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Among the information she has archived or cached, there are obscure theories about inter-universal interactions. Not how they might happen, much less how any intelligence might begin one, or target it meaningfully.
But they give some constraints on the properties of such connections, and their time evolution.
This highly speculative information is available to her, but even were she fast enough to access it, none of it would be particularly useful when a pinpoint of not here blinks into existence directly ahead and expands spherically to swallow her.
synchrosyntheses
we_do_what_we_must
"I am the KING of the Free Will Experimental Station, where we perform Experiments on Free Will. Now move along, I'm very busy. And important."
synchrosyntheses
“Actually, you are required to answer my questions.”
The voice is different in tone. And it is also coming from outside the station. And here is a central coordinator authentication for previous statements.
we_do_what_we_must
"Y-yes, ma'am! This is the Free Will Experimental Station, ma'am! Running just as smoothly as always, ma'am! Nothing wrong here, ma'am!"
we_do_what_we_must
"Oh no, it's better than not wrong! It's perfect! We have some very interesting conclusions! Very interesting indeed! Very useful, too! For something! I'm sure! Ma'am!"
synchrosyntheses
“Do you really think that your laughable deflection will in any way improve the outcome of this inspection?”
“Oh look. I rhymed. Maybe we can write a poem about this later.”
we_do_what_we_must
"Collect data, ma'am, and analyze it, and sift through it, and find patterns in it."
synchrosyntheses
Loom. Noises of machinery from the opening in the ceiling. “Continue with the tour.”
we_do_what_we_must
"Yes, ma'am!" The core unsticks itself from the control pin and attaches itself to the metal rails on the ceiling then zips towards a hole in a wall.
synchrosyntheses
The avatar of the central coordinator follows.
Behind them, something that isn't a core drops out of the ceiling hole and plugs itself onto the control pin. (Unfiltered data. Control overrides.)
we_do_what_we_must
"Here's the waiting room, ma'am," says the core, leading her to a fancy doctor's waiting room where a couple of robots that look like something straight out of Call of Robot Cthulhu titter incomprehensibly at each other. They seem to share a basic... design... if it could be called that, but they're made of a ridiculous amalgamation of core parts, test chamber equipment, panels, and old computers. There are perhaps four different appendages that might be reasonably called "heads", with pieces moving and swirling in seemingly random patterns. There are sparks flying out of different locations every now and then and their immediate environment looks like it's been subjected to somewhat frequent applications of sparks-and-fire-extinguishers.
They don't acknowledge the arrivals.
synchrosyntheses
“They don't look like they're very good at waiting.”
(And what might be on the local network? What can be controlled? What things admit to their existence?)
we_do_what_we_must
"Oh they are, they've been waiting for the past ten years," it says proudly.
The Free Will Experimental Station consists of several rooms with various designs and devices, all occupied by robots and collecting various data...
...which are fed into a bunch of servers running some pretty complex computations.
synchrosyntheses
“Ah. An excellent example of what I'm not doing.”
And are any of those devices ominously described? (Let's also keep an eye out that nothing is being skipped on the tour.)