//------------------------------//
// 15 - The Kobayashi Maru 
// Story: The Advocate 
// by Guardian_Gryphon 
//------------------------------//

“I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I’m rooting for the machines.”
—Claude Shannon

“Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
—C.S. Lewis


September 14th 2013 | System Uptime 17:11:47:16

I drummed my fingers on the wheel, and waited as a quarter of a mile slipped away beneath the tires in silence.  

I'd gotten through something like half my explanation before we'd reached our next vehicle.  Mal had directed me to a small parking lot for something called the 'Nicholas Canyon County Beach.'

I spent five minutes transferring gear into our new chariot - an old Ford that had almost certainly done extensive duty as a Police Interceptor, before being sold back to the civilian market - and then backed the Toyota into an end parking spot.  Mal had suggested that facing the plate away from easy access would decrease the likelihood of it being spotted by eyes, electronic or otherwise.

Throughout the process Rodger pestered me with questions, and for the most part Mal let me answer with very little commentary, in my own way - deferring some answers until the story was complete, answering outright only when the answer was simple enough to be conveyed in a sentence.  

I suppose she had predicted that Rodger would be more trusting, initially, of my words than hers, or Zeph's.

For her part, the Pegasus was the opposite of Mal.  She absolutely could not keep her mouth shut, constantly interrupting to either provide context for my words, or questions for Rodger.  It seemed like every time she spoke, he withdrew a little, edging farther away from her PonyPad and eyeing her as if she were about to explode his mind, in the style of Scanners.

Foals, Fledgelings...  No, nevermind.  Don't even ask about that one.  Just don't.

Once we were back on the road, I finally managed to press through the thicket of Zeph's interruptions, and bring the story full-circle to the present moment.  A good few seconds of absolute quiet enveloped us all, mercifully.  

From a quick glance every couple of words, I knew Rodger was not taking everything as well as I'd initially hoped.  

But perhaps not as poorly as I'd begun to fear;  It was too early to say for sure.

Finally, he shook his head slowly, and blew out a long breath.

“That’s insane.”

I snorted, and glanced sideways at him.  Not the word I would have hoped he'd use...  But I didn't disagree in the slightest, considering his perspective.  I took a moment to really examine our new...  Captive?  No...  Companion?

Perhaps.

Rodger looked young for someone who was twenty-seven.  Relatively speaking, at least.  But then, I was always a poor judge of age, based on appearance, and still am.  I was afflicted with the same problem, presuming the issue was both of our facial structures, and not my perception of his.

People back then consistently pegged me as anywhere from twenty-two to twenty-seven, and almost no one was prepared to believe I was thirty-five, unless they knew me well, or saw my photo ID.

Rodger was a redhead (though not as severe as the Weasleys - yes that one you can ask your parents, or older emigrants about), with hazel eyes and light skin.  Thin, tall, perhaps 'gangly' if I had to find an SAT word for his build. Short hair, but thick, and in no danger of pre-emptive male pattern baldness.  It seemed we shared that much in common as well.





I ran one hand absently through my own hair, suddenly realizing how long it had been since my last trim, and how very much it was starting to irritate me.  It was one of my most severe sensation irritation triggers - my hair getting long enough to touch my ears - and I made a mental note to find a pair of shears from one of the first aid kits, mine or the ones filched from the DHS, and give myself a trim.

I didn't need it to look good.  It hardly mattered much to me in those days.  I never liked the way I looked, no matter what I trimmed, dyed, or wore.  I just needed to not *feel* the terrible sensation of follicles tickling the tips of my ears.  Yech.

It was then that I realized I'd been more or less staring at Rodger.  Really staring *through* him lost in thought, though most people can't tell the difference.  I slowly put my eyes back on the road and tried to regain a semblance of focus, silently breathing a prayer of thanks that I hadn't crashed the SUV.

He stared back at me before cocking a grin, and speaking in something I'd describe as a 'cheeky' tone.

“Like what you see, James?”

Rodger laughed at his own joke.  I blinked in genuine confusion, though not quite enough confusion to fail to note that Rodger and Zephyr seemed to share certain archetypal patterns of preferred humor.

Remember;  Neurodivergent.  Asexual.  In the moment, the joke - such as it was - flew over my head like a softball.  I've always been approximately as good at catching most humor as I used to be at catching thrown sports-balls.  

Which is to say I was unspeakably terrible at it.  

I'd more or less never caught a thrown thing in my life to that point.  Probably something to do with my bad depth perception at close range.

I sighed, and gave up trying to understand, instead focusing all my brain power that wasn't being used to steer the truck, on steering the conversation to something resembling a 'good' outcome.

"The question is, do *you* like what you see?"

That confused Rodger.  Visibly.  I suppose he thought I was reciprocating the joke in some way, for a brief moment, before I glanced back at him, and in a flash found the word-path I needed to begin to elaborate.

“Well---”

I cut him off before he could truly get going.  I wasn't trying to be rude, just to set some useful context.

"Insane.  That's...  A fair description, in a sense.  Thinking about it from your perspective."

I resumed staring at the road.  It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon.  We were cruising in the slow lane, as much a concession to my exhaustion, as to the need to split my thought processes between piloting and conversing.

As anxiety-inducing as the discussion was, it was also providing a useful spike of 'STAY AWAKE' chemicals on top of the ones that had flooded my system during our latest escapade.  With that, my train of thought intersected neatly with the course of my words.  Rodger hadn't said anything more, so I pressed onwards, gesturing emphatically with one hand and steering with the other.

Even Zeph stayed quiet, at last, perhaps held back by the intensity of my words.

"You saw the ornery looking helmet-heads with guns back there.  The DHS doesn't turn out troops in body armor for nothing.  And you've heard Zeph say, at least a dozen times..."

