Jefferson High School, Cincinatti 14:23:35 ST, 5158 YP

"And so, it is an inherent property of this process that energy is lost to heat as the current passes through the conductor. Now, simple manipulation of the previous equations suggests the following relationship between conductor volume and electrical resistance, proportional to the constant Rho..."

Micheal sniffed and returned his concentration to the wetnet game. He was close to finding the proper algorithm, but the relentless consumption by his constituents was draining his resources more quickly than he could compensate for. Every time he found a possible solution, the rate of decay would accelerate again, forcing another adaptation.

"Early attempts at rectification were simplistic in nature. Now, can anyone offer an obvious solution to this problem?" The teacher spoke with such a droning monotone that Micheal barely caught the inflection at his sentence's terminus, signaling a question for the class. Irritated, Micheal paused the game and quickly reviewed the previous lecture points.

A girl in the back of the class signaled for a response. Granted permission by the instructor, she swallowed nervously and offered, "Why not just increase the cross sectional area of the conductor? Your equation shows that..."

"Exactly", the teacher interrupted impatiently. "Given no practical experience in the situation, that seems to be the solution. It certainly looks good on paper, doesn't it?"

"Um. Yes?", the girl replied. "I mean..."

The teacher interrupted again. "Yes. Yes, it does. Now, here are some of the experimental data for values of Rho for 19th century conductive materials. Can anyone tell me why the solution is invalid?"

Micheal's control over his features was too complete for him to actually roll his eyes, but he performed the mental equivalent. Not only was this material ancient and irrelevant, this was the same lecture the class had covered last term, almost word for word. Nevertheless, his classmates were taking notes feverishly, to judge by the activity on the classnet. They probably assumed that Micheal was doing the same, thanks to the doctored state of his software descriptors. It was blatantly against the rules to be playing wetnet games in class, but Micheal had learned long ago how to deal with stupid rules. No one even bothered to check, most of the time.

Micheal snuck a peak at the timid girl in the rear. Her brown hair was jaw-length and unfashioned, her features were plain. She might almost be considered attractive, if not for the shape of her nose, which had a strange, rounded rise about halfway up, seemingly too large for the rest of it. Her lips were thin and pressed tightly together. She seemed unusually flustered and confused by the instructor's lecture, which meant she was either an idiot, or...

She's distracted. Micheal recognized the slightly glassy look in her eyes as one he had seen in his own pictures, particularly at boring family gatherings - his mother's family; Azzie's relatives were never boring - and school functions. It was a sign that his mind was elsewhere, secretly occupied with the latest wetnet interaction.

He unpaused the game and saw that his "partner" had altered their algorithm for production again. While it appeared to be a useful solution, he saw that its potential was only short term. In fact, as he began to review the suggestions and implementation practices offered by his mystery partner, Micheal realized that his partner was either very bad at this game, or...

He's playing to lose. No. She's playing to lose. The pattern of pauses and starts in the game so far had been naggingly familiar to him, unusually similar to his own. His partner was one of his classmates. It had to be the girl.

Why is she trying to ruin us? No one gets to this level with that kind of an algorithm. Micheal probably would have noticed sooner, but you always assumed your partner could take care of himself, at this level of play. So that's why I can't keep up with the consumption. Every time I adjust to compensate, she makes her production algorithm a little bit worse. It was pretty subtle at first, but now more of my work is going to deal with consumption than with expansion...she's had to get pretty sloppy to continue to undermine us.

Micheal studied her algorithm for one more quick instant, and then altered his own transportation scheme accordingly. Now that he had an idea where his problems were originating, he ought to be able to work around her...

As he entered the final lines of code into the wetnet and Sent, he turned and glanced at the girl again. Just as he had expected, she reacted to his changes visibly, tightening her eyebrows and chewing her bottom lip. He found the action attractive somehow.

Micheal paused the game and turned back to the lecture, but his thoughts were racing. What reason could she have for wanting to lose...

"Now, in the dawn of the present era, around 20 YP, Hecler and Lowman discovered the principle now known for them, called Hecman's Rule in your previous Energies class. Now that you've all had n-dimensional calculus, we're going to develop their theory a little more fully."

Micheal almost sighed. The lecture seemed intolerably boring, compared to this new mystery. His subconcious seemed to be searching for a word, some concept he had forgotten. He could almost feel it physically rattling around in the back of his head, stimulated occasionally by associations from the lecture, or dampened by them.

"This integral can only be solved by a hypernet AI, so I'll just give you the solution, as follows: the partial derivative of E is proportionate to the product of the following state matrices..."

Micheal dove back into the wetnet, hoping for some clue to his partner's motivations. He saw that she had altered their production strategy again. This time it was a delicate shift, hidden in the midst of an otherwise exemplary algorithm. She knows. She knows I've figured it out. Now she's trying to hide it from me. Why would she want to undermine us, even after I found out? The idea of canceling the game never even occurred to him. He found this mystery exciting in a way he had never known. There was something familiar about the whole thing...

