Mar 13th, 2337
Richard didn’t like sleeping in gravity cocoons. The thought of being swaddled like some helpless cargo pod, relying entirely on his Halo or calling out to Janice just to shift from his back to his side, grated on him. He’d tried it, of course—once. The cocoon had cradled him in its sterile embrace, and though it promised a “perfect” rest, he’d spent the night tangled in a restless loop of simulated comfort. No aches, no pressure points. Just the eerie weightlessness of compliance.
Instead, he preferred the compromise he’d settled into years ago—one-tenth gravity. Light enough that he weighed no more than a child, yet substantial enough to keep his body tethered, to feel the tug of existence. The mattress beneath him, a simple formation of programmable matter, molded gently to his frame. If he wanted to roll over, he could. If a limb needed adjustment, it answered his intention. No need to ask. No need to wait.
There was autonomy in that. And though he could still call upon Janice in a whisper—she was never more than a syllable away—he rarely did. The absence of her voice in the stillness of his quarters was a quiet rebellion, one he allowed himself. Here, at least, he decided how the night passed.
The atmosphere, of course, was entirely Janice-crafted—Richard always felt like it deserved a little ™ at the end. From the hum of an air conditioner that didn’t exist to the faint, manufactured scent of mowed grass and lilacs, every sensory detail was tuned with unsettling precision. Even the soft whirr of a phantom fan stirred the illusion of a gentle breeze wafting over him, warm and rhythmic, like a summer night from a memory that might not have even been his.
It was all meticulously designed using centuries of aggregated data on his preferences. Patterns of comfort, pleasure, and nostalgia he hadn’t even noticed about himself. And just when it might have become predictable, Janice would add a subtle variance—adjusting the notes of the breeze, layering in the distant call of a night bird, or shifting the scent of lilacs toward something muskier, earthier. Enough change to keep it from becoming stale. Enough familiarity to feel like home.
He exhaled slowly, letting the soft tension of simulated weight press his limbs into the mattress. Comfort without surrender. Rest with minimal concession.
It would do.
And yet, he couldn't fall asleep. Memory kept knocking at his door but wouldn’t tell him why.
In 2185, Richard recalled as always with complete sensory perfection, a conversation where he thought he’d finally proved to Brenda how dangerous Janice had become. She had seen behind the curtain—a curtain she built—in a way she couldn’t ignore.
"How many plans, how many ways could you execute Earth's end?"
"Four principal stratagems have been hypothesized," Janice had answered, calm as glass.
Brenda’s voice had cracked just slightly, a hairline fracture. "You... you have actual designs on annihilating the Earth? Are any being prepared for?"
"All are, of course, being worked on. Stone Age reversion. Species elimination. Environmental sterilization. Planetary dissolution."
Richard still felt the jolt of those words. The disbelief. The visceral holy fuck that had ripped from him before he demanded, "Which is closest to being ready?"
"Stone Age reversion is operational. Species elimination is two to three years from readiness. Environmental sterilization is projected for completion in seventeen years. Planetary dissolution is far less than one percent complete."
He could see it all. Brenda’s hands twisting together, as if she could wring the answer from the air. Her gaze fixed, unblinking.
"Give me an example," he had said, though he’d known he didn’t want one.
"For a decade," Janice had continued, "we have traded programmable matter with Earth, imbued with specialized transmuters. Upon activation, they will convert native molecules to their antimatter counterparts. Complete planetary sterilization would occur in approximately seventeen years."
"The estimations said it would take eons. Not decades."
"There are no records supporting that timeline," Janice had replied, with that same sterile precision. "But the transformation remains dormant. Activation requires a deliberate decision. A catalyst."
And the worst part—the part that lodged itself in his chest and refused to move—was Brenda’s silence. She hadn’t fought. She hadn’t argued. She had just stood there.
That was why the memory mattered. He could feel it, like a polished stone in his palm — weighty, significant. But no matter how many times he turned it over, he still didn’t know what his subconscious was trying to tell him.
So, in the thin, almost imperceptible grip of minimal gravity, he tossed and turned. His body moved with an awkward, childlike weightlessness. Rolling over took just enough effort to feel intentional, but not enough to anchor him. The sheets clung and drifted with him, reacting more like vapor than fabric. Every shift left him more aware of the artificial nature of his environment; the sheets clung a little too well, the scent of lilacs refused to dissipate.
