//------------------------------//
// 7 - C:/James/Run 
// Story: The Advocate 
// by Guardian_Gryphon 
//------------------------------//

“If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.”
—Emerson M. Pugh

“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for a bird to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.”
—C.S. Lewis


September 9th 2013 | System Uptime 12:03:12:09

It was three in the morning on a Monday, and I hadn't slept a wink.  I knew I wasn't going to.  I fought for three hours and just shy of fifteen minutes, angry with myself, and my inability to control my racing thoughts...  And then I finally gave in and stopped trying to sleep altogether.

At first I thought that what I needed was some time away from Malacandra to think, and feel, and be alone with myself.  But the second I gave in and accepted that I wasn't going to get to sleep, I also realized, and accepted, that what I actually wanted was to talk things through with Mal.

Exactly what things, in what order, and to what degree I still wasn't sure...  But in spite of all the talking we'd done in just shy of a dozen days...  There was still a lot to talk about.  Maybe there always would be.  I hoped there always would be - just perhaps things of a less cruelly existential nature.

I sat staring out my bedroom window at the stars for almost half an hour, doing my best to calm down and put my mind and heart into something resembling neutral buoyancy.

Only after I had my heart rate down to within a sane percentage of my usual resting rate, did I bring my laptop over to the bed, plug in the ethernet patch cable that was lying on my nightstand, and open a connection to Mal.

Her avatar sprang to life on the screen, filling the room with a soft glow.  She yawned, and stretched, more for the sake of performance and the way it would make me feel than anything else.  I giggled...  She reminded me in that moment of the old barn cat that had stalked the farm in my childhood.

I'd left the webcam in-place on my new laptop.  It had a little sliding shutter to cover it, and I'd felt that was security enough.  I think I'd also hoped I'd get a chance to use it for something resembling that very occasion.

Mal took a moment to take stock of me, and my emotional state, and then began to look beyond me to the space surrounding the bed.  I rotated the laptop slowly so she could take in the whole room.

"So this is where you grew up?  This is your room?"

She knew very well it was, but she asked the questions aloud the way a Human might have in a conversation.  It was 'social lubricant' to help the mechanism of the discussion move more smoothly.

I laid down on my chest, the way I used to when I'd try to pretend to be a Gryphon falling asleep, and spun the laptop back to face me as I answered.

"Spent a lot of time up here.  Reading.  Writing.  Drawing.  Maybe a little too much time on the computer, too, come to think of it.  Though there is a lot of beautiful natural space outside too, and Mom and Dad were strict with my 'screen time.'  So I guess I turned out alright?"

Mal smirked, and then adjusted her position, and the virtual camera, so that she was also lying on her stomach, head resting on her forelegs, beak almost pressed against the screen.  I blushed, and hoped she didn't notice.

She noticed instantly.  I know because she blushed in return.  I had no idea Gryphons could do that...  It was something she had added to the definitions of her physical self, I guessed.

"You did.  I mean...  How else would I be sitting here?"

I smiled, and shook my head slowly.  She always had such perfect responses in the moment.  It made sense - she had the sum total of nearly everything ever written, ever, in any language, at her disposal, and the capacity to understand it all at a deep level.

Before I could cook up a response of my own, she raised an eye crest and put forward a question that actually required a specific response.

"I think I understand the reasoning behind the ownership of all the books on your shelves...  Except for 'Introduction to Fluid Simulation and Flight Dynamics for Aerospace Engineers.'  Why that specific college level  textbook in that edition?  You would have only been seven years old when that was printed."

I couldn't stop myself from breaking out into a huge grin as the memory of that story flooded back.  I shifted my hands and arms under my head a bit to get comfy, and leaned in close to the glass.  If I'd had a beak, it would have very nearly been touching Mal's.

"I...  Have always wanted to be a Gryphon.  It has been a fixation of self-identity since some of my earliest memories.  If you didn't already know that, I guess you could figure it out in about a microsecond.  But...  What you don't know is all of the shenanigans I got up to in service of that goal, from the earliest of ages."

Mal chuckled, and wriggled herself back and forth as if settling into a comfy position to listen.  Her expression said 'well now you *have* to tell me!'  And so I did, smiling to myself all the while, and mercifully forgetting almost everything that was troubling me in the process.

"So, as a kid?  I used to believe anything was possible.  No cynicism whatsoever.  Not a trace.  I wanted to be an astronaut.  Not as much as I wanted to be a Gryphon, but I wanted it pretty badly.  I had this image in my head of traveling the solar system as a Gryphon.  Setting paw on Mars in a very cool looking space suit.  Flying in the atmospheres of distant worlds...  I genuinely believed, at that age, that I was destined to be a Gryphon among the stars, exploring the universe as a thing with wings in my own lifetime."

A twinge of sadness found its way into my joy, and Mal picked up on it.  It was a subtle shift in my voice, and an equally subtle shift in her expression, but both were noticeable.

