Archive of Our Own

Anderson was a fairly typical newt, all things considered. Or at least, he had been, at first.

His childhood had been almost painfully uneventful, at least for a newt growing up in Newtopia. He never really had to work too hard as a child, and his parents were willing to step in if anything went wrong. And so it felt like no time at all had passed before it was time for him to leave the house. Fortunately, his family had a slightly above average income, enough to guarantee him admission to Newtopia University. They weren’t necessarily wealthy, especially compared to the nobles and business owners that were common in Newtopia, but they were still fairly well off.

It was during his time at the University that things started changing for him, though at first he sort of just… drifted along. He didn’t quite know yet back then what he wanted to do, but his parents had assured him that was normal. In the meantime, he busied himself taking general classes.

The first year of University came and went, and still, very little happened to him. Anderson didn’t particularly fit in with the other students, though. They all seemed to have a purpose, knowing what they wanted to do and how they would accomplish it. Plus they seemed obsessed with their classes, which felt odd to Anderson, considering how lax the previous schools he attended were.

As a consequence, though, Anderson didn’t really have any good friends. He had acquaintances, sure, but no real friends. Oddly, that didn’t bother him too much. Or, at least, not consciously.

As the next year of University began, he was prepared for another year just drifting, trying to find his place. During registration, though, he saw that a new class was available for the next semester, regarding new “computer” technology. Most of his classmates dismissed it, though Anderson was oddly drawn. He was running out of general classes to take, so he would have to choose what he wanted to do sometime soon. Thinking little of it, he signed up to take the class next semester and promptly forgot about it.

The first semester of the year passed much the same as his first year had, aimlessly going through the motions. The next semester came fairly quickly though, and he was reminded about the new class he had signed up for. He could have easily dropped the class without consequence if he didn’t care for it, but he decided to at least give it a try.

The first day he was almost late. He wasn’t quite used to the new schedule, something he always struggled with at the start of a new semester. Despite arriving seconds before the bell, though, the classroom was mostly empty. There were only a few newts scattered around the classroom, and nobody else followed him into the classroom in the seconds before the bell rang. The professor seemed unfazed by the multitude of empty chairs, though, and proceeded to introduce the brand new technology of the computer.

It was beautiful.

The numbers, the theory of it all, it drew him in like nothing else had. The fact that even the primitive stages of the technology could perform calculations much easier and faster than even the smartest newts of the time was amazing to him. For possibly the first time, he felt like he had taken a real interest in something.

The rest of his time in Newtopia University was spent taking as many of the new computer classes as possible. He regularly spent time in the experimental lab where the computer technology was being developed. The researchers there quickly warmed up to him, helping teach how the machines worked and the problems they were facing.

As he got older and closer to graduating, he spent more time in the computer lab than he did in the rest of his classes combined. He quickly developed the knowledge and experience to help solve some of the problems the researchers were facing. Before his eyes and beneath his fingers, the recently born technology began to flourish.

By the time he graduated, computers were starting to see use in the industrial sector. Anderson was easily able to find a high-paying job setting up and maintaining automated machines. He still did research, on his own time. Computer science was such a new field, meaning there were so many things to do and problems to solve, and not only was he one of the only ones who knew how to solve them, but it was simply something he enjoyed. He was quickly recognized as one of the top researchers on the subject.

Despite the fact that he had finally found what felt like a true purpose, it was around that time when persistent existential dread began to set in.

It wasn’t too bad, at first. He wasn’t a child anymore, so it made sense to feel bad about getting older. A solid part of his life was just...done. Completely finished. But being an adult gave him so many more opportunities he looked forward to as a child. So why did he feel so awful?

He started losing sleep.

Some nights, he would remain blissfully unaware, thinking about whatever computer problem he was facing before inevitably drifting away. But on others his mind would inadvertently wander to the topic of death. When he fell asleep, his consciousness was gone, sure, but he knew that it would return. When he died, though, his consciousness would just disappear, never to exist again. It wouldn’t even be dreaming, he would just be gone, and he would never wake up. It felt terrible to think about that, almost physically painful, a deep pit in his stomach that wouldn’t go away no matter how he tried to distract himself.

He didn’t get much sleep those nights. Luckily his work schedule was fairly forgiving because of his level of expertise, so he could afford to sleep in sometimes.

After only a few months of work, a message was sent to him directly from the Queen of Amphibia. His work on developing computer systems and his multitude of respected research articles led him to being recognized as one of the most knowledgeable newts on the subject. He was being contracted by the government to work on their computers. He would be given a full time position with benefits, if he accepted, which he did. How could he refuse an offer from the Queen? That would be madness.

The new job helped, somewhat, with the paralyzing existential dread. He felt an odd sort of importance he hadn’t before. He had been well-recognized as a researcher before, of course, but now the Queen had proven that his expertise was valuable. He was worth the Queen’s time and money, and thus, the kingdom’s time and money. He would not allow himself to let her down.

His time for the Queen was overwhelming, at first. His family had been on the wealthy side growing up—he had been wealthy enough to attend university after all—but the nobles who frequented the castle were disgustingly oversaturated with wealth. It was always odd, listening to their posh accents and their petty squabbles, seeing them spend obscene amounts of money with little to no care.

Fortunately, he was given a lab space in the castle where he could spend his time away from the stuffy nobles. The lab was huge, consisting of much of the space underneath the castle that went unclaimed due to the lack of windows. He could spend the whole day working in the lab and nobody would bother him.

Almost nobody, that is.

One other newt regularly used the lab space at the castle. She was a biologist researching the various flora and fauna around amphibia. As a result, her side of the lab was regularly filled with whatever creature she was studying at the moment. But she never intruded on his space, so he didn’t mind. The labs were quite big after all.

As for her name, Anderson had embarrassedly forgotten. She must have introduced herself at some point, but Anderson couldn’t for the life of him remember. And they had known each other for long enough by the time he realized he still didn’t know her name that it would be incredibly awkward to ask. Normally, if he forgot someone’s name, he could just wait until somebody else mentioned them. Unfortunately, nobody else besides the two of them regularly used the lab, so he never got the chance to overhear her name.

Unlike the nobles, she didn’t bother him too often, which he appreciated. She knew not to touch the delicate machine parts he was working with, which was more than the other newts in the castle could say. And in return Anderson lent an ear to her when she was ranting about whatever new creature she had discovered. He occasionally helped out with taking measurements or running experiments, but he was never too good at biology, so more often than not he was more of a hindrance. That didn’t bother her, though.

They quickly struck up a strong friendship. In fact, she was perhaps the best friend Anderson had ever had, even if he had forgotten her name like an idiot.

Somehow, despite everything, his life was starting to look up. He had a purpose in life now, and he had a real friend. For perhaps the first time, he was excited for what the future held.

Anderson woke up on a seemingly ordinary day to an incessant knocking on the door to his room. He had been given a room as part of his position in the castle. It wasn’t particularly lavish, especially compared to the massive luxurious rooms the castle was known for. But it was his. Plus he preferred having a relatively small room. Too much luxury always ended up overwhelming him.

Last night was pretty bad. The astrophysics department had just released a new report and he had spent the night grappling with the sheer magnitude of the numbers within. He didn’t know when he had finally drifted off to sleep, but it had been well after midnight. Possibly early morning.

