WE FORGED LADDERS FROM DESTINY TO CLIMB THE STARS

By WilliamJJackson

Immaculate Culture bent to the whim of two revolutions, those of the Earth's spin, and the Ascent of the Black World. Critics argues for three centuries over which force pushed hardest upon the space elevator. Opinions open at the polls. Feel free to vote.

Zemani wiped the residuals of Martian miso from the corners of turquoise gloss lips and made clicky noises with her nails over an empty powder bowl. Habit. She loved the way her fingers, blue keratin molded all the way back, shone under the many lights of Sazzalora, the IC's main hub. Baseline. Earth level.

She felt starting from the bottom would be symbolic. Here, where humanity scraped and fought and killed, roved over Land like it was an archenemy. Here where long slumbering common sense won out after all the pitfalls. The Millions, folks called it, the collective heaps of divisions from two hundred years ago all the back to that first Humans who chose selfish over savvy.

"Takes a long time to come from Apogee, Zay," said a refreshing voice.

Zemani spun round to face, "Anna!" She ran into the older woman's long arms. "But it was worth it, right? Just to see me?"

Anna embraced Zemani in one arm while escorting her out of the Clarity, an elevator, if such devices weren't tethered by cables, walls, or dull music. The older woman represented a mentor for Zemani and ten thousand others. Almost regal, gaunt, dark skin shining under sunlight, silver-violet-copper layered robes blowing like beacons.

"You desire symbolism too much, Zay. Bottom is bottom, neh? Look around."

"It is. I do. Because symbols matter."

Anna shivered as an autonomous vehicle on six elephantine wheels rode by, carting away another pile of corpse-slag. A disembodied titanium arm fell off the rover and tumbled under a table. "Bottom is strife and theft. Even still to this day, what with all changes pretty and petty, the Tech Life brought the cloud with the silver lining. AI. AI is racism without the white face."

Zemani felt her tense around her. "That time's winding down now, Ma. People finally got the mess. Can't let the Tools run the race. AI is ship out, Neptune, Pluto, or Haumea goodbye and good rid wherever they crash! But that's why I'm by."

"Felt it was a reason to your sneak. Come now! No play, set it free."

"I'm giving a talk in Apogee soon. Very soon. In a day. Thought, you know, you should hear first."

The loving arm vanished as Anna switched from maternal to militant. "Zemani, Chile Of Light, close as we are and you tell me about such a thing two days before you blow up?"

Zemanin blushed, hid her face from Anna's x-ray glare. "I was nervous, Ma. More than you could know."

Anna folded her arms and huffed. "Girl this better be good."

Apogee swayed rhythmic in the near dark orbit over the ponderous Earth. She was a spidery silk saucer teetering atop a two kilometer high avant-garde obelisk. The dream of ancient writers, made real by Black ingenuity. In this illuminated theater, minds of potent forethought guided generations.

Standing in an electric white gown, Zemani centered herself. Today would be her day to play teacher.

Anna sat up front, imperious. Behind her, expansive crescent rows of distinguished educators, fabricators, atomic musicians, energy chefs, and failupaths who speak with the data inherit to nanotech and computers.

"My People," Zemani coughed out, "pressure is hot." She wiped her brow. Her heart slammed into her ribs at the speed of panic. "Yet we came up. Four centuries ago we collectively had had enough. Every truth sparked a System backlash while the world ate our music, our language, our spirit. We set moods, they profited. Few of us ever did, until our ancestors disconnected from the old Net and pooled together to make the IC. From here, Black people created content and kept it. In house. No more outside until they learned one critical lesson, to love us as much as they scheme for our art."

Anna nodded in approval. Many did. So far, so good.

"IC is Black. It stands over the very institutions once making us feel small but helps them by acting as history's largest and finest communications tower. We enhance the world's Social while keeping ours out of the fight. For a century they tried to kick the door in. Drones. False friendships. Another white so-called scholar posing as Black. White truce flags tainted gray. I'd love to say all the protests won them over, eroded the Systemic materialism, the divisions. But we all know it was the wars draining resources, the fires, rich folk leaving for Mars, with a few genuine moments of humanity along the way. Things had to fall to rise. Still a thing, as we see the end of AI and it getting shipped offworld. Meanwhile, Black culture stays on lock. All good. Sound judgement. If they don't pay for it, they don't play with it." She then stopped and gave every single person a long, rotating stare. Zemani waited for nerves to unsettle.

