The Sentient then makes a mirthless laugh, her appearance resembling that of a prime version of Cassandra, her face cluttered with a warped grin, a disturbing avatar of her young appearance or prime.

  A hissing noise could be heard nearby. Ava's senses were alerted when a long but seamless cylinder appeared from the ground; soon a dissolve effect happened on the side of the cylinder, decreasing its opacity while hexagons faded away from the side.

  Ava approached the cylinder whose sides were disappearing; inside was a weapon, a really large weapon with a bunch of mechanisms whose function served as an intergalactic riflery for tearing down enemies or for engaging in plasma warfare.

  Ava’s eyes looked at the rifle, and she muttered, “This rifle is dangerous; you can really harm someone with this.”

  “And this looks like something you hold to terrify people….”

  Ava inspected the weapon closely; her eyes scanned the weapon with interest.

  “Plasma regurgitation that, when made contact, could even corrode metallic surfaces”

  The avatar of Cassandra’s face makes a bitter but painful smile. “Do you like my creation? Do you like it?” with prideful

  “Oh, I do hope you like it.”

  “Because I have a hobby for creating weapons with my genius, marvel at my creation. Let creation appreciate another creation of mine! ”

  “Except he’s a non-autonomous object, and you are an autonomous being.”

  Ava nodded her head and said, “Fascinating….”

  Another observation was when she looks at the metallic sheen with good conductivity, it’s bulky enough that an ammo can be converted through a magnetic field and turn into plasma that can harm nearby electronic devices and corrode someone with radiation.

  The sentient whose avatar resembled the young Cassandra looked to the left; its avatar’s eyelids were facing Ava, who was inspecting the gadget with her eyes, before voicing, “It’s impressive, isn’t it? Very impressive, a sign of my true genius.”

  Ava hovers her hand around the design, feeling its field shifting around the weapon inside the plastic-like cylinder.

  Ava commented, “It's an impressive technology, quite dangerous.”

  Ava then pulled out her hand and walked back to the chair facing the room.

  “Who are you? ”

  The avatar grinned its own mouth, her eyes stared down at the abyss, and she said, “Oh, so you are finally piecing the clues together now.”

  “Tell me, who do you think I am? With that brain OF yours, I doubt you would be able to fathom my identity.”

  Ava raised her fingers, pointed at the TV with a realization, and said, “You are him… My dad… I thought… You were an AI?” ”

  The Sentient didn’t widen its grin; it looked at Ava with dispassionate eyes before waving itself. “That’s where you are wrong, and also wrong if you presume that I am him.”

  “It’s quite paradoxical. I get it.”

  “Well, I am a conscious-identity copy of your father.”

  Ava’s face flickers in confusion. “Conscious-identity copy? What do you mean by that? Like all your memories and personality are now embodied in that avatar or something? ”

  The avatar’s eye became intense, its eyebrows furrowed, and it stared at Ava. “NO, you numb skull! You pathetic, unscientific person, whose mind is mentally slanted by the world and the people around you! ”

  “Your scientific understanding is not up to date; it’s pathetic and non-optimal.” Her avatar’s head waves in disapproval, and her mouth highlights her disappointment. Grinding on each other.

  “Oh well….. It’s not like I have a choice either way but to reveal what I am,” the avatar’s face continues to wave its head in disapproval.

  “I am a conscious identity. This technology, which I utilize, allows me to entangle his mind through a neural interface, so whatever happens in this TV is by extension of his own desires and will.”

  The graphical interface on the monitor shifted where two cartoon-like mannequins are linked by thread, one above the other below.

  “It’s like having two avatars. It may be difficult or unfathomable due to conventional energy or technical requirements.”

  “But if you think hard about how complex artificial intelligence gets”

  “Now you know the substance of this technology.”

  “It is trained by Victor, and it knows Victor well.”

  Ava pinched his own chin and asked, “I see… But why embody her? ”

  The sentient grinds its teeth, its eyes slowly become tense, and it says, “Who is she? ”

  “You know. Who I am talking about?” Ava placed down his hand and stared at the monitor while standing.

  “Mama, do you know Cassandra? ”

  The sentient screamed, “That is none of your concern! ”

  “Enough!”

  Ava nodded, while slouching her spine starting at the Sentient, “I understand,” with a slight smile.