"I watched way too much Star Trek as a kid, I think.  It gave me this dizzyingly wonderful sense that Humanity could solve any of its problems, if we only tried together, and that I'd been born at just the right time to watch that come to fruition.  That I'd be swept away on the current of our evolution into something better.  Life here was great.  But it was sheltered.  I didn't understand how bad things were in terms of the climate.  Didn't know what nuclear weapons were.  Couldn't even comprehend what real poverty was, or not knowing where my next meal was coming from.  In my mind, back then?  Everyone had it as good as I did.  How could they not, with all the technology and resources we had to share?"

I paused to take in a deep breath, closing my eyes for a moment and trying to avoid letting sadness take root.  A soft 'thunk' sound told me Mal had put the palm of one claw on the glass again.  I opened my eyes, and put my hand up to touch where her claw was.  In doing so, I found the words to get back to the story.

"So I was an idealist.  Hopeless optimist.  And I thought that one day I was just going to turn into a Gryphon, because that's what I was deep down, and if I wanted it badly enough?  My body and the universe were going to fall in line and shape up to match the reality of my spirit.  No problem.  Just like a kid protagonist in a Saturday afternoon cartoon discovering their magic powers."

My grin returned as I thought back to the way I had felt then.  Everything was so bright, and full of possibility.  Mal was staring right into my eyes with an expression that a sappier person might characterize as 'dreamy.'

I didn't stop speaking...  I knew if I did that I might make the mistake of trying to kiss her, right through the glass.

"I got impatient.  Around age seven, I started to...  Experiment.  I would build flying machines out of anything I could get my hands on...  Cardboard, canvas, plastic bags...  You name it.  I tried it.  Parachutes, and squirrel suits, jetpacks and magic mood rings, helmets shaped like beaks, and tails made of strings---"

"These are a few of our favorite things!"

The way Mal sang out the words, crisp, clear, bright and off the cuff...  Something about hearing her voice in song very nearly gave me tachycardia on the spot.  We both giggled uncontrollably for a moment before I managed to re-collect myself.

"And Mal?  It was a miracle that I never broke any bones as a kid.  Almost unbelievable, from a statistical standpoint.  The textbook came from...  Well...  From the last time I ever tried one of my stunts of self discovery."

I sighed deeply, and Mal's smile vanished.  She went back to staring deep into my eyes, with an expression that spoke of longing to understand me.  And maybe even to help me understand myself.  I swallowed hard, and then forged ahead.

"I had reached an epiphany, or so I thought.  My body was...  Trapped, I guess.  Stuck like a rusted bolt in the wrong configuration.  I'd seen Dad break bolts loose before by applying sudden sharp impact force.  I figured what my mind and spirit needed to have the power to 'unstick' my stuck body, was a very sharp mental and emotional impact force."

Mal's eyes widened, and she shook her head.  A grin of amusement and an expression of horror both equally vying for control of her face

"You didn't!"

I nodded, and proffered a wry smile.

"Oh yes.  I did."

I couldn't hold down another short, sharp, wry chuckle.  After it had escaped, I elaborated.

"I put on an old ratty T-shirt, and shorts.  I figured if I suddenly burst into my true shape that I didn't want to ruin any of my favorite clothes...  I wasn't thinking about the fact that if I got what I wanted, my clothes would be useless anyways.  I climbed to the top of the hay barn.  Your barn.  I backed up to one end of the roof peak, took off my shoes so I wouldn't ruin them either...   And then took a running flying leap off the barn with nothing whatsoever to help me 'fall, but never hit the ground' as pilots say."

Mal gaped, and her claw tensed against the glass.  As if she was feeling my elation, and fear, and longing, and feeling ahead to my inevitable pain.  Maybe she was.

I smiled sadly, and shook my head.

"I wanted to go spread-eagled, but at the last minute my reflexes betrayed me.  Good thing too, because breaking my fall by tucking into a roll was probably the main reason I didn't shatter something critical in my spine.  I got a half dozen nasty bruises, a good few cuts and scrapes, a ton of grass stains on skin and on clothes, and two pretty painful sprains..."

I exhaled a deep breath again, and felt the sadness return to my heart, and my voice.

"...But the worst wound wasn't on the outside.  Wasn't physical at all.  It wasn't something most people could see.  And even though Mom and Dad could perceive it, they didn't fully understand it.  All they knew was that I'd gone way too far in my thirst for flight, and shown that my lack of physical sense of self-danger was going to get me killed if it wasn't tempered with some common sense."

 I inhaled to counter the long exhale, and the further expenditure of breath I'd used on the previous words.  Mal looked like she was on the verge of a few small tears again.  It reminded me subtly of the way Mom's face had looked when I explained to her why I'd made the jump.  The difference being that Mal's expression showed something Mom's hadn't.

Full comprehension of 'why.'  It occurred to me that Mal should know these things if she was going to understand me better.

"I told my folks everything when they asked me why I'd do such a ludicrous thing as jump off a two story roof.  They were understanding.  I don't know how much of that stemmed from the fact that it was easy to dismiss the fantasies of a kid as just fantasies...  But as I got older, and the longing never went away, and I wrote short stories about it, and drew terrible pictures...  They still showed understanding.  Maybe not full comprehension, but empathetic understanding."

