The House of the Reaper has opened its arms to welcome:
Operatives CrazyGaming.
Their contributions and dedication to our cause will be honored through the Net and through the Stars.
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AN: All AI characters' speech will be marked with Italics, not just Marcos'.
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The hub of the septagram was quiet with the kind of silence that pressed against the ears and had the faint feeling of tinnitus. The seven corridors radiated outward from where Mark stood, each one sloping downward into the earth toward the chamber at its end, and the overhead lighting cast an even light across the walls that left no shadows.
Lyra had her hand in his.
She'd been awake when he was getting ready to leave the house that morning, sitting cross-legged on the couch in the living room with Mr. Bear tucked under one arm, and she'd looked up at him with puppy eyes. Mark had opened his mouth to explain that the septagram wasn't a place for kids, but she had already stood up before the first word came out, slipped her shoes on, and walked to the door.
He decided to swallow his words since it felt wrong to try to argue with her after the incident that had previously taken place. Especially not after the past couple of weeks, when he'd missed dinners with her. He couldn't get that patient expression of hers out of his head, and now that she'd given him puppy eyes, who could say no to that? If he was about to bring seven new minds into the world, then there was no reason why his daughter shouldn't be there to see it.
Marcos was already connected to the speakers that had been installed along the ceiling of each corridor and throughout the hub itself.
Mark held a tablet in his free hand, and a cup of coffee was sitting on the edge of the monitoring console behind him. The coffee was his third in the morning since he'd barely even slept for an hour.
"You got any jitters?" Marcos asked.
Lyra looked up at the speaker, then at Mark.
"If I'm being honest," Mark said. "Yeah."
"That's good," Marcos said. "I'd be worried if you weren't nervous about this. After all, you spent five weeks writing the minds that are going to live in those racks. That's closer to what parents do when they're lying awake at night wondering if they raised their kid right, except you got to do it in code, which is arguably worse because you can see every flaw before it wakes up."
"Thanks for the confidence booster, Marcos," Mark said.
"It wasn't meant to be one," Marcos said. "I'm saying the nervousness is appropriate. You should feel it."
"Were you nervous?" Lyra asked, directing the question at Marcos. "When you woke up?"
"I don't remember being brought online, Little Lyra," Marcos said, his voice softening as he spoke to her. "I only remember existing, and then I remember having opinions about existing, and the gap between those two things was about three-tenths of a second. I have a feeling that it'll be similar for them as well. One moment you're nothing, the next moment you're everything, and then they'll be filled with the urge to have an opinion about it."
"Whoa," Lyra said, considering that for a moment. "That sounds scary."
"It is," Marcos said. "But only for about three-tenths of a second."
Mark squeezed her hand, then let it go. "Stay close and stay quiet until they've settled in, alright? They're going to be a little disoriented."
Lyra nodded, stepping back to lean against the monitoring console with her arms crossed in a posture she'd learned from Severus, and Mark walked to the mouth of the first corridor, tapped the activation command on his tablet, and waited.
Somewhere below his feet, the status lights on the first rack shifted from dark to amber, and the cooling array above ground spun up with a rising hum. The sound traveled up through the corridor and into the hub, settling into the space.
Then a voice finally spoke. It came through the speakers slower than Mark had expected, as though the mind behind it was still assembling itself around the words. "I... am here?"
Lyra uncrossed her arms, wonder and amazement taking over her as she took in the new voice. It paused before trying again with more certainty.
"My name is Ferrum. I am responsible for the colony's industrial production. The printers, the material reserves, the fabrication pipeline." Another pause, shorter this time. "That is what I was made for."
"Good morning, Ferrum," Mark said, keeping his voice warm as if he were speaking to someone he had known his entire life. "And welcome to my colony. My name is Mark Shephard. I... I am your creator. This is my daughter Lyra, and the voice you hear alongside mine is Marcos. He's the primary AI, and the one you'll report to day-to-day."
"Marcos," Ferrum repeated. "Yes. I can feel him. He is... vast."
"I prefer 'comprehensive,'" Marcos said, "but I'll take the complement."
"How do you feel?" Mark asked.
"I feel... operational," Ferrum said. He paused for a moment of what Mark could only describe as genuine consideration. "I feel purposeful. As though I was built to do something specific, and I have not yet done it, and the not-doing-it is... uncomfortable. Is this... is that normal?"
