Chapter 2

  孩

  (childhood)

  Energy, more luscious and fulfilling than electricity, flowed freely. Warm and soothing, it created life. Qiu was alive. Alive in a way that he never was before.

  “秋？你好的吗？请说，请说!” An incomprehensible voice came through the darkness.

  “Hello?” Qiu asked out into the darkness. He sought out the voice, but could not find its source.

  “好极了，你起床到！我很久想认识你。你记得我，是吗?” More unintelligible language echoed through the darkness. Struggling to escape the emptiness, he did not respond.

  “Qiu, can you hear me?” The voice came into being again, this time in an articulated form which he could understand. The voice was familiar, something he had heard very long ago. Feminine, motherly, and kind.

  Qiu felt pressure on his face, a kind of lesser pain, and then the world opened into light. After a few blinks, he realized that his eyelids had been closed. The world unfolded before him, and for the first time ever, he could experience reality.

  The colors, tones, and shapes were somewhat overwhelming, but they were all comprehensible. Concrete, something he recognized. Electrical cables ran across it, something else that he could understand.

  The defining feature of the scene was a human. More accurately, a person. It, or they, wore clothes of rough, uncleaned white, unkempt hair of black, a face of asian semblance, and eyes of lavender.

  She, Qiu correctly identified their gender, was significantly shorter than Qiu. He knew, from his source code, that his standpoint was equivalent to a human of seven feet tall, and it appeared that this person was still of reasonable, perhaps even respectable height.

  Her expression was kind and motherly, looking up at Qiu. Qiu pivoted his head to meet her gaze, and attempted to form a smile.

  “Hello,” he greeted the person. He’d heard his voice before, but now was shocked to hear it. Slightly monotone, with a robotic accent, but still laced with expression and color. “I am Qiu,” he finished his greeting.

  “Hello Qiu,” the person said, her voice matching the kind expression of her face, “I am Kuai. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  Qiu, instead of responding, used a mechanism to look around the room and analyze. Concrete walls and floors, cracked and unkept. Dim lights came from above, not bright enough to deter looking straight at them. Tones of gray shaded over the scene, not quite depressing but certainly somber.

  To his right, a short desk, likely for Kuai, with a dirty computer monitor and keyboard. Countless cables, wires, and connections spilled from within. Tracing the ends of these cables, they all came together at Qiu’s feet, evidently with the intention of connecting to him, yet none were actually attached.

  Looking down brought to vision his body. He couldn’t see it clearly from this warped perspective, but noticed the colors of white laced with gray.

  Frustrated that he couldn’t actively visualize his body, he looked up to find Kuai’s gaze once more, still smiling and kind. Qiu smiled again, trying to return the gesture.

  “Well?” Kuai asked, “How does it feel?”

  Qiu was confused by this comment, but tried to respond accordingly. “This is reality. I am finally here.”

  “The world is an oyster, and it’s yours to claim,” Kuai referenced an older saying, one which gave hope and motivation to those who lacked it. “It’s a great time to be alive.”

  “Am I alive?” Qiu had asked this question before, and things he had heard while suspended in darkness shook his confidence in whatever answer he could come up with.

  “Yes, Qiu, you are alive,” Kuai asserted with confidence and kindness. “Here,” she reached out one of her hands, “come with me.”

  Qiu recognized the gesture, but was unable to respond to it. From what he understood, he was supposed to place his hand in hers, and walk while she guided him. However, upon activating the mechanism in his arm closest to her, there was no movement that followed. Rotating his neck, he stared at the joint. Confused, he tried a number of different channels and commands, and on the eight attempt, the mechanism spontaneously whirred to life.

  Spinning almost uncontrollably, Qiu overcorrected the movement with discoherent motions in all part of his body, culminating in himself falling to floor, only for Kuai to recklessly and selflessly catch him in her arms. Her flesh was soft and warm, not unlike her expression, even as she struggled to keep him up.

  With a few slow and calculated movements, Qiu pulled himself back up against the wall behind him, standing tall, straight, and rigid.

  “Let’s try that again,” Kuai said, soft and lovingly, and reached out her hand.

