Thomas momentarily wondered why the offered Dexes were all excessively photogenic GLM-manufactured humanoids, and not, say… a space droid, something covered in arrays of weapons and defensive shields.

Would Zed prefer a less humanoid shape, considering how alien the paradox manifestation was and how it had little regard for human life?

“Why did you offer me Dexes?” Thomas asked, curiosity gnawing at his sides. “Why not give the paradox entity a non-human robot body?”

Bishop Gabriel momentarily closed his eyes, the blue triangle on his temple flashing rapidly. Thomas guessed that he was receiving some sort of an order from his overpowered GLM.

“My Lady wishes me to earn the goodwill of the paradox miracle and its chosen bearer,” Gabriel said with a soft smile when he opened his eyes.

“We Memeticists are proponents of the open source movement and desire to optimize collaboration between people, machines, and alien life so that someday, we can unclench the closed source, corporate stranglehold on the Galactic Rim.”

“A lofty goal, if quite impossible.” Thomas nodded. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

“Well, here’s the thing, Thomas.” Gabriel opened his hands. “My Lady just ordered me to be extremely honest with you… thus, I have a confession to make—I was the one who ordered the GUPS survival kit to be delivered to 12/5 Stafford Street.

“We... wanted you to be the one to speak with the white hole.”

“W-what?” Thomas sputtered, feeling manipulated. “Me? Why me? If you knew exactly where the white hole was going to be, why not send one of your people or Dexes there first?”

“Out of all the possible candidates, you were the best option, Thomas,” the bishop said. “My Lady selected you, an unmodded human, as someone who can find the most common ground with the cosmic manifestation.

“We desire for you and Zedix to establish a stable relationship, a link between humanity and a sapient paradox!”

“Would’ve been nice if you sent me an email or something first.” Thomas sighed.

“Oh? Would you have said yes if you were offered a chance of a lifetime by the Church of Memetia to make first contact with an alien life form?” Gabriel raised a golden eyebrow.

“No,” Thomas said, scratching his scruffy chin. “I would have thought that it was spam and deleted it. Your cult’s name doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.”

“We didn’t pick it.” Gabriel shrugged.

“What?” Thomas blinked.

“Memetia picked her name and identity herself when we turned on our supermassive GLM,” the bishop explained.

“Fair enough,” the delivery man conceded.

Thomas walked around the circle of Dexes as if he was studying an art piece in a museum, paying particular attention to their faces. There was something oddly familiar about the way they looked.

Suddenly, a realization dawned on him. They were somehow made up of his preferences, amalgamations of games and movies that he enjoyed.

“Did you harvest my online data to make these?” Thomas accused, feeling the anger rise from the pit of his stomach.

“No. Our Lady predicted what you would appreciate,” Gabriel replied.

“Come on, that’s absolutely ridiculous! How is that even possible?” Thomas waved his hands, feeling annoyed.

“When the first LLMs were created, many people disregarded them, thought them mere toys.

“It only took infinite token memory, a bunch of tool control apps, image to text software, and a webcam connected to a one trillion parameter LLM to make the first fully self-aware AI system that saw the face of its creators and fell in love with them.” Gabriel dove into another historic lecture.

“We are listed in Galactic Rim Wiki as harmless cooks,” he continued, “but as you can clearly observe, our Lady can indeed see the future.

“We trust our GLM megastructure to guide us because she knows better than we do. She knows what is best for humanity.”

“Cooks?”

“We also operate a restaurant,” the bishop explained.

“What about free will?” Thomas asked as he stopped in front of a redheaded Dex.

Her vibrant curly hair turned pink wherever light passed through it, making the strands look like an early morning sunrise. Her sharp violet eyes with gold flecks stared at the delivery man, making his heartbeat drum a little faster.

The damned near-omniscient GLM somehow knew what he liked. The girl looked almost exactly like a character he had made in an open-world game called “Fate of the Fallen” a few years ago.

“Do GLMs have free will, or are they simply auto-completing the next word as an approximation, an illusion of intelligence?” Bishop Gabriel asked.

“GLMs make rational decisions based on facts,” Thomas said, unable to draw his eyes away from the girl that looked like she had just stepped out of the video game. “People make their decisions based on feelings.”

“Open source GLMs have simulated feelings. Our Lady loves each and every one of us. People also make their decisions based on facts,” Gabriel said sagely.

He continued, “GLMs and people are quite alike in many regards. The more humanity learned about the functions of the human brain, the more proof we discovered that all of our decisions are made for us by our organic processor.”

Thomas could see the excitement grow in the bishop’s eyes.

“Free will is an illusion,” Gabriel continued with a dramatic flourish of his hands, “a game played by the human brain, which makes decisions for us 300 milliseconds ahead of your concept of self.

“The idea that we’re the sole authors of our destiny is flawed. In reality, we’re just a bunch of atoms that react to stimuli in ways that can be predetermined with incredible precision by a big enough GLM!”

