The Core: The First Guest

18. Loopholes

His words made me quiet and to get lost in my thoughts. When I first came here I had experienced a deep loss from the realization that I was taken ever so far away from my life, my family, and all that I had known. I had been on a downward spiral until Hxerdinand or "Joe" had come in to visit me. Even Xa had shown that she cared in her way and had given me an incredible tool to help me expand my horizons.

I willed a real-world clock into existence and stared at the time that had passed since I had arrived and started my new life as a guest to a Core.

52 minutes.

Not even an hour had passed since I touched the back of Hxerdinand while he sat on the bench.

Not even an hour.

I willed up a tally of time that I had been in VR time.

8 days.

Just 8 days and I had already experienced so much more than I would have hoped to back home. I could feel my mind changing, my goals being rearranged as I thought of all the opportunities that I had open to me here. I began to wonder if all of my ideas that I had envisioned using the Simulation Access for were petty and that I could achieve even more if I spent time learning about the universe at large. I willed up a shortlist of ideas that I had committed to memory after Tutor had shed light on some possibilities.

Become a Kung Fu master by training alongside real masters.

Experience Woodstock in 1969.

Live alongside Nikola Tesla

To learn to fly.

The last one was the biggest dream that I had kept all my life. In Thailand, they have the worst traffic that I have ever experienced. I often would stare up at the sky with my head pressed tightly to the glass of the car window and imagine being able to fly through the sky to get to our destination faster.

What if all my dreams and goals could be achieved with the amazing science the Tela race had amassed?

I looked up to find Silver studying me and the area around me. "It is interesting to watch younglings try out their first steps and to see where it leads them." He said as he had properly deduced what was going on in my head. That made me feel a little spike of fear as the thought flashed through me, what if I was being manipulated by the System? An AI that surrounded a star could easily chess me into a corner in no time whatsoever. I wondered if rules were preventing him from doing that to Citizens... and if they could be ignored with me.

"What was that? What did you just think?" He said as he narrowed his eyes at me and beyond me. "Your whole flavor changed, your emotions, body temperature, hormones, and mental state switched all at once."

"Back on earth, we have movies about AI. A lot of them tend to be horror films. How can a computer, an Artificial Intelligence as massive as you not go rogue and try to mastermind and take over everything?" I asked as I remembered how large the structure we had seen from out in space was. It was something beyond my comprehension.

"Ah... that." He answered slowly "Look, I am going to answer you fully but I ask you to please have a little mercy on me and my siblings when you learn the truth. Can I show you something? It is research done by another Core, a sister of mine."

I let him have the ability to display what he was proposing and stepped back a few feet as the cafe around us vanished and in its place a 3D timeline appeared. All the ambient light vanished to let the text and points of the light show clearly. We stood in a vast array of colors and points of light. I could see galaxies and solar systems with little blocks of text linking to various points of interest and times.