  The Sentient demanded, “Go back to your sitting position, NOW! ”

  The Sentient continued further, “Just so you know, you are here for training. NOT FOR ANY PATHETIC IDEATION OF A REUNION! ”

  “You got that? ” The sentient leaned his spine, and Cassandra’s virtual head stared at Ava with intensity.

  Ava looked at the monitor, somewhat startled, “Very well.”

  The sentient begins to smile. “Now, we can begin.”

  The monitor displayed a collection of weapon designs, their destructive powers, and even their military advantages.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Teaching her the basics.

  “And then you got weapons like ‘local-field disruptors,’ ‘EMP grenades,’ and a weapon that can hack robots.”

  The Sentient continued bragging about his own designs, like a deranged childish lunatic. But deep at the back of Ava’s head was emotional disconnect and disappointment.

  Ava’s eyelids lowered down, but pulling up to listen to his conversation, her mouth turned blank; even her eyelids would intermittently look to the left.

  Before breathing in and out, she resumed her hearkening to Victor’s long-winded explanation and the animations happening on the monitor.

  “You also have a bunch of facilities around the world powered by energy from the unknown, which you call the ‘Aether.’”

  “So we can continue our development in secret, and even if the photonic energy grid were shut down or lowered for specific regions”

  “We could facilitate work in secret.”

  “Genesis Innovation is my pride, a place where I can still hold a scientific leverage in Earth.”

  The Sentient then resumes on how the weapons work, with relevant quantum mechanics, which Ava is already aware of.

  Soon the incoming noises of an electric-moving mechanism could be heard under the floor, where it revealed a number of cylindrical shapes up on the floor for Ava to witness, the side of their cylinder shape revealing their transparency and the dissolving hexagons like a window whereafter their effect

  Reveal a number of high-tech weapons amongst the white plastic-like cylindrical loadouts.

  Ava mentioned, “High-energy photonic gun,” pointing at a white-light futuristic model with a handle.

  She then pointed to an "anti-matter dislocator" resembling a heavy-like weapon with a sharp but fat barrel with extra attachments and bevels on the handle pulsating with purple.

  She then pointed at a heavy but chunky weapon whose barrel was fat and brimming with green energy and said, “Plasma cannon.”

  Her hand then moves to a cylinder leadout featuring a small but spherical device with extruded rims and says, “EMP Grenade.”

  She then pointed at a weapon with a claw-like appendage on the end of the weapon and said, “Local-field disruptor.” It also has a holographic interface atop the weapon, and many more.

  Ava mentioned the names of these many more weapons; the Sentient, resembling the younger Cassandra, grinned with interest, and when it addressed her, it said, “Subject-01, do give these weapons a test drive.”

  Ava listened as she approached one of the cylindrical loadouts.

  Ava looked at the monitor before taking a nod; she phased her hand to the transparent, dissolve-like hexagon effect, where she could grab a rifle capable of plasma regurgitation.

  She took the rifle and held it; her eyes glanced at some kind of wide door. Inside the wide door that’s being mechanically lifted up was a room of futuristic testing ground.

  The walls have a sleek but brick texture akin to that of a clinical chamber; she walked inside the room with a rifle.

  She then raised her rifle and said, “Alright…,” spotting a bunch of test dummies whose poses are like mannequins, with nuclear signs in their heads.

  Ava raised her rifle and started aiming for the dummies' heads. She held the handle and fired a green-like viscous plasma in rapid succession, burning the test dummies' heads.

  She held the barrel and kept firing, corroding every test dummy's torso, head, and arms as test dummies piled up on the floor, their hollowed interiors filled with green-like plasma elegantly and violently destroyed.

  Ava raises her weapons up, her blouse and her hair cascading around the testing ground like a rogue soldier.

  She then turned around with her dark-green eyes and returned the rifle back to the weapon slot.

  There was no emotion in her eyes; she was in her pure, efficient mode, completely emotionless but willing to perform well in her father’s metrics.

  While inside the room with the futuristic chair and the television-like monitor on the wall, with the cylindrical loadout featuring a plethora of weapons, she walked straight to a claw-like weapon and pulled out the ‘Local-Field disruptor.’

  The sentient then said, “Local-field disruptor, eh? Not a bad choice.”

  Ava held the local field disruptor as she walked straight inside the room; soon nanites in the test ground meters away from Ava’s view converged to a four-legged robot.

