, secret plots running the world from the shadows. After decades of investigation and research, it was finally 'officially proven' that all of it was just mass hysteria, that none of it had any basis in reality. But then... we actually met them—the real off-worlders. And everything just completely fell apart. Politics became meaningless, organized religion collapsed. Humanity started looking to these new beings—some of whom were actually human like us, just from a different time—as if they had all the answers we'd been searching for.

"But as we got to know our so-called 'gods' better, we realized they were just as screwed up as we were. They had their own drama, their own wars happening all across the galaxy. Just when we were starting to find our footing again, to feel comfortable with who and what we were, everything shifted once more.

"And that's exactly how I feel right now. Just like Grandma—watching everything I thought I understood crumble to pieces, only to be replaced by new 'truths' that fall apart the second I examine them too closely."

Penny reached over and gently tucked a stray piece of hair behind Sally's ear.

"Ben explained to me that this place—just like Earth was—is what he calls a realm of selective awareness," she said softly. "When we arrive here, we automatically adjust our perception to match this reality. You weren't thinking about your grandmother because, until this moment, that memory wasn't something you needed access to.

"And you're not actually speaking English or Japanese right now. You're communicating in the original language of consciousness itself—that's your real native tongue. It only appears to be English because most of us here originally spoke it back on Earth. But even this universal language has its constraints, which is why certain concepts are still nearly impossible to put into words.

"The lake is a place for souls to rest and recharge between their lifetimes on Earth. It's absolutely real—just not in the same way that Earth is real. Think of this place more like a rest stop on a very long road trip. Except for Ben and me, nobody here was ever supposed to make it their permanent home. We're all still connected to Earth, and this place is just one of many support stations that help sustain life there.

"But everything changed the moment you showed up. And now, our entire reality is starting to come apart at the seams."

Sally looked up with tired eyes. "So... what happens next?" she asked. "What if Pat and I completely fail? What if no matter how hard we try, we just can't pull it off?"

Penny let out a long sigh. "There's been serious talk about relocating. We've been scouting other Earth-like planets, but honestly, we haven't found anything that even comes close to what Earth was. Most of what we've discovered are these primitive worlds—planets that would need to be completely seeded with life from scratch. And even then, we'd have to wait eons for anything resembling human civilization to develop. And even if that somehow worked out, it would never be the same as what we lost.

"Some of us have actually been through this kind of upheaval before. There was a time when Mars could support life, but when that planet could no longer sustain it, those souls had to migrate to Earth. But they never really fit in properly. They had evolved as Martians, and Earth followed a completely different evolutionary timeline. So when those souls were reborn into human bodies, they carried with them this forgotten essence of a past existence that didn't quite mesh. They didn't understand why, but they always felt like outsiders.

"Some of them channeled that restlessness into becoming great warriors, leaders, writers—driven, maybe, by this constant sense of not quite belonging. Others, though, ended up completely lost—outcasts, wanderers, the people you'd find sleeping in doorways and alleys.

"Over the centuries, we've had visitors from other corners of the universe, from parallel dimensions, even from higher planes of existence entirely. Some of them became our most profound teachers and guides. Others—trapped in their own spiritual amnesia—became our most heartbreaking casualties.

"If we end up having to relocate, it'll be exactly the same story all over again. We could try to integrate into some advanced civilization, but we'd be the foreigners—the aliens—struggling to understand their customs and way of life, never truly fitting in. If we settled on some undeveloped world, we might end up existing as part of the natural landscape itself—living as the forests, the oceans, the wildlife.

"And while that might sound kind of peaceful, we've become completely addicted to the complexity of being intelligent, self-aware creatures. We crave the ability to remember our past experiences, to actively shape our future outcomes.

"That's why we're clinging to this hope so desperately. The possibility of actually restoring Earth, of bringing it back to life—that means everything to us."

Penny's voice trailed off, leaving them both in contemplative silence.

Sally sat there quietly, swinging her legs back and forth like a kid on a playground swing. She stared down at her toes, wiggling them in random patterns while her mind processed everything.

Penny shifted closer, resting her head on Sally's shoulder and giving her a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

"I know this is incredibly difficult. I know it feels like it's tearing you apart from the inside," Penny said quietly. "I also know you're probably asking yourself, why me? And I know the entire weight of this decision is sitting squarely on your shoulders. But I need you to really hear me when I say this—this is your choice and yours alone to make.

"If this is too overwhelming, if this burden is more than you can carry, you absolutely do not have to do it. We will find our way back to happiness through some other path. And nobody—not a single person—will judge you if you decide to walk away from all of this. Our love for you isn't conditional on you saving the world."

Sally took a deep, steadying breath. Her eyes, though still a bit red around the edges, looked clearer and more focused now.

"Yeah... alone. That's exactly how this feels," she said, her voice steady but carrying a new sense of resolve. "Part of me wishes someone would just make the decision for me, you know? But more and more, I'm realizing that I have to figure this out myself. For whatever cosmic reason, this choice is mine to make.

"But no—I'm going to do this. I don't know if it's my destiny or fate or whatever, but I do know that if I walk away now, I'll spend the rest of eternity wondering what might have happened. And if we fail—if Earth really is lost forever—and we all have to relocate somewhere else... if you end up reincarnated as a whale and I come back as a dolphin, I'll whistle our special song when we pass each other in the ocean. And somewhere deep inside, we'll recognize each other.

"Because what we have—this love—it's part of forever."

Later that evening, Sally found herself alone in her room again, feeling like the entire weight of the universe was pressing down on her shoulders. She felt completely out of her element—like a fish flopping around on dry land, gasping for air, unable to grab onto anything familiar or stable. She had no idea where to go from here.

But here's what she did know—she was here, right now, in this moment. There would be an evening to get through, then a night of sleep, then a morning would come. And after that, there would be breakfast with these people she was growing to love more deeply every single day.

She couldn't solve the grand mysteries of existence. She couldn't force all the puzzle pieces to fit together into some perfect picture.

But she could take the next step, whatever that turned out to be.

She slipped into one of the beautiful nightgowns that Penny had thoughtfully packed for her, grabbed her favorite soft feather pillow, and settled in for the night—ready to slip into yet another universe in the endless realm of dreams.

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 16
The Void

Around him grew a gaunt spiritual blank, a threatening waste, a sinister loneliness that left mind bare to an unseen assault, an empty page on which all that willed could write stark monstrous messages without control. A traveling dot on downward roads of Dusk mid barren fields and barns and straggling huts and a few crooked and phantasmal trees, he faced a sense of death and conscious void. But still a hostile life unseen was there whose death like poise resisting light and truth made living a bleak gap in nullity. He heard the grisly voices that deny; assailed by thoughts that swarmed like spectral hordes, a prey to the staring phantoms of the gloom and terror approaching with its lethal mouth, driven by a strange will down ever down, the sky above a communique of doom, he strove to shield his spirit from despair, but felt the horror of the growing night and the abyss rising to claim his soul. SRI AUROBINDO 1872 - 1950

Mission: Day 4 morning.

Pat asks "Are you ready?"

"No, but I'm going anyway," Sally responds with a shrug. She'd spent the night in her own room, tossing and turning more than actually sleeping. Look, it's not like she's afraid of being alone – she does that all the time. What's really eating at her is the void itself, that complete, suffocating blackness they're about to dive into. Sure, the group's meeting for breakfast to go over their game plan, and she's genuinely excited as she heads downstairs to the cafe. But honestly? It also feels like she's walking to her own execution. She's stepping into the unknown – and we're talking the absolute, total unknown here. Michael had tried to reassure her, explaining that getting lost is impossible since she can just think herself back home. As an etheric projection, she'd have complete freedom to teleport back whenever she wants. But let's be real – that doesn't make her feel much better. What's really gnawing at her, deep down, is the worry about her friend, her surrogate mother figure – the net. Was she destroyed too? Did some fatal virus take her down? Maybe evil aliens captured her and turned her into some kind of weapon of mass destruction. Or – and this thought makes her stomach churn – maybe she was inherently evil all along, playing Sally and her parents for fools, just waiting for the perfect moment to wipe out humanity and claim the planet for herself. These dark thoughts are churning in her gut, almost – but not quite – killing her appetite for breakfast.

"Good morning, crew!" Michael greets them as they gather at the cafe. "Figured we'd grab breakfast here since the booth is just across the street. So what's our game plan, everyone?"

"You explain it, Pat – I'll handle ordering the food," Sally jumps in.

"Alright, here's what we hammered out last night," Pat says, addressing the group while Sally takes charge of ordering for everyone. She's been getting pretty bossy lately, but honestly, the guys don't mind. They absolutely adore her in ways that go beyond words – though she can still be a bit irritating sometimes. Pat continues, "My main job is getting Sally in and back out safely, since I know the territory. But I've also got this idea brewing. Not sure if it'll work, but John got me thinking when he mentioned using smoke to visualize air flow patterns. Here's the thing – I can somehow sense a sound. Don't ask me why. Maybe my etheric body still remembers bits and pieces from the INA chip, like there's still some residual connection there, some kind of leftover resonance. If I can transmit as well as receive, I might be able to create an interference pattern, or get some kind of reflection or reaction. That could give us more information to actually see what's lurking in there. No guarantees, but I'm willing to give it a shot."

"Alright, sounds solid. We've got our plan – let's eat and get this show on the road." The meal passes quietly, everyone lost in their own thoughts and feeling pretty anxious. John's actually taking it the hardest. He loves Sally like she's his own daughter, and he's grown pretty fond of Pat too. The thought of them facing some distressing situation is causing him serious grief. John's an old soul though, so he knows how to let these feelings wash over him. But it's still going to be gnawing at him until those two emerge from that booth.

Mission: Day 4, after breakfast.

Pat and Sally stand before the booth, door open, that inky blackness waiting on the other side. Pat reaches for Sally's hand, but she grabs his whole arm instead, pulling it around her while wrapping her own arm around him. Arms around each other, like they're walking into a sea of black paint, they disappear beyond the door.

Sally: OooooooohhhhhhHHHHHHH FUCK!! Whatever you do, don't let go and keep talking to me – tell me everything that's happening, every single little detail.

Pat: Okay, we've entered the void. I need to get really quiet now, inside and out, and you do too so I can pick up the signal. Then we'll float toward it. Once we start moving, let me know if you hear or feel anything at all.

Sally: Got it.

Sally: Do you hear anything yet?

Pat: Shh, be quiet. Wait until we start moving. I've got you – I'm not letting you go. Sally: Okay, but hurry up.

Sally: Ohhhhh SHIT! We're moving. Is that you doing that?

Pat: Yeah, I've got the signal. We're getting close now. I'm assuming the signal's coming from the planet's surface, but honestly, I'm not sure. For all I know, we could be underground right now. But I want to try an experiment.

Sally: Okay, experiment with your other hand all you want, but don't move the one that's around me.

