“Think about how things changed because Tessa and I fell in love,” I continued. “First, if this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had nanites on board for the critical showdown with the Swarm. I wasn’t supposed to get them for a long while. But because Tessa fell in love with me, she threatened to walk if I didn’t get them immediately. Which surprised the hell out of the Swarm. Their AI never factored the irrationality of love into the equation, didn’t predict I’d be supplied with nanites against the strong recommendation of the Federation’s own AI.
“And the nanites’ role in our victory can’t be overemphasized,” I continued. “They saved my life even before this final encounter. Without their help amplifying and focusing my will, I’d have never been able to kick the Swarm out of my mind. I couldn’t have kept the Swarm from knowing I was receiving their thoughts and memories. And even if I could have, I wouldn’t have been able to store or decipher them—or find the password that allowed me to take control of all Sentinel assets.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Tessa. “I never really thought about the cause and effect in just that way.”
“It goes even deeper,” I said. “The raw power of my love for you was the only reason I could come close to expelling the Swarm, even with the nanites.”
“Incredible,” said Tessa. “And this despite the fact that the Swarm knew as well as the Federation that humanity’s burning passion, especially love, was our greatest strength. And that their inability to fathom this passion was their greatest vulnerability.”
“How do you know the Swarm reached these conclusions?” asked Brad.
“They made it very clear,” replied Tessa. “They, in the form of Kussmann, described how thoroughly they had researched love, and that they were really only interrogating me to help them understand it better.”
“And yet they still grossly underestimated its power,” I pointed out. “Otherwise, they’d have never tried to kill you in the end. That, alone, was the only act that could have possibly given me the mental strength to expel them.”
I paused. “And given my access to Swarm memory, I can finally take a guess as to how all of this came to be. Or, more precisely, how I came to be the center of it all.”
“How?” said Tessa.
“The Federation AI initially thought I might be useful for the reasons we’ve discussed. So Nari nudged me in my sleep. But it turns out the Swarm is able to detect Federation mental tampering, just as the Federation is able to detect theirs. Well, except when they go full-Monty, and even then the initial penetration is easily detectable if you’re looking.”
I paused for everyone to digest what I was saying.
“Go on,” said Nari with great interest.
“So the Swarm detected this tampering and realized I was important to the Federation. So it had Kenneth Kussmann gather intel on me. Keep tabs. Build a file.
“And this is just conjecture,” I continued, “but somehow the Federation AI spotted this activity, or in some way began to sense that I was of interest to the Swarm. Which made me even more important in its eyes.”
“Which made you even more important in the eyes of the Swarm’s AI,” said Tessa.
“Exactly. Which made me even more important in the Federation’s eyes. And so on. Thus began an ever-amplifying feedback loop. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Both AIs thought I was increasingly important to the other side, which made me increasingly important to their side.
“Both decided my importance to the other could be exploited, that I could be used to deliver a decisive hammer strike to their enemy. The difference was that the Swarm’s AI developed a clear sense of why I was important, what I could do for them. The Federation’s AI never did.”
“Right,” said Nari. “So if not for your relationship with Tessa, the Swarm would have easily won the day. Because our AI was floundering in the dark, and also didn’t guess the Swarm’s ability to control minds.”
“Exactly right. So if all of our actions had been strictly rational, all would have been lost. But you had enough genius to program your AI to give added weight to love, which resulted in the introduction of a confounding variable. One that bollixed the calculations of the hive-mind and its AI alike.”
“Is that what we’re going to tell our children when they ask how we fell in love?” said Tessa with a twinkle in her eye. “That I was introduced to you to be a confounding variable in the equations of warring AIs?”
I laughed. “Of course,” I said. “Isn’t that the way all great marriages are born? I just hope the kids don’t think our story is too ordinary.”
“Even if they do,” said Tessa in amusement, “we still have time to make it interesting. After all, our story is just beginning.”
“Speaking of making things more interesting,” I said. “One last topic. We’re all exhausted, so I’ll bring it up now, and we can hash it out at length later on.”
“Go ahead,” said Nari.
“I’ve seen into a mind that is utterly icy, relentless, and malevolent. I know better than anyone what we’re up against. I’ve also seen what the Sentinel organization managed to do with advanced technology, and knowledge of a bigger galactic picture, even if this picture was a lie.”
I blew out a long breath. “So I think it’s time,” I continued. “Time for the human race to be brought up to speed on what’s really going on. Time to pull the Band-Aid off already and treat ourselves as adults. Yes, these disclosures will be insanely disruptive. The consequences will be unpredictable, and many of them will be negative. But we have to do this. We can’t waste more time. We have to light a fire under humanity and galvanize our species into maturity and action.”
“I can see both sides of the argument,” said Brad Schoenfeld.
“Me too,” seconded Tessa.
All eyes turned to Nari, who remained silent for a long while. Finally he spoke. “Recent events have shown me that we have blind spots larger than we would have believed,” he said. “Meaning it really is time for us to reevaluate everything. I still believe disclosure at this point is premature, but I won’t close my mind to the idea.”
“Good,” I said. “Then I’ll just have to convince you. I guess it’s going to be another very long day tomorrow.”
“I have the feeling they’re all going to be long days from now on,” said Tessa. She locked her gaze on me and raised her eyebrows. “But at least we’ll have the nights,” she added with a smile.
EPILOGUE
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