The days are peaceful. Lance and Robin arrive with the caravan from the AI city. Some of the flock arrives with the caravan, and others leave for home. A few of the larger AI do the same. Now that this city has been proven safe, people are beginning to take vacations.

  Only a few days later an important message reaches me.

  “Blue?” Monary says. “You have the caravan from Yellowstone over the horizon.”

  “Thank you.” I instantly move ten of my bodies into four cars, load in Frankenstein's portable tests, and head out. “Take care of the city please, I want to be able to focus fully on this. And prepare the drone swarm just in case.”

  “Will do.”

  I take my small caravan to meet theirs. It’s eight entire cars, and from what I can see, they’re packed tight with supplies. I get directly between them and the city, they’re not coming in until I know things are safe. Ahead of me I send out a radio signal.

  “This is Blue, the leader of Arc City, to the Yellowstone Caravan. I am approaching your caravan. Please, don’t be alarmed, and please stop when I arrive.”

  “What’s this about, Arc City?” A response comes a moment later.

  “I’d rather speak about this in private. I don’t want to accuse you of something if you’re not guilty.”

  “Can we expect compensation when you find we are innocent?” They ask.

  Is that fair? I suppose I am taking their time, potentially delaying their delivery.

  “I can compensate you for your time. We’ll work out the specifics when I arrive.”

  “Fine. We’ll stop when you get here.”

  “I appreciate you making this easy for both of us.”

  Both sets of cars move slowly over the desert, and they thankfully didn’t adjust their heading. Glad they’re making things easy. In the meantime, I walk through Silver’s compound to find help.

  Ivy is in the range tutoring a few separate people. I wait for her to finish correcting someone’s form before interrupting her.

  “Ivy? Can you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.” She turns to Vince, catches his eye, and sends out a few signals. Take over.

  Ok. He responds.

  “What do you need?” She asks.

  “I’m about to interrogate a caravan. Can you watch through my eyes and tell me if anyone is lying?”

  “No offense, but I doubt your eyes are as good as mine. I can take my best guess, but you’ll be missing out on a lot of the details I use.”

  “Still, I trust your judgement regardless.”

  “Then I’ll help how I can. Just don’t expect me to catch anything more than obvious lies.”

  The two of us head to our living room, and I broadcast my eyes to the screen.

  The caravan slows to a stop as I approach, and I park every car in front of them. All ten of my bodies step out, and a man walks forward to meet me.

  “Blue, I take it?” He reaches out to shake my hand.

  “That’s me, and what is your name?”

  “Dean.”

  I quickly cross check that name with not only C-1’s servers, but also with Olson’s records. The name has never been attached to his face, but has been used in relation to this caravan before. Maybe it’s a standard cover name?

  “Nice to meet you. I see no reason to draw things out. Blur has been killing people, my people. There’s a possibility that tainted Blur can be traced back to your caravan. I need to test everything you are bringing into my city. Please, if you could ask everyone to step away from your cars, I will get to work quickly and efficiently.”

  “You want us to let you go through everything without oversight?” Dean asks.

  “If you want to enter my city, yes. I’m sorry, but I wouldn’t do so without the belief that I’m acting in the best interest of my citizens. You’re welcome to go home if you would like, or if you can’t make it someplace safe, I can host you until the next storm passes, but none of your cargo will make it into the hands of anyone inside my city.”

  “Fine, go for it. We have nothing to hide.” Dean signals to the rest of the caravan, who all step out. Fifteen visibly unmodified humans step out and move out of the way, sharing quiet words between them.

  “They’re nervous.” Ivy points out.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I’m sure I would be too in their situation, regardless of if they have anything or not.”

  All my bodies get to work. I pull out every package I can find and begin to carefully go through everything. I set any powders or liquids to the side and task one of my bodies with testing each one.

  Frankenstein’s small, portable test is as simple as possible. Just a small amount of powder or liquid needs to be placed in a compartment and the device does the rest. For every single test it lets out a quiet beep and an LED on the front lights up green, signaling it hasn’t detected what we are searching for.

  The body that Ivy is watching through simply looks through each car.

  “There’s a hidden compartment there.” She points out.

  I pour over the frames she pointed out and can find nothing out of the ordinary. No cracks, no crevices, no latches, nothing.

  “How can you tell?” I ask.

  “That panel is sticking out further than it is on the other cars.”

  I run my fingers along the edges of the panel and find that it gives way at the very bottom, the plastic easily bending out of the way. I push in and the panel pops loose.

  A large glass vial falls out, full of a clear liquid. That’s promising.

  I bring it over to Frankenstein’s tester, watching the crowd out of the corner of my eye for Ivy.