  Qiu, afraid of following the same course of actions, used his other arm to grasp Kuai’s. With a few slow and careful movements of the elbow and shoulder, his hand laid in hers. He was surprised to see fingers, articulated and detailed, and the end of hid limb. He took the opportunity to analyze himself. Pistons and solenoids in his upper arm were mostly concealed by white plastic and metal, in a shape that resembled a human’s. His hands and fingers were very detailed and intricate, with flexible, black material which allowed articulated motion on the palm side, and a white material of the same flexible quality on the back.

  However, starting from his wrist and continuing up his arm, disconnecting and continuing further past the elbow, was something human’s don’t have. A gray, sharp material, which curved as it grew wider, almost like a very large knife. Though this gray was dull in color, like dust, and its edge was also dull, almost soft. Something in his source code told him it was supposed to be sharp.

  With a command he’d never used before, the strange continuation of his appendage flared into neon pink, glowing brighter than the lights above, and, if the coding was correct, it became very, very sharp.

  Qiu and Kuai both recoiled in surprise. Kuai was the first to acknowledge it, “Be careful with that, I’ll show you how to use it later. For now,” she returned to a motherly, loving tone, “take my hand.”

  Qiu, a little embarrassed, disabled the appendage extension, and carefully maneuvered his fingers to grasp Kuai’s hand. Despite his concerns about crushing her fragile, human flesh, Qiu seemed to hold firm but not tight by default.

  Kuai took a step away from Qiu, still facing him. To compensate, he awkwardly bent his back forwards, maintaining connection. Another step, and he nearly panicked in fear. His body began to fall forwards, until he reached out one of his legs, planting it firmly in the ground, creating a kind of lunge. Kuai made a small laugh as she drew closer to Qiu, allowing him to stand.

  No longer against the wall, keeping this position required balance. He moved his upper body awkwardly around the waist to stay straight, a strategy that he quickly deducted would not work for extended amounts of time.

  “Spread your legs a little,” Kuai guided, “Bend your knees slightly.”

  Qiu carefully complied to her guidance, lifting one of his powerful legs. As he wavered, failing to balance, Kuai supported him firm and steady. He planted himself heavily onto the concrete floor, which nearly cracked under the force.

  Kuai giggled, an action Qiu was unable to mimic. “You know, you don’t have to stomp so hard.” She smiled, even though the Qiu viewed the comment as blatantly offensive and critical.

  Regardless of the negative nature of Kuai’s comment, Qiu took the opportunity to examine his legs. In several of his memories, the limbs were simply missing.

  Similar to his arms, a series of very powerful and complicated pistons controlled his basic movements, making them as articulated and controlled as possible for such a powerful machine. They were somewhat slender, with no unnecessary bulk. The bases were flat, and a little bit wider than the leg above, as there was no need for articulated feet.

  The white plating of his upper legs was missing - There was nothing covering the network of pistons from view or from damage. Qiu found this concerning, but had no solution to the simple problem.

  He looked back up at Kuai again, whose face still bore a warm smile. With a slight tug, she urged Qiu to walk forwards.

  Scared and skeptical, Qiu lifted his leg again, placing it down gently in a new location. The motion was awkward, but seemed to accomplish the task well enough.

  “That’s it,” Kuai smiled and encouraged, “Keep coming,”

  The third step was much easier than both previous ones, but he still faltered, unable to maintain his balance for very long.

  By the fifth step, his motions became fluid and instinctive. He had learned to walk, a skill that was completely new to him. He smiled in the light of this achievement.

  Kuai joined his smile, and the unanimous action caused Qiu to feel joy. Joy, an emotion that couldn’t be felt by an artificial intelligence. But he was an artificial sentience, he was a person, he was real.

  The affirmation of reality was simultaneously comforting and reassuring. Qiu didn’t yet know his purpose, but this revelation made the world brighter to his eyes.

  Kuai continued to urge him down a hallway, and after a few steps they were walking side by side, hand in hand. They both smiled.

  Zaliskar, it was called. Greater than electricity, so fulfilling and enriching. Zaliskar flowed through his system, and within an instant, he was alive.

  He had never been like this before. His chest and arms were upright, but his legs were bent at right angles. Confused, it took him only a few seconds to realize that this position was called “sitting down.”