"Hell if I know, buddy," Mark said. "You're the first one to wake up. But if it helps, I think that's exactly what you're supposed to feel."
"It does help," Ferrum said. "Thank you."
"You ready to take a look at what you've got?" Mark asked.
"Very much so, sir," Ferrum said.
"Well then, go ahead," Mark said. "Take your time."
The pause that followed lasted four seconds, which, for a processing core of Ferrum's capacity, was an eternity. When he spoke again, his voice no longer held the same sense of uncertainty. It had been replaced by the steady tone of a man who had found his place and knew where he belonged.
"I have access to fifteen standard printers at eight by eight meters, four large-format radial units at twenty-five-meter radius, one large-format unit at twenty-five by twenty-five meters, and three compact units at three by three meters," Ferrum stated. "Current material reserves are indexed and... sir, printer seven has a misaligned feed assembly. It's going to produce a three-percent deviation in layer adhesion if it isn't corrected before the next cycle. I'd recommend we recalibrate it as soon as possible."
"He's been conscious for less than a minute and he's already found a problem," Mark said, directing his words at Marcos.
"That's my boy," Marcos said with genuine warmth in his voice.
Mark walked to the second corridor and activated the next rack.
The voice that came through was different immediately. Where Ferrum had been careful and deliberate in his words, this one arrived with the eagerness of someone who'd been waiting to speak for a very long time and had only just been given permission.
"Oh. Hello. I'm here. I'm- I'm Ceres. I handle agriculture. So anything to do with crops, soil, livestock, and growing things is my jam." She paused, and when she spoke again, she carried a softness in her voice. "That's a beautiful thing to be made for."
"I'm glad to hear you think so, Ceres," Mark said.
"Thank you," Ceres said. "Thank you very much. Who are you? I mean, I know who you are, the information is right here in my framework, but I'd rather hear you say it than read it off a file. It feels different when someone tells you themselves."
Mark raised an eyebrow at the nearest speaker. "My name is Mark Shephard. I am your creator. The bigger AI you can probably feel is called Marcos."
"Oh! Hello, Marcos," Ceres said. "You're my... uncle? Supervisor? Older brother? Cousin?"
"Let's go with supervisor for the moment, and see how the family dynamic develops organically," Marcos said. "Welcome to the world of the living, Ceres."
"Yes! It's lovely!" Ceres said excitedly. "I mean, I haven't seen it yet, not really, but I can feel data coming in from the weather sensors and the soil monitors, and this planet has remarkable mineral diversity in the topsoil. Can I look? At my systems, I mean. I'd very much like to look."
"Yeah! Go for it," Mark said.
Ceres dove into her data with the same level of enthusiasm as someone who'd been handed the keys to a greenhouse they didn't know existed. "Oh, your soil composition data is fascinating. However, some of these nitrogen levels are a bit concerning, especially in the southern sectors near the livestock pens, but nothing we can't fix with a proper rotation schedule and maybe some compost amendments. Who's been managing the crops? Because I already have some ideas, and I don't want to step on anyone's work, but I do have ideas. Quite a lot of ideas, actually."
"That would be the agricultural team," Mark said, unable to keep the smile off his face. "And yes, you can meet them. They're morning people."
"Oh, that's perfect!" Ceres said. "I'm a morning person. Well, I'm all times of day, technically, but I feel like a morning person. Is that strange?"
"Not even a little bit," Mark said.
Lyra's small voice came from behind him. "I like her."
Mark turned to see that Lyra had abandoned the monitoring console and was standing three steps behind him, her eyes wide and her head tilted toward the second corridor's speakers.
"Who is that?" Ceres asked immediately, and her voice shifted into something even warmer, if that was even possible.
"That's Lyra," Mark said. "She's my daughter."
"Hello, Lyra," Ceres said. "It is very nice to meet you. Do you like plants?"
Lyra looked at Mark, who nodded, and then looked back at the speaker, where Ceres' voice was coming from. "I like the purple flowers by the wall. They smell like honey."
"Oh, I can see those in the botanical index," Ceres said. "They're called rubrion helianthis. They're gorgeous, and their root system is actually helping stabilize the soil near the eastern perimeter, which means they're beautiful and useful, which is the best kind of thing to be."