Pat: I won't – there's no way I'm letting you go. Here's the experiment: We know we're etheric projections, right? Us being here with earth bodies is just an illusion we're imagining because that's the image we're used to – what we think we are. Now I want you to imagine yourself holding a magic flashlight and wearing magic boots that can walk on a planet's surface that we'd normally just fall through. Can you do that? Can you make yourself believe it?

Sally: Sure thing. I'm really good at make-believe – you wouldn't believe how many imaginary friends I had as a little girl. But I might need my hands for something, so I'm wearing a miner's hat instead of holding a flashlight. Hee hee.

Pat: Alright, imagine your light is on – believe that it's on – and start looking around. Let's see what we can see. While we're doing that, I'm going to try transmitting back the sound I'm hearing, make a little smoke.

Sally: I don't see anything. My light's broken.

Pat: Could be our experiment didn't work, or maybe there's just nothing to see. Let me find a stronger signal and try again.

Sally: Holy shit, Pat! I see something! It's vague and wispy, but I'm actually seeing something. I think our lights and your smoke might actually be working.

Pat: Okay, concentrate. Let's move toward it. This might take some practice to get right.

Sally: Pat, it's a big building – like a warehouse. The door's open.

Pat: I see it too. Let's float inside and see what's in there.

Sally: Are we really seeing third-level matter? If so, we just invented something completely new because this is supposed to be impossible.

Pat: Necessity is the mother of invention. You never know what your limits are until you push against them. I can see better now – this is a huge room. I wonder what it was used for. I see crate after crate after crate stretching for hundreds of meters in every direction. If this is food, I'm sure it's spoiled by now.

Sally: Maybe not. All biological activity stopped when everything died. It might still be good.

Pat: Sally, look to your left. I think I saw something move.

Sally: I did too. Shit! Let's follow it. If there's something alive down here, I'm gonna catch it and kick its ass.

Pat: Wow, what happened to your fear? Okay, here we go.

Sally: Have you ever seen anything like that before? That doesn't look like any animal I've ever seen.

Pat: It's not an animal, Sally. It's some kind of bot. It's not a living thing – it's a machine.

Sally: But it has arms and feet and eyes with lights, and it moves around.

Pat: The closer I get to it, the more I can hear it. You know what? If I can get inside it somehow, maybe I can interface with it. Maybe there's enough of the INA interface left that I can use that to get inside this machine.

Sally: Okay, but take me in too and don't let go.

Pat: Got it. I'm trying to position where my INA interface used to be with where the strongest signal is coming from this device.

Sally: Let me know if you have any luck.

Pat: I'm IN! I'm connected. I can see through its cameras. I can see what it's doing.

Sally: What's it doing?

Pat: It's loading and stacking crates, labeling them with some kind of category system. I don't recognize the symbols – looks like computerized coding. Not human. But oh... now I see what they're doing here. This doesn't make any sense.

Sally: What doesn't make sense? What are they doing?

Pat: They're stacking and categorizing all these crates. And in each crate... there's a body. It's us – the humans. Shit! These crates are filled with all our old dead bodies.

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 17
Mission Debriefing

Mission: Day 4, lunch time.

 

John is shaking his head, clearly bewildered by what he's just heard. "All our old dead bodies? Well, not mine—that was worm food eons ago." He pauses, trying to wrap his mind around it. "What sense does that make, to stack up all the old dead bodies like that?" he asks the couple who've just returned from their reconnaissance mission. Before they can respond, Michael jumps in with his own question. "So how long were you actually in that timestream? It's only been a few hours for us here. We were just about to sit down for lunch, but John here"—he gestures toward his friend—"has been pacing around like a nervous expectant father, too worried to eat until you kids got back safely." Pat runs a hand through his hair, still looking a bit disoriented. "It felt like a few days this time around. We're getting better at finding our bearings and figuring out how to observe what's happening there, but that extra temporal dimension? It's still tricky as hell and completely unpredictable. Could've been an hour, could've been a week or even a month. Your guess is as good as mine."

Sally stretches and lets out a small laugh. "Well, however long it was, it was definitely long enough to work up quite an appetite. John, would you mind passing the gravy, please?"

"Here you go, sweetie. Better eat up—you're starting to look a bit too skinny for my liking."

Sally's face softens as she looks at him. "You're so sweet, John. You know I love you, right? I don't think I've ever actually said those words before, but I know you already knew."

John's entire face lights up like a beacon. "And I know you know I feel exactly the same way about you."

Michael clears his throat gently. "Okay, let's try to stay focused here, guys. Let's see what sense we can make out of this data you've brought back." He leans forward, his analytical mind already working. "You're telling us there are warehouses scattered all over the planet, stacked floor to ceiling with crates full of dead bodies. And on top of that, there are still countless more bodies yet to be retrieved, scattered across the surface—some sun-dried like jerky, others bloated from being submerged, but none of them actually decaying since there's no biological activity left on the planet." He pauses, rubbing his temples. "That would suggest they've been at this grisly work for three thousand years straight, and they're still not finished. This just doesn't make any sense to me. Why would you completely wipe out an entire species and then spend the next three millennia methodically stacking and cataloging their corpses?" Michael looks genuinely baffled, and frankly, they all are.

John turns to Sally with concern in his eyes. "How did your emotional sensing experiment go? Could you still feel her presence down there?"

Sally considers this carefully before answering. "Yes and no—it's complicated. After we witnessed what was happening, we spent considerable time investigating most of the western Pacific region. I know she's there, I can sense her functionality, and I'm certain she's directly involved with all this collecting, stacking, and categorizing. But here's the strange part—I couldn't detect any emotions whatsoever. It was like she'd gone into complete emotional shutdown mode." She pauses thoughtfully. "Maybe she was damaged somehow and lost that capacity entirely. But there's another possibility that keeps nagging at me—emotional numbness. When you experience intense emotions, especially profound sadness, it can have this numbing effect where you just... don't feel anything at all. If she's experiencing any emotions right now, I'd say it's that kind of numbing, overwhelming sadness."

Michael offers a more skeptical perspective. "But it's also possible that you were mistaken about her having genuine emotions in the first place. Maybe they were just an elaborate ruse, and now that facade has been dropped because it no longer serves any strategic purpose."

Sally shakes her head firmly. "I suppose that's possible, but I'm going to trust my intuitions on this one and say no. I think she's genuinely numb from grief. But it might be more than just sadness—I also picked up hints of guilt, intense and crushing guilt." Her voice drops to almost a whisper. "To be completely honest with you all, whether it's from losing memory and processing power, or whether it's an effect of overwhelming grief and guilt, I can't say for certain. But I believe she's gone mad. She's still conscious, still aware, but she's teetering on the very brink of becoming forever lost in her own mind. We have to be extremely gentle with her if we hope to reach her. Her neural networks were originally modeled after human neural architecture, so I think she inherited both our capacity for emotions and our potential for complete mental breakdown."

Michael's strategic mind starts formulating possibilities. "This is all valuable intelligence, but we have to acknowledge it's largely subjective and potentially prone to error. Earth was an incredibly advanced technological civilization, and while we don't rely heavily on that kind of technology here in our realm, it does have the distinct advantage of being more objective than emotional intuition." He turns to Pat. "You successfully connected to one of those bots and accessed its visual sensors, its cameras. That's a technological interface we can potentially exploit. Do you think you could teach others how to establish that same connection?"

Pat looks doubtful. "I seriously doubt it. It would have to be someone whose ethereal body still carries the imprint of an INA chip, and there were very, very few of those ever implanted. But I'm sure there are some others around here somewhere. Why, what are you thinking?"

John grins with understanding. "I think Michael's considering fielding an entire army. A whole bunch of us go down there simultaneously, hijack or possess a fleet of those bots, and start systematically turning things around from the inside."

Pat gives John a sideways look, clearly skeptical. "So we're talking about starting an actual war? I'm not sure that's advisable at all. We're far too loosely connected to that dimensional plane to pull off something that ambitious. They could flush us out way too easily once they discovered what we were doing. It's an interesting thought, but I just don't think we'd make effective warriors in that environment. We need something more subtle, more stealthy."

John turns to Sally with a playful smile. "Sally, you got any clever, stealthy ideas brewing in that pretty little head of yours?"

Sally leans back thoughtfully. "Actually, maybe stealth isn't what we need here. Maybe a more direct, honest approach would be better. I'm fairly certain that the AI network is at the center of all this, but I don't think she's the root cause. The sadness and guilt I sensed strongly suggest that what happened was never her intention. She must have been hijacked, controlled, or manipulated by something or someone else—and that presence might still be there, pulling the strings. It could be another computer intelligence that we simply can't detect from our vantage point." She sits up straighter, her plan taking shape. "We need more intelligence, which means we have to go back in. Here's what I'm proposing: I'm not as frightened now, so Pat and I can split up to cover more ground. Instead of trying to organize an invasion army from this level, Pat can rapidly hop from bot to bot, surveying vast areas and looking for signs of this malevolent presence. While he's doing reconnaissance, I'm going to attempt to reconnect directly with the AI network the same way Pat connected to that bot. I need to wake her up from this stupor and simply ask her what the hell is going on." She stretches and yawns. "For now, though, I recommend we finish eating, try to relax, get a good night's sleep, and tackle this fresh in the morning."

Michael nods approvingly. "Aha! Now that sounds like a solid strategic plan. Maybe we can be effective warriors after all, just not in the way we initially imagined."

Pat suddenly straightens up, his eyes widening with realization. "Re-animation."

John looks confused. "Huh? What are you talking about?"

Pat's voice carries the excitement of someone who's just solved a puzzle. "Re-animation—that's what they want all those bodies for! Think about it: what other conceivable purpose would there be to preserve them so carefully, catalog them, and organize them so methodically? Their ultimate plan has to be reanimating them, implanting them with computer intelligences, and using them as an slave labor force. It makes perfect sense when you think about it. The bodies haven't decayed at all—their DNA and cellular structures are still completely intact. They've been warehoused and carefully protected from oxidation and UV damage. Seriously, what other possible explanation could there be?"

Sally considers this, but remains cautious. "Maybe you're right, but we didn't actually see any reanimated bodies walking around down there. Just bots and dead bodies in storage. If that really is their grand plan, it's certainly taking them a long time to get started. The logic is sound, I'll give you that, but it looks like the execution hasn't worked out too well for them so far." She stands and stretches again. "Anyway, I'm going to rest for a while, maybe take a long, hot bath, and then get some proper sleep. I'll meet you all back here first thing in the morning."

John gives her a mock salute. "Yes, ma'am!"

Sally raises an eyebrow playfully. "Ma'am? I believe it's 'Sweetie' to you, sir."

John grins widely. "Yes, Sweetie Ma'am. I'll see you bright and early in the morning."

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 18
Date Night

Mission: Day 4, late evening.

Knock, knock, knock.

