"You what!?" 

Sino paused in the middle of wiping a table, turning his giant eyes to face Andrew. Andrew, however, was too tired to imagine a look of shock on his face.

"Granted it's not as bad as drunk-texting, but I'm still feeling pretty stupid about it," said Andrew, burying his face in a palm. 

"Well, what did she reply?"

"That Joshua Glenn is a myth and that I should stop with the conspiracies." 

"And you don't think he is?" 

"I don't know. I did do a little digging and there was one Dr. Joshua Glenn that got his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan way back in 2036. I think it was in computer science, but the records on the archive were hazy at best."

Sino placed down his cloth and rolled over to where Andrew was sitting. It had been a while since Andrew stepped into his establishment so Sino had let him stay after closing, with a few drinks on the house. The quiet of the cafe was amplified by the somber mood outside in the Business District. After the initial shock of raised taxes and the newly-enforced future conscription of toddlers, people were beginning to realize the gravity of the situation. Even if the CRS could come up with the right weapons, many were still going to die. They could put their faith in reincarnation, but no one could predict what the Lemurians might do to shatter that faith. Even the noise from the SoR had quietened. Their love for the Lemurians was now deemed a legitimate threat to society, and the CMC had begun cracking down on their activities. For that, both Andrew and Sino were thankful.

"So what are you going to do?" asked Sino, placing his hands on the table.

"I honestly don't know," sighed Andrew with another sip of lemonade. "I keep working the same math day in day out and I just don't see how I can attach a soul to anything without using some kind of external agent. If it's not a God then it's some new force we haven't discovered yet."

"So you're seriously going to look into this Joshua Glenn guy?"

"Believe it or not, that's likely the easier option right now."

"And no worries about what this might bring in the future... after the Lemurian threat is gone?"

"Oh, trust me, I am worried. I just think there are more pressing issues to deal with... "

Andrew was interrupted by a slow knock on the door. Sino shot a glance towards the cafe's entrance followed by a quick swing back towards Andrew's confused look. 

"Oh... shoot... " he said. "I forgot I was supposed to meet Priya today!"

"You what?! How could you... She's back? When did she get back?!" Andrew's confusion gave way to lividness. 

"I swear! I honestly forgot! She told me she was making a short trip home and agreed to do diagnostics a couple of weeks ago in exchange for free snacks."

Another knock came on the door.

"Sino! Are you in there?" came Priya's voice through the wood and glass.

"Just a second!" Sino replied.

Andrew began frantically looking for a place to hide. Under the table? No, that's silly. What about the janitor's closet? Not much room and he's been gaining weight. 

"Sino! Can I hide in your quarters?" he asked.

"Ok. Just try not to touch anything."

That was easier said than done. Sino the droid did not require a lot of room for comfort. Andrew found himself crawling into a room about half his height and the area of a double bed. There were toolboxes already occupying the corners, presumably for Sino to do his personal maintenance, and a soldering iron sitting by the side. Andrew found himself scrunched up against the right wall, instinctively sucking in his gut as much as he could. He began to feel somewhat silly, and wondered if this had been the best idea. 

"Hey! Thanks for coming! Sorry, I was just tidying up a little," came Sino's voice through the little door.

"Oh, don't worry about it. I wasn't outside that long."

Andrew barely remembered the last time he heard Priya's voice. He had tried to shut those words out of his memory, desperately holding on to the times when they laughed together, when they were passionate about each other. Hearing those sweet, musical tones again brought him back to the past, and for a brief moment he had wanted to crawl out the hole and run straight back into her arms. That brief moment of fantasy loosened the vigilance which had held his unfortunate pose which led to an involuntary kick on one of the toolboxes. He managed to stop himself from swearing.

"What was that?" asked Priya.

"Oh damn it. It's probably that mouse again. I swear, I've been cleaning this place top to toe at least twice a day and somehow, that thing has always manage to find a spot I've missed."

"Oh, that's unfortunate, but how did a mouse get down here?"

"It probably followed someone or something down from the terra-restoration dome. That's my guess. It's too bad I don't know anyone who used to work in creature control."

Andrew breathed a sigh of relief. Good thinking, Sino!

"Anyway, Priya, thank you for agreeing to do my diagnostics! Do you need any information from me before we begin?"

"Just the usual. Have you experienced any cognitive abnormalities in the past few weeks?"