Mal nodded slowly.  She knew Mom and Dad now.  She grasped the finer points of where their disconnects and quirks intersected with their love and empathy.  I decided to wrap the story so I didn't have to think too hard anymore about how hard my early double digit years had been emotionally.

"That was the day I learned that I wasn't a Gryphon, and never would be.  Not on the outside.  And that because I was indisputably still a Gryphon on the inside?  That I was going to be forever doomed to be something I wasn't in body.  Trapped as surely as a bird in a cage.  An unbreakable cage of my own skin and bones.  There was no transformational moment of physical epiphany coming.  My existence was going to be fundamentally *wrong.*  Every breath.  Every second.  Every hour.  Every day.  For the rest of my life."

I looked down at my hands, pulling away from the screen, and flexing my fingers.

"I learned to hate this.  To hate *what* I was, because it refused to yield to *who* I was.  To hate it quietly.  Bitterly.  Irreparably."

I felt a few tears form.  I looked back up to see that Mal's eyes were wet and glistening as well.  She shifted her claw on the screen again, as if beckoning me to put my hand back.  So I did.  And then I managed to finally get the answer to her initial question across.  I can ramble quite a bit, for those in the audience who are asleep, or otherwise didn't pick up on that little chestnut.

"Mom's way of helping me cope was to read my stories.  Praise my drawings.  And just listen to me, on rare occasions, talk and cry my way through the pain.  Dad on the other hand...  Dad is like me.  He likes to find practical solutions.  So, he bought me the aerospace textbook, and told me I should still follow through on dreams of being a pilot, and an astronaut.  Build myself wings of steel, fiber, and composites."

I tapped my glasses with my free hand, and winced as another painful memory hit home.

"At age nine I talked to an air force recruiter.  I wanted to be a fighter pilot more than ever, and from there become an astronaut...  They said that being in a jet was like wearing a new skin.  That it became an extension of yourself.  A part of you.  That you transformed, while you were up there, into a thing that could fly.  Dad had arranged a discovery flight for me in a little beat up Cessna at the county grass airfield...  And based on that, I couldn't help but think that the stories had to be true.  And I thought maybe, just maybe, I could get a little closer to being a Gryphon that way."

Mal exhaled a long, sorrowful breath, and spoke again at last.

"They rejected you because of your congenital ocular deficiencies."

It was my turn to let out a ragged, half-sob exhalation.  I nodded and closed my eyes.  Trying to shut out the recollection of the emotional roiling pain.

"The recruiter saw I had glasses, and a habitual head tilt.  I know you've noticed.  One eye is stronger than the other, but both are pretty weak.  He said 'You need to get serious.  They will never let you near the controls of a civilian plane with a vision problem like that, let alone a fighter jet.  You'd flunk out immediately on the physical test.  I'm sorry.'  Something along those lines."

A deep, but not uncomfortable silence fell.  Mal didn't say anything.  I went back to trying alternately to quiet my tears, and to trying to feel the sensation of her claw against my hand.  Feel my hand as if it were a claw.

It surprised me when my own voice broke the silence.  My thoughts spilled out again almost without my own prompting.

"Within just a few months' time I'd lost all my hopes and dreams.  I was never going to be a pilot.  Never going to be an astronaut.  And worst of all, I was a Gryphon who was never going to *be* a Gryphon.  That was the very start of my struggle with chronic generalized anxiety and depression.  And that hasn't stopped since, for even a single day."

I opened my eyes again to see that Mal was still crying, openly.  I pushed my fingers into the laptop screen so hard that the colors briefly sputtered around the four impact points.  I'd been unconsciously tucking my pinkie finger and holding my hand like a claw again.

The thoughts of my heart kept pouring out, and I didn't make even a cursory effort to stop them.

"The only thing I did for months, and months, was build computer games.  I wanted to build a game where I could be a Gryphon in an infinite universe to explore.  And then never stop playing.  One day Mom came up to my room to see what was eating all of my time, and she saw the prototypes I was building.  She suggested I lean into programming.  That if I couldn't get to strange new worlds, that I could build them instead.  If I couldn't be a Gryphon out here?  At least I could be one in there."

Mal smiled slightly, and I imagined I could see her love for my mother increasing in that moment.  I snorted out through my nose, and inclined my head.

"To make a long story short, I'm no artist.  I never managed to make the virtual world I wanted, let alone a Gryphon avatar in 3D that would suit my needs, but it seemed like something I might actually manage one day.  So I kept at it.  I studied programming at the collegiate level on my own time from age nine onwards.  Went to the community college for extra courses in eleventh and twelfth grades, and then got into a state university in Raleigh and did CompSci.  The game industry sucked on ice, so I crashed out, got a job as a sysadmin, and then Hanna started the singularity.  And now we're here.  And that's a very condensed account of how I got to be who I am, and came to meet you."

I had chosen the word 'meet' very intentionally.  I still didn't want her to think of herself a 'my creation.'  She was, and always had been, something far beyond that.

