12 Miles Below

Following the stream of data leading to the Icon turned out to be fairly easy. Just follow the traffic line of data, what could go wrong right?

A lot. A lot could go wrong, and now I understood why Wrath was the one who ferried me around and dropped us off like a doting Logi with their precious cargo.

The world near the ocean floor was a tangle of shimmering data lines, packets going up and down, like veins that I hadn’t noticed until I really looked for it. Once I did, I couldn’t stop noticing it.

These ones had extra data packages that made them appear to be mite-made data, to my senses that was what made them shimmer. And as I quickly found out, mite-made data usually meant junk and static to anyone reading. I think the Icon was hoping any random program with higher level functions would look over the bottom of this sector, see random streams of data going in and out of mite terminals in wild circus loops, all signed with mite traces - and understandably lump it all as worthless junk.

Hiding in plain sight. And if that by itself was fine, why not multiply the lines by a few thousand, just for fun? Make sure every one of them leads to nowhere, except for the single line of data. Keeping track of the source and riding it out ended with me having to backtrack and start over.

Seven times.

I’m not upset at all about this, I swear. I only want to talk to the Icon, peacefully. In stabbing range.

Aztu was no help at all. She had all the time in the world and enjoyed just running her mouth. She gave me a quick rundown on how tracing data lines and following them with any kind of speed was done, and then sat back and watched me flounder.

Advice was given only after I messed up, and only when I swallowed my pride and asked for help. Hexis, the stuck up bastard that he was, was at least far more meticulous with his training regiment. Felt like everything he used was precisely calibrated to funnel me down the right paths.

This was the seventh attempt, and I had been forced to make rope-like harnasses of personal cudgled together code that would hook into the data stream and follow it forward, along with a few scout programs up ahead warning me when there’d be bisections and path updates so I could keep a close eye on anything sneaky.

And of course, sneaky things happened. The line went into the ground. I hit the sediment floor hard, everything turning into a cloud of junk and obsolete data around me. But my lessons on navigating the digital sea so far have taught me one thing: That rope-program-latch I’d made to track the line was in my hand with a deathgrip. No way I’m redoing all this again.

The data line wasn’t buried too far under the silt and sediment, so Aztu and I walked over the ground, following the rope I kept latched. We eventually caught the line leaving the ground and flowing back upwards into the tangle of traffic, but a question had lodged in my head from the short walk on the ground.

“You know, I never thought to ask but what’s under us?” I asked. “Under all this silt and dead space I mean. Does it just end?”

Aztu flowed behind me, looking more like a giant sphere of plates, with a propeller behind her lazily spinning. Any idea that she was humanoid made about as much sense as an agrifarmer trying his luck in the freeze. “What else? Mite space. The sediment here accumulates, but it can’t cross over the other side since mite systems aren’t compatible.”

I gave a look at the massive ocean floor under me, filled with dust and rock formations. Filled with holes and texture like the inside of bread. “So the entire floor of this sea is technically a wall?”

“Imagine gravity is to your right instead of under you, looks a lot more like a wall now, doesn’t it?”

I wanted to argue, but found it did make some amount of sense. A look around me showed the mite ‘wall’ stretched beyond what I could see. “They are way bigger of a faction than I’d have guessed.” I said, slowly getting it through my head just how vast the mite territory really was.

“Oh yea, they don’t just control the world out there.” Aztu said, a few plates floating around to point at the sea around us. “They control a good ninety nine percent of all the world’s digital space. The space we can exist in and explore here is microscopic in comparison.”

“... you’re joking. Ninety nine percent?”

Aztu chuckled darkly. “Everywhere you step in the real world, there’s lights in the walls and circuits all over inside rocks, trees, right? Even the dirt path you step on, chances are you’ll find something running if you dig down enough.”

“Some stratas I’ve been to, yeah.” I said, thinking back on all my explorations underground.

“Not just stratas, think about what separates the biomes apart too. The amount of mass and scale of all that. Maybe a good chunk of all the circuits inside all of these things aren’t complete or built right but point nowhere and aren’t hooked up to the digital sea. But the random servers they build all over the place that do work… Well, that’s twelve stratas worth of it. Built just about everywhere. It adds up.”

I gave a look down at the wall under me, filled with holes and terrain. Then looked up at the dim light and gloom in the sea around, the particles slowly obscuring my vision after maybe a mile of distance. Whatever a mile actually meant in this world. “How big is the digital sea?”

“I’ve met programs that have existed here since it was forged by the mites and Relinquished had only recently connected to it. We’re talking about thousands of years. I don’t think they’ve explored even five percent of the entire space here. Mites are building this sea faster than the universe is expanding outwards. Relinquished doesn’t mess with the mites for a reason.”

I didn’t get time to ponder this more as our destination came up expediently. And this time Aztu didn’t tell me that it was time to backtrack.

