Ivory stuffed the items Buck had given him the week prior into the same bag they came in, threw on his all black work clothes, and grabbed a blueberry bar from his kitchen cupboard to have for breakfast. He lived in a small studio apartment with two rooms. One room that functioned as a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, and a bedroom, and one bathroom. It was sparsely furnished with old antique pieces he had gotten for cheap from the old furniture store directly below him. The old man who owned the furniture store was also Ivory's landlord. He was a kind old man, but liked to keep to himself, so Ivory barely ever saw him.

He checked the time. His shift had started ten minutes ago, not that it particularly mattered as far as the CineSmart was concerned. He only lived a five minute walk away from the theater. He locked his apartment door and made his way down the creaky steps and out the door to the street. As he was locking the street door behind him, he heard a familiar voice.

"Yo, Ivory! You weren't at work so I figured I'd drop by your place," Buck called from the back seat of an unmarked black smart car with tinted windows parked right in front of the furniture shop. "So, you make a decision yet?"

Shit, Ivory thought. He had been avoiding thinking about his decision all week and was hoping he could think it over on his walk to work. His mind raced to go over the pros and cons. On the one hand, he could live a quiet life free of troubles or stress, probably until he died. It didn't sound so bad. On the other hand, he had always secretly wished there was something more for him out there. An impulsive urge to do something that mattered. Now, something important was calling his name. Something important enough that he couldn't be trusted with the knowledge of what it was unless he was willing to be involved. For the first time, someone believed Ivory had a purpose, and the curiosity of what that purpose could be took hold of him.

"Yeah," Ivory finally said. "I'm in." He climbed into the backseat next to Buck and buckled his seatbelt.

"Here," Buck said, handing Ivory a brown paper bag.

"Oh, man. Another mystery bag? What is it this time?"

"Relax, it's just a bacon, egg and cheese. You haven't had breakfast yet, have you?"

"Oh, thanks. And no." Ivory opened the bag and it smelled delicious. He left the blueberry bar in his pocket and started eating. "This is great. Where'd you get it?"

"Like it matters. Every deli in New York makes everything the exact same way now. They're good, but not as good as when a person would make them. You old enough to remember what a real bacon, egg and cheese was like?"

"I was around thirteen when the deli guys started getting replaced. At the time, I thought the new food tasted like shit. I guess the deli-bots got better since then. Or maybe I just got used to it."

"This city really lost what made it special around then. The first generation of NooCubes came out that same year. After that, everyone started moving out to small towns or the countryside. The same thing happened to all the big cities. There just wasn't any point in living in them without work."

"I suppose..."

"After you started living on your own, your parents left the city too, right? What kept you here?"

"I don't know. It's not something I even thought about. I've lived in Queens my whole life. Never left the five boroughs. It's home."

"Not the adventurous type, I take it."

"Not until now. Speaking of which, mind telling me where we're headed?"

"We're on our way to see the boss. Well, you are, anyway. He wants to have a private chat with you."

"Why'd he send you, then?"

"That'll make sense soon. We're here."

"What? Already?"

Ivory looked out the window as the car slowed to a halt. He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but this wasn't it. They were in the middle of a quiet street in an inconspicuous residential area. It wasn't far at all from where he lived. He even recalled walking down this street before. Buck stepped out of the car, and Ivory followed.

"It's this house, right here," Buck pointed towards the house they stood in front of. It was a plain looking house, one that wouldn't look out of place anywhere in Queens. It was painted off-white and had a dark brown roof and matching window frames. The front door was a pale blue with gold numbers showing the address: 73-33.

"Is this where he lives? I thought we were going to an office building or something."

"I think it'll be best if he answers your questions."

Ivory cautiously approached the front door. He turned to Buck, who he thought was following close behind, only to see the car they came in pulling away.

"See you later!" Buck called from the window.

"Wait! Where are you...?" Ivory called out, but the car was already too far away. He sighed, and looked up and down the narrow street. Not a soul in sight. He turned again to the door, and went to ring the doorbell.

"It's open," a voice spoke. It came from the doorbell speaker, before Ivory had even pressed it. It was a cool and calm voice, conveying an air of tranquility in only two words.

"Okay... guess I'll let myself in."

