“Looks like it’s about that time,” said Narain, looking out the window toward the bay. He rolled down his window, and I did the same, after fumbling with the manual switch for a moment. I could feel the outside air battering against my cheek as I craned my neck out the window to look over at the massive sphere on stilts that towered over the South Bay—a cocoon of white that housed the Titan of the Twelfth Intelligence Base. This was Phoebe’s home. I checked the time. It was 11:29—only a minute to go, if everything ran according to schedule.
“Won’t they need you over there?” I asked Narain.
“Phoebe’s got it all covered,” he said. “We decided that she’ll just worry about Coeus, and I’ll worry about the UNDP and their goons. Pretty ideal division of labor, we thought.”
I recalled what he’d told me once before—that humanity gets in the way of getting the job done. And to be sure, this unforeseen threat from the UNDP had created a lot of unnecessary extra work for us, all thanks to their base “human” emotions and desire to maintain their current authority, even though now was absolutely not the time for power struggles. I felt like I could finally understand just a little bit of Narain’s indignance.
“Here she comes,” said Narain.
I brought back my wandering gaze as fast as I could, keeping my eyes peeled for any sort of movement as a strange sound began to emanate from the massive sphere. It was shrill, yet eerily pleasing to the ear—like a newborn’s first cry and an opera singer’s high note wrapped in one. Then I saw something relatively small suddenly burst through the outer shell of the sphere. Slowly, it grew larger, before being joined by four more of the same, stretching out into long constructed pillars of varying lengths reaching out from the cocoon. And then I knew. These were her fingers.
“We considered the possibility of redesigning the base so that it could open up and then shut again,” Narain said, “but we quickly determined that that would be even less efficient than just letting her trash the base on her way out and rebuilding from scratch.”
Then, all of a sudden, the rest of the massive arm shot through the cracks her fingers had made in the shell with incredible velocity, reaching triumphantly out to touch the sky. Yet despite its colossal size, the arm itself looked shockingly human—nothing like the rigid, armor-like exoskeleton Coeus had made for himself. By comparison, Phoebe’s outer shell looked remarkably thin and elegant, like a long glove that closely adhered to the actual contours of her arm, colored a purer white than even the brilliant exterior of the intelligence base itself.
Shortly after this, the second arm came bursting out as well. She then slowly bent each arm around to grip the edge of the hole created by the other and rip herself free by yanking on the cocoon itself, twisting her arms left and right. Soon, a massive fissure began to form across the exterior of the base, as the entire eggshell was riven in twain. And then at last, as the gargantuan egg could no longer bear the strain, it deposited its contents down into the San Francisco Bay. The titanic woman was born.
There was a low rumbling sound like an earthquake as her body touched down, loud enough that the vibrations could be felt on our vehicle even from this far away. Slowly, the Titan lifted her body to stand upright, letting the fresh taste of atmosphere fill her lungs for the very first time.
Her figure was the exact opposite of Coeus’s bulky frame in almost every conceivable way. Where his photopolymer exoskeleton had been hastily designed with function over form in mind, hers had clearly spent a lot more time in the oven, was more form-fitting, and thin enough to still suggest the actual body shape of the Titan underneath. If Coeus’s exterior was akin to a suit of armor, then hers was an elegant formal dress. The delicate-looking “fabric” coiled around her waist, adhering closely to her body all the way down to just above her knees, where it widened out into a broad sweep of flounces all the way down to the hemline. This slender feminine form followed by a flourishing tail that dramatically flared out from the knees down made her look a bit like a mermaid—and indeed, that was exactly the descriptive word generally attached to this particular style of gown: a mermaid wedding dress.
Phoebe had garbed herself in bridal attire.
She slowly lifted her head, yet I could not glimpse the visage concealed behind her bridal veil. I couldn’t begin to guess what the purpose or function of such an accessory would be as a static part of a Titan’s exoskeleton, but the crown of massive artificial flowers holding it in place seemed to suggest that she’d chosen it for the sake of style alone. And if that were the case, she’d certainly succeeded—as she stretched her back to stand up straight, she looked like nothing less than the most dignified, beautiful bride in all the world. She moved her gigantic body with about the same speed as Coeus: quite fast relative to her size, but slow nonetheless. I checked the clock.
“Is she really going to make it there in time?” I asked Narain.
According to the schedule, Phoebe was to begin making her way over to the rendezvous point at 11:30 and get there in only twenty minutes, but judging from her speed I just didn’t see how this was possible. Narain didn’t even answer my question, though, and simply pointed his finger out the window to where Phoebe stood with one arm now raised.
Flickering balls of light had formed near her fingertips where it appeared that large swarms of pixies had gathered—something you didn’t often see in broad daylight. At the same time, a large object began to rise up from the surface of the waters at her feet. It was difficult to see particularly well from this distance, but I soon realized what was actually happening: Phoebe was dispensing photopolymer and pixies from her hand to build something bit by bit, layer by layer in the water below. Something enormous.
“Is that…a boat?”
In less than a minute, the long and narrow vessel was complete. It was several times larger than the gigantic tanker we’d encountered on our journey, yet there were none of the defining features or equipment one might expect of a vessel its size up on the deck. It was a simple concave hull, both massive and empty.
Phoebe bent her knees ever so slightly—and then she leapt.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. A thousand-meter, several million-ton colossus kicked off of the ground and jumped into the air. It was something I would never in a million years dream of letting Coeus do, even if he were capable of it. The mere thought of the resulting force of impact upon landing and damage to the local environment was enough to make my skin crawl. Yet here Phoebe made it seem almost effortless, as she boarded this ship of her own creation. And the resulting waves were astoundingly small compared to the sky-high tsunami I’d been bracing for. It was then that I saw for the first time just how much more advanced Titan technology had become in the few decades between Coeus’s construction and hers. Her awareness of her own weight and size was spectacular, and her sense of balance was immaculate. She moved her body nimbly despite its incredible size, and with the coordination and finesse of a gymnast who’d spent their entire life practicing the same routine. She was only the twelfth of her kind, yet made it abundantly clear that the gap between human and Titan was far deeper than we could ever know. I thought back on what she’d told me when last we spoke. She was a member of the third and final generation—the most highly specialized AIs in the network.