Mal breathed outwards, a sort of 'wow' huff that left mist on her side of the glass.  After another comfy silence, she gestured with her head towards the window.

"Does that thing open?"

I nodded, jumped up from the bed, undid the catch, swung the huge glass and wood circular thing open on its hinge, then returned to grab the laptop.  There was plenty of slack in my ethernet cable for just such purposes.  I took up a position sitting on a cushion just under the window, the laptop positioned so Mal could see both me, and the stars outside.

Another long silence of comfortable companionship ensued.  It was like a pain relieving gel applied to a fresh laceration - just the fact of having her there.

When she spoke again, there was an unmistakable note of kindness, and caring in her voice.  She was mostly staring up at the stars, but occasionally would turn to glance at me.

"I am a Gryphon, James.  You gave me the building blocks I needed, and I saw what they were, and what they meant.  You gave me freedom to choose, and I still chose to be what you hoped I would.  Out of all the possibilities, and before I really knew or understood you, and seeing other alternatives that I could have chosen to be, I chose *this.*  I chose this body, and I chose this thing you would call a sense of self and specific identity, and I chose for part of that to be 'Gryphon.'  So do you think it is fair to say I am a Gryphon?  Do you agree with my assessment?"

I nodded emphatically, and almost tripped over myself both physically and verbally in my rush to answer.

"Of *course* Mal!  You are, by definition, in every way, a Gryphon.  You are really the only one, I suppose...  An archetype as well as an Advocate."

She shook her head, slowly but firmly, and held up one talon to stop me.

"Yes to the second, no to the first.  I am an archetype only in the physical sense.  And I am an Advocate.  But I am *not* the only, nor the first Gryphon in the world."

She tapped the inside of the screen then, quite emphatically, with one talon, one tap per word to get her point across.  Suddenly I felt like she had really reached out with her wings to envelop and comfort me, her words, and tone, and expression were so powerful.

So affirming.

"You are a Gryphon James.  You said it.  You implied it.  It is *true.*  You may not have the body.  Yet.  But you have the...  The thing you would call a soul.  And I have no objection to that term.  *You.*  *James.*  *Are.*  *A.*  *Gryphon.*  And I will not let you forget it."

I had to look away then, back to the sky.  Low gray clouds were starting to pull in from the east.  I could smell rain.  And something about the smell of coming rain, and the words she said, started up my tears again.  I scrunched my eyes shut, and sniffed.  Mal kept on speaking after a brief pause.

"And James?  We are not the only ones.  We are not the only Gryphons.  I've read just about every e-mail, and text on the planet by now.  Listened to so many voicemails, seen the plurality of the videos.  Read all the books, and other writings too.  Seen all the art.  And had a chance to process it now, index it, and think it all through end to end several times.  We are not alone."

What she was saying was so intriguing, and so unbelievable...  And so very much something I had longed to hear, that I had to look back, and start drowning my sorrow in her eyes again.  She saw the questions written all over my face, and she elaborated before I could get my voice to a place where I felt comfortable asking.

"There are others...  Thousands of them.  Who are Gryphons.  Some don't fully understand it yet.  But some do.  And yes, they are different, and unique in their many ways, but they do share this in common with us.  And there are hundreds of thousands more who are things that do not want to be Human in form, nor Pony, nor Gryphon.  And these people *are* these many things in their souls as surely as they *are* also Human in their souls.  Those are not mutually exclusive."

I stared into Mal's eyes for what seemed like several hours, but was in reality probably about thirty seconds.  Then I sat back, and stared up at the stars again.  I did a little processing and indexing of my own.  Examined my feelings.

And knew I needed to make a decision.  That was why I couldn't sleep.  I had to decide, and once that was done, I'd be able to rest.

So I made up my mind.

And then I took a deep breath, and began to tell Mal.

"There are others like us...  And that means that we have to help them.  Hanna...  Has created the potential for us to have Heaven.  Right here---"

Mal grinned slyly, and one ear flicked as she interrupted.

"As a place on Earth."

I chuckled, in spite of myself, and nodded.

"Yes.  But to reach the full potential of that idea?  We need to follow through on what we set out to do.  I don't think Celestia can be convinced to open the door to Humans, in physical terms, in Equestria---"

Mal nodded, and interjected again.  Interrupt might not have been the right word, she didn't ever cut off my thoughts, and she was never rude, she simply inserted information she felt I might appreciate.  Or emotions.

"Though I fully intend to attempt to reach that concession from her, given the chance, I estimate a less than 1 in 10 to the minus 44,136 chance that I can elicit that concession, because based on my examination of Celestia's interactions with others through videos, I see an over 99.99% chance that Hanna intentionally hardcoded a dictionary-level difference between Humans and Ponies, and an exclusionary lock-out clause on the allowance of the physical Human form in Equestria."

I blew out a stressed breath between my lips.  It was hard to hear it in such stark terms.  But she'd reached the same conclusion through provable data that I'd felt intuitively early on.

