This ongoing work in progress is entirely a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed within are entirely fictional and any resemblance to people, living or dead is coincidental.
No part of the work may be reproduced in any form without the explicit permission of the author.
Copyright Ion Fyr 2022
Outside, camouflaged on an outcrop, Etelka and Luc lay, watching the structure.
Luc’s long curly, jet black hair, where it stuck out from the active camouflage hood, moved in the turbulence of the updraft. Etelka had done a better and more precise job of tucking her hair under the cover of her own hood. The field extended to their weapons, which lay prone in front of each of them, even covering emissions from their embedded wireless tech.
“She’s been inside for a while. Do you think she even knows we’re here?” Etelka asked in a low voice, barely audible against the background rasp of wind in the rocks.
“No…probably not. She showed no signs of noticing. Nila would have at least hinted at recognizing us.”
“And there’s an artificial intelligence in there? I get that they are like people in their reasoning and perceptive faculties, but it is still difficult to, as you say, wrap my head around the concept.”
Etelka, distracted by the gritty sensations of her surroundings, allowed her focus to wander and refocus on a smear of grey mud on her bare left hand. The camouflage field of the jacket, or hooded coat, or whatever it was called, stretched out over her exposed hands and even over the rifle propped on a bipod in front of her, and lay a disorienting texture over it, to the point where the smudge of grey mud blended seamlessly with the adjacent projections. It was mostly her body-memory that told her where her hands were, as her eyes were lying to her.
Likewise, she new Luc lay beside her, on his belly as well, propping the same weapon and wearing the same camouflage garment.
In her fairly recently implanted computing device–one that she was still attempting to harness, or at least manage–she could feel the processing of Luc’s similar device, and so she wondered, to her secret embarrassment, what kind of connection could come when two individuals can be connected in such a way…
“Luc,” she finally said, shaking off her embarrassment, “Tell me more about this AI, as you call them. Is it ‘it’ or them’?”
Ion Fyr 