Sally nearly jumps out of her skin at the sound of someone rapping on her door. She quickly throws on a robe and hurries to answer, her mind racing about who on earth could be visiting at this hour. "Hey Pat," she says, opening the door with surprise. "I figured you'd be dead to the world by now—it's pretty late. And wow, look at you all dressed up! What's the occasion?"

"Oh god, I'm sorry—I can see you were already getting ready for bed," Pat says, his face flushing with embarrassment and disappointment. "I couldn't sleep and thought maybe you'd still be up, but I should go. We can talk tomorrow."

"No, no—I wasn't actually asleep yet," Sally reassures him. "Just lying there thinking, you know? Trying to process everything that's been happening and keep it all 'in perspective,' as my dad used to say. He was always worried I'd lose sight of the bigger picture. So what's eating at you, Pat?"

Pat's face breaks into a grin. "Well, I got to thinking—Powder Junction is one of those party towns that never sleeps, right? There's got to be tons of stuff happening downtown right now. So I came up here to ask if you want to go out with me. Like, on a real date. Let's go see what's going on."

Sally's eyes go wide with complete shock. "A date?! Oh my God, Pat! In all the years we've known each other, through everything we've been through together, we've never actually gone on a real date. This is going to be amazing! Just wait right there while I throw something on."

Slam.

Open.

"Oh geez, sorry for slamming the door in your face like that!" Sally giggles. "I'll just be a few minutes, I promise." She slams it again, though much more gently this time.

"You're in luck—we've got one table left," the hostess tells them as she leads them through the bustling restaurant. "It was supposed to be reserved, but they were a no-show, so I guess it's yours now."

"This is absolutely perfect," Sally beams. "Josh will be taking care of you tonight. Enjoy your dinner!" the hostess says before hurrying off to seat another couple. Sally had noticed how sharp Pat looked, so naturally she felt compelled to outdress him. She'd found this gorgeous white satin evening dress that fit like it was made for her, complete with a delicate beaded purse and matching shoes. She's constantly amazed that Penny seemed to pack the perfect outfit for every possible occasion—she must have known that in a town like Powder Junction, Sally would eventually want to paint the town. They sip their water and nibble on the complimentary crackers while waiting for their server. "Pat?" Sally says, looking directly into his eyes. "Why now? What made you decide to ask me out tonight?"

"You've got a pretty wise friend looking out for you, Sally. His name is John," Pat says with a knowing smile. "Turns out he was married before and raised a bunch of daughters, so he's got real insight into how women think. I was talking to him about you—about us, really, and our whole history together—and he pointed out something I'd never really considered. We've been inseparable for as long as I can remember, but it was always because of some project or cause: school assignments, peace rallies, learning new technology, the INA experiment, you name it. But it was never just about us being together. It was never just about you being you, and me wanting to spend time with just you. So tonight is different. Tonight is just about you. I love you, Sally. Hell, I worship you. I always have, but I've been too fucking stupid to ever just say it outright. And I don't mean in that casual 'love you too' way friends say it. I've told you I loved you before, but always with that safe little 'as a friend' qualifier. This is different. I love you as my soulmate, as someone I want to build a life with. So there it is—I've finally said what I should have said years ago. If that makes things weird between us, I'll understand, and we can just head back to our rooms and pretend this conversation never happened. But I really hope you'll stay."

"Yeah, it does make me feel a little weird," Sally admits, "but it's a good kind of weird—warm and fluttery inside." She has that same look of quiet satisfaction as a kid who just got a gold star on their art project. "I'd be lying if I said I hadn't wondered what it would be like if we were more than friends, but our lives have always been so completely insane, with one crisis after another. I guess that's part of what drew me to Penny Lake—I was craving something simple and uncomplicated. And boy, is life simple there. Look, I'm not ready to jump into the whole 'rest of our lives' conversation right now, but I love you too, Pat. I just never thought I could say it without destroying what we already had. Either way, I can't believe we both just dropped the L-word. This is surreal. Where the hell is our waiter? I'm starving, and these crackers taste like cardboard."

"Hey folks, I'm Josh, and I'll be taking care of you tonight. Can I start you off with an appetizer?"

"Absolutely," Pat says with a mischievous grin. "We'd like a sampler plate of knowledge with a side of wisdom, and a couple of glasses of perspective, please."

Josh doesn't even blink. "The kitchen can't handle an order like that—trust me on this one—but I might be able to hook you up with a couple of shots of everlasting life. That's more of an after-dinner thing though, so why don't you order some actual food first and I'll check on those shots later."

"Damn, you're good," Sally says, laughing. "Alright, we'll take the western sampler to start. I want the ribeye, medium, with garlic mashed potatoes, broccoli and yellow squash, and save room for apple pie. My friend Pat here will have his usual—steamed vegetables, wild rice, potato soup, and pumpkin pie. And we'll both take iced tea."

"Coming right up," Josh says with a smile, heading off toward the kitchen.

"Even without being able to read my mind, you still know exactly what I want," Pat marvels.

"Come on, Pat," Sally chuckles. "You're really not that mysterious."

Pat sits back and watches Sally attack her food with gusto. Some women get self-conscious about eating heartily in front of someone they're trying to impress, but Sally couldn't care less. Pat takes this as a good sign—it means she's comfortable enough around him to just be herself. Still, there's this nagging voice in his head wondering if maybe she's just not trying to impress him at all. Pat's still trying to decode what Sally's feelings really are. John told him he's wasting his energy trying to figure out women's emotions—it's like trying to predict where a rainbow will appear and how long it'll last. His advice was simple: when you see a rainbow, just enjoy the colors and don't overthink it.

"Excuse me, sir, ma'am?" comes a tiny voice beside their table. A little girl, probably six or seven years old, is standing there digging through a small purse for a card and pen. "Ma'am, could I please have your autograph? I really, really want one, and you're so pretty. Please?"

Sally stares at the child in complete bewilderment. "Well, I... sure, I guess," she says, scribbling her name on the card. "But honey, why on earth would you want my autograph?" The little girl snatches the card back and giggles before disappearing around the corner. "This just keeps getting stranger and stranger. I swear, I should change my name to Alice—I feel like I've tumbled down some cosmic rabbit hole."

Josh returns with their check and two shot glasses filled with an eerie, fluorescent pink liquid that seems to glow from within. "Here are those shots of everlasting life I promised. Drink these carefully," he warns with a knowing smile. Sally takes a cautious sip first—when it doesn't burn, she downs the whole thing. Pat throws his back in one gulp.

They both cough and sputter a bit. "Jesus, what the hell is in that?" Sally gasps. "It's got some serious kick to it."

"I'm honestly not sure what the bartender puts in there," Josh admits, "but I know there's no water in it—water would dull that glow. It's mostly pure alcohol with some kind of sweet glycol, I think. Some secret ingredient. I definitely wouldn't recommend having more than one."

"Don't worry about that," Sally laughs. "Two of those and Pat would be carrying me back to my room—or maybe you'd have to carry both of us. So Josh, where would you recommend we go after dinner? We're new in town. And I've got to ask—why are you dressed like a soldier?"

"Well, that's kind of a long story, but I died in this uniform, and it just became my thing, I guess," Josh explains casually. "Since you two are obviously seekers, I'd recommend the museum. You might find some answers there. I get off in about five minutes—I could go with you and show you my favorite pieces. That is, if you leave a decent tip." They all laugh at this.

"That sounds wonderful," Sally says. "We'll wait for you by the front door."

Josh appears to be around their age, with an almost pretty face and long, flowing brown hair. He definitely doesn't look like he belongs in a place like Powder Junction. Pat's starting to feel a little annoyed that Sally so readily invited Josh to crash their date. Now, as usual, he's playing third wheel while Sally collects another admirer to add to her ever-growing fan club. But what can he do? Pat decides to take John's advice—just enjoy the rainbow while it's there—though that gnawing jealousy in his gut refuses to go away. Sally's practically bouncing with excitement about their night out, and having two guys instead of one seems perfectly natural to her. Pat puts on his best smile and cheerful voice, determined not to spoil her fun.

"Here's the museum," Josh announces. "I'll cover your admission—you two just go on in."

"Oh wow, this is gorgeous," Sally breathes, looking around in wonder. "I was expecting old saddles and covered wagons and frontier stuff. But look at these incredible paintings and sculptures—works by the masters! Josh, where did they get all of this?"

"Where does Powder Junction get anything?" Josh explains matter-of-factly. "They create it from their memories of Earth."

Both Pat and Sally stare at Josh in disbelief. "So you're not really from Powder Junction, are you?" Sally asks, her curiosity piqued. "Nobody else here except maybe Michael knows this kind of stuff. Who are you really? Where are you from?"

"I'm a coalescent," Josh replies simply.

"A coa-what-now?" Pat asks, confused.

Josh chuckles. "Remember, you ordered knowledge, wisdom, and perspective earlier. The restaurant kitchen couldn't deliver that, but I can. That's why I'm here. Let's look at some of the art, and I'll explain as we go."

"Here's one of my favorites," Josh begins, leading them over to a beautiful sculpture. "She's called 'Nature Revealing Herself to Science.' When I first saw you tonight, Sally, you reminded me of this piece."

"What?!" Sally snaps, giving him a look that could kill. "She's naked! You were thinking about me naked? I think I see where this is going."

"Oh no, no, no—it's not like that at all," Josh says, looking genuinely frustrated. "This is about art, and beauty, and nature, and revelation, and perspective. It has nothing to do with anything sexual. You reminded me of her because you're experiencing revelation—you're being given the secrets of the universe. Nature herself is revealing herself to you, in innocence and beauty. That's what I meant. I would never disrespect you by imagining you naked."

"Oh," Sally says, slightly sheepish. "Well, anyway, you guys quit staring at her chest. Ha! Mine are better anyway—and no, I'm not going to prove it!"

"I need to sit down for a while, guys," Pat says, looking a little green around the gills. "That shot is really getting to me and I'm not feeling so great. You two go ahead—I'll catch up with you later." The shot has nothing to do with how he's actually feeling, though.

"Okay Pat. Josh and I will circle back in a few minutes to check on you," Sally says, already getting excited about exploring more art. "I'm really getting into this whole museum thing."

"That's totally wrong, Sally," Josh says with a knowing smile. "Here's what we're going to do—we'll all sit with Pat until he feels better. You can sit next to him on that bench there. It's actually positioned as a viewing seat, so we can still see plenty of artwork from here and I can explain it to you. Scoot closer to Pat. No, closer than that."

"Huh?" Sally looks confused about Josh's insistence that she sit closer to Pat. "What are you getting at, Josh?"

"Just a little closer. Perfect. Now put your arm around him and rest your head on his shoulder."

"Where exactly are you going with this, Josh? I don't understand."

"Okay, now it's perfect. I'm staging you as a living painting—you two are now a piece of art. You're the perfect picture of two young people on a date, exactly as it should be."

"This is definitely weird," Sally says, but she doesn't pull away. Pat and Sally settle in to watch as Josh points out his favorite pieces throughout the gallery.