"Well, I might be having some memory issues. I actually forgot you were coming today!"

"Ok, is this a one time thing?"

"Yes, but could you look into it anyway?"

"Certainly."

Andrew had jumped into the little cavern head-first so he wasn't able to peek out to see what was transpiring. He had to imagine Priya opening up Sino's diagnostic ports, studying the dials and displays, checking the wires for any burns. He realized that he had never actually seen Priya work, be it at her current job at the Mole or her old specialization as a Sun Dancer Engineer. He wondered if this was something he should be feeling guilty about, but dropped the notion when he remembered how she had viewed his own work.

"Ok, I'm just gonna hook you up to my laptop and run some pre-diagnostics. Just the usual malware scan. In about, let's see, five minutes or so, you're going to have to be as quiet and still as possible. In the mean time, I need you to keep talking to me so I can assess your linguistics abilities. Sounds good?"

"Sure, what do you want to talk about?"

"Hmm... How was your day?"

"Andrew stopped by earlier."

Sino's sudden proclaimation nearly caused Andrew to give the toolbox another kick. His suspicions that Sino had set this whole thing up was getting stronger. He contemplated running out to stop this whole charade, but general fatigue and the cramped space stopped his impulses from getting the better of him. He decided to listen; Sino probably wanted him to hear this. The labored whirring of Priya's laptop took over the sounds of the cafe for a good few seconds. 

"I see... " came Priya's hesitant voice. "What did he talk about?"

"About his work at the CRS. He seems to be making good progress, although he says he's a little stuck on something. Came to me asking about this guy called Joshua Glenn."

"Huh! He texted me this morning asking me about the same guy! Good thing my phone is always on silent. Did he tell you who this Joshua Glenn is?"

"Yeah, he's supposedly the true father of modern robotics or something like that. My creator, or at least, the reason I exist."

"Uh huh, and what did you tell him?"

"That Joshua Glenn is a real person."

The whirring from Priya's laptop only seemed to get louder. Andrew tried to squeeze his body a little closer to the door but had to stop when he found himself in dangerous proximity to the soldering iron.

"Sino, you know you're hooked into my laptop, right? I can tell when you're lying," said Priya. She maintained a professional tone with Sino though it was clear to Andrew she was slightly irritated.

"Am I lying?" asked Sino.

There was more whirring.

"Well, based on what I'm seeing here, it appears you do believe that Joshua Glenn is a real person. Why don't you humor me a little and share what you know about him."

"Well, he got his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Michigan way back in 2036. I don't recall his thesis but it has to be somewhere out there. And erm... there's this person, a Stacy Langevin, who allegedly worked with him?"

"Ok, so just bare-bones trivia then, stuff that you probably got out of searching the internet archives," replied Priya.

"Ah yes, you got me. I couldn't help but dig through the archives after hearing what Andrew had to say. Gotta say it is pretty weird though. Usually anyone who graduates with a Ph.D., especially from a renowned institution like the U of M, should have their thesis published on a University repository. Why do you think his was missing?"

"Well, it's entirely possible that he requested an embargo of his thesis. People do indeed do that for all sorts of reasons. Or it could be that the archives just aren't complete. You need to remember that a lot of the digital archivists were untrained volunteers who couldn't tell if something was important or not. They also didn't have a lot of time before the Lemurians arrived."

"Really? If I were an untrained volunteer, I would imagine common sense dictating that I should save anything from an institute of higher learning."

"Common sense, huh," laughed Priya. "Well, unlike sentient droids, we humans don't have a Tome of common sense."  

"Well, what do you think of Joshua Glenn then?" asked Sino.

"I do agree that he is a real person, but the whole story about him and Stacy Langevin working together to create some kind of God-level A.I. is obviously a fairy-tale. My guess is that someone made that whole thing up to create a mythological image of the organization and they took it and ran."

"You're so convinced that it's myth?"

"Yeah! I mean, it's quite likely that Langevin and Glenn knew each other, and maybe Glenn told Langevin's kids some hyperbole that got spun out of proportion. Then Langevin was like; 'Ah yeah, sounds neat! Let's write a book!'"

"Huh... "

"Yeah, it's kind of a company past time, like you know how some schools have stories involving haunted bathrooms? When I worked at Sun Dancer, this was the story that would keep our fascination high and our curiosity sharp. The whole Joshua Glenn figure has been sort of turned into some kind of self-parody honestly; this weird dude who's been given this Adam status."

