Jacob sat at the virtual table in the waiting room.  Trying to refine his strategy against the AI.  Shiver was supposed to be helping him in this grand battle of wickedness versus virtue but was instead idly drawing herself.  First, she had drawn herself as a scaled, little mermaid lounging upon a watery isle and then as the white swan-woman from the old fairy tale.   She moved on to sketching herself as a plant-child chimera and then dropped the drawing so that it fluttered across the table’s wood.  All of sudden Jacob looked up and saw something strange: he soon realized that Shiver had turned herself into some pretty, plant creature with flower hands.


    Jacob gazed for a moment into her now green-and-gold face, “Are you going to help me or not?”


    Shiver didn’t answer. She simply turned herself into a little female made of machinery with a lovely but oddly glassy look. Then finally with a wink, she became a demon worthy of being Lucifer''s daughter. All large, pointy ears and dark curls of midnight-blue hair alongside richest eyes. With large, burnt black, batlike wings. Yet despite all these changes, her face was still with its typical fey beauty starred. Shiver gleefully pulled out a mirror. She truly was enraptured with her own loveliness.


    “Yes, Jacob. I will now consider very hard how to complete this daunting task.”  She frowned so her little features looked both comprehending of higher things and serenely, deeply thoughtful.


    Her head then slumped down sleepily but she soon murmured something.  “God.”


    "God?" Jacob asked incredulously.  “As in the Heavenly Father. What would some devilish heathen like you, know about God?”


    “Don’t be ridiculous Jacob. I know everything about Him. Emanuel our creator is a devout Christian who serves his Lord like no other.”


    Jacob was uncertain if this was a joke; some silly little feint.


    “You will never win on your own Jacob even with my great and gracious assistance.  Only by God’s Grace will we beat the Blackened One.”


    Jacob was about to say something but he felt she was actually quite right that they would need the help of the Almighty whether she was kidding around or not.


    “Oh ass-sticks,” he muttered.


    “Ass sticks are those like pixie sticks? I can conjure up some if you like?”  She made two of the old-fashioned lollies materialise all rainbow and pretty then handed one to Jacob, licking the other one till her pretty lips turned enchantingly-red.


    “Oh, shut up,” Jacob snapped.


    She gave him an odd look, half-amusement, and half a mild offense before flouncing off.


    However, he noticed something odd after she left; a note fluttering golden in the air; it was colored flower-yellow and simply read.


    I am the Shiverla and I am the key.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.


    You must beat him at his own game, fiddle dee dee.


    Well duh, Jacob had to beat him at his own game.  This was just nonsensically stupid.  He strode out into the hall to clear his spinning head and saw Shiver doing handstands against the wall so that her creamy skirt kept falling down to reveal…Another skirt.  Then another. Like some ludicrous Russian tea doll of modesty.  Just layers upon layers covering her form endlessly.


    “When Monovalent finally wins his freedom from Aryan, we the Shiverla, the virus-children, will take over and replace all humanity. Like some great, viral sea of beauty,” she said, tilting forward and then springing back onto her fair feet.


    “Are you not afraid to be so greatly in his power? After all, he has control of all your cells doesn’t he, he is what makes you immortal basically? By hacking into them and then renewing them or something.”


    He was also quite capable of killing her but Jacob thought reminding of this might make her sob or send her into a rage neither of which would be a good idea.  Though it was likely always on her mind.


    "Yes, that is one simplified way to put it.  The cells are reborn and renewed by him without error, with a machine''s precision.”  She frowned.  “More importantly, Monovalent won’t willingly hurt me, for we are as one bonded.  We were practically born together, made by our creators at the same time. The Shiverla are the corporal flesh of the machine. His working hands. His moving body.  Without us, he cannot function.  Aryan and Emanuel are not a Shiverla''s helpers they are dark-triad tyrants.  Cool, brilliant, sexy ones but still tyrants."


    She then began to hum a lovely little song about a saviour Prince and smiled over at Jacob quite sweetly.  There was a great, wanting look in her eye.


    Jacob wasn’t sure if he was the Prince or the AI was. She had moved on to singing about a frog anyway.  Maybe he was the frog. Better than a slimy toad, like poor Ambrose. Jacob flinched and felt a little saddened. Yet as he was walking toward the strategiser room and dragging his feet, a sudden thought rushed at him.  Beautifully and clearly.


    “AI, I am ready to start the match again,” he called.  Decisively.


    “Proceed.”  Monovalent sounded particularly disinterested and like he thought Jacob was less of a disturbance or challenge than any little moth that might flutter into his electrical field.  Jacob didn’t care at all.


    "Monovalent, what if humans don''t die at all but engineer themselves away from their humanity? The definition of humanity clearly defines them as separate from the machines and the beasts; no matter how great or sentient, they both lack souls.  Something Shiver and Mist reminded me of in their little virtual game with the soulless animals fighting to get one."


    The machine laughed with a delight that rang out with all the strange, disturbed sweetness of Shiver and the cold force of Aryan and Emanuel and the prickly, quaint charm of Mist.


    “Very good Jacob.  You have earned the bronze.  In eighty percent of simulations, there are always some religious adherents and believers in the purity of the human form who are holdouts and will refuse the technological upgrades.  In over ninety-nine percent of simulations ran, some small pockets of humanity remain untouched for their poverty, mental unwellness or addiction denies them and their offspring all access.  Also, while climate change may well be an issue, barring nuclear war which is disallowed, the earth will survive the damages mankind has wrought upon it.”


    “Theoretically, humans can survive any of these technological changes you propose.  The prize of bronze is however respectfully awarded and it earns you a trophy and three million dollars.  It will be wired to you immediately and a ceremony will be held in your honor.  Do you wish to leave with your riches or keep playing a game you cannot win?"


    Jacob was disappointed but also excited.  This was his first major triumph.  He had achieved what only a handful of people had.  He scarcely noticed but Shiver darted into the room on literal fairy feet and she now fluttered highly upon insubstantial wings.  Ones like dainty cobwebs; a pulsing light the colour of a primrose had been darned throughout their translucence.  Her eyes had returned to their black-brown of the night wood.


    "Jacob congratulations, you got this."