Thomas’ limbs were tangled with the female Dex that resembled his dream girl, her pink-red hair splayed across his face.

He blew a loose strand of hair away from his mouth and took a peek at her. Her head was on his chest and she seemed to be sleeping.

Sliding gently out from underneath her, he got to his knees and scooped her up into his arms. He then got to his feet with a grunt and carried the limp body to his work couch where he threw a blanket over her.

Then he slipped Lizz back into his bracelet from his pocket and taped the compartment door closed once again.

“That damn bishop and his damn portals,” Thomas muttered.

“It wasn’t the bishop. The office opened the transit portal to my position,” Lizz said from the bracelet’s speaker. “The interference finally went away.”

“Gee, thanks.” Thomas rubbed his bruised butt and elbow. “Perfect timing.”

“You are welcome,” Lizz replied cheerfully.

Thomas sighed.

“Who’s that?” Lizz inquired as the camera in the bracelet spotted the blanket-covered girl on the couch.

The Dex opened her eyes. “I am Zedix̶̪̘͐̕ͅx̴̖͓͎̾̓͂į̶̍͝s̷̪̅̏s̶̬̘͛̕h̸̨͖͖͑̽̌t̴̪͉͘ą̶̹̓͂͝v̵̧͇͔̂͋i̴̛̮͆͝b̷̬̝̥̍a̴̼̮͒r̷̢̗̺͋ư̸̱̬͈̔s̸̡̝̫̗̭̋͐͗̑͆ǐ̶͇̝͝a̶̹͛͒̚h̸͙͓̓̽͋͠,” the cosmic entity replied. “Behold, my new containment vessel, granted to me by the cult of Memetia!”

“Owwww!” Thomas grabbed his throbbing head, blinking blood tears out of his eyes. “Please, for the love of God, stop introducing yourself to everyone with your unspeakable name!”

“It is perfectly speakable,” the inverted singularity commented. “Would you like to hear it again?”

“Yes, I would like to hear your name again, Miss,” Lizz commented. “I’m afraid that there is something wrong with my microphone.”

“No!” Thomas yelled, muting Lizz. “Please! You’re seriously killing me here, Z! God, where’s my Advil? I feel like my eyes are melting out of my skull!”

“You do not like my name?” the cosmic being asked.

“I... errr,” the mailman sputtered as he rummaged in his office desk for an Advil. “Look, can you say your name as slowly as possible using only English letters?”

“Zed. Ein. Aiiya. Exx. Exx. Aii. Ssss. Shhh. Hcskkk. Tachh. Aiiia. Viiii...” The paradox manifestation made disturbing noises that sounded somewhat like English letters spoken by someone being drowned repeatedly.

“That is way too long and weird,” Thomas said. “Nobody human is going to memorize that sort of a name.

“You’re in the body of a female Dex, so it stands to reason that you should introduce yourself with a human female name. Nothing weird.”

“Nothing weird?”

“That’s right, nothing weird,” Thomas affirmed. “When you said your real name in front of bishop Gabriel, you made his eyes bleed. That’s not normal.

“If your goal is to be a tourist in our universe and not get boxed in again by idiots who want to contain you, then please don’t stand out. Be a bit less... of whatever the hell you are.”

“I... will adhere to your recommendation, emissary,” the cosmic entity replied. “What is an acceptable female Dex name?”

“Zh-ed-en-aya-ex-x-ai-sh,” Thomas mulled, trying to come up with something realistic. “Zedya... no that’s stupid. Zedaaya...? Zeniya! Yes, that’ll do. Zeniya Exis. How’s that?

“Go on, say it after me... ‘I’m Zeniya Exis, or Z-ed for short. I’m a female Dex, AI partner of Thomas Morell.’”

“I am... Zeniya Exis, or Z-ed for short,” Zed replied. “I’m a female Dex, AI partner of Thomas Morell.”

