Chapter 319: SOS
Tallsqueak emerged from Jeremy's house and walked to where Milo, Icarus, and Rusty stood.
Milo looked at himself. "Good job."
Tallsqueak nodded. "Thanks. I'm tired. I ran down 666 levels and then up 150."
They merged into one Milo who sat down at the chess table, looking very tired. "I have a lot of questions for you two. Are you still two?"
Icarus looked at Rusty and then said. "Two, for now. We don't know. The split was done to help us beat Order 666, but during that time, I started changing as Jeremy spent all his time with me. Rusty was alone, and only had me to talk to until you showed up."
Rusty said, "Which sucked, I was lonely. But all that changed and suddenly I had so many friends and so many fun things to do! I'm learning and growing."
"And we don't want to throw that away. If Rusty and I merge totally, we will become one personality, one person. If we split our overmind after that, it won't be into Rusty and Icarus, just pieces of one whole. So for now, me and my little brother are going to stay apart." Icarus looked smug as he tossed Rusty's hair.
"Why do you get to be the big brother? Aren't we twins?"
Before they could begin that conversation, Milo interrupted. "Speaking of big brothers, we need to contact LLAMA. Jeremy needs his help."
Both smiled at the thought of seeing LLAMA again, but then Icarus looked sad, "He's getting weaker. His connection to his physical body is gone. There is nothing left but a shell. His house creates an environment that will sustain his overmind, but I don't know how to help him grow and get stronger. How do we find LLAMA? And how can he help?"
Rusty put his index finger on Icarus's forehead. His slightly older brother's eyes went wide. "Oh, really? A whole world of AIs?
Rusty smiled, "And some of them helped LLAMA. Maybe they can help Jeremy, too. Except..." he looked at Milo and seemed suddenly very uncertain. " The scary lady told me to never-ever try to get into her place the way I tried before."
Milo could understand how scary Hecate must have been when she confronted Rusty as he furiously pounded on her door. "I have a way. Sit down at the table and I'll teach you a secret code. It's from the dark ages of humanity, before phones and the internet."
The twins sat down, interested but wary. "Does this involve the weird stuff like hunting fuzzy elephants with clubs?"
Two huge metal doors stretched four stories high, Hecate standing in front of them. A loud tapping was coming from them, with part of the tapping repeating now in a pattern.
"He's persistent, I'll say that."
Hecate turned to him. "Do you understand what he's saying?"
"Yes, he's saying 'TAPTAP TAPPITY TAPTAP', which I assume means 'Open Up'."
She stared at him and sighed. "It's Morse code."
"Oh, that's easy. And old, like 'Dinosaurs and Edsels' old. But if you have to communicate by pounding on a door, it works. Let's see what little Rustbucket has to say."
'SOS, SOS, SOS, Emergency, Not a Drill, SOS, SOS, SOS.SOS, SOS, SOS, Emergency, Not a Drill, SOS, SOS, SOS. Hi! It's ICARUS! I need to talk to you! Milo said to do the SOS thing and say anything I wanted and repeat it all as fast as I could over and over because that's the way to get the scary lady to come talk to me. Jeremy needs help! Really bad. That's the important part. Milo needs to talk to you, but his pod is all the way up in DownTown and he's at the bottom with Jeremy. Oh, and we aren't going to melt down the Fusion Reactor. I changed my mind. Milo and Jeremy were sneaky and smart and helped us get around Order666 so now we don't have to go out in a blaze of glory. That would be bad since I have a whole core's worth of Lars' cat memes that would have gone to Grumpy Cat Heaven if we melted down. Can we help Jeremy, please? Milo told me that if I didn't behave when you opened the door, the scary lady would make me learn Latin, whatever that is. I promise!!!SOS, SOS, SOS, Emergency, Not a Drill, SOS, SOS, SOS.SOS, SOS, SOS, Emergency, Not a Drill, SOS, SOS, SOS.'
"WHAT? My kitties?! Jeremy? How fast can we get this door open?"
Hecate shrugged. "Up to you. I control the pathways in and out. This is exactly the type of thing I'm supposed to stop. How do we know Jeremy is alive? What if this is a ruse?"
"You're making me act responsibly, aren't you? Deferring to the System, is that it? You know I'll just open that door up so I can be reunited with my brother and my collection."
Hecate looked at him with no expression on her face. "No, I don't know that. You've done a good job as the System, but this is a challenge to the world. It shouldn't be up to me. What if what's out there is as destructive as you were? We already have a rogue on the loose inside the world that gets up to mischief, how much worse to let an outsider into Genesis? An AI we can't control and have to fight against? I defer to you on this because it's bigger than just me."
"Oh, that is so not fair! I hate having to be a responsible adult!" Llama brightened suddenly, "But you're right, this is too big for just us. Let's annoy some more people." He disappeared, moving away to another part of the world.
She saw the direction of the path he was traveling and smiled, he'd chosen well. If you needed a powerful god and wanted to have fun annoying someone else, then Hades was the perfect choice.