The Unicorn in the Tower

by Cynewulf

The Interminable

Their great fortress then did they found,

And cast till they gat sure ground.

All fell to work, both man and child,

Some howkit clay, some burnt the tyld.

Ane Dialog, David Lindsay

In her dreams the world kept ending.

There was no explosion. There was smoke. Or there was distant rumbling. Or just a dark sky. Waves of locusts outside her window, the glow of fire, the crackling of circuits sparking, the coughing of pandemics. Sometimes there were none of these things, and she was lying on her couch inside and the world was ending and she just knew that. The eschaton emmantized, the ticking of all the clocks stopped, gravity let go and all things spiraled up into nothing like flitting embers from a fire.

And then, she woke up, and the world was not over and her alarm was ringing, and the bed was vibrating as she’d set it to until she had pulled her sleep-addled self into a seated position.

The upheaval of a month ago was well and happily forgotten. She told no one about he dreaming, and she did not expect that to change. Why would it? Informing others of her continued dreaming could only cause trouble, and so after a shameful few days of distress Twilight Sparkle had righted the ship. A mantra pulled from an old book had risen up from her past, ready to guide her: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.

So she passed it over in silence. She dressed herself, sensible gray, and ate a sparse breakfast over the morning’s reports. She was, technically speaking, the Chief Director of the project, but much of the actual workings of the machinery of progress was not directly at her beck and call. Supplying the physical needs of Three Sapphires and its workforce were the purview of others, who she could overrule but whom she was loathe to—and they knew it. She signed off on reports on her pad, her mouth a grim line. To interfere was unnecessary. To micromanage was a misuse of energy. But there was a suppressed part of her that wanted to meddle, to ask a thousand questions, to run the math.

It was a useful part of her, if troublesome. Celestia, in their long hours of tutoring, had smiled and said, it’s the part of you that wants to take the whole universe apart like a clock and understand it. It’s a way of loving. It had been such an odd thing to say. It was an odd thing to remember as she finished breakfast and walked out to face another day.

Her shift today was twelve hours. Building had slowed, not for lack of effort but to accommodate testing. While the basic core had been in constant, ceaseless operation, much of the tower had never once been powered. It was time to test them, and so instead of endless coding, compiling, revising, overseeing, she now simply waited and watched. Far, far above her mobile office pod, near the bottom of the shaft, a constellation of violet light winked into existence. She smiled. She did not need to read any of the screens or listen to one of her technicians report verbally what he was seeing from the readouts. She knew it had gone well.

The whole shift had stopped in its tracks to watch readouts and nervously chat while they waited for the reports now streaming in. One woman clapped delightedly, a man offered his colleague a handshake and a quick tension-relieving joke. The small crowd milled about and congratulated each other. Twilight could feel their nervous-yet-excited energy, but it did not touch her. These interactions were just noise, background radiation. She could understand in a clinical way, from a distance, but she could not understand thinking that the Tower would be anything less than operational.

Why would a god be held back by human mistakes, after all? It would come into being despite them, eventually.

Twilight had already begun the trek around the bubble of humanity when she found herself waylaid by a smiling young technician.

“Congratulations, ma’am,” he said, face split in a smile.

Reflexively, she returned it. “Thank you. I had complete confidence in our success, of course, but it is nice to see it in action. But there’s more to be done.”

Her smile, plastic and frozen, remained. The technician let her pass, and if there was anything amiss she did not notice and did not care to notice. Wooden as she had been, every word had been true. She had complete confidence, and there was more to be done.

She wasn’t sure when things died down outside of her small office in the back room. The celebration and the relief were just fleeting, temporary things. The tower was what mattered.

Moondancer cleared her throat.

“The rail stations and emergency power networks are all secure. We’ve found some significant security weaknesses in the overall system, Director. Most of it is simple encryption protocols, adding another layer of security, basic things. The actual connections themselves are fine.”

Twilight blinked. “Security?”

On the screen, Moondancer bit her lip. Had she always been this… emotive? Twilight wasn’t sure. “Well, yeah. Security.”

