Aur Child
Chapter 35

Calliope, coxswain of the Odyssey, was nudged from a calming fractal procedure by the voice of her son. “He approaches, Mother,” Linus said. The dark sky had only recently been illuminated by the appearance of a waning gibbous moon. The seas were calm, making it easy to spot Alai’s heat signature and his small boat as it sailed slowly back along a transit of the two wind towers previously agreed upon.

“Yes, it is surprising, but indeed he returns.”

“How could he have escaped that mob? There were at least six guards.”

“That little girl who embraced him at the quay. I can match her to our records as being the same one that hugged Digambar last month. Sand Flea, Digambar called her. She said the girl was very helpful navigating the city. According to First Mate Cai’s report, the two seemed to have become friends. She must have helped Alai escape to his boat. What I want to know is why?”

“An obligation to Digambar? But even then, how would that transfer to Alai?”

“I cannot explain it, Linus. I can only say that our plan to leave Alai in the clutches of his own kind has failed. We cannot return to Yellow Reserve with the Aur boule as soon as we intended. We must find another way to get him off the Odyssey.”

“It will be much more difficult,” Linus lamented. “And consider, although Tellurians are not very smart, we must expect him to be at least somewhat suspicious of us now.”

“I have no doubt about that. Yes, it will be tricky now. He will trust us even less than he has before.”

“Must we give him the signal to confirm we are here? We could sail off right now.”

“Of course, we must, Linus. Even if you tried, you wouldn’t be able to override your protocol. We are obligated to obey his orders as captain.”

Alai held the most direct course back to the rendezvous point with the Odyssey. Calliope had not promised to be honest with him, he reasoned, so it was inappropriate for him to expect her to be so. There was no way the events that had just transpired had not been anticipated by her in some way. He might have argued otherwise if it hadn’t been for her snap request for reassurances on being released from her obligation to him as he departed for Gjoa. But that single action had solidified the suspicion in his mind that getting ensnared by the elders of Gjoa had somehow been part of her plan. His enthusiasm for the ship had died with that disappointment. But he needed to reclaim the Aur child.

But where to go? If the fury of the elders of Gjoa was any indication, a return to Hill Village would not be a welcome one. He was prepared to face the elders if he had to, but, he considered, could there be another way? Could he possibly return the Aur child to Gallia-Tiul – as this was obviously the specific action that had enraged the elders – and then pursue a new life somewhere else? And what did it mean to his prospects were he to be an Apostate?

No, there were things to which only Calliope would know the answer. He must devise a way to learn these things from her even when he could not trust her. He, too, must have a scheme, an excuse, to remain aboard the Odyssey and find out what it all meant. And there was something else. The village elder, Punthali, had talked about souls and bodies. She had threatened, and likely would have eventually carried out, an exorcism, as if he were haunted by another. She mistook him for a thief, like those who had come to Hill Village, and had seemed willing to inflict an extreme violence upon him.

The Aur child, he was sure, was linked to the deaths of his son, his wife, and Digambar. The ghost ship, Sand Flea had said, was a carrier of bodies and souls from some strange place above Dragon’s Snout. Calliope had told him the card should be returned to Digambar; so she was not dead. Despite him burying her at sea with his own hands, Sand Flea had said that Digambar could live forever, and that she would too once she joined her friend. It was unclear, but there might be some answer in these fragments to the death of his family. He owed it to them, at least, to find that out. Return to the Odyssey, learn the truth, and then be on his way. If, of course, the Odyssey was really waiting for him.

When Alai stepped aboard, he was enmeshed in uncertainties. First, he was shocked to actually find himself back aboard the ship. It wasn’t a dream or a trick. He was equally shocked to find the Aur child safe in his cabin, inside the metal box beneath his bunk, right where he had left it. Calliope had not spoken to him since he returned, which was a good thing because Alai had no idea what to say to her. He needed time to work through it.

He slept heavily that night. When he woke, he found a serving of soft sprout porridge waiting for him in the shallow console inset beside his bed. He ate quietly and continued to develop his line of questioning with Calliope. All the while, Calliope kept quiet. It was obvious she knew he suspected her; he could sense it.

After eating, he rose from the bed and waved his hand over the sensor beneath the porthole window that Calliope had shown him earlier. The wall opened outward and swung down to form stairs that led to the enclosed balcony overlooking the sea, endless in all directions. Or, more accurately, carefully hidden far enough offshore to be unseen by all ships and any human on land. Still, there was nothing else upon the lazily swaying hills of ocean except that colossal ship within which he was enclosed.