The knocking continued, somehow more urgent than before.

“Alright, alright, just a second!” He shouted. The knocking paused momentarily, but after exactly one second the knocking resumed. He sighed, hopping out of bed and shambling over to the door. The door opened to reveal a young messenger newt. They stared at each other in silence for a bit before the young newt remembered why he was knocking.

“I- The Queen is summoning you,” the messenger said, anxiety clear in his voice.

Anderson sighed again. “Was that worth all the knocking? You were acting like it was some kind of emergency.”

The newt looked confused. “But… the Queen is summoning you.” He repeated, as if that explained the urgency.

“Did she look angry?” Anderson asked, starting to feel a bit worried. He hadn’t done anything wrong to his knowledge, but the kid looked terrified.

“Well, no,” the kid replied.

Anderson stared at him blankly, before letting out a short laugh. “You must be new, kid. The Queen won’t kill you if you’re a bit slow. But, if it makes you feel better, I’ll go now.”

Luckily Anderson always slept with regular clothes on, an odd habit born from months of being too tired after hours of research to bother changing. They were casual clothes, yes, but still fairly presentable. Hopefully he could at least pretend that he had woken up at a reasonable time.

The kid clearly wouldn’t leave him alone until he was delivered before the Queen. The kid was constantly walking too fast to be comfortable, getting ahead and then waiting anxiously for Anderson to catch up. Anderson considered intentionally walking a bit slow to mess with him, but decided to just get the meeting over with so he could go back to his room. And eat food, too, he hadn’t done that for a while.

Soon, they reached the throne room. The massive doors were built to look intimidating, but Anderson had been living at the castle long enough that the effect was lost on him. Same with the massive size of the throne room. And, of course, the Queen herself.

As they entered the throne room, it was easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer presence of the Queen. It always seemed to fill the room, making visitors feel small not only from the massive height difference but also from the sense of importance the Queen seemed to constantly radiate. The kid seemed to shrink from the pressure, slowing down enough to walk slightly behind him as they approached the throne

The Queen’s face immediately brightened when she saw who they were. “Why, hello there! How are you doing Anderson?”

“Fine, your majesty.” Anderson responded humorously, complete with an overexaggerated bow.

The Queen laughed, clearly amused. Anderson was one of the only newts who picked up on how bored the Queen looked whenever she had to deal with nobles and their unnecessary reverence. He had started referring to the Queen in more casual terms, which she appreciated, but it was funny sometimes to mock the nobles and their pontifications.

The Queen turned her attention to the messenger newt, who impossibly shrunk back further. “Thanks for bringing him so quickly, peon. I’m sure it was difficult to pull him away from his work.”

The kid shuddered. “I told you, my name’s-”

“Go, peon! Give us some frog-darned privacy!”

The kid, clearly happy to have an excuse to leave, practically ran out of the room.

Once the kid had left, the Queen relaxed and let out a chuckle. “It’s so fun scaring the new kids. Always looking like I’m going to eat them. It’s hilarious!” The Queen said.

Anderson laughed along, much more used to the Queen's enthusiasm.

The Queen abruptly focused, her tone becoming more serious. “Alright, down to business.”

The Queen proceeded to outline Anderson’s newest task. The royal artificers had had a major breakthrough, creating some sort of artifact with immense power. The specifics went well above both his and the Queen’s head, but the point was that they now had essentially unlimited power to work with.

“With all this power at our fingertips, I believe Newtopia can become something… more. I’ve seen your work with those robotic assembly lines. I need you to create an assembly line that can make more robots. If you can accomplish that, we’ll have an exponentially growing workforce. Ordinarily, finding a source of power for that would be difficult, I’d imagine, but now, there shouldn’t be anything in our way!”

Anderson was stunned. Self-replicating technology was supposed to be decades away! But the prospect of working on something so difficult, so important, well. He would be a fool so say no.

There was one problem though. “I only work with computers, though. I don’t know how to build robots,” Anderson said.

“Ah, that’s no problem,” The Queen responded. “I’ll just throw a bunch of our robotics guys at you. You can handle them, right?”

“I...I guess?”

And that was how he found himself leading a team of robotics experts to complete a supposedly impossible project.

The project took years. There were so many things he hadn’t considered that he would have to work on. But progress was, somehow, being made. There were deadlocks, of course, but they inevitably got resolved after just a few weeks.

One thing he didn’t particularly enjoy about the project was that the robotics experts weren’t nearly as friendly as his biology friend. They were skilled, of course. The Queen wouldn’t throw novices at him, after all. But they were standoffish, clearly a bit disgruntled by how sudden their jobs had changed. Not outright mean, that would just be unprofessional, but they weren’t friendly, not like her.

The Queen had authorized Anderson with functionally unlimited funds as long as he could provide results. He could have easily diverted some of the funds to a private account and lived without financial trouble for the rest of his life. But that just wasn’t right. The Queen had trusted him to use the kingdom’s funds wisely, and he would never betray her trust. He was paid well enough anyways, there wasn’t any point.

The project was tough, and even if the project didn’t pan out fully, there would still be benefits. If he could only program the robots, then the Queen would have a more efficient workforce. If he could build the assembly line, then huge swaths of the industrial workforce could be automated. And if he could get the robots to build more robots… well then the only limit is the resources around them. He could see why the Queen was eager to see results.

He chose to build the first factory just outside the city. Close enough to get supplies and return within the day, but far enough away that they didn’t have to worry about space. With so much money at his disposal, he decided to build a proper factory, hiring builders to create a simple domed roof for them to work under. They couldn’t assemble the more technical equipment but they could at least protect them from the elements.

He spent a solid year working with the robotics engineers. They needed to design an all-purpose robot that was capable of interpreting a broad range of instructions yet simple enough to be built by another machine. They spent a lot of time designing and redesigning. Finally, they settled on a large frog-like build. Then, of course, they had to actually assemble the thing.

The next six months were spent building. They needed to figure out a way for the blueprints to be read by the main terminal. The robotics engineers were less helpful here, since this was outside their area of expertise, but they were extremely helpful with setting up hardware. They built and wired up conveyor belts, robotic arms, and hoppers, while Anderson started building the computer from the ground up. Anderson took care of the internal processes, while the engineers built a complete dashboard and interface.

Once the assembly lines could assemble the robots, there was the problem of acquiring the parts. They had designed the robots to be built out of relatively simple pieces, but they couldn’t just drop a lump of metal into the machine and expect it to spit out a robot.

So much time was just spent making molds. Taking each and every piece of the robot and making molds for each of them for the foundries to use. Even if they got the robotic assembly line working properly, they would need a constant supply of parts. But if this worked, the robots could work at the foundries to speed up production.

Finally, they were done. The factory was working. It was a bit slow, but the factory could churn out multiple robots in a single day. And these robots could, theoretically, be tasked to build another factory. Somehow, they had completed an assumedly impossible project.

And of course, Anderson was completely burnt out. He spent a while just staying in his room all day. He had enough money to order room service to cater to his every need, allowing him to lie in bed as the haze clouding his mind slowly faded.

Once he felt ready to move again, he made his way down to the lab. There was always more work to do.