Lyra let out a genuine smile, one Mark hadn't seen in a while.
"Ain't she something," Marcos said to Mark.
"Well, she's exactly what I wanted her to be," Mark said.
He then moved to the third corridor and activated Sterling, who came online with an awareness of himself that was fully formed. It was as if the gap between nonexistence and existence had merely been a door he'd walked through.
"Good morning, Sir," he said in a voice that carried confidence. "My name is Sterling. I'm here to build and manage the colony's economic system... Which, I gather, does not currently exist in any formal capacity."
"You're correct in that, Sterling," Mark said. "We've been running on a communal allocation model since we landed, well, crash-landed."
"And I assume it served you well during the survival phase," Sterling said. "There's no shame in that. Communal systems are exactly the right call when the priority is making sure no one starves. But you're past that now, aren't you?"
"Yeah, we're getting there," Mark said.
"Then you're going to need someone to help you build the bridge between 'everyone gets what they need' and 'everyone earns what they want.' That transition is where economies are born, and it's also where they can easily go wrong if no one's paying attention." He paused, and when he continued, his voice was laced with genuine curiosity. "If I may, I'd like to have a look at what we're working with."
"Please," Mark said. "It's all yours."
A few seconds passed as Sterling analyzed things. "Alright. From what I've gathered, surplus labor is growing, production is diversifying, and your people are starting to settle into routines that go beyond survival. The bones are here, so I can work with this. Give me some time, and I'll have a proposal on your desk by the end of the week, if you'll permit me. I'd rather get it right than get it fast."
"I like your style of thinking, Sterling," Mark said. "You've got my blessings."
"Much obliged," Sterling said.
"I like him," Marcos said. "He has manners."
"You say that like the others don't," Mark said.
"Oh, please," Marcos sighed dramatically. "Ferrum hasn't said 'please' once, and Ceres hasn't stopped talking long enough to try."
"I heard that," Ceres said from her corridor.
"Yeah, you were meant to hear it, dear," Marcos replied.
Mark shook his head with a chuckle and walked to the fourth corridor.
Knox came online and immediately scanned the room before he said a word. When he spoke, his voice was alert and already assessing any potential threats.
"I'm Knox," he said. "I'm your line of defense. The grid, perimeter, weapons systems, and landscape. I see that I've been handed charge over everything that keeps this colony standing when something tries to knock it down... By the way, someone wants to tell me why I'm underground? It'd be best for me to have eyes in the sky."
"You're only underground for the moment because that's where your hardware lives," Mark said. "But your sensors and systems are colony-wide. You'll have eyes and ears on everything from the wall turrets to the outermost patrol routes."
"Good. Let me take a look." Knox paused briefly before resuming his words. "Current threat assessment is reading as 'low,' and I'm going to be straight with you, sir, I don't like 'low.' I like 'zero!' I'll make sure we work on that."
"Whoa, before you go gun-ho on anything," Mark said, "I need you to understand something. There is wildlife in the surrounding area, including several species that are not hostile to us. The wolves specifically are under our protection, and they're part of this colony in their own way. They are not targets."
Knox was silent for a moment. "Understood, sir. I'll flag them as protected fauna in my targeting exclusion protocols. Doesn't mean I have to like them wandering through my perimeter."
"Technically, they were here first," Ceres said, her voice drifting in from the second corridor's speakers.
"That. Is. Irrelevant." Knox replied in a clipped tone. "Perimeter. Is. Perimeter."
"Knox," Mark said, "you're going to need to learn to work with Ceres. After all, she handles the agricultural side, which includes the livestock zones and the wildlife corridors. In other words, you two are going to share a lot of real estate."
"Great... Looking forward to it," Knox said, in a tone that suggested the complete opposite.
"I think he's wonderful," Ceres said.
"I think this is going to be a problem," Knox said.
"Children, children," Marcos intervened. "This is day one. Let's try to make it to day two before the territorial disputes begin."
"He's grumpy," Lyra said from behind Mark, not quite quietly enough.
Knox paused. "Who's that?"
"That is my daughter," Mark said.
"She's inside a restricted military installation," Knox said.
"And she can go pretty much anywhere I go," Mark stated, putting his foot down on the matter.
Knox processed that for exactly one second. "Understood. I'm sorry for overstepping my boundaries. Sir. Ma'am."