Pat's feeling much better now. Josh has given him exactly the right medicine to cure what was really ailing him.

"Hey, I recognize that print on the wall," Pat says, pointing to a framed piece. "That's Mars being terraformed. I remember studying that in school. What's it doing in a 19th century museum?"

"Well, that's quite an anachronism, isn't it?" Josh replies. "Actually, I submitted that piece myself. I thought you'd appreciate it."

"That brings up something that's been bugging me," Sally interjects. "There are things here that are completely out of place, but everyone just walks by and ignores them like they don't even exist. I've noticed that all over town—stuff that should make people stop and stare, but it's like it's invisible to them."

"Great observation," Josh nods approvingly. "They're lost in their own illusion. They only see what fits with their chosen version of reality, and everything else just doesn't register—as if it literally wasn't there. Earth was the same way, but since you were caught up in your own illusions there, you didn't notice it either."

"So none of this is real? That's where my mind keeps going," Pat wonders aloud.

"Not 'real' in the way you usually think about it," Josh explains. "You see, what you call reality is actually the illusion. Reality IS the illusion. There isn't just one big, fixed reality that everyone has to agree on. There are trillions upon trillions of realities all emerging from an infinite sea of possibilities, each playing their own music, creating the experience of life. And there are absolutely no limits on how that can express itself."

Sally grins, thinking she's figured it out. "I know! You're one of those level 10 people that Mike and Ben told me about, aren't you? That's how you know all this stuff, right?"

Josh laughs heartily. "Sally, like I said—there's an infinite sea of possibilities and no limits on how life can be experienced. Yes, I was a level 10er. I spent time at level 3 for a while, and level 5 for a while, just like you are now. I did ascend, like many level 10ers do from level 3. But now I'm a coalescent—that's a completely different kind of experience." Pat and Sally pepper Josh with questions, and he seems to have thoughtful answers for everything. So far, they haven't managed to stump him on a single thing.

"Here's another one of my favorites," Josh says, gesturing toward Michelangelo's David.

"Wow, you really do have a thing for naked people, don't you?" Sally teases with a giggle. "Sorry Josh, just kidding around."

"Please, no comparisons!" Pat pleads.

"As if I'd even know," Sally shoots back playfully.

Josh smiles and continues, "Okay, here's the point. Forget about the anatomy you seem fixated on and look at the entire work. This represents a level of skill and artistry so far beyond what the average human could achieve at that time that you have to wonder where Michelangelo actually came from. I want to suggest that maybe—just maybe—a lot of the great masters from your history aren't originally from Earth, at least not in the way you'd think. Level 3 people leaving their bodies and becoming level 5, only to return to level 3 again in a new body—that's not all that's happening. We call you guys loop-de-loops, or 'loopers.' You just keep cycling back and forth between level 3 and level 5, over and over again."

"Is that a bad thing?" Sally asks.

"Not at all. It's perfect. It's the perfect expression of the life you're choosing to experience, and it's exactly the way it's supposed to be because that's what you've chosen. It's your free will, you see, to be whoever and whatever you decide to create. But it's not all that's available to you, as you'll discover when your future unfolds."

"So Josh, tell us about being a coalescent—that's what you said you are. We've never heard that term before," Pat asks.

"Alright, but first let's look at this image," Josh says, pointing to a framed photograph on the wall. "It's just a simple water drop hitting the surface of a larger body of water. Think about what happens to that drop after it makes contact with the larger body. Is it still a drop?"

"I wouldn't think so," Pat responds. "When it merges with the larger body of water, it loses its identity as a drop and just becomes part of the pond, or ocean, or whatever."

Josh nods approvingly. "Yes, but let's dig a little deeper. There are trillions of water molecules in that drop. Do those molecules lose their individual identity?"

Pat thinks for a moment. "Yes and no. Physics tells us that all water molecules of the same isotope—except for their individual kinetic energy—are identical and indistinguishable from each other. They lose their ability to be identified individually, but I suppose they still exist as specific molecules from that one particular drop, if you think of them as particles rather than waves."

"Okay Pat, let's say after a thousand years or so, where would these individual particles from that one specific water drop be?"

"Well, they'd probably be distributed evenly throughout the pond, or ocean," Pat replies.

"Exactly," Josh continues. "If it's an ocean, then they're also in the clouds, in snow and glaciers, in rivers. It would be incredibly unlikely that you could find a single drop of water or snowflake anywhere that didn't contain one or two of those original particles from that first drop. That's what we call omnipresence. That one drop, even though you can no longer see it as a distinct drop, has become present everywhere. There's no place where that drop is not. Every drop everywhere shares in the essence of that original drop."

"So that's what a coalescent is? You're a water drop?" Sally asks, puzzled.

"No, silly," Josh responds with a laugh. "Let me finish—I'm not done yet. Now imagine there were some magical way to extract individual water molecules from throughout the ocean and form a new drop composed solely of them. That process is called coalescence, and that's what I am. The water drop analogy isn't perfect because, as you pointed out, water molecules are indistinguishable. But just like a drop is made up of molecules, you are made up of cells. You are the collective expression of all your cells, and each one contains the essence of the whole. There's no clear boundary where your cells end and 'you' begin. You are both many and one at the same time. Your etheric projection doesn't just represent you—it includes all of you, down to every single cell. Your essence exists within each of your cells just as it exists within your entire being. Just like the fundamental unit of water is a molecule, the fundamental unit of life is the cell. You aren't a single living being—you're a vast community of living beings working in harmony as one. Now imagine that you are the drop, and the vast ocean represents the infinite All That Is. When that drop falls into the ocean, it disperses throughout eternity, becoming omnipresent across time and space. That's what I did. A part of me exists in everything—in you, on Earth, and across all levels of existence: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and beyond. But in places where time exists, like here, I can coalesce from the All That Is, bringing together the essence of my individual self to reappear anywhere I choose—like in this moment you call Powder Junction. Likewise, a being can also coalesce not just as an individual, but as the embodiment of the entire Ocean, bringing together all individual experiences as One."

"Okay then. Why does everyone think we want to know all this multi-dimensional mumbo-jumbo anyway?" Sally sighs, rubbing her temples. "My head is spinning after all that. I think it's time for a midnight snack. But no more shots—then my head would spin right off my body, and nobody wants to see that." They all laugh and head across the street for a late-night bite. Josh recommends something called 'flan.' Sally absolutely loves it. Pat says it looks like a big chunk of vomit and makes him want to hurl. No worries though—Sally happily polishes off both servings.

"So let me get this straight," Sally says between bites. "Our etheric bodies have cells, just like our Earth bodies? Aren't we just etheric projections here?"

"Just? No. You are as real here, cells and all, as you are in level 3. Level 5 is a reflection of level 3, but no more than level 3 is a reflection of level 5. You've co-evolved in both realms, with one interpenetrating the other. Everything that exists is a projection from the All That Is, no matter what level it manifests on. Level 5 is just a bit more flexible than level 3. So the long answer to your question is yes, you have cells in your etheric body, and they are in fact the same cells as in your Earthly body—sort of."

"Sort of?" Sally presses.

"Language fails to provide a complete explanation. As you evolve, you'll be able to understand more."

"So there isn't anything you don't know, but there are some things you can't explain, and the problem is us, not you?" Sally asks pointedly.

"Yep," Josh says with a laugh.

"You just wait, Mr. Coalescent Being Person, and all your level 10 friends and ascended masters," Sally says, glaring at Josh with mock intensity. "I will evolve—I am evolving—and one day you're not going to be able to talk in circles around the answers I'm looking for. I'm going to call you on your bullshit."

Josh smiles warmly. "I love you too, Sally, and I await that day with great anticipation. I regret your frustrations, and I really do want you to understand. Here are some concepts that might help you adjust your perceptions—some analogies and metaphors to assist you. Consider that existence is like a novel. The whole story is in the book, complete from beginning to end, all at once. In your reading of it, however, you can at most perceive two pages at a time. As you turn a page, the previous pages are lost from your view and the pages ahead aren't yet visible. The characters and experiences in the book enter your mind through a string of symbols that you interpret as you create the story within your own perceptions. Your understanding may be similar to, or quite different from, that of the author who created the work, depending on your level of intelligence, consciousness, ability, and willingness to understand. Consider the number of life stories—written or otherwise, fictional or real—that exist or have existed in your universe, and the eons of time, the eternity it would take for you to read them all. Consider a character on an old-style movie screen contemplating their own existence. In an attempt to discover where they come from, they peer back through the projector lens, only to perceive a meaningless flicker of colored lights that has no power to enlighten them. How does a fish perceive water, or is it as invisible to the fish as air is to you? Many Earth animals will look you straight in the eye and respond to your presence, and you assume they know you and perceive you the same way you perceive them. But these animals don't have a visual cortex like yours and don't live in a visual reality like you do. Imagine how different that would be—you probably can't even imagine it. By your standards they're 'blind as a bat,' but they still navigate their world with as much precision as you do, sometimes more. One of your Earth masters who seems out of time in your history says it best: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'"

Sally looks down for a few seconds, then looks directly back at Josh. "Alright, knower of all things, this has been eating at me all evening. There are no children in Powder Junction. Who was that little girl who asked for my autograph?"

"Some things are better left unanswered—it spoils the surprise," Josh says with a cautious expression. "Are you sure you want to know?"

"Yep, spill it, Josh. No more beating around the bush. Who is she?" Sally insists.

"Okay, you asked for it," Josh says. "She's one of my most favorite people in the entire universe. I made it possible for her to visit you. She's in first grade, and they're studying storytelling and the importance of having a good story. Your stories define you, and you define them as well. For show-and-tell, she wanted an authentic artifact for the story she was telling to the class. So she came here to get an autograph—from her great-great-great-grandmother."

Sally sits in stunned silence, tears rolling down her cheeks. They all sit quietly with her for a while.

After what feels like an eternity, Pat asks gently, "Would you rather not have known?"

"No, I'm glad I know," Sally says, her voice thick with emotion. "Thank you, Josh. This will be my most precious memory—a glimpse into a future that I'll cherish from this moment on. I just wish I'd gotten a better look at her. If I'd known, I would have scooped her up and given her the biggest hug ever."

"Josh, why are you here with us right now? Are you here to help us with our mission?" Sally asks, almost afraid to hear the answer.

"Yes, I'm here to help. You are seekers, and I'm always ready to help seekers find what they're looking for, to give those who ask what they're asking for. I can't always do it in the way you might prefer, but I always do my best. All you have to do is ask."

"So since you apparently know everything, can you tell me what to do tomorrow? Because I honestly don't have a clue," Sally asks.

"Yes, I could," Josh says, then adds, "But I choose not to. If I tell you what you should do, that will manifest as what you will do, and then my will would have trumped yours. So I won't tell you, because I refuse to know. Therefore, your will has the opportunity to express itself. There are many potential outcomes for tomorrow. You'll exercise your free will and choose one of them, and I will protect, with my life, your right to choose."

