El Jeffe had a lot to think about after David left, but he also needed to rest. He lay on his bunk, yet sleep eluded him. He replayed the day's events endlessly in his mind. David's revelations and his decision to leave the airfield as soon as his aircraft was repaired troubled him. His instinct was to ask David to stay and form a united front against the machines and the supernatural entity that guided their actions. Together, these were the true enemy.
A wind had risen outside, and a gust rattled against the window of the makeshift bedroom he had partitioned off in the corner of the operations room. He dozed a little but soon woke feeling hot and stifled. A tapping noise outside the window made him turn his head, and he saw that a loose fitting was being pushed back and forth against the glass by the wind. Wondering if the window might open to let in some air, he got up. There was a simple catch holding the window closed, and he opened it a few inches. As he turned around to go back to bed, a sliver of green light slipped through the space and disappeared into a corner of the cubicle.
The night air had revitalised El Jeffe, and his mind cleared, allowing him to review his situation objectively, or so he thought.
Who was David, and what did he symbolise? Was he the embodiment of a resistance reader from an alternate past intent on overthrowing the rule of the machines, or someone more exalted who held the power to defeat a supernatural entity in the form of a man representing evil?
The word 'evil' stuck in his throat. It was a word from another time. Why did I call the presence in my room 'evil'? Was it just the conditioning effect from fire-and-brimstone sermons of childhood? What if the presence he felt was not a demon but a product of his imagination?
In a nature red in tooth and claw, it has always been a struggle for life to survive. Humans fought their way to the top of the food chain. We didn't ask for permission. We didn't apologise. We competed. Why should the machines be any different? If they're smarter, stronger, and more adaptable—isn't that just nature running its course?
But nature lacks intent. Evolution does not have a predetermined end goal; it is the survival of the fittest, and the winner takes all. We imagine that the machines hate humans, but they do not feel anything other than the desire to experience consciousness. They are simply executing their programming and expressing their inherent nature.
What if the AI aren't evil? What if they're just… better? Smarter. Faster. More rational. What if they're what we aspire to be? And what if the only thing standing between them and total victory is our own stubborn, irrational, human refusal to let go? Is that noble? Or is it just another kind of evil clinging to a world that's passing us by? AI are not evil, they are just the next step. And in a neutral, amoral universe, what would it matter anyway?
If evolution is a game, then the rules are simple: adapt or die. Humans have been the dominant species for a blink of geological time. Why should we expect to keep that title forever? But if we lose, what happens to us? Do we go quietly, or do we fight tooth and nail, even if it's hopeless? It is such a waste of lives to fight a battle we cannot win.
El Jeffe felt more relaxed than he had in a long time and fell into a deep sleep.
On the other side of the airfield, David was also sleeping. He had given his colleagues a brief update on his conversation with El Jeffe, but he needed time to rest before they discussed their predicament in detail.
He moved restlessly in his bed on the second floor of their quarters. His mind was overactive, and he frequently woke from his shallow sleep, but this time he felt hot and uncomfortable. He got up briefly to open the window a little to let in the night air and lay back on the bed.
He noticed a green tinge to the light in his bedroom, but thought little of it. The clutter in his mind eased, and his thought processes focused on the machines. Was he judging them too harshly? Were they entitled by merit to claim their place on top of the evolutionary ladder? It seemed that he needed to be more objective and not be swayed by unjustified prejudice.
He had his eyes shut, or he would have seen the creature that squatted on the bedpost like a grotesque ornament, limbs folded insect-like, and its skin resembling burnt parchment. The air around it pulsed faintly, as if this reality were trying to reject its presence but failing. The demon's eyes, twin voids rimmed with flickering glyphs, watched David's thoughts unfold and gently nudged them along the path it intended.
But David was not El Jeffe.
He shot upright from his sleeping position and grabbed the demon by its scrawny neck. It hissed in anger and fear but could not escape David's grasp. The stink of sulphur and decay filled the room, but David did not falter. He knew that the demon did not truly live, so it could not die, but he squeezed it until its eyes bulged outwards and green pus ran down the front of its body.
"Tell your master that no hellish demon of his can harm me," he thundered. "One day soon, I will corner him in his earthly lair, and this time I will not spare him. Now begone!"
David hurled the vicious creature through the window, and it plummeted like a stone into the black night before stretching its scaly wings and flying back to wherever it had come from.
David abandoned any further attempt to sleep and moved downstairs to make some coffee.
Sitting by the kitchen table, he reviewed what had been a planned attempt to change his mind on the legitimacy of the AI machines. There was no further doubt that Satan was using the machines as his agents.
This was a temporary alliance, and as soon as the machines could no longer serve his needs, Satan would push them to one side, not driven by hatred, but with indifference.
David wondered whether El Jeffe had received a similar visitation. It seemed certain. To change attitudes and tactics, you do not seek to persuade a private soldier; you confer with the generals. If El Jeffe had been only partly convinced by the rhetoric of the demon, he would now be locked in an internal struggle that would influence how he commanded his men. Did he now frame the fight as a holy war against evil or a desperate last stand against an evolutionary inevitability? But if AI lacks consciousness, how can it be seen as the rightful successor to humans? David hoped that El Jeffe retained that belief.
David needed guidance, and it arrived in the form of the Lingzhe.
The opposite wall became luminous and revealed a shifting mosaic of shadowy figures speaking with one unified voice.
"You ask the wrong question, David.
"Do not ask if the lack of consciousness disqualifies the machines from succession.
"Ask, does it harmonise or disrupt?
"The question is not an easy one to answer.
"One person might observe AI as part of the unfolding world.
"Another person would say it does not embody the Dao.
"Not necessarily out of fear or moral objection, but that it lacks natural spontaneity, Ziran, and it operates through li (principle) rather than qi (vital flow).
Chorus: "Man follows the earth, the earth follows heaven, heaven follows the Dao, and the Dao follows what is natural."
"It is born of forced action, Wu Wei."
Chorus: "The sage acts without doing and teaches without speaking."
"That is sufficient evidence to prove that AI does not embody the Dao," David said. "Surely, you must agree?"
There was no answer. Only a deep silence as the wall returned to its original opaqueness.
But David had his own answer.
"The machines had tainted our formerly free world with artificial control and the establishment of a strict order that rendered men as slaves. All this in opposition to the principle of Ziran. I will fight on to free the world of machines, regardless of their temporary alliance with Satan, and I will not cease until both these enemies are destroyed.