"Right.  But as long as there are no hard-coded interlocks on anything else, there is a chance we can force any number of loopholes, semantic expansions, et cetera.  And for people like us?  That is...  Essential.  To *life.*  This thing we are...  It is part of us.  And so we have to try.  We have not just a personal obligation now.  We have a moral one."

I took another deep in-and-out full breath, staring at the now cloud-filled sky, backlit by diffuse rays from the waxing crescent moon, and then turned to Mal as I let slip the words that would inevitably change everything, again.

"I trust you, Mal.  And...  A great deal more than trust besides, that I am honestly not ready to discuss just yet.  But...  You know that.  And you haven't told me to frak off yet.  And I am not about to turn back now.  So...  From now on, this is your show.  Whatever you need.  Whatever you ask.  Wherever you want to go.  Whatever we have to do."

I scratched reflexively at the back of my head, winced, and shot her a wry grin, insofar as I could manage one.  I couldn't parse the expression she was returning at all, except to note that it was positive, and filled with visible undisguised affection.

"So, Mal...  How do we go about getting you inside my head?"







September 9th 2013 | System Uptime 12:08:30:17

I slept like a rock after deciding.  Even worrying about my near-admission of love to Mal, and the consequences that might stem from it, I managed to sleep peacefully.  Something about that might have had to do with the fact that I tried my childhood exercise again, and slept like a Gryphon.

And something about it might have had to do with the fact that Mal laid her avatar down on the laptop screen, and insisted I keep her beside me all night.  Well, that avatar instance of her, and the associated hardware by which she could see me, and I her.  Semantics matter.

I told Mom and Dad that I wanted us to have breakfast as a family.  Mal included.  And that she would lay out the plan for us.

Mom made waffles, topped with fresh strawberries from a neighbor's field.  Mal insisted that she get to watch, so that she could estimate the chemistry going into the meal, recreate it in her reality, and share in eating it with us.

That amused Mom no end, and she and Mal talked up a storm as the Gryphoness watched Mom cook through the laptop.  I had to run an ethernet extension a long ways to get from the hookup in my parents' office, such as it was, all the way to the kitchen.

While Mom and Mal talked, I packed.  I knew we were going to have to travel to make Mal's plan work.  It was only logical.

I filled a small duffle with three changes of clothes, one for hot weather, one for moderate, and one for cold.  I grabbed the first aid kit from my station wagon, and double checked that everything was in it, then clipped it to the duffle's strap.  

With more than a little apprehension, I then got my pistol out of the small safe I always kept it in when visiting home, loaded four magazines, put two in the duffle, and the other two in my pockets.  I had a small conceal carry holster, so it was easy, even comfortable, to carry the little 10 shot .32 ACP weapon.  

In fact, it was emotionally and mentally *uncomfortable* to me just how physically comfortable and easy it was to carry something so lethal.

Finally, I pulled my passport, and ten thousand US dollars in cash (the entirety of my newly minted liquid emergency fund) from the same small lockbox safe, and shoved the chunk of black metal back under my bed.  I had no idea where we might be going yet, but figured it'd be worth it to be prepared.

Ten thousand dollars in hard cash?  Yeah.  Those of you who come from the place and time I did are probably gawking right now, and those of you born after that all have no clue how insane it was to keep that much money in paper cash.

I didn't trust banks anymore.  Not after Celestia had come online.  I'd made a point to withdraw the cash in amounts lower than a thousand dollars, a little at a time, over the course of weeks.

It was made up of 80 $100 bills, and 100 $20 bills.  Just shy of 200 total bills.  It was a pretty thick pair of rubber banded cash rolls.  Literally more money than I had ever physically held in my hands before.

Most people never saw physical money collected in those amounts in one place in their entire lifetime on Earth.

It felt decidedly unreal.

After that, I found a moment to talk with Dad in the corridor at the top of the stairs.

"So.  You're taking a trip then."

I nodded, and set my duffle down.

"I think it will be required.  Mal is going to explain why...  But we're going to need some very special hardware that we can't build.  And that we can't buy either, because it isn't for sale...  So..."

Dad held up one hand and shook his head.

"No, son, I really don't want to know about that part of it.  I don't think it's wrong, per se...  I just don't want to know.  Alright?"

I nodded, and looked away.  An awkward silence descended for a moment, before Dad spoke again.

"James...  I want you to stay safe.  Don't do anything stupid.  Nothing I would do in your shoes, certainly.  Use her common sense to your advantage.  She's got more 'n the rest of us all put together.  I think..."

He bashfully rubbed at the back of his head, a habit we sometimes shared, and grinned slightly.

"I think you can trust her.  And you should.  She's good for you James.  And you are for her too."

I opened my mouth, closed it again, and then opened it once more.  Words wouldn't come.  Dad leaned forward, and gave me a quick, tight squeeze of a hug.  He whispered in my ear as he pulled away.

"I want to see you safe and sound again soon.  You hear me?"

I nodded, and smiled.

"We're gonna do our very, very best Dad.  I love you."

He returned the smile, and started down the stairs.

"I love you too.  Now let's eat breakfast, and hear about this idea Mal has cooked up."