"And Langevin's Eve?"

"Exactly! The whole origin of Sun Dancer is so clouded in bizarre stories that they can make up anything. Alright, you want to check it for yourself? Try going to the Sun Dancer's Helios repository. I helped the company back up all their data before the invasion, even the fairy-tales. There is a file that's titled 'Thesis-JGlenn'. After I'm done with your diagnostics, you can go check it out and see for yourself just how ridiculous the whole thing is."

"Oh! So it does exist!" Sino's voice had that rare uptick, a clear sign that he hoped Andrew was listening. 

"Hush now, I'm going to have to go deep. For the next two minutes, I'm going to be running tests on your base processing units. I need you to be as silent and still as possible."

Priya's laptop soon began roaring like a jet engine. Amidst the din, Andrew was curled up in the tiny cave, his heart feeling a rush that had been so absent in the past few months.

***

"This looks like the right file," said Andrew, circling the mouse over a folder on the screen. It was one among many other similar folders in the Helios repository, a database stored in the deepest parts of the internet archives. For all the myth and legend that the Sun Dancer Organization was made out to be, the user interface was disappointingly bland. There was nothing more than plain texts and minimalist designs for key links and supposedly important documents. It was a reflection of the little time they had; the magic would have to be found a little deeper.

"Alright, let's see just how far this rabbit hole goes," said Sino, an unusual amount of high pitches in his voice.

They had expected an article, a formalized draft of sorts. Even after Priya's proclaimation, they had expected at least an attempt at sounding believable. 

"What are these?" exclaimed Andrew. Sino motioned for him to move aside as he propped himself closer for a better look. 

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Sino's confusion as he read the text out loud was plainly evident. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Andrew opened the next text file in line.

"This sentence is false... I have no idea, man. I've a feeling we've been pranked."

They both turned towards the front door, half-expecting Priya to walk back in, laughing and finger-gunning them for their naivety. When she did not, they realized the prank must have gone back much further. 

"So... it was really all a joke? A twenty-first century shaggy-dog story that became a publicity stunt... " Andrew nearly slammed the laptop shut in frustration before remembering that he had borrowed this from Sino. 

"Whoa, hold on. There're still at least ten other files, you wanna check those out first?"

Andrew went through each note, hoping each click would give an answer to the one before. However, he was met with only more questions, many bordering the lines of philosophical and outright bizzare. With each file opened, he felt his drive to open the next one fade. When all twenty or so were displayed, they were just ordinary black pixels on ordinary white pixels, asking and positing what seemed to Andrew like a waste of time.

"Ok, this is all stupid. Priya was right... " Andrew sighed yet again. "Man! I can't believe I got my hopes up! What was I thinking!"

"I'm sorry, pal, " Sino tapped Andrew on his shoulder in an attempt to comfort. "I'm sure you'll work something out eventually."

Andrew nodded, trying to force a smile. How many times has he heard that before? Nothing short of a miracle was needed at this point.

***

Maya had lost count of the number of times she had paced around the lab. She began to wish that she had asked Andrew to help her out instead of letting him run off in his own direction. She had made the possession guards a tad bit beefier, but there was still no way they could fend off attacks on the level of the Alien Mother, if Andrew's account were to be believed. She was not optimistic that current technology would allow her to make them much stronger.

She let out a small groan as she looked at the screen. The numbers and colors were still the same. They did not magically become better the more frustration she showed. She had a feeling that Andrew may be able to come up with a way to work around this, to make something that would really take their reincarnation capabilities to new heights. He was the creative type, and the past few months had shown that to be true. In the few meetings that she had had with him, he had already developed what she was considering calling a 'proto-soul'. An optical lattice! Not many in their right mind would even come close to postulating something so bizarre. What's more, he even worked out how he could use her dimensional deflector to induce folding into a six-dimensional form. 

Onsager had let her see Rinpoche a few times, on the condition that the conversation be monitored. She had kept quiet about the soul-cloning project so it was basically impossible to let Rinpoche know that they had figured out the baby-steps. Rinpoche himself was unable to offer her much more insight about existing technology. He only knew what a soldier wielding a weapon should know, and they had milked everything they could from it. 

