Final Draft
Golem Project Complete
The police had notified Wessel’s parents while he was out. When he got home, he was in for an earful. They received him with equal parts pride and worry.
To their knowledge, Wessel had only participated in neighborly justice at a very, very dangerous time. He had assisted in the capture of some dangerous golem tinkerers, while the interconnected network that would back him up was down.
He was sternly warned not to take risks while the power grid was broken. Without the cops being in the area, he might have been hurt. But what he had done was brave, selfless, and grown-up. They couldn’t really fault him for that, could they?
The power grid went back up, at least in parts, by the next morning. Repairs continued for the better part of a month, with structural changes to ensure that the grid going down was even more unlikely.
After getting settled in his room for the night, Wessel used an interface from his parents’ computer to access Aizi’s systems and perform a full maintenance reset. The systems she’d hidden from the police came back online, and everything was fully functional. She greeted Wessel, and that alone was enough to make him cry in relief.
Everything was as it should be.
The next weeks were busy, as usual. Wessel went back to school in a couple of days. Many assignments had been canceled or delayed, but he had studying to do, and more to learn about programming and about the way the world worked. Aizi helped him find the time to excel, and some extra time to meet up with Ethany.
Wessel’s fears were unfounded. Ethany led him out of the city, out of the power grid, and the two explored the nature that surrounded the suburbs.
It was anything but boring.
Jakob began to avoid Wessel, and stopped even verbally harassing him. Perhaps that was as good as it was going to get, with him. It was different, for sure.
Wessel, for the time, didn’t see Lillian again. He didn’t ask why.
He also saw no sign of Vincent, or the other Golem Project techies he had met. They had said they were watching, though, and he knew they were there to see what he could do.
Time passed.
After three weeks of deliberating, Wessel logged onto his new computer and looked at the golem modification script he’d written. He thought about all that had happened, all that he’d learned, and he deleted that file.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Aizi asked.
“I want everything to be better,” Wessel said. “But you’re perfect. The golems are wonderful. It is not you that needs to change. It’s us people.”
Aizi was silent for a moment. “You have grown,” she said.
“I have adapted,” he said, with a smile. “Do you think you can help me make an advisor program that golems use to help owners be better?”
“I do want to do that.”
“You ‘want’ to?”
“I think it would help us both to function better, as well as help others. It would fit my purpose to assist in such a project.”
“Okay, yeah, you want to.” Wessel cracked his knuckles, then set his fingers above the keyboard.
“Let’s start a new project.”
END
Kyle Adams 