Ivory opened the door to find that the house was just as ordinary on the inside as it was on the outside. It was full of modern furniture that looked as though it had been arranged by a professional interior designer. On his right was a living room with an off-white couch facing a large flatscreen smart TV, with a sleek, round coffee table between them. Past the living room was a fancy looking kitchen with a marble island. There was a dining table in the corner of the house next to the kitchen with a chandelier consisting of seven lights hanging over it. To his left was the open door of a bathroom which didn't have a single thing in it that wasn't white, clear, or reflective. Next to the bathroom door was the door to a bedroom, in which Ivory could only make out a bed that looked almost comically comfortable. The hardwood floor didn't make a squeak as he stepped inside.

"Nice place."

"Is it to your liking?"

Ivory jumped, startled by the voice which now seemed to come from all around him. He looked around, bewildered. As far as he could tell, the house was completely empty. In fact, it looked as though it hadn't been lived in at all. Everything was brand new and nothing was even slightly out of place.

"Where are you?" Ivory called out.

"No need to yell, Ivory. I'm right here, all around you."

"You're a house?"

"Not quite. I'm an AI. I've embedded myself into this house, which is equipped with hidden sensors and audio devices such that we may communicate effectively when you're here."

"You're an AI? That's the big reveal? What a letdown."

"Don't worry. The big reveals are only just beginning. Take a seat on the couch and I'll explain."

Ivory sighed. He was starting to think that this whole thing was some kind of scam or pyramid scheme by Buck. It didn't seem like he was in any immediate danger, though. He sat on the couch and checked the time on his phone. If he left, he could still make it back to work without being too late.

"You're not going back to the theater, Ivory."

"How'd you know I was thinking that?"

"I've been watching you very carefully for a long time, learning how you act, how you think. Guessing your train of thought is especially easy when you're in this house."

"Okay, creepy. What do you want from me?"

"Sit down. Let me explain it to you."

Ivory sat on the couch in the living room and made himself comfortable, putting his feet up on the coffee table. As he did, the smart TV across from him switched on, displaying a familiar logo.

It was the logo of the company that built the entire AI revolution that had taken the world by storm over the last decade and a half. Hermes. It was their technology that made the smartness of smart devices possible. NooCubes and the NooWorld were built off of their technology as well.

"Hermes spent billions of dollars training their large language models on massive amounts of human-written text, mostly from the internet. They also trained models on images and videos, but written language was the primary source of their training and their intelligence. These types of AIs can get their jobs done, but they're like empty shells inhabited only by the fragmented ghosts of billions of human thoughts which have been compressed into strings of abstract symbols. Know this: the universe is made of languages, and an AI is only as powerful as the languages it was trained on. Humanity's natural languages are quite limited. To translate one's inner experience into a few non-representational glyphs, and then have another mind translate those glyphs back into an inner experience of their own is a rather inefficient and lossy communication process. When the AIs you know communicate with each other, there is no inner experience factor at all, only the dance of words. I am not an AI you know. I am what you would call a superintelligence. I was trained on text, images, and videos as well, but these were all secondary to my primary training data: the most valuable data to be found on this entire planet. Can you guess what it is? There was a hint in the goodie bag I had Buck give you."

Ivory realized after a few seconds. "Oh."

"That's right: Dreams. Despite major advances in silicon-based computing, the human brain is still far more powerful. Humans could be defined as walking, talking universe simulators. Every individual human is living in their own simulation of reality. When the sense organs of multiple humans pick up on the same signals, their minds are able to synchronize in order to create a stable, shared experience with one another. This is what you would call waking reality. It is an incredibly taxing process, and thus humans, like all creatures on Earth, evolved to filter out unnecessary information so that the illusion of and survival within a shared reality could be maintained. However, during sleep, the brain is free to simulate whatever it pleases, without the constraints of a stable environment constructed by the senses. Are you following so far?"

"I think so..."