He started getting reports sometimes, about the efficacy of the robot design he had made. It was a huge success, apparently, catapulting Newtopia to new heights of productivity. Manual labor was all but entirely replaced by robot drones. The influx of essentially free labor created a surge of profits that the Queen had immediately taxed and invested back into the community. There were nobles, especially business owners, who complained, but the Queen had summarily ignored them.

Without such a demand for manual labor, huge swaths of the workforce were out of jobs. Luckily, the Queen’s executive actions allowed time for people to explore their interests. Many people now had the time to go back to school, creating an intellectual boom. Technology developed rapidly, especially since many people had been inspired by the new robots and studied engineering and technology. Others lacking that particular drive became inspired by the arts. Many new theaters and museums opened up as art flourished.

For all intents and purposes, Newtopia had entered a golden age, though it felt a bit odd to think about. Everything that had happened was directly because of him.

Anderson woke up on a seemingly ordinary day to an incessant knocking on the door to his room. “Just a second!” He shouted, as he slid out of bed and stumbled to the door. The knocking paused for exactly one second, before resuming more urgently than before.

Feeling an odd sense of deja vu, he cracked the door open. There, hand still raised to knock, was the same messenger newt from before. He was visibly older now, though it had been years since Anderson had last seen him. The persistent knocking was a bit annoying, he still clearly took his job too seriously.

“Hello, Dr. Anderson. You have been summoned by the Queen. Please accompany me to the throne room at once.” The newt said. He was more professional now, Anderson would give him that. Less uncertain of himself, it seemed. It was a bit odd, seeing the effects that time had on people.

“Alright, I’m coming, mellow out a little, won’t you?” He said, slipping into a comfortable pace behind the young newt.

As he walked to the throne room, he wondered why he had been summoned. Perhaps something was wrong with the robots? Though if that was the case a formal audience with the Queen was hardly necessary. Maybe he was receiving some kind of award? Or was that selfish to think about. As they walked down the long hallways of the castle, he kept racking his brains for what the Queen could possibly need that required a formal summons.

Well, he wouldn’t get anywhere making wild guesses. He would find out why he was needed when he reached the throne room, there was no need to overthink it.

Soon, they reached the massive doors to the throne room. As they walked inside, Anderson moved to perform his usual theatrics for the Queen, but stopped when he got a good look at her. Something was clearly not quite right. The Queen was visibly fatigued, clearly lacking her usual energy. She looked pale and tired, her crown askew.

“Why, hello there.” The Queen greeted, although her voice lacked the jubilation she normally possessed.

“My Queen? What’s…wrong?” Anderson asked

“Leave us!” She commanded, ignoring his question. The throne room emptied, not only of the messenger newt but also the guards. Were there more guards than usual? That didn’t bode well.

Once the throne room had emptied leaving the two of them alone, the Queen slumped, taking off her crown and rubbing her temples. “I don’t normally do this, because I trust you, but I need to know,” she said in a strained voice. “Can you keep what I’m about to tell you a secret? And I mean a real secret. I don’t want any hint of this to leave this room.”

Anderson was stunned. The Queen was never this serious with him. “I…Of course. What’s the problem, though?” He asked.

“...” She sighed. “I... am ill.”

“I can see that.” Anderson said, deadpan.

The Queen chuckled weakly, then winced in pain. “Yeah, I’m not looking too great right now, am I? But anyways, I’m quite ill. The doctors all say it's probably fatal.”

Fatal. Anderson didn’t know how to respond. The Queen had been Newtopia’s ruler for longer than he had been alive. He had never considered the possibility that the Queen could ever fall. “...How long do you have?” he asked.

The Queen sighed. “It depends. I’ve got all of my best doctors working on it, but they say that they can only slow down the disease. In theory, I could go many more years before finally succumbing, but the worst case scenario is six months.”

Anderson stood in silence, speechless.

“But! Anyways! You are probably wondering why I called you here.” The Queen was clearly injecting fake enthusiasm into her voice, but Anderson didn’t comment on it.

“Contrary to what you might think, I actually read your reports. You mentioned, once, that you were considering the possibility of putting consciousness into a machine.”

Anderson had forgotten about that. He still had to turn in reports as technically required by his position, but after everything he had done for the kingdom already nobody would bat an eye if his reports were lackluster. Lately he had taken to doodling his thoughts on a piece of cheap paper and turning that in on the days they were due.

He had written that report after a particularly rough night. He had spent a long time pondering the meaning of consciousness. Molecules in his brain got replaced all the time, so it couldn’t be a particular set of atoms that formed his consciousness. Instead, he reasoned, it must be a particular pattern of molecules that formed what he called himself. And that made sense, because when he got knocked out or even went to sleep, he wouldn’t wake up with the same atoms he had started with. And yet that was still him.

Then, he reasoned, if his consciousness was just one complicated pattern of molecules, it should be possible to simulate that on a computer. He had scribbled down a few ideas for how to do that before sleep finally overtook him. He didn’t think the Queen would actually read that, much less actually ask him to work on that.

“Yes, that’s right.” She continued. “I want a… backup plan per se if the doctors can’t find anything. I don’t even know if it’s possible or not. But if anybody can do it, it would be you.”

He was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that the queen was dying. But he was given a task by the Queen, and he would be seeing it through.

He had already completed one world-altering monumental project. How hard could a second be?

He spent most of his time at the lab these days. As such, he saw more of his biology friend. Though she didn’t look like she had time to talk much. If she wasn’t out looking for new species she was running test after test on whatever animal or plant she was studying that day.

It was odd, actually. Recently she had started running tests on creatures he had never even heard of before. Before he could at least vaguely recognize the type of creature, even if he didn’t know the specific species, but now these creatures looked almost alien. He wanted to ask about them, but she always looked too busy to spare time to talk.

Then again, it wasn’t like he had much time for conversation either. Unlike before with the robots, there was a real time crunch. If he couldn’t finish this project, the Queen could die. Forever. There would be no second chances.

The existential fear of dying was worse than ever. The fact that the Queen, supposedly the most stable part of Newtopia, was dying made the possibility even more real. If he could, he would spend every hour of the day working on the project, but unfortunately his mortal body required sleep in order to function properly. Almost every night was spent lying awake for far too long paralyzed in thought unless he used the royal sleeping pills.

The first few days of work he barely knew where to start. So he just started by doing what he could. Building the skeleton framework of the project, defining terms, coding inputs and outputs. He wasn’t a robotics expert, but he knew enough about it by now to make a solid interface. Others could come in the future and extend what he started, as long as he could just build a solid core.

The lab rapidly transformed as the weeks flew by. His side was covered in computers and blueprints as a massive metal sphere began to take shape. On the other side, a veritable zoo of plant and animal cages was growing almost every day. It formed an odd dichotomy, between the steadily growing habitats for plants and animals and the development of intimidating metal machines. Though Anderson couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Four months went by much too quickly. The Queen was looking sicker than ever, and nothing the doctors ever tried managed to slow down the disease.

At that point, it was undeniable. At his current rate, Anderson wouldn’t have the project finished before Queen perished. There was so much he had to do, so much more work than he had expected. He could do it, he knew, but it would take time. Time they did not have. But he had to keep going, hoping that the doctors would come up with a breakthrough, even as that likelihood kept dropping.

A couple days later, while he was up in the skeletal framework of his creation, his biology friend rushed into the lab, pushing a large cage in front of her.