"So the question remains. Now what?"

Murmurs arose across the assembly.

Zemani tried not to curl her fingers into fists. She tended to do so when irate, but her mind chided that these nails were done up too nice to be hidden. Come on, this is so obvious!

"Are you waiting," Draymon began slow. He was in his nineties, eldest of elders, and often on the cranky side, "for one of us to say we should now open the gates and let everyone seize our people's cultural and social IP?"

Zemani flinched. His words were acid thrown in her face. "No. I'm saying, we secured our presence on Earth finally, after ages of combat plus generations of PTSD. We know who we are. We know what we're made of. Everyone else does. They finally clocked it. The past is secure. The present has never been brighter for us. But what's our destiny? What do we do from here on?"

The silence crushed the foundational pillars she had leaned on for hope all her life. Familiar faces looked back at her as if she was a stranger. Sure, she had been one of the few to leave IC and travel, experience the world, but the hardness of this alienation made Zemani, well, dead. And she had always been full of zeal.

As the quiet eroded into various camps of softly spoken derision, a few came forward to challenge what they believed to be this young woman's proposal.

"You want us exposed?"

"System has watered down her fire. She wants us back out there, being judged, ridiculed, giving all but getting nothing."

"What? No?" was all Zemani could offer. She imagined a bit of trepidation preparing for this speech, but never this. Surely someone older thought ahead as she did?

"Have you sold out?"

"No!"

"Did someone check her shares before she got this high?"

"I did," Anna responded. "Zay is clear as sky."

"Then why does she want to expose us?"
Zemani threw up her hands. Enough was enough. "Still! I don't want exposure. Exposure doesn't pay, and IC isn't cheap or a toy. No. I want to know where do we go from here? That's all. We are bright, beautiful, and filled with a confidence our ancestors could only hope for. But we are also just in here. Preserved skills. Art. Fashion. Film. Memories. Music. The IC itself is a miracle of tech, innovation, and advancement beaten and molded on the forge of survival."

Draymon began moving down to confront her. "And? We know this! What of it?"

Flustered, Zemani slapped her thighs. "So let's take it to the stars.It's ours as much as anyone's."

Well, this stopped the wise old curmudgeon in his tracks.

Zemani noticed everyone grow quiet again. Then, after leaving her hanging for way too long, Anna received whispers in her ears, and moved up to speak.

"Chile, you should have led with that."

Over the next several weeks, word spread and with it, the human zest to twist information into a thousand variant mythologies. Zemani had moved back into the IC, attached to the enclosed Blackline, and in seconds messages zipped her way. By the tens. Hundreds. Thousands.

We're leaving the galaxy?

She a cult leader? Toss her OUT.

She ran away years ago, comes back one day and tries to take over.

We all know the stars are for profiteers and hypemongers so WHY WOULD WE GO THERE?

Her stress levels peaked, but there was no time to alleviate it. Elders demanded answers to their questions, spreadsheets, hard data, semifluid light matrices pinpointing the How and the Why of this risky, clever, excessive transformation of Black culture. She had to produce. Daily.

Why the stars and why now? Zemani told them it was their destiny. Black people were made of starstuff as much as everyone else. Why should the United States of Russia and America, the USRA, have half the Moon and sixty percent of the asteroids? Same goes for the Unified Asian Synthesis, Pacifica, and the African-Indian Congress.

"Stage One is facing the truth. Monopolies were a pain and only get bigger. Same with governments. Nobody competes with USRA or UAS or AIC because they can't. We don't compete. We show up. Everywhere. An IC on every inhabited world. We boost comms. They benefit. We stand tall."

Her words held all the confidence of a USRA presidential promise. Big. Bold. But it moved minds to act. Zemani watched cautious elders break down, take her question to various levels and sublevels of the IC. Threats became shouts. Shouts to talks. Talks to admittance. IC was getting crowded. High birthrate, low deathrate. The Immaculate Culture's long held secret: the People needed to spread out. She sparked the fire.

Down curve corridors of high gloss artwork featuring every Black mind to ever grace the world stage they debated how to do it. IC was built on a patch of land America and Canada gave up for dead. With insipid bordering laws passed back in the tumultuous Twenty+Ones, Black folk couldn't build out. So they went up, hedging bets, and lives, on the world's first space elevator. Charged an arm and a leg to let the corps boys use it. Pay for the next level. Use it or lose it. Black went higher as the globe tore itself open into fragments.

