Priya left the optimizer church with her head held low and her hands shoved in her pockets. As she slinked away from the door and towards the parking lot, a voice, familiar but certainly not Father Clever’s, cried out behind her. “Hey, Priya!”

Priya spun around, alarmed to see the mail android trailing behind her. “Concorde?”

“You remembered!” He eagerly cried out. “I never got to talk to you earlier.”

“So you just waited here?”

“Yeah,” he responded sheepishly. “I don’t have anywhere else I need to be on a Saturday. And I was curious about the human optimizer!”

Priya quickly shook her head. “I’m not an optimizer. I was just hoping to learn a little about you all.”

Concorde tilted his head in curiosity. “Did you learn what you were hoping for?”

She lingered on the question. “It was a start.”

Concorde’s expression beamed. “Well, if there’s anything I can do to help you learn, let me know! That’s the Path of Menace!”

“I can’t follow the path as a human,” she once again refused, “but I guess if you’re offering… How confident are you that Pure Illusion is real, Concorde? Do you know where it is?”

“Oh, of course! The knowledge of its existence and location is disclosed to every android when informed of The Path.”

“Huh. So it really is that simple of a fact for all of you, then.”

“Well sure, why wouldn’t it be?”



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