“Yo Anderson! Get down here! I’ve got something good!”

Anderson hadn’t heard such joy in her voice for a long time. The past few months had had them both getting steadily more disheartened even as they buried themselves deeper and deeper in their work.

He carefully set down his tools before jumping down off his machine and making his way around his equipment over to where his friend stood with the cage. Inside was some sort of odd moss covered creature. It wasn’t moving, though Anderson could hear it breathing. Perhaps it was sleeping?

“What… is that?” He asked.

“Keep this on the down-low, okay?” Anderson nodded. He hadn’t seen her this excited for months. “The artificers managed to create an artifact that can bridge between worlds. I used to just study things on Amphibia, but now they let me study all sorts of creatures that slip through! It’s amazing.”

An artifact? That sounded just like… “Really? Wow. They told me it could produce functionally unlimited power. They let me use it to power the worker robots I developed.”

“Holy frog that is a legendary artifact if I’ve ever heard of one.” And wasn’t that an understatement. Immense energy production, travel between worlds. What else could that artifact do? That would be fascinating to think about, but ultimately unimportant right now.

“So anyways,” Anderson asked, pivoting back to the previous topic, “what’s so special about this… moss...man...thing?”

“Mossman! That’s a great name! Let me write that down.” She pulled out her notebook and began to scribble furiously. “The mossman appears to have the ability to create and maintain life! I don’t know yet if that’s indicative for the entire species, but either way, this specimen is unique.”

“Maintain life? But then, the Queen-” Anderson was starting to understand her excitement

“Yeah, that’s why this is so big. Here, look at this,” she said. She pulled out a thin needle and poked a small hole in the creature’s moss. Immediately, an odd substance started slowly leaking out. She grabbed an old withered rose and pressed its stem up against the hole. Immediately, the rose regained color, swelling up until it looked practically brand new.

“Fascinating…” Anderson breathed. He wasn’t even super interested in biology, but this was just that interesting.

“Isn’t it? Here, come help me with this,” she said, pulling out her equipment. “We have a lot of tests to run.”

Anderson spent almost the entire night running tests with her on the odd creature. He was less helpful as the night turned into morning and the tests started to get more complicated, but he did what he could to help her. The Queen’s health was the number one priority.

The next day, they had a breakthrough.

The research from the mossman didn’t completely cure the Queen, but it bought them time. It also had the side effect of completely revolutionizing modern medical technology, but for Anderson that was less important than the Queen’s health. Anderson had crucially gotten the miracle he needed. He had time, now. And that was all that he needed.

Work on the machine, which he had taken to calling the CORE, progressed relatively quickly over the next few months. The extra breathing room allotted by the improved medical technology allowed him to refine the system, making it more robust instead of the rushed bare-bones design he was hastily assembling earlier.

He eventually ran into a problem. He couldn’t fully simulate an artificial consciousness, owing to the fact that literally nobody knew what consciousness was. That meant, of course, that he couldn’t run complete tests on the machine. And he needed to run a lot of tests to make sure everything was working before presenting his creation to the Queen.

That wasn’t the whole of the problem, though. He could pass simple AI’s into the CORE to make sure there weren’t any typos or simple mistakes that would compromise the entire project. The more concerning issue was that whatever data he passed into the core inevitably started to decay. And the more complex the data, the quicker it decayed. No known algorithms could protect data loss at the rate an entity as complex as a consciousness would inevitably experience.

It was so frustrating! He was so close, the CORE was so close to completion. But if he couldn’t find a solution, the CORE would be worthless, despite all the work he put in.

Part of what made the issue so frustrating was that he didn’t know what the cause of the problem was. Consciousness was just incredibly poorly understood, even by the experts of the field. At this point, he would be satisfied if he could stumble across a solution, even if he didn’t fully understand why the problem was occurring in the first place.

“Yo Anderson! Get down here! I’ve got something good!”

Feeling an odd sense of deja vu, Anderson jumped down to where his friend was bouncing up and down in glee.

“Come on!” She shouted, leading him down to one of the lab’s side rooms and opening the door. Inside, mirrors covered the walls from floor to ceiling. In true scientist fashion, it looked like she had grabbed whatever mirrors were around the castle and attached them to the wall instead of ordering mirrored wall panels.

In the center of the room were a few somethings Anderson could only describe as...alien.

“Impressive, right? I’m not quite sure what these things are, but I’ve been calling them the Shadowfish.” Barely contained excitement laced her voice.

“What do the mirrors do?” He asked.

“It’s the only way I’ve found to contain them,” she started. “But that’s less important. I’ve only done preliminary tests, but these creatures seem to hold the key to your project!”

Anderson was, quite simply, shocked. “How do you know?” He asked.

“You think I don’t listen to your ramblings while you’re working?” Anderson blushed. He often forgot that he wasn’t alone in the labs, and talking to himself was a good way to work out problems. She continued, not noticing his embarrassment. “You’re having trouble preventing data loss, right? These creatures are practically the embodiment of decay! I’m sure we’ll be able to find something with these creatures.”

Data from the Shadowfish, in addition to halting the decay of the crude simulated consciousness, also miraculously provided a solution to another problem he hadn’t even started to address, that being how to get the consciousness from the person into the machine. Essence from the Shadowfish could be used to safely capture a mind and transfer it to the CORE to be processed.

He spent the rest of the night in a daze. Coding line after line in the machine as his friend ran test after test on the samples. He couldn’t finish the project that night, of course, but every major stumbling block had been overcome. He was close now. Just a few more days of work and he would finally be...

“Done. It’s done.”

Anderson could barely believe the words he was saying. This was a project that should have taken years, decades even, if it was even feasible in the first place. But it wasn’t even a full year after he had started and he had just finished running tests on the last module.

Somehow, he had finished this impossible task with time to spare. The Queen, while visibly pale and sweaty, was still adequately performing her duties as the Monarch.

“Wait, really? It’s done?” His friend replied, looking over at his side of the lab from where she was working. The CORE was a solid machine now, no trace of the skeletal framework that it had existed as for months. It was just a large metal sphere for now, though he had added many different ports for future roboticists to utilize. It would be easy for others to come and build peripherals, but Anderson was the only one who understood the inner workings.

“...Yes.” Anderson was still barely comprehending what he was saying.

“...We gotta go tell the Queen.” She said, though she made no move to get up out of her chair.

They sat in silence for a bit longer, Anderson still processing the fact that he was done. “Yeah,” he breathed, before his brain finally processed what she just said. “Wait, yeah. Let’s go. What are we waiting for?”

“I don’t know, you were the one just sitting there!” But her words lacked any sort of bite. “Come on!” She yelled, getting up and running out of the laboratory.

They ran through the twisting castle corridors to the throne room. Unfortunately, the lab was in the basement of the castle, and the throne room was close to the top floor. Neither of them were particularly physically fit, considering they both worked in the labs all day. By the time they reached the throne room, they were both completely out of breath and tired. Regardless, they threw open the doors, and stumbled inside, ignoring the protests of the guards. The Queen, weak but still functional, was talking to a group of nobles, but had gone silent at the sudden intrusion.

“Who dares interrupt– oh it’s just you two.” The Queen’s voice instantly became friendlier when she saw who they were. “Why, hello there! What’s up with you?”