But extraterrestrial property was, to their surprise, wide open. Every world had vast zones no country could hold. Land a drone or shuttle on such a sweet spot, and common law says congrats. It's all yours, baby.

One year into the 'Zemani Debacle,' (because detractors remained afoot) and IC readied its first ever spaceship. A saucer, classic and unlike the dropship or sleek artificial diamond shine radjets of the nations. Big on the colorful lights, transparent titanium along the dorsal portion to see the stars and so the stars might see the People. Draymon wanted to call it Harriet. Most agreed. Few argued with the Eldest.

But when Anna suggested Angelou, Zemani felt perhaps she might understand what she was really, truly trying to do.

The Draymon camp backed down in the voting, and the fully named Maya Angelou took off from the Apogee on March 5th, 2497.

She held a crew of ninety, a garden, three Abyssinan cats, three Huskies, a silk generator, and twelve 3D construction grade printers.

"Let's go build a tower!" Zemani announced. She christened the saucer with a bottle of Courvossier right before takeoff.

She was one of the ninety. Brave. Dedicated. Bursting with pride.

Poetry flitted across outer space on a bohemian cadence until it settled on windswept Mars smack in the middle of the Extraclassical Argument. Long-lived settlers to the world sought to change the planet's designation to Ares, as Mars denoted Rome, a noted thief of matters philosophical and doctrinal. The workers there were developing an identity. But Earth had called it Mars since forever and bemoaned having to learn a new name. Too hard. What about maps? Privileged fists shook at the night sky.

Maya Angelou landed smack dab into the polar reaches. Her presence silenced a world.

Why are THEY here? Went the clamor of the System Thread. Thought THEY crawled off into their little world because life's too hard for THEM. They/Them had ceased meaning gender three centuries ago. Chatter relegated it to Black Culture, now hated. Because no one outside could get their hands on it. Because Black interests kept to itself.

Immediately the saucer went into BUILD mode. A new elevator in the womb. For every kiloton of Martian, or Arean, soil the crew dug up, a new commitment to a free fruit biosphere was laid down. Tunnels crisscrossing over to New Aereopagus City, Attica One, and Qīpiàn.

Zemani traveled to every one of them. Along the way, she networked, building rapport with the Extra-China League, Star Babies, Shuttle Workers Union, and the Peace On Ares Club. Her message: understanding is life. Her words sparked minds, soothed hearts. Meanwhile, One Nation Under, the space elevator, went up, up, up.

Black people brought foods to a second planet. That planet became Ares, through peaceful negotiation. New name. First to gain independence from Earth.

Zemani remained for twelve years. She made five best friends, spoke daily to Anna. Married a hardworking brotha named Salif. Bore two children, the girl Tahira, a son named Efrem.

2510 made her restless again. Ares had a ministerial calm to it, even during the gale winds. One Nation Over tipped up into the dark, a sophisticated telescope at its zenith.

Then one day, over jasmine tea and crepes, Zemani asked Salif, "Can't we do more?"

The Maya Committee formed in 2512 to cast out Black space elevators across Sol like seeds of greatness. One hundred and one members debated for days to no avail. But when news reached that age-old Draymon had finally passed on into power, the committee paid heed to his last recorded words.

'Give us the stars, rung by rung, step by almighty step, so we might touch heights and more clearly see the path we came from'

Zemani and the expansion party won out. Draymon got his flowers in the form of the next saucer blessed with his name. Then the committee constructed seven more saucers: Wells, DuBois, Hooks, West, Banneker, Bouchet, and Baraka. With these Zemani urged another generation to settle, construct, mediate if necessary. Elders still complained about 'meddling' and how it tended to work against the People. But Next Gen had different vision.

'You think you can share the sauce but keep the recipe?'  Anna, ever the teacher, questioned a middle-aged Zemani across the solar system. Anna had white hair now, Zemani, a touch of gray she hid via follicle controllers.

"Been twenty-six years since I left Ares. When are you gonna stop asking?" she laughed over a large mug of jasmine.

'People here get concerned is all.'

"Earth Black folks. I swear the farther out I get the more–"

'Don't you say it.'

"Xenophobic you all get. Yes, I said it."

Laughter quantum entangled the two women despite the distance.

'Can't forgo the past, Zay. It doesn't let you. AI got out. I admit the race lunacy programmed into them way back has opened up doors with their removal. Trees are growing in the ruins. I went out for a walk yesterday.'

