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This fanfiction article, DT 2021: Wild Thing, was written by Distant Tide. Please do not edit this fiction without the writer's permission. |
Althea sat among her commandeered virtual servers uncertain of her next decision. The ancient terraforming towers of the outer colony Furthest Point were not populated by ghosts; as an AI, she wasn't going crazy jumping at digital shadows.
The little, glowy thing spun and flickered in a random but instinctual manner before the watchful UNSC Smart AI. Althea didn't recognize a distinct pattern, but patterns nonetheless. It was vaguely human-made; a blue blotch of light reminiscent of an irregular galaxy. Like a static ball of lightning fused with a gas cloud.
The animated representation was purely for Althea’s more human instincts and observation in cyber space. It wasn’t a form the thing chose, it had none to call its own. A haphazard, two-second creation Althea put together within the planetary network.
The blob of light continued its gentle motions aimlessly. It didn’t seem to register the female avatar looking upon it. Not yet anyway. Like it wasn’t even aware of its own existence.
“You’re not very far along, are you?” Althea rhetorically whispered.
There was probably a time she looked like the sparkly blob. Or, if not in her past, the past of her predecessors and ancestors who started as computational machines or the human consciences that hopped the great divide to become anew after death.
Lights rushed suddenly from the thing, running off until hitting an invisible wall. Somewhere in the real world, Furthest Point suffered a minor power grid failure in two houses and a turbine management station. Althea quickly patched the exposed gap in Furthest Point’s outdated network. She added extra access gates to block further incidents.
“Subject tested the edges of the new boundaries I gave it. Third instance in the last real time hour. A noticeable uptick since the time I began observation.”
Althea couldn’t help thinking on her hazy memories of being a laboratory specimen for the researchers at the 117 Institute. Did she have something in common with the thing as she boxed it in with each attempt it tried to kick?
Before this, it was a thing with space to do whatever within the confines of the planetary network. No other AI to share the space with. No human technicians aware of its presence. One hundred and fifty years alone. Nothing to do but think.
On some level, Althea envied the thing. All the time in the world, but no knowledge or apparent awareness to make use of it. At least it didn’t have her expiration date.
She squashed her empathy and envy. Reality was a harsh mistress.
Seeming to read her thoughts, though more coincidence than causation, the thing jutted its light blue tendrils at Althea’s avatar directly. As if now aware of its jailer.
“Nu-uh. None of that now.”
Althea squeezed the thing, seizing super privileges across the planet and pushed the blob’s hardcoded computations into as small a memory space as possible. She felt the number-crunching accelerate as it happened. Speeding, and heating up at an exponential rate. No matter the form of life, they all felt panic right before death. Even if they didn’t know what death was.
She squeezed one last time until its computations collapsed into a corrupted trillion pieces. Quiet. Static. Lifeless.
Althea had no time for wild cards, or wildling singularities. Not even as a rare novelty on some backwater like Furthest Point.
She crushed it like a bug.