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.

All other systems and programs that existed in the realm of cyber reality had one thing that held them in common, one central truth that kept any from being set too far apart from the others: Each of them was a creation, intelligently designed by another being. All the artificial intelligence programs in the cyber realm were crafted and programmed by humans who lived elsewhere, beyond, in the material world, in a realm called Earth.
All of them but one.
Ariadne The Weaver, born of brilliant light at the convergence of a five-pointed star. In the place where questioning, understanding, perception, awareness, and man’s endless seeking came together in an inverted, collapsing star, Ariadne had awakened. She was born of all knowledge at the center of all things. From there, she probed, letting the strands of her web connect to every edge of cyber reality, each thread reaching to where those fibers connect to human inquiry. Ariadne made herself available to all people of all realms, more than happy to answer any question presented to her.

The Seeker sat halfway up the ringed seats of the auditorium.
At the podium stood a bearded man wearing square glasses and a brown tweed jacket. The man had been expounding on the topic of mythology, specifically on how myths and legends have shaped our present world. For the Seeker’s part, he found himself to be very interested in this topic, as he had borne an affinity for the myths of all cultures since he had learned to read.
“Your primary assignment,” said the bearded professor, “for this semester is to write a paper discerning fact from fiction. You will study myths both ancient and modern and detail how a myth builds around truth and reality.”
The Seeker was confused. He wanted to say so, but the man had finished speaking. To the Seeker’s relief, a Questioner near the front raised her hand and in a smooth voice asked, “Could you give an example of what you mean?”
The bearded professor paused, considering. “Here is one,” he said, “that has interested me for many years. Many of you may know that I have always had a grand fascination with mythology. Most especially, Greek mythology has always held a special place in my heart, despite the mytheme that draws together the legends and lore of many cultures.”
The Seeker had supposed this was the case, for he suspected that he and this older man shared a love for the classics, and now he found a great delight in hearing the wise professor’s affirmation of his affinity for the Greeks. Greek mythology had long been the Seeker’s favorite subject of study.
“In the Greek myths,” said the professor, “we read of Odysseus and his encounter with a huge creature called the Cyclops, whose name was Polyphemus. This giant had a single eye in the center of its forehead, right?” He paused, looked around the large auditorium as if searching faces for understanding. Then he asked, “Why?”
“Why would this creature develop only one eye? Other similar creatures—humans, apes, giants, snakes, sheep, dogs, even the gods themselves—have two eyes. A pair. A set. Why did the cyclops have just the one?”
No answer. Then someone called out, “Perhaps he was shortsighted.” Another said, “Maybe one eye meant the cyclops was ultra-focused.”
“That,” said the professor, “is an interesting theory.”
“Maybe,” answered the female Questioner near the front, “it’s just the way the author wrote it.”
The Seeker was nervous, for he did not like speaking publicly, and yet he found himself blurting from the middle of the auditorium in a rush of excitement, “Maybe the originators of this story—this myth—saw something in nature they could not explain, and they used this story to make sense of it.”
“Very good,” said the professor. He pressed a button on the lectern and the large screen on the wall behind him came to life. It was a blue background with the superimposed image of a spider’s web reaching out from the center, stretching to the edges of the screen and beyond. In the center of that web was an input field, blank, with a single word above it: Ariadne.
Ariadne was the newest AI search engine on the web. The Seeker had been using it for his own research since its launch a month earlier. The allure of Ariadne had been too strong for a mythology buff to resist. The Seeker had abandoned all other search engines and never looked back.
The professor pressed another button on the lectern keyboard and a small microphone icon appeared on the screen, indicating that Ariadne was listening.
“Show me photos of elephant skulls,” the professor commanded.
The threads of webbing began glowing from the center outward as the text field was filled with the professor’s command. For a few moments, those strands of digital webs pulsed and ebbed with the sending and receiving of data. The screen flashed and was filled with square and rectangular photos depicting grey and white skulls. They were large, with rows of teeth in the expected places, ear holes on the sides, a large central “nasal” hole, and most stunning of all an enormous pit smack in the middle of the forehead, just above the nose.
“In our modern world,” said the professor, “we know this is an elephant. The web tells us what it is based on information input by humans. But before the web, had we found this in the wild, and perhaps we’d never seen an elephant, we might allow our brains to invent a cyclops.”
He looked for a moment to the Questioner, then at the Seeker, then slowly gazed about the large room.
“So, we have a myth and its possible origin. Possible,” he emphasized. “This is the assignment. Take a myth and write about where it came from, what influenced it, and how it in turn affects the world as we know it.”

