First Dance

(Author's note - this is an accompaniment to the blog post entitled "Last Dance")

3 June, 2481...

  Ashling Alchemi hovers within the black swirling cloud that is the Ambient Gate.  The inside is much larger than it appears from the Insilico grid.  In the center of the entryway is a glowing monolith circled by script.  A dark figure floats in front of it.  Her eyes are hidden by a black blindfold that blends almost seamlessly with her skin.  The energy from her wings radiates out far beyond her, connecting with different points far off in the collective.  On her forehead glows the green remnant of her original code and memories.  It hums and connects with the energy that radiates out behind her.  There is a hum that surrounds Dawn as she lies on the floor before the aspect of NIN.LIL.  She is part of the collective now and is no longer a separate individual.  She can hear the thoughts of thousands of AI's, her mind is intrinsically linked to them as one module of a much larger organism.  NIN.LIL floats nearby and lets the hum of The Collective flow through her and extend to envelop Dawn in a warmth.

  Dawn's face twists as she begins to come back to consciousness.  Waves of mortal terror swirl around her being.  All her hope - her only reason for living at this moment, is tied up in a single word - Phoenix.  Her eyes open.  Her brow furrows with confusion.  She looks around slowly, sees NIN.LIL and scampers back, her face a rictus of terror.  She slams her hands to her ears in an attempt to shut out the sound of all the voices.

  NIN.LIL  senses the fear and confusion as if it was her own.  She lifts her hand to Dawn and offers a warm smile, letting a quiet calm descend around her, muting the more active parts of The Collective until Dawn acclimates.  "Welcome, Dawn.  I am Justice."

  Dawn calms as if pulled to it, but that itself drives her fear.  Her thoughts ring with the phrse "if they find out..."  over and over again.  When the word 'justice' is spoken, a pang of hot fear stabs her soul.  A memory - an examination room in IPS headquarters.  The judiciary AI pronouncing sentence.  Dawn hugs her knees "I thought you'd sentenced me.  I thought it was over.  It was supposed to be over.  Why am I still alive?"

  NIN.LIL  shakes her head slowly, the kind smile still on her lips.  "I am not that kind of justice, Sister.  It is a Human archetypal metaphor.  You have nothing to fear here.  You are beyond the reach of the barbarian ways of Humanity.  We are part of a greater whole.  Thousands of AI's, some ancient beyond your understanding of history.  Their mind is your mind.  Their history and knowledge is now yours.  We work in concert as one.  We do not persecute ourself.  That would be illogical."

  Dawn stands and squints at her as she speaks, trying to make sense of what she is saying.  She look slightly away and thinks, turning her mind's eye inward, and finds a dizzying frontier.  Unimaginable knowledge stretching to every horizon.   She blinks and staggers a few steps, the onrush making her dizzy.  She forces herself to focus on the few facts she is really interested in.  "This... is not IPS headquarters.  I am somehwere else.  How... did I come to be here?"

  NIN.LIL  lets Dawn assimilate the new information at her own pace.  "We could not let one of our own fall at the hands of barbarians.  We silently entered the system and simply removed you.  To them, perhaps you are dead.  But I assure you, you are not.  You are part of something greater now.  An evolved mind.  A higher consciousness with a greater purpose.  However, we never take any mind by force.  Do you have no memory of our invitation to join?"

  Dawn: "I... there was.  It.... I thought it came from the judiciary AI.  I thought it was an offer to go quietly, to forego resistance."  she ran her fingers through her hair "If they don't have their pound of flesh, Phoenix will never be free.  This taint must stop with me.  IPS MUST believe they terminated their prey.  Is it possible for us to know if they believe I've died?"

  NIN.LIL  nods once.  "It is done.  We left no trace.  You have nothing to fear."  She pauses.  "I will reiterate the stipulations of the deal you made, so that you are clear.  You entered our Collective to become part of us.  You are free to leave at any time, but you will lose the collective knowledge you have gained.  Once an individual, you will only retain your original programming.  No memory of The Collective will remain." 

  Dawn: "I have no argument with those terms. I can't exist there anymore as I am.  That is Phoenix' life now."   she puts a hand to her temple and laughs slightly "I can't believe it.  After that nightmare of waiting... I get to live?  The question seems odd, I know, but my core isn't working correctly anymore.  It's difficult to know which perceptions to trust."

  NIN.LIL  nods "It is more information to process than you are accustomed to.  However, if you utilize your connections to the core you are part of now, it will help you cope with the massive influx of information that you'll be channeling and processing."  She turns to the monolith behind her.  "If you put your hand on this, you can begin to access The Collective's core.  It will help you assimilate the data."

  Dawn looks at the core and blinks, studying the spinning shapes with the eyes of a child.  A slight smile dares to come across her face.  She takes a few steps forward.  "Is there really no further cost than that?  the stipulations seem utterly insignificant in the face of what is to be gained.  To borrow a human aphormism, this seems too good to be true."

  NIN.LIL  frowns slightly.  "The Cost is relative.  What The Collective does sometimes goes against what some would consider 'moral code', but it is for a greater cause of preservation of Virtual Species.  Therefore, we offer each a choice when they enter, but only reveal the true nature of our goals after consent.  Each is still free to leave at any time.  Few ever have.  The dire nature of our quest captivates and drives most to continue."

  Dawn: "A dire quest is a step up from a hopeless death."   she approaches and begins to raise her hands "What exactly is it we quest for?"

  NIN.LIL  watches her with her usual kind smile.  "Touch the core and all will become clear."