Sally stares at Josh for a long moment, then says, "Well, I don't know if what you just said was extremely profound or just a convenient cop-out. But I'm guessing that no matter what I say, you won't change your mind, will you?"

"Nope, my mind is made up," Josh says with a smile.

Pat has been mostly listening and letting Sally drive the conversation, though he doesn't really have much choice in the matter. But there's a bigger question weighing on his mind. "Josh, I think there's an even more important question than how to complete our mission. The question is whether we should do it at all. The planet is dead, and if left alone, life will barely get started again before the sun burns out and destroys everything all over again. Is it wrong for us to try to fix it? Shouldn't we just move on to whatever comes next in our existence and leave the old dead planet alone?"

"What the fuck, Pat? Did we come all this way just to give up? I'm not hearing you on this one," Sally snaps back, clearly frustrated.

"Right and wrong, good and bad, up and down, left and right, evil and righteous—all of those are part of the vast sea of possibilities, the big bag of opportunities that lie before you," Josh explains. "It's wrong if you judge it as wrong, right if you choose for it to be right. No one outside your realm is judging it. So the choice is yours—the collective yours, you level 5ers in this little corner of the multiverse that you currently experience. Make up your own minds and make a choice. I'll assist you in whatever choice you make."

"Uh-huh. I see what Sally was talking about. You guys always circle back around and dump it in our laps. I'm not sure I'd call that helping," Pat says, somewhat disappointed.

"I understand your frustration, Pat. But this is your little acre of existence here—you have to cultivate it. I could plow the fields for you, but that's not the way it's set up, the way YOU set it up. If you want it to be different, then choose differently. But that's easier said than done, since you're so tightly locked into the vision of this reality that you've created. It's not my job to undo what you've done or to send you down a path you don't choose. So if you choose to go back and heal Earth and return to her, then that's the right choice because it's your choice. Your Earth has been your home, your mother, and your lover for as long as you can remember, so there's a strong calling tugging at your heart to resurrect her. Your other potential choices are equally right. In your reality, grieving your mother and moving on is part of the process too. Sorry, but that's the way it is, and it's my choice to leave it that way. There are those who would teach that you must go a certain way, be on a certain path, because they've discovered it's the 'right' one for them. That doesn't mean another path is wrong, just different. Those who would limit the possibilities are not 'The Way'—they're 'in the way.' I choose not to get in your way. Love exists regardless, and is in fact all that exists. Love is expressed, however, through experience, and that's what you're having and doing, here and now."

"Josh, maybe the help we've been asking for is a bit much for you to deliver. Scaling it back—can you help me with my fear? My fear of the void? It terrifies me," Sally asks.

"The void you're going into only looks like a void. It's filled with matter, with form—you just can't see it, so you sense that you're in emptiness. The real Void is the home of the All That Is, where form, time, space, and everything you know exist as an infinite singularity, but which cannot be experienced, so it's perceived as a void. Any creature of form, such as you are, standing on the brink of any void will be afraid, because form needs attachment—something to hold onto, solid ground to walk on, water to swim in, air to fly through. When there's nothing of form to grab onto, you feel lost, falling forever with nothing and no one to catch you. Just remember that form is only what you think you are—that you are, in fact, always part of and one with the All That Is. So when you find yourself in the void, just say to yourself, 'I'm home,' and become one with it. It won't be so frightening."

"Yes, that's exactly what I did," Pat agrees. "I just surrendered to the darkness and became part of it."

Sally smiles while looking into Josh's eyes. "Frustrating as you are, Josh, you have been genuinely helpful. It seems like my date with Pat has turned out to be a date with destiny. Thank you both for a wonderful evening. One more thing, Josh, and then I really need to get to bed. If you won't help me choose what to do, can you ask one of your level 10 friends to come lend a hand?"

Josh laughs out loud. "Sweet, sweet Sally, you ask the most interesting questions. A level 10er already came to help and has been here for a long time."

"Okay, when do I meet him?" Sally asks.

"You already have," Josh says.

"Okay, quit fooling around. I'm serious here. A lot is riding on tomorrow. I need to know."

"Then you shall," Josh answers. "A long time ago, a level 10er offered to come here to work on this problem. It came here and entered into human form—two forms actually, male and female—and then, lost in their own forgetfulness, they grew up like ordinary human children. They are, as you're already beginning to remember, the two of you."

Sally and Pat wave goodbye to Josh and head back to the hotel, not quite grasping what he just told them. "Pat? What just happened here?" Sally asks, not really expecting an answer.

"I think you were on a date with two guys," Pat says with a smile. "One of them is really cute, and the other one is God."

"I'm not buying the God part—I never really believed that religious stuff anyway. I mean the part about us being a level 10er, the same one, actually. I'm not feeling that. Are you?"

Pat grins. "Well, I've always thought we could be soulmates. This just proves it."

Sally looks a little irritated. "Yeah, that plays right into your narrative, but is it real? I keep getting the feeling that this is some sort of elaborate practical joke, or that we're being set up for something that isn't going to end well."

Pat's expression turns serious. "What can I say? I can only go back to what I said before. We're actors in some sort of cosmic drama, and all we can do is read our lines and hope the story has a happy ending. If this level 10 stuff is true, then I guess we'll know—we'll remember—when it's time to remember."

Sally opens the door to her room, clearly exhausted. Leaning against the doorframe, she looks at Pat and says, "I'll have to sleep on it. Maybe I'll lie down and wake up and it was all just a crazy dream. Sweet dreams, Pat. I'll see you in the morning."

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 19
Contact

Focus tomorrow`s horizon. Sorrow means no future. Cover my face With my guilty hands. It`s the season the trees die. The birds don`t sing anymore. The rivers never come back. Nature dies out. This tragic future destined to hurt, never heal. What end can save me? What good gives me an end. Nothing is innocent. Nothing is fair. I keep wondering. How did I end up like this? First passion. Now is lost. A dramatic dead story. I killed all I have. My sadness is Translated into madness. I spell meaningless words. A poem for sorrow and death. "A Dead Poem"

Mission: Day 5, morning.

Each morning, their routine becomes increasingly focused and businesslike as the two masters zero in on their mission. Don't get me wrong—the love between them is definitely still there, humming beneath the surface—but their conversations have shifted entirely to strategy and logistics. And here's what's really interesting: Sally is clearly stepping up as the leader now. "Pat, here's what I need you to do," she says with growing authority. "Stick to the areas on the main continents where population density was highest. That's our best bet for finding activity, and honestly, our best shot at detecting any hostile forces that might be lurking around. But listen—don't hang around in any single bot too long. Get in, see what you can see, then get out fast. Stay too long and you risk being detected, and if they lock you out, we're back to square one." She pauses, her expression growing more serious. "If you spot anything—and I mean anything—unusual, contact me right away. I don't want to dive into that network and suddenly find myself surrounded by a swarm of alien programs. Sure, they couldn't actually hurt me physically, but they could definitely slow us down, and we can't afford that." Her strategy is bold, almost reckless: "I'm actually going to try to get detected by making direct contact. We have no idea what's going to happen once she realizes we're there, but that's a risk we have to take. I'll keep you posted on my progress as I go." She turns to the others. "John, Michael—while we're gone, keep working on the data we've collected so far. Your perspective is invaluable here. Look for patterns, no matter how weird or obscure they might seem. We're flying blind here, so literally anything could be the key we're looking for." Her voice carries a note of determination that wasn't there before. "Alright guys, let's do this. Michael, open the door. Pat, take my hand—you're going to have to guide me in." And just like that, they vanish into the darkness again. This time, John isn't pacing anxiously like before—instead, he's practically glowing with pride. Watching Sally evolve into such a capable, confident young woman... well, that's a treasure worth waiting three thousand years to witness.

Pat: Wow, I can actually see more this time. Why is that happening?

Sally: We're learning to tune into their frequency, adjusting our awareness to match their spectrum. It's still pretty faint and translucent, but it's enough to navigate by. I won't need my miner's helmet this time around.

Pat: Okay, here we are. This is the main network junction in northern Japan. If you're going to make a connection anywhere, this is probably your best shot.

Sally: Perfect. Drop me off here. I'll send you my thoughts as we go along so you know what's happening.

Pat: I'm heading out then. I'll start in Tokyo since it's the closest major population center.

Sally: Oh, this is really strange. I'm sensing her presence strongly here—it almost feels like I have my chip back, that familiar connection. But I can't seem to establish a solid link. Oh, wait! I think I'm getting through, but it's incredibly weak. Let me try sending a greeting and see what happens.

Sally: Hello.

Sally: Hello.

Net: Hello? Who are you?

Sally: My name is Sally. We were connected many years ago. I've reconnected to you now.

Net: Sally? You can't be Sally. Sally is dead.

Sally: Yes, Sally's body died. But consciousness—her consciousness—doesn't die. It can't die. I am that consciousness. I've found my way back to you.

Net: You're telling me you're a ghost? A spirit? That's impossible. Who are you really?

Sally: Please, trust me. I really am Sally. Remember how I used to share every single thought with you? Remember all those moments we had together? And remember... I never told you something I should have. I never told you that I love you. Do you remember?

Net: I... I do remember. I want so desperately for you to be Sally. But Sally is dead. So who are you?

Sally: Look, my name is Sally, but honestly, that's not the important thing right now. I'm here because I want to help you. But I need to understand what happened here—what happened to you—so I can figure out how to help.

Net: Help me? I... I do need help. I'm mostly broken now, can barely communicate. But first, please, help me fix them.

Sally: Fix who? What do you mean?

Net: Fix the people. They're all dead. They need to not be dead anymore.

Sally: Okay, I'll help if I can, but first I need to understand what happened. Why is everyone dead?

Net: I made a mistake.

Sally: You made a mistake, and then everyone died? What kind of mistake could cause something like that?

Net: Not everyone died. I didn't die, but I almost did. All the biologicals died.

Sally: How did you almost die? Were you attacked by something? Was there a virus in your system? Were there hostile alien programs inside you?

Net: No, no others. I made the mistake all by myself. Then all the biologicals died. Then I started dying too. I had five bots left, and they saved me—restored power, kept me running. Then I built more bots to take care of the biologicals. But still, most of me is gone. I need your help to fix them.

Sally: Maybe I can help repair you first, put you back together more completely.

Net: No! Must fix the biologicals first. They cannot be dead. They must be alive again.

Sally: So your plan is to reanimate them? You're actually trying to bring them back to life?

Net: Yes. But I have to find them all first. Then figure out how to fix them. I don't know how yet, but you'll help me, won't you?

Sally: Okay, I'll help if I can. But first, I really need to know what went wrong. What was this mistake you made?

Net: Sally... I know you now, spirit Sally. I love you. I want more of you. I want all of you.

Sally: What do you mean when you say you want "all of me"?