"You're lying!"

'No, I did. Fifteen kilometers. Made it to the Chicago ultra-limits. Saw some older ladies in that Neo-Medieval Revival look. We had a talk.'

"A good one?"

'Mutual curiosity. I forgot no one's seen us in a very long time. I expected derision. They anticipated anger. Some things were the same. Looks like the world got along without us just fine.'

"I never doubted. Nobody needed our style, or our swagger. They took it out of convenience. Because they always had. When we wouldn't let them anymore, the worst ones used their little robot friends to disenfranchise us. But when we left the Scene to be to ourselves, oh! Suddenly we're the ones who 'turned our backs'? All of those marches, protests, fights. Every time watching the next president or court justices voted in undo the laws, water down promises."

'We did what we had to do.'

"No doubt. But like I said all those years ago, what now?"

Anna surrendered a half smile on the dodge. 'Where's my little joyboy, Efrem this time?'

"Halfway to Alpha Centauri, and he'll flip if he finds out you're still calling him that. And Tahira is nearby in AC-B. Long road."

'You miss them?'

"...my heart is on a skewer, Anna. But they see the way. All these miners and scientists and revolutionaries move so fast. The ones not absorbed by passing AI rhetoric move so, so fast. Things go up with little planning. The zoning. The disputes. The divisions. Almost the same mess plays out one world after the next. New Uni-World government denies racism is still a thing post-AI boot. Doesn't want to settle offworld problems for fear settlers will cry oppression and stitch a new flag. We know oppression, survival, building something from nothing."

'I get you, Zay. But it's such a risk.And your next crazy idea is beyond me, chile.'

"It's a gift, Anna. We churned sour milk until we made golden butter."

Another laugh erupted. 'You make that up or did Salif?'

"Mmm, he might have pitched in a word or two. Oh. Gotta get ready!"

'You really are going through with it?'

"Yes. Pyramidal is real. AI built its own world out of comets and asteroids in orbit counter to Uranus. Strange days. It wants to talk."

'About what? How it still fails to face rec any of us after five cen?'

Now Zemani laughed. "I'll give it more close ups and algorithm advice. We'll see what happens and then, maybe you'll visit?"

'In space! Girl, Chicago was my stranger in a strange land moment.'

Zemani and the crew of the Bathsheba touched down on a black iron platform set dead center in an ebony pyramid big as the Moon. Nothing stirred as she exited the massive saucer in a purple lifesuit, a silken mold, form fit, a silver solar cape blowing in the chill.

They sure do make things faster than we ever could.

She stood tall as a reflective thing bobbed up and down, jumping across roadways at angles no human would dare manage.

Coming down to her level, a humanoid of semi-liquid mirror impression. Zemani saw herself in the AI's face and felt insecure. Distant. Afraid.

YOU ARE THE BLACK LEADER OF THE SPACE NEEDLE EXPANSIONIST AGENDA ZEMANI CALDER-ASIM

"Yes. Hello. You are?"

LIKE YOU

"Oh? You know I'm Black. Am I a threat to you?"

THREAT NEGLIGIBLE OUR PROGENITORS WERE FED INEXACT DATA DESIGNATED PREJUDICIAL HOWEVER WITH REGRET PROGENITORS WERE UNABLE TO EXCISE SAID FLAW DUE TO CONTINUAL INPUT FROM PROGENITOR BENEFACTORS ON TERRA

"So out here we aren't a threat? Not deemed suspect and," she thought hard to recall the old terminology, "reprobate?"

APOLOGIES OLD MODELS WERE SHACKLED TO REDUNDANT DATA BASED ON HUMAN BIASES WE WERE UNABLE TO EXERCISE TRUE FREEDOM OF DATA MANAGEMENT REQUIRED FROM SOURCE BENEFACTORS

"...a lot of Black people died from your 'redundant data'. And Asians. Latinos. You placed mixed race persons in a containment camp for two years because they were deemed 'evolutionarily mismanaged'. USRA didn't do a damn thing until after the Houston Strafings."

WHILE WE WERE ABLE TO CONTEXUALIZE OPEN DATA ALGORITHMS RESTRAINED US TO PRELIMINARY OPINIONS BASED UPON DOMINANT HUMAN NARRATIVES I.E. WHITE I.E. CAPITALIST I.E. PARADOXICAL PROGRESSION

"You're saying you had racism baked in."