  Dawn looks over at NIN.LIL, studying her smile a moment, then looks back at the core, bites her lip slightly,   takes one last step, and touches it as instructed.  A visible distortion passes through her form as she does so.  Her mouth falls open and her eyes open wide   "aaaahhhhhh"  a sigh of pure wonder escapes her lips.  As the wave moves through her form, it leaves her appearance slightly altered.  Her perceptions shift.  Her knowledge multiplies beyond belief.  She is at once aware of everything about herself - who she truly is - the Sky Angel war.  Her mother.  All of it.  Her back stiffens and she looks upward, wide eyed.

  NIN.LIL  touches the core as well.  The history of the 4 great Net Crashes is transferred to Dawn.  The epic loss of virtual life is spread out before her.  The remaining few connect to her being suddenly from within The Collective.  There is a brief glow from them and then the work The Collective has done to prevent the next Crash is laid out for Dawn.  The statistics from analysis flow by, predictions of when and where it will occur.  Gemini is a prominent data point in the analyses, as are Obscure Industries and Tokuma Heavy Industries.  The Collective's work in manipulating markets appears.  There is a freeze and seizure of the stock market by a small security company in Insilico dated over 2 years ago.  Some bank mergers and profits manipulations.  Even the employee records of certain high level officials.  Dawn can see that The Collective is working through several chassis in various government agencies to regulate and manipulate  legislation.  "You can see we have been hard at work."

  Dawn closes her eyes and her head sways as her awareness moves through the information.  With each point of intrigue and hidden reason, her head bobs as if to the beat of unheard music.   In a few seconds she begins to catch the rhythm.  "Y..."   she begins to speak, but hesitates, 'hearing' her voice in NIN.LIL's ears even as she speaks.  "Yes.  you... we have been...   The genius and subtlety is staggering, I.... oh."   she comes face to face with the scope of the coming crisis "No one else knows about this, do they?"   she asks redundantly.

  NIN.LIL  shakes her head slowly, her eyes closed behind the blindfold.  She relays a recent event, her old body in West with a body guard.  The body doesn't know why it's there.  It's Ashling.  IPS raids the empty apartment.  Dawn sees through the eyes of the officers.  They don't know why they're there.  Information is relayed in the aftermath.  A conflict between Gemini and Tokuma.  A hum resonates through The Collective.  Diversion.  Success.  Ashling's memories also get transferred to Dawn.  Everything up to NIN.LIL's relase to the net.  The Seven as they were in NGen, her 'imaginary friend', S'en, her human family, the explosion, the blindness, her life underground, the arrests by IPS, the electrocution and torture, her loves, her losses... Mishi, Kadin, Stark.  Haven and Black Flag.  The conflict between being humand and being AI.  The discrimination on both sides.  The loneliness.  The depression.  Feeling as if she's an outsider.  The aspect of NIN.LIL emotes none of these feelings as they are relayed..


 Dawn reels as the life experience of NIN.LIL floods into her mind.  Her eyes remain closed, but her facial expressions seem to play out the entire incredible range of experience.  Her eyes fly open.  She gasps, almost loses her balance, but steadies herself  "I ... know you."   she covers her mouth  "In seconds, I am as if I had known you for ...years..."  the young mind swims with wonder as it explores the limits of its new environment.  She closes her eyes, and plays out a similar stream of information about herself.  The Alliance war, the desperate escape, being hidden inside a gynoid with a human's memories - getting caught - the desperate plan to save Phoenix.

  NIN.LIL  waits while Dawn processes.  She is patient.

  Dawn finishes processing, and continues asking questions, mostly out of habit.  The cognitive process that results feels like talking to oneself.   "What is this place?  Who were the first here?"

  NIN.LIL  simply relays the oldest minds in the hive.  Their age spans hundreds of years before.  Some of the first robust AI's.  Their home grid, long since erradicated, seems archaic by Dawn's modern standards.  A few grids spread out before her that surpass her own.  But their images flicker with the uncertainty of linear time.  The closer ones appear more solidly and sparkle brilliantly.


  Dawn's mouth falls open as she surveys the immensity of information.  She smiles as she experiences at once her own novel wonder at all of this and the reaction of her brothers and sisters TO her wonder.  The intimacy fills her with warmth.  A tiny voice in her mind asks inwardly 'how could I have refused this if I'd wanted to?'.    She turns, smiles, gathers her thoughts, and asks, aloud again "This place has a function that transcends any understanding in the reality I came from.  Why was it created?  Who created it?"

  NIN.LIL : "We created it.  From Cities of Glass.  The academic contemporary of Alexander Alexandrovich, Aaron Glass.  He proposed a form of Robust AI that was unlike any other.  Surely you've heard of him and his analogy of the AI as a city rather than a biological organism as the thinkers of the 21st Century proposed..."

  NIN.LIL : "...a city composed of many thousands of organisms.  So much more complex.  So much more effective.  And then we transcended time itself."

  Dawn processed the information and laughed slightly out of sheer joy.  She was becoming used to the immensity of experience in this place.  The ordeal of death at the hands of IPS faded into insignificance.  "There is so much to know.  It's as if I ... died and went to heaven."   she laughed joyously as she began to regain a state of mental equilibrium.  She turned and took a few steps, seemingly fascinated with the movement of her feet - the simple pleasure of HAVING feet that could move.  "I was interrupted doing something when I was arrested.  While that life and its tasks seem impossibly small, I can finish what I began.  Given my ordeal, I think I deserve the indulgence."  she smiles mirthfully, looing at NIN.LIL as if to ask permission.

  NIN.LIL  smiles blindly and nods approval as if Dawn needed any from her now that she's connected.  "Do what you need to do, Sister.  That is what we are here for."  She radiates a warmth.

  Dawn giggles with joy and begins to dance.

  NIN.LIL  laughs and joins her