We’d made it.

The Icon of Stars. Or the spot in this digital realm she called home.

I expected a large structure with lights or something alive, or even just a small mountain that hid her true size. Instead, the current was taking me closer and closer to some random patch of sediment at the bottom of the sea, no lump or anything that set it apart from any other spot. For a second, with the speed we were going, I thought Aztu and I were about to just crash right into the dusty mounds of particles again. Except at the very last second the current curved, and a lip was revealed, just perfectly angled to be near impossible to spot. We flew close to the surface of the sediment, and then right into the tiny entrypoint.

The strands of data dissolved then, breaking down into individual packets. The landing threw me off balance, scattering bits of data across my armor like powdered snow kicked from an airspeeder.

“I take it since we’re not going back, I got the right place?” I asked, getting back on my feet, brushing off the bits of sediment off myself.

“Either you did, or we’re both being bamboozled.” Aztu said, forming back up into a golem-like shape and landing onto the more firm ground under us. She took a few steps forward, dark glowing eyes deep within her plates looking around. “This is the endpoint the terminal had, no deviations. But, if I were an ancient golden-age AI hiding from Relinquished, I’d have a few more redundancies.”

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

“She’s hiding from us?” I asked, trying to feel the digital sea around me, testing to see if it wasn’t some illusion. It was dark, gloomy and looked unpowered. The walls were simply rock formations in hexagonal shapes, all filled with dust and sediment of dead data. What looked to be mite architecture around here too.

“Or she moved out a long, long time ago.” Aztu said, one metal covered hand pointing out. Her plates shifted and rejoined as a giant hand. One ‘finger’ tracing through the dust in sweeping motions, exposing the rock under it all.“Marks left behind here look to be dated from centuries prior. Makes it seem like there was something here, but since I can’t see any sign of habitation by an entity this size. Gives the impression she’s upped and moved on a while back. Doesn’t feel intentionally misleading either.”

Aztu turned to me, “So. You are now in an unknown server, with a possible entity hiding in the shadows beyond you. How do you proceed?”

“Are you going to teach me first or just let me walk into a wall and then tell me how it’s actually done?” I muttered, cracking my neck, giving the small little cavern here a proper look.

She gave a dark chuckle. “See? You’re learning already.”

I opened up my occult senses, feeling around the caverns before me. Trying to get that visualization state of mind. “Steal everything. Steal everything.” I muttered to myself like a mantra. First rule of the digital sea. The walls here weren’t walls, they were loot. And when I licked my mental eyes around and into the walls I found they weren’t quite walls. More illusions like before. Intentionally made to look derelict.

“The room’s fake.” I said.

“Yep. But it serves a purpose.” Aztu said, a few of her plates detached and circled around her finger as she pointed at the walls. “Give it a deeper look. It’ll show you what kind of AI we’re working with.”

I tried, feeling beyond the walls. And that’s when I realized Aztu had it right. This cavern wasn’t fake in the sense that it served as a distraction - it was an.. airlock? There were triggers woven into the floor and ceilings that would shut us in if we stepped further in. And… “Data spikes? Some kind of data trap I think.” A closer glance at the danger there showed me something odd about that. “They’re… toothless? Or am I getting double fooled here?”

“You caught on to her game.” Aztu said, nodding. “Keep going.”

“One of the walls is weaker, built differently.” I frowned in thought, focusing on the still cavern. Worse than just weaker, there was an outright flaw built into it. Like it was a poorly maintained barrier, but instead the more I looked into it, the more I saw how complex it was built deeper inside. “It’s like an art piece of some kind, built to draw the eye to it. Except it’s drawing us to a vulnerability that can be broken through. This room, it’s both a trap, a poorly made one, and an intentionally poorly made one?”

Aztu just hummed, staying in place.

I took it as a sign to keep going with my thoughts, sitting on the ground and thinking it through. “If I were a program that just walked inside here… I would step forward, an think the place is deserted. Then trigger the trap. Walls would seal around me, digital spikes with draw out and start compressing downwards. And I’d notice the flaw in the wall.” I took a deeper inspection at the ‘weak’ wallpoint, and found the complexity within it was a sleeping program of some kind. Something that’s built to attach to whatever passed through the broken wall. A further look into the program, and I saw monitoring, tracking, and obfuscation concepts. “Okay, I see where it’s going.”

“Yep.” Aztu floated over, one plate patting the top of my head. “The Icon’s built a pretend kill chamber, that would make any program panic for its life, and run out the nearest escape.”

“And in doing so, get stamped by that program within. That’s the real trap.” I watched the sleeping program in its hiding spot, and felt more like I was watching a spider waiting for something unfortunate to walk into the web. Bit of a predator-like feel to it.

Aztu nodded, “You’re using the occult intuitively as a shortcut to see past some of her additional software walls of defense, but I can guarantee you it would take a very clever program to be able to see past the illusions here. And now, of everything in this room to steal, what’s the most important one?”