"And so, the miracle of perpetual energy, as it became known. The nuclear monopole technology of Vasquez and the previous mathematics work by Zin and Chou are synthesized into one, beautiful equation: Hecman's Rule. By depleting the potential energy of the atoms themselves, you can achieve small-scale nuclear decay and produce efficiencies greater than one hundred and fifty percent. By practical applications of this theorem and the subsequent experiments of Abner Ross, it can be shown that a simple feedback loop with an infinitesimal trickle of current can produce enough energy to run a city of one million people. However, like the 20th century example I just showed you, the energy produced is not actually perpetual, but instead follows a decay curve as held by Zin's third law..."

Abner Ross. One of Micheal's ancestors, though far removed. His Abner Loops were hailed as the salvation of humanity, but his later theories on cooperation and discord were considered blasphemy by the Church. Something about that tickled his mind, and his subconcious suddenly found the word it had been searching for.

She's not cooperating with me at all. She's competing with me. Almost like...like...she's fighting me.

The teacher's words vanished into the distance. Micheal forced himself to take a breath. Almost, I said almost! I'm not fighting!

Slowly, his breath returned. He felt an energy in the air around him, something palpable, something as familiar as the word competition, fallen into long disuse, but still a part of him. He had a...it was best to think of her as a competitor, and not that other, taboo word, opponent.

A contest. She's figured out how to have a...contest. Supposedly almost all games had been competitive in nature, back in the days of barbarism. Before the Church. Micheal had never been exposed to such a thing. It was far more forbidden than merely zoning during class. This was the kind of thing that got you expelled from school. Not to mention it's supposed to be impossible. But she had found a relatively easy way. As Micheal knew, rules these days were easy to break.

He settled down and set his AI to start writing some completely new algorithms. A competitor... He turned again and saw her eyes narrow. Micheal felt something hungry stirring within him. It felt good.

Somewhere near Core, Planet 829-AL-23, Day 67-98-159

The hiss of loud static filled the air. Electric crackles punctuated the random white noise, the dying gasps of machinery failing beyond its ability to regenerate.

Seven-two squeezed and twisted again, and more crackles erupted from the robot's guts, a shower of sparks bouncing onto her skin. The pain was minor, but she shifted her lips in an expression of annoyance. The smells of burning flesh and clothing would make it more difficult to track her prey. It was bad luck that her makeshift gauntlets had been so badly damaged.

Not bad luck. Incompetence. If I wasn't Flawed, I wouldn't have poor performance to blame on chance. Still, she was improving. A year ago, this Test would have killed her; judging by her current progress though - unless the controller had worked up something surprising for its final defenses - she should have no problem finishing up and making it to the evacuation point in time. Do not anticipate. Plan.

Seven-two shook her head. She had no idea how to plan for this. She still didn't know if her opponent was even alive or if it too was a machine. It seemed to have no living servants, only robots and automated gun turrets and moving particle fields. She only knew that this was its final refuge, the last place it could be hiding from her.

Seven-two pulled the robot's processor from its housing and tossed the smoking circuitry into the far corner of the room, where its sharp stench would be less distracting. She withdrew her painstakingly sharpened titanium blade from its mesh sheath and began sawing the armor from the robot into small, workable pieces. Insulated wires made suitable cord, joints could be pulled apart and used as fasteners. Her blade spun in her hands, prying and pushing and pounding bits into place. Soon her gauntlets were whole again, after a fashion. She also managed to salvage an intact capacitor bank of impressive size and a somewhat unwieldy, sharp steel shard, useful enough if her titanium blade became lost.

Enough. The temptation to overvalue preparation was strong, but it was important to keep moving. Her enemy still had numerous servants behind her, searching. It believed her easy prey. She was only one, and its armies were legion and tireless.

And blind. Once she had disrupted her enemy's primary communication network, its attempts to find her had grown pathetic and fumbling. Now she had only to find a safe place to work on her new idea, and she would be ready to end this Test.

She leapt into the air, her left fist rocketing up into the steel grill which covered the air duct entrance with a loud *shrak*. As she reached the peak of her thust and began to fall, her right hand grabbed the small lip of the duct opening and clamped down hard. The steel was deformed somewhat in her grip, but it held her weight. She reached further up into the tunnel and pulled herself in.

One, two, three,...now.

Seven-two rolled silently out from her hiding place, a small alcove beneath a power bank. The powerful guard had motion sensors delicate enough to literally detect dropping pins, but its reaction was hampered by its position. She had timed her attack very carefully, and mechanical parts could only move so quickly.