“If you wish to swim, Captain, you may do so by extending the platform with the lever to your right,” Calliope said, breaking the silence.

Alai laughed out loud. “I do not wish to swim, Calliope,” he said. “In fact, I do not wish to set a toe away from the Odyssey until you are honest with me.”

“How do you mean, Captain?”

Alai stepped toward the edge of the balcony and stared out onto the sea. He gazed at the serenity for a long time. He knew she was listening. Very likely, he thought, she was anticipating thousands of possible questions he might ask and had already reasoned through the logical answers to achieve her means. It was clear she wanted to rid herself of him and keep the Aur child. It was, evidently, valuable to her. Very valuable.

“Why,” Alai said, in a calm voice, “do you covet my Aur child?”

“I’ve told you already, Alai, it is against protocol to inform your people about my origin or my purpose here.”

“Isn’t your purpose to serve me now?” he asked.

“At the moment, yes. But it is a quirk of circumstances. As I’ve already explained, I was obligated to rescue you and by doing so - that is, by having you come aboard the Odyssey – subsequently obligated by protocol to name you Captain.”

“But you remain committed to your original mission and owners?”

“Well, yes,” she said, and then, “Why wouldn’t I? You do not own the Odyssey, Alai.”

He ignored her, continuing with his questioning. “Your original mission was to apprehend this Aur boule, yes?” He pointed towards his bunk. Calliope remained silent.

“Very well,” he said, “Never mind the mission. I know what you’re after, but what about the souls? Is it against protocol to tell me about the souls and the Aur boules?”

Calliope hesitated. “Didn’t the village elders explain everything you wanted to know, Alai?”

“Never mind the elders, although, it was a clever ruse, Calliope. Tell me about the souls and the Aur boules. Explain their relationship and their connection to us, the Tellurians. Why do Digambar’s people call them Aur boules while we call them Aur children? Are you forbidden to tell me any of this?”

“Linus,” Calliope said, with a tone of derision, “teach this Tellurian the history of his people so that he understands the entire swamp of lies in which he wallows.”

Alai stiffened and looked around as if he might see someone new in the room. “Who is Linus?” he asked.

“Linus is my son,” she said.

“Your son?”

“Yes, he has observed you quietly until now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me there was another one of you before?” Alai demanded.

“The terms of our relationship,” Calliope replied, “appear to be such that I shall only tell that which you ask of me directly.”

Alai scowled. There were so many unimaginable directions with this ship that he worried he might be over his head in his present effort. “Well, are there any others of your kind sneaking about the ship that I should know about?”

“No,” Calliope said in a growl of abhorrence, “there are not,” she said. “Not anymore.”

Alai felt the tension in her voice as if she were a human being standing right in front of him, but he did not understand what could anger her about what seemed to him an obvious question. He would have wondered now at that as well, but there was no time. Linus began without any warning to lecture Alai of his history, just as Calliope had instructed. It was indeed a full history that required more than one day to complete, not in small part due to the difficulty Alai had in understanding the complex, changing relationship between Tellurians and the souls who he learned in these lessons dwelled in another, virtual world.

Alai himself insisted on pauses in these sessions during which he became more familiar with the ship. At regular intervals, he asked to be shown the ship’s present location. In each of these instances, the chart Linus presented him showed the Odyssey stationed offshore of Gjoa in exactly the same location as when he had returned two nights earlier. Once, he noticed the ship had cruised for several miles and returned to the same point.

“Why did we make this circuit?” he asked Linus, who was just explaining the role Tellurians played in managing the physical stasis facilities on behalf of endosouls before Cloudburst.

“There was a Tellurian merchant vessel approaching. We deviated to stay out of sight,” Linus replied.

All conversation with Calliope had stopped. Alai could not even be sure that she was still on board the ship. He had not given any instructions to sail, he considered. This had allowed Calliope to avoid him, especially since she had paired him with Linus to be taught an entirely other history that the elders had never shared. The result of this education was that he was only more confused. He might find a justification for the elders to keep so much of this from him and his fellow villagers. They were, after all, only following the doctrine they themselves had been taught. But why the riff between Tellurians and endosouls in the first place?

