On our swim back to the boat, I tried to imagine what a new society would look like in which averageness was no longer viewed as valuable to society. I found this challenging, since my existence had always been contingent on this thought. I imagine what it would be like to raise a child in a society where being an outcast is looked highly upon. It would most likely be easier than raising a child today. One of my biggest fears is raising a child, only for them to grow up to become an outcast in society. But in this new world, I could strive to make them unique and creative in their own way. I would encourage them to follow their passion, whatever it may be. I suppose that can still be done today, although the risks are far too high.

Luckily, I had been deep in thought and failed to notice how long I had been swimming. Only when I got up onto the deck of the boat did I register how exhausted I was. The swim to the shore was significantly shorter and I look to see if the boat had drifted off during our walk around the island. However, it is more likely that the boat stayed in the same place and only my enthusiasm was what drifted away.

When we were talking on the island I couldn't tell if Theo was serious about starting a new society. He seems to be happy living in isolation on this boat, fulfilled with the pursuit of knowledge and the hope of rescuing the society that he has destroyed. For a moment, I wished that I had no part of this plan. The responsibility of the situation felt like more than I could handle. Eventually, I accept my fate. All I can do now is think about Lily. She would somehow persuade me into thinking that I had no other choice than to help Theo.

"There must be some way to save her." I think to myself.

My focus shifts to my mother as I imagine her and my sister fading away after the universal income checks stop coming in. I'm not sure how long they would be able to last, or if they would even notice what was going on. Maybe they would just wither away from starvation and die peacefully in their sleep. Who knows?

"Up here my boy!" I hear Theo shout from the stern.

He was holding binoculars up to his eyes and looking back at the island. His paranoia was on full display. For a moment I was scared that he had begun to go crazy. I walked carefully back to him, in fear of what I might see.

"I knew it Red, there's someone on the island!" He yells.

"What?" I ask, puzzled.

"Take a gander my boy! You'll see him clear as day in those trees just past the shoreline. I knew someone was following us when we were walking around. I didn't want to say anything to scare you." He says.

I grab the binoculars from his hands and see a man in all black making his way into the trees that reside just above the shoreline. He walks into the trees like a tiger who has missed his opportunity to snatch his prey. I see the man looking around to make sure that no one is watching him.

"Why do you think he was following us?" I ask.

"Hard to say, but I have a feeling it was no accident." He replied.

"Do you think someone is out to get you Theo?" I ask.

"I'm not sure. I have been noticing strange people every time I dock, or go to visit my son. I thought I was going crazy my boy! I can't tell you nice it is knowing that these weren't the hallucinations of an old man." He said laughing.

"How are you laughing about this? This is terrible!" I exclaimed.

"Well my boy, there is no point in worrying about it now! That is the beauty of this boat! No one can reach us here!" He said, still laughing.

His laughing began to comfort me and I see, that for the time-being he's right, there is nothing to worry about. Theo can somehow compartmentalize what may happen in the future into a section of his brain and only focus on the present. His ability to do this means that he does not feel troubled at what is to come, only what is happening now.

"Ah my boy, what strange times we are living in. Philip must know that I have a way to power down the Assistants and has been keeping tabs on me to make sure that I fail to do so. You see, like I said before, Philip is not an evil man and so I have nothing to fear. He would not want harm to fall upon me. These men that follow me are just a precaution. They might intervene should I try something rash, but they won't hurt us. If that was the case, he would've had me killed already." He said with a crazed laugh, staring towards the island.

"I suppose you're right, he isn't going to harm you. But, that doesn't mean you should just sit idly by and let them follow you." I said.

"No, that is the best part! Since I know that there are people following my every move, I now know to act accordingly. The reassurance of you seeing the man lets me know I am not going crazy!" He said still laughing. "Now we are in a chess game and I have always been a marvelous player."

I quickly forgot about the man on the island. Theo was pulling up the anchor of the boat and I went to sit in my usual spot on the bow. Theo seems to have zero doubt about our plan, even though he just thought there was no way to save our species. How was he able to change his whole mindset so easily? Three days ago I was ready to excuse myself from the world altogether and find peace in the mountains. Now I am instrumental in the plan to start a new society? I fear that I lack the courage it takes to play a part in something so important to the future of our species. Unlike Theo, I was not able to convince myself so quickly that our plan would work and I was the one telling him that we should try. Thinking back to our conversation on the rock, I never meant to imply that I wanted to help in the plan I proposed. If only there was someone else that would volunteer to fill my position in the plan.

Growing up, I was set on believing the world was dictated by randomness and chaos. The older I get, the more I believe the world is instead predetermined. I guess some would call this destiny. I try to convince myself that I was predetermined to be in this situation and I slowly regain confidence in myself. As long as Theo is around, I know that we have a chance.

"I think we should talk more about what we plan to do regarding the Assistants." I said as he walked towards me.

"Of course Red. What do you think we should do?" He asked.

"Well, to be honest I haven't the slightest clue. This morning I thought we would go sailing like the last few days, but now everything has changed. I feel overwhelmed about the whole thing." I told him.

"I understand my boy, I feel overwhelmed too. I wonder how many other people have felt this way throughout the course of history?" He asked the question, clearly not expecting an answer.

"I have to imagine that everyone who has led a revolution felt this way. If they didn't, maybe it means we weren't meant for the job." I told him.

"Well, either way my boy we have been put in this situation. To fail most likely means the end of our species. All we can do now is try and if it was meant for us to survive, we will." He said.