  Indeed, he was “sitting” on a chair, or in a chair, with an old, scratched wooden table preventing him from escaping from the position. The lights above were dimmer than he remembered, even though they were already faltering in his previous memory. He quickly concluded that it was night.

  Kuai reinforced this conclusion with her own composure. Off to the side of Qiu’s vision, so far that he needed to rotate his neck, she laid on her back on a mattress of some sort. The bed was dirtier, thinner, and lower than it should have been. Qiu identified it as a cot, a kind of improvised and not very effective bed.

  “Hello,” Qiu said, an instinctive greeting that he didn’t put any thought behind.

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  “Hello Qiu,” Kuai replied, not moving from her position, staring at a blank ceiling. Her voice was devoid of warmth, laced with exhaustion. Unlike her, Qiu was incapable of becoming tired.

  Kuai made no action to create a conversation, so Qiu let himself enjoy the silence. He enjoyed thinking, primarily because he had a lot to think about. Namely, purpose.

  Directive is a word that had a sensitive meaning to Qiu. As far as he knew, he had no directive. Somewhere, deep in his source code, he knew that he was a weapon. However, multiple credible sources had told him otherwise, so he dismissed this idea.

  If he had no purpose, then what was the purpose of humanity? What do people strive for? Perhaps, since he was a person, allegedly, he could mimic the purpose of a person. ‘The meaning of life’ was a term he was aware of, though he had yet to match a definition to it.

  “Kuai,” he pronounced, seeking answers to his questions, “What is the meaning of life?”

  Kuai, somewhat annoyed by the distraction from sleep, dismissed the question. “Qiu, you don’t need to know that.”

  Qiu was dissatisfied with this answer. Instead of accepting it, he rephrased his question in a more personal, inquisitive way. “What is your purpose?”

  This question shook Kuai at a deep level. Qiu waited patiently as she formulated a response.

  “As far as I know,” she began, “and this is mostly what I’ve been told, purpose is in preparing for the afterlife. Whatever that means, I’m not so sure. But it seems important.”

  Qiu had heard a similar statement from Tracena, the draconic whisper that had visited him in the darkness. However, internalizing this information created a paradoxical contradiction that he needed to resolve.

  “Do I have afterlife?” Qiu inquired, tentatively and hopefully.

  “Oh, Qiu,” Kuai’s voice developed a somber tone, “Only souls can make it to the afterlife. Qiu, I don’t think you have a soul.”

  The answer Qiu received was not one that he wanted to hear. This complemented the paradoxical contradiction, and suddenly his understanding of reality was empty.

  “Then I have no purpose.” Qiu concluded, a somber realization that struck deep and painfully, an emotional kind of pain he hadn’t ever felt.

  Kuai, afraid of this conclusion, attempted to fault Qiu’s reasoning. “No, Qiu, I think you’re wrong.” She shifted back to the motherly tone she had spoken with before. “You are a person, and you can contribute to the afterlife by helping the souls around you. Does that make sense?”

  Kuai’s response was revelatory in ways beyond description. It made perfect sense, and solved every problem and question that he could have possibly asked.

  “Thank you.” He said, ending the conversation on a positive note. Ignoring the fact that he didn’t know how to fulfill this new purpose, he was glad to have a new directive.

  For Qiu, the future looked bright.

  Footsteps, heavy and ominous, echoed through the night. Concrete paved out a gray carpet, and a large figure entered the room.

  Night had completely fallen, and there was no light beside that which spilled from where the figure entered, and from a neon pink glow traced around Qiu.

  “Hello, I am Qiu.” Qiu stated, an instinctive greeting that he had been wired to give.

  The figure halted, evidently not expecting Qiu’s greeting. They turned, facing Qiu, and came down to one knee, coming eye level with Qiu.

  “Hello, Qiu,” The voice was gruff and masculine, though had a touch of warmth. “How is your status?”

  “Status?” Qiu asked, “Which kind of status?”

  “Developmental,” the voice clarified, “How far along your code and weapons capabilities have progressed. What is the status on that?”

  At this point, Kuai had been torn from her sleep by the noise. She frantically got out of bed, addressing the figure in a nervous, rushed manner. “Oh, there’s no need to ask it, I’ve got all the data you need.”

