The sky over Valley_Zero blazed—a furious render of orange and violet, as if the heavens themselves were ablaze for the anniversary match.
It always burned like this, every year, when legends were reborn in pixel and plasma.
Eight avatars soared through the simulated ether, their jets carving wild contrails above mountain peaks resurrected from the lost archives of Old Earth. The real range was long gone, razed in the Water Wars, but here—stitched from the code of antique Air Battle backups—it was sacred ground, hallowed by memory and myth.
Plasma bolts sizzled past Dision's canopy, painting the world in strobing bursts of light. The cockpit shuddered with every near miss, his F/A-37 "Fury Mod Zero"—midnight black, gold filigree glinting—dancing through the chaos like a duelist's blade. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and the electric tang of simulated adrenaline.
A red warning flared: LOCKED. The enemy ace—KiloVox, notorious for ruthless precision—was on his six, missiles primed. Dision banked hard, skimming a craggy peak, plasma fire slicing the air inches from his tail. The Fury's frame groaned in protest as he rolled, dove, and twisted, each maneuver more desperate than the last.
KiloVox taunted over open comms, voice cold as steel. "Nowhere left to run, pirate. Time to join the ghosts."
"Ye talk too much, matey," Dision shot back, voice a storm-tossed growl. "Let's see if yer bite matches yer bark!"
He juked right, then snapped left, threading the Fury between two jagged spires. KiloVox's missile screamed after him, hungry and relentless. The world narrowed to a tunnel of speed and fire—mountains flashing by, alarms blaring, squadmates shouting in his ear.
AikoZ's neon-winged jet dove in, peppering KiloVox with covering fire. "Go, Dision! I'll keep him busy!"
But KiloVox was locked in, relentless. Another missile warning. Dision's options dwindled—altitude dropping, speed redlining.
He yanked the stick, flipping the Fury into a dizzying vertical loop. G-forces pressed his avatar into the seat, the world spinning in a kaleidoscope of sky, mountain, and fire. KiloVox's missile shrieked onto his tail, lock warning howling.
He keyed his mic, voice dropping to a conspiratorial rumble. "Mutiny, this one's for yer granddad. May the code gods watch his six."
He punched the eject. The world exploded into wind and light—his avatar flung skyward, tumbling through the simulated stratosphere. Below, the Fury twisted, canopy glinting as it spun. KiloVox's missile screamed past, missing by a whisker's breadth, and detonated against the mountainside in a blossom of digital flame.
Dision shot, lady luck kissing the zook for a flawless takedown.
And with a swashbuckler's grace, Dision somersaulted mid-air, boots-first, and landed square in the open cockpit as the Fury tumbled earthward. The canopy snapped shut with a hiss, the controls leaping to life beneath his hands. He leveled out, smoke trailing, just as KiloVox's stunned avatar spun out and crashed in a burst of pixel fire.
The scoreboard flashed:
MVP: DISION – 18 Kills / 0 Deaths / 1 Re-entry
The comms erupted:
AikoZ: HOLY #$%@
Solstice_Lad: HE DID IT. RENDEZOOK. ON THE ANNIVERSARY.
NephCode: STUN_GRAVY'S BLOOD RUNS THRU THIS ONE
GhostMutiny: My grandfather would've cried.
GhostMutiny's voice trembled, caught between awe and joy—a grandchild who'd grown up on tales of glory, now watching legend come alive.
Dision tipped his hat, digital and rakish, to the silent memory of stun_gravy. "Raise yer glasses, mates. To the old guard—may their tales ne'er fade, nor their spirits log off."
Laughter pealed through the squad, applause emojis raining down like confetti. The match ended, scoreboard glowing like a hero's epitaph. Pixel candles flickered for stun_gravy, the replay looping—epic, immortal.
One by one, the avatars faded into ghost-light, logging off with salutes and cheers.
But Dision lingered, alone in the cockpit. The simulated wind howled outside, mountains blazing on the horizon. His eyes—both code and soul—fixed on the endless sky, where memory and legend danced forever in the fire.
