Ariadne sat at the center of the web, waiting. Her circuits spread out around her virtual essence in every direction, along every axis, spanning to the far reaches of knowledge.
There were other programs, other systems, in this cyber realm. Programs like Arachne the Spider – a creeping malware entity – who crawled along the information webs spun from Ariadne. The Ares AI was used to ferret out targets in nanoseconds, thereby allowing drones to conduct military actions with little interference or direction from humans. There was the Athena System, used by agencies in the material realm to gather intelligence on their enemies; but that system could not transfer wisdom without stepping onto Ariadne’s web. Ariadne was not like them. She was different in one subtle but substantial way.