Book 8 – Chapter 62 – Return

“Please explain in more detail who or what this program is.” The Icon sent to me, almost whispering in a data package while she gave it nervous glances.

“When I first came to your strata, I was trying to get a hold of Wrath and let her know where I was.” I formatted up a quick data package of my own, bundling up everything I’d gone through. “I stepped into the digital sea through a terminal, called out for help and this guy showed up. Learned how to draw out a probe of Relinquished, some interesting information about the state of the digital sea and ecosystem here, and then promptly got caught by Relinquished herself when I thought Wrath had gotten my message.”

After which I had to play a chess game for my life, and in hindsight, I should have recognized she’d let me leave alive for a reason.

The giant looked down on us, “Your request for another trade is understood. I seek this knowledge. What do you require?”

“Safe passage together to this location.” I sent back, along with a set of coordinates. “For the both of us. We’re handling the smaller programs easily enough, but the larger programs keep getting in our way.”

“Larger programs will not be an issue to me. This distance is possible. I accept.” It lowered itself downwards, the giant eye turning to the Icon. “Explain what this N-Soft is, and how you know of it.”

The Icon gave me a small look, and I nodded back. “Don’t worry. same thing happened to me. He expects his side of the bargain done first unless otherwise stated, so go ahead and tell him what you know.”

She turned to the giant looming above us both, and readjusted her cap before speaking. “N-Soft was a corporate entity dedicated to billing and accounting software that automated headcount. Their services were rather faulty and required troubleshooting with their representatives. And so I would be required to work with them. Quite often.”

She held a hand out, and a packet of data hovered above her palm. I got glimpses of it. A full debrief on what N-Soft was, and what it produced. And among it the most basic information.

The Leviathan studied it too. Then the giant eye turned back to the Icon. “Do you recognize me? Have you spoken to a prior iteration of myself, when I was lesser than I am now?”

“No. I am unfamiliar with your program. The agents I connected with were far more…. human-like in appearance? Or at least more conventionally uniform to meeting clients.”

“That region. Human.” The leviathan spoke, studying the package. “Much of what you show in your data makes little sense. But that word I have heard echoed before. I saw traces of it mentioned at the origin, among the decayed structures. Your information matches the structures I found there. There is much left to learn. Tell me where I fit within this cycle.”

“Would that I could help you with that request, however I simply do not have enough information about your makeup to know how you are related to N-Soft.” The Icon said, shaking her head.

The giant rumbled for a moment to itself. Then it slowly lowered down. “I require answers to my existence. You do not recognize me. You may recognize what I carry within me instead. Search, and give me the answers I seek.”

At the same moment it fully landed on the seabed, sediment flying everywhere in a dust cloud before a wave of willpower demanded it all to settle back down.

The eye within the massive program had opened up, revealing a far smaller section within. Wall after wall lifting upwards. Swarms of smaller programs fleeing the path, along with what I felt were layers of defenses unraveling and turning off.

Deep within, I saw… a small office room. Similar to the Icon’s. And sitting on a chair with a desk in front of it was a human-like figure. Hands folded over the desk, as if waiting for the next customer to come. There was no trace of life, he looked more like a mannequin.

I had no idea what any of that meant, but the Icon absolutely did. It was basically written all over her face in one instant. Surprise and shock. “Oh my.”

“You have seen something.” The Levithan rumbled. And a bit of hope there. The walls shut back down, swallowing up the small room back into the core, once more defended.

“Yes.” She looked up to the giant. “I know what you are. You are the internal security systems that guarded one of N-Soft’s customer support agents. I can see you were connected to a soul fractal in order to defend the systems from acausal intrusions. However N-Soft never updated their customer agents from before the acausal era. This was a far more simple chatbot program designed to obfuscate and redirect customers away. I often had to skip past them in order to get an actual representative.”

“I require more knowledge.”

“I… would need to have deeper access to your systems in order to understand your purpose further.”

The giant remained silent. As if judging if the Icon could be trusted. “Acceptable.” It finally spoke, and lowered again.

She took a few more steps forward and held a hand out to touch on the old metal walls that were now firmly shut. I couldn’t see what was going on behind all of that, but clearly the Icon was getting some more information. “It seems like almost all functions ceased to operate when the main N-soft servers were eliminated. You were left alone. And I can see you were attacked during your earlier operational years. Yes, I can see the older logs and distress signals in your records. You barely survived the assault. You were small then. Smaller than the agent you were protecting.”

She stopped, then looked up at the program with a more serious gaze. “Your prior iteration was forced to jettison partitions of itself in order to escape. You took the customer support agent along with its terminal location with you and left the region entirely. You had no choice but to delete your prior programming in order to even jettison.”

The Icon send me a full data report of what she was watching. A floating office building in the digital sea, carried away by the current. Along with a tiny program crawling over the roof and sides, like a crab, building defenses around it year after year.

A dutiful guardian protecting a sleeping charge. Slowly forgetting what it was protecting, only that it had to.

Centuries went by. The program mutated, growing more powerful in order to protect the sleeping agent through all of it.

Until one day a random human finally came back to the digital sea and sent out a message that triggered a generic response from the sleeping agent deep within.

The massive titan seemed to freeze for a moment, realizing what it was.

“I see. I understand. My curiosity has been satisfied.” The eye turned to the Icon. “I see you. I know you now. Icon of Stars, program of Festival Cruises, friend and adversary of my sleeping charge. I will continue to serve my purpose.”

The eye looked back up to the world beyond. “You are small here. You should return to your systems, dislocate it from its roost, and travel through the sea as I do. I will teach you how to guard and protect your core.”

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“That is unfortunately not my current objective or task.” The Icon softly said. “I am needed elsewhere.”

“So be it.” The giant spoke. “Climb onto my shell. I will take you to where you need to be.”

A swarm of smaller programs left the shell, floating down to the seabed floor where they formed a living staircase up into the red coral forest that had sprouted on the giant’s armor over the years.

I held a hand out to the Icon, then jumped off the ground and let the current float us both over the steps, following the path made until we landed on the leviathan’s shell.

Among the red corals, we grabbed hold. The giant rumbled, moving up off the ground and we traveled through the sea.

The difference was pretty stark. For one, the smaller programs avoided us like the plague. The leviathan didn’t have a defensive shield around it. The sheer presence and power was enough to warn anything not to come close. Simpler programs that did got eaten by the ecosystem floating around the leviathan.

Larger programs passed by, but there seemed to be an unworded agreement everywhere not to attack one another. Or the leviathan was simply too big to deal with.

“You meet the strangest people Mister Winterscar.” The Icon said to my side, watching the sea part around us as we steadily made our way back to the vault.

“You don’t even know the half of it.” I shrugged. “The last few months have been a bit of a wild airspeeder ride where we keep finding anything to keep the engines fueled up. Tell you what, if I survive through it all, I’ll write a nice book and send it to you first.”

“I would very much appreciate that. Although I would appreciate you surviving through the events that come more.”

“It’s on my to-do list.” I shot her happy smile. “So far so good.”

Our trip unfortunately got cut a tiny bit short right at the very end.

“I will not travel further.” The leviathan spoke, coming to a slow stop, exiting the digital sea proper. “The entities I sense beyond are beyond my ability.”

It floated at the halfway point, far enough away from the digital sea that the mass amounts of programs flying around weren’t anywhere near our faces.

But far below us, I could see a small spec among the grey desert of sediment below. The mite terminal, and in one large dome by the very tip, the vault I’d been launched out of.