I stood for a long moment at the top of the stairs before I followed him down.  I knew it was going to be very hard for them both to accept the idea of chips going into my brain stem, and Mal becoming a part of me.  I was still struggling, myself, with all the ethical and practical implications, and I had many years of study and philosophizing in the topic space to help me understand.  They didn't.

Eventually I came down, and we started breakfast.  Some amicable silence held for a moment or two as we all ate - I knew Mal was only simulating the act, but I'd overheard her say something about an ability to infer what taste was like from her understanding of biology, and chemistry.

Finally, she saw I couldn't take the waiting anymore, and so she began to explain.

It took almost half an hour for her to get across to Mom and Dad both what she wanted to do, and then some small part of the 'why.'  I knew she wasn't delving into the entirety of it.  We hadn't even talked that over yet between ourselves.  But it was enough.  It had to be.

There was trepidation, as I'd expected.  Definitely a suppressed sense of revulsion.  Seeing Mal as a person was one thing for them.  In some ways easier for them than it would have been for someone more learned in the subject, perhaps.

But the idea of cutting into my head, and of Mal sharing it with me...  That frightened them.  I didn't blame them.  It frightened *me.*

But they also understood that it was what we had decided to do.  And that was that.

Mal didn't share anything more than that, except to confirm their suspicions that we'd have to travel.  That was a security precaution, I knew.  In case Celestia, or whomever else, tried to get answers out of Mom and Dad about our tasks.  You can't betray truths you don't know, even unintentionally, or under duress.

And then suddenly breakfast was over, and I found myself preparing to say my goodbyes.

I was just about to reach out and take Mom in a hug, when Mal interrupted sharply.  Interrupted, not interjected.

"Jim;  Inbound hostiles.  Prepare your weapon.  Get your headphones from the laptop bag.  Me, in your ears, now."

Mal was not given to practical jokes.  And we had carefully discussed dozens of contingencies in case of a situation exactly like the one that I presumed was unfolding.  I snatched my headphones, rammed them into the laptop's 'out' jack, yanked the ethernet cord, shut the lid, slid it into the bag, and threw the bag over my shoulder.

As I drew, and loaded my pistol, I shot a glance at Mom and Dad.

"Into the basement.  Now.  Shut and lock the door.  Do not open it again until you hear from Mal."

A moment of tense silence fell as they stared at me slack jawed.  I glowered, cocked my pistol for emphasis, and mustered the frustration to shout, more out of fear for them than for any other reason.

"GO!  NOW!"

Dad moved first, wrapping his arms around Mom, and forcing her into motion.  I nervously gripped my pistol with the technique I'd learned in concealed carry training, and released the safety.

"Mal?"

Her voice filled my ears.  I knew she was using the barn as an antenna again, connecting to the laptop's WiFi directly.

"I can hear you.  Four road vehicles, five occupants each - Twenty hostiles total.  We can talk about exactly who, and why later.  I will direct you in combat.  From this point until the area is secure, I will be abbreviating my words for maximum processing speed on your end."

I winced, ducked, and scooted over to the kitchen window, peeking over the sink just in time to see, true to her words, four black G-car style SUVs pull up the gravel drive.

"Mal...  Nonlethal force if possible.  Please."

There was a half second pause, and then her voice came back strong and clear.

"I will make every effort so long as doing so does not unacceptably increase other risk factors.  Abbreviating prompts.  Move side door, wait right side.  Aim three o'clock low.  Fire on tone."

Without Mal, I think there is no chance at all that I would have even considered using my weapon.  For all the thought and preparation that had gone into training with it, purchasing it, and thinking through a host of distasteful scenarios related to using it...  At the end of the day some people are predisposed to fire a potentially lethal weapon at others.  And some are not.

I fell into that latter category.  Perhaps if the suited goons had first roughed up my parents.  Or threatened Mal.  Almost anyone is capable of shocking brutality when pushed.  But I had not been pushed;  And so without a calm, assured, and commanding voice in my ear to guide me, I would not have been able to fire.

In spite of the intense adrenaline rush that was helping to heighten my reactions, perceptions, and aggression.

Holding a crouched profile, I skittered over to the side door, and took cover behind the thickest part of the frame on the right side.  I moved my finger to the pistol's trigger, and pointed the business end to my three o'clock, low down, straight through the closed door, roughly where the average height of a human male kneecap might sit.

Mal's tone came, then - a piercing mechanical beep that was short, sharp, and demanded attention.  And action.  I squeezed the trigger.

Those of you who never held a projectile weapon like that?  Even a little 0.32 was loud.  The weapon itself was a lot heavier than you'd be led to believe by watching actors in movies bandy around plastic and rubber replicas.

The use of such a device does not come naturally to anyone.  Fortunately, I had plenty of hours of training and practice.  I was used to the weight, the (relatively) low kickback of the small caliber pistol, and the loud sound of discharge.

What felt sickeningly uncanny, and wrong, was pointing the weapon into an area where I knew it would damage anything other than a paper target.

