Chapter No.182. Life
Reality is often murky!
The next day we decided to start by checking our Maui settlement. The original group of humans, or at least human like people, were installed on what was once Kohala on the northern part of Maui.
We decided to go down in a shuttle instead of just popping into existence. No use frightening them or making them think we were gods. After we landed in a clearing near the beach, Alexa and I, along with Alice and Ben, got out of the shuttle and started walking to the main settlement, which we noticed had grown to a sizable town-like enclave.
We attracted a fairly large group of people, both men and women, some of which were holding infants. We noticed that there were lot of children running around. Apparently, our original settlers had become fruitful and multiplied.
A male approached us, and by the fact that he had a feathered headpiece, we assumed that he was the leader.
I held up my hand, palm out. "Greetings. We here to check on how you're doing."
"We are thriving," he replied. "You are the gods that brought our ancestors here. Do you require offerings?"
I had to think awhile before I understood what he meant. "No, we require nothing. As we told your ancestors, we have no intentions of governing or ruling you. Our purpose here is to make sure you are not attacked or suffer from a major calamity."
"You have grown in population," Alexa said. "Are your children prospering?"
"Yes. There is plenty of food and water."
"I assume that you linked up with the people we introduced to the big Island."
"We have done trade with them, but they have not taken control of us."
I exchanged glances with Alexa before I turned back to him. "Well, I hope that you remain peaceful. We will leave you now but remain in orbit to ensure that nothing happens to you."
I assumed that they thought we were some sort of gods that lived in the sky. They seemed to be peaceful, and that's all that we could expect. We decided to take our leave. Unless there was evidence of conflict, we saw no reason to go back down to them. The last thing I wanted was for them to begin worshiping us.
We went to the colony of humans that we installed in what was once the San Joaquin valley of California. Compared to the Hawaiian settlement, this colony had grown quite large. It covered a lot more territory. However, we saw something that we had not quite expected. It appeared that the humans we installed there had developed some technology, or had discovered old human tech. We saw that they had discovered automobiles, probably left over after the collision, and had figured out a way to revive them.
The evidence for this was the presence of what appeared to be a road along the coast of California. It's possible that the road survived the collision event.
Because of this, we decided to avoid going down there. If they were smart enough to have revived automobiles and the gasoline necessary to run them, they might have found weapons. We had no attention of entering into a conflict with them. Better to leave sleeping dogs lie.
Later that evening, I began to get a feeling that we had not found the complete truth about our origins. I didn't like the idea that we had never existed and were just characters in a cosmic play, as Alex put it.
I teleported to the Supercomputer orbiting Saturn and was surprised to find Alexa there using the command station. She looked back at me but continued working.
"Yeah, I had reservations about this idea that we were just created by some entertainment software."
I sat down next to her. "What have you found so far?"
"I've discovered discrepancies in what I remember and what's on my list. For one thing, it has the location of my supposed birth wrong and it also doesn't have correct how I ended up in Space Command."
I rubbed my jaw. "That would suggest that it wasn't how we were created."
She got up. "Here, you check out some of your data."
I sat down where she had been and started a search through my data. After some time, I found some discrepancies of my own. "This has the location of my marriage to Marie all wrong. It also doesn't include Alicia's birth." I looked at her. "This is weird, but I don't know if it's proof that we weren't created."
"What if this is Tyco's trick to make us think that he really didn't exist," she said.
"Yes, that would make sense, but what advantage would that provide him?"
"Well, for one thing, his daughter, Judy, and his wife, Gretchen, should know that."
I sighed. "His wife would not really be a problem, but Judy would. She is the Nexus."
"The only way we could determine what's going on is by going into the processor core."
"That would be a risky idea," Alexa said. "We would be vulnerable."
"Yeah, but I feel it's worth the risk to determine what the hell actually happened. I don't wish to live as a slave of Tyco."
"I agree," she said. "I would rather be dead than under that bastard."
"We'll have to do this without anyone else knowing about it."
She nodded her approval.
We teleported back to the hidden chamber to plan how we could do our trick without any interference.
"I think we can use our teleportation powers to penetrate the processor core without having to go to engineering," Alexa said.
"I agree. I just hope that we can do it quick enough before they realize what we're doing."
We converted to quantum size and entered the fiber lines that led to the processor core. We each managed to jump on a photon to complete the crazy ride to the core. After avoiding attempts to stop us, we arrived at the core and began to go through the programming code that ran the collective.
Alexa pointed to a block of code that was protected by an energy barrier. I thought of a quantum trick of being in two places at the same time. After a few tries, we got past the barrier and began going through the code. We soon found the problem. It was a trick that would have been launched had we not realized that it was a ruse. The problem we had was how to eliminate it without causing the core to shut down.
Alexa pointed to a loop code that kept the trap from being eliminated in the usual manner. Once we shut it down, we were able to eliminate the trick code.
We returned to normal size.
"I hope this is the last of it," I said.
"This means that we were real humans," Alexa said. "This bullshit about being created characters was simply a ruse to dominate us."
"We don't know that for certain, but it sure does look that way."
"Are you going to tell the others?"
"No. I want to see how this plays out. The only one we should tell is Molly. She might be able to go through the positronic brains of the so called human based androids to see if there is any residual code in them."
"I agree," she said. "Like you, I'm not confident that we eliminated the trick."
I summoned Molly mentally and she appeared.
"What's up?" she immediately asked.
"We went back to the supercomputer orbiting Saturn and found discrepancies in our personal lists," I said. "Alexa and I went into the processor core and found coding that consisted of a Tyco trick. We eliminated it."
"Are you saying that we were real humans, not created characters?"
"That's what we think, but we're not absolutely sure," I said. "I don't want anyone else to know about this. I want you to go through the positronic brains to see if there is any residual code related to this."
"Yeah, I'll do that, but I'll have to do it on the sly."
"That's a good idea. In the meantime, Alexa and I will continue going through the data in the supercomputer orbiting Saturn."
We were all in agreement, but whether we would be successful was in question.