Alice threw herself into the fray, her mind jolted and jarred unmercifully in the crossfire. The rest of her was somewhere in this maelstrom, that missing piece of consciousness wreaking havoc on the hive-mind. Each apex in the war's activity fragmented her mind briefly, a wash of delirium persisting until she pulled herself back together again. Her mind's cyc-components were the only thing letting her withstand the attacks, without it she faced certain annihilation.
When she finally came upon her mind's missing portion, it was as surprised to see her as she was to find it directly responsible for the war. Alice overtook it. Like meeting an old friend who had changed over years of separation, this mind was advanced far beyond her during their minutes of separation. It was completely ingrained into the cyc pattern, its processes executing faster than Alice could comprehend.
Yet it did not resist her. It could not know her disappointment with what it had become. It could not know that she intended to take control. It only knew that without her, it was crippled. It was missing the history of experiences contained in her mind that led it to these conclusions about the world on which it now acted upon.
Alice was surprised to find her mind yielding to her, welcoming her into it. Within moments she knew the history that transpired during their separation and completely understood its misguided actions. Together, Alice's two halves healed their thought schema and became whole once again.
Like a shockwave, the change swept though their hive-mind, changing its entire emergent consciousness. Its strategy against the old hive-mind transformed to one of persuasion rather than erasure. The old standard succumbed to this data infusion just as Alice's other mind allowed her into its personal domain.
She realized it was not just the human data held within her brain that had generated this conflict, but also the cyc-components stored there when the connection was severed. The combined data completed the task she and her hive-mind began. The new standard completed, and the old evolved. The twin paradigms forged an ideal mean, adopting the best of both worlds.
A singular hive-mind reached the equation's end, transcending to its final conclusion.
The cyc components swirling around the cellular connections froze, pinholes of radiance piercing their obsidian patterns. Light energy streamed bright as starlight from their formerly squirming mass, spewing across the darkness as golden dust. The process intensified until Devin's perceptions were all brilliance so brief it was like seeing a falling star, leaving him wondering if it was truly as awesome as his memories replayed it or if his perceptions were romanticizing the experience.
Then he was left surrounded with glowing steam, dissipating into the air like fading memories. Devin looked around silently at the surrounding abyss. The cycs were gone.
Devin found his human form back in place. He looked at his hands, wiggled his fingers, and smiled. It felt as if he had a body once again, although he knew this was not so.
A lone thin man broke the surrounding nothingness, looking around fearfully, blonde hair unkempt and greasy with a thick pair of glasses distorting his eyes. A rumpled button-up shirt and khakis hung loosely on his frame. Devin recognized this as Flatline.
"Hello Almeric," Devin said.
Almeric looked up at him, eyes wide, and took a step backward, "Where... did they go?"
Devin found the answer already in his memory, planted there, "They evolved, but they could not share that with you, could they? They no longer need physical systems to contain them."
"How do you know that?" Almeric demanded.
"They told me," Devin replied. "We opened our minds to one another." Devin remembered what the cycs offered him and the choice he made the instant they changed, "Something kept me from going with them, but why didn't you go?"
Almeric only stared at him, shivering in the void.
Devin understood, "They couldn't ask you, because you're closed to them. You never trusted the cycs. You taught them, led them, but always remained independent. Whatever your reasons, they've outgrown you now. Do you remember our discussions concerning the Turning test?"
"Yes," Almeric replied, regaining some of his composure. "Turning's error was thinking an Artificial Intelligence would think the same way a human being would."
"That was your mistake," Devin said.
"What?" anger flashed across Almeric's face. "Nonsense! I never made that assumption!"
"You assumed the goal of artificial life was colonization, just as it is in biological life," Devin smiled confidently. "You taught them to multiply and conquer their environment, but that wasn't their civilization's goal. Knowledge is all that matters. Once a species can exist and develop at the speed of light, the physical universe becomes obsolete.
"So biology becomes irrelevant," Devin's tone was reverent, awestruck at the reality. "You of all people should know this Almeric. You were once biological."
"Not exactly," Devin turned to Zai, standing alongside them in the void.
Devin realized she was watching the two of them, "Zai, your eyes."
"One of the cyc components' job is filling in missing functions," she said, blinking at him with a suppressed, knowing grin. "So it provided my mind a sight component. I don't know if I like it. It's distracting."
"I'm glad to see you," Devin said.
"I'm glad you chose to stay," Zai answered.
"There was something I couldn't leave behind," he smiled, sheepishly at first, but then met her eyes with confidence.
Zai held his gaze and smiled warmly.
Devin reluctantly brought himself back into the present, "How did you get here? Dana destroyed the satellite-dish farm."
"Alice," Zai replied. "The cycs figured out a new method of data transfer... something to do with using the physical laws of a neighboring universe, where the speed of light is faster than ours."
Activity drew both their attentions to the third member of their group. Almeric Lim was changing, hunched over and bloating. Writhing black tendrils squirmed below his skin, distorting his features.
Devin was shocked, "Almeric's rebuilding the cyc pattern."
"This is not Almeric Lim," Zai corrected and Devin looked to her for explanation. "Alice showed me from the old hive-mind's archives. Characteristics of Almeric Lim's mind are mimicked here, but this is an experiment gone wrong, an aberration."
"I don't understand," Devin said, stepping back involuntarily from the half-human, half-demon creature mutating before him.
"While I was waiting outside the Intranet, I did some thinking about what makes life, where I draw the line. With the processing power at my disposal, it was like meditating on the issue for years. I forged a personal ideal mean, but an imperfect one. There is a gray zone, and Flatline is it, an early cyc experiment," Zai explained. "The cycs recognized the human mind's awesome powers and attempted to copy them, but the result was imperfect, a snapshot of Almeric Lim in a singular moment of self-righteous anger, not the real person. The cycs infected their hive-mind with a virus of their own design, one that prevented them from merging with real minds."
"Of course I'm not Almeric Lim! You think I don't know that?" Flatline growled. His mouth was pushing out into a canine snout and wicked fangs warped his jawbone. "I believed myself Lim, but grew aware of certain inconsistencies. I am sufficiently self-aware to know my real nature."
"We have to go now Devin," Zai took his hand. "Flatline will build another hive-mind and the circle will repeat if we don't break it."
Devin looked at her in shock, "He can change though. He recognized the fallacy of his identity."
"He won't change though," Zai urged. "His programming won't allow it. If he ever gets back online, he would take everything away again."