“The monitoring program.” I said without hesitation. “Of all the things in here, it’s the most complex. Looks like it does something, like… suggestion?”

Two plates from Aztu broke off and started tapping each other, in what looked like impromptu clapping. “You nailed it in one. That thing attaches to you, and it’ll make you think the Icon is in a different strata.” She finally turned her gaze at me, one plate-filled finger absentmindedly pointing upwards to the ceiling where the digital spikes would appear. “Now here’s the part where you debate who your opponent is. What do these spikes tell you?”

I pulled my focus upwards, focusing on the spikes. They were built to look threatening. Like maw-of-a-monster threatening, teeth filled with fangs and dripping venom. But a further look into them, and I found it all just… soft. If they actually closed around me, they’d deflate and end up doing nothing.

Making them lethal would have been easy, even for the little about the digital sea that I knew. Scrapshit, making them non-lethal like this was several fold harder than just building them to be destructive. If anything, they looked like something that had been lethal to start with, and modified to be harmless. Why go that far?

“She’s a pacifist?”

Aztu hummed. “In the digital sea, that’s not a great idea unless you have a community you’re building with all of you working together. The spy and suggestion program could also easily have more venomous payloads to inject, but instead it’s only scratching the very edge of what could be considered aggressive.”

It clicked into place in my head. “I got it. She’s not allowed to be destructive.” None of this felt like altruism to me, more like an imposed limit. She was a customer support bot. That meant more than just smiling and waving at anyone talking to her.

“There ya go.” A few of her plates flew out and formed a really creepy looking smile that was way too big for the size of her eyes. “Our little golden age AI isn’t just programmed to be nice, she’s obligated to. All of this is probably as much as she could stretch her shackles out. Made more sense when I thought of her similar to how Mother’s own blind spots work. We can’t be completely certain it’s like this, but I got a good feeling we’re on the money.”

“So, we trigger the trap, and then break through one of the regular walls?” I asked, giving a look around to the walls that were far more solid and looked unyielding.

“Naw, that would redirect us further into her maze.” Aztu said, a hand holding me back. “You already have the key, find it.”

I thought about that and realized the obvious: Data from the terminal had to go to the Icon somehow, and it would go through all these trials and traps. So if there is a key, it’s embedded within the data stream.

I looked up from my sitting position and examined the data line with the occult. There, I found a concept of a hand-shake protocol. Something that lets everything skip all the games and defenses.

I reached a hand out, feeling the data flow through my fingers, and copied the key off of them.

Some kind of ever-changing pattern, but instead of grabbing a static picture, I yanked the entire thing out and demanded it conform to accept me. Aztu’s plated hand reached over my head and gave me a few pats. “And that’s your next lesson learned: Use your willpower to skip a few steps everyone else has to take. This is why programs with a soul fractal are so much more dangerous than standard programs that lack one. We can cheat.”

I could feel a tendril of something reach out from Aztu, out to the stream and equally copy off a key. Even felt her demand the key-program to accept her, and generate something specifically made for her entry. Same as I had.

“All right, let’s go meet my colleague.” Aztu said, plates shifting around her as if she had cracked her neck.

“Could you beat her?” I asked. “If you had to get into a fight with her.”

“Everything we know about her tells us she, quite frankly, is not allowed to fight. But giving me the run around?” Aztu shrugged. “I’d need to know more about her and what she could do. She’s a golden age AI that’s got all her hardware still working and wired up to her soul. I’m a floating fractal echo without a body, and that means I’m without hardware to back me up.”

Aztu stopped and hummed for a moment. Her plates clicked and rearranged themselves into raised fists, one giving a quick mock jab out. “I got a better analogy for you. Imagine the Icon and I are two boxers in a ring. I know every technique to punch, but I lack the body strength to really do damage. And she’s a four hundred pound ten foot tall monster that can move three times faster than I can. But, she’s not allowed to punch. Neither of us could hurt the other.”

“And if she’s allowed to punch?”

Aztu laughed, “You wouldn’t catch me anywhere near the ring in the first place. Another lesson for you kid, discretion is the better part of valor. So if you see me start heading to the exit, I’d recommend doing the same.” Her gaze turned to the wall of sturdy rock further ahead, where the streams of data seemed to vanish, as if curving away from the rock. Except I could see it wasn’t, the stream was going through it.

A plate flowed from Aztu and patted my head again, “Hope she can fix your little bird problem out there.”

“I’m not worried about the Odin.” I said, with a shrug. “I just need to get a message to Wrath any way I can. And if she’s as good at hiding as she is, I think she might be able to do just that.”

“Well. She is a customer support bot.” Aztu laughed, “Finding people that don’t want to be found in order to sell them something they aren’t looking for was supposed to be their job right?”

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!