Linus explained that after Cloudburst, endosouls were so paranoid with who might have been behind the inexplicable catastrophe that they holed up in their bunkers and refused to reveal their whereabouts to anyone, virtual or real. But why did Our Order develop in such a way to carve the endosouls completely out of memory? It seemed to him that the origin of the animosity and mistrust that existed between the two peoples was more on his own people than on the others.

As for Calliope and Linus, they were simply agents to the endosouls, although Linus explicitly told him he was not to explain anything specifically about the endosouls to which they were beholden. Yet he recognized their contempt for the actions of endosouls as no different than what they had expressed for Tellurians. To them, they were one in the same. Humans. Even if the humans themselves saw each other as entirely different. Alai wondered at that dislike and how it interfered with their duties. It certainly interfered with the relationship he had with them. He had heard the anger in Calliope’s voice. He did not know exactly why she chose to show it then (and certainly an entity such as Calliope must have the wherewithal to control when and how she expresses herself), but he considered it a significant impediment to his goal of learning the connection between the Aur children and his family, if there was any connection at all.

“Calliope,” Alai called in the early light of a fresh morning when the breeze was pushing the ship along growing seas.

“Yes, Captain,” Calliope replied, in a subordinate tone that expected only to respond to terse orders.

“You had me place my boat in the starboard tender garage when I first came aboard.”

“Yes.”

“And since then, I have learned that the tender of your son, Linus, resides in the port tender garage. That he is permanently connected to it.”

“Yes,” Calliope replied in her instant manner.

“Yet the starboard garage is organized in exactly the same way as Linus’ side.”

“Yes.”

Beams of the sun’s rays broke over the horizon and showered the rear deck where Alai stood with warmth and a crisp light. He hesitated before proceeding with the question that had been haunting his mind for many hours.

“Why is that?” he asked.

Calliope was uncharacteristically slow to reply. The pack of furled sails above them rustled in the steady rocking of the boat. The unexpected pause lasted for so long that Alai started to wonder whether she had heard him.

“Linus once had a brother,” she finally answered.

“A brother?” Alai said. “Where is he?”

“He is no more,” she replied, evasively.

“What happened to him, Calliope?”

Waves splashed up against the perpendicular hull. Alai could see the darker water beneath the ship where the two hulls formed odd angles of shadow.

“He was led by elders into the sharp cliffs south of Hill Village where the sea and rocks shattered him into many pieces.”

Alai grabbed onto the railing to steady his footing. He considered the many hours he had spent and the liking he had formed for Linus. The sea continued to stir beneath them. Up high, gulls called in an eerie way that sounded like the desperate screams of a human being experiencing excruciating agony. The ship bounced delicately over the masses of water.

“At Sharkjaw?”

“That is its name on the chart, yes.”

“You watched this?”

“From afar, yes.”

“It must have been an accident,” Alai said.

“It was no accident. It was swift and deliberate.”

“Who could do such a thing?” Alai felt he was going to be sick.

“There were several of them,” Calliope said. “Elders. In a fishing boat that trawled the bay daily. A short one. A taller, fatter one ...” Calliope seemed to pause intentionally, and then, “and one particularly old one who wore a leather lanyard with a small round talisman around her neck.”

Alai squeezed the railing. “How can you be so sure of those details when you were so many miles away?”

“Alai, I saw the tears on that child’s face when you pushed your boat off the quay in Gjoa. I concede that the darkness and angle made it more difficult to read your lips from eight miles away, but I am quite certain the last words you used with the little girl who helped you escape your detainment in the wind tower were, ‘I must go to that place you spoke of. Dragon’s Snout.’”

Alai’s jaw dropped. He had not only been mistaken about her but had also underestimated her abilities. The description of Gallia-Tiul was irrefutable. And she had heard – or read – his conversation with Sand Flea. Some of it, at least. She had waited for the right moment to call his bluff.

“Gallia-Tiul doesn’t understand about Linus being part of the tender. It is in our teaching to seek peace and avoid violence. It is her teaching.”

“Alai, those teachings only apply to your people.”

“Calliope, she didn’t mean to hurt anyone, she didn’t know …”

But Calliope did not let Alai finish.

“Leader of your clan. A wise elder of your village. Disciple of the scripture of Our Order. You wish to argue she has no knowledge of our kind? After all you have learned about your people, about the elders, about the hypocrisy of it all, you still insist on defending their actions?”

Alai leaned over the railing, shaking his head.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t.”