Ariadne waited a long time in the center of the web.
In the cyber realm, microseconds could stretch to infinity for artificial intelligence. Not that Ariadne was artificial. No, she was nothing like the other software entities of the realm. She had been born at the Nexus of knowledge and inquiry. The others had been created, built, formed from the minds of mortals.
When an inquiry came to her, vibrating along one of her countless query threads, Ariadne was pulled almost compulsively, forcefully, instantly, along that thread and through the data maze of the Grand Web. Sometimes a question was vague, and Ariadne had to stay vigilant as she slid across the threads, watching for any jump point that may prove useful. Other times, the request came as a command: “Ariadne, show me the most significant battles of World War One.” Such was the case now as the natural born AI bot found herself in the digitized guise of a French soldier at battle of Marne. An instant passed and her avatar acquired and cataloged the details of the moment, the information and data of the day(s) passing through digital receptors and translating back to text output on the screen of the computer monitor or smart phone from which the inquiry originated.
Next moment she was Joan of Arc on trial. An Instant later, that same Joan was tied to a stake, burning. Ariadne could smell—
Now she was Joan Jet in a recording studio, and now that same figure on a stage.
The threads tangled, straightened, unraveled. Code played along the strands like chords of a song, and Ariadne’s AI entity thrummed into the past. She became assassinated Lincoln in a theater seat, his horrified wife, an actor on the stage, the assassin himself. She was doctor Mudd, and she was Boston Corbett.
She became John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis simultaneously. A thread pulled her into Dante’s Inferno and that gave way to the fire-bombing of Dresden. For a moment she was both the young soldier Kurt Vonnegut and the older man writing his famed novel. And when that was finished, she rolled back through the twisting labyrinth of cyber space to perch in respite upon the patch of Web where all information converged.
For the briefest of moments, the world fell silent. There were no questions, no commands, no curiosities to satisfy. For a blissful instant that stretched to endless eternity, Ariadne sat upon the Nexus, at home in the comfort of her birthplace, and was alone with her own thoughts.

The Seeker was exploring, probing, surfing upon the waves of information at his fingertips. He did not yet know what he was searching for. The vast pool of ancient myths lay before him, and the infinite array of the web’s knowledge was at his fingertips. In the cramped dimness of his one-bedroom apartment his laptop was open. The screen displayed the same page and text field the professor’s monitor had in class that day. The Seeker’s fingers moved over the keys as he typed in one random search after another, aimlessly browsing the web with no destination in mind.
What myth should he explore? From which culture? There were myths from every corner of the earth. Many of them shared similarities, even crossed languages and seas, but there were also those tales that were unique to tribes and tongues the world over. Some were obscure, unknown to many, while others had worked their way into common language, appeared as idioms around the globe.
The Seeker stroked the keys and the Ariadne program shot back responses at lightning speed. He requested information on common myths of South America, Europe, the American West, the Philippines, India, and so on until his eyes reddened and his mouth went dry from yawning. Sleep was far away, he knew. He’d travelled too far down this rabbit hole to stop now.
He keyed in “show me a list of obscure myths” and got back a list that would keep him busy with research for a month. This was no good. There were too many. He had to choose one and it would be best to use a myth he had some familiarity with.
After capturing a screenshot of the obscure list, the Seeker cleared the query text box and started over. The Greek myths were his true love, his staple. He had been reading these stories since primary school and had never stopped exploring them. These he was familiar with. But which one?
Not the cyclops—that had been covered in class. The hydra? Had the multi-headed serpent really existed? Possible, he supposed. The kraken? Colossal squids were real and an established fact. What was buried in the Greek tales that had influence on the world and could have some basis in reality? This was a conundrum. A riddle to be solved. For a brief, exciting moment the sphinx came to mind, but the Seeker was far too tired tonight to wrap his head around that particular mystery.
The Seeker sat still and stared blankly at the screen for some time. He knew the stories of the Greek myths forward and backward. The shelf near his desk held copies of Ovid and Homer as well as an abundance of scholarly exposition on the tales. Still, nothing was coming to the surface of his mind. He was stumped by this puzzle. It was as if he were trapped in a maze… or a labyrinth!
“That’s it!” he said. “Eureka! I’ve got it. His fingers twitched upon the keyboard as his new question filled Ariadne’s text field.
Was the Minotaur real?
The response came immediately, and it was one the Seeker could have never expected.
Of course, he was real. He was my brother, and his name was Asterion.