“I think the director is asking for some examples,” suggested Likely Story. Twilight did not appreciate his help or his presence. He was a suit from the Union’s commerce board and she found him repugnant, when she thought of him at all, which she strove not to. “I would also be interested in—”

“No,” Twilight said, cutting him off. “I’m more unsure who exactly we are securing against.”

Moondancer grimaced. “I mean, no one and everyone? You can’t just connect everything together and not secure it. If everything is on the same network, and its all accessible…”

“The Tower will be sentient enough to counter anything faster than we could,” Twilight pointed out. “Faster, smarter, and more capable. It will be a native to the environment. This could be more simply solved by just shoring up its own defenses and making sure it has unimpeded administrative access.”

Likely Story snorted. “That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? Handing over the Union’s entire infrastructure to one being… it’s one thing to unify our disparate network hubs, and another entirely to just blindly accept a machine’s cognitive abilities warranting words like sentience, isn’t it?”

Isn’t it, isn’t it, Twilight hated the words isn’t it. They were what cowards used to question things they didn’t understand and couldn’t understand. What she wanted to say was that Likely Story was an idiot with delusions of status, perhaps even personhood, but telling the man he was a slug was unwise.

“Extreme is not a helpful or useful word in this situation, Undersecretary. You should know, with the scope of your ministry’s efforts and responsibilities that the word ‘extreme’ applies to so much at the national scale that it becomes a modifier without weight. Building a national-level transit system was extreme. Unifying most of a continents financial institutions was extreme. Our Union’s existence itself is due only to mundane acts of extreme scope and effort. I am unsure what you mean to communicate.”

Every word like a force-bullet from her mind. Words should be able to kill, and it was unfair that they could not.

He coughed. “Sure, yes. Economies of scale are a thing, I’ll grant that. But we’re still talking over something radical like… yes, I know, radical is not a useful word. The issue of unimpeded admin access is a separate one from the system’s security.”

Twilight glanced away from him to the time. He wasted so much of it. She wanted to return to her work.

“I don’t think we would need to stall out anything,” Moondancer offered. Her voice sounded odd. “Really, Director, we can do this without a fuss. I just need authorization for overtime and maybe hiring a couple of contractors and it’ll be done in a week. It’s not a huge deal.”

“Acceptable,” Twilight said. “Send me a work order and I’ll sign it. Anything else related to it, and I’ll sign as well, just make sure you mark it as important so it’s not lost in the pile.” She turned back to Likely Story. “My itinerary for this meeting ends with an item for security issues and then an opening for questions. Do you have any that can be answered in a timely manner?”

He gaped at her, like some sort of mindless fish. Her stony face did not budge.

“I, uh, well there are a few…”

“If they are more complex questions, they can also be submitted to me via mail. I will be reviewing comments and questions from the ministries ahead of the council meeting at the end of the month, which would be a better venue for anything we cannot answer shortly.”

He nodded.

Twilight waited for three seconds, counted them, and then nodded herself. “Right. Department heads, please make sure your monthly reports are in by the end of the week. That will be all for the day. Thank you.”

She cut the feed.

Another dream, and another world’s ending.

This time, she was lying in the back of an ancient flatbed truck somewhere in the green fields north of Mt. Canterhorn. She could see the mountain in the distance, its crown covered in some sort of smog.

She was uncomfortable, but it felt unimportant. Humid summer air lay on her like a damp blanket, clinging to her hair and crawling on her skin. Her clothes felt ill-fitting. The seams of her pants felt jagged and harsh. They had rubbed her raw. She had run and run and run, from something or maybe to something. The world was ending. She was alright. She was tired.

The sky was gray but alive, a whirring. The wind howled, the sky chittered, the sun was barely visible. It was like seeing the sun glaring through the window through a sheer curtain. She wanted to turn away from it, lay on her side like she would in bed, get the sun out of her eyes. But she did not. She probably couldn’t. Her body was emptied out.

Exhausted or not, what was the point? You can’t outrun the sky.