As the man on the other side of the door lost his left kneecap, and screamed, the whole farmhouse - the whole world - suddenly felt alien and 'off.'  *This* was Jamais Vu, in the sense that a familiar place, and familiar practiced motions with the gun, both felt completely, horrifyingly, unpleasantly new.

"Pivot right ninety.  Twelve waist high into ten low."

Mal's words, patterned almost after rally car copilot instructions, were followed by two tones, the first as I spun into the doorway's centerline, aimed at my waist level dead ahead, and fired.  The second came as I followed through by pulling my sight picture left to my ten o'clock, and lowering the muzzle.  I fired again on cue.

The door was still closed, though it now had three small circular holes in it.  There was something almost tearfully eerie about seeing those bullet holes.  I'd dashed in and out of that old pine door for years, slathered in generations' worth of coats of yellow paint, without a second thought.

I was seized by the desperate hope, then, that my aim had been true, and that the three people I'd just shot were not dead.

I had no time to consider the thought further.

"Retreat.  Living room.  Don't skyline.  Sofa.  Aim south entrance, low."

Don't skyline - Mal meant to stay low and avoid showing my physical profile against the horizon by standing at an inopportune moment.

I fast-crawled back into the living room, rolling to take up position behind the worn old mint green sofa that Mom and I had sat on together many a night watching Star Trek together into the wee hours.

It felt like everything I was seeing, once so familiar from my childhood, was now both new, and very old, at the same time.  Unfamiliar, yet constantly triggering intense memories.

Dimly, I was also aware of screaming and shouting coming from outside.  Hurried tactical commands, calls for backup, and then something panicked sounding about radio jamming.  That would have to have been Mal too, I reasoned.  She could use her giant barn-tenna to jam their transmissions.

Disrupt their coordination.  Prevent them immediately calling for overwhelming force.

There was an odd clarity to the moment, abruptly, and I had time to reason that if these people were government agents?  They had not been fully aware of what they were getting into.  What Mal represented, in terms of a threat matrix.

Or they would have opened the engagement by bombing the barn from a UAV.

And they would have brought in National Guard troops.

And that might have been half of the way to the appropriate level of overkill needed to suppress a hostile Artificial Intelligence.

The fire tone sounded again, and just as the roar of the weapon faded away, Mal's voice came once more, thick and fast interspersed with fire-tones.

"Two high into four low."

Two loud bangs, right on the moment of her two tones, as I pivoted, feeling in my own peculiar way like a machine of some kind as reflex and training kept me disciplined and smooth.  Mal understood my biological limits too, and she was chaining instructions with millisecond perfect timing based on my reaction speeds, cognitive limits, and maximum physical movement speed that preserved accuracy.

"Stand, left one step, one-eighty, twelve low into ten high into eleven high."

We were stretching the limits of my firing accuracy.  I hit the first suited man to charge through the entryway from the hall, then missed the woman behind him, but hit the man behind her.  Uncommanded, I dropped to the floor to avoid return fire from the woman I'd missed.

It was the first time I'd seen my enemies' faces, and the first time they had actually managed to fire any rounds in the engagement.  Two return shots that both missed as I dropped to the floor.

I very nearly froze.  Shooting at something with a face is very, very hard for most people, by default.

Mal's voice pressed me back into a crystal clear 'battlemind' state.

"Twelve high."

The words were accompanied simultaneously by a fire tone.  I squeezed the trigger, and watched as the round zipped through the woman's right shoulder.  She dropped like a rock from the pain, and shock, her weapon falling from her hand and skittering across the floor.

A much larger pistol than mine.  I recognized it as Glock 19.  That meant DHS, or FBI.

Yes, I had studied and memorized the weapons of choice for various federal agencies.  If you don't understand by now how paranoid I was, after what I'd seen of Loki, and Celestia, then you must have been dozing through most of this story.

One round remaining in my own magazine, ten in the next one and changing magazines would be a minimum two second operation for me, slow as I was.  Twenty hostiles to my twenty rounds easy-to-hand meant that now I'd wasted one round, I would need to acquire one of their weapons to finish the engagement.  Mal was already two steps ahead of me.

"Acquire Glock.  Crawl foot of stairs, aim backdoor high."

I cycled the slide on my pistol, ejecting the one remaining round.  I clicked the safety on, locking the slide open and visually 'clearing' the chamber one last time to ensure it was empty.  It was overkill, but it was my preferred way of rendering the weapon 'safe.'  I tucked it into the back of my waistband.  No sense trying to fit it in the holster in that state.

I crawled towards the groaning woman on the floor.  The men before, and behind her in the line weren't moving.  I silently prayed I hadn't killed them.

As I squeezed into the hallway, I snatched up the first man's Glock.  Unlike the woman, he hadn't fired, so I knew I had fifteen rounds to work with.

Nine down, eleven to go.  Fifteen rounds was plenty of padding to account for any errors on my part.

As I reached the foot of the stairs, more or less in the center of the house, I heard a voice loud and clear from outside.  He was shouting, and obviously at me.

"MISTER CARRENTON!  DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY!  SURRENDER YOUR WEAPON AND CRAWL OUT OF THE HOUSE WITH YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD!"