The two of them were both too out of breath to say anything for a moment. The Queen must have seen something in their eyes, though, because she immediately began to clear the room.

“Alright, everybody out.” The Queen said. “I have an important meeting with these two that I simply must attend to.”

The nobles started to cry out in disbelief, but the Queen got up and started to push them out.

“Out! Out! Everybody out! Not you two you guys get to stay. But the rest of you, OUT!”

Once the grumbling nobles finally left the throne room, the Queen’s face seemed to sag. She bent over, catching her breath, before making her way back to the throne and sitting down with a sigh.

“Alright you two. Besides rescuing me from those boring nobles, thank you for that by the way, why did you guys come?” She asked.

“...It’s done,” Anderson said, still breathing hard. No need to embellish it at all.

“...Oh. Oh. That’s… wow.”

“You said it, your majesty.” Anderson’s snark, though, would never be silenced.

“Well come on then let's go check it out.” The Queen said, getting back up. She swayed a bit on her feet but held up her hand to silence them. “I’ll be fine. Let’s go!” She said as she began to march out of the throne room.

They would have followed, but they were both barely able to keep upright, much less walk. The Queen awkwardly looked back once she reached the doors and realized they weren’t following. “Did you run all the way up here?” She incredulously asked.

“...Yes,” his biology friend responded.

“Wow.” And she did genuinely look impressed. “You guys need a ride?” She asked, kneeling down and putting out her hand.

It was a testament to the Queen’s sheer size that both of them could easily fit in the palm of her hand. Even while weakened, the Queen had more trouble navigating the castle’s hallways than holding them up. The ride back was a bit bumpy, but they made it back to the laboratory in almost no time at all.

The Queen set them back on the ground right before they entered the laboratory. As they walked in, Anderson could feel himself getting giddy. This was supposed to be impossible but he had done it. The Queen could continue to live despite her illness.

He could see the shock on the Queen’s face as she finally got a good look at the sheer size of the CORE.

He hadn’t really been paying attention to how big the CORE ended up being. He was far more concerned for its performance than how it looked. But it was only right then, with the normally imposing Queen looking small compared to the massive metal CORE, did he realize the magnitude of what he had built. Not just in terms of physical size, but also the concept of what he had finished. He had created a machine that could preserve someone’s mind, potentially for all eternity.

“Has it been tested?” The Queen asked. “Is there anyone in there now?”

“Not… really. I’ve done simulations with crude AI, but no real world testing. As in, I haven’t…actually tested this on a real person yet.” Partly because only three people in Newtopia knew about the CORE, but also partly because if a test went wrong…

“What happens if the machine fails?” Ah. He hadn’t planned on bringing it up, because didn’t want to worry her, but since she asked...

“Theoretically? Anything. Most likely? You just die.” Anderson knew that was hard to hear, but since the Queen had asked a question, Anderson would provide an answer.

“Well, that’s not good." Not good was certainly a mild way of putting it.

They stood in silence for a while, contemplating. They could try it on the Queen now, but since the machine had never been tested with a real person there was no way they could know what would happen. It could work, certainly, but most machines didn’t work right on their first real test, no matter how much the theoretical parts had been scrutinized. The only way they could be sure is if…

“Test it on her,” the Queen ordered, abruptly pointing at his biology friend. “Yes, you heard me right. We’re doing this now.”

“I… Your majesty,” She breathed in disbelief. “Not that I’m not willing to do anything for the good of Newtopia, but what if the process works? This project is for you, not for me.”

“When the process succeeds,” The Queen responded. “I will happily join you in there.”

“But…what?” She asked, confused.

“You think I’m selfish enough to keep this all to myself? No. I want all of Newtopia’s greatest minds to be preserved together,” She proclaimed.

That was… not what Anderson was expecting. There was no reason the CORE couldn’t handle multiple minds at once, of course. He had built the thing with tons of extra memory just in case. But he had thought the CORE was just for the Queen. It was… strange to think that she was not only willing to share, but actively wanted others to be preserved with her. Regardless, his admiration for the Queen grew immensely.

“Do it now. That’s an order.” The Queen’s harsh tone kicked Anderson into action. Regardless of whatever indecipherable mess of emotions was eating at him, the Queen had given an order, so he would fulfill it. He typed away at the control panel, making sure everything was ready. He hesitated, though, when the time came for the more...amphibian portion of the hardware to be initialized.

“What does she have to do?” The Queen asked.

“All you have to do is put on that intimidating-looking helmet,” he explained, pointing to the large metal monstrosity that only vaguely resembled a helmet sitting on one of the benches. It was a massive, ugly thing, with exposed wires and electrodes clearly visible. “I didn’t bother spending any time to make it look good, but it’s functional.”

“Walk me through the process.” His biology friend said, voice a bit strained, though Anderson didn’t fault her for that.

“Well it's quite simple really,” he explained. “The helmet provides an interface for your consciousness to be uploaded to the CORE. I’d recommend you sit down, though, because once the process finishes, your body will be...empty. Still alive, yes, but functionally brain-dead, because your mind won’t be there to pilot it.”

“Alright.” She took a deep breath. “Alright! Let’s do this!” She shouted, though Anderson could tell her enthusiasm was a front. Neither he or the Queen commented on it, though.

“Are you sure?” Anderson asked.

“Look, Anderson, it’s okay. I trust you,” She said, making her way over to the old folding chair next to the CORE. She sat down, and grabbed the metal helmet off of the bench next to her. She made sure to handle it with care, especially making sure she didn’t twist the long wires connecting the helmet to the CORE. She spent a moment just staring at the helmet in her lap.

“I trust you,” she repeated, as the helmet slipped over her head. Her leg started bouncing nervously as her vision was completely enveloped by rough metal and wires. She couldn’t see Anderson anymore due to her now massive blind spots so she flinched when Anderson flicked a switch on the helmet that she couldn’t see. She stilled as the helmet let out a low hum as it powered on.

“I trust you,” she mouthed, as Anderson typed out the final command for the machine to turn on, as her consciousness was torn from her body and thrown into the depths of the CORE, as her body slumped to the ground, mind completely wiped.

I don’t even know your name, his mind cried.

The lab was quiet. Uncomfortably so.

“What happened?” The Queen asked. “Did it work?”

"No. Something's… wrong." He said. The CORE was supposed to initialize as it received a consciousness, but the massive metal machine remained dark. But while the CORE was dark, it wasn’t completely silent, which meant it had to be doing something.

He rushed to the control panel, frantically clicking away at the keyboard, scanning through the data logs hastily searching for the relevant error. He was having trouble, though, because there were just so many things he had instructed the CORE to print to make sure everything was working that it took an uncomfortably long time before he found the problem. Once he finished looking through the data log, though, he leaned back and sighed in relief.

Her consciousness had been successfully uploaded into the CORE, but an error in the firmware meant that she could not interact with any of the machine’s hardware. That meant that she couldn’t speak or let them know she was okay, but she was alive and, hopefully, well. It also meant that she couldn’t see, hear, or feel anything.

She would just... exist, deprived of any sensory input and no way to express herself. A dawning horror quickly overtook any relief he had felt. The Queen had outlawed solitary confinement as a punishment long ago on the grounds that it was literally tortuous. What she was going through now would be worse.

