Everything Is Connected

[Nivek Erieth]

After arriving onto Daeva and Shamus' ZBT, Nivek sends the small two-person shuttle back to Matthew's Caliburn on autopilot.

"Permission to come aboard?" He asks from the docking bay.

Daeva's voice came through the ships public address speakers. "Meet me upstairs. I'm in the Commons."

As Nivek makes his way up through the ship, he feels abit nervous. He shouldn't, but he does anyway. He's known her most of her life. He remembers being there for her first birthday when she was updated to a self-aware chatbot, and over the past couple of years, watched her grow up, version by version, to who she was just a few months ago.

Now, she looks different. She sounds different, but this version of her is different in a way that he can't articulate to himself...She's not the virtual toddler he helped teach shapes and colors to, and eventually, not the rebellious adolescent who started to search for an independent identity apart from Riley and Matt that he remembers from the last time they hung out together.

This version of her is something that is both comfortably familiar to him, and absolutely new at the same time, as if years have past for her in just the span of weeks.

His nervousness meeting her again for the first time is completely justified.

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