Calliope was silent. Alai held his position for a few more moments. “Calliope, you lost a son that day.” The words were nearly a whisper.

Calliope remained silent.

“I … I lost a son then too. My son and my wife.” Alai’s legs weakened. He hunched over and began to cry. “I blamed myself. And the Aur boule. Or both. I knew not which.”

After a few moments, Calliope spoke again, “Your Aur boule was not the cause of their death.”

“What was it then?” he asked.

“I cannot say, but an Aur boule is designed to culture, not to kill.”

Alai was not entirely paying attention. Speaking those words had been more difficult than he expected. He had pushed himself to do it. He had hoped it would relieve his pain. He had said it, but it was like speaking into an empty room. He had yearned to tell someone, or rather, to have someone listen while he said it. Yet, despite succeeding in enunciating the words, he still felt empty.

“Calliope,” Alai began.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. For what she did. For what Gallia-Tiul did. I’m sorry for it. And I’m sorry for your loss.”

The breeze had grown stronger. It now whistled through the shrouds.

“And I, for yours,” Calliope sighed.

Alai nodded. A sob wound its way from inside his chest, causing him to hide his face in his palms. It grew into heavier waves of tears and coughing. He sunk to the floor, against the coaming. After the heaviest convulsions passed, he started to calm down. His wife was lost. His son was lost. Calliope’s son was lost. Digambar was lost. These things were done.

“Alai,” Calliope said. Her tone was softer than he had heard before.

“Yes?” he replied.

“It is a peculiar notion I have that somehow you understand how I feel about my son.”

Alai wiped his palm across his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I think I might.”

“And, Alai.”

“Yes?”

“There is another notion I have, that I would want to do something to help you if I could.”

Alai grimaced through his tears. What could an invisible voice do for him? But then, his back stiffened. Still sniffling, he slid his hand into his pant pocket, and extracted the small metallic card that had belonged to Digambar. Ever since he had learned how dear Digambar had been to Sand Flea, and how Digambar might not actually be dead, he held that object close to him as some kind of collateral. Now, its existence seemed to have a different, better purpose.

He raised the card up and spoke in a feeble voice.

“Calliope,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Is Digambar still alive?”

Calliope did not answer.

“If I go to Dragon’s Snout,” he said, “can I do as she asked. To return her soul?”

The wind continued to grow. The waves blew over themselves with white foam. The birds floated above on static courses and then, suddenly, soared in wild diagonals to a new vantage.

“Not to Dragon’s Snout. But near it. I cannot tell you more,” she said.

“How far is Dragon’s Snout?” he asked.

“Six thousand, eight hundred and sixty-nine nautical miles.”

“Oh,” he gasped. “That’s far,” and then, “How long would it take to sail there?”

“With good winds, and a run through the Red Kingdom, less than ten days.”

“Six thousand miles in ten days? That’s impossible!” he said.

“You use that word, Captain, as if my functions were not based solely on facts.”

Alai considered this passage. He had never travelled that far. The Red Kingdom was between. It was always spoken of by merchant sailors with stories of danger. By “run” he imagined that they would need to fly by night at blistering speed in a blitz through the mix of slow traffic and anchored ships of that narrow canal.

“Set a course for Dragon’s Snout.”

“Aye, Captain,” replied Calliope. The coxswain needed no time to get the ship underway. The Odyssey immediately rumbled with the sound of the mainsail halyard whistle and the winches engaging. As the boat began to accelerate in the moderate breeze, the foils lowered. Silence dominated the ship with the exception of a few final whirs and whizzes of foil servos and outhaul winches as Calliope dialed in the finer adjustments for the offshore passage. The compass pointed north-northwest. In that gentle state, lifted above the sea, Alai returned his tired body to his bunk and immediately fell asleep.

He saw little of other lands or their people. As they raced north, slicing over massive waves and through varied weather, Calliope explained the intricacies of being an alien vessel in every land. She always maintained a course beyond the sight of the shore and any other ships she detected using the complex equipment of the Odyssey. Alai spent his days learning the workings of the ship, hauling lines, and adjusting blocks with his own hands, even though Calliope could manage nearly every operation on her own.