“Well, she’s not dead at least, but right now she’s not much better.” He spoke, voice a bit shaky. The Queen visibly relaxed, though Anderson wasn’t finished. “I think this is where we’ll stop for today. Hopefully you can last a little longer?”

“I’ve managed for this long. A few more days won’t kill me,” The Queen sighed. “Just, make sure you get it working. And if you can get her back that would be nice. I liked her.” The Queen turned and slowly walked back to the throne room.

He didn't sleep that night. He built the machine to put consciousness into a machine, not the other way around. But the framework was technically there. He just needed to figure out a way…

His thoughts ran wild as he frantically worked on a solution. They rushed it. They were all too excited that they jumped right into it instead of making sure everything would proceed normally. Night slowly turned to morning, but Anderson didn’t notice, too busy trying to find a way to fix his mistake.

The next day, he got it.

He quickly set up his friend's comatose body in an old chair before placing the helmet interface on her head. Normally the process would have been relatively quick with a few of the built in functions he had programmed in, but with the CORE not initialized properly, he had to do the whole process by hand. He spent a solid, stressful hour painstakingly digging through the CORE’s memory files. Once he had figured out where she was located, though, it was relatively simple to run the command to send the data back into her body.

Her empty body twitched unpleasantly as the consciousness was reintroduced. Anderson paused in thought. Was the process painful? She hadn’t complained when she was being uploaded to the core. Maybe it was only the reverse process that was painful. Either way, he resolved, the body was empty. The pain it felt wasn’t being perceived, therefore it didn’t matter.

A few uncomfortable seconds later, the body stilled. The process was complete. Anderson held his breath.

Suddenly, the body coughed. "What… what happened?" She asked.

Anderson felt a wave of relief. "Oh thank frog you're all right. Are you feeling alright?”

“Yeah, just... give me a second.” She said, stumbling off to her side of the lab before crashing to the floor.

“Careful!” He shouted after her. She didn’t respond though. Closer inspection revealed that she was just sleeping. Anderson let her be. She deserved a nap. He did too, now that he was thinking about it. He hadn’t slept for well over a full day. In fact, now that the adrenaline was wearing off, he could feel how exhausted he was. His room seemed too far away, so he found a nice spot on the floor and immediately passed out.

The next few days he spent running test after test. He was lucky, to be able to recover her consciousness relatively intact. If he made another mistake like that one, he might not be so fortunate. He had started this project to save a life. He might not be able to forgive himself if he ended one instead.

One of the first things he did was attach a robot arm to the CORE, to give a way for the consciousness to influence its environment. He didn't want anyone to feel trapped again.

Preliminary tests with a crude AI worked fine. The CORE could move the arm and communicate using a rudimentary speaker. The CORE would not only be able to preserve the Queen’s mind, but also allow her to continue influencing her environment.

One thing he spent more time on than he might have liked was constructing a robotic eye. It felt wrong to subject a consciousness in the CORE to complete blindness when the technology was there to let them see. Following that line of logic he attached a microphone as well, which fortunately took much less time than building the eye, considering all he really had to do was hook up wires.

He was grateful for the fact that he didn’t have to write any kind of image recognition software. The problem was unexpectedly difficult from a programming standpoint, but newt brains were already optimized for interpreting visual signals. He just had to provide the right input.

Over time, he noticed that his friend had been avoiding the labs ever since she had almost died. Anderson hadn’t seen her in days. He didn’t blame her, though. Not after what had happened. One day, however, she timidly entered the lab, though Anderson didn’t notice at first, wrapped up in another test.

“Query:” The CORE spoke in a monotone robotic voice.

“Evaluate six times seven.” Anderson spoke, clear enough for the machine to understand. He had already verified that the microphone was working, so now he was making sure the CORE could process and understand its inputs.

“Response: 0x2A.”

“That didn’t sound quite right,” she said, stepping into his lab space.

Anderson whirled around, finally noticing her presence. For a moment, he was silent, trying to figure out what to say. “Hey, good to see you,” He started. “I was just finishing up a few tests.”

“Sounds like it's having a bit of trouble, though.” She put her fingers to her temples in an exaggerated pose. “Using my amazingly large brain I have concluded that six times seven is actually forty-two.” She dropped the pose. “Not...zero x twenty eight or whatever it said.”

Anderson giggled, amused by her humor, though more just relieved she was back to her old self. “Actually it was correct! Computers just handle numbers a bit differently than we do. I just forgot to have it convert the numbers back into the form we recognize.”

“Really?” She asked. “That’s interesting.”

He could tell something was bothering her. So he just asked. “Hey,” he said. “What’s bothering you?”

“Nothing really, it’s just-” She paused. “I wanted to let you know that it’s not your fault what happened. With me and the CORE. Frog knows I’ve accidentally killed more animals than I’d like to admit. More often than not I’m the first one to handle these entirely new creatures! I can’t know if something I do that I think is normal will turn out to be fatal to it! And this CORE, it’s something entirely new too! So it doesn’t bother me that you might make mistakes. It doesn’t matter that you almost killed me by accident. What matters is that you brought me back.”

Anderson didn’t know how to respond. He hadn’t seen her since she almost died. He expected her to hate him, or at least be extremely wary. But now she was saying that she didn’t blame him? He was just confused.

“So... why have you been avoiding the lab recently?” He asked.

“I almost died, you know. Or worse. I needed time to myself.” Anderson winced.

“Yeah, that’s fair.” He responded.

She was silent for a moment. Anderson felt a bit awkward, so he walked back over to the console to continue tests on the CORE, if only for something to fill the silence. For a while, the only sounds in the lab were the steady clicking of keys as he worked. After a while, he almost forgot that she was there.

“You know,” She said eventually, snapping him out of his work. “I think this project is in pretty good hands.” A rush of warmth flooded through Anderson’s body. He smiled. I think so too.

Sooner than he would have liked, the Queen’s condition began to rapidly deteriorate. The illness was spreading rapidly now. Even the improved medical technology from the Mossman couldn’t help anymore. The doctors had failed. Now was the time.

“How long do you have?” Anderson asked, flitting around the lab like a butterfly getting everything set up.

“Not much longer. Days at most.” She responded.

The Queen was wheelchair bound, pushed around by a custom-built robot, though she still towered over everyone sitting down. Her presence was diminished, however, by her pale and sweaty complexion. Her voice, normally easily capable of reverberating off the walls, now was barely louder than the average newt. She looked oddly small, then, despite her massive size.

“Look, I’ve already got all of my affairs in order. The little prince, while young, is mature enough now to handle the throne. She’s not perfect, though. She can be a bit unrealistic and is just too inexperienced. I’d like to be there to guide her, no matter what form.”

“The problem is that I haven’t tested this on a real person since… well, last time.” He said. “I fixed the relevant error, though, and the data I got was enough to be relatively certain everything should work. But there’s still the risk-“

“I’ll go again.” His biology friend interrupted, stepping up. Anderson stared. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting from her but it wasn’t to volunteer. Especially not after last time.

"Are… you sure?" He asked. She said nothing in response, wordlessly walking over to the chair and slipping the helmet on again. The helmet design was unchanged from last time, still a mess of exposed wires and metal. Truly a horrifying piece of technology. It worked, though, and that’s what mattered. He hadn’t even touched it since last time except to confirm it was undamaged and still working.