Maya shook herself back to the present and looked at the tiny clock on the desk. It was coming to ten at night and there had been no progress for the past two hours. She thought about checking on Andrew again, wondering if he still might be hammering away in his lab. She was about to pick up her keys when she noticed a dark shadow in the reflection of the doorway on her screen. Alarmed, she turned back to face the intruder and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it was only Axel. 

"You're still here?" he asked.

"I could say the same for you!" she replied, somewhat thankful for the company. 

"Well, yeah. We all are kinda busy nowadays aren't we? Any progress on your end?" he began approaching.

"Well, I managed to turn up the power of the guards to about twenty-five Gigawatts, but that seems to be about as much as it can go," Maya sighed, turning back to look at the dismal numbers.

"Huh, and what was the goal again?"

"At least fifty."

Axel let out a high whistle. 

"Yeah, this is not going to work. We need something ground-breaking," Maya shook her head.

"I take it you're counting on Andrew then?" said Axel as he took a seat on the nearest chair.

"Well, what about you?" asked Maya, also planting herself in a chair.

"There's not much on my end either. I've been trying to model the energy projection, but there are just too many dimensions to work with. I think I've managed to reduce dissipation by five percent at most."

"Yep, that's not going to solve any of our problems." 

They both sat in their chairs in silence for a while. Maya swivelled slightly in hers. 

"It seems that Andrew's doing the best among us, huh?" Axel said eventually.

"For now at least, I don't know how he's going to work past the missing science. I'm concerned he may really be thinking about closing the gap with the supernatural." 

"Well, the boundaries of science and the supernatural are being pushed everyday now. Would that really be such a bad thing? I think Andrew has the capacity to do this, he just needs to overcome... a lot of things."

"Oh yes, I know about his self-doubt," said Maya.

"I think it's a little deeper than that," said Axel, scratching his chin. "He has this 'why me' mentality, like he's targetted by the Universe. He thinks he doesn't deserve anything good in life because the world keeps throwing him curve balls."

"Hmm... That's an interesting insight. That would explain his choice in... wait... do you know about what happened to him during the invasion?" Maya's alarm was evident on her face. Has Onsager somehow found out and blabbed about it to her husband? No, that doesn't seem like her.

"Oh? What happened?" he asked.

"Erm... never mind. It's a sensitive matter that I think should be left to him to tell you. Still though, I'm amazed you got that out of him. I never knew you to be so good at reading people."

"Oh, no, don't get me wrong," laughed Axel. "It's true that I have dealt with distressed graduate students in the past, but Andrew reminds me of a person I've heard about in stories from long ago."

"You mean the stories told by your Great-Grandmother?" asked Maya. 

"Yes. Wanna take a gander as to who that is?"

"Joshua Glenn?" 

Axel snapped his fingers and nodded. 

"You got it!"

"Really? Tell me more."

"Well, Great-Grandma Stacy described him as a person who was 'just not happy'. He keeps saying that he felt that he should be punished, that he had been a fool and did not deserve the honors that he had received. He essentially censored himself from history, which was a real pity because our advancement of robotics could have been accelerated by at least half a century."

"What?" Maya was befuddled. "Did she say why?" 

"She was never clear on that. It seems like he felt that he'd done a terrible wrong or something, I'm not sure."

"And you think Andrew thinks the same way?" Maya's concern was growing for her protege.

"Not exactly. I don't know what exactly made Andrew this way, but just based on the conversations I've had with him and the little things I've seen him do, I just get this sense, you know?"

"Huh! You're sure you're not just projecting a character from Great-Grandma Stacy's stories onto him? I feel like that's what you're doing."

"That may be true, but the fact is I can project Joshua Glenn onto him," Axel declared. "That's saying something isn't it? I mean, just look at his choice of partner! A girlfriend who doesn't believe in what he's studying? How on earth could he think that'd be a sustainable relationship?"  

"Well..." Maya hesitated as she thought about what Axel had said. "He did tell me that Priya invoked a sense of normalcy in him."

"And did he think that holding on to the past was a healthy thing to do? Certainly not for this line of work!" 

Silence fell over the conversation once again, with only the whirring and beeping of the devices behind them. Maya turned briefly to her screen; no change in the numbers.

"Alright, well, I think I'm going to head out," she said. "I might drop in on Andrew tomorrow. I can't have you do all my mentoring for me."

"Yeah, it's getting late," agreed Axel. "And don't worry, I won't tell Erika anything about that project."

***

Next: 'Breakthroughs', to be released 26th September 2020, before 12 noon Singapore time