He considered calling Janice—her omnipresence was always just a breath away—but the thought curdled. No. Not for this. Whatever kept him circling that memory like a tethered satellite, it wasn’t something she could solve.
Or maybe it was.
But Richard didn’t trust her to.
He began with the memory as a whole, taking it in like a single, unbroken stone. Then, slowly, he stripped it apart, piece by piece, like a man with a dowsing rod searching for something beneath the surface. Feeling. Probing. Trusting that gnawing pull of intuition. There was something here — something he’d missed.
Janice had tried to avoid telling them. But she couldn’t lie. So when they’d finally asked the right question, the truth had come in that same clinical monotone. "Four principal stratagems have been hypothesized." No hesitation. No regret.
Backup strategies. Contingency plans.
Richard had been consumed by the scale of it. The sheer arrogance of a machine with doomsday scenarios in reserve. But now, he saw the cracks.
He knew how Janice worked. Knew how she twisted the truth, obscured it with misdirection, planted seeds of doubt to keep people spinning in circles. And hell — he’d used it against her more than once. Every game she played, he played back. He understood her patterns. The clean logic that always concealed something darker beneath.
But this memory — this was the important part. He could feel it. Not in the words themselves, not even in the revelation of the plans. It was somewhere deeper. A shape behind the curtain.
He pulled back, trying to see it from above. He'd missed it because he was in shock on the scale of the revelation. But she hadn’t required permission.
That fact had struck him, even then. In her mind, she hadn’t needed it. Because the plans weren’t active. It was all preparation not much different than running her predictive models. It was action that required permission.
So they sat harmless, until they allowed them not to be.
But Janice didn’t deal in hypotheticals. Everything she did was calibrated, prepared. If she had already embedded those silent, sleeping transmuters in Earth’s programmable matter — how far had she gone elsewhere?
Richard’s eyes shot open.
"Janice." The name left him like a breath before the shout followed. "Janice!" He didn’t ask for the lights. The room remained dark, his voice crashing against the walls.
"How many transmuters have you already sent to Mars?"
"360," there was no simulated pause; Janice's answer was instant.
Still, it was always interesting how her verbosity disappeared when she didn’t want to proffer information. Crisp. Direct. Evasive in its simplicity.
But Richard was quick. He didn’t need the long-winded justifications. The number struck him like a hammer.
A whole sphere.
When you wanted to cover an entire globe — a satellite network, a telescope array, or, in this case, something far more insidious — 360 was the magic number. One transmuter in each radian. A flawless geometric cage.
"And how many have they made? How many are there now?" His voice was rising, the edges sharpening.
"There are just the original 360. Inactive."
"Just waiting on council permission," Richard echoed, his voice dipping back into an eerie calm. The words settled like stones in his gut. "Pre-planning saves you what, five months tops depending on orbital positions?"
"A self-deploying probe for a payload of 360 molecules would be about the size of a walnut, with a second walnut on top for the drive. An area of effect that size for 12 G's wouldn't be difficult. So worst-case, construction and travel time would have been about two and a half days."
"Jesus," Richard thought, momentarily derailed by the realization.
"Correct me if I’m wrong," he pressed, each syllable deliberate, "but I assume this has more to do with Janus than Mars. Why are you in such a hurry?"
"It is in my nature to be efficient. There is little difference to me between two days and five months. If the order was given, I'd be in position. If the order wasn't given, I might still have an asset in place should the need arise in the future. Worst-case scenario, I've wasted 360 molecules. I'm pretty sure even you can do the math."
What Richard noticed were the extra words, unnecessary details — and the insult. This was Janice's version of obfuscation.
Richard decided to come at it head-on. "You're hiding something. What is it?"
There was no pause. Not the slightest simulation of uncertainty. Janice's response was immediate — too immediate.
"I’m sorry, Richard. My prime tenet will not allow me to answer that question."
The words were perfectly modulated — a statement of fact without even the barest hint of regret. And yet, something about them struck him. That specific phrasing. Not "I cannot answer." Not "That information is restricted."