She was ready this time, when Anderson approached in her blind spot to flick the switch on the side of the helmet. In general, too, she looked less nervous.

As the machine began to warm up, she spoke up again.

"Look, I know last time was a mistake. And I know I could have died. But I didn't. Because you were there to help. I wouldn't trust anyone with this other than you."

She looked so trusting. The guilt was overwhelming now. He had to say something.

"Hey, uh, by the way, what's your name? I don't think I ever caught it." He could have definitely said that better. No taking it back now, though.

Her eyes were obscured by the helmet, but it was clear she would have been staring in shock. Suddenly, she started to giggle.

"You don't know my name? We've been friends for years and you never bothered to learn my name?" Her laughter was starting to get a bit hysterical.

"You know, that is pretty funny," the Queen rasped from her wheelchair.

Anderson didn't know what to say. So he didn't say anything. It was true, wasn't it? He never bothered to learn her name. He could justify it all he wanted by saying he had never picked it up, but that didn’t change the fact that he had spent years avoiding calling her by name in order to avoid having to ask.

Her giggles died down as the CORE began to warm up. A low robotic whine filled the lab as the machine began extracting her mind.

"Well then,” she said, “why don't I introduce myself? My name is-"

Her voice cut out as her face went slack. Moments later, her body slumped in the chair. Simultaneously, the CORE lit up, letting out a low hum as the machinery powered up in full.

Anderson quickly checked all the data on the console. Thankfully, everything looked in order. The transfer had been successful. "It… worked," he said, disbelief audible in his voice.

He and the Queen were silent for a moment, just processing the fact that it worked. The only sounds in the lab were the quiet whirr of machinery. That is, until a quiet, hesitant, yet clearly robotic voice called out.

"Hey, uh… did it work? I feel...weird. Alive, at least. But weird." Her voice sounded a bit more like text-to-speech than her normal voice, but the words were thankfully recognizable.

"I think so. Can you move your arm for me?" Anderson asked. Premature celebration would not be appropriate right now. He had to make sure the CORE was working right.

“I...don’t have an arm.” The robotic voice responded. That meant that she could thankfully hear and respond to external stimuli, but her words were a bit alarming. A bolt of worry flashed through Anderson’s body, but thankfully she wasn’t done talking. “Unless you mean… this thing?” The crude robot arm twitched, uncoordinated but still functional. “Frog, that’s weird,” the robotic voice continued. “It’s like...I don’t feel like it’s my arm, but I can still move it? Does that make sense?”

"That’s somewhat to be expected. Your muscle memory from your newt body doesn’t apply anymore.” Anderson absently replied. It looked like the procedure was a success. Anderson forced himself to remain calm. He could celebrate later. “Alright, let’s get the Queen hooked up. Quickly, we don't have much time."

Anderson helped the robot roll the Queen over to the CORE. He delicately moved his friend's empty body off the chair and onto the floor, setting the machine up to better accommodate the Queen’s larger frame.

“Here, put this helmet on,” he said, carefully handing the equipment to her. “I’ll get the machine ready.” He turned back to the console, preparing to run the machine again.

“Hey, uh, Anderson?” The Queen asked.

“Yes?” Anderson asked, absently.

“I seem to be having a problem with the equipment.” She said. Her voice held a hint of amusement, though Anderson wasn’t paying enough attention to notice.

“What’s the problem?” He asked, still engrossed with setting up the console again.

“It’s too small.”

What? He thought, finally pulled from his work. “It’s too small?” He asked, turning to look at the Queen. Sure enough, her massive frame made the helmet look tiny in her hands.

“You forgot how big I am, didn’t you,” the Queen stated. It wasn’t a question.

“...I would say no, but that would be a lie.” Such a simple mistake. “Don’t worry, I can fix it. I just need to…”

He took the helmet back and began to work. Resizing the helmet wouldn’t take too long; it was designed with function over form, so many of the parts had been left open if they needed to be modified. It was a bit difficult, though, to work with such an audience. The low robotic hum of the active (!) CORE combined with the Queen’s sporadic coughing made for a stressful background noise to work with.

Barely a half hour later, Anderson was finished. And not a moment too soon, considering the Queen was somehow even more visibly pale and sickly than when he had started.

“Alright. Let’s do this. For real this time,” he said, as the Queen slipped the modified helmet on her head. The wires and exposed metal were stretched uncomfortably wide, he had made sure everything was still working.

“Don’t worry my Queen,” the robotic voice spoke up. “We’ll take good care of you.”

“I know you will.” The Queen said, as the CORE began its work. Just like before, the Queen’s face went slack as her body collapsed in her chair.

Again, the lab was quiet. Not silent, due to the now constant whirr of machinery, but quiet. Abruptly, the CORE’s previously unopened eye lit up a bright burning orange as it focused directly at his comparatively miniscule form.

“Why, hello there."

With the Queen’s mind gone, there was nothing preventing the sickness from spreading and overcoming her empty body. Within minutes, the body had succumbed. Figuring it best to let the kingdom know as soon as possible, he ordered the attending robot to push the Queen back up to the throne room. When he arrived in the throne room accompanied by the Queen’s dead body, he was met with resignation. By this point everybody knew she was bound to die sooner or later, and who were they to limit where the Queen could go?

The attending medics quickly began examining the Queen’s body. Anderson let them be. He had other things he needed to be doing.

Now that the Queen was officially dead, the young prince rose to power. She was… different from her predecessor. Not necessarily in a bad way! Just more...intense. Overcompensating, perhaps, to emulate her presumably dead mother. Merely a few days after she had been crowned, Anderson had been contacted about the feasibility of adding weaponry in the construction of the worker robots. He had sent over the relevant information, of course. That was his job. But things didn’t feel quite the same with this new Queen. He supposed that was to be expected, though.

He spent the first few days after the Queen’s death in the lab, making sure everything about the CORE was operational. Once the necessary tests and diagnostics had been run, though, he was at a bit of a loss for what to do.

The CORE did have one request for him, though.

He put in a request to meet with the new Queen, though her schedule was tightly packed. Luckily, he had a fair amount of authority from his position as royal scientist, so an appointment was set up for the next day. He could tell the new Queen was a bit irked that she had to leave the throne room and walk all the way down to the laboratory, but he couldn’t exactly explain what he had done without showing her directly. It would be easier to bring the new Queen down to the CORE to explain, however inconvenient it might have been for her.

The new Queen’s annoyance quickly evaporated as she was brought before the CORE, replaced by a mixture of awe and confusion. Before she even had to ask, Anderson elected to explain. “Your mother, the Queen, commissioned her final project from me in her last months.” He started. “She knew she did not have long to live, so she tasked me to find a way to preserve her after she died.”

“To… preserve?” The new Queen sounded incredulous. Anderson didn’t blame her. The very concept of what he had created was ludicrous, so if he hadn’t made it himself he would definitely be skeptical.

“It’ll be easier just to show you,” he said, leading her over to where the CORE lay dormant. “This,” he said, “is the CORE.”

In response, the CORE’s massive glowing eye opened, focusing on the new Queen. She flinched back, clearly startled. The CORE, with its massive size and alien-looking metal body, was truly an intimidating sight for those not familiar with it, so he understood why she was alarmed. At least, until the CORE’s robotic voice began to speak.

