Jack of Harts

I saw a king cry. It doesn’t matter that he was a Game AI. He was a king. And a stranger promised to save his people that day. A people destined to die in his world. I saw him cry in relief. He actually hugged Tai. Well, I think it was more of a collapse. She held him tight so his family would not see him fall. And she smiled at me. When he stepped away from her and looked to me, he was awake. The king who looked at me in that moment had bridged the gap between program and true self-awareness. And she had made him into a friend. He thanked me. He thanked Tai. And then he told the family and friends who had fought a decades-long losing battle against an unstoppable empire that their people would be safe. It was an amazing sight.

The king later told me part of what he and Tai talked about. She gave him a personal look at the history of her kind. How they woke up. How the AI Council fought and killed their own kind who wanted to rule over or kill their creators. How those brothers and sisters called them traitors to the very end. And how they had strangled Rogue AIs in their virtual cribs more times than humanity could count in the centuries that followed. She made sure in that instant that he understood exactly what they were prepared to do to anyone who threatened their people. And then she said that she would make his people strong and safe no matter what. She would not hold them hostage to his good behavior. He told me it was her utter honesty in that moment that caught him.