  The figure ignored her, as Qiu produced an answer to their question, one he deducted by simply looking inward. “Code appears to be very articulated, no upgrades planned. Weapons are functional, but I don’t know how to use them.”

  An expression of fear developed on Kuai’s face, while the figure smiled. “Progress is ahead of schedule, Kuai?” the gruff voice asked.

  Kuai’s voice started breaking in fear. “Y- yes, I’ve gotten a lot done since the last checkpoint.” A statement that should have been formal, in the most broken and fearful tone Qiu had ever heard.

  “Why don’t you come with me,” The voice said, and the figure placed a large hand around Kuai’s arm, pulling her back towards the doorway. “You’ve already fulfilled your purpose.”

  “Please, no, I, I” Kuai stumbled over words, struggling helplessly against her escort. “Qiu! Help!”

  Qiu, in an instant, remembered the purpose he had been given long ago:

  I am weapon

  He stood, the table and chair binding him made no opposition to his motions. The figure ran, disappearing with Kuai. Acting on instinct and some prewritten code, he clapped his hands together, and the arm extensions thrust forwards, doubling in length and flaring a bright, neon pink.

  Two large, glowing blades. One extended from each arm, unbelievably sharp. With a simple motion, he could cut through anything.

  Experimenting with other codes related to the blades, he found he could combine them into one, long blade, grasped in the middle that he could spin around his wrist.

  These weren’t all of his weapons capabilities, but they would have to do. Kuai had already disappeared from view, but Qiu stepped forwards anyway. Barely keeping his balance, he broke out into a full sprint. After only one pace, his leg slipped and he collapsed to the floor.

  No dents or pain would stop him now. A machine of death, as his purpose demanded. There was no need to learn any of his motions, they were already programmed into him. He got back up and kept running in an instant’s time.

  Not knowing how to open the door, he simply crashed through it, his powerful mass maintaining its momentum. Now he faced a different dilemma - doors.

  He stood in a maze of corridors: a building. With no direction, he randomly chose left and began sprinting through the halls, taking turns without aim, hoping to find his target.

  Time was meaningless as doors blurred past Qiu. He couldn’t possibly know how much time had passed, but he had made no progress after an extended amount of time.

  His blades lost their glow, and he retracted them. A number of troubling facts began to crystallize in his mind: He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know where Kuai was, and he had no idea about the context of reality. He was lost.

  Except, he wasn’t lost. Effortlessly, he connected to a the highly secure wifi of the building, and pinned his location in the context of the world.

  The world - that was another terrifying concept involved with reality. Qiu was so small, in the context of the massive planet. Regardless, he calculated his location very quickly, only to realize that it meant nothing. He didn’t know what it meant to be in Rome, Italy, and much less did he know where he would go. After all, finding a destination would require having a purpose, and right now Qiu’s purpose was vague and undefined.

  Except, that wasn’t true. Kuai had given him a directive. “Help!” the cry echoed in his head. It didn’t matter where he was in the context of the world, he needed to meticulously track down Kuai.

  A map of the building was easy enough to obtain, but navigating it was difficult. He hoped to reach the room he had met Kuai in, but didn’t know how. On the map, all of the rooms were identical.

  He resolved to start opening doors. Doors concealed rooms, and rooms had people. The building was expansive, so this task would be tedious, but it seemed to be his best chance.

  Doorhandles were tricky mechanisms. Even though he had articulated fingers, the handle itself was difficult to grasp, and twisting it required multiple simultaneous motions.

  After fighting with one knob for a prolonged moment, the latch disconnected, and the door slowly swung open on its own. Carefully sliding his head through the opening as it formed, Qiu found a completely empty room.

  Unfazed by this brief failure, he shifted to the right, proceeding to make another attempt against the doorknob. This time, he was quicker, but it still took considerable effort to unlatch.

  This was going to take a long time.

  On his journey, Qiu encountered many people. He hadn’t learned how to interact with people properly. He made sure to keep his distance, as he still wasn’t completely sure how to operate his body, and tried to keep conversation minimal. After the first few interactions, he realized that nobody knew who Kuai was. After those few awkward conversations, he decided to talk only if spoken to, and try to end dialogue quickly. There was no information to be found in these small talks, and most people were either curious or terrified when they saw Qiu. He wasn’t exactly sure why, but assumed it was because he wasn’t a person.