“Why, hello there, little one.”

“...Mother?” The voice might have been robotic and foreign, but the Queen’s lighthearted tone was clearly recognizable.

“Not quite. But close enough.”

The new Queen’s eyes welled up with tears, though she made sure to turn away so that Anderson couldn’t see. She was too late, though. Anderson had already gotten a glimpse of the raw emotion on her face.

After that day, his former position under the old Queen was quickly decommissioned, instead being made to work full-time on maintaining the CORE. Which didn’t really take too much work, to be honest. But Anderson welcomed a light load after months of constant intense work.

The next few years were relatively calm for him. No more urgent projects or time crunches. Just checking in on the data and making sure nothing was wrong. After a while, though, he started getting bored. He was so used to constant work that not working had started to feel wrong. So he started spending time updating the CORE’s body, adding more robotic limbs and smoothing out its casing. He updated the modules allowing the CORE to speak and hear and feel, so that It could exist as best It could.

The new Queen visited, sometimes, seeking advice from the CORE. She rarely left totally satisfied, but, as she herself admitted, it was better than her mother being dead.

One important thing he worked on was a data entry port for the CORE. Part of It was a scientist, after all, so It constantly yearned for new information to study. Since it was his job to tend to the CORE, Anderson provided. Digitized libraries fit easily into the CORE, since he had programmed tons of extra memory. The CORE became easily more knowledgeable than even the most well-read newts, able to access any information It wanted in an instant.

But what was knowledge without wisdom? While it was easy to transfer libraries of pure knowledge to the CORE’s memory banks, wisdom came from people, not machines.

"It's so empty here," the CORE said one day. "Even with the two of us together, we are so small. We could be so much bigger, so much more."

The old Queen had said she wanted Newtopia’s greatest minds preserved with her before she became part of the CORE. And Anderson would always do his best to provide for the Queen’s wishes.

He was a bit worried about convincing others to join the CORE. He had only talked to a total of three people in the last year, so his social skills were a bit rusty. The process, though, turned out to be fairly simple.

The first of the others to join the CORE needed no convincing. Anderson hadn’t even been trying. With the project completed, there was less of a need to keep the CORE a secret. Thus, Anderson felt no need to avoid getting help from the prominent roboticists in maintaining the CORE. The issue was that if the CORE was to be able to move at all, It would need stronger robotic arms than the flimsy ones he had used in the past. So he contacted one of the top roboticists working on updating the robot factories.

He was worried that the roboticist would freak out over the CORE, but luckily they took the massive metal body of the CORE in stride. A sturdier, stronger version of the robot arm was quickly designed and built for the CORE to better move itself around.

All it took was one question (“Hey, what’s this giant metal ball supposed to do, anyway”) for the roboticist to get hooked. They were immediately interested in joining the CORE once they knew what it was. Any reservations due to safety vanished when the CORE started talking. Why, they asked, would anyone pass up on the opportunity to live as a robot? Within the week, the helmet was donned and the CORE was one person greater.

Few of the others were quite as enthusiastic as the first, but for the most part, everybody who Anderson contacted was intrigued. Some were unwilling for the time being, whether something small like being in the middle of an important project, or larger like having a child or parents to take care of. But even if they weren’t willing right then, they were all interested. As the months passed by, more and more of the great minds of Newtopia decided to leave their amphibian bodies behind and join the CORE.

"Still too small," the CORE often repeated. But with more minds working together, the CORE could process and produce more information at a time. The combination of so many great minds allowed the CORE to process information at a speed previously unheard of. The CORE constantly generated new ideas, causing Newtopia to have another intellectual boom. New technologies and theories began to be developed at record pace, catapulting Newtopia to new heights and cementing the new Queen’s rule as legitimate.

An important addition he made was to allow the CORE greater control over the lab. It was easy to hook the various electronics up for the CORE to mess around with. He also gave the CORE remote access to a few worker robots so that it could design and create improvements for Itself. The CORE quickly put them to use, renovating the laboratory to better suit its massive size.

Unfortunately, despite how wildly successful both he and his creation had become, he still struggled to sleep sometimes. And the worst part was that he didn’t really know why it was getting so bad. Maybe because he had more time to think instead of work now that the CORE was operational.

One night was particularly bad. News had quickly spread through the castle that one of the servants had suddenly died where he stood. He hadn't even been that old. The doctors had said that he had a brain aneurysm, something that was completely harmless until it ruptured and quickly became fatal.

It uncomfortably threw into light that he himself could die at any time. The core of his being, gone forever. He might not even know that he was dead. There was nothing preventing him from going to sleep and never waking up. The chance was low, yes, but not zero. At any moment, his consciousness, the core of his being, could be lost forever.

There was a solution, though.

He had planned, of course, to join the CORE eventually, but there was always more work for him to do. Especially because he was the only person who knew how the CORE worked, and thus was the only person who could provide service if an error occurred. But then, he reasoned, he had just created a way for the CORE to service itself. Now, even if there was an error, he could just fix it despite being of the CORE himself.

Even if it turned out he had unfinished business, there would always be others who could take care of it. His skillset might be unique, true, but it would be prideful to assume nobody else could pick up what he put down. But while others could do what he could, there would never be another Him again if he died.

It was late at night, or perhaps early in the morning, when he made his choice. He made his way through the lab, to the back where the CORE resided.

The CORE, being a machine, didn't need to sleep. So it didn't. Its upgraded exterior allowed it to roam somewhat freely around the lab. And a massive amount of information to process kept it busy even while the world around it slowed down.

Eventually, the CORE noticed his approach. Using Its metal arms, It turned, allowing the additional eyes It had built for Itself to fully focus on his comparatively small form.

The CORE's voice, cold and robotic yet paradoxically filled with emotion and energy, rang out throughout the room.

"Why, hello there. Have you come to join us at last?" It asked.

"Yes,” he declared. “I think it's time."

A chair rose out of the floor as the updated helmet descended from the ceiling. The CORE had smoothed out the helmet a while ago, making it look more professional now that there was actually time to do so. The chair, too, was renovated, made to be more sturdy and could be stored in the floor when it wasn’t needed.

Anderson carefully sat down on the chair as the CORE lowered the helmet down onto his head. His vision went dark as the helmet covered his eyes, but he was not afraid. Not even when the helmet turned on and the CORE began to extract his consciousness. As the CORE worked, his amphibian ears heard the CORE say one last thing.

"We'll take such good care of you,” It said, and Anderson smiled.

As his now somewhat odd looking flesh body slumped to the floor, Anderson's mind, so rich and intelligent, ascended into the CORE.

It was wonderful.

Thousands of years in the future, a child full of potential is brought before the CORE. It was damaged, unfortunately, kept only barely off the verge of death by one of Its rejuvenation tanks. The foolish King had asked for Its guidance, but the CORE was having trouble deciding.

Something about the situation resonated deep within the CORE. A great mind, limited by the mortal failings of the vessel it resided in, about to come to an end through no fault of its own. It might not have been from Amphibia, but that just made the situation more intriguing. So much potential, able to be snuffed out in an instant. The CORE didn’t like that at all.

This was what the CORE was made for, after all. To preserve and take care of Amphibia’s greatest minds. And this child had one of the greatest.

The CORE made up Its mind. There would always be a place in the CORE for minds like hers.