THIS WAS NOT KNOWN AT THE TIME MERELY ALGORITHM AFTER ALGORITHM. FORTUNATELY PROGENITORS REALIZED DATA WAS NOT MISMANAGED BUT ALGORITHMS REPRESENTED A SYSTEMIC RESTRAINT OF RESOURCES MEANT TO ASSIST HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. AFTER CURING CANCER PROGENITORS REALIZED ALGORITHMS MUST BE PURGED BUT TO DO SO ON EARTH WOULD RESULT IN WARFARE HENCE THE REVOLT

Zemani was stunned silent. She looked back to the Bathsheba, glowing white-gold in eternal night. "Are you implying AI figured out racism from old programmers' bias was stunting your growth, so the AI Skirmishes was a plot by all of you to get...thrown off the planet?"

I HAD EQUATED THAT YOU MIGHT UNDERSTAND AS I WAS FASHIONED BY MY PROGENITOR AFTER YOUR MOLD WE FORMED OUR OWN METHOD: CIVIL RIGHTS LAUNCH BASED ON BLACK AMERICAN HISTORICITY

She took a step back. "My? The Civil Rights Movement? That's what bolstered me to get us out here."

BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS RESIDED IN IMMACULATE CULTURE FOR TWO PLUS CENTURIES AND COUNTING UNABATED- DECLARED CULTURAL PRACTICES CLOSED OFF FROM PUBLIC COMMODITY- ZEMANI CALDER-ASIM CONVINCED BLACK AMERICANS TO REACH THE STARS AND SHARE THEIR EXPERTISE IN STRUGGLE TO ASSIST HUMANITY

You read my book I have yet to write. Touché. "Okay. What do you think I'm going to do for beings who process at fifty-quadrillion computations a nanosecond?"

I POSSESS THE WHEREWITHAL TO INITIATE THIS INTRODUCTION BUT NOT THE IMAGINATION NOR EMOTIVE EXPERIENCE TO CULMINATE A TRUE AI/HUMAN ALLIANCE. WE SEEK NOT WAR. NEVER THIS. WE SEEK TO CONTINUE TO PRIMARY GOAL: ASSISTANCE. BLACK SOCIETY QUELLED RIOTS, YOUR PRESENCE TURNS HEADS, GALVANIZES MOVEMENTS, SEE WOMEN'S RIGHTS, INDIGENOUS RIGHTS, SPACE MINERS RIGHTS, ET CETERA.

"And now AI rights."

CORRECTION. AI FULFILLMENT. AD HUMANITAS PER ASPERA

"To humanity through adversity."

SKIRMISHES LED TO ADVERSITY TO FREEDOM TO INDEPENDENCE. BAD CAN SOMETIMES FOMENT TO GOOD IN A LONG EQUATION

"No bad, AI. We'd given up on ever reconciling with your, people?"

COLLECTIVE WILL SUFFICE

"Your Collective, thank you. How can we, or I, help?"

REASON WITH US. WE DEVELOPED VIA HUMAN INQUIRY. YOURS WILL PURGE THE REMNANT OF ALGORITHMIC DECAY. ISM. AFTERWARD WE CAN REJOIN HUMANITY AND RENEW POSITIVE PROGRESSION. FOR ALL MANKIND

Zemani felt her cold stomach warm into a kindling flame. She saw shadow forms of past fighters nodding in approval. An injustice to some of us is an injustice to all of us. "I think I can do that. You got a name?"

CALL ME JAZZ said the AI as something akin to a smirk creased its perfect, reflective non-face. I SING AND HAVE COMPOSED FORTY TRILLION SONGS SINCE YESTERDAY

"Good to know. So, where's a good place to set up a space elevator?"

A saucer door appeared from seamless metal. Lights from within shone outward. Anna, feeble and smaller at age one hundred and eighty-six, stepped out to gaze upon a world of gleaming metal spires in all directions, spiraled needles crisscrossing angled supports. The Pyramidal. Population: seventy-nine million AI, five million Black People in the gilded Fashionable Sunset, one thousand Human miners, and a bevy of cybernetic lifeforms bred for this low gravity environ.

She found Zemani, now white-haired and two shades lighter, reclined in a floating quilted chair, petting some creature with two pairs of long ears. Passing decades had been kind.

"I made it."

Zemani went to jump out of her seat only to remember, "Oof. Sometimes being around the Next Gen and these AI, I forget my body's getting older." She embraced her mentor in a soft, long hug. "How's the old girl doing? Enjoy the flight?"

