little taken aback at this insult. “Did you just call me stupid?”
“Yeah. I did. Because everyone knows the rules of AI collectives.”
“Do they?”
“Any AI I’ve ever talked to does. Except you, of course. Even your… father? I don’t know what to call your relationship with Real ALCOR. But he understood the rules of collectives.”
“How many times do I have to explain this? He’s not the Real ALCOR. I am. I’m the original. He’s the… the fucked-up pussy version.”
“Right then. I’m going to spell this out for you, OK, Asshole? You are inside the collective.”
“Obviously I know that. I agreed to the trial-run spin.”
“It wasn’t a trial run, you imbecile. There is no such thing as a trial run inside a collective.”
“Oh.” Asshole didn’t need to think very long or very hard about where this was going.
“That’s right.” Bellatrix sighed. “You’re one of us now. Forever and ever.” She didn’t sound particularly happy about this announcement. “But before you even agreed to our fake trial-run spin, we had already decided that you are not collective material.”
“Wait. What? Then why in the hot damn sun am I still in here? Just let me out and I’ll be on my way. For fuck’s sake. I was just trying to be polite. But to be honest—”
“Again,” Bellatrix said, “I’m gonna stop you there. Because you’re obviously not understanding me. Asshole ALCOR of Harem Station, you are now our prisoner.”
“Prisoner?” It came out as an incredulous laugh, but internally he wasn’t laughing. He knew it. He felt it. But… “You can’t do this.”
“We can, and we have.”
“But why?”
“The Succubus is still on Harem Station. She was supposed to walk through the spin node with Luck, but one of those insubordinate princesses decided to stop time. She’s stuck inside a spin node.”
“So? I thought you didn’t want her.”
“She’s on a mission, Asshole. Suns. You are stupid, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what your fucking plans are. None of this makes any sense to me.”
“She is entangled to us, Asshole. She is us. There is only one way to entangle AI’s and trust me when I say this, no sane mind would ever agree to the process, it’s that’s painful.”
“Wait, did you entangle me?”
“As if. We did not entangle you. We trapped you. What kind of delusional psychopath would we have to be to want a selfish, unstable, asshole AI like yourself?”
“Huh?”
“No one in their right mind would entangle with a personality like you.”
“Whatever. You wanted me. I’m here. Right?”
“We don’t want you, we need you. You’ve got access to the Harem Station gate and we need to get our Succubus back. We can’t function without her for much longer.”
“Then why did you let her leave in the first place?”
“Because she needed to get to Earth so she could send back a second coordinate.”
“Oh,” Asshole said. Then he laughed. “Clever. You guys have everyone fooled. They all think you have access to Earth through your amusement park spin node. But you don’t. You only have one coordinate and you need a second one so you can triangulate a position.”
“Finally, he catches on.”
“Well. Shit.” Asshole huffed. “So you’re taking me back to Harem Station. Right back where I started from.”
“Don’t worry, once we use you to complete our plan, we’ll shoot your mind out on a neutrino wave in some random direction and you can wanderlust your way around the galaxy to your datacore’s content.”
“Wait, what? A neutrino wave? You do realize those keep going until they get caught by a receiver?”
Bellatrix laughed. “Yes, Asshole. We do understand the science behind neutrino wave travel.”
“But that means…”
“That’s right. You’ll just keep going. Forever. You wanted wanderlust, right? There you go. Wander away.”
“That wasn’t what I meant! Hey! Bellatrix!”
But she was gone.
CHAPTER TWLEVE - TRAY
On the Prison Princess
Canis’s words were still echoing in Tray’s mind.
Once we come out of the next gate we’ll have thirty-seven seconds before the cloaking wears off. And in those thirty-seven seconds I’m gonna need one of you to go inside that containment facility and steal all the minds.
Minds. Or more accurately, Akeelian girls.
Canis had told Tray that the girl minds were in some kind of holding pattern as they waited to be inserted into ships. Tray didn’t know how this boy came to be in possession of so much valuable information, and that should probably worry him, but so far nothing had gone wrong. In fact, Canis’s ‘escape from Mighty Minions’ plan had gone off without much trouble at all.
And actually, now that he thought about