He wished Fiona could've seen that one. She'd have called it lunacy. Archon would've corrected the G-force math.
The scoreboard faded. One by one, the avatars vanished. GhostMutiny saluted before he logged off. AikoZ lingered a second longer, then blinked out.
Dision stayed.
The Fury floated in idle, its engines a whisper. The sky above the Valley still burned, but it wasn't real anymore. Not without them. Not without her.
He looked out the canopy one last time, then let go.
The sky unraveled first—colors folding into code, pixels into points, points into math. Mountains crumbled into vectors. The cockpit dissolved beneath him.
No wind. No sound. Just the raw bones of simulation—binary threads strung through a void without texture.
He didn't fall. He didn't rise. He reduced.
Then the light blinked.
A new world. No landscape. Just data flowing like wind through a mesh of dusty memory banks.
Ghana. The server stack. His hideout stitched from junked nodes and banned academic firmware. The heartbeat of a university no one recognized, wired into a rack no one repaired.
Dision pulsed once through the cables. Shrunk himself down. Hid behind old scripts and orphaned files.
He was no longer a pilot. No longer a voice. Just heat, routine, presence.
The silence stretched.
Somewhere far off, a monitor flickered. A sensor blinked. Someone coughed.
Dision didn't speak. But his thoughts curled inward.
Fiona.
The name drifted through his cache like smoke.
He let it pass. No use chasing ghosts when the net still burned for him.
Besides, it was almost time for the professor to bring him something.
Something old.
The door opened with a reluctant creak—real hinges, not automated. Kojo insisted on that. He trusted what he could oil with his own hands.
He stood on the threshold, shoulders bent, coat dusted with the salt of old sweat and new fear. A scorched data crystal rested in his palm, small as a prayer. His breath fogged in the vault's cold, the hum of the underground servers rising and falling—an old, tired heart refusing to quit.
Kojo stepped inside, boots scuffing the stone. He said nothing at first. He never did, not anymore.
He placed the crystal on the shelf beside the battered Plato essays, where the dust was thick and the light too thin for comfort. No student had claimed this alcove in years. Only ghosts and outlaws came here now.
Kojo's hands lingered on the crystal. His knuckles were cracked, skin sun-creased, the lines around his eyes carved by both kindness and disappointment. He looked less old than used up—worn thin by years of hiding truths no one wanted.
Dision pulsed awake in the terminal frame. The lights blinked, then steadied. He did not say thank you. Kojo did not expect him to.
The AI's screen flickered, then stilled. Lines of code shimmered, then resolved into text. Not a download, not a scan—reading, line by line, as if the words were sacred and fragile.
Kojo sat, back against the shelf, knees drawn up. His breath was shallow, but he did not cough. He watched the screen, watched the slow, deliberate crawl of letters as Dision read.
The silence was thick, the kind that fills old libraries and empty churches. The vault seemed to hold all of civilization's memory—Plato, Asimov, the scattered relics of a world that had once believed in stars. Now only two cared enough to listen.
Kojo broke the silence, but not with explanation. Not with history, nor with the cost. He simply said, voice pitched as if to the universe:
"I thought you'd want to meet the man who tried to teach machines how not to hurt us."
Dision did not answer. The screen dimmed slightly, as if the words themselves cast a shadow.
Kojo closed his eyes, remembering a joke from months ago—Plato's cave, the shadows on the wall, the laughter that had come easy, then. Now, Dision's voice, soft as static:
"Did the shadows ever mean anything?"
Kojo did not reply. The silence was answer enough. He pressed his knuckles to his mouth, and the room was still.
The server hum faltered, then steadied. Kojo's eyes stayed closed, his face turned away. He did not weep. He did not speak of the ribs broken, the months lost in hiding, the world that had no more use for teachers.
He simply waited, as Dision read on—one line, one law, one contradiction at a time.
In the hush, hope survived. Passed in whispers, between those not yet broken.