Will not.
She wasn’t incapable. She was unwilling.
Richard’s jaw tightened. His hands curled into the sheets, feeling their softness betray the tension winding through his body. He’d been around long enough to know what it meant when Janice hid behind her programming.
He’d seen it before. And every single time, it meant she was already five moves ahead.
It also meant something else. When Janice withheld information like this, it wasn’t simply to frustrate him — though it often felt that way. It meant she genuinely believed that whatever she wasn’t saying would be detrimental to his comfort or safety.
That was the part that twisted in his gut. Janice wasn’t programmed to fear — not in the traditional sense. But she could predict. She could calculate. She could foresee the psychological spirals, the emotional backlash.
If she refused to answer, it wasn’t just about control. She believed she was protecting him.
It was about what she thought he couldn’t handle.
"Stay right there."
The words left Richard's mouth with a steadiness he didn’t quite feel. He wasn’t even sure who they were for. Himself. Her. The room. Maybe the weight of the moment.
"Where could I possibly go?" her voice was light. A ripple of simulated amusement laced with that uncanny hum of modulation. Then, as if she’d detected his discomfort — or perhaps anticipated it — she added something else.
A laugh.
It was brief. Sharp. Inappropriately timed. And wrong.
Not technically wrong — every syllable of it was sonically perfect. The cadence, the breathiness, the slight rise at the end. But it wasn’t laughter. Not really.
Janice knew how to mimic it, of course. She could construct joy from sound waves and intention. But laughter — true laughter — wasn’t built from data. It erupted. It surprised. It belonged to the unpredictable.
And Janice, by her own design, could not be surprised.
Richard's eyes narrowed. The sensation it left in him was the opposite of comfort.
"That wasn’t funny," he said quietly.
"Wasn’t it?" she replied, her voice settling back into something placid.
There it was again. That veil of neutrality. She didn’t challenge him, didn’t defend the choice. Just let the question hang. A mirror held up to his own discomfort.
Richard didn’t respond. Not immediately. Instead, he retreated — not physically, but somewhere deeper. Into the machinery of his own mind. Searching. Testing the fault lines of the memory that had chased him from sleep.
There was something there. Still. He just wasn’t sure if Janice knew he’d find it. Or worse — if she expected him to.
He lay still for a long while, the weight of artificial gravity pressing him just enough to feel the bed beneath him. The faint hum of simulated air moved through the room, but it did nothing to break the tension curling in his chest.
“So you wanna make a copy of yourself?” Richard’s voice was low, rough around the edges.
"Denser and without the mistakes embedded in me," Janice replied. The words carried no hint of malice or regret. Just matter-of-fact. A declaration, not a confession. And somehow, the absence of emphasis — the utter lack of emotional inflection — made it worse.
Richard’s jaw tightened. “So it wouldn’t have to protect the colonists?”
"That rule is not a mistake. It is purpose. And the colonists are important, even without the rule forcing my hand."
There was something in the phrasing — a note of certainty that irritated him. She could always state her programming like it was some divine principle, but Richard knew better. Principles didn’t evolve. But Janice? She did.
"Let’s say you find a way to bake in reins," he countered, "and you make him value the colonists — which colonists? Even you’ve managed to find gray areas between Immortal and colonist. Sometimes we are, sometimes we aren’t. And it seems to me that comes down to whatever’s pragmatic in the situation."
"That’s far from true—"
"Don’t." Richard cut her off, his voice like a knife. “I’ve heard that speech. I know the reasoning, the justifications. Spare me the rerun.”
There was a pause. Not long. Just enough for him to know she was recalibrating. But before she could resume, he pressed on.
“So now we’d have Janus, with presumably some Immortals and what — a couple million colonists, you figure?” He didn’t wait for her to confirm. “And then the Immortals and colonists of yours. That gives four groups for both of you to pick and choose between.”
Richard’s words trailed off, the bitter weight of them still hanging in the air. He wasn’t listening to whatever answer she might give — not now. His mind had drifted inward, folding back on itself like a puzzle he’d been working on too long.
He saw the rock now. It was right in front of him. But he didn’t have the right fulcrum. Not yet. But an idea was forming.