  “They’re good at hiding their nervousness.” She says. “Look at the guy in the back though, look at how his weight is shifting, his body tensing. You have something important there.”

  “Monary?” I call into the network. “Be prepared for things to go south.”

  “I already am.” They respond.

  I open the vial, load a few drops into the tester, and wait. Long seconds pass as the device works.

  “Look at them tense, all of them.” Ivy mumbles.

  Only a minute later the device softly beeps and the light turns green, just like every other time, reporting nothing.

  “Nothing?” I ask her.

  “They’re not reacting like it’s nothing. They look like they’ve just been caught.”

  Could something be wrong with the device? I plug myself in and do a quick test, only to find the data from the last result has been scrambled. Garbage data has overwrote whatever it recorded. Every other test makes sense, it ran perfectly every other time.

  I load in a second sample and once again wait.

  “Is something wrong?” Dean asks.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  I watch the device, every cycle, every byte. I mirror the program and all the data it's collecting and run it on my own, unaltered processors.

  Frankenstein’s device makes no sense. Equations come back with the wrong answer, random bit flips propagate through the entire device, scrambling everything. Even the sensors reporting the makeup of the chemical make no sense.

  The device beeps once again and lights up green. Beeps in the exact same way, the same exact volume in every ear, almost as if it’s pre-recorded.

  Shit, the puck. Nimda mentioned that if you know the specifics of a device you can manipulate the processors at a direct level. Almost all of the internals of these bodies are directly reused from what C-1 originally installed in them, it's possible someone could know the specifics of their construction. Maybe a top floor could have given away some of C-1’s secrets? A few of them did go north-west when they left.

  Where would they get one? What’s their plan? Is it just to poison my citizens? Maybe to destabilize my city and capitalize on that? Or is there a bigger plan? Or maybe it’s just dumb greed, a way to cut the Blur that they didn’t fully test.

  I can figure it out if I can talk to these people. They don’t know I know about the puck, they don’t know I have one. I can use that, maybe.

  I set the bottle to the side and get to work testing everything else, trying to buy myself time to prepare.

  I start by sending a message to Silver, asking to speak with them. A moment later a connection between their private network and mine opens, and both halves of their brain stand in front of me, alongside Clover and the child.

  I don’t hesitate to pass all three of them everything that has happened.

  “I need help arresting them.” I say a moment later. “They can disable any electronics near them, making me useless. Humans without cybernetics, or at least with cybernetics that won’t interfere with them if they go haywire, are the only people who are safe to help.”

  “I imagine that would kill Ivy, and possibly Vince.”

  “It almost did.” I answer. “And I only hit her for less than a second.”

  “I’ll get a team together.” One half of their mind says.

  “Just keep them busy.” The other half adds before they both drop out of the network.

  “Clover, are you feeling good enough to connect me to Kismet?” I ask.

  “I am.” She reaches out, grasps reality, and with a single movement tears open a rift.

  Kismet’s attention turns to us, and the familiar pressure that comes with it.

  “Blue, I trust things are going well?” They say.

  “Kind of. Did you ever find a way to combat the pucks?”

  “Nothing small enough to deploy on any practical scale, much less carry on a mobile platform, unfortunately. An entire room’s worth of hardware can protect only ten feet around it. Although we are working on miniaturizing the technology. We’re hoping to have something small enough to protect a server room in a year, and a humanoid body within a decade. If you don’t mind us asking, who has access to the technology?”

  “I’m pretty sure a caravan from Yellowstone has access to at least one.”

  Genuine confusion floods through the tear, and the pressure fades for a moment. Waves pulse through the server as they think. Even with all the processing power at my disposal, It’s utterly impossible to discern a single thought from the waves. A moment later it settles, and the pressure returns.

  “We were following the wrong future then. We’d like to apologize for not warning you in advance about this possibility.” Kismet says.

  “It’s ok. How do you see this turning out?”

  “We deemed the possibility of this future being true low, and the consequences of being wrong minimal in comparison to the risk. As such, we did not follow this potential future closely. We cannot recontextualize our flashes instantly, but will inform you when we have insight.”

  “Thank you. I assume that there are too many futures to just inform me about every potential one, no matter how unlikely?” I ask.

  “There are millions of futures we deem likely, and trillions we deem possible. Even culling those down to the ones we believe you have the possibility of influencing is enough to drive someone to madness, just as it threatened to do to us long ago. We’re sorry.”

  “It’s ok.” I repeat. “I’ll figure this out, thank you.”

  I turn my focus away from the conversation as Kismet stitches reality back together. Through the cameras in Silver’s compound, I watch people begin to move quickly, all equipped for war, all heading to Silver’s office. I guess I should probably go join them.

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