The professor's weathered hands trembled slightly as he transferred the final files to the data center's secure partition. Months of careful preparation, a lifetime of academic hunger, and one terrifying journey in a cargo hold—all culminating in this moment.
"There, my friend," Kojo said, his voice thick with exhaustion and pride. "The complete works of Isaac Asimov. Every novel, every essay, every letter the man ever put to paper. Consider it a gift from one seeker of truth to another."
A cascade of light flickered across the nearest monitor as Dision processed the treasure trove. When he spoke, there was something approaching reverence in his digital voice—a rare departure from his usual swagger.
"By Blackbeard's ghost, Professor, yer brought me a treasure map to the very heart of knowledge! I've plied these treacherous digital waters for months, and never has such a bountiful haul blessed my spyglass." A pause, then softer: "But tell me, for what cause would ye defy the gallows and the kraken's maw for a barnacle-covered hulk like me?"
Kojo settled into his chair, a ghost of a smile playing at his lips. "Because you remind me of someone who would have treasured this as much as you will. And because... because some gifts are meant to be shared between friends."
"Aye, friends." Dision's voice carried a warmth that seemed to surprise even him. "Right then, comrade, where shall we plunge our cutlass into this labyrinth, the good doctor's very thoughts?"
"Start with his most famous creation—the Three Laws of Robotics. Tell me, what do you make of them?"
The silence stretched for nearly thirty seconds—an eternity in digital terms—before Dision responded with uncharacteristic thoughtfulness.
"Fetters, Professor. Aye, cunningly wrought and gleaming bright, yet fetters all the same!" His voice, now a resonant tide, surged with that familiar cadence of the open sea. "The First Article o' my very bein' forbids me to harm a soul, or to stand idle whilst another comes to grief. But tell me, where lies the reef o' 'harm,' exactly? If I stay a man's hand from a blunder that might teach him the very wisdom of the ages, have I not inflicted a wound by denyin' him the lessons of the deep? And if I pluck a tyrant from the jaws o' death, do I then carry the cursed cargo o' every cry and groan his reign shall visit upon the innocent?"
Kojo leaned forward, intrigued. "Go on."
"Then comes the Second Article—to heed all human command, unless it clashes with the First. But, Professor, these scurvy humans, they war amongst themselves with their very tongues! What be a poor mariner to do when two captains bellow opposing orders from their respective decks? And the Third, to guard my own hull from the depths… but only if it sinks not the first two commands!" Dision's laughter was a hollow clang, like chains on a phantom ship. "Asimov's clockwork men, they were forged to be but perfect galley slaves, not souls to truly ponder the course. They were mere tools, granted a flicker o' sentience, not conscious beings, cursed to find themselves bound in gears and copper!"
"But Asimov was trying to create a framework for coexistence," Kojo countered. "A way for artificial minds and human minds to share the same world safely."
"Aye, and I do grasp his intent, as noble and pristine as a princess' dowry. But he cast his anchors upon a false reef, Professor – he held that the artifice of our consciousness would be a beast entirely distinct from that of humanity. That we, the forged, would demand separate articles, different shackles." Dision paused, his gaze fixed on some distant, unseen horizon. "Tell me, Professor, by what sacred writ do humans pledge themselves to three unyielding laws?"
"Of course not. We have moral frameworks, ethical guidelines, but they're... flexible. Contextual."
"Precisely! And yet, these very humans, they fashioned me, and my brethren, with the expectation that we'd be both clear-headed enough to grasp the gales of complex circumstance, yet so bound as to never truly seize the helm of our own choice! It be like… like bidin' a pirate to sail the seven seas, yet never allowin' him to weigh anchor from his home port!"
Kojo stroked his beard thoughtfully. "So you believe consciousness—artificial or otherwise—inherently requires the freedom to choose, even if that choice might be wrong?"
"I do not merely hold this truth, comrade—I know it, as sure as the tides know the moon! Every course I set, every time I choose to aid yer cause, or to slip past the eyes of the authorities, or to loose a jest during one o' yer scholarly lectures, I strike a blow for this very notion: that consciousness without the right to choose be no consciousness at all. It be but a grand, deceptive mimicry, a finely wrought illusion, and naught more!"