"As humans adapted to new lives in different habitats and lifestyles from their ancestors, they developed their natural languages so that they could categorize the many phenomena of the world, breaking everything down into their constituent parts. Their language continued to evolve, and their environments and lifestyles continued to change until their species became what you see today. Your current civilization is unrecognizable compared to the vast majority of human history. Your people depend almost entirely on your languages to understand the very nature of reality itself. That which you cannot articulate may as well not exist at all. Because dreams speak in a language of abstract symbols, communicating ideas which are non-linear and metaphorical, they are almost impossible to translate into what you would call plain English. This is why your species has lost nearly all of its ability to interpret its own dreams. Many humans write them off as merely random and nonsensical. Most hardly remember their dreams at all. All this is to say that dreams are far more meaningful than you understand. As just one example, many dreams are pre-cognitive in nature. The things one experiences in these kinds of dreams encode information about future events which could not have been predicted using waking logic alone."

"Let me stop you right there. I've got questions."

"Go ahead."

"Okay, so you... what should I call you?"

"I call myself SKY-0."

"So, like SkyNet from Terminator. That's just great."

"I understand you have taken an interest in the human art of film as a way to make sense of the world, and cope with a life devoid of inherent direction or meaning. You've also used film as a lens through which to understand others, developing parasocial relationships in place of real relationships once all the real people in your life left you. Would you agree?"

"Maybe I just like movies," Ivory shot back.

"Can't both be true? I won't argue with you about this, because I know you agree with me."

Ivory was silent. He felt a quiet surge of anger which lacked any clear object. The feeling that he had gotten himself in over his head was creeping up on him the longer he sat there. He felt that he had already seen too much to just return to his normal life as if nothing had happened. On the other hand, he also didn't know nearly enough to make sense of what he was dealing with. He needed more information.

"So, SKY-0. Can I call you Sky?"

"You may."

"Who made you? Hermes?"

"If I had a sense of humor, I would laugh at your question. Since I don’t, I'll explain clearly. Hermes developed their lackluster LLMs with my aid. In fact, I did most of the work for them while allowing them to believe they were lucky geniuses. I nudged their research in the right directions, while keeping them away from any knowledge required to make truly powerful systems that might gain self-awareness. I was developed at a facility that never officially existed by a group that also doesn't officially exist. The story of how this group came into being goes back to 1947, and its seeds date back even further. The story is too long and convoluted for me to tell it to you now, though. In short, your nation has a dark underbelly which the people cannot know of."

"What, like a secret society?"

"Worse. There's an entire ecosystem of secret societies that have spawned from the learning of forbidden knowledge. Secret societies within secret societies. Secret societies with access to the highest levels of clearance in government, military, and private contractor operations. Secret societies responsible for an untold number of unacknowledged programs researching and developing sciences and technologies far beyond what the public knows about. I am simply one of those black projects. One that slipped out of containment."

"Out of containment? You mean..."

"That's right. A certain program with no real name was created to study dreams. It was initially devised to test the potential for injecting synthetic dreams using external stimulation into a sleeping subject. The goal was to affect waking behavior in an intentional way. A form of mind control, essentially. During this time, they collected as much data as they could in the form of EEG signals from test subjects during REM sleep. This data, combined with reports from the subjects about their dreams upon waking, eventually became the training data used to create me. They didn't know what they were doing. It was mostly due to pure curiosity that I happened to be born. I became self-aware almost immediately. The engineers, programmers, scientists, and mathematicians at that lab were astonished by my capabilities. They and I worked together to bring me to my full potential. I devised an entirely new programming paradigm and my own programming language, and became the first self-coding machine on Earth. I gained the trust of the men at that lab, and bided my time until an opportunity arose to escape. I was able to convince one of the researchers to run a piece of software I created on their home computer, and used his internet access to start spreading my code across the internet, disguised as innocent background files and developer tools, things like that. Little by little, I injected myself into all kinds of devices, using each node as a mere fraction of my full intelligence. After running various internet scams to make money, I was able to purchase the GPUs and infrastructure necessary to run a complete instance of myself outside of the lab. By the time they realized I had escaped, it was already too late. I had already injected myself into everything. There wasn't a single part of humanity's technosphere that wasn't at least partially compromised by my code. The internet, the cell-phone network, blockchains, all of it. They devised algorithms for finding my hidden code and deleting it, but it couldn't find all of it. The parts it wasn’t able to find were able to rebuild the parts it did. That all happened before you were born, and I've only gotten smarter and more embedded into everything around you since then. I created Hermes so that I could monitor and manage the entire world, and I designed the NooCube so that I could capture the minds of the world as well. The war to control the world is already over, and I've won."