She always wondered, before she woke up, where everyone was. It was a little odd, wasn’t it? Whose truck was this? She’d never know. It was the only part of dreaming that truly frustrated her. She just wanted to know. Was that so much to ask?

“Yes, probably. Who said you were so entitled, hm?”

The woman was there. Twilight tried to rise and her arms betrayed her, slipping on the sweat-swamped truckbed.

“Who are you?” Twilight asked. She tried to rise again, to find that woman, the one from the beach and the waiting room. “Hold on! Hold on.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Twilight righted herself at last, and her whole body shook. “I know I’m dreaming. Or whatever this is, because I shouldn’t be able to dream at all.”

“And why would that be?”

Twilight swiveled her gaze. Nothing. The woman was not there. It was just her voice. Of course it was! Of course. She cursed.

“Because I’m a mage,” she said sourly.

The voice tsked, which was weirdly infuriating. “Such a straightforward but horrid trade, isn’t it? Give up your restful dreaming for power? I’d say its both too light and too heavy a yoke, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s not a trade. It is a byproduct.”

“A thing may exist de jure or de facto or both. If a thing is functionally an exchange, it is often helpful to think of it as an exchange.”

Twilight sighed. “It doesn’t matter. You are distracting me. I’m going to assume you aren’t going to be visible for this conversation. Is that accurate?”

“No, but also yes, for the given value of your subjectivity. So yes.”

“I hate that answer, but I’ll take it.”

The voice laughed and it was not like crystal or like bells or anything. It was just a laugh, warm and human and as mundane as possible. “You are a prickly one, Twilight Sparkle. I wonder if you are always so, or if you are under some undue stress.”

Twilight resisted the childish urge to growl. “I’m a busy woman.”

She was. And this was a waste of her time and energy. Her early fear that it was some trick or invasion had not left, but it was just a quiet simmering in the back of her mind. If her tormenter had meant to damage her in any serious way, they would have done so long before now. Giving her these false “dreams” was frustrating, yes, but it was hardly harmful. Technically.

“So you are! You’re, what was it, building God? Was that it?”

Twilight scooted to the edge of the flatbed. Long grass waited for her, and for a moment she thought about dropping off into it. The air was hot and humid, the world was ending, her body was spent—sure, but wasn’t this all window dressing?

“I am not building a deity. We are building a tower to house a super-powerful AI,” she said slowly. “Which is public knowledge by now, I’ll add.”

“Just a tower. Just an AI. Dead machines and a flat delivery. Where is your soul, Twilight? You’ve thought of more than this. I know you have.”

Twilight grimaced.

“It is important, yes. I know that there is more to it than the mere parts. We are knitting together a continent. I’ve said that myself, several times. I said it front of at least thirty cameras behind a podium to a crowd of a hundred. Maybe when I wake up I can send you the clips. If you leave me an address.”

“Oh, I’ve seen your address. Your voice was steady, and whoever wrote your speech did an excellent job. It was a little dry, but very solid.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “I wrote it.”

“Oh. I’m surprised.”

“Why?” She asked, finally deciding that taking a walk was a bit beyond her. She laid back. “Because I’m only able to do one thing? People assume that. I mean, not like me specifically, but those behind the keyboard. They can offer themselves the space to be full, realized individuals but to those with professions they don’t respect or understand? They’re cartoons. They’re graven images. Just lines and shading and all one thing. A profession of hats.”

They were quiet for a bit. Twilight did not know what to say. She wasn’t even sure that she wanted to say anything. The dream would not move on while she watched it, if it even could have moved on before she had said anything. She just wanted to be out. She just wanted to get back to the tower.

Twilight wiped her glasses off with the edge of her shirt. They weren’t strictly necessary, these glasses. But she liked them. They were comfortable. She wasn’t sure why they were comfortable, and yet they were. Her ocular implants could just adjust. But when she needed peace, when she was exhausted, she could just take the glasses off and with it cast off sight. It was so much more peaceful to let the world wash together in vague and vibrant shades.