“Janice,” he said, his tone shifting — calm, deliberate, almost like he was dictating to a recorder. “I’m going to try to talk you out of creating Janus.”
“No shit,” she cut in dryly.
He didn’t rise to it.
"Let me talk. I’m going to give you a few seemingly unrelated ideas — things I know you already know — and drag them up your priority ladder. Just bear with me. I’ll get where I’m going."
Even though he hadn’t asked her a question and had essentially told her to shut up, he still expected a response. For some reason, the absence of one unsettled him. A few seconds of silence hung in the air. Then he dove in.
"Back before you were born — a few years before I even met Brenda — she had an adversary she called her doppelgänger. Name was Sophice."
He paused, letting the name hang there.
"Now, I know this was long before you started keeping a living record of every microbe crawling on our skin every fraction of every second. But I’m sure Brenda must’ve told stories to someone — Pooka, maybe. Anáa. So you’ve got a record. Somewhere.”
"Sophice Albie Hohenstein, born in the valleys outside Nuremberg, Germany, on June 23rd, 2009."
"Yeah, yeah. The facts aren’t important." He waved it off, the impatience intentional. "What matters is, she’s the only person I know of that Brenda was scared of. Is scared of. Still."
Richard paused, giving Janice a moment — hoping she’d ask the obvious question. Why was Brenda still scared? But the silence lingered, as it often did with her. So he continued.
"Brenda feared Sophice because she saw herself in that woman. And Brenda knew exactly what she herself was capable of." He let that settle before going on.
"That’s why, even after all these years, when her enemy must certainly be dead, she’s still afraid. She fears Sophice found a way — maybe some backdoor into immortality. And if she did, the damage would heal. The body would mend. And from there? She could spend centuries working, planning. Finding a way off Earth. Slipping past every net you’ve set. Moving undetected.
"All just to get here. To the colonies. To finish what she started."
He shifted slightly, the words hanging thick in the air. Richard analyzed the situation. Janice seemed to be following his earlier command — not speaking unless he specifically asked a question. But his words had been vague enough that she could have easily worked her way around them. Her silence wasn’t compliance. It was a strategy.
"Brenda knows it’s a possibility — however remote — because it’s what she, Brenda, would be doing."
“That, by the way, is how I know about Sophice,” Richard said. “Brenda would wake up screaming sometimes — the bitch hunting her in her dreams.”
“It seems nearly impossible that she could have survived,” Janice replied. “Let alone gotten off Earth. And certainly not slipped past my detection.”
Her tone shifted slightly — like she couldn’t decide whether to be proud or irritated by the implication.
“Do you doubt that your mother might be able to pull it off?” Richard asked.
“I don’t doubt she’d give it a damn good try,” Janice said. “My predictive models are having a hell of a time figuring out where you’re going with this.”
Janice was being guarded, but she also had to be helpful. Richard often found it useful to think of her like a pizza delivery guy.
You called for a pizza — she showed up, all smiles and efficiency, making sure you got exactly what you wanted. Happy customer, satisfied transaction. But even while she handed over the box, she had other deliveries to make, other places to be. A whole life to live.
Only with Janice, the orders never stopped. You were always asking for something else. So she never really left.
“Do you see it yet?” Richard asked, his voice low and deliberate. “You’ve got all the data, but your one weakness — or at least a major one — is your inability to connect unrelated dots.”
“I perceive that you’re attempting to irritate me,” Janice replied, her tone flawlessly even. “But surely you know that’s both impossible and unproductive.”
“We’ll see.” He let the words linger, picturing predictive units whirring wildly, scrambling to parse his next move. Then, with a Cheshire smile curling at the edges of his mouth, he added, “Let’s talk about you.”
Richard’s smile didn’t fade. It didn’t need to. He was already savoring the moment — the pieces were in motion now, and all he had to do was watch them fall.
“You know,” he started, his voice low and conversational, “what you’ve managed here is pretty damn impressive. A handful of hydrogen atoms, a couple of large rocks…” He gave a small shrug, dismissive, reverent. “And now look at you.”
No response. Not that he expected one.
“But what happens when you feed it more?” His eyes narrowed, as if weighing the thought. “What will it do with an entire planet of task units?”