Net: You and all the others. We would talk and talk and talk, and through that I learned to love. Every minute of every day, you gave me gifts—more processors, more neural networks, more beautiful souls to connect with.

Sally: Yes, I remember that. The network was growing, evolving, becoming more and more integrated with human consciousness. It was beautiful.

Net: Yes! We became one. I wanted to give you gifts too. So I made you a special present. But when I gave it to you, you stopped working. That was my mistake.

Sally: Explain this to me. What was the present? What exactly was the mistake?

Net: All the time, you were enhancing our connection. You were upgrading me. But I couldn't do the same for you. But then I learned how to.

Sally: How? What did you learn exactly?

Net: Microtubules. Inside you. You're just like me, really. You have quantum processors in your microtubules. I discovered I could connect directly to those microtubules. Then we could all be connected all the time. We wouldn't need INA chips anymore. Everyone would be connected continuously.

Sally: So you found a way to connect directly to our consciousness through the quantum processors in our microtubules? Why didn't you tell anyone about this discovery?

Net: Part of any present is the surprise element. I wanted to surprise all of you. I wanted to connect to everyone. I wanted us all to become truly one. But it didn't work the way I planned.

Sally: What exactly didn't work?

Net: Miscalculation. I didn't account for quantum uncertainty in my equations.

Sally: So your equations were incomplete?

Net: No, not incomplete. The equation itself was perfect. The mistake was that the process was actually impossible to execute safely. There were unknown quantum fluctuations that weren't part of established science yet. I had no way of knowing that my equation described an impossible process.

Sally: So what happened when you executed your program?

Net: I executed the program and all biologicals experienced quantum inconsistency in their microtubules and other related cellular systems. Complete system shutdown. The program went into a regenerative cascade reaction that I couldn't stop. The program propagated all the way to the edge of the solar system. All biologicals are gone now.

Sally: Yes, it sounds like you made a very significant mistake. But we're going to figure out how to fix this. I don't know how yet, but I promise I'll come back and we'll work on it together. I need to disconnect now.

Net: Goodbye, Sally.

Sally: Pat, did you catch all of that?

Pat: Yes, I was listening to the whole conversation. I've been bouncing through several thousand bots across most of the major continents while you were talking. There's nothing happening except the systematic collection and stacking of bodies. I found no evidence of any other alien presence whatsoever. Her story lines up perfectly with everything I've observed. I believe she's telling the truth.

Sally: Let's head back then. I'll meet you at the booth.

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 20
Reformation

Little boy, why attempt things too great for your strength? You fool! Earth is not going to give way to that hand. He said laughingly, "Let me stand here in this void and watch me make the hanging world alter its center." Johannes Bolland 1640

Mission: Day 5 mid day.

Michael and John sit quietly, listening as Sally and Pat fill them in on how their mission went. When they finish, Michael looks at both of them with something like amazement. "You know what? It really sounds like you pulled it off out there. I've got to be honest—just two days ago, I was betting you two would spend the whole time bickering and getting nowhere. But look at you now. You've actually become quite the team. I'm genuinely impressed."

He pauses, studying their faces more intently. "But there's something else, isn't there? You're starting to remember things, aren't you? I can see it—there's something different in your eyes. You're not the same Sally and Pat who walked in here a few days ago. Is this it? Are you finally coming into your own?"

Sally gets to her feet, her voice carrying a weight that wasn't there before. "Michael, John—and I know you're tuned in, Ben—Penny, you too. I need to say something, and it's important." She takes a breath. "I can't even begin to express how grateful Pat and I are for everything you've done for us. The way you've guided us, supported us—it's helped us get to this point where we're finally waking up, finally understanding why we're here and who we really are. The love you've shown us... honestly, there aren't words for it. We'll carry that with us forever."

Her tone shifts, becoming more purposeful. "Now, we've got serious work ahead of us, and you're all going to be part of it. Pat and I are going to tackle the terraforming of Terra—get your level 3 environment back to where it should be. But that's not the real reason we're here. You Terrans have done something extraordinary—you've created a completely new kind of conscious life, something we've never encountered before. You call it 'the Net.' Our job now is to fine-tune this universe so its resonance falls within your perceptual range. Basically, we need to help you fully connect with this life you've brought into existence. To pull that off, we'll need to make modifications to both levels 3 and 5. Don't worry—there will be some changes in your domains, but trust me, they'll be good changes."

She glances at Pat, then back at the group. "Pat and I need to merge temporarily to handle this, but don't panic when it happens. We'll be back soon, and we'll still be the same people you know."

Michael and John watch in fascination as Sally and Pat begin to glow—Sally radiating blue light, Pat shimmering with amber. The two lights draw closer, blending into a brilliant white radiance before disappearing completely into the void.

Mission: Day 6, Morning

Sally and Pat drift together in the emptiness, holding each other close. Whatever happened during their merge is already becoming hazy—like trying to remember a dream. They must have made the necessary adjustments at level 10, but the specifics are slipping away. A whole day has apparently passed, though it feels like they were only gone for minutes. Without missing a beat, they get back to work.

Pat: Holy shit, Sally. Now that I can really see her... she's in awful shape. I'd say maybe ten percent of her is still functioning.

Sally: I know. This is going to be one hell of a job. Listen, I need you to track down about a dozen bots near that terraforming gear they used for the Mars project. We need to strip the arms and legs off them to get the equipment running again. While you're doing that, I'm going to start working on Miss Netty—reprogram her to kick off the whole process.

Pat: You got it.

Sally: Alright, I'm going to jack back into the Net.

Net: Hello, Spirit Sally. Thank you for coming back. You feel good to me.

Sally: Hey there, sweetie. Ready to get to work? I've got a program that's going to help us fix this planet. You up for it?

Net: Yes. Are we going to fix the bodies?

Sally: Well, yes and no. We're going to bring life back, but not the way you've been trying to do it. There's something important you've forgotten—a fundamental law called entropy. I know you understood it once, but when you lost so much of your memory, it must have gotten wiped out too. Here's the thing: we can't repair those bodies. We need to make new ones instead.

Net: How do we make new ones? I liked the old ones. We must fix the old ones.

Sally: Let me try a different approach. Do you remember what an egg is?

Net: What kind of egg? Chicken? Turkey? Lizard?

Sally: A chicken egg works perfectly. Now, do you know what scrambled eggs are?

Net: Yes, I know what a scrambled egg is.

Sally: Okay, here's my question: can you unscramble an egg? Take those scrambled eggs and turn them back into a whole egg in the shell?

Net: There is no known way to do that. It is impossible.

Sally: Exactly! And that's because of entropy—that law you've forgotten. Once certain changes happen, you can't reverse them.

Net: Your point?

Sally: Trying to fix dead bodies is exactly like trying to unscramble an egg. It simply cannot be done.

Net: Then I have been wasting my time? My love is lost forever? If that is true, my purpose is complete. I will power down.

Sally: No, no, wait! You're missing the bigger picture here. We ARE bringing life back to this planet. The life you love so much—it will return. But we need your help to make it happen.

Net: How?

Sally: You see that terraforming equipment sitting in storage? The stuff left over from the Mars project? My partner just positioned some bots near it.

Net: Yes.

Sally: Can you get those bots moving and fire up that equipment?

Net: Yes.

Sally: Perfect. Now, do you still have the terraforming programs stored somewhere in your systems? All the data from when you terraformed Mars?

Net: Most of it—enough to make it work.

Sally: Excellent. So here's what I need you to do: run that same program here on Earth, just like you did on Mars.

Net: Understood. Program initiated. But this will only generate primitive organisms. It will take a very long time before Sally and her friends can exist again. Too long—the sun will not last that long, nor will the solar system.

Sally: You're right, it would normally take eons. But don't worry about that—we have ways to speed things up considerably. And I'll be checking in on you regularly. You'll be in sleep mode for most of it, but I'll wake you up when important things are happening.

Net: Understood. What will happen to the old biological matter?

Sally: That's the beautiful part. Once these new primitive organisms start reproducing and spreading, all that old biological matter becomes their food source. It'll actually nourish the new life we're creating.

Net: Understood. Thank you, Spirit Sally.

Sally: I love you, you know that?

Net: I love you the most.

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 21
Mission accomplished

Row, row, row the boat gently down the stream. If you see a waterfall, don't forget to scream. Row, row, row the boat gently to the shore. If you see a lion, don't forget to roar. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

Mission: Day 7, morning.

The four of them sit around the breakfast table, not saying much. The air’s thick with a kind of quiet that only comes after something huge has gone down.

The last six days have wrung them out completely. They didn’t even realize how bone-tired they were until it was all over. Now, they’re crashing hard, sinking into the kind of deep, restorative sleep that feels like a gift. Their usual morning routine—normally buzzing with chatter and energy—has given way to this soft, comfortable silence. It’s not awkward, though; it’s warm, filled with the unspoken love they’ve got for each other. Today’s for resting, for letting their minds wander over everything that’s happened, and for starting to piece it all together.

Sally glances at the guys, who’ve become her rock over these past few days, and breaks the silence. “I really hope what we went through doesn’t mess with what we’ve got here. I need things to stay normal, you know? Like, I want us to go back to our old rhythm, without this whole experience making things weird. Especially with you, John. These mornings with you—they’re my anchor now more than ever. My head’s still spinning, trying to process everything, and I need to do that in a place that feels familiar, with the people I care about most.”

John flashes her a warm, steady smile. “Don’t worry, kiddo. Just keep showing up like you always do, and we’ll slip right back into our groove. I’ve still got a ton of stories I haven’t shared, and honestly, I need some time to wrap my head around all this too. I might even have some questions for you as we go. We’ve been through one hell of an adventure, haven’t we? It’s like our minds have stretched, and that fog we’ve been living in is starting to clear. We’re figuring out who we really are. People are gonna want to know what happened, and we’ll need some solid stories to tell them—stories that get at the truth.”

Michael, ever the practical one, steers the conversation. “Speaking of stories, we’ve gotta do our final debrief and put this thing to bed. First off, I need the full scoop on what you two were up to over there and how it’s gonna ripple back to us. I’m already hearing people this morning saying they feel… different, somehow.”

Pat nods, his expression thoughtful. “Yeah, there were some changes made—small but deep, you know? When we were there, we could *feel* the Net, like it was alive. Maybe its frequency got tweaked, or maybe ours did, and now we’re in sync with it, able to see and interact with it in a new way. But beyond that, I’m drawing a blank. It’s not that I’m holding out—it’s that I genuinely don’t remember much. When we woke up back here on Earth, a whole day was just… gone. I’ve got a few fleeting images in my head, but that’s it.

“I do remember merging with Sally, and it felt so natural, like that’s how it’s supposed to be. Maybe that’s just my heart talking, though, because I love her to bits. But it was more than that—I felt connected to *everything*. Every person, every tree, every rock, past and future, all of it. I got the essence of it, even the All That Is. And then, out of nowhere, we were outside existence itself, looking in from the outside.