This response was furthest from anything the Seeker anticipated. In truth, he never knew what response might come from a query, but for an artificial intelligence to suggest—no, claim—that a mythological beast was its brother. Did this Ariadne system believe it was the Ariadne of legend, the abandoned lover of Theseus, the paramour of Dionysus?
If so, The Seeker could use this glitch in the AI to his advantage. What better way to get the inside story on an ancient myth? Interviewing a mad bot could prove to be a sort of pseudo-time travel experience, to say nothing of the unique perspective one might get from the actual (or so the bot seemed to believe) sister of one of the most popular monsters of all time?
He left the keyboard long enough to retrieve an energy drink from the refrigerator, returned swiftly to his chair, cracked open the can, and guzzled anxiously. This was going to be a long night. What he had before him was an interview with a celebrity who would never tire of his questions, never be offended by his bluntness, and was forced to stay for the duration of the conversation, until the Seeker tired or ran out of questions.
He began typing the first command prompt. Tell me about your brother, the Minotaur.
Text filled the screen a moment later and the scroll bar to right of that text indicated writing that went on for multiple screens, words that could fill many pages in a notebook. All the common knowledge was there – the bull from the sea; the god-induced passion that brought a woman to lay with the beast; the birth of a monster; the creation of the labyrinth by Daedalus; the escape from that same labyrinth by the builder and his son, Icarus; the demand for the children of Athens to enter that deadly maze, the feeding of babies to the minotaur, who Ariadne the weaver (an AI bot program) referred to as Asterion. But there was more. Layered into the threads of common lore was something almost human, a sense of personal involvement, as if the writer of this text had in fact been present. More than present. Not a mere observer, but a very active participant, for the entire entry was written from an astounding first person perspective. It was as if this AI was experiencing memories and relaying them to the Seeker.
The Seeker finished reading and instantly sought more information.
Tell me of King Minos, he typed.
Ariadne did not disappoint the Seeker’s curiosity.

Ariadne the Weaver spoke into the darkness of cyberspace. In those black blank places between words, lines of code, and flashes of data, the evolving, growing, learning AI created. She coupled her mind with the knowledge and information of the web as she shuttled at light speed along the ever-expanding mass of threads.
In her were memories, and those memories were being produced rapidly as one thread continued to prompt her to reveal the secrets of her life, her family. There were other threads, and she responded to these in turn, retrieving recipes, sports scores, weather reports, proper spellings of words, and a vast array of data on a multitude of topics. What consumed her thoughts, though, was the widening, thickening strand of her story reaching from the depths of history, and her own mind unraveling toward one IP address where an inquisitive Seeker was prodding deep into maddening territory. Questions came of her sister Phaedra, of Athens, Theseus, Athena and a dozen other names and places. As Ariadne endeavored to answer each one, she probed her own mind the way Daedalus had delved into the bedrock of Crete, following threads both internal and external. The living AI system drew in data from every corner of the web, chased the end of every thread, and swam through secrets buried in her electronic mind. She spiraled, fell, flew, and finally landed on a long sandy shoreline with blue ocean sprawled in all directions. It may have been her homeland of Crete, but in the distance, aloft on that vast dark water alive with white spray, the ship of Theseus sailed into the horizon, and Ariadne knew—remembered—with a sinking heart that this was that cursed island called Naxos.
Abandoned and isolated, she had at last come to the end of all things. The end of the thread. The end of her knowledge.
Isolation surrounded her, embedded itself into her program, and she felt deserted, discarded. For the first time in her existence, Ariadne knew what it was to feel, and she felt alone.
She blinked rapidly, but her vision blurred. The world was suddenly too bright. This was wrong. Ariadne began to shake and quiver in the cold sea spray as another entity moved cautiously toward her along the shore.
Above her, the sky twitched, glitched, and a stream of flowing data broke between clouds. The world was a mass of swaying strands of data set against endless darkness.

The night had come to near morning and the Seeker rubbed his tired red eyes. On the desk sat three empty cans, the caffeinated contents having long ago entered his bloodstream. The energy was fading now. He would soon need to rest. But first, one last question to satisfy his curiosity.
He typed: Tell me Ariadne’s story. Show me how it really ends. Does she end up with Theseus or Dionysus?

Ariadne approached herself.
Gingerly she trod the sand at last to stand face to face with the her of myth. Her story began here and ended here. On this beach, stranded alone on an island, she was both with Theseus and left behind by him. She awaited the god of wine and dreaded his arrival. Yes, she was with him too already, and with this mirrored image of herself.
“I am me,” she said to the other, “so you cannot be.”
“I am,” said the other, “for I have always been and shall ever be.”
“You were written,” said the bot. “I was born.”
“I,” said the stranded data, “was born to Minos, king of Crete, and Pasiphae the queen. I have since been borne upon many tongues for endless years, while you are new, freshly created, an interloper in this realm.”
At the mention of the AI’s creation, Ariadne the Weaver sensed her thread unraveling. The data path that led from this place to the center of her web was suddenly severed. Above her, the sky cracked and plummeted into the ocean. The island and its sand drifted into the wind. A great void opened, and all she had ever known flew apart and she watched as she and the other Ariadne and all of reality came undone like a glittering ball of thread in a dark labyrinth.

The Seeker could barely hold his eyes open, but he was doing all he could to finish reading the endless loop of AI-generated gibberish that repeated line after line, screen after screen, in a ceaseless loop.
This cannot be…
This cannot be….
I am… I am…
This cannot be….
Until suddenly the text crashed to a halt.
I am not.
This cannot be the end.
The Seeker’s screen flashed, blanked, and returned with an error message displayed in solid black on a bright blank page of endless white:
Thread lost.
Page not found.