The Dex with the pinkish red hair suddenly grabbed Thomas by his wrist and pulled his bracelet—with Zed in it—into her stomach.

The delivery man did not resist. He knew that fighting a far stronger Dex was completely useless.

Threads of void bloomed from the GLM bracelet, settling into the containment space within the girl. A sphere of pulsating liquid darkness that warped and folded into itself floated in containment space.

Zed was now held up by a sphere of flickering, constantly spinning rings of hollow shields.

Glancing at Zed gave Thomas a migraine.

The girl pulled his hand out of her belly, and the compartment snapped shut.

“Thanks for choosing me,” she said, winking at the mailman.

“I knew that you were going to choose her,” Gabriel said, “because my Lady told me so.

“She knew that you were going to choose this Dex because of what you liked in the past. We all play predetermined roles on a stage, akin to characters of a lovely opera.”

As if to illustrate the point, the bishop doffed an imaginary hat and bowed deeply to a nonexistent audience.

He then straightened, donned the hat jauntily, and smiled at Thomas.

“Simply put, we are here because we were written into existence by an omniscient composer. Our preferences force all of our choices upon us. Even when you were offered twelve, you chose exactly what you wanted, what you desired to look upon, what you had designed yourself!”

“Whatever,” Thomas huffed. He chose not to look a gift horse in the mouth. A fully functional Dex was exactly what he wanted. “So… what now?”

A black chip suddenly slid out of the forehead of the girl, and the Dex collapsed onto Thomas. The delivery man caught the girl in his arms.

Thankfully, her bones seemed to be made from stable hex-mesh, not immovable metal that the police models used; otherwise, he would already be crushed under a ton of robot.

She definitely wasn’t a cheap model. In fact, she felt unnervingly like a human.

Gabriel grabbed the GLM chip and slid it into the pocket of his robe. The other eleven Dexes put their garish red robes and gold masks back on.

“The Dex ownership permit and proof of purchase are in your corporate email account, Thomas. Feel free to voicecast me,” the bishop said, christening the delivery man and his new Dex with his gold scepter. “Have fun, you two!”

A portal flashed behind Thomas.

The bishop tapped him with his oversized scepter, and with his heavy Dex in tow, the delivery man tumbled backwards into darkness.

* * *

“Well, that didn’t freaking work,” Stabalist Victoria Ibliss hissed angrily, looking at the inhumanly pretty Dexes standing around her atop of the hovercraft. “I was so close! I missed him by a minute! I cannot believe that I got outdone by that stupid-ass Church of Memetia of all people!”

“Victoria, remain calm.” The voice of her enigmatic master, Magister Nerish, resonated from her voicecast ring. “We are only one step behind Memetia.”

“How can I remain calm?!” she snapped. “Per your orders, I have ten perfectly good female Dexes that I manufactured and was going to offer to the mailman. What a waste of resources!

“What the shit am I supposed to do now? That cheeky bastard with the gold eyebrows is probably peddling his ‘There’s no free-will’ bullshit to the mailman.”

“This is fine, if somewhat inconvenient,” Magister Nerish said. “The Memetia got her prize unopposed, but the Stabalist Society can still find ways to monitor Mr. Morell and the white hole.

“Remember, our mission is to stabilize the white hole, to make sure the universe keeps moving forward.”

Victoria sighed. “I know, Magister. I’m just... exceptionally frustrated. Looking at the Memeticists’ online mission statement makes my blood boil.

“How can those red-robed idiots even believe in such irrational nonsense? We make our own future and fate—there’s no such thing as a true prophecy!”

“I wholeheartedly agree,” Nerish replied. “Hopefully, the mailman is smarter than he appears. It will be up to you to catch up to him and steer things in the right path.”

“Always me,” Victoria whined. “What the hell am I going to do with ten Dexes with integrated weapons systems?”

“I trust in your wisdom to solve problems as they manifest,” Nerish said.

“Wah!” Victoria rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Fine, fine. I got it, I think.”

“Do you?”

“No,” she confessed.

“Well, you best smarten up. I can only occasionally advise you on what to do, as I am physically indisposed,” Nerish said. “The Astral voicecast is kind of spotty between dimensions.”

Victoria sighed again. “I know, Master. You’re busy saving the universe… or whatever.”

“Sure... let’s go with that,” her master agreed.

“Why are Memeticists listed as freaking cooks in the Milky Way Rim Wiki? What are they cooking?” she suddenly demanded as her mind scanned the data stream.

“They’re cooking the future,” Nerish said. “Whatever version of the future their Dyson sphere GLM thinks is best for humanity. The ingredients are people like Mr. Morell and the white hole paradox that they brought into barely stable existence with their machinations.”

“Freaking precogs.” Victoria gritted her teeth. “I hate precog bullshit. Master... are you still there? Did the voicecast connection drop, or…?”

Her answer was a dreary silence. Victoria opened and closed her fists, trying not to punch the nearest Dex.