Indigo pushed the door into the wall this time, for a change of pace, and then we emerged into the room. Lab 17. It didn’t look like Brigid’s bedroom this time; there was something sullen about its determined blandness, as if to say see, we can generate a convincing habitat for you. Which I would’ve believed more if it hadn’t been for the giveaway writing on the door.

In the center of the room, dust-free, the Philosopher Stone gleamed.

“There it is,” Lantern-Eyes breathed.

“The Stone,” Indigo rasped.

“Which of you is going to kill the other this time?” I asked. “Because you’ve already traded off once, and then killed each other at the same time. There’s not really any more permutations of that conflict, unless you start repeating yourself. Or maybe you start making out furiously, and I’m supposed to take the Stone and run while you’re distracted.” That mental image was somehow both disturbing and weirdly fascinating.

“I couldn’t kill Indigo,” Tamara declared, gazing off into the corner of the room, dramatic.

“I would rather harm myself than do harm to either of you,” Indigo said softly, but with feeling. “You’ve saved my life.”

“And you’ve saved mine,” Tamara said.

“Of all the… of all the different versions you’ve made me watch go down, this is definitely the least believable,” I said. “Hey, Tamara, have you got your gun? Maybe I’ll shoot myself for a change of pace.”

“You should take it,” Tamara said to me.

I hadn’t expected her to actually agree. “What, the gun?”

“The Stone.”

I took a minute to try and track her logic, and found nothing to track. “Um. Why?”

“Because you sacrificed your life for ours.” Indigo had crossed to the other side of the table, and the light of the Stone shone with faint rapture over his face. “Consider this our payment for the debt.”

“You also tried to sacrifice yourself for me a couple of times, you know,” I pointed out.

“He didn’t succeed,” Tamara said.

They both stared at me expectantly over the table. Side-by-side, there was a certain similarity to them: soldierly stance, dark hair, a completely unnerving and absolutely out of character adoration for me shining brightly from their two loving faces.

I sighed.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s just cut the crap. This is obviously a test of character, right? You’re asking me the same question every time and tempting me to answer it in a particular way.”

They gazed at me in weird twin adoration for a little while longer, and then Tamara said, “Do you want the Stone?”

“Seriously?” I said. “I mean, seriously? What is it with you and the stupid Stone? Would you leave off about it for five seconds; you’re clearly a sophisticated AI; you’ve got to realize I can’t do anything with the data while I’m trapped in the mind of a computer, Dreaming myself to death—”

But that was it, wasn’t it? The Philosopher Stone was data—data in a computer. And I was inside the computer.