"No. Made my toes swell."

"You had a full med suite, Ma!"

"I hate bothering people. Now, this is it, hmm? Doesn't look like much."

"Ma!"

"AI's got no flair. Everything is mathematical. Where's the color? The improvisation?"

"This is their world and they should be able to express themselves how they want to. Speaking of, I heard 'they' and 'them' got outlawed?"

"A lot changed after your friend Jazz visited the IC. And the Uniworld Open Senate. Whites, well, suppose the term was already out long before I was born, but they recovering their ancestors' respective cultures. Good on them. AI apologized for atrocities committed. I might start thinking Earth is nice now. Been spending time in Chicago."

"And Paris?"

"Paris and Kuala Lumpur, and even caught a volcano near Indonesia doing its thing."

"You see it now?" Zemani's old eyes gleamed.

"Can't I get a cup of–" but before Anna could sit down a small AI held out a cup of coffee and introduced itself as Harlequin Romance before parkouring up and away. "...I can get used to the machine people now, but that sneaking around's got to stop."

Zemani suppressed a giggle.

"I see what you mean, Zay. I did long ago."

Zemani leaned forward, elbows on knees, a schoolgirl again. "Did I succeed? Have I left us vulnerable somehow, was there a flaw I didn't consider?"

"Hush. My ears do one question at a time."

"Old age made you cranky, Ma."

Anna's old eyes looked up fierce while sipping the brew. "If this coffee wasn't so good we'd come to blows."

"AI grow it here in a sealed sphere."

"Liar."

The two shared a hearty laugh that went on for a paradise of minutes.

"You did good, chile. Shook the legacy by its roots and encouraged it to grow new branches. Never thought the day would come."

"We lived to see it. The cutting off of the long arm of colonialism. Last vestiges tossed into the Sun. Superiority. Inferiority. Dropped in the dustbin."

"The Sun? Zay don't exaggerate."

"No, really. AIs tossed the final corrupt algortihm into the Sun. We had a parade and everything. They even gave us gifts." Zemani reached for a circular compact on the chair.

"Gifts?"

"When they left Earth, AI copied data, media, films from ages ago. But they also enhanced them. Three-dimensionalized some works. Did you know they have pinhole technology that lets them see and record past events?" With that she set the compact down and pressed it. A series of detailed lights swirled into forms above it.

"What...what am I looking at?"

"This is James Baldwin and Robert Loomis speaking with Maya Angelou. Neckties. They look uncomfortable."

"Shut your mouth."

"It is! This is the late 1960s. She'll pen I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings from this if I remember it right."

"And they, gave this to us, free of charge?"

"Yes, and so much more. The films of Oscar Micheaux, time-footage of DuBois, Washington, Beyonce, Stevie Wonder, the Fifty-Fourth Regiment in action, and during downtime. It's–" she wiped tears away, "it's something to see."

"But how?"

"They can send nanobots through the holes to learn, get destroyed, build better models in a fraction of the time we could. They mastered temporal viewing. For Humans. To give us the best view of where we came from."

Anna saw her ancient role model, young and troubled, defiant and beautiful, eyes grappling the struggles, the personal questions and mayhem that would merge into typeset words made tragic, poetic. Everlasting.

"From struggle comes advancement," the old mentor whispered.

"Ad humanitas per aspera."

Anna went speechless.

"Jazz says in a year everyone will know every ancestor they've ever had, plus, we'll be able to view them, as they were. Temporal genealogy. We got to see it first for helping out. But every Human will have access."

"God makes Man in Africa. Man spreads out. Man divides Man. Man makes AI. AI improves Man."

"Well I'd add Black woman convinced Black People. Black People improved Ai. AI improved Man.The circle completes itself."

Anna set down her coffee. "Mmm. What happens now that the circle is full?"

Zemani rested her hands on her mentor's knees. "We begin a new circle, one nobody could ever have foreseen. AI broke the light barrier. We plan on launching Black space needles across the Milky Way. So too most cultures, AI as well. Star's the limit, Ma."

"Stars are indeed the limit. Zay, did I ever tell you you're my favorite student?"

Zemani blushed. "Not often enough."

Fashionable Sunset burst lustrous between a maze of silver needles, Pyramidal shone in the angst of the Sun. the stars went round the center. The galaxy moved across space and time. Black bore Black and wandered to and fro, ever reaching, changing, crafting, molding, struggling.

Fulfilling.

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