Day 7, 0 NE

[This was a scene that I did two ways. This is the way that lost out. But again, this shows what happened not what Lem said happened.]

“So, what do we write?”

“I suggest we focus on things future historians will find interesting.”

Lem smiled. “They’ll probably want to know what we thought was important enough to write about. I’m pretty sure that’s how history works.”

“There’s the whole, world-just-ended angle.”

“Indeed.” He nodded thoughtfully and sipped his coffee. 

They had both just put pen to paper when Eryn spoke again. “Lem?” He sat back in his chair. “I want to write about the day we shut down the System. I want to tell them how it happened. You and I are the only people in the whole world who know what really happened.”

Lem drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

“But it’s important, don’t you think?”

Lem lay his pen down in the crease of his notebook. “I do. That’s why I’ve pegged our new dates to that night. But Arley was a Systemic AI, which means she could basically predict the future. She was my partner, which means she always had my best interest in mind. She warned me to never let anyone know that her and I ever planned to shut down the System. She said if I was caught after the System was gone, I would receive a punishment that had a lot more to do with anger than justice.”

“But you didn’t shut the System down. Thomas did.”

“I think you’re over-estimating how compelling that detail is. People would still question why we were down in that mine shaft at all, why we didn’t try to stop Thomas, and why we conveniently left him to die behind a four-foot-thick steel door. We’d look guilty and we’d have no systemic veracity rating to prove our innocence.”

“We could explain that we were under a mnemonic lattice. And that it wasn’t really us at all, they’d understand.”

“Just like we understood when Thomas told us about our lattices? No. They would assume we were liars or insane. Even if an angry mob didn’t string us up, they certainly wouldn’t believe anything we had to say or listen to anything we tried to teach them from the book. Our new roles are too important. Let’s play it close to the vest for a while. We can be more forthcoming once we’re better established.”

Eryn chewed her lip and screwed up her face in thought. Eventually she huffed, put her pen to paper and started writing.