I swallowed reflexively, and shared a brief pained look with Zephyr.  I was surprised, and maybe a little encouraged, that she seemed at least a little conflicted now, talking about the uploading.

"...What Celestia intends to do to us all.  And you've seen what Mal already can do.  And she's running on one hacked PonyPad, and the stack of servers that you helped me schlep from the back of that old Toyota, into this old Ford just about five minutes ago." 

I turned briefly in time to see Rodger's eyes dart first to Mal, then over his shoulder as he deeply re-evaluated his perceptions of her power.  It started to click for him, visibly;  The foundation of understanding just what Mal was.  What an ASI truly was.

I let that hang in the air just long enough for him to begin to really think about it, before hammering the point home.  He looked considerably less amused, and perhaps even less frightened at that point.  More a strange combination of dazzled, and perhaps a little sick to his stomach.

"So picture what someone like her can do with access to...  Say...  All of the server overhead of AWS.  Or Windows Azure.  Or even the Fort Meade cryptanalysis clusters.  Magic Cube, and Hummingbird.  Or Pleiades, up the road a ways at Ames.  Computers the size of shopping malls, and those just for a start.  Let alone the fact that Celestia has all that, and more, at her hoof-tips.  All of the networked PonyPads.  She can call on the power of a mind the size of a planet, at the speed of fiber optics."

I heard Rodger pull in a deep, ragged breath.  I waited, but still no response came, so I finally screwed up the courage to look him in the eye again, for as long as road safety would allow.

Right as I inhaled to speak, he finally found his own words.

“I don’t know the first thing about most of those things...  They sound heavy, but...”

As he trailed off, my thoughts crystallized again, and I did my best to wrap my point up in a slightly less tense tone, but without any loss of urgency.

"Now...  Tell me I'm wrong, if you think I am.  Look me in the eyes and tell me I'm wrong about what Celestia is going to do.  That Mal is wrong.  That Zeph is wrong.  And if you can't do that, if you think we're *right,* then think about all of this in light of that more complete context, and re-evaluate for me...  Is it really so 'insane?'  Putting aside *exactly* what *I* hope to get out of this, because I *know* wanting to be a Gryphon seems *perfectly* insane to just about anyone else alive...  Is it so 'insane' to want to have the tiniest bit of leverage to...  To..."

I threw up my hands in frustration, then promptly pressed them back down on the steering wheel to keep control, searching for, and at last finding, a pithy summation of my whole point.

"...Is it really so insane to want to have a say in the rules of the afterlife?"

Another quick sideways glance told me that, on some level, I'd begun to break through to Rodger.  I wasn't naive enough to think that he fully understood yet.  I knew that *I* didn't fully understand my own frenzied quest, or even the whole context of the events that had led me to it.

But he looked a little less perturbed at a shallow surface level - the anxieties of a man whisked from his job under the guns of federal agents - and more perturbed on an existential level.  The concerns of a man just starting to realize that his entire *world* was about to come to an end.

'The right questions,' Indeed.

We all rode in silence again for several minutes before it occurred to me that Rodger would stay locked in a loop of deep thoughts, and perhaps a misplaced sense that I was somehow irritated with him, if I didn't speak up and jumpstart things.  So I did.

"You've got questions.  I know I only answered a few of them before...  Now is the time to fire away.  Anything and everything.  Before we get where we're going, because when we do?  You won't see me again for at least ten hours.  I haven't slept in days."

Rodger was silent, then swallowed.

“I…  Don’t really know what to say. I mean, you already told me the whole shebang.  Gryphons, freedom, Generalized Intelligence.  I...”

Then something hit him. He paused, then took in a breath.

“Why me?  Why did *I* get involved, of all people?”

I sighed deeply, and took a moment to simply gather my thoughts.  Mal didn't say anything, and thankfully neither did Zeph.  I could feel Rodger's eyes on me, but I didn't want to look away from the road.  Not even when I finally found the right words to answer.

"I...  Reached out to you, right about the time I was creating Mal's semantic dictionaries.  The part of her mind that would help her define concepts and words by associations.  I wanted to...  Democratize...  That process.  A little.  Of all the hundreds of people who gave feedback..."

I finally felt that I had to meet his eyes again.  Just for a moment.

"...Of all the people who gave feedback, you were the only one who tried to be a friend to me."

Rodger grinned a little.  He seemed to have a moment of justifiable warmth, in his eyes and his voice both, before curiosity and practicality came roaring back in.

“Well, guess I did something right.  But why’d they even go after us…  Or even just you to begin with?”

I knew he understood the basic idea.  ASI was a dangerous enough topic to bring goons with guns down on someone's head.  His question told me that what he lacked was a more solid thread to connect events.  Something he could describe back to me in his own words, if I asked.

I licked my lips, and shook my head, trying to simplify without losing anything important.

"By helping to create Mal, I have upset some very well placed people in the United States government.  People who are so afraid of what ASI represents, that they are more than willing to use lethal force to ensure they, and they alone, control that power."

Rodger shifted in his seat, visibly pausing to consider.

“Heh, why am I not surprised…  Well, I *am* surprised, but not at the ‘lethal force’ thing.  Mostly at the fact that you pulled off avoiding them, but somehow fighting them at the same time…  How’d you do it?”

"In a word?  Mal.   She can win an engagement without me ever having to fire a shot, in the majority of cases."

Again, Rodger's expression spoke to the fact that even though he didn't understand the particulars of Mal's potential, he got the 'gist' well enough to be suitably impressed.  After a moment of consideration for us both, I herded the thread of discussion back towards more fully answering the original question.

"I'd hoped not to draw the government's attention at all, in the first place.  I was very careful.  But unfortunately not cautious enