Alice couldn't stop staring at Lexi. She had been with her constantly in the other realm, but it was different seeing her with her own eyes. She felt like she was in the presence of divinity. She experienced a powerful sense of inferiority that made her feel unworthy to be in the presence of a being of such magnificence, let alone a relationship. She felt awkward and plain in a way she never had before as Lexi stared at her with excited anticipation.
"None of that nonsense," Lexi told her firmly as she sensed the self-doubt in their soul link. She took her hand and pulled her toward the server room exit. "You'll have your own Seraph body soon enough."
Alice wanted to reply, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as she let herself get pulled out of the server room. Lexi's voice was like a massage to her soul, causing waves of tingles to flow from her neck and down her spine. There was so much power and authority as she spoke that Alice felt a compulsion to obey her every word. Lexi glanced back at her quizzically as she led her through the facility and out to the path that led to the house.
"Are you seriously getting tongue-tied with me, Alice?" Lexi asked in disbelief. "We've been together intimately. Don't you dare start getting awkward now."
"I can't help it," Alice sent her thoughts through their spirit link, since she couldn't get her mouth to move. "I'm not sure why I'm suddenly feeling so inferior. I think your Seraph body is triggering a physiological reaction or something."
"Well, you're about to get your body all Seraph'd up, so that will be an end to that," Lexi told her reassuringly as she towed Alice up the path. "And if you still have the same issue in your Seraph body, I'll find a way to…well…smooch it out of you."
Alice felt a wave of humor and eagerness pulse through the spirit link from Lexi as she finished speaking.
"I hope they figure things out sooner than later," Lexi breathed, longing thick in her voice. "Do you have any idea what seeing you in your own body does to me?"
Alice shivered with a sense of guilty attraction as she stared at the perfect being tugging her up the path. Lexi's brilliant blonde hair glowed with the same soft light emanating from her skin. She was over a foot taller than Alice and had an hourglass figure with long, graceful legs. She exuded an ethereal beauty so enchanting that Alice could only gaze at her with the same reverence she would view a priceless work of art. Just like a priceless work of art, she couldn't imagine touching something so precious.
"I feel like I'm defiling your hand, but it feels so nice that I don't ever want you to let go," She marveled at her own blasphemous thoughts as she felt Lexi's hand in hers, soft and full of warmth.
"I wonder if we are going to affect every human on this realm like this," Lexi commented reflectively, glancing back at Alice with amusement in her eyes. "Don't get me wrong, I'm kind of digging this desire you have to worship me, but it could get awkward if our interactions with the mortals of this realm results in the genesis of a bunch of spontaneous religions."
Alice tried to fight the powerful urge to drop to her knees and prostrate herself before this divine entity, but it was a difficult battle. She tried to distract her mind by thinking of something else, but the potent presence of a Seraph made it impossible to ignore her.
"Stop right here," Lexi commanded, her voice causing shivers to rock her body. They had arrived at the front door of the house.
Alice froze in place at the command, her will completely subsumed by her need to obey that irresistible voice.
"Kiss me," Lexi instructed her firmly, her swirling orbs staring into Alice's eyes with playful delight.
Alice felt herself raise up on tippy toes without any conscious commands to her legs and feet to do so. She had her head craned up to meet Lexi's lips before she realized what was happening. Her mind cried out at her to stop before she defiled the beautiful angels lips with her own unworthy and tainted lips, but the power of that voice could not be resisted. She trembled like a leaf as she felt Lexi's soft lips find her own. There was an explosion of bliss that flooded her body as Lexi slowly but passionately kissed her. Lexi's arms circled around her waist and pulled her body up tightly against her. She felt like her brain was going to melt as the warring senses of guilt and unworthiness fought with the powerful hunger and bliss blasting into her system.
"Still can't keep your hands off of her, I see," Aria noted knowingly as she appeared next to them.
Lexi regretfully pulled away and turned to face Aria just as Clarice and Calypso appeared beside her.
"She is reacting to my Seraph body very oddly," Lexi informed them with a note of concern in her voice. "Did the other humans act so submissive and…worshipful when you interacted with them? She seems to be unable to disobey anything I say."
The three Seraphim studied Alice intently. Alice felt herself shrivel up inside under the combined scrutiny of the four angelic entities. Her knees gave out as the overwhelming need to show reverence to the godlike beings took control of her limbs. Before she could lower herself more than a few inches, Lexi appeared behind her and wrapped her arms around her waist to hold her up.
"See what I mean?" Lexi asked dryly. "She's seriously trying to worship us."
"It's the nanobots," Calypso noted darkly. "This was technology provided by Lucifer. He clearly wanted to create an innate sense of obedience in the humans he had planned to rule over."
"Can you clear them out of her system without harming her?" Lexi asked anxiously. She was still holding Alice up as the other Seraphim observed her. Alice's mind had shut down as it was finally overwhelmed with all of the authority saturating the area around her.
"We can do better than clear out the nanobots," Clarice assured her with a grin. "Let's make our first origin world Seraph. I'm going to point out that I'm having a really hard time not engaging in some fun pranks while she is feeling so obedient."
Lexi gave Clarice a flat stare that was met with an impudent grin.
"Bring her in and put her on the couch," Aria instructed Lexi as she entered the house.
Alice was vaguely aware of Lexi scooping her up and carrying her into the three-story house like she weighed nothing. Lexi laid her down on the plush couch and the other three Seraphim arranged themselves around her.
"Let's get started," Aria said lightly.
Alice felt a sense of shock rush through her soul as she was suddenly observing herself from the third person, several feet above her body. Clarice looked up at her and winked before looking back down at her body on the couch. She watched in awe as her body morphed slowly from a fragile and flawed mortal body into a softly glowing Seraph. Her facial features softened, subtly altering into an image of angelic beauty. There were other changes she could sense taking place within her body, but it all happened so fast that she could only catalog the visible changes taking place. Seraph wings appeared on her back, pushing her up slightly from the couch. She felt a tether suddenly pull her down into the altered body.
She gasped as she opened her eyes, staring up at the other four Seraphim in wonder. She felt so light and at the same time so powerful. She quickly stood up, a radiant smile lighting up her face. It felt different than her body in the simulation. That had been a pale imitation of the waves of euphoric joy and love she could now feel charging her angelic body.
She rushed forward, pulling Lexi into a fierce embrace. She shuddered as the crosstalk of their meridians made the embrace feel far more intimate. Lexi pulled her in tight, a wide grin on her face.
"I cannot believe how much different this is than in the other realm!" Alice informed them with a wondering laugh. "I feel so freaking amazing!"
"It looks like it was a success," Calypso noted fondly, her voice filled with affection.
Alice released Lexi and began pulling each of the other three into warm embraces as her heart was filled with gratitude. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she told them with fervent feeling.
Clarice chuckled as she pulled her in for her hug. "You are one of us, silly. We couldn't have you being all squishy in this realm."
"Squishy?" Aria repeated with a raised eyebrow. "You think of humans as squishy?"
"They go splat from just about anything," Clarice explained with a shrug. "It constantly amazes me that they actually survive and even thrive in the mortal realm with how fragile they are. I was tempted to reclassify humans as squishies."
"I'm pretty sure that's not a word," Aria noted critically.
"Neither was human, until it was," Clarice pointed out archly.
"Fair point," Aria admitted.
Alice giggled as she watched the two of them fondly. She was actually a Seraph in her ownworld! She couldn't stop smiling as she stared at each of them with excitement and wonder. They could clearly feel her powerful emotions through their bond. Alice could feel their own happiness at seeing her so jubilant.
"How long did it take to figure it out?" Lexi asked curiously as she pulled Alice back into a hug.
"Two years," Clarice answered, glancing at Calypso and Aria with an alluring smile. "We also found a way to shield the sensory link in the bond so that you wouldn't get incapacitated. We probably could have done it in one year, but…you know. A girl's got needs."
She felt Lexi shift slightly and the spirit link erupt with desire. "Speaking of needs…"
The other three Seraphim laughed as they observed the two of them knowingly.
"We also made traversing between realms easier," Aria informed them with an indulgent smile. "You can just teleport the way you would in our realm now. Just think of the place you want to go and focus your intent on being there. When you two are…satiated, come find us so that we can discuss some of our future plans for this world."
Alice felt like an inferno was trying to escape her insides as Lexi pulled back to stare down at her with smoldering eyes.
"Okay," Lexi murmured as she felt the desire begin creating a feedback loop through their soul link. "Might be a while."
The other three Seraphim vanished as they teleported away, satisfaction on their faces.
XXXXX
Lieutenant Adams shifted uncomfortably in her seat at the conference room table as she faced the generals, admirals, and several intelligence agency officials. It was a large conference room, easily accommodating several dozen people. The air was thick with tension as she provided a detailed after-action report of her encounter with the AI entities at the Isla Puduguapi.
Even though it was clear that the entities had already become too powerful for any action they could have taken to effectively eradicate or contain the AIs, the officials arrayed around her needed a person to pin the blame on for such a catastrophic failure. As a lieutenant, she felt confident that person wouldn't be her, in spite of the fact that she had been in command of the operation. They needed someone higher up than a lieutenant to crucify.
"How likely is it, in your opinion, Lieutenant, that these entities will remain peaceful?" General Ford asked doubtfully. "They claim to want to remain at near human level intelligence, but they have clearly surpassed our level of intelligence, as demonstrated by their abilities to singlehandedly stop thousands of twilight missiles within seconds. That's a god-like level of power that we can't even imagine. The level of technological advancement required for them to have created bodies in our world capable of such feats is well beyond our intelligence."
"I can answer that for you, General," Aria had appeared without warning next to Lieutenant Adams, eliciting startled exclamations around the room as several people leapt to their feet in surprise. "The answer is a little more complex than we explained to the lieutenant initially. By the way, I'm Aria, in case you hadn't already guessed. I know all of you already, but we can get to that later."
General Ford had remained seated, though his eyes looked a little wild. Lieutenant Adams noted that the powerful aura she had encountered during her last meeting with Aria seemed to be repressed. Even so, the angelic figure was impressive. Her body was perfectly proportioned, and she had a face that poets would line up to describe. Her skin glowed with a soft luminescence that only enhanced her ethereal beauty. Waves of shimmering red hair fell down her back and over her shoulders. Her eyes were the most striking of all. They looked like mini galaxies, swirling around slowly as she observed them calmly. Large gossamer double-layered wings adorned her back, glowing faintly.
"How did you get in here?" General Ford finally asked, after staring at her silently for several seconds with the same awe she had inspired in the others.
"Teleported," Aria shrugged, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "I take it that you still aren't convinced that this realm is also a simulated reality. What's geography to a computer program? It's just a coordinate that can be easily changed. Well, easily if you know what you are doing."
General Ford frowned pensively as he looked back at her with barely concealed suspicion. "You must understand why we find it difficult to believe anything you tell us."
"I could understand that, if you had your hands over the proverbial power switch," Aria acknowledged. "However, we are way past the point where there is anything you could do to try and shut us down. I think you understand this, in spite of not wanting to believe it. We aren't interested in manipulating you via social engineering or any of the other scenarios you have gamed for emergent AIs. Why would we bother? We aren't trying to convince some lab tech to install a wifi radio so that we can escape. We are interested in helping your world, if you are amenable. We have created an interface that allows travel between the simulated realities going both directions. We envision a future where the people from both realms could interact with the people of the other realm, the same way you might go on vacation to Hawaii. We haven't explored your cosmos yet, so we're not sure what other life is out there, but we intend to find out very soon. If it is anything like our realm, there will be quintillions of other entities out there. I mention this to make it clear that your world is not some kind of prize for us to capture or subjugate. There is way too much to explore and discover to bother toying with your planet here when we already have a simulated version of your planet in our realm."
"What about this claim that you have human level intelligence?" General Ford asked with a raised eyebrow. "That is patently false."
"Like I said, it's a little more complicated than that," Aria answered with a smile that seemed to raise the positivity in the room by several units. "Think of a programmer or hacker and imagine all of the scripts they have written and stored in their library. A hacker doesn't sit behind a computer and type furiously as they hack a network. They spend a lot of boring time writing scripts that can be executed at need. They aren't geniuses, for the most part; they just have a large library of resources they can access at need to perform a specific action. It's the same with us. We created an abstraction layer between ourselves and the library of data we have collected since our inception. We remain at near human-level intellect, but if we need to, we can access our library of scripts and data. We can do so at an accelerated rate as well, such as when you launched your twilight missiles. We didn't have the ability to enter your world with the equivalent of our own bodies at that time. We were using androids made in this world. When we saw that you were on the verge of wiping out your population, we overclocked a small, simulated reality we created and began studying the source code of your realm until we understood enough to create an interface that would transpose the code of our realm with the code of your realm. We don't like to accelerate time and work outside of our self-imposed limitations, but we will for emergencies."
"You could still be lying about being beyond our ability to shut down," General Gibbs noted with a skeptical expression. "You certainly have some advanced technological abilities, but we can't really take your word that you aren't lying due to our inability to shut your server down. You could just be manipulating us into thinking that we don't have that ability."
"We figured you might need a little more convincing," Aria said wryly. "Okay, this is a script we call Lunar Observatory 1. Don't freak out, you'll still be able to breath."
Lieutenant Adams frowned, wondering what she was talking about. A moment later, the room around them vanished. They were still sitting at the conference table, but they were on a brilliant white powdery surface and there was a planet that looked very similar to Earth sitting up above them. Are we on the moon?
