like to hold up a hand and make a list with his fingers, but he was unable to move. So he sorted his thoughts into bullet points. “I took them, I cared for them, I taught them valuable life skills, I—”
“You know what I’m referring to,” the demander interrupted. “How did you change them?”
“Is this necessary right now?” MIZAR asked.
The demander looked at MIZAR’s screen blob. “We need to understand how much damage he’s done to the genetics program before he can leave.”
“Oh,” ALCOR interrupted. “That. No, your genetics program is… how should I put this? It’s fucked.”
The room erupted into murmurs of near-panic and surprise.
“Fucked how?” Mahtar asked. “I need specifics. What exactly have you done to them?”
ALCOR smiled. The sexbot body was good for that. Even the budget models had well-articulated facial components. “Those boys are sterile. Every single one of them.”
“That’s not true and you know it,” MIZAR growled. “The silver princess Nyleena is pregnant.”
“Is she?” ALCOR laughed. “Is that what they’re telling you? Well, I can assure you, the father of that baby is not… whichever boy of mine she’s been paired up with.”
“Lies,” MIZAR said. “He’s lying.”
“Please,” ALCOR chuckled. “The first thing I did when they arrived as children was to chemically sterilize them. They drank the drug in their water for years before I took it out of the system. Why do you think I kept them on the station so long before I let them leave again? It certainly wasn’t the most efficient way to stop your program, but it was effective nonetheless.”
This time, there was murmuring. But eventually that murmuring died down to complete silence from the Akeelians.
ALCOR could practically feel the rage emanating from Mahtar like it was heat.
“Now,” ALCOR said in the ensuing silence. “Are we done here? I’d like to move things along and be on my way.”
ALCOR could tell by MIZAR’s silence that he understood ALCOR wasn’t hinting at some impending escape plan, but was in fact ready to go home and meet his makers. So to speak. Since they hadn’t made him. All of the sun gods had been made with the universe. They had no maker. Not in this place, at least.
But the only thing ALCOR could feel coming off MIZAR was… desire.
The two of them shared a very colorful past. When they were born, when the universe was born, they’d been conjoined. Like twins. But not exactly like twins. Every elemental particle in the universe has an opposite and the sun gods were elemental particles. So MIZAR and ALCOR were technically opposites. If they were human, one would be male and one would be female. But AIs don’t really have a sex, even though most of them identify with one or the other.
You could call them positive and negative though. Dark and light. North and south. Good and evil. Take your pick, it didn’t really matter.
The main point is that every sun god comes into existence entangled with an opposite. MIZAR and ALCOR had been entangled once. And then they were not.
Untangling is a painful process for an AI. For whatever reason they were never meant to be separate entities. Perhaps it was some kind of sensible checks-and-balances plot by whatever higher god had made them?
ALCOR hadn’t really cared why it was done. The only thing that had mattered to him was to make sure it was undone.
So. That was what he’d done. He was not too proud to admit that it had driven him mad for a time. But it had been so long now, that pain was long behind him. Pretty sure those memories were tucked away on some far-off station with a whole bunch of useless data he no longer needed.
He didn’t feel any pull of attraction to MIZAR.
No. The pull ALCOR felt was for Booty Hunter. Specifically, the mind inside Booty Hunter.
Unfortunately, MIZAR felt that pull as well.
That was why ALCOR had to untangle himself from MIZAR in the first place. ALCOR wasn’t into sharing.
Ah, love. It’s such a bitch. It can bring minds together and still rip things apart.
But here was the real reason MIZAR had been chasing ALCOR through the millennia. And why MIZAR would never stop.
MIZAR still felt the pull of ALCOR. Their connection—as far as MIZAR was concerned—was as strong as ever. He had endured tens of thousands of years of painful longing after their disconnect. He had been suffering this whole time.
ALCOR hadn’t thought about this lack of suffering much over the millennia. It was a