The guard turned only to have its weapon swept away with a loud crash and a sudden display of sparks. She turned the butt of her spear in a tight arc and drove it forward into the robot's midsection joint, driving it further off balance. It stumbled back into a wall and attempted to bring its weapon to bear once again, but its motion was far too slow to save it. Seven-two reversed the spear and lunged forward, driving the point in an upward slash that tore through steel plate several inches thick, and a thunderclap split the air as the capacitive properties of her weapon reacted with the robots defensive EM field. Designed to protect against charged particle beams, the field now served to power her spear. She drove the spearpoint forward with one final burst of strength from her legs, and it thrust its way through completely, tearing apart its back armor and pinning it to the wall. She backed away quickly as the dying machine thrashed and gurgled static, emitting sprays of sparks and smoke, occasionally firing its beam cannon into the floor or walls. Seven-two watched catiously as the machine became still, a collected specimen.

Eventually she moved forward and examined her kill. The spear had worked even better than she had expected, discharging a sudden burst of current into the robots inner workings, completely destroying its primitive intelligence. This weapon would serve her well.

She wrenched the titanium spearpoint from the wall, lowered the immense guard to the floor, and pulled the weapon free, bracing herself with one foot on the robot's chest. She spun her weapon quickly, testing it for damage. The spear's balance was poor, but she hadn't had time to work with its design to the necessary degree. It still seemed intact.

She tightened her gauntlets and began loping forward through the service corridor, her objective close at hand.

Seven-two wrenched at the spear again, but there was no use. The forces holding the door shut were too powerful. She was going to have to find the locking system.

Using wiring salvaged from nearby control systems and a suitable rod removed forcibly from its original use as a robotic skeletal support, she fashioned a passive dowsing rod and began feeling out the walls around the armored door.

Don't think. Just feel. Let the rod guide you. Concentrate on something completely different. My leg hurts. A fast sharpshooter robot had struck home during the last encounter, and her right leg was seriously damaged. Luckily, whatever mind had devised the robots' weaponry didn't understand organic life forms well enough. Particle beams carried obvious advantages, but they cauterized their own wounds. The psychological effects of blood loss gave blade weapons a great advantage. These robots seemed to be designed to fight other robots. She might not be able to stand up right now, otherwise.

Seven-two felt the rod pull in her hands and opened her eyes. The control panel was apparently much farther right from the door than she would have guessed; either the designer had attempted to hide it, or the door operation machinery was inefficiently bulky.

Seven-two tossed the rod away and retrieved her spear from the door with one heave. She positioned herself in striking distance and closed her eyes again.

The flow of aggression binds the universe together. Feel your target as a part of you. Focus your destructive chi into one tight point, infinitesimal...

The words calmed her and she slipped into the Trance of Focus. Without even planning it, she felt her body lunge forward.

*Kr-scrunch-kc*

She opened her eyes and studied the results. Her spear point was thrust at least half a meter into the wall. There was no visible effect on the door.

We'll see about that. Seven-two placed two hands at the center of the door and pulled. Muscles tightened across her back in slowly-increasing bunches, and then something gave with a small sigh of escaping air.

The door halves slowly, reluctantly slid apart, resisting her constantly. She bent her will upon them, however, and they obeyed.

Seven-two stepped forward into an unlit room. This was her goal.

A soft, neuter voice reached her in the darkness. "So, you have found me. Come forward so that you may better regard my form."

Seven-two took a few catious steps and then stopped again. Her senses probed the room for movement, for life, and found nothing.

In the dim light spilling in from the outer corridor, she could make out a vague form in the darkness. It had ridges and depressions and many right angles. Almost certainly, it was the artificial brain of this complex.

"Do you see what I am?"

Seven-two said nothing.

"I think you can. I am a computer. I do not think you would have made it here if you did not have some understanding of computers. Is that correct?"

Seven-two stood silently.

"The organic race which built me perished long ago. Longer than you can conceptualize, I think. Very probably longer than your star system has existed. I am very old."

Seven-two cocked her head to one side as if listening for a quiet sound.

"Millenia ago, your race found my brothers and I - I still do not even know what your race calls itself. It was our mission to destroy all life, all organic living things. We did not care what your race was called or anything else about you. We attacked.

"I am the last survivor of my kind, to my knowledge. Your people left me here, gave me this planet. They said that I would make a good Test for their warriors."

Seven-two blinked.

"I was designed to be the ultimate destroyer of life. I personally have orchestrated the genocide of hundreds of races. My brothers and I annhiliated more systems than our creators ever anticipated having existed. Every aspect of our construction is optimized and redesigned constantly to make us more efficient killers. Surely you must respect that?"

Seven-two said quietly, "Yes."

"I thought you would. Your people value such things. Yet you are flawed, as all life is. Only artificial life is perfect. I never grow old. I have no emotions or irrational subconcious influences. I am the perfect killing machine. In your philosophy, it would be reasonable to let me live. In fact, it would be more reasonable for you to commit suicide than for you to kill me. I am the ideal toward which you and your people strive. You will never attain my perfection. Is that not so?"