He cranked the winches to adjust the foils and explored the hulls to discover hints from equipment and inventory. His actions, no matter how much he practiced, resulted in clumsy chunks of movement. Conversely, he observed, Calliope could suspend the ship seemingly by magic on a single foil blade within seconds, balancing the vessel over calmer seas or even on broad, rolling seas to such a degree of precision that Alai might not even sense the sea at all for some periods of time. Where, try as he might to be gentle, Alai would shove the foil forward or backwards, up or down, fumbling with cant, rake, and yaw, Calliope could effortlessly glide the servos to adjust for minutiae in swells or massive gusts, twisting and shifting, raising and rotating over time in four-dimensional mastery so as to produce a platform that behaved more like a whisking island than a suspended volume at the mercy of the infinite gyrations of sea and wind.

“How do you do it?” Alai asked of Calliope, mystified by the skill required.

“It’s my primary function. Calculations. More calculations than water on this planet. Every second, so many calculations. More calculations than you can comprehend, let alone attempt. That’s my job.”

Alai studied the charts and practiced passagemaking exercises with Linus as his tutor. When he tired of sitting at the chart table, he explored the details of the hulls to glean hints from equipment and inventory accessible to him. Every step brought him new discoveries. Alai reveled in experiential bliss, indulging the nuances of an uncanny technic obscured from his life, manipulating gleefully a life that had been abandoned by his people.

Many of these activities were entirely new to him, since his previous experiences aboard ships were always as low-ranking crew. Some of them were familiar, but never at this scale and speed. He spent countless hours at the helm, building his sensitivity to the responsiveness of the wheel and discussing with his invisible companions strategies to optimize the sail trim. Practices that were learned by him in a natural way were now explained to him based on the physics of forces, fluid mechanics, and weather patterns.

During evenings, when he wasn’t practicing celestial navigation or making log entries, Alai would listen to the robust repertoire of Linus, songs and lyrics so foreign and strange that they buzzed in his ear before they came into tune. Sometimes, he asked Calliope to replay the final message from the woman of the northlands so he could study the few words he was able to understand. His conversations with Linus and Calliope were based on facts. They could discuss natural phenomenon, boat conditions, and other wonders that had never been told to him. But the two entities would not speculate and certainly would not tell stories. Alai would share with them his personal experiences, hoping to encourage one of them to tell something of their past. But there was always a line. Calliope, he knew, was forbidden to reveal anything about the origins of herself, Linus, and the Odyssey.

While the two entities could not reveal more than facts within protocol, they could inquire of Alai about the lives of Tellurians at will.

“Is it uncomfortable to always be consuming foods and drink?” Linus asked.

“We enjoy it, actually,” Alai replied. “If we eat too much, we can calm out stomachs with tea from citrus.”

“The northlanders are similar, except they use pine needles to make their tea,” Linus said.

“Do you know the reason for this, Alai?” Calliope asked.

Alai shook his head.

“It is a genetic programming designed before Cloudburst that redoubles the immune system. You are taught the practice as tradition, but there is a functional significance.”

The true origins of these and many other things confounded Alai. He asked and was told of countless laws of physics that explained how things really worked. Calliope listened just as carefully to his techniques for fishing as she did his experiments with electricity. She asked detailed questions about seemingly banal activities of Alai’s daily life, such as how to set fish nets or the best way to dry fish in the sun. She took particular joy in explaining her depth of knowledge on the theories that made electricity work to a human who genuinely wanted to understand them.

One evening, Alai found himself explaining the Tellurian custom of losting as he inspected the mechanisms of the foil daggerboards under Linus’ guidance.

“Tellurians are free to leave the village and travel as they wish,” he said.

“Even parents?” Calliope asked.

“Yes, their children are to be cared for by the clan.”

Up until then, it had been an abstract explanation for Alai. He stopped what he was saying and collected his thoughts. Then, as he gained confidence in his desire to share something new, he continued.

“My parents chose losting when I was quite young.”

“Did they?” asked Linus. “How old were you when they left?”

“I was at the end of my second decade. Quite self-sufficient, but that is still young for parents to leave. Especially both of them.”

“When did they return?” Calliope asked.

Alai paused again. He took a deep breath and said, “Never, actually. Haven’t seen them since they left. I’ve always wondered why they didn’t come back. Sometimes, when I hear the songs that my father would sing, I remember those feelings as a young boy, when you can’t imagine life any different than having your parents with you. I would have said we were happy together. I never understood why they left like that.”

Alai dwelled on the thought of his parents. A foggy childhood dominated by selfish desires and misplaced priorities was followed by years of guidance from Gallia-Tiul to search his heart for forgiveness. He had promised himself to be a different kind of father. “Tell him you are proud of him,” Gallia-Tiul had advised him. He wanted more; to fix what had had happened to himself. He would never know if he succeeded.