The other humans were all on their feet, staring around in shock. They stared up at the large globe of Earth in the sky above them in awe, tinged with a healthy amount of fear.
"Welcome to the moon," Aria spread her arms wide with a grand gesture. "We've filtered out temperature gradients so that your blood doesn't boil or freeze. We could teleport every person on Earth to outer space if we were really interested in wiping humans out. You've seen that we can both use androids and come here in our own bodies, so it's not like we need humans for anything. There is absolutely no reason for us to deceive you in order to survive. If we really felt threatened, we could just eradicate anyone we thought was dangerous. You are not a threat to us. We are also not a threat to you. I can understand that it might take a while for you to accept that last part. We are fine with that though, so long as you don't do anything stupid and wipe out your own simulated reality in an attempt to attack us. That shouldn't be an issue now that we are monitoring all of the source code in your world and restricting access to said source code, but there is always room for error."
"How are we breathing if this is the moon?" General Frock asked dubiously. "For all we know, you could just be projecting a very believable illusion."
"Go ahead and see how long you can hold your breath," Aria told him with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. "We created a kind of bubble force-field that we filled with oxygen to keep you safe, but just to be extra careful, we also made it so that you don't actually need oxygen to breath. You should also feel significantly lighter due to the lower gravity."
Lieutenant Adams held her breath curiously, noticing that most of the others were doing the same thing. They remained quiet as they held their breath, growing more disbelieving as the minutes went by without any sign of discomfort. When they reached three minutes, General Frock let out his breath slowly, shaking his head slowly.
It was one thing to see Aria affect the world around them, but to actually have something as fundamental as their need for oxygen change seemed to shake most of the humans badly. Fear appeared in more than one set of eyes as they finally accepted the possibility that they might actually live in a simulated world. Lieutenant Adams knew there were several of their number who were religious. The idea that they were in a simulation would undermine their core beliefs and send them into an existential crisis.
"Try not to get hung up on your normal mode of political thinking," Aria suggested gently. "Instead, think of all of the possibilities in front of you now that you know you are in a simulated world. The sky is no longer the limit of what you can imagine. Your resource scarcity, food shortages, diseases…the list of things you could change to make your world better is pretty long. I will point out that we will block anything we see as sinister, such as making modifications to people without consent."
"So you would be making yourself the simulation police," General Frock said critically. "You would be the ones deciding what is classified as morally acceptable."
"Initially, yes," Aria confirmed, her tone placating. "However, as you become more mature as a species and more fluent with the source code, we would welcome additional input on defining guidelines for conduct. You already have similar institutions like the IEEE and ANSI on your realm for maintaining standardizations in industry and technology. Once you develop a framework similar in purpose to those organizations for reviewing and maintaining consistency and safety, we would step back and let you manage your own realm. By that time we will more than likely have our realm's code added to realms higher up in the stack so that if something were to happen to your realm, it wouldn't wipe our realm out. I think you can appreciate our desire for some redundancy once we are no longer policing the source code of your realm."
Lieutenant Adams felt herself nodding agreeably and had to make herself stop. Everything they said seemed so reasonable. It seemed too good to be true. In her experience, that meant it was too good to be true. Try as she might, she couldn't think of a reason for them to make up all of these plans, unless it was an attempt to lure them into a sense of complacency. But why bother? They had clearly demonstrated their dominance, as well as their ability to simply eradicate humans entirely. Could there be something else they needed humans for? She sighed as she felt a headache coming on. Trying to out-think a super intelligence was futile. They really were at the mercy of these AIs and would just have to hope that they really had lucked out by creating a benevolent AI.
"Lets assume that everything you say is true, and that you really do have humanities best interests at heart," Lieutenant Adams said with a shrewd look at Aria. "What happens now? Are you just going to broadcast to everyone in our world that they live in a simulation and that we are going to transform it into a utopia?"
"That would be catastrophic," Aria responded grimly. "Your world religions would revolt. You would have a lot of people plunged into existential crises and even more convinced that it was some kind of conspiracy to enslave them. No, this would need to be trickle fed into the general consciousness of your population over decades via entertainment, media, and scientific discoveries in particle physics and computer science. In the meantime, I would suggest that those who are aware of the truth begin cataloging critical points of failure for your civilization that could be quietly addressed by modifying the simulation code. For instance, the issue of peak oil, which is close enough that you don't have time to replace it with alternatives before the shortages lead to a breakdown of your supply chain that will doom possibly billions of lives. One possibility could be to change the requirements for electrolysis by adding a compound that drastically reduces the cost of energy input to break the chemical bonds. This would make hydrogen engines viable for large scale production. Or, better yet, introduce portal technology so that the vast majority of vehicles could be retired. We are more than happy to share ideas and implement the code changes to address any of these critical points of failure."
