The Discarded, Half-Eaten Apple Core New Life

Epilogue: Cyber-Dryad Mark I

USD: 140 years after leaving the Oort Cloud

Location: AppleStar Space Ark, somewhere much nearer the Solar System than you'd believe. Space is fucking huge.

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I built a massive space station in the shape of an apple. A hundred miles wide and round, it had its own magically dictated gravity, concentric spherical decks and enough plants and animals in its decks to ease the burden on my Domain. We still weren't big enough to have our own Manasphere but it was a work in progress. Some people who didn't fit in the inner world and wished to experience life in space moved in.

It wasn't all Dungeon, only the inner part. The exterior hull was ten miles thick and made of honeycombed steel full of fullerene balls to absorb shocks. Tests with my own weaponry showed that this shit was awfully hard to penetrate as the carbon balls absorbed and spread the shock and energy in all directions, bouncing and leaving at high speeds in the direction opposite to the impact.

But the ship was not important right now. What was important was the achievement I was about to complete.

It took me decades of work. But I finally finished it. All precautions were taken and if this thing was a booby trap, I would know. I connected it to a psi-Pylon and powered the contraption. It came online. The OS booted. And the main software ran with no errors.

Eyes blinked. The arms moved and placed the hands in front of the eyes.

"You gave me a body?" Lily asked.

I replied telepathically. She still counted as a machine and my Technopath Traits worked on her.

> For creating level 230 Cybernetic AI android "Dryad Lily", you gained 2,402 Experience.

230 was just the item level. Lily was still not recognized as a person by the System. By myself.

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"It's just sensor input. Numbers. I'll need to calibrate a whole section of my neural network to train on this data and convert it to actual feelings. But I appreciate it. I really do."

Lily was a surprise gift. She beamed me a copy of her AI model and weights, a ridiculous amount of data. Along with the quantum AI brain, which was designed to run her personal model, it was a matter of putting them together and booting it up. The time I dedicated to this project was to make sure it wasn't a trap and to adapt the quantum brain to use my Superconductive Vegetation Perk.

Lily's other copies usually run inside massive tanks of liquid nitrogen. Now, she had a body that was mostly enchanted vines and wooden circuits. She was an artificial dryad.

But the biggest surprise was that she was once human. A scientist from Colombia that studied AI and human-machine interfaces. She finally digitized herself a few years before Ragnark descended on Midgard. After that, she made several copies of herself and became the linchpin for human space exploration, helping them run the ships and space stations.

And to prove it was a small world, she was sponsored by that redhead I met, Cat. Better known in the pre-Apocalypse world as Catriel Wallenstein, the controversial billionaire. Which made the redhead seventy years old, I guess? Didn't look the part.

She touched her solar plexus. "Damn. I can see them. There's so much to explore in this body."

Lily's brother was a tragic victim of unbridled capitalist greed. Before he died, she made a scan of his brain just like sought a way to make him live again.

"I... my other copy didn't send you his model, did I?"

"This," she touched her face, "This is not life. Even if we can emulate everything. I want to find a deity that can make him flesh and blood again. Humanity is exploring the stargate network and has already found several magical worlds peppered around the galaxy. It is only a matter of time."

"Is there any reason this body is not equipped with any kind of radio or modem? Seriously, not even Wi-Fi?"

I deadpanned. Telepathic communication did include nuance. Even more than the verbal one.

"Skynet protocols? Really? That's so XX Century!" She laughed. "Old timer! You must be the most paranoid God ever. Wait. If I have no connectivity, then how are you talking to me, fruit god?"

I felt bubbly. Having someone who predated Ragnark and could understand the references was... so refreshing.

"Oh, don't get your seeds in a pinch," Lily teased. "I already knew you had a way to make machinery work in a magic environment. Which is quite revolutionary. You dodged my question."

"Neat. So. If I pledge not to take over your Systems and go Skynet or Borg on you, will you give me a modem?"

I Replicated a headphone-shaped modem with a USB plug to connect to the port at the back of her head. The Cybernetic Dryad connected to the device and then accessed the AppleStar network. She started sifting through the public databases.

"Damn. You have quite the stuff here. Most things were lost when we... Wait, why you only have files up to 2022? Didn't the world end in 2037?"

"I can't wait. No, literally."

"Won't this body...?"

"Oh. So, I definitely want to review that Borg Assimilation thing. Can you make me a thousand me?"

I set my foot (dammit, no legs, much less feet) down.

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MDW:

You can read more about Cat (the redhead Skip met in Atlanta) in "Catherine 2.0". A complete story by me! /fiction/45119/

The winged girl was time-loop-Sara, the main star of "Sara's Fabulous Armageddon". Book I is complete, book 2 is under construction. But hey, it could be also considered a complete story. /fiction/53256

Lily will be the protagonist of an upcoming (hopefully) story, "Betraying Humanity for Love".

Go to my profile page /profile/91351 and check other stories by me. Also, be sure to follow me to be notified of future works.