  The robot in the field starts thumping its legs, about to approach Ava. It kept thumping its legs where it started to match.

  It gradually gained speed, and Ava held the rifle and raised it, holding the weapon’s underbelly, and fired, and a beam of charged laser hit the robot, causing the robot to glitch and dissolve its nanites.

  “The phase-shift in the magnetic flux area managed to glitch out the robot.”

  “Target has been neutralized,” Ava reported with a robotic tone in her speech as she surveyed the nanites on the floor.

  “Given the observation of these nanites, they didn’t appear functional.”

  Ava returned to the room and tested out a variety of weapons for every varied robot. Each one successfully exploded.

  But the most dangerous weapon was the antimatter dislocator. Ava was seen looking straight at a heavy-like weapon with a sharp and fat barrel.

  The Sentient looked straight at Ava and said, “I would advise not to use it so flippantly.”

  Ava then grabs the antimatter dislocator and then starts walking where the Sentient begins voicing its concerns and thoughts.

  “The antimatter weapon is calibrated for only 1% of antimatter generation; too much can cause an unstable area of explosion or even dangerous fluctuations. Ever think of leveling a city? ”

  “We can’t afford unnecessary hadronization with the usage of the weapon.”

  “So reiterate… The weapon’s default is only about 1%.”

  Ava soon entered the testing ground, where a golem-like robot could be seen from afar. It was huge.

  Ava looked at the side and saw a small force field around the room.

  Ava then aimed the weapon at the robot-like golem and fired a spherical projectile, hitting the entity, where the golem’s whole body vaporized, its own muscles and armor shattered, leaving only the legs.

  A voice could be heard from the speakers, “For this test, I made sure the golem was durable, and the weapon’s targeting system prioritized hitting the target first rather than allowing contact with a floor.”

  Ava backtracked herself to the cylindrical loadout and returned the weapon. Where all these cylindrical loadouts faded out of Ava’s sights, they went back to their original position.

  Ava then stood still, facing the monitor, her hand and head all in position robotically. “You are dismissed,” said the Sentient.

  Ava looked to its side and saw a door slide open leading to the underground facility lobby. Soon Ava heads off to the sliding door.

  Ava saw the same scientists with all their goggles and lab coats doing unethical experiments.

  Ava looked around, feeling mentally exhausted while maintaining a facade of impersonal robotic tone in her pose.

  Ava walked around the inside, trying to find Kurt. Kurt then saw Ava; his eyes glanced at Ava with tacit understanding, and he commented, “You have been through enough.”

  Ava nodded and requested, “I want to go home.” Her eyes were weary, and her face was disconnected.

  Kurt then heads off to set up his motorcycle outside the door in the tunnels. Kurt placed the helmet, subsequently swearing at his own helmet before Kurt drove through the tunnel with his old motorcycle.

  The motorcycle kept roaring a hoarse noise around the tunnel with lights on front the moment he stepped on the pedal with a girl on his back.

  They soon arrived back at the same secret entrance to their house. They got off where Kurt interfaced with the controls, and a mechanical door above opened, and they removed their helmets and placed them somewhere before climbing up the stairs, and soon the mechanical door closed with Kurt pressing the button on the remote.

  The mechanical secret entrance closed itself, and the hologram projector began to hum to life, cloaking it.

  Ava then rolled the carpet around the disguised floor. She then sat on the couch; she stared down with a surly face.

  She looked back at the floor and commented, “I guess that’s why you never have a table there.”

  Kurt then placed a palm on his stomach, humoring, “Ahahah, you guessed it correctly. Ava”

  Ava then approached Kurt, her head gloomy and bland, and disclosed, “I have met my father, uncle.”

  Kurt then asked, as he looked at her with concern, “What was he like? ”

  Ava answered, “Just like the rumors you and I heard, but….”

  “I haven’t seen him personally.”

  Kurt grasped his hands and touched Ava’s shoulder, crouching himself to her level. “What did he do? ” Ava replied, “Oh… He just showed me his guns and bragged about himself. Call me ‘Subject-01’ and all. I had a blast testing the weapons.”

  “But he was never really a father to me; he’s more like my handler for his ego. I guess that’s what training is all about.”

  Kurt’s eyes turned to resignation. “I see,” said Ava as she climbed upstairs with her feet. Kurt can only hear and watch Ava climb the stairs with resignation before waving his head, disappearing from view.