This response from Theo reminded me that we had nothing to lose. For if we try and fail, the world will meet the same end that it would should we choose to do nothing. To know that billions of lives would be lost in the process was a weight too heavy to carry alone and I am glad to help Theo carry that burden. He meant to free us from labor so that we may follow our dreams, but instead created a world void of fulfillment. I see that this is his last hope to fix the flaws in society that ruined his original plan.

Theo grew silent as he began flipping through the pages of a book. The book was written in Spanish and I couldn't make out the title, but it appeared to have pictures of plants on the inside. I decided to leave him to his thoughts for awhile and walk to the front of the boat again. I look to find the island in the distance, but can only see blue all around us. We must have been sailing for longer than I thought. I want to ask Theo how far we are from the harbor, but decide that the answer might frighten me more than it would calm my nerves. I remember that the Pacific Ocean is over ten thousand miles wide and the feeling of isolation dwindles away. We couldn't have been more than fifty miles from the coast. In the grand scheme of things, fifty miles is insignificant.

Theo is still intently reading his book and I lay down to rest my eyes for a little while. I have a dream of what my life would be like had I gone to school for art. I picture myself painting on a coastline in Italy, content with my life. Instantly, I flash forward years later and see that I have grown isolated from the world, lost in my paintings. I look in the mirror to see a face staring back at me, but it has no eyes. I panic and jump off of my balcony, tumbling down the rocky hillside until I reach the bottom of the coastline. As I am looking down from above at my lifeless body, I begin to see a life flash before me. While I was able to find success as an artist, my life grew increasingly meaningless. Those around me valued my art, but their relationship with me only for superficial reasons. For awhile I was content with this, but soon I grew tired of having no true friends. I ran away from my life as a famous artist so that I could start again. In my isolation I grew mad and depressed, which lead to the frightful end I witnessed.

When I come to, I walk to the back and find Theo hovering over a laptop. He had a crazed look in his eye and was scanning pages on the screen. He didn't notice when I first walked in and when he saw me, he shot up to greet me. I must have had a petrified look on my face, for he tried to diffuse the tension with a joke before beginning to explain to me what it was that he was doing.

"My boy, I was growing paranoid over the men following me. I had this suspicion that there must be a reason for this increase and began looking into the files from TyraTech. I didn't think that I would still have access to the top secret files, but alas, they must have forgotten to delete my account. They've almost done it my boy. I can't believe it." He told me, while returning to his computer screen.

"They've almost done what?" I asked.

"They've almost created a sentient machine. In the email, Philip says he wants to start producing them next month." He replied.

"You told me it was impossible." I said.

"Indeed my boy, I thought it was! I have been looking over the code they have been developing and can barely understand it. It is all over the place. I never imagined that someone would have been able to write this." He told me.

I saw that he had been skimming through pages of code and could hear him muttering inaudible words. Eventually, this progressed into obscenities aimed at the person who had wrote the code. I sat down and watched the madness unfold. He had been writing notes on a page next to him and after a while he grew silent. He sat back and looked over at me. He stared for a few moments before telling me what he had discovered.

"They used my code. Well, at least for most of it. I didn't notice at first because of how scrambled it is, but now that I've read it, it's undoubtedly mine. I've never read anything like it though. I don't know how any human code write this though." He began. "I have to imagine that Philip had his developers create a machine who's only purpose was to rewrite my code until he got what he wanted. The machine must have used my code as a starting ground. I don't know what to do Red, this changes everything." He said. "Taking down my code from the Assistants won't do us any good now."

"Maybe there is some way to use the new machine to our advantage." I said after a long pause.

"Perhaps my boy, what did you have in mind?" He asked me.

I told him I would need some time to think and that he should look to see if there was anyway to alter the code of the sentient machine. I thought back to what Theo had said was wrong with our society. The willingness to accept a mediocre life was because our culture had made it seem like that was all we could do. Our society placed value upon intelligence, but intelligence was only relative to the structure of our economy. So, most people believed that they were average, but this stemmed from having no rare attributes valued by our society. This resulted in them having to settle for a practical job within the relative confines of our economic structure in order to earn a living. When freed of the need to earn a living, the masses were weighed down by the dogma that still shackled them. In this new world, we will create a society free from the dichotomy of intelligence and averageness.

"Do you think this new machine would be able to run simulations in its head?" I asked, ending the silence.

"I suppose it would be able to, but that doesn't mean that it would be willing. That is the mystery of technology like this, we have no idea what it is going to 'want' to do." He explained.

"Well what determines the machines willingness to do so?" I asked him.

"I would have to believe that the machine's personality would be dictated on the code surrounding its reasoning. It would develop similar to how a humans would, part biological and part environmental. Except, in the machine's case the biological aspect would be replaced by it's code. Take yourself for example, part of your personality is a result of your upbringing, family, wealth, etcetera and part of your personality is passed down in the DNA from your parents. It is a combination of these two that end up making you who you are today. The machine would have similar parameters that would determine what its personality looked like. Now, obviously the new Assistant would lack any upbringing or DNA transfer, but the idea is similar. The machine could have code that makes it hyper-sensitive to anger, but these behaviors would grow and change over time, much like a human. It would all be determined by the person who wrote the code." Theo explained.

"So there would be some way to alter the new Assistant into being more willing to help us right? I mean, if you could alter the code and make the new robot more inclined to help the human race it would see the benefit of our plan and help us." I told him.

"You might be on to something my boy. Perhaps we should try and make this machine ourselves, because if I alter the code but TyraTech still has the machine, they would know that someone changed it. Philip would know that I was the only one capable of doing so and come after us. By leaving their code alone and creating my own, they wouldn't know what hit them." He told me.

"Do you think you could make it here on this boat?" I asked him.

"Well yes my boy, I would like to think that I could." He told me. "I'll get started on the code right away."