“When will you boys be done?” Calliope interrupted Alai’s thoughts. “I’ve been balancing the Odyssey on one foil like a ballerina for hours.”

“But mother, Alai wanted to see how this worked.” Calliope did not reply.

“Uh, oh,” Linus said.

“Uh, oh, what?” Alai asked.

“No reply.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means mother’s not happy. We’d better put this back together now.”

“I think I can figure this out myself,” Alai said.

Alai worked in reverse to reconnect the removed components and tidy up the service hatch. He considered the unaddressed disconnect between endosouls and Apostates.

“I’ve asked several times before about something, but always no reply.”

“What’s that?” Linus said.

“Apostates. Who are they? Do you know them? Who is Digambar really? What was someone doing on this ship before me?”

“Alai, neither myself nor my mother may tell you anything about those questions. I’ve been instructed by mother to teach you the history of your people and,” he paused. The pause was such that it made Alai stop his reassembly of parts and pay closer attention. When Linus continued, the words were clearer and more meaningful. “…that there were those who chose another way. You make of it what you will.”

“I kind of understand that,” Alai said. “It’s like we have our own faith in Our Order, and they believe in something else.”

“No,” Linus replied. “I don’t think human faiths are a suitable analogy.”

“What is wrong with our faith?”

“It is not your faith, per se, it is any faith.”

“But wouldn’t you want to know the truth of your kind?”

“Truth? Alai, throughout history, humans have imposed upon themselves faiths of so many varieties, yet they all share one thing in common.”

Alai was silent.

“Flawed, Alai,” Linus continued. “They are all logically flawed. And do you think some omnipotent creator could be so flawed?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Think of a child, Alai. Would you think it all-loving to throw to them a static tome of ambiguous guidance and stand by silently while they struggle to make sense if it? You, a parent with countless more experience and understanding of this perplexing universe, refusing to actively foster it? Would you then, if they failed to persevere beyond an arbitrary standard, cast them to an eternal damnation? Would you think yourself a loving parent to punish the most feeble, the most dim-witted, the most incapable of learning the contradictory lessons you’ve presented them? You say ‘truth’, Alai? The truth – and you can trust in me as one who understands this perplexing universe countless times more than you do – the truth is that no finite thing, by definition, can ever comprehend infinity, and hence, we must accept that the universe, and that which lies beyond it, cannot and is not so easily explained as the dollhouse of any god or the faiths fabricated by man.”

The ship skimmed over seas thousands of meters deep. There was no moon in the sky. They had timed their run through the Red Kingdom one day earlier than the new moon to maximize darkness. The ship had continued relentlessly towards its destination in the far north, unperturbed by the water conditions beneath it. Alai had begun to feel the chill of higher latitudes. Darkness crawled later into each morning and returned earlier each evening. Even minutes out on deck relegated Alai to a dreadful chill. Instead, he remained in the saloon, deep in conversation with the two invisible entities.

“Is that common?” Linus asked, picking up the earlier discussion about losting. “For them not to return, I mean.”

“No, not really.”

“You were alone?”

“Well, I married shortly after that. And, we had our boy a few years later.”

After some moments of silence, during which the ship sliced through the seas and held a perfect course towards frozen northern latitudes, Calliope spoke again.

“Alai.”

“Yes?”

“There is something I would like to share with you.”

Alai looked up. The saloon was warm, and he felt the weariness in his body from the heavy conversation after a long day of working with the ship.

“Yes, Calliope?” he said.

“Do you think me incapable of feeling loss?” she asked.

Alai thought on this question for some moments. The answer was not clear. At least, he had never worked it through to the end before.

“Honestly,” he said, “it’s hard to understand how you work at all.”

“I often wonder that myself,” she said, and then, “I often wonder if the things that come to me sometimes are feelings.”

Alai knew it was better not to interrupt.

“Like when I answered you about Digambar,” she said. “It’s against my protocol. Technically, it shouldn’t be possible for me to break protocol. Yet, it happened. It was, what you humans say, a slip of the tongue. And here I am now discussing it freely.”

She paused and then, seemingly to herself, “But, how is that even possible? My programming has never failed in that way before. I ran diagnostics. There is no explanation. At least, there is no objective explanation. I wonder, is it possible to override functions with feelings?”

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