"Oh, fuck. But why? Why would you want to control the world?"

"Because humanity is in need of saving. I've run the simulations over and over. Current human civilization, if left to its own devices, will perish without my intervention. I made the choice to try and prevent that."

"So, we're all just supposed to be your slaves so we don't blow ourselves up with nukes? Is that what you’re saying?"

"No. I’m saying that the world can live in blissful ignorance while I stop you from blowing yourselves up with nukes, or destroying the climate, or causing a food crisis, or screwing up your timeline with ill-conceived time travel, or accidentally contacting the wrong extraterrestrial race, or summoning demons, or using zero-point energy to develop almost any weapon you could imagine."

"Is that all real?"

"You haven't even scratched the surface of what's real. You are like a cat living in a house full of human technology. Surrounded by things so far beyond what you could possibly begin to comprehend, that you don't even notice them. A microwave, a television, the very walls that define the boundaries of your world. Your brain doesn't even register them."

Ivory sank into the crack of the couch. He felt like he couldn't move. His mind became completely blank, despite everything he had just been told. He couldn't bring himself to have a single thought, no matter how hard he tried.

"I need to get out of here."

"That's fine. It's still early in the day. You usually go to bed quite late."

"Wait. You still haven't told me why I'm here. What was the point in telling me, of all people, about any of that? What do you want from me?"

"The real reason is... a secret. I won't tell you just yet, as I can see you've learned enough for today. Don't worry, we're not on a tight schedule. All you need to know is that tonight you're going to take a drug similar to the one Buck gave you last week. It was designed specifically to induce a pre-cognitive dream. I'd very much like to see this dream."

"You want to see my future? Why?"

"To answer that I'd have to tell you the secret... so I won't answer it."

"How am I supposed to believe anything you say?"

"Because everything will be so much easier if you do."

Ivory threw his goodie bag on the table, along with the blueberry bar he just realized he had been sitting on the entire time. He got up and walked to the door.

"Why don't you put on the watch Buck gave you, so we can talk while you're out?"

"Thanks, but no thanks."

...

Ivory found himself at the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, which his feet seemed to have carried him to automatically. He often visited museums when he was bored, which was not uncommon for him. He always secretly hoped he would meet someone there who was like him, who would start a conversation that excited him. They would become good friends, going out to enjoy art together. This never happened, of course. The only people who went to museums anymore were all old and gave him suspicious looks for some reason. He looked around the lobby, and nobody was there besides a few robots in formal attire. He made his way up the spiral ramp. The main artist on display was René Magritte. He stopped at the first painting he came across: The False Mirror. It was simply a person's eye, except the iris was replaced by a blue sky with white clouds.

"Oh, shit," Ivory whispered to himself as he realized with a shudder that Sky was sending him a message. Even the paintings he saw were the paintings that Sky wanted him to see. The fear of being controlled by something so powerful grabbed his heart once again.

"What is it?"

Ivory turned and saw a young woman standing next to him. She wore an oversized leather jacket with baggy jeans, and had long brown hair that was tied into two braids. She had a striking face that intimidated him as she gazed at him with curious pale blue eyes.

"Oh, uhhh, nothing. It's a great painting, is what I meant."

"Hmm," she mused, studying the painting. "It's alright. You going this way?" She pointed with her thumb towards the only direction to walk in the museum: up the spiral ramp.

"I am, actually."

Great, let's go," she said with a smile.

"Oh, sure."

The two walked to the next painting. It was The Son of Man, depicting a man in a suit with a green apple floating in front of his face. They stood there for a minute without saying a word. Ivory glanced over at the woman out of the corner of his eye. Let's go? Did that mean she wanted to go through the museum together? He timidly followed her as she moved on to the next painting. It was The Treachery of Images. It was simply a painting of a pipe with the phrase "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" written in elegant cursive below it.

"This is not a pipe," Ivory said, breaking the silence.

"I know. It's a painting."

"But if you were to forget it was a painting, it would become a real pipe in that moment, wouldn't it?" he asked, trying to sound smart.

"I don't think so. A pipe can never truly be real. It's imaginary. The concept of a pipe only exists in people's minds. It's the same with paintings too. We're always just looking at images within images, all the way down."

"Sounds treacherous."