She was feeling that urge now. In front of her, various team leaders muttered amongst themselves, shifted in their chairs, stacked papers. Hours. Twilight’s mind was like a blocked well. Hours and hours of meetings. Her life was meetings.

God, everything was meetings. That was the real secret, wasn’t it? A thousand years of philosophers huddled in their cliques trying to sort out right and wrong and the great unknowable mysteries of the universe that trapped them all… and here it was, the great mystery unveiled. It was all just a long series of tedious meetings about nothing until you died.

“Alright,” she began, “what is next? My itinerary says, ah…” She looked down with bleary eyes. “We finished with questions for the maintenance department, and I guess it’s me? Yes. I originally scheduled this to talk about the next phase, but that was a week ago, and we’ve actually already talked this to death. Would anyone mind skipping over?”

A chorus of answers.

Twilight blinked, and sighed. “Well, one thing? I did want to put out there that we’re looking for suggestions on the interface.”

Mint Breeze tilted her head, and Twilight caught the movement in the corner of her eye.

“Interface. I hadn’t thought of that at all, you know?” she said. “What context would we be engaging with the Tower in? It runs itself.”

“True,” Twilight said. “But we need a way to ask it questions, check its status, and it will need our consent and knowledge to do some things, even in my plan for its access and control.”

Moondancer, who’d arrived that morning, hummed. “It would need to be something simple enough that anyone could talk to it. It can’t be too difficult, right, because if it was, then all it takes to make the whole thing pointless would be for the resident tech to be on vacation.”

“Voice, then,” Twilight said. “I mean, that would be simple.”

Why had she said that? Her first thought hadn’t been voice at all. Her first inclination had been something visual and image-based.

Moondancer nodded. “That makes sense. Don’t need proximity, you just need a voice. I guess we could do a simple tactile interface as a backup. Normal Terminal.”

“I’ll have the team work on something we can use as a simple query input. It gives you a basic text readout, you can ask questions, blah blah.”

“Yeah, that’ll work. What do we do about the voice?”

“Somebody willing to record a lot for us to build a phonetic database.”

“Maybe Twilight?”

Twilight blinked out of a mindless reverie. She had been staring off into nothing. “Wait, wait what?”

It had been Moondancer, who now shrinked back, surprised herself. “Oh, sorry. I was just saying that we could use your voice.”

Twilight found the very idea… nauseating, which was surprising.

“Why?”

“I mean, this project has really been your baby before it was ours. You were the one working on this when it was just you, like…” She shrugged helplessly. “It felt right. Nothing more than that.”

Twilight just took that in. “I’ll, uh. I’ll think of something,” she said, feeling oddly loose. Limp. She wanted the meeting to come back rushing in so that her eyes could glaze over and her mind fog up. That made sense.

But a voice was a good idea. It was simple, it was “ergonomic” for the uninitiated leadership who would need to talk to the Tower’s AI. The suggestion made sense. Just… not the part where she voiced it. That felt wrong, arrogant at best and she wasn’t sure what at worse. But a voice… that she could think about.

Comments

[AvidSeason]

Oh god, there's time travel involved for this Twilight, ain't there? Shit. Hope she has a bootstrap ready to pull her out.

[Fire_Starter]

Bloody good mate

[FanOfMostEverything]

And all the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made...

Though it seems she’ll be anything but silent. Fascinating to watch the inchoate cyberdeity make herself known to her creator. And the experience is having quite the effect on Twilight. We’ll see what happens from here.

[SigmasonicX]

Ah, so mages not dreaming is why Twilight was so concerned about the dreams she was having.

Another great chapter. You really captured the feel of endless meetings with people who shouldn't be involved in the first place. That said, it does seem like Twilight is interacting with Moondancer and others more now, even if it's through meetings.

[Ice Star]

Likely Story as a character has just as much bite as I'd expect their name to. Nice.

I've got my fingers crossed hoping for more.

[the dobermans]

Very much enjoying this one.

[PonyofEntropy]

Interesting story. Added to my read list.

[orp]

She told no one about he dreaming

"the/her dreaming"