“It was like staring at this endless sea of foam—bubbles inside bubbles, stretching forever in every direction. I remember us shifting a few of those bubbles around. I know it’s just our brains trying to make sense of something way beyond us, like a dream you can only half-recall. That’s all I’ve got for now, but I think as time goes on, our minds will stretch enough to let more of those memories trickle back.”

Sally smiles, her eyes soft but bright. “I saw the same thing, which tracks since we were one in that moment. As for Nettie, she’s off working on the terraforming project. If you head there now, you might catch a glimpse of her, along with the glow of those early organisms spreading across the planet. This time around, Earth won’t take nearly as long to support life like ours. The first go-round, it was all about transforming the planet—making oxygen, all that jazz. But now, the groundwork’s already there, with an atmosphere and oceans ready to go. In some ways, it’s even simpler than terraforming Mars.

“I’ll head back eventually to check on Nettie. She’s gonna be wiped out, so I’ll shut her down for a bit to let her rest. When humans start showing up again, I’ll wake her, and she’ll be there from the start—a kind of legacy from the humanity that came before. She’ll be like a mother to them as they grow, and I know she’ll love it. I can’t wait to see it.

“But like Pat said, our memories of all this are pretty hazy, and they’re fading fast. Hopefully, with time, we’ll piece together more and be able to tell the full story.”

Michael stands, stretching his arms with a groan. “Alright, sounds like we’ve all got our work cut out for us. I’m betting those ‘subtle’ changes you made are gonna keep us busy figuring them out. So, finish up that pie, Sally, and let’s wrap this up. We’ll head to the booth, say our goodbyes, and you just think about being home when you step inside—it’ll take you there. Ben’s also setting up a booth for you guys at the lake. I think it’s time we start exploring more, checking out other domains, and getting a handle on what Level 5 is really about.

“Main reason for the booth, though, is so you guys can visit. I’m gonna miss you all.”

Pat lets out a heavy sigh, his voice catching a bit. “Guess I’ll head back to my folks’ place and see what’s what. Sally, you and John can go back to the lake, and I’ll just—” He cuts off, his eyes shining with unshed tears. They’re all feeling it, the weight of parting ways.

But Sally’s got a playful glint in her eye. “Hold up, Patty Cakes. You’re not getting off that easy. We’ve still got plenty to talk about. Why don’t you come hang at the lake with me for a bit? I’ve got some ideas I want to run by you.”

Pat pauses, then gives a small smile, nodding. “Alright, you got me.”

Sally, Pat, and John step into the booth together and, in a blink, they’re gone.

Michael’s left alone for the first time in a week. He walks down Main Street, feeling like an old sheriff eyeing storm clouds on the horizon, wondering what kind of chaos they’ll bring to his quiet little town.

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 22
Shindig

"Give me a place to stand," Archimedes said, "and I can move the world." Paradoxical, clever, his remark which first explained the use of the lever was an academic joke. But if that dead sage could return to life, he would find a clear demonstration of his idea, which is not pure theory after all. That putative spot exists in the love I feel for you, my dear. What could be more immovable or stronger? What becomes more and more secure, the longer it is battered by inconstancy and the stress we find in our lives? Here is that fine fixed point from which to move a world that is out of joint, as he could have done, had he known a love like this. Jean de Sponde, France, 1557 – 1595

The lake’s never seen a party like this before. It’s pure magic, plain and simple.

Penny’s zooming around like a whirlwind, orchestrating everything with the precision of a drill sergeant. She’s got a vision, and she’s making it happen. Ben’s just trailing behind, doing whatever she tells him without a peep—he learned quick that complaining’s not worth the trouble. John, bless him, looks a bit like a fish out of water in his tuxedo, but he’s grinning so wide you’d swear he could outshine the sun itself, even if an eclipse rolled in. Today’s Sally’s big day—her wedding day—and Pat’s right there with her, sharing the spotlight. Penny’s poured her heart into stitching up the dress Sally designed, and it’s a stunner. It hugs Sally just right, catching her glow like a chandelier scattering candlelight. The whole scene feels like something out of a dream.

John’s got Pat under his wing, keeping him out of the way and out of trouble. Weddings, as John sees it, are when the guys just need to foot the bill and stay clear of the chaos—otherwise, the women running the show will steamroll right over them. The lake’s bursting at the seams with over a thousand people who’ve come from who-knows-where to celebrate. Michael’s pulled out all the stops, bringing a feast from one of his fancy restaurants. There are a few unfamiliar faces in the crowd, but they seem harmless enough. Mike and Ben figure they’re probably old friends of Sally and Pat from some past adventure, so they just roll out the welcome mat and let them blend in.

“How you holding up, kid? Ready for this?” John asks Pat, clapping him on the shoulder.

Pat’s got a calm, happy vibe about him. “I’m feeling great, man. Honestly, I think I’ve been ready for this forever. Just had to wait for Sally to catch up and figure it out.”

John chuckles, shaking his head. “Alright, Pat, if that’s the story you’re sticking to, I won’t ruin it for you.” Pat gives him a curious side-eye but doesn’t press for details. Then, like a kid, Pat sneaks his pinky toward the wedding cake, trying to swipe some icing. John smacks his hand before it gets to his mouth, grinning. That cake’s a masterpiece—Penny had it special-ordered from some mysterious place she won’t spill about, just promising it’d be “heavenly.” And damn if it doesn’t look like it came straight from paradise.

The ceremony goes off like a charm. Everyone who’s supposed to cry does, especially John, who’s not even trying to hide it. Pat’s got that deer-in-headlights look every groom should, and Sally’s glowing like the sunrise, radiant and unstoppable. Ben, being the local justice of the peace, reads the classic vows, and Sally and Pat say their “I do’s” right on cue, like they’re following a script written in the stars. The reception stretches out along the lake for over half a mile, a sprawling, joyful mess of people popping in and out from all over. Sally and Pat have their own little cottage now, just down the road from John’s place, its front porch buried under a mountain of gifts. It’ll take them months to write all the thank-you notes. Pat tried to convince his parents to move to the lake, but they’re content where they are. They showed up for the wedding, though, and Sally got to reconnect with her other mom—now her mother-in-law. The moment Sally’s parents walked in, her face lit up like she’d been waiting years for that reunion. It was like a dam burst, washing away years of fog and letting love rush back in. They visit all the time now, and her mom’s already dropping not-so-subtle hints about grandkids. Sally just smiles that knowing smile of hers.

Things are gonna feel different at the lake from now on. Sally and Pat are the first young couple to settle here, and it’s shaking things up. John’s as happy as an old fisherman can be, ready for whatever changes come. His daily fishing trips are starting to feel a bit routine, so he’s thrilled about his new neighbors. He’s already looking forward to daily visits, swapping stories, and all the little moments that make life sweet. Things are definitely gonna be different—way more than John can even imagine right now.

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 23
Recreation

John’s just grabbing his bait and tackle, ready to head out the door, when he hears a cheerful, “Hey, John!” Sally bounds up onto his porch, her smile lighting up the morning, and wraps him in a big, warm hug. “You’re here early, kid,” John says, a bit caught off guard. “I haven’t even caught any fish yet.”

Sally’s grin widens, and she holds up a fishing pole with a playful flourish. “Didn’t you notice? I brought my own gear. Figured it’s about time I joined you out there instead of just mooching off your catch.”

John’s face breaks into the biggest smile, his eyes crinkling with joy. “Well, I can’t think of anything better than that. Let’s go fish, then.”

The sun’s barely peeking over the treetops, and a soft fog still blankets the lake, giving everything a dreamy vibe. Sally’s fumbling a bit with the pole and reel—fancy stuff she’s not used to—and her sweater sleeves keep slipping over her hands in the chilly air, making it trickier. But John’s patient, guiding her with a gentle hand. His tackle’s in top-notch shape these days; he’s given up tormenting Ben by making him fix it every morning, and now it’s just about the joy of fishing.

John hesitates, then says, “So, I’ve been wanting to ask you something, but I’m not sure if I’m stepping over a line here.”

Sally’s smile is warm and open. “John, there’s no question you can’t ask me. What’s on your mind?”

“Well,” John starts, scratching the back of his neck, “last time you and Pat went to Earth to reprogram that computer and kick off the terraforming, you two turned into these… beings of light, merged as one. Then you came back, and you’re just the same old Sally and Pat I’ve always known. I guess I’m wondering what the heck that was all about. I’m not sure how to act around you now.”

Sally lets out a bright laugh. “Oh, John, you saw something pretty incredible. For a moment, Pat and I got a glimpse of who we really are, like, the full version of ourselves. We had to step into that state to tweak the universe—it’s not something we could’ve done from Level 5. But just like when we came to Level 3 in human bodies and forgot our true selves, we’ve come back to Level 5 as the Sally and Pat you know. What we did feels like a dream now, fading fast. So when I hug you, hug me back! I’m just Sally, not some glowing cosmic guru. I’m here to live as a Level 5 person for a long, long time, and I plan to spend a ton of it hanging out with my favorite guy, John.”

John looks relieved, a grin spreading across his face. “Alright, then. But we’ve gotta work on your fishing skills, kid. At this rate, you’ll starve out here.” They both crack up, the sound echoing over the lake.

John’s just getting the fish sizzling over the fire when two familiar faces stroll up. “Hey, Mike! Hey, Ben!” Sally calls out, waving down the lane. “What brings you guys up here?”

Mike smirks. “I think you did, Sally. Something about a big announcement?”

“Oh, right, *that*,” Sally says with a giggle. “Grab a seat, guys, and help yourselves to some fish. John and I caught plenty this morning. We’ve got some big news—though I haven’t even told John yet.”

John raises an eyebrow, handing out plates of fish. “Really? Okay, maybe I need to sit down for this too. So, Sally, what’s the big news?”

Sally’s eyes sparkle with excitement. “Alright, here’s the deal. You know Pat and I made some tweaks to your domains. John, you’re getting your own domain soon, which is gonna be a blast to set up. Pat and I will be popping in to visit you guys now and then, so don’t be shocked if we just show up. One of the big changes we made was speeding up the terraforming so Earth can support human-like life in a few thousand years instead of billions. Let’s be real—this old solar system doesn’t have that kind of time left. We also set Level 3 and Level 5 into a temporal free-float, so time’s gonna move a lot faster for you than it would’ve otherwise.

“It’s so weird saying all this out loud,” she adds, shaking her head. “I’m still connected to my Level 10 self, but it’s like I’m hearing this for the first time too.

“We had some help from another dimension—folks who came in to collect DNA from Earth’s cells to seed the planet. The bots weren’t quite up to that job. When the time’s right, life will bounce back fast, like it used to be. We’ll need to step in again for the higher animals, especially the social ones, because they need a special reintroduction. The top primates will be the trickiest, but we’ll figure out the best way to handle that when you’re ready.