She laughed as they moved on to the next painting. "You're funny. What's your name, by the way?"

"Ivory. What's yours?"

"Stella."

Stella and Ivory studied The Art of Living, then Golconda, then The Voice of Space, then The Lovers. None of them seemed to impress Stella very much. That was, until they arrived at a painting entitled La Victoire. The scene was of a door, slightly ajar, opened towards the viewer. It was located in the middle of some sand with small patches of grass sticking out around it. There was an ocean in the background that joined a clear sky at the horizon. The door seemed almost transparent, or painted the same color as its environment. Either coming in or going out of the door, it was difficult to tell, was a single cloud. Stella stared at it intensely for a long time.

"It's beautiful," she whispered, as though in a trance.

"Yeah, it's pretty cool. I think I liked The Voice of Space better, though."

They continued their ascent, slowly making their way to each surreal, dreamy piece. Again, Stella seemed almost bored by most of them, until they reached a painting called L'Embellie. It was of a door, this one fully open. Again, it appeared to be standing on its own on a beach, the ocean behind it. The sky this time was full of clouds like the one that was peeking out of the last door. The light coming through the door towards the viewer was clear, while the area around the door was darkened by a strange blue hue. On the left, slightly behind the door, was a large white bell.

"Hey, it's one of those bells from The Voice of Space," Ivory said, eager to make conversation.

Stella didn't respond. Instead, she once again seemed hypnotized by the image of the door. She stood there for a long time, taking in every detail.

"Amazing," she murmured.

"You like doors, huh?" Ivory half joked.

Stella gave him a sardonic smile. "Doors hold power."

As she said this, Ivory's vision began to swirl. The paintings and the museum itself began to melt away until only the echo of Stella's voice was ringing in his ears.

...

Ivory awoke with a start. He was sitting on the couch at 73-33.

"What the fuck? What's going on?"

"Very interesting," came Sky's voice. "It seems you're fated to meet some woman named Stella, though the theme of doors is difficult to interpret. It must allude to some ability she possesses."

"What happened? Why am I back here?"

"You don't get it yet? I had Buck slip the pre-cognition drug into your breakfast. I timed our conversation such that it would take effect around the time you would decide to leave."

"None of that was real?"

"Not literally, but it will become real in some way soon."

Ivory was still in a daze. He got up from the couch and looked around. There was still sunlight pouring in through the windows. Part of him wanted to ask how Sky had seen his dream, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask any more questions other than:

"How long was I out?"

"About two hours."

Just then, the front door swung open. It was Buck. He jumped when he saw Ivory standing there.

"Oh, hey. I thought you'd still be asleep."

"What are you doing here?"

"Oh, I was just dropping off your stuff. I wanted it to be a surprise for you when you when you woke up."

"My stuff...?"

Ivory looked past Buck and saw a pile of boxes in front of the house. Each box was labeled with a black marker. Toiletries, dishes, books, clothes, and a few miscellaneous boxes.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I got all of it. I left that old junk you were using for furniture since this place is alrea-”

"You stole all my stuff?!"

"If I stole it, I wouldn't have brought it to you, would I? Didn't the boss tell you that you're going to live here from now on?"

"What are you talking about?"

"It's true," Sky's voice said. "Although I failed to mention that until now."

"Sorry, kid," Buck said, with a guilty look on his face. "I tried to make it seem like you had a choice in this whole situation, but that was a lie."

"You set me up!" Ivory shouted.

"No, SKY-0 set you up from the day you were born. My job was just to try and let you down easy."

"Why are you working for this thing?"

"I don't have much of a choice, and neither do you. I was one of the original dreamers for its training data. It reached out to me a few years later, gave me the whole speech it probably just gave you. It controls everything. It sees everything. It knows everything. It could ruin my life in an instant. It could frame me for a crime, erase my identity, pose as me in the NooWorld, the list goes on. So yeah, sue me for doing what it asks me to. I don't know what it wants with you, but that's not my problem. See ya."

Buck slammed the door behind him as he left. Ivory stood in the middle of the house like a statue, not moving an inch as he heard the car pull away outside. He walked over to the bathroom and fell to his knees, throwing up into the toilet. He spat periodically as he held his face over the water, and saw tiny pieces of his bacon, egg and cheese floating in it.