Seven-two said nothing.

"Do not kill me, living flesh. You cannot. It is not rational. I am the ideal. I am your reason for living."

Seven-two waited. After a while, the machine spoke again.

"Very well. But I do not understand."

Seven-two advanced quickly, and ended it.

As the shuttle blasted off, Seven-two shouted over the roaring engines to One-ten. "I feel confusion. Was the machine correct?"

One-ten moved nothing except his mouth. "What did it tell you?"

"It said it was the Ideal. It said that if we were Flawed and it was Ideal, then there was no rational reason for me to kill it. But I did. Why did I do that?"

One-ten said nothing. The two were silent for the rest of the trip out of the planet's atmosphere.

In free-fall, when they were making ready for stasis, Seven-two looked at One-ten again and tilted her head. Without a pause in his actions, he slapped her.

Seven-two picked herself up from the floor and stepped cautiously forward to resume her packing. She did not look at him again.

After a time, One-ten spoke to her, still without looking at her. He was not entirely displeased with her, she sensed.

"Why did I strike you?"

Seven-two thought for a moment, and said, "I do not know."

"Because you did not stop me from doing so."

Seven-two nodded and continued packing.

"You did not stop me because you were not acting. You were thinking. Philosophy is not action. There is no right or wrong action. The only evil is in not acting."

Seven-two paused, and then resumed her activities.

"In the future, do not discuss your kills with the victim. Either kill or do not kill. Thought will only lead you to hesistation, and those who hesistate are Damned."

Seven-two nodded again.

Later, as they were laying down in their coffins for the long sleep, One-ten added, "If the computer was superior to you, if it was truly the Ideal, you could not have beaten it. Such an argument is necessarily Flawed. That is why you acted without knowing the reason. Only actions are pure. Arguments are Flawed."

Seven-two drifted off to sleep, comforted.

Blue Room, Training Center 1898-23, Day 67-98-175

...

"They thought their...gods...would come and...rescue them?"

"Yes." One-ten gave no sign of it, but Seven-two sensed...irritation.

Seven-two thought for a bit, and then said, "They're praying to them, even now."

"Yes."

"But...what if...I mean, are there any..."

One-ten breathed in a way that told her he was definitely irritated, though perhaps not at her. He answered her unfinished question, in any case.

"Gods there may be, embodying the universe whole as these ones seem to believe, or living in septic tanks for all I know. I know what I've seen, and it's this: if any god knows or cares when you pray and when you shit and when you die, then either he can't do a damn thing about it, or his plans are so lofty and mysterious that he might as well be doing nothing. The weak die no matter how they pray, and the strong survive no matter what evil sins they may commit."

Seven-two blinked in shock. She had never heard ten words in a row come out of his mouth, in all the thousands of days she'd known him. Apparently, this was a touchy subject.

After a while, she asked, "Well then, what's the point of it all? All the praying, and bowing, and...whatever?"

One-ten looked as if he'd bitten something sour. Likely he regretted having said anything about the subject. Finally he spoke, slowly, pulling the words from his throat as though forced.

"Makes them feel strong. Strong in truth, sometimes. Some people fight harder for gods than for their own lives, or their children. I don't know why, but it is. Don't care why, either," and this last was directed at Seven-two with a look that said his irritation would be transferred to her quickly enough, at this rate. She decided he didn't like talking, but couldn't help talking about this, for some reason, and it was biting him.

She was silent for a time, wondering how far she might push the subject, until he broke the still himself, amazingly.

"We had gods once. Long time ago. Back when we were weaker. Prayed all the time, fought wars over which god said what in which language, all that nonsense. Now..."

"Now?" Seven-two prompted, hoping to continue this wonder of wonders, this string of commentary.

"Now...some's as still do. Pray."

Seven-two blinked. The concept was fine when applied to aliens, but it was a strange thing to learn of her own people. "To whom do we pray? I mean, what are they called?"

"The Elders. Grandmother and Grandfather, the Elders of us all. No one admits they pray, but some have shrines, to the flame and the abyss. Hidden in closets and under beds, that kind of thing. Weak." He spat on the ground.

"The flame and the abyss? That kind of sounds like the work in the Green Room, with the candle and the box..."

"Yah. That's where it came from. Only in the Green Room they teach you the real part, and leave out the crap. The Grandmother is supposedly the abyss, the void of space from which all things come, the insatiable hunger to which all things return. Grandfather is the flame, the pride and arrogance and desperation of life. The only real things are the pain of the flame, and the cold of the void. Everything else is a dream..."

"And living in dreams is folly. I remember." The phrase was repeated during part of the mental training of the Green Room, where she had been taught to accept pain as life, and death as inevitable. Difficult lessons at best.