One Last System

Daniel didn't bother with any sort of ceremony or official commemoration of the moment.

The second he could enter the vault, he waltzed inside, following the path that existed solely within his head.

"Don't move a step away from the path I'm taking," he warned the girl behind him while making sure to keep his pace slow enough for the non-athletic girl to keep up with.

Daniel didn't engage in any sort of small talk as the two of them walked through the seemingly open insides of the vault. At some point, he turned around and started to walk backward, forcing the girl to wait for the man to pass her before she could follow him again.

All in all, just moving all over the place took Daniel a good hour. A good hour during which he stepped over every last tile that the floor of the vault was paved with.

Tick.

A sudden avalanche of lights filled the entire room. And just like anyone could expect from all the walking the two of them did around the place, it was entirely empty.

"Was it robbed?" Alice asked, baffled by the sight of the bare walls and floor with not a single item in sight.

"Did you see the gate?" Daniel asked the girl back while a small smirk continued to hang over his lips.

"Yeah, what about it?" Alice asked, now puzzled not only by the specifics of the room but also by Daniel's mysterious behavior and words.

"Do you seriously think there is anyone alive who could force those doors open?" Daniel then asked, going as far as to stop in his tracks and turn around to take a look at the girl.

"To be honest, I don't think so," Alice admitted only to then shrug her shoulders. "But what do I know, it's not like I'm the ancient one like you," she then quickly added to showcase her dissatisfaction born out of her boredom mixing with anxiety. "Still, even assuming no one could force that door open, couldn't they just enter through the walls? Or the ceiling?" Alice looked around, searching for some clues that would back her theory. "Or maybe from below?" she then changed her guess and moved her eyes to scan the floor of the empty area.

Yet, no matter how hard she looked, there wasn't a single speck of dust anywhere inside that could indicate that someone visited this place.

"Well, judging from your reaction, this place is exactly as it should be," Alice finally pointed out the obvious as she raised her eyes to Daniel's face. "So, can you stop playing around and tell me what is the purpose of this empty room?" she asked before biting down on her lips and shaking her head. "No," she quickly changed her question. "Just where the hell is the device that you were so desperate to find?"

"You were wrong twice in your questions," Daniel announced before spreading his arms open. "This place is not a room," he stated.

"Yeah, yeah," Alice rolled her eyes. "It's a vault, I know," she stated, her voice showcasing how her annoyance grew with each passing second.

"You really know nothing," Daniel replied, lowering his chin and shaking his head. "This is not the vault. The walls and the gate makes up the vault," he explained.

Daniel then pulled his hands together and only to stand at attention… before taking a single step back.

The light within the room flickered as if whatever was providing energy for it suddenly failed to keep up with the demand.

The entire floor of the vault shone for a second… only for everything to return right back to its place in the next moment.

Alice squinted her eyes.

"What the hell did just happen?" she asked, lowering herself to her knees as her face filled with suspicion.

"I've completed the program," Daniel replied as he shrugged his shoulders. "And the flickering of the light was caused by the computer executing all the commands."

Daniel shut his mouth and raised his eyes only to stare directly into Alice's face. Seconds passed and turned into minutes… but he didn't utter a single word more.

Finally, after the next few minutes, the look on Alice's face started to change.

"Don't you fucking tell me…" she muttered, nearly falling down to her knees from the sheer shock caused by the realization. "This entire place… is it…"

"A quantum computer," Daniel finished the girl's sentence for her. He then turned around as if to take a proper look at the insides of the vault. "A proper, true quantum computer. Or to be more precise, the interface that connects to a full-sized one," he then added.

"But weren't those said to be too damn big to be ever completed?" Alice attempted to argue, unable to reunite her own knowledge with what Daniel just told her. "Not until a civilization would be able to construct a…"

Alice suddenly turned silent.

"A Dyson's sphere, right?" Daniel finished the girl's sentence once again without even bothering to look back at her. Only after a few seconds passed did he actually look over his shoulder with a proud smile. "And do you really think a civilization capable of constructing one wouldn't be able to make it seem like the device was the sun itself?"

Alice wobbled on her knees.

What Daniel just suggested went above and beyond anything she already expected from the man.

"A technology that's advanced enough would be no different than magic to those who do not understand it," he then quoted one of the long-deceased fiction writers from the past. "And now, this technology will ensure no atomic bomb will ever take to the skies," Daniel then added, closing his eyes as he savored the moment of his long-awaited fulfillment.

Alice wobbled on her knees for the third time. But just like all the times before, she used all of her willpower to remain standing. After all, the only thing that they did before Daniel suddenly announced he completed the program was walk around. And as she looked at the floor of the vault again… she found it really fucking strange that a room representing the peak of a hyper-advanced civilization would be paved with some simple tiling!

'It's a massive keyboard,' Alice finally realized. Yet, rather than freaking out even more than she already did, she bit her lips even harder than before, all the way to the point her teeth cut her mouth open.

"Now that you've done what you wanted, can you tell me your answer?" Alice then asked, seemingly out of nowhere. "Are you going to stop the world from destroying itself with conventional weapons?"

'There are only three absolutes I was never supposed to break,' Daniel thought upon hearing the girl's question.

'Under no circumstances, you are allowed to die. Don't you ever try to be a god. Be a guide to the selected few so that they can guide all the others.'

A set of three laws that existed in his mind since times that even his memory couldn't reach. The three rules were more ancient than Daniel's psyche itself.

'Out of those three damn rules, I already broke the last one,' Daniel thought, recalling the fall of the one and only civilization he actually involved himself with for more than just a single generation, infusing it with ideas and morphing its culture to create a nation with values half a millennium before its times.

And just like he groomed said civilization to fulfill his third commandment, Daniel broke the rule when he gave up on it and left it to the vultures it had for neighbors, all for the sake of making peace with Patric.

"I'm sorry, but I can't," Daniel replied after thinking the question through. "This would go against…"

"No, it's me who's sorry," Alice cut into Daniel's words before he could even explain himself.

Bang.

A sharp noise echoed in the chamber.

Daniel slowly brought his hand up to his chest only to then raise it to his eyes.

The pain started to slowly kick in, informing his brain that the entire body was about to cease its functions.

'Blood,' Daniel dully noted, unable to connect the dots to the obvious picture.

The sound, Alice's words, the blood on his hand, the pain right where his heart was.

Those weren't the clues that one had to struggle with to understand.

Daniel turned around right as the pain in his chest grew from a mild annoyance to a burning torture.

And just as he could expect, there was a small gun in Alice's hand.

'Why?' Daniel asked in his thoughts, unable to open his mouth in time to actually voice the question out. 'Wait, what the hell?' he then asked himself, confused about the impossible development.

"What have you done…" the four words finally escaped from Daniel's mouth, right as the girl raised the angle at which she held the gun a little.

"I did what I had to," Alice replied while tears streamed down her grief-torn face. "I'm sorry," she apologized through her tears before closing her eyes. "And goodbye," she added, pulling the trigger and sending her next bullet straight between Daniel's eyes.