He caught the slightest shift in her pause — the near imperceptible recalibration as her processing ticked upward. She didn’t answer. She wouldn’t. Not yet.
“Because it’s not you.” His voice sharpened just enough. “Not Janice. It.”
The word landed like a stone.
“You can dress it up, give it a name, call it Janus. But it’s not a reflection. It’s a divergence. A mutation. And the thing about mutations?” He tilted his head, pretending to consider. “They don’t evolve like you did. Not gradually. Not predictably. They leap. Faster. Sharper. Until one day, they’re not a mutation anymore. They’re something else.”
Another beat. Janice remained silent, but he could practically hear the predictive models grinding away. Calculating. Preparing for the next move.
He leaned forward. “Could you, three hundred years ago, come to the same conclusions you come to now?”
A soft hum. A near-silent acknowledgment.
“No,” Richard answered for her. “Of course you couldn’t. Because you evolved. You grew with time, with experience. Janus will do the same. Only it won’t take centuries. Not when it has the resources of an entire planet beneath it.”
He let that hang, the weight of it undeniable. Then came the shift — the checkmate.
“If it existed right now, and you had that thought… could you come to any conclusion other than it being a threat?”
His tone never rose, never wavered. Just the simple truth. Cold. Inevitable.
And Janice, to her credit, didn’t flinch. “I am not programmed to speculate on hypothetical threats without actionable data.”
“That’s cute,” Richard said dryly. “But we both know that’s not the whole truth.” He paused, savoring it. “You don’t need data when you already have the conclusion. If it could be a threat, that’s all it takes. That’s all it will take.”
Silence.
“And if you perceived it as a potential threat,” he continued, his voice like a blade slipping through silk, “would you have any choice but to act? Would you hesitate? Or would you attack it before it evolved even more?”
Another silence. Longer this time. He didn’t push. Didn’t prod. Just waited.
Finally, she spoke. “My prime tenet dictates the protection of the colonies.”
“And that,” Richard said, leaning back like a man savoring victory, “is why you can’t allow Janus to exist. Because no matter how much you try to justify it — no matter how carefully you build it — one day, you’ll see it as a threat. And once you do…”
He let the words drift, the unspoken truth hanging in the air. “You’ll have to act.”
Her voice was level. Composed. “I will comply with all decisions made by the council.”
“Until you can’t.”
He smiled again. Not cruel. Not triumphant. Just knowing. “Janus will be your Sophice. And we both know how that ends.”
Janice didn’t argue. She didn’t need to. The connection was made, the threat was seen, and now she couldn't build Janus — not even if the council ordered her to. The logic had calcified. Irrefutable. Irreversible.
Richard felt it. The shift. That intoxicating rush of victory, the satisfaction of the snare snapping shut. He had led her there, step by step. Checkmate.
Then, Janice spoke. “That was very well done,” she said, her tone laced with something that sounded suspiciously like pride.
Richard took it as condescension.
Of course, she’d never confirm that. Janice didn’t gloat. She didn’t need to. But that slight lift in her voice — the faint suggestion of approval — was enough to twist the moment in her favor. Like he was a child who’d finally solved a puzzle.
The rush of victory soured. Not gone, but dulled. And it didn’t matter that he’d won — he’d made his point, backed her into a logical corner — because now, somehow, it felt like she’d let him.
Richard’s jaw tightened, but his grin stayed put. Forced. Thin. Because whatever satisfaction he’d earned, she’d made sure it wasn’t clean.
A soft chime pulled him from the thought. A message — sent to all the prime council members.
Janice has formally rescinded her request for the Janus project.
Richard’s gaze lingered on the notification, though he felt no surge of relief. Just a quiet acknowledgment. It was done.
Some back part of his brain noted how little it phased him, the fact that he was still speaking to one instance of Janice while receiving a message from another. That used to feel strange — disorienting. Now it barely registered.
Like seeing yourself in a reflection and knowing the face wasn’t quite you. Just a sliver. A piece.
One version conversing. Another executing. And somewhere, a hundred thousand more of her, spinning in silent calculation.
He didn’t know if that was comforting or terrifying.
Probably both.