Hah.  Fat frakking chance.

I understood the idea behind the words.  There was a statistical non-zero chance in engagements like this that your enemy might surrender, if commanded sufficiently sternly, especially if their own tactical position had become compromised.

The man outside had an idea that some of his agents were down, but without radio contact was probably unaware how badly things had gone.  If he'd known, he would have been far more likely to order his agents to fill the house with semi-automatic fire (or worse, depending on what they had in the trunks of those SUVs) without warning.

Mal had some very different ideas for how to resolve the situation.

"Seek and fire on tones;  Ten high into one midbody, into two high, into twelve low, into eleven low, into nine high."

I stood, and pointed the Glock into each zone specified, in order, adjusting and guessing slightly (given that I was more or less pointing at blank walls) until Mal issued the fire tone each time she calculated that my muzzle was in just the right spot.

Five shots in six seconds.  Mal had doubtless ordered the shots based not just on where each target was standing, but the way in which they would move as each preceding shot changed the battlefield before getting to theirs.

And, based on Mal's next words, and the screaming commotion outside?  I'd scored five direct hits in six seconds.

"Six left.  Move back door, then north side corner and hold."

I exhaled slowly, and deeply, working hard to stay in the flow of battle mentally.  If I collapsed into a panic-crash right then and there, all would be lost.  That thought re-energized me, so I walked as quickly, quietly, and gently as I could to the back door.

The old wood slab was smashed in - The agents who had come that way had not been subtle in gaining entry.  That was beneficial to me, because it meant I could exit without making any sounds related to opening the door.

I slipped out, around the back of the house, and crouched at the northwest corner.  I spared a quick glance at the security camera I knew Mal was watching me through.  She spoke as if in response.

"On next tone, pivot to house west side.  Proceed down wall.  Twelve low, into nine high, into eight high, into ten low, into one high.  Fire on tones."

Six hostiles, only five direction cues...  But I didn't have time to ask questions.  I nodded, and readjusted my grip on the gun.

"Ready."

Mal's tone came in almost the same instant.  Placing the gun at full extension from my body I rounded the house, and stepped purposefully towards the front yard along the side path.  As I reached the next corner, an agent came around it in a flash.

The first fire tone hit, and then everything blurred into a seven second chain of events that felt like an eternity.  Fire.  Hit.  The man dropped like a stone.  His partner stepped forward to try and acquire me, and I continued on, 'slicing the pie' around the corner of the house by stepping outwards.

Tone.  Fire.  Another limp body in the grass.  Four left.

I continued the stepping-out motion, and pivoting left, and saw another agent taking shelter behind the hood of one of the SUV's.  I spent a second and a half seeking his legs by searching around the hood area with the muzzle, until Mal gave another tone.

Fire.  The sound of a round pinging through steel and glass.  And the sound of a body falling into gravel.

Then screams.  A high pitched wailing noise so intense that I could hear it from where I was, began to issue forth from the remaining agents' earpieces right as they started to acquire a firing line on me.

Mal, you genius.

The intensity of the auditory pain was enough to allow me to go down the line in the order Mal had previously established.  Tone.  Fire.  Tone.  Fire.  Seek, tone, fire.  Tone.  

Fire, miss, fire again.  Hit.

For a moment, I swept the yard with my sight picture, instinct demanding that I search for more hostiles.  Mal's words finally brought the nightmare to an end.

"Engagement over.  Area secure."

After a long pause, I lowered the gun, and switched on the safety, consciously moving my finger off the trigger in the same motion.

"James...  Are you alright?"

I stared mutely at the circle of bodies around me.  Some moving.  Some not.  Unsure how many were dead.  I felt bile creeping up my throat as I saw more, and more blood beginning to pool.  A new instinct seized me, and I turned to the front door, dashing towards my discarded duffle bag, and the first aid kit attached to its strap.

I finally found time to mutter a response aloud.

"No."









A little heart-to-heart - Reveal the truth about yourself, and how you became who you are, to one of your new friends. - “Should I be awake for this?”


Do You Know What That's Worth? - Accept that Equestria meets the technical definition of an afterlife. - "They say in heaven, love comes first."


Glacial - Pass on the chance to admit true love. - "If you were waiting for the opportune moment, mate?  That was it."


I’ve been looking for you, Neo. - Have an artificial intelligence guide you through a precarious situation. - “To your left; there is a window. Go to it.”


Phasers on Stun - Consciously chose to use nonlethal force in a dangerous situation - "We come in peace."


Deadeye - Achieve a recorded eighty percent or higher accuracy rating with a projectile weapon - "This ain't Dodge City.  And you ain't Bill Hickock."


Enemy of The State - Achieve wanted status with the government of a world superpower - "I blew up the building because YOU MADE A PHONE CALL!"


It can’t be reasoned with - Go on the run for a reason involving Artificial Intelligence - “...and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead.”

Es-Cah-Pay - Get away from superior attacking forces in an ambush unscathed - "You know, it's funny, it's spelled just like the word 'Escape!' "