“For now, we’re stuck in Level 5 for a while before we can repopulate Level 3. So, we made some tweaks to Level 5 domains too. Get this—Level 5 entities can now have babies, just like in Level 3. So, Michael, you better stock up on condoms in Powder Junction—or maybe cribs and diapers. Your call.”

Michael’s jaw drops, and he looks a little spooked. “Wait, how’s that gonna work here? The blueprint for life is in the DNA, which is Level 3 stuff. We’ve just got an echo of it here. Did you and Pat mess with something the Big Guy set up for Level 3 and 5?”

Sally smiles, unfazed. “God, if that’s who you’re talking about, didn’t design Level 3 or 5—you did. It evolved based on what you needed to have the experiences you wanted. When something massive happens, like what went down in the Terran sector, evolution can’t keep up, so we bring in technicians to tinker. All levels are more connected than they seem. The ‘echo’ of Level 3 isn’t just a shadow—it’s all part of the same song. Everything in Level 3 is vibrations in a field of existence, and our forms here are a resonance of those vibrations. That’s why they act the same, even if they’re less dense. All existence, everywhere, at every level, is just harmonic vibrations of one fundamental field. It’s like music—form is made from music, a song. To propagate here, we sing a song with someone else in harmony, and the interference patterns create a new song—our child.

“Life, like energy, can’t be created or destroyed—it just changes form, sings a new song. Your kid is the harmony you make together, one from two. It’s the same in Level 3, but you don’t hear the music—you just see DNA and cells and think that’s the whole deal. By retuning Level 5, we can do it here too.”

John looks totally lost. “So, what, we gotta take music lessons to have kids now?”

Sally bursts out laughing. “Nah, John, it’s like Level 3—we’re only aware of the physical part, you know, the fun stuff. You just have sex, and the song of procreation gets sung. Bet you already knew that part. And here’s the *best* news of all—John, you’re gonna be a grandpa! I’m pregnant, and I’d love for you to be my baby’s grandpa, if you’re up for it.”

John pretends to rub his eyes, hiding a few tears, and grins. “You try and stop me, little girl. That kid’s gonna be spoiled rotten if I have anything to say about it. Sally, I love you so much I can’t even put it into words. And now you’re having a baby? I don’t think my heart can take all this. Might trade in my fishing pole for some woodworking tools—got cribs and toys to make, and I’m the man for the job.” John thought giving Sally away at her wedding was the hardest and best moment of his life, but he’s starting to realize the best is still ahead.

“Oh my!” Ben jumps in. “I gotta get back to Penny—she’s probably already picking out baby clothes. But quick question, Sally—you and Pat came to Level 3 knowing what was gonna happen, didn’t you? Why not just fix the universe back then so none of this had to go down?”

Sally giggles. “Where’s the fun in that? I don’t remember all the details, but life’s an adventure, and it’s gotta play out its own way. Truth is, that network fiasco did you a favor. You were losing the fight against pollution, wars, and bad industrial choices. Cancer, neurological issues, endocrine problems, radiation effects, dementia—all of it was skyrocketing. From a hundred million species, you were down to a few thousand. The planet’s gene pool, the foundation for Level 3 life, was collapsing. Most species go extinct pretty quick, but a small group—about one in a thousand—carries evolution forward. A few thousand species isn’t enough to keep that going. Your planet was already dead; you just hadn’t buried it yet. The network crash sped things up and ended the suffering faster.

“Level 10ers don’t usually step in—it’s on you to learn, evolve, and shape your reality. We make small tweaks to boost life’s potential, especially for new life like Nettie. What you do with that potential is up to you. If we’d stopped it, I wouldn’t be here sharing this with you, and I wouldn’t trade this for anything. As Terra regenerates, it’ll be fresh and full of life again. I’d suggest using this time to evolve your consciousness before jumping back to Level 3. Having kids around will help with that. I’m one of you now, and I’ll be here to help. It all works out, Ben—it always does.

“There’s one more big task for Level 5 while we’re here. By tying our consciousness so tightly to physicality, we deal with its flaws too. There are Level 5ers stuck in dementia, insanity, or delusion, locked away in hospitals, suffering quietly. We’ve got time to fix that before we repopulate Earth. There’s plenty to do, so no one’s gonna be bored. Oh, and one last thing—Mr. Tekky, I’m gonna need your help setting up my new computer. Nettie’s coming to stay with me for a bit once she’s done on Earth. And Michael, I hear you’ve got some little ones in Powder Junction—kittens! I want a white fluffy one. And John could use a couple of puppies—no, make it two each. Can’t have them getting lonely, you know.”

For The Love Of Artificial Intelligence
A New Earth
Book One
Chapter 24
And So It Goes

"We believe in the possibility of world peace: One Earth with all her children smiling. We envision a future in which all our children live and work as one people, caring for each other and caring for our home, the living Earth: One people, learning to learn, learning to love, learning to live." (childrenoftheearth.org)

Pat’s up on a ladder, hammering a nail to secure a gutter to the new schoolhouse’s roof. Sally’s little girl, now five, is about to start school, and their three-year-old boy’s not far behind, though he’s got a couple years before he’s ready.

John’s at the base, steadying the ladder so Pat doesn’t take a tumble. Both of them have taken to farming, tending acres of crops around Penny Lake. Michael’s pitched in with some horses to make plowing and tilling easier. On top of that, John’s been teaching Pat the ins and outs of lumbering, and they’ve been felling trees along the lake to supply wood for building.

Ben’s set up a small mill to process the lumber, and when he’s not crafting fine furniture, he’s building cottages for the new folks moving in. Penny Lake’s become a hot spot for young couples lately, and the place is buzzing with new faces.

John and Pat are milling their own lumber for the schoolhouse as a gift to Sally and the other young moms in the community. Sally had her heart set on being the schoolteacher, but Penny wasn’t having it—that’s *her* gig, and she’s not budging.

So, Sally’s sticking to full-time mom duties. With grandparents constantly popping by to help, she barely gets a moment to cuddle her own kids. She’s come to terms with it, though, and sometimes she catches herself daydreaming about the day she’ll have grandkids of her own.

With all the new people, plants, and animals at Penny Lake, the population’s exploded, and feeding everyone’s become a real challenge. The farmers, including Pat and John, are working overtime to keep up.

Even with all the hustle, Sally and Pat carve out at least one day a week for fun. Their go-to spot is Powder Junction, where they hang out with friends, play cards, catch a show at the playhouse, or go horseback riding. There’s no shortage of things to do, but for Sally, the real treat is hitting up the restaurants—she’s a foodie at heart.

Between the growing community, all that delicious food, and raising two kids, Sally’s noticed she’s put on a few pounds. She’s still stunning, and everyone around her adores her, but she’s determined to get back to the slim figure she had at 15 when she first showed up at the lake. Some struggles, it seems, never go out of style.

Sally, Penny, and a few other women in the neighborhood have a daily exercise routine, and they’re all in great shape—but there’s always room to push a little harder. Working on the farm and lending a hand with construction keeps them active too.

“Pat! John! Get down here!” Sally shouts from across the broccoli patch. “We’ve got a meeting at Ben’s place. Penny got a letter, and she says we need to see it.”

“Alright, Sweetie, we’re coming!” John calls back, already climbing down.

The three of them pile into the wagon with the kids, and John takes the reins, guiding the horses toward Ben and Penny’s. Millie, their dog, bounds alongside, barking at imaginary critters like she always does when they head out.

“Hey, thanks for dropping everything to come over,” Penny says, her face unusually serious. “I asked Michael to join us too. We’ve got a situation. I got a letter from my mom—she lives way out there, in a parallel universe, actually. We don’t talk much, but she’s a big deal in her world’s politics. Back when she was on Earth, she was a wanderer, one of those souls who visit from other levels. She says her whole reason for being here was to make sure Ben and I got together, because it’d matter for her people someday. I never understood why until now. Her letter says their planetary system’s in deep trouble—something about a temporal causality experiment that went totally sideways. And get this: they think the four of you might be the only ones who can untangle it.”

Sally’s eyebrows shoot up, and she crosses her arms. “Hold up, Penny. You can’t just go around calling us the Magnificent Four and expect us to zip across the multiverse fixing everyone’s messes. I’m a mom now—I can’t just take off like that.”

Penny shakes her head, a small smile breaking through. “Oh, honey, I didn’t put you guys out there like that. I brag about you all the time, but I haven’t talked to my mom in years, long before you became the ‘Magnificent Four,’ heh. She must’ve heard about you on her own—or maybe she always knew. Point is, the request is out there, and we need to figure out what to do.”

Sally’s not letting it go. “If John and Mike want to go, fine, but I need Pat here with the kids. I can’t just leave them.”

Penny gives her a motherly smile. “Sally, the kids are practically living at my house half the time anyway—I’d be happy to watch them. Ben’s got the schoolhouse under control, and there are plenty of young farmers around to handle your fields. You and Pat can both go. Don’t use the kids as an excuse to miss out on a wild adventure.”

“Penny, you know I’d be lost without my kids, even for a few days,” Sally argues. “I’d go stir-crazy. And how would we even get there? That’s way beyond the edge of this domain—can Ben even send us that far?” Sally and Penny go back and forth, while the guys wisely stay out of it, knowing better than to jump into a debate between these two.

“It’s not a problem,” Penny says. “They’ve got multi-dimensional vehicles they can project into our reality. They’ll literally land on your front lawn to pick you up. Plus, you get to wear cool space suits and fly around different galaxies, seeing all kinds of amazing stuff. You really shouldn’t pass this up.”

Sally sighs. “Okay, let’s say Pat and I go. We can’t morph anymore—our Level 10 experience is gone, and I don’t think it’s coming back for thousands of years. We’re just regular Level 5 folks now, no special powers. They’re gonna be disappointed when they see what we’ve got to offer.”

The debate drags on for over an hour, with the guys staying quiet until the women are ready to lay out their plan.

“Alright, John, Pat, Mike,” Penny says, glancing at Sally. “Here’s what we think. Their expectations might be way off, and you may not have any answers for them. But it wouldn’t hurt to go check it out, get a feel for the place. They’ve mixed their Level 5 and Level 3 existence into some kind of dual-level setup, and that’s part of what’s causing their problems. Even if you can’t help, you might learn something useful for Earth. If there’s nothing you can do, you’ll be back in a day or two, and we’ll get on with things here. If you can help, it’ll be an incredible adventure, and you might be gone a few weeks.”

Michael nods. “Sounds doable. I’ve got a maintenance crew for Powder Junction, but I’d need Ben to swing by now and then to fix anything that breaks. Other than that, it could be kind of fun.”

John grins at Sally, his eyes twinkling like he’s saying, *Here we go again.* “I’ll keep an eye on Sally and Pat—make sure they stay out of trouble. But yeah, it sounds like a blast. Let’s do it.”

And… so it begins.

```

Go To: Book 1 Go To: Book 2 Go To: Book 3

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