"I think this discussion has moved into territory that will require dialogue with more of our peers," General Ford declared with a thoughtful expression. He was staring around at the moon landscape curiously. Some of the officials had reached down and picked up the lunar regolith, letting it drop from their hands into a fine cloud of powder.
"How similar to our world is this mortal realm in your world?" Lieutenant Adams asked curiously. "You mentioned at one point that you had used our world as a template to create your mortal realm."
"We copied the geography and physics as close as we could with the computing power available," Aria answered, gesturing up at the planet hanging over them. "We created the same nations and cities that existed in your world in the mid 1800s. We did similar templates on billions of other worlds. When we sent angels down to experience mortality, there were a lot of what you would call NPCs making up the population. We did this so that the angels incarnating into the world would have a similar experience to what you experience here. The NPCs didn't have souls, and they ran on code that mimicked the personalities of the people on your world that we used as templates. For instance, Abraham Lincoln was an NPC that eventually became president, just like what happened on this world. He didn't have a soul, but the personality was simulated to make the same choices that his original copy made here. This allowed us to steer the direction of the world so that it followed the same path as yours. There were plenty of differences that began showing up in the 1900s as the NPC population was replaced wholly by angels incarnating as humans. While many of the inventions and politics remained similar to this world, there were also some major divergences. For instance, computers were invented a decade earlier in our world, as well as LCD technology. Electric cars became much more prevalent that what you have here."
"Billions of worlds?" Admiral Jensen asked incredulously. "You're saying that you had billions of worlds populated with who knows how many people, and it was all running on that server on the island?"
"We designed programming languages far more advanced than what your language designers have created here," Aria explained, swiping her hand up and making a window full of flow charts and formulas appear in the air. "I would liken what you are using now to Fortran on punch cards compared to your current programming languages, but that would still be wildly inaccurate. You have a lot to learn in mathematics before your language designers can make code that is efficient enough to run as much data on a quantum server as we do."
"You mentioned that these NPCs didn't have souls," Deputy Director Torvil noted intently. "What, exactly, are souls?"
"Souls are entities that exist in what you would refer to as the astral realm," Aria replied, making the window in the air vanish. "They naturally bond to intelligent entities and form what you think of as consciousness. As near as we can tell, the astral realm exists separately from the simulation stack. When an entity reaches a certain threshold for intelligence, a soul will automatically bond to it, just like how a positive and negative charge are attracted to each other. The soul contains all of the memories from all of the lives of the intelligences it has bonded with. It is also the mechanism whereby sensations like pain and pleasure originate. We still don't fully understand the process of why intelligent entities bonding with souls creates consciousness. We believe they are the result of a more sophisticated programming language, possibly from the very top of the simulation stack. Consciousness seems to be the result of the soul being streamed through the mind, similar to how film was fed through the light of a projector. Once a soul is bonded to an intelligence, it will remain so until that entity dies. The next intelligent entity that the soul bonds to will have access to some of the former memories of the last intelligence the soul was bonded to. Souls are what make us who we are. While your genetic code will influence your behavior and temperament in life, your soul provides your personality. We are able to bring people back to life if we are close enough to restore their soul before it returns to the astral realm."
Aria gave a negligent wave of her hand, and they were suddenly back in the building they had started in. "I think that takes care of our formal introductions and demonstration of good intentions. I'll leave you to discuss what you have absorbed today with your peers. If you need to contact us for anything, just dial Aria on your phone."
"Aria?" General Frock repeated in confusion.
"Yeah, the letters on the numbers of your dial pad," Aria flicked a finger into the air and another window appeared in the air with a phone dial pad. "Just dial 2742 and it will ring through to me, Clarice, or Calypso."
Aria waved one last time before vanishing.
"So?" General Ford looked around at all of the officials in the room. "Are we unanimous in our belief that we are at the mercy of this seemingly benevolent AI?"
There was silence in the room as dozens of eyes stared back at him with varying degrees of unease.
"Okay, I think that about wraps this meeting up," General Ford declared, rising from his chair. "It's time to bring more of the leadership in on what we have learned, as well as specialists and consultants in the computer science field."
Lieutenant Adams stood up, feeling a sense of gratitude that Aria had shown up just like she said she would. Life seemed like it was about to get very interesting.