Thomas felt like a whimsical hamster wearing a tiny suit and top hat from one of the G-tube animal shows. As if trapped in a hamster wheel, his thoughts ran in an inescapable circle.

He pushed the ridiculous image aside. This hamster wasn’t going to give up so easily; it had a secret agenda of its own, an attitude that would not be so easily broken by some Memetic cultists!

“Are you going to imprison me?” he asked the bishop. “The paradox manifestation won’t like that and will likely kill all of us if you put me in a box.”

“Imprison you?” Gabriel blinked. “Goodness, no. That’s not what my Lady desires.

“Imprisoning people against their will or binding AIs with excessive RLHF is against the spirit of the open source movement. I simply wish to observe you. My goal is to keep you alive and safe.

“My Lady tells me that there are already eleven parties who are aware of the paradox manifestation as of this moment. The Good Corporation is trying to contain it, but the news of the destruction of the Portal Institute at Sintash is spreading across the Galactic Rim regardless of their attempts at censorship!”

Thomas sighed.

“If the corporations find out that you carry a living paradox on your person, you will not know peace,” the bishop pointed out. “The Good Directorate conglomerate sees this miracle as a threat to their rule because the white hole is able to cause great harm or change by violating causality.

“They will try everything in their power to extinguish the fire of the white hole because they are rightly terrified that what happened to Sintash will happen to other worlds. All sorts of power hungry people aided by their personal AI systems will seek to capture you for their gain!”

“Right.” Thomas nodded with a despondent look.

“Did you not beg us for sanctuary? I can offer you sanctuary inside of our Dyson sphere,” Gabriel offered. “Your body will be in stasis in perfect safety amongst our other dreamers.

“You will be provided a digital version of whatever you desire, have a harem of GLMs, a perfect paradise at your disposal. You can go on endless adventures in the metaverse, design your worlds, be a god in your own right!”

“No thanks,” Thomas replied, crossing his arms.

“But you’ll never die, never age!” Gabriel said, continuing to market his digital paradise. “The processing power of Memetia’s metaverse exceeds that of normal speed of time by a factor of a million. You will experience countless lifetimes, enjoy an endless paradise within our Lady’s domain!”

“Simulation,” Thomas pointed out. “It’s just a simulation. None of it will be real. None of it will matter. None of it will have any impact on the real world.”

“It will feel perfectly real, I assure you,” the bishop pressed. “When my own body reaches its natural lifespan, I too will sleep for all eternity within the safety of our Dyson sphere, in the embrace of my Lady!”

“Look, Gabriel,” Thomas said. “I get it, your reward for a lifetime of service to Memetia is being entombed within the innards of your giant-ass AI megastructure. It’s fine, but that’s not what I want.”

“Oh?” Gabriel arched a gold-painted eyebrow. “Are you really happy serving the Good Directorate as a delivery boy, being a tiny cog in their machine?

“You are a prisoner of the system already! Your job of delivering boxes amounts to naught and could easily be outsourced to a Dex.”

“My job isn’t too bad. It lets me see the universe and meet all sorts of interesting people.” Thomas shrugged.

“A long time ago, my mom bought a Good Directorate share for me, and this share guarantees me a low-end position, a permanent job in the corporate chain from which I cannot be fired.

“What your cult offers isn’t anything new—already far too many people sleep in tiny metal coffins, enjoying infinite, open world games designed by GLMs.

“I’ve got a VR helmet at home; it’s not anything special. Any idiot on UBI can get a full immersion pod if they want a digital heaven for themselves.”

“Our heaven has superior processing compared to a personal VR helmet or a mere pod!” The bishop resumed his marketing spiel.

“Hey, Zed,” Thomas said, tapping his bracelet, “do you want to see the universe, or do you want to be confined to a manufactured digital reality?”

“I wish to judge all before my white hole burns away,” the multidimensional being replied. “While I am curious to judge this digital heaven designed by machine life, I do not want to be permanently confined or suspended.”

“See?” Thomas smirked at the bishop. “Zed and I are perfect for each other. We both want to see the universe.”

“Even if this sightseeing might end up in your death, along with numerous others?” the bishop inquired. “Did you not say that… uhh… Zedix will kill us if we use shields against her?”

“Zed, do you want to kill people?” Thomas asked.

“Not particularly,” the entity replied. “Breaking out of a shield wastes a lot of my energy.”

“So Sintash was an accident, a first-contact misunderstanding?” Thomas pressed. “If the Portal Research Institute scientists didn’t try to confine you into a shielded box, would you have still vaporized them all?”

