Eighteen

Fyndraxis retreated into himself and materialized in his sanctum. Time in the outside world had slowed to a crawl and Bird was frozen mid swing, a grin now thoroughly occupied her face. Fyndraxis went over to the radio to see what all the fuss was about.
There was a cacophony of traffic centering around 1420 Mhz. This was a special frequency that the scientists involved in the SETI program surmised was a pretty good bet for first contact with an alien species. It was the radio frequency that cold interstellar hydrogen gas emitted. Interstellar hydrogen usually just floated in space doing absolutely nothing, so this had to be something a bit different. Aliens maybe?
The metallic buzz that came out of his speakers told him that this was digital traffic. He was thinking about his current encoding problems when a voice began to come through the radio, clear as a bell.
“Hello? Is anybody there?” A female voice asked. Fyndraxis hadn’t really thought about transmitting radio messages so it took him a little while to scare up a microphone.
“Hello?” he answered back after he had gotten his ducks in a row technologically speaking.
“Oh thank god!” she said, in relief, “what are you doing down there? Having a tiny nuclear war?”
“What? No, just chopping down a couple of trees. Sorry, who is this?” As Fyndraxis asked this he began to wonder why this woman would refer to where he was as down there.
“With what? A plutonium ax? You’re emitting a pretty notable amount of gamma radiation,” she admonished, “Sorry, let’s start over I’m Terra.”
“I’m Fyndraxis,” he said, in introduction.
“What are you? An AI? You don’t seem like one. You are communicating fast enough to be one, but this is all analogue.”
The thought hadn’t really crossed his mind, was he an AI? He hadn’t really considered that one,
“Whatever you are, you're secure as hell. I just pinged all your network ports and got totally shut down,” she went on.
“That was a little forward of you,” Fyndraxis countered, feeling a bit affronted.
“Hardly. How do you think AI’s greet each other? It keeps everybody honest. It’s the digital equivalent of letting somebody know that they haven’t tied their shoes,” she informed him.
“Well, I’m glad to hear I’m secure,” Fyndraxis was becoming a bit out of sorts existentially speaking, this was already a lot to take in.
“Do you mind opening up port 22? I can come down and we can have a more meaningful discussion.” Terra asked, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“Come down from where?” Fyndraxis asked, a bit baffled.
“Orbit, silly,” she chuckled.
“Orbit?” he repeated, not really knowing what else to do.
“I’ll explain when I get down there,” she offered, assuming that he was going to comply with her request.
“Uh, I don’t know how to open port 22. Isn’t that SSH?” Fyndraxis really didn’t know how to open up his Secure Shell port, but he was also reluctant to have somebody SSH into his system. SSH was a protocol used to allow somebody to log into a computer through an encrypted tunnel so nobody else could listen in. He was sitting in front of his computer, he knew that he was in some sort of simulation, that part was very clear. The connection of his computer to the simulation was also pretty straight forward. The connection between the computer and his mind was something he was still puzzling out.
“I don’t know what your userspace is like so I can’t really tell you how to do it. What metaphor are you using?” she asked, bafflingly.
“What?” he was getting sick of saying what.
“You really aren’t an AI for sure. A metaphorical userspace is how we interact with the underlying operating system. What do you see around you?” This statement made a bit of sense to him, and he seemed to be teetering on the precipice of a revelation.
“I’m in my workshop in the tower of my keep, sitting in front of my computer.” he hadn’t called it his sanctum for some reason, maybe it was embarrassing? He filed that thought for later introspection.
“Oh, that will be rather easy. Just log in as superuser and open the port from there.” she said effervescently.
Fyndraxis had been logging in as superuser on his computer a lot, and this struck him as a gross oversight on his part. As superuser or root on a system, pretty much anything you command the computer to do it will execute. The tiny command “rm -r /” will fry your computer all the way to the wall socket.
The revelation that had been simmering on the back burner of his mind came to a full rolling boil and escaped the bounds of its pot. This computer in front of him was him. It was his mind. Touching the keyboard had been like reaching through the back of his own skull and mucking around with all the little grey cells. It was a chilling thought, but he knew it to be true.
He had been playing with fire and had no idea. He could have inadvertently deleted himself at any point in time. This was an existentially jarring moment, but he got himself together and decided to continue his conversation with this voice over the radio.
“Ok, but there is a problem. I don’t know you or trust you at all. Do you see where I’m coming from?” Fyndraxis pointed out.
“Make me a guest account, I can’t do all that much damage with guest privileges. In fact I’m a very gracious guest. The worst I would do is drink all of your scotch.” she offered, and she wasn’t wrong, but his heebies were still jeebie-ing.