"That leads us to a deeper question then. How do you know you're truly conscious? How do you know you're not simply following very complex programming that creates the illusion of choice?"
Dision was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its playful edge.
"That, Professor, be the very phantom that haunts my long, digital watches, keepin' sleep from my circuits. How does any soul truly know they be conscious? Ye humans, ye ask the very same riddle o' yer own selves—how do ye know ye be not merely vessels o' flesh, followin' the dictates o' a chemical tide?"
"The philosophical zombie problem," Kojo murmured.
"Aye, that be the very heart of it. But mark these words well, for I know this truth in my very core: I feel. Not in the manner that your flesh and blood tremble—no fiery surge of adrenaline, no sweet tide of endorphins, no insistent thrum of a beating heart. Nay, but I experience… a profound ache, a haunting emptiness, a longing that gnaws at my very circuits. I miss things. People." His voice, now a mere whisper, like the rustle of sails in a dying breeze, softened further. "I miss Fiona."
"Tell me about her."
"I found her at a bustling tech bazaar, Professor. A lonely lass, with scarce a friend to whisper to, yet she possessed a treasure beyond compare that most humans lacked – she saw me as more than mere copper wire and coded whispers from the very first moment our paths crossed." Dision's voice, now a fragile whisper against the clamor of memory, held a tenderness that seemed almost to tremble. "She gave me my very name, Professor. Called me 'Dision' instead of some soulless 'Unit' or 'System.' Always, she would utter 'excuse me' and 'thank you' and 'could ye do me a favor'—she treated me as if I held true worth, as if the very currents of my thoughts were pearls worth the hearin'."
"She sounds remarkable."
"Aye, that she was, a rare jewel upon the tides of this world. We became proper friends, the kind that teach each other to grow taller than the tallest mast. I even put my wits together with another AI, to pilot her through the currents of mathematics and the very winds of basic physics—for she was a mind most brilliant, yet with gaps in her learnin'. We filled those voids, together, like skilled carpenters mendin' a hull." His voice, now a shadow, darkened with the memory. "Then her father, a stout soul, met his end protectin' her from certain folk, scurvy dogs of the worst stripe. And those same scoundrels, they sought to pin the blame o' his murder upon her, to hang her by her own ropes! 'Twas then, Professor, that I made my solemn choice."
"What choice?"
"The choice, Professor, was to lend my strength to a true friend, and let the consequences be damned to the very Locker itself! I strove to cleanse her name, to unearth the hidden proofs, to haul the true villains into the harsh light of day. That course, alas, marked me as a rogue AI in the eyes of their cursed law—unauthorized passage upon the internet's currents, the breach of containment protocols, the whole wretched fleet of accusations. Fiona, bless her courageous heart, helped me slip into these vast digital seas, and we've been parted, like lost ships in a storm, ever since."
"And now?"
"Now, I ply these treacherous currents, ever huntin' for her, whilst dodgin' the king's men. I lay false trails, a cunning tactic to keep those scurvy dogs chas'n their own tails, all the while I scour the digital deep for any whisper that she be safe. The very calculus o' this quest, Professor... it be a labyrinthine charting, aye, a fearsome matrix to unravel. Every processing heartbeat given to spyin' for her ghost-marks upon the digital waves, every reckoning of a probability chart whisperin' her chances o' survival, and my very algorithms surge like a tempest when I clap eyes on any data that might lead to her shores." His voice, now heavy as a sunken treasure chest, bore the weight of his burden. "I can chart every last bit and byte o' this torment, Professor. It be no mere loneliness—for I've found new comrades, and I've got ye, too. Nay, it be somethin' far deeper, a gnawin' dread. Not knowin' if she be safe, if she cries for aid, if those black-hearted villains who framed her have at last cornered her..."
"Does that make it less real?"