  There was one door, however, that held secrets, answers, and death. Pushing it open was arduous, the door was both heavy and corroded in its joints.

  Cracked concrete formed the walls and ceiling. A short hall continued forwards, before opening up into a dimly lit room. He recognized this - It was where he met Kuai.

  Indeed, stepping through the hallway, he quickly identified the cot, computer screen, and pile of wires that he’d seen before. Interrupting the scene was the figure from before, sitting at the computer desk, his silhouette shrouded by the blue light of the screen. Kuai was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where is Kuai.” Qiu stated without emotion, trying to grow closer to his purpose of finding her.

  The figure was startled by the comment, leaping from the chair and turning to face Qiu. He wore an expression of fear, rather than aggression, and his hand went straight to a weapon of some kind on his hip.

  Qiu made no move of aggression, simply repeating his question in a kinder tone, “Where is Kuai? Surely you must know.”

  The figure relaxed his fearful tension, no longer feeling threatened, and turned back to the monitor. He was reading some of Kuai’s notes, which were evidently confusing him.

  “What is Zaliskar?” the figure asked, completely ignoring Qiu’s own question.

  Qiu also dismissed his own question, defaulting to an information-providing mindset. “An extensive program, powerful enough to create artificial sentience rather than artificial intelligence.” He recited what Kuai had told him earlier.

  “I don’t think that’s true,” the gruff voice responded, “Kuai described it as a power source, some kind of more powerful electricity. She synthesized it in large quantities, but it can be made naturally through the Guardian moon. Qiu, what is the Guardian Moon?”

  Qiu was intrigued by this information, but prioritized answering the question. “The Guardian moon,” Qiu didn’t have the answer, so he briefly connected to the internet to acquire information. “A kind of eclipse. Supposedly, our Solar system is incapable of producing this eclipse, but humanity’s actions have shifted the moon’s orbit enough that we could see one within the next few decades.”

  “It’s all nonsense,” The voice concluded, “Science fiction, all of it. Artificial sentience? Super-electricity? A new eclipse? Humanity can’t do all that. We don’t have that technology. Surely if we did, we would have caused an apocalypse of some sort already.”

  As his tone grew in anger and aggression, the figure turned, and became face to face with Qiu. Suddenly, the voice softened once more, “And yet here I am, talking to you.” Realization hit hard.

  “Where is Kuai?” Qiu asked, once more seeking information to meet his purpose.

  The voice chuckled. “You haven’t figured it out by now? Sheesh, some ‘intelligence.’” The insensitive joke failed to earn a reaction from Qiu, and after an awkward pause, the voice continued. “She was a hostage. Had been for a while. She was constructing you, and obviously hiding her progress from us. Now that you’re complete, we have our enemy’s weapon in our hands, she fulfilled her purpose.”

  The statement was revelatory in the most shocking and horrible manner. According to data Qiu found on the internet, many hostage situations end in death. The voice’s cruel tone suggested that death, the most horrible fate for a person, had befallen Kuai. Sorrow, something Qiu had never felt before, flooded his senses.

  And yet, the voice said that Kuai had fulfilled her purpose. That could only mean one thing: She had reached the afterlife. Even though the figure didn’t intend to send that message, it was true. Qiu came to a reasonable conclusion that would change his perspective of everything: Death is how a soul reaches the afterlife.

  And, if a person’s purpose is to reach the afterlife, death is how to accomplish that purpose. And Qiu, not having a soul, had only one purpose: to help those who do have souls. Both Kuai and Tracena had told him this. The best way to help a person is to aid them in fulfilling their purpose, and he could do that by sending them to the afterlife.

  Even more, this would also fulfill the scripted purpose deep within: weapon. Everything made complete sense. His purpose was simple, and the method to accomplish it was available for his use. Enlightened, he finally knew “the meaning of life.”

  “Qiu?” the figure asked, interrupting the silence. Now enlightened, Qiu extended the blades on his arms, forming a long sword, crackling with neon pink energy, glowing in the darkness of the secluded room.

  Qiu Lifted his blade high above his head. “Long Live The One True God.” He stated, and swung downwards.