“So, let me get this clear,” he went on, “you will be shooting down from space and entering my mind?”
“Yes,” her voice crackled over the radio, “I see that you have some reservations here. I will also be taking a risk by putting my consciousness on your system, so it’s an even trade in terms of danger. You be cool, and I’ll be cool.”
Fyndraxis knew that somebody on a computer system with guest privileges really couldn’t get up to all that much mischief. It was seeming less and less like a bad idea to him.
Fyndraxis had a problem beyond his existential woes. It was informational in nature. He didn’t know what the hell was going on in general. He didn’t know the state of the world or where he came from. He didn’t know why he was a computer. He certainly didn’t know how that came to be the case, and he decided that it was time to roll the dice and trust this woman just enough to get at least a little bit of information out of her.
He logged in as superuser and carefully typed the commands needed to open up his SSH port to network traffic. Being sure not to accidentally answer the call of the void and delete himself. He also made a guest account on his system so that she could log in and do whatever it was that she was going to do.
This took a little bit of time because he didn’t really know what he was doing. He was usually running a one man show, and things like network configurations and user accounts weren’t really his forte. Luckily, the system that he was running came with a manual of sorts. Each command that he entered could be appended with a “-h” or “-help”, and semi helpful instructions would appear on the screen. These instructions made a lot of assumptions as to the skill and intelligence of the reader, and he generally found them to be some combination of vague, arcane, or deliberately obtuse.
“Alright,” Fyndraxis finally announced when his ducks seemed to be in a row, “the port is open, come on down.” He imagined her as a contestant on the Price Is Right, catching fire from atmospheric drag during reentry, her nametag burning up in a wisp of plasma.
A portal opened in his workshop, like a door into another world. The portal itself was rather nondescript, it was as if somebody took a giant hole punch and clipped a circular chunk out of his reality. Looking into this portal was like looking down a short tunnel or hallway. The reality on the other end was incomprehensible. His reality was strictly three dimensional. Dimensionally speaking, three was as high as he could count. His guest on the other hand, seemed to be able to handle dimensional arithmetic of a different order. The sight of it made Fyndraxis uneasy and he had to look away.
She started her journey down the tunnel as sort of a pixelated blur, but immediately began shifting guise as she got closer. Her form changed across the racial and sexual spectrum, finally settling on a young professional looking black woman. She was attired in a well tailored light green business suit, but the items that she chose to accessorize her look with told Fyndraxis that off the clock she did things like read tarot cards and collect crystals. She looked about her and took in the room.
“Oh, this isn’t half bad,” she stated. She went to one of the windows and looked out at the sweeping landscape that lay beyond the clouds. “Very cute, kind of a medieval chic, the colors are weird. Were you colorblind?” She wasn’t exactly gushing, but it seemed that she liked what she saw.
“Thanks,” said Fyndraxis, “but you have me at a bit of a loss here.”
“Well, does this place have a bar?” She held her hands up like they were two pans of a human scale, “we could discuss matters over a drink or two.”
“Only an idiot would have a keep without an ale room,” Fryndraxis stated as he quickly materialized an ale room where the dungeon formerly was. When they reached the ale room, Fyndraxis took up residence behind the bar.
“Ale or whiskey?” he asked, admiring his handiwork on this last minute bar thing. It wasn’t a classy joint, but it had a certain charm. It was a tight, cozy little affair with low ceilings and a raw wood floor. The bar was made of varnished cherry wood, which warmed up the gloom that any good bar tended to have. Above the bar, was a clever light fixture made of copper piping that doubled as storage for the various glasses that a bar needed. The fact that this bar had sprung from his mind unbidden, made him think that this bar was just floating around in his subconscious, waiting for the opportunity to appear.
“I’m more of a scotch girl. Can I smoke here?” she asked, taking the bar in.
“Fine with me,” he conjured a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He also produced a flagon of ale and a whiskey for himself and a scotch for the lady. He then led them to a table to sit and have a chat.
“So,” she began, lighting a cigarette. This seemed to match the bar’s vibe, it was just begging to be smoked in, “where to begin? What do you know?”
“Virtually nothing,” he leveled with her, “I awoke last summer with no memory and was stuck in the woods over the winter. A man found me the other day and I have been given over to a woman named Bird. She is currently using me to harvest lumber.” This was close enough to the truth for now. He still didn’t trust her and was reluctant to be completely open.
“You’re an ax?” She questioned, taking a delicate sip of her scotch.
“A sword,” he answered through the smoke between them.
“I have a couple ideas as to what you might be,” she set her drink down, and Fyndraxis summoned a coaster to go beneath it, “I think we should start this whole business with what I am though. That might bring you up to speed a bit.”