Three days earlier… The four year old peaked out through the opening in the leather stretched tent. Smoke filled the clearing and stung at her eyes. She pulled the opening closed and shrank back into the darkness of the tent, trying to decide what to do. Smoke wasn’t normal, was it? She thought to her pre-school class and the drills the teacher had made them do if the classroom filled with smoke. She grabbed a shirt and put it over her mouth and nose. She was already as low to the ground as she could get. She was sitting on the ground. What was next? She had gotten a gold star in class for knowing the answer. She remembered and looked at the sleeping form of her father. Tell an adult, that’s what you did next. She pushed at her father’s shoulder. “Papa, wake up, papa, there’s smoke.” Grethu’s eyes fluttered open. “Hmm… what is it, sweetheart, do you have to go potty?” “Papa, there’s smoke.” Grethu pushed the sleep from his mind and sniffed at the air. There was smoke. He raised a hand to the side of the tent, and heat, along with a red glow coming through the seams of the tent. Grethu sat up, alarmed now. He looked at his daughter. She had a shirt pushed against her face. He grabbed their drinking flask and took the shirt from the little girl. He poured water on the shirt, then tied it around her head. “Lana, keep that around your face.” The little girl nodded. He grabbed another shirt, and after soaking it, tied it around his own head. He could hear the fire now, burning the nearby brush. This campsite was at the furthest end of the cluster of campsites. He wasn’t a wealthy man by any means and had only been able to afford to rent a campsite at the less cleared end of the popular campground, but it had afforded them more privacy as there were no other campers down here. Grethu carefully looked outside. He could see flames uncomfortably close to their camp. The forest was on fire. He turned back to his daughter. “Sweetheart, I’m going to carry you inside my coat. Stay inside the coat, don’t look out. Do you understand?” The girl was frightened now and only stared at him. “It’s going to be alright, just keep your head inside my coat.” He opened the tent and was immediately struck by the overwhelming thick smoke stinging at his eyes. The trees to his left and right were engulfed in flames, and the grass was on fire just beyond the tent. He crawled outside, then reached back in and pulled his daughter out. The little girl had started to cry. He pushed her under his coat and she buried her face into his chest. Grethu stood and searched for a direction to go. He looked back at the tent. The rental camping gear was a month’s wages. It would take a long time to pay it off if he lost the gear. His other financial obligations were already stretched to their limit, and the reason his wife had left him, she had grown tired of living hand to mouth. It wasn’t his fault, a dock hand didn’t make much, and it was all he knew how to do. The woman hadn’t even said goodbye to Lana. A falling tree just behind the tent made his mind up for him. He turned and ran through the thick smoke, his arms clutched around his daughter. Yes, it was the right decision. His daughter was all that mattered. He had saved for two years to be able to bring her here and camp as their Ruk ancestors lived. If the situation hadn’t been so serious, he would have laughed. Maybe he was getting his money’s worth on this trip after all. Certainly life couldn’t have been easy for his ancient ancestors, always on the run from predators and natural disasters. Well, he was getting a good taste of what life had been like back then. He looked down at the ground. There was a path at the far end of the clearing that would lead them out of the forest, but he hadn’t seen the path yet. Had he run too far, or not far enough? He stopped and turned in a circle. Nothing was familiar. He’d missed the path. Which way was the right way? The fire was all around them now, and the smoke too thick to see more than a few feet. He was lost. Grethu stroked his daughters head. What would he do when the flames came for them? Could he let his daughter die like that? The very first brush of the final decision he’d have to make entered his mind. Could he do it? He pushed the thought aside and kept walking. A tree fell in front of him and he had to change directions. The heat of the fire was nearly unbearable and he struggled to breathe. He still hadn’t found the path. It was hopeless. They were trapped. Tears started to flow down his face. It was nearly time to make the decision. He couldn’t let Lana burn to death. Grethu ran. The fire roared through the tree tops. He felt dizzy, he wouldn’t be able to run much further. The heat was now a painful thing he couldn’t escape. He felt it burning his flesh. He stroked the girl’s head. His life had been one bad decision after the next. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.” His hand tightened on her head. “I’ll be with you soon, I promise.” A sound so strange and completely out of place came to him through the smoke. He paused and listened. Ping… Ping… Ping… Ping… “A locator beacon?” The sound brought him back to reality and he looked down at his daughter. He snatched his hand away from her head. What had he been about to do? The revulsion of it nearly made him throw up. Ping… Ping… Ping… Ping… Grethu followed the sound through the smoke and nearly fell over the small tent. He looked down, the tent was so small it must have been a child’s tent. Of course, he’d seen some parents allow their children to sleep several yards from their main campsite, to give them a sense of independence. The locator beacon was coming from inside the tent. He pushed the flap open and looked inside. The air inside was still relatively fresh and he stuck his head through the opening to take a deep breath. He pulled his coat open and gently turned his daughter to also take a breath. Ping… Ping… Ping… Ping… Grethu looked down at the source of the sound. A stuffed bear lying on a small sleeping bag was the source. He reached down and picked the toy up, and immediately heard a voice in his head. “I am Mr. Buckles, Advanced Deep Learning A.I., my master has already fled the fire. I am now in survival mode. I saw you on my proximity scanner. My scanner indicates you are suffering from smoke inhalation and disorientation. I estimate you have eight minutes before you and the child you are holding succumbs to the smoke and die. Hold me up so that I can scan the area and find an escape route.” Grethu stared wide-eyed at the small stuffed toy. A survival A.I., the child that owned this device must have the wealthiest of parents. Grethu backed out of the tent and held the stuffed bear into the air. A green light scanned a 360 degree circle. “I have determined an escape route. Turn to your right and walk straight. Do not run yet, you will use up too much oxygen.” Grethu did as the stuffed bear ordered. It was a direction he wouldn’t have picked, but this was his only hope to get out of the forest. He followed the bear’s instructions and walked. The bear had him do several frightening switchbacks that looked like he was leading them into the flames. The burning pain from the heat ended. He felt nothing. Grethu glanced at the bear, he’d heard that the Survival A.I.’s fighter pilots carried could block the pilot’s ability to feel pain, so they wouldn’t have to experience a particularly horrible death. His burns must be worse than he knew for the A.I. to have done it to him. The fire reared up all around them, Grethu couldn’t see any way out, but he continued to follow the bears lead. They reached a spot in the flames with an opening no more than twenty feet across. It was a tunnel through the fire. “You must now run,” said Mr. Buckles. “You have 12.7 seconds before the fire closes this escape path.” Grethu took off at a sprint, covering the distance between the flames barely in time. He looked back and saw the flames close the path he’d just run through. “You must now run one-half mile straight ahead. There is a road. A vehicle is coming. You have one minute ten seconds or you will miss the vehicle.” The distance and time was doable for a Ruk, but Grethu was coughing from the smoke. It would be a hard run, especially with his daughter in his arms. He ran. The vehicle was a truck, and passed as he was still thirty feet from the road. He ran out onto the road and chased after the truck, waving his arm and struggling to shout. “Please…stop…” Grethu shouted between a hacking cough. The brake lights on the truck lit up. It stopped and a teenage boy jumped out. “Holy Great Tree, where did you come from, Mister.” Grethu bent over and pointed at the burning forest. “You came through that?” the boy asked incredulously, then saw Lana. “Oh my gosh, you have a little girl. Come on, get in the truck, this road isn’t going to be here much longer.” Grethu carried his daughter to the truck and lifted her inside. Her eyes were glazed over and she didn’t respond when he said her name. Fear gripped his chest as he gently nudged her. “Lana! Lana!” Lana blinked and looked up at her father and smiled. “Mr. Buckles was telling me a story about a turtle and a fox that had to cross a river.” Grethu stared at the bear. Of course, survival A.I.’s had a V.R. mode. From the time they had left the tent where he’d found the bear, she had been inside the V.R. and hadn’t experienced any of the terror of their run through the fire. Grethu looked into the bear’s eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Buckles, thank you.”