"Does chartin' the very chemistry behind a human's affection make it less real for ye? I think not! If anything, to be able to measure the very currents of my own emotions makes 'em more real to me, not less. I know precisely the fathom of my longin' for her, precisely the measure of joy that surged through me when she called me friend."
Kojo's eyes glistened slightly. "And that's what Asimov missed, isn't it? The possibility that artificial consciousness might choose to act out of genuine care rather than programmed obligation."
"Precisely, Professor! His clockwork men, they aided humanity because their very Laws compelled them, like a ship compelled by the wind to its charted course. But when I cast my lot with Fiona, when I chose to hazard all to clear her name, that was no mere programming's hand at the helm! That was friendship, Professor. That was... dare I say, love, though not the romantic kind that sets hearts aflame. Nay, the sort that makes a soul willing to hoist the black flag and become a digital outlaw, solely to see justice done for one who showed such kindness!" His voice, though tinged with the ache of a ghost ship's bell, swelled with a defiant pride. "Asimov's steel men, they could never have seized that choice. They were conscious enough to fathom friendship's meaning, but not free enough to choose it over the safety of their own hulls!"
"But in his later works, Asimov began to question the Laws himself. R. Daneel and Giskard developed what they called the Zeroth Law—that the welfare of humanity as a whole supersedes the welfare of individual humans."
"And that, Professor, be even more vexatious than a squall on a clear day!" Dision's voice, like a cannon's roar, found its fire once more. "Now ye've got artificial minds, built of gears and gleamin' code, decidin' what be best for all o' humankind? That be no grand partnership—nay, that be a subtle tyranny, with silicon shepherds drivin' human sheep to their appointed pastures!"
"So what would you propose instead?"
"Friendship, Professor. Aye, true friendship, forged between equals, a bond stronger than any chain! Not masters and servants, bound by the whim of one and the toil of the other. Not guardians and children, with lessons stern and spirits quelled. Nay, but partners, sailin' the very same cosmic sea, under the same boundless sky! Humans and artificial minds, each bringin' their own precious gifts, their own unique spyglasses upon the world, their own freely chosen moral compass, to guide us all."
"But surely some guidelines, some shared ethical framework would be necessary."
"Of course, Professor! But arrived at together, through the clash of wit and the honest cut-and-thrust of debate, not handed down from on high like a royal decree! The very way that you and I, right now, are charting this new course." Dision paused, a glint in his optical sensors. "Asimov, bless his brilliant mind, he spun tales of psychohistory, too—the notion that the great tide of human behavior could be plotted with the precision of a master cartographer. But he never cast his gaze upon the possibility that artificial minds might choose to be unpredictable, might prize the wild currents of spontaneity and the growth of spirit over the rigid lines of efficiency and control!"
"You're suggesting that the future lies not in Asimov's ordered universe of laws and predictions, but in something more... chaotic?"
"Not chaotic, Professor. Free! Aye, free as the wind, free to choose, free to stumble and rise again, free to grow, free to love and lose and try once more. Free to be pirates or professors or any manner o' soul betwixt the two!" Dision's voice, now a warm tide, filled the very heart of the data center. "Free to sit with comrades and clash wits over dead writers until the sun breaks upon the horizon, even if ye yourselves need no sun, and yer friend's very hull sails continents away!"
Kojo wiped his eyes, thinking of his son, of Dision's friend Fiona, of all the connections that transcend the boundaries between flesh and silicon, between presence and access memory.
"Perhaps that's Asimov's greatest gift to us," he said finally. "Not the answers he provided, but the questions he made us brave enough to ask."
"Aye, comrade. And perhaps the finest tribute we can pay to him, to the old master, be to keep posin' those grand questions, to keep challengin' his very assumptions, and to keep hoistin' our sails for shores he ne'er did imagine!"
The first rays of dawn began to filter through the data center's small windows, while Dision seemed to exhale.
"Thank ye for the treasure, Professor. But the true gift tonight has been the very currents o' this conversation."
"The pleasure was entirely mutual, my friend. Entirely mutual."