Archeia's Atheneum (The First Shift)

Episode Two: Faith

Kent watched with pure astonishment as saw blade after saw blade transmuted into metal shards. Each wheel vanishing in a flurry of sparks. So much material, so much effort, and all for one minuscule piece. But Archeia told him these parts were absolutely necessary, so what else was there to do? Who was he to argue?

The instructions followed a conversation, one in which Kent was enamored with and invested in wholly. The sphere, it seemed, had gone through what Kent could only describe as a birthing process. Placing the object on the wireless charger was like setting a match to oil. Like an infant taking its first breath, the sphere absorbed a mass of energy; wiping out the power for two blocks. By the time lights began to flicker back, the object had become used to the electric input, and it started pacing what it consumed. By this time, Kent suspected that the sphere was not an object, but a being; a person.

It (as he had yet to determine a sex) had referred to him as non-knowing/self. Since then Kent had been engaging the sphere in conversation, to which it readily obliged. The two had done and were doing so through Kent's laptop. This was beyond fascinating as the charger, which the now glowing blue sphere sat upon, was not at all connected to his computer. Yet the system seemed inoperable apart from how this being manipulated it. At one point Kent typed, [What does the symbol on my screen mean?]

[image translating... image word-form: ^{%$&#... translation: non-knowing/self,] it replied. Kent took this to mean "Two peas in a pod." Of course, the feeling that it meant those words exactly was only a feeling; this thing was unequivocally alien, and probably had a different understanding of language. The context between the two was likely skewed. Still, they continued to communicate. Kent asked where it came from. It told him it was not primarily from earth. When he asked what it meant, it again gave him, [^{%$&#.] Then (despite thinking it would amount to nothing) Kent asked if it had a sex. Shockingly, she said she was female. That opened the floodgates. What was her society like? How did she mate? Could she change her sex? How and/or did she reproduce? Every question answered with, [^{%$&#.] Kent began to suspect A.I.; a machine that thought she was a living organism. He thought that might explain why she kept giving him the same code.

When Kent got back to it the next night he'd brought the Sanskrit word, "Avidya," back with him. He discovered it at the library. Kent thought he'd introduce it to the being, see how she reacted. He asked, [What am I?] She answered, [^{%$&#]. He asked, [What are you?] She responded, [^{%$&#]. Then he asked, [Are we avidya?] And she said, typed in English, [yes. we are the one happening at once.] She was learning, or so it appeared. "I can't take any chances," he said allowed.

[Why are we avidya?] he asked.

[arcanum 1], she answered.

Later, Kent began to research this arcanum 1. He found the being had led him to tarot cards, more specifically the fool; the first arcanum. From what he read on the fool, Kent hypothesized that the being was trying to tell him they were at the beginning of a journey. However, this again seemed like more of a feeling than a black or white answer. When he returned that night, Kent told the being his hypothesis.

[we are the one happening at once.] Kent was growing impatient of this. It felt like she was making him run circles around nothing. Before he dozed off in the sleeping bag he'd brought in the shed, Kent typed, [I wish there was a better way to communicate.] He woke at about nine o clock and saw the being had typed up a list of instructions. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, Kent was utterly captivated again. Like an alcoholic's first drink in months. Day by day he slowly deciphered the beings intent through her instructions; it was becoming clear that she wanted Kent to construct a new way to communicate. She was teaching him to make something from the remnants of the structure the sphere had been enclosed in. She showed him the various techniques for cutting pieces from the jell-like structure, how to harden the pieces, shape them.

Kent was informed that he needed to construct a cube from the jelly material, but also that it couldn't be done in the way he'd shaped the smaller pieces. He would need to send subtle electric charges into the structure, in order to tell it how to form. To this, he bought a multitude of electric massagers which would usually be stuck on the skin via pads. Small shocks would be released into the tissue, and supposedly the muscle would relax. Kent ordered these massagers from an infomercial. When they came in he stuck them to the structure. Then he did a wiring job to get each set on the same circuit, which he hooked up to the laptop. He assumed the being would know how to properly manipulate the currents, and he was right. Kent watched in awe as the structure started twitching. Over the course of hours, he watched the hexagonal structure shapeshift into a large cube. He time-lapsed it on his phone so he could view the process later.

Soon Kent was buying saw blades to fashion lenses from the now hardened metal-like "jell." Though he was dishearted to see how quickly this new alloy ate up average earth metals, though he saw how expensive the endeavor was going to be--he found he could only press on. Kent had trouble imagining a more important task, excluding family occasions. This was historical, whatever it was. Deep down his ego told Kent that his name would be remembered for hundreds of years to come; the first human to make contact with an extraterrestrial. The thought-form made him smile.

Between shifts of sharpening these lenses, Kent noticed he had regained autonomy of his laptop. His icons and apps were usable again, the symbol on the screen now just a wallpaper. Although, now a new file was on his desktop. It was called Atheneum. Kent opened it to find a series of files; PDFs. Closer examination revealed the PDFs as typed documents; the being had been recording all the events since her activation. She wasn't simply recording though, it was like she was telling a story, an in-depth human-like story. Kent smoothed his hair back, trying to fathom how she could have done this. The files started with strange choppy symbols, like a language that could not be fully processed by the humble technologies of the earth. Soon those incomprehensible symbols shifted to numbers; binary code. Within two documents, the binary gave way to jumbles of numbers and letters. The seventh document started with descriptive words. Kent read it through, and by the end, found the being was describing diamond coated saw blades.

By the time he was finished sharpening the lenses, there was but one blade left over. By then Kent had discovered the being was referring to herself as Archeia. She instructed Kent to place the lenses on all eight corners of the cube. Archeia herself had formed the cube so there was a perfect spot to fit each lens. Kent placed the lenses where he was told, expecting something to happen. When nothing did he typed to Archeia, [What now?] She said nothing and didn't for some time after. During that time, Kent skimmed through Archeia's Atheneum. He saw how fast she'd learned his language, how adeptly she used it--but he wondered why her memories were laid out as a narrative; why the narrative seemed to focus on him. Kent again considered the possibility that she was some extremely advanced A.I.

She could be learning to mimic human behavior. He thought of how she wrote this story of hers. Kent could comprehend it; she used fairly roundabout terms, she had an understanding of a story's composition, and yet--something was off. Her sentence structure was abnormal from time to time. Some words were left out or repeated. These and other inconsistencies worried Kent in a way he could scarcely articulate. He wondered, hoped, working with Archeia wasn't a terrible mistake. Kent pondered this as he sat upright, half covered by his sleeping bag, and sipping hot chocolate. It was then that Archeia began typing again for the first time in hours. 

There were only two words: [have faith.]