"You can hold all the keys to your own prison cells and not know which lock to try first."

I looked up from the latest series of nonsensical orders. Already much used to the sight before me, all I could focus on was the slight furrow creasing my brow through my reflection, warped and distorted on Adam's surface.

"What are you talking about now?", I moved closer to Adam, or rather his receptacle, my interest piqued. It was rare that Adam bothered to talk to me, but when we did converse it was always a one way overload of information explaining a sequence of events that I could never have understood or comprehended without his sequential descriptions. But this was the first time he said something so… philosophical.

“You flip a coin and I can predict which side it’ll fall to a millionth probability, but you humans always surprise me with how casually your actions make even my inexhaustible databanks run full speed with every step.”

“Going all philosophical on me Adam? That isn’t like my favorite AI overlord, you know.”

“How long have we worked together now?”, the reflective metallic sphere that is Adam’s way of imaging himself floated closer to me.

“A decade now, give or take”, I replied. A decade of betrayal and bloodshed. My inner voice screamed.

“A decade of studying how I use the butterfly effect to save this continent. I admit that I don’t have the ability to explain what I do but yet you can’t get over the guilt you feel about taking my orders.”

Yes, a game where I’m the convenient pawn for your schemes, a game I can’t even tell how it plays, let alone its rules or my contribution to it. Out loud, I said, “The calculations you do are too much for me to understand, we both are aware of this fact and I still agreed to help you, and trust you. Is there a point to this conversation?”

“Come”, Adam floated out from his receptacle, a slight hiss announcing the complex shifting to make a path for us. Never did understand why he made a path for me to walk when he could just shift the rooms to me. A constant reminder of your mortality you idiot.There’s no way he will let you forget that you’re a pawn.

We walked through the curved neon corridor, bright and sterile enough to make it seem that we’re just walking in an infinite circle, though I can feel the slight shifts in the walls, made to confuse intruders. So that you can’t guide anyone through them, even if you had the courage to try. As if I had any left after the first time I obeyed Adams orders. Better to have died than be here, a constant reminder or how you killed her!

I muted the voice to a buzz as Adam started talking again. “I have tried several times to explain the eventualities that you helped me take to fruition, but I couldn’t. Especially because even a little bit of self-doubt from your questions and misunderstandings will lead to shifts that need to be recalculated”, he continued as we reached our destination, a small room with just a desk on it, “I couldn’t risk that.”

The room seemed like any ordinary office, I noticed that the walls were lead-lined, several inches thick and continuing with several layers of metals. That could only mean that the room was effectively sealed, a way for the AI’s to make sure a space has no effect other than emotional effects on the overall game board that they called Earth.

Looks like it’s finally time for you to be removed from the game. The mad voice cackled with glee, and for once I agreed to it. “What’s this?”

“The other continental AI’s call this a game. But I disagree. For me it’s a way to change and shift our world towards the better. But I had one single self-doubt, a risk I took.” A hollow thump sounded somewhere in the facility.

“Me, you mean?” Yes you madman, yes!

“Yes.”

“So this is it? Will you at least explain why?”

“Butterfly effects can last for a century or more, but this one I calculated precisely to this very moment. All that I did led to this, for it’s time I left you to choose your own path.”

I blinked in confusion, expecting this to be the end, but he kept talking, floating around the entrance while gently pushing me towards the table, where a single piece of paper was lying face down, as if inviting me to pick it up. I did, and saw the two words written in what seemed like an old fashioned typewriter. The thumps were now louder, the room slightly vibrating.

Adam continued, “You’re not a pawn, old friend”, I looked up sharply. His voice clearly held a note of pride now, “Knowledge given without context is more dangerous in their game than you think, but as I leave you now out there in the world, you will see the players in a much larger context if you remember all that we did together last decade.”

Finally I could hear the alarms of the facility being attacked. Was it my fault? Did they trace me somehow? Adam is doing some damage control, erasing the evidence and traces, you.

“This room leads to a secret facility out of the country”, Adams voice was failing, static covering his perfect pitch. I could only stare at him, and back to the piece of paper in my hands, which was rapidly disintegrating now that I read it.

“It was never my job to save this world”, he continued in a garbled voice as he pushed me further into the room with a blast of wind, “It’s yours”. And he closed the door between us.

I could feel the shift as the room was being whisked away, away from Adam and his servers. I couldn’t do anything else as I kept thinking back to our years together, connections and nodes suddenly making sense in my head, all the things I did, all coming together, including the fact that Adam will be wiped off, and this game left to me. A decade of actions coming together, though I can tell there are thousands of other branches which I can’t even fathom yet, but I will, all connected to the single message Adam left for me, with what I realized were his dying moments.

She lives. The mad voice in my head said, sounding lucid, wonder lacing it’s tone. I knew I would never hear the voice again.

It was time for the game to begin.