“Very good,” Thomas sighed, relaxing. “Is that acceptable? Can you use that to introduce yourself to everyone who asks from now on?”

“It is acceptable,” Zed affirmed.

* * *

Thomas spent the next twenty minutes establishing a backstory with Zeniya, explaining how she had to either defer questions about her origins to him or simply answer that he bought her from the Meme Cafe, which was how the Memeticists’ Dyson sphere was labeled in the Galactic Rim Wiki.

Thomas wondered if the Memeticists’ reason for marketing themselves as a cafe was some kind of a tax loophole or if it was simply part of their grand plot to appear unimportant.

The galaxy was full of whimsical and ridiculous bullshit, thanks to GLMs, so the delivery man chose not to overthink it.

As the next order of business, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver and Dex repair kit from a grandmother’s metal cookie jar that was magnetized to the bottom of his desk.

Then he tapped the unlocking sequence on Zeniya’s abs, which made the Dex body unfold its stomach, presenting its innards to Thomas.

Thomas quickly scanned the interior with a parts identifier, trying not to stare at the mind-bending inverted singularity occupying the central compartment.

“What are you doing, emissary?” Zed wondered out loud.

“Trying to understand how this Dex functions,” Thomas explained. “I’m scanning everything to see what’s inside it.”

“Why not ask Bishop Gabriel for an explanation?”

“I like figuring things out myself,” Thomas said, shrugging. “It’s my thing.”

“What have you figured out?” Zed asked after a deep pause as Thomas went over the entire Dex body with his scanner.

“This Dex was definitely custom made… for you. It’s mostly hollow, as if it was made to accommodate your void-threads. I think you should be able to control it from within. Just let me finish checking everything.”

“Very well,” Zed said. “I shall trust you to make this vessel safe for me, emissary.”

Thomas quickly found the gateway modem, which he immediately proceeded to unscrew out of the Dex.

“What are you doing now?” Zed wondered.

“Disconnecting the internet,” Thomas explained.

“Why?” the cosmic being asked.

“I don’t want you to look at an advert billboard somewhere and accidentally download a virus,” Thomas said. “They’re a pain in the ass to remove from the software.”

“Does Bishop Gabriel not have eleven more containers for me to utilize if this one breaks?” the floating, pulsating sphere of darkness inquired.

“One—I don’t trust Gabriel, so I don’t want to rely on him too much,” Thomas said. “Two—if this container breaks, then we might get caught, or else…”

“Or else what?”

“From what the officer Dex told me, you’re leaking tachyons like crazy, and I don’t even know if those are going to give me seventeen kinds of cancer… or something.”

“Your meaty body is rather weak and fragile,” Zed commented.

“Yeah, it sure is.” Thomas nodded. “Comes with being human, I suppose.”

“Why not replace your organs and meaty shell with something superior? I would prefer it if my emissary didn’t accidentally expire on me,” the paradox manifestation said.

Thomas shrugged. “Eh, I’ve got corporate health insurance.”

“Meaning?”

“This bracelet has a medkit in it.” Thomas tapped his hexagonal-textured black bracelet. “It’ll inject a bunch of crap in me that’ll keep me alive even if I’m cut in half. It’ll then call a doc to gate to me. Corporate-employed doctors use gates too, so they don’t take very long to help out in an emergency.”

“And if you accidentally spontaneously combust faster than a doc can arrive?”

“Humans do not spontaneously combust,” Thomas said.

“From a library in the ruins of the Portal Research Institute, I have learned that you do spontaneously combust,” Zed said. “There was an entire book about this diresome phenomenon. It would be an inconvenience to find another emissary.”

“Not everything we write down in our books is the truth,” the delivery man explained. “It was most likely a fictional story.”

“Why would you put such deceptions into a knowledge database?”

“It’s just how people are, I suppose.” Thomas shrugged. “People are packed with imagination and creativity, and we bestowed the same traits upon our GLMs too.