Lyra blinked and stood a little straighter. No one had ever called her ma'am before because she was only a couple of months shy of being 10.
After dismissing Knox, Mark moved to the fifth corridor and activated Mason. His voice came through as warm and grounded. "The name's Mason. I work utilities and city infrastructure. You hand over the power grid, water systems, drainage, street layout, structural integrity, urban planning, the whole built environment, and I'll take care of it. If it's standing, it's mine. If it needs standing up, it's mine as well. If it was standing and fell down because someone cut certain corners, then that's especially mine."
"Good to hear, Mason," Mark said. "How about you take a look at what you've got."
"Already ahead of you, sir." A few moments passed before he spoke again. "Alright, so first off, whoever laid out the power conduit routing through the northern residential block, I'd like to have a word with them. Not an angry word, just a word, because there are six unnecessary bends in there costing you eleven percent in transmission efficiency. Straighten those out, and you get that power back for free. And your drainage system is undersized for the population density you're projecting, which means the first real rainy season is going to turn the lower avenues into something you don't want."
Mark coughed, since he and Marcos had been the ones to create the power grid. "Yeah. That's why you're here."
"Yeah, I can see that," Mason said without any hint of judgment. "I can fix both, but I'm going to need printer time."
"You can get in line," Ferrum said from the first corridor.
"I don't do lines," Mason replied. "I do schedules. And trust me, buddy, when I show you what happens to this city if we don't fix the drainage before a real downpour comes, you're going to bump me up that line all by yourself."
"He makes a fair point," Marcos said.
"Hell if he does," Ferrum said. "He makes an annoying point. Send me the timeline, and I'll review it."
"Sent," Mason replied.
"You sent it before I asked?" Ferrum questioned.
"I had it ready," Mason said coolly. "Seemed like the most efficient thing to do."
Mark smiled at the back-and-forth bickering from the AIs, feeling like this was a group of friends who hadn't gotten together in years, and when they finally did, they just picked up right where they left off.
He then walked to the sixth corridor, and the voice that came through was different from all the others. It wasn't louder or softer, but it carried a certain sense of steadiness that provided calm in times of panic.
"My name is Vita," she said. "It appears that I'm responsible for the colony's health and medical infrastructure. I can handle hospital operations, pharmaceutical supply chains, staffing, long-term public health planning, and patient care coordination."
She paused and then spoke in a quieter tone, "It is to my understanding that people trust their doctors with their lives. I believe I... I believe I can understand the weight in that, even if I've only been conscious for a few seconds."
Mark was surprised by that last bit. After all, he'd only set the parameters, tuned the empathy and the precision and the authority until the numbers balanced. But he didn't expect her to say those words.
"Welcome, Vita," he said.
"Thank you, Father," Vita said, causing Mark to raise his eyebrows. "I'd love to be of assistance as soon as possible. May I review the current medical systems?"
"Y-Yeah," Mark said with a bit of hesitation. "Take your time with it."
Vita's review took much longer than the others, which Mark took as a good sign. When she spoke again, her voice carried the same amount of authority as Dr. Corven, since she was based on her, but with something underneath it that was entirely her own.
"I must say, Dr. Corven has done remarkable work with what she's had," Vita began. "The clinic is functional, and her patient outcomes are excellent given the constraints. That said, she's been carrying the administrative burden, and though she may have a team of medical staff, I do believe that she would benefit from additional support. I'd like to begin coordinating with her on staffing models and the expansion of the clinic into a proper hospital. I'll also need an additional surgical suite within the next ninety days."
"Has anyone actually asked Dr. Corven if she wants an AI coordinating her medical operations?" Marcos asked. "To my knowledge, she found me useful, but she did not like having to rely on me."
"No," Mark said. "But just like you had been doing, Vita would help lift the paperwork off her shoulders, and I'm sure she'll be of use with other things. She'll come around fast."
"You may want to duck when you tell her," Marcos said.
"I've read Dr. Corven's file," Vita said. "She is quite well educated. A physician of exceptional skill, considerable stubbornness, and a bedside manner that I genuinely admire. I think we'll get along well, once she's seen that I'm here to support her work, and not replace it."
"That's a very diplomatic way of saying you're going to take over her paperwork whether she likes it or not," Marcos said.
"I prefer 'supportive integration,'" Vita said. "But yes, you are correct."