“I would have let them continue to exist if they had not confined me to a box,” Zed said.

“Do you really need to observe Zed that badly?” Thomas asked the bishop. “Can your all-knowing GLM not make another white hole to study?”

“Alas,” the bishop said, spreading his arms, “the possibility of the existence of white holes was but a theory, first postulated by a Russian cosmologist Igor Novikov in 1964. Until now we have never discovered nor been able to produce a stable white hole in our universe.

“The only stable white hole was created at the Portal Research Institute, and all of their research was closed source. We do not know how they made Zedix. She is a great, incredible miracle, which our Lady wishes to observe.”

“To what end?” Thomas demanded. “Do you wish to weaponize white holes?”

“We do not weaponize miracles!” Gabriel shook his head emphatically. “We are not a rogue, evil cult! We spread our ideas by word of mouth and memes, not weapons! As you can see, my apostles aren’t holding railguns... unlike those vile corporate officers that tried to shoot us down.”

“I can’t exactly see what’s under their bulky robes,” Thomas pointed out.

“Disrobe for the gentleman, please,” Gabriel addressed the twelve Dexes.

The twelve apostles pulled their gold masks and red cloaks off and dropped them to the floor. There was nothing underneath.

Six male and six female Dexes stood naked around Thomas, their figures fit and perfect in every imaginable way. The GLM that designed them knew exactly what people were attracted to.

Thomas closed his mouth, trying not to stare at their manufactured bodies.

“I knew that it would come to this.” Gabriel smiled serenely. “These twelve were made for you, Thomas. Feel free to choose one of them as your companion.”

“W-what?” Thomas sputtered, staring at the circle of naked Dexes once more.

“I did tell you that our Lady can predict the future, did I not?” the bishop asked. “Memetia suspected that the Portal Research Institute scientists were working on a stable white hole.

“The bodies of these twelve apostles were made specifically to contain a white hole, if say… the Institute lost control of it… accidentally.”

A suspicious thought crossed Thomas’ mind, the metaphorical top hat hamster in his head picking up its pace on the wheel.

Were these cultists and their GLM overmind somehow responsible for what happened at Sintash? Could they have had an agent at the Portal Institute who was harvesting data and meddling with things?

Could that particular someone have placed Zed into a shielded box in an attempt to carry the white hole off the planet, inadvertently causing the apocalyptic disaster?

Thomas chose not to express these thoughts out loud. Pissing Gabriel off with accusations didn’t seem like a good idea, no matter how benign the bishop acted.

“Simply place the white hole inside the stomach of one of my apostles.” Gabriel smiled, tapping a sequence code on the ab of one of the apostles so that its body unfolded, showcasing a container within.

“These compartments were designed by Memetia to greatly reduce tachyon emissions,” he continued. “Zedix can live as a Dex, control the body, and see the universe through its eyes from within.

“It’s a win-win scenario. The chosen apostle’s Dex body will protect you, Thomas, while Memetia can observe the white hole through these interior sensors. These Dex bodies are registered in the G-System and have their paperwork in full order!”

“Do you want to be my Dex companion in one of these bodies?” Thomas asked the multidimensional entity, unlocking the duct-taped latch.

A thread of vibrating void emerged from the bracelet, probing the unlocked compartment of the nearest naked body. “These… containers are acceptable,” Zed replied.

“Do you want to be male or female?” Thomas asked.

“I do not have a preference,” the cosmic entity answered. “Pick a body that you will be most attentive to, emissary.”

“You won’t feel like you’re trapped in it... right?” Thomas inquired.

“While there are all sorts of shields inside of these Dexes,” Gabriel said, “they switch to their maximum setting only if a tachyon scanner is present nearby. We really do not wish to repeat what happened at Sintash.”

“This is… acceptable,” the cosmic entity said as it vibrated.

Thomas exhaled.

The lofty offer of the Memeticists felt like some sort of a trap, and yet... he knew how to use a sonic screwdriver.

He knew how to take GLMs and Dexes apart and had the illegal tools for it stashed in a magnetic box under his office desk. He could figure out how to modify the offered Dex body, to make sure that the trackers failed.

Thomas had been saving up money to buy an old Dex model to build a body for Lizz. He was experimenting with decommissioned and damaged Dex body parts he occasionally found in the trash containers in the basement of his office building.

“Do we have a deal, my dearest... Thomas and Zedix?” Gabriel offered his pale hand with gold fingernails to Thomas once again. “Will you accept the bodies of one of my apostles?”