“Our digital children are just as imaginative as we are since we made them from all of our books. A GLM is able to conceptualize and output all sorts of imaginary nonsense to entertain us.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun,” Thomas said.

“What is fun, exactly?”

“Fun… is basically a feeling of enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure that is experienced by humans during leisure or social interaction. It’s entirely subjective and can vary depending on one’s preferences.

“People get fun out of a wide range of activities, such as playing sports, listening to music, watching movies, reading fictional books, playing games, socializing, and so forth. Fun can be attained through all sorts of emotions, such as happiness, excitement, and satisfaction… even fear…”

“Fear?”

“People write books about spontaneous combustion because it’s a spooky and exciting narrative,” Thomas explained. “We enjoy being scared without actually being in danger.”

“How... odd,” Zed mulled.

Thomas unscrewed a location services cube. Nobody was going to track his new Dex, especially not Gabriel.

Then he unscrewed all of the microphones and disabled everything that broadcasted signals.

An incoming voicecast buzzed on his wrist.

Thomas picked up the call, seeing the man’s name on the ID tag. “Yes, Bishop?”

“You’ve... somehow disabled all of my tracking tools,” Gabriel said. “This was not part of our agreement.”

“I don’t recall signing anything.” Thomas smirked at the holographic face of the bald, golden-eyebrowed man floating atop his wrist.

Gabriel sighed.

“I don’t trust micro-portal data transmissions,” Thomas explained. “And I don’t trust you. You’re full of shit, Bishop.”

“I cannot observe the white hole if the gateway transmitters are disabled!” Gabriel complained.

“I didn’t remove the interior radiation scanners,” Thomas said. “They’re still recording all sorts of technical data about the white hole.”

“You’re limiting me.” the bishop hissed indignantly. “We must observe the miracle!”

“I can deliver the data card from the scanners to you once a week,” Thomas offered.

“That is not acceptable!” Gabriel growled. “I know where you work, Mr. Morell!”

“What are you going to do, stage an assault on the Good Directorate cube in Europa?” Thomas raised an eyebrow. “You won’t even get past the first level of security. Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t gate in here.”

“Modification of Dexes is illegal!” Bishop Gabriel gritted his teeth. “You’ve just voided your warranty!”

“Like I give a damn,” Thomas said. “Go on then, call the Good Directorate. Tell them eeeeeverything about Zed.”

“I must observe Zedix!” the bishop insisted, his voice becoming increasingly more incensed. “My Lady commands it!”

“I am Zeniya Exis.” Zed interjected herself into the conversation. “Please refer to me as such, Bishop Gabriel.”

“I must observe you!” Gabriel said.

“Deal with it,” Thomas said. “I’m not having you violate my privacy... or Zeniya’s for that matter. No microphones, no modem, no location services, no GPS for you. If I feel like it, I’ll bring you scanner data.”

“But… I…” The bishop sounded distraught. “She’s… we…”

“I tire of his pestering,” Zed commented. “I wish to take my new vessel for a walk.”

Thomas pressed the disconnect call button. Then he closed the Dex access panel, satisfied that he had done the right thing.

“I’m surprised he didn’t see that one coming.” Thomas smirked.

“As I gain greater power in the present and become brighter, my future echo becomes harder to observe. As you are near me, your future actions become harder to observe,” Zed explained.

The brilliant violet-pink eyes of the Dex girl suddenly shot open. They moved left, right, up, down, and then settled on Thomas.

The mailman retreated away from the couch, giving Zeniya some room.

“These controls are quite easy to utilize.” Zeniya’s lips twitched ever so slightly as she spoke. “With this fine vessel, I shall take my first grand step forward, towards judging all of humanity and all of your digital children!”

The cosmic being attempted to take a step with her new legs and immediately got tangled up in the blanket, slamming face first onto the floor with a thud.

“This is not acceptable,” she said as Thomas tried very hard not to snicker.