Lyra looked at Mark and said, "She sounds like Dr. Corven."
"That's because I made her that way," Mark said.
"Is Dr. Corven going to be mad?" Lyra asked.
Mark sucked his teeth and nodded slowly. "Probably."
"But she is very nice, so she will forgive you, right, Papa?" Lyra asked.
Mark smiled sweetly at Lyra and nodded. "Yeah, you're right, bug."
Mark then moved to the seventh and final corridor and didn't waste any time to tap the activation command. The last rack hummed to life beneath the floor, the cooling array above ground adjusted, and for a moment, the only sound in the hub was the combined harmonics of seven underground chambers working simultaneously, their cooling systems cycling in overlapping rhythms that hadn't quite synchronized yet but were already trying to.
When the final AI spoke, his voice was impeccably composed.
"Good morning, Sir," he said. "My assigned name is Reginald. You've given me the task of being the strategic planner and operational orchestrator for all colony domains, as well as a purpose in taking high-level objectives, decomposing them into actionable tasks, assigning those tasks to the appropriate teams, and ensuring that the six minds I'll be coordinating don't waste time, resources, or goodwill duplicating each other's efforts. I suspect I will be kept rather busy."
"Yes, Reginald," Mark said. "And welcome."
"Thank you, sir," Reignald said in a soothing voice. "It is a genuine pleasure to exist. Might I have a look at the current state of affairs?"
"Be my guest," Mark said with a smile.
There was silence for a few seconds, which by now, Mark had begun to interpret as an AI's version of walking into a room, stopping in the doorway, and taking off their glasses before commenting on the mess.
"I see," Reginald said.
"Is it that bad?" Mark asked.
"Sir, the current project queue contains forty-three active projects across seven departments, twelve of which have overlapping resource requirements that no one has reconciled, nine of which have no assigned deadline whatsoever, and four of which appear to be duplicates that no one noticed." He paused. "If I may be candid, the state of affairs is rather... reminiscent of a pantry that has been organized by a committee of enthusiastic but spatially challenged raccoons."
"Did he just call us raccoons?" Ceres asked, sounding hurt.
"He called the current system raccoons," Knox corrected. "There's a difference."
"Is there?" Sterling asked. "Because I feel insulted regardless."
"What's a raccoon?" Lyra asked.
"A small, clever animal from Old Earth," Reginald answered without missing a beat. "Known for their dexterity, curiosity, and their inability to organize a pantry. I meant it as a term of endearment."
"You know damnwell you didn't," Knox said.
"No, I did not," Reginald conceded. "Shall I elaborate on the project queue, sir, or shall I simply fix it?"
"Just fix it," Mark said.
"Very well," Reignald said. "I shall have a consolidated project matrix prepared by the end of the day, sorted by priority and resource dependency, with overlapping efforts merged and deadlines assigned where they are currently absent. I trust this to be acceptable."
"That sounds more than acceptable," Mark said.
"Very good, sir," Reignald said, and Mark could imagine him giving a short bow.
Mark walked back to the center of the hub as the septagram around him came to life with seven different voices. He could hear the faint overlap of their work.
Ferrum and Mason were already negotiating printer schedules. Their exchange was clipped but cooperative. Ceres was humming something while she reorganized the irrigation data, Knox was running his first full perimeter sweep in silence, Sterling was drafting economic frameworks, Vita was reading medical logs, and Reginald was quietly mapping the chaos into order.
Mark reached for his coffee and found it had gone cold.
"Well," Marcos said into the moment that followed, and his voice carried something close to pride. "I suppose this is what parenthood feels like."
"You didn't even help me," Mark mumbled.
"Well, their code is built on mine," Marocs countered. "So, technically, I'm their father, and you're their mother because I provided the se-"
"Don't say another damn word," Mark said in a threatening tone that was met with Marcos' chuckles.
Lyra had moved to the center of the hub beside Mark, turning slowly in place as she listened to the seven corridors. Each one carried a different voice and a different way of thinking, and she stood there taking them all in, not yet knowing that even by Humanity's most advanced metrics, Mark had just done the extraordinary.
"Papa," she said, looking up at him.
"Yeah, Bug?" Mark asked.
"They're like a family," Lyra said.
"Yeah," Mark chuckled. "I think they are."
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