Ava and Aphrodite: The First Human in 8000 Years (Featured)

Chapter 79: Mother's Plan

Mother had invited the group inside her house. It was more like a cottage, very cozy, rural, hidden. She'd locked herself away in a small home in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere. It was clear that she'd decided to live the life of a hermit.

She'd done so for thousands of years.

From what it looked it like it was just a small two-storey building, the bottom floor was simply a kitchen and living room, only two chairs around a small dining table and a sofa. The stairs led upstairs but the lights were off, it was unclear but that was probably where she slept.

Ava and the group looked around, there was no indication of any sort of technology or computing devices that could connect her to the network. How did she control all the Servs and Evos?

Ava did a quick scan for electronic devices in the area, it quickly became clear to him that there was a huge hub of technological wizardry below them. Computers, networks, receivers, odd devices that he couldn't identify. Her basement. It was most likely a massive facility underground. She'd built her little cottage on top of it.

Mother went to her kitchen and started making more tea.

"Locke, go to the fields and gather more leaves, will you? We're running short," she asked,

"Which types would you like ma'am?" Locke replied,

"Restock on all of them. We're running low."

Locke paused, "That will take over a week ma'am." he said,

"I know. Get going."

Locke looked a tad dejected. He walked to the door and took another glance at the gang before he saw his way out and walked outside. It was getting dark.

Mother was a bit of a slave driver. Well, no surprise.

"I haven't got administration access to the original solar network," said Mother, "I can moderate the system. Give commands, appoint roles, etc etc. But the actual big changes to the system? I can't do that." it wasn't clear who she was addressing. Everyone, maybe. "But the only way to defeat this virus is to-" she sighed, "to cut everyone off the network completely. Manually."

"Delete the network?" asked Ava, "you mean... actually get rid of it completely?"

"More than that. You need to do a full reboot. Doing what you and Aphrodite intended, that wouldn't get rid of the virus, it would still be in the Evo or Serv's system. I know it sounds harsh, but we'll need to deactivate every Evo and Serv that's already infected. After that we'll have to cut the network to make sure the virus doesn't spread at all." she froze for a moment, like the words that were coming out of her mouth truly hurt her, "potentially forever."

"C-cut the network out forever!?" Aphrodite's voice elevated, "you'll set the Evos free!?"

"It's not like I have a choice."

Ava couldn't quite understand. Was that the only option then? Mother had spent thousands of years manipulating everyone, it was her entire life and being. Why was she now ok with letting all of that go?

"To you, I'm no doubt the most despicable person in the world. Manipulating your community, creating this false war, robbing you of your autonomy. But this isn't the model that I created. It's a model mankind has been using to moderate the Servs and Evos for a long time. We wanted to evolve you to be more human. You all had thousands of years of human development to catch up to." she turned to face the group, "when you were reborn in new bodies, your thoughts, your ideas, your communities, they were fresh, naked. You had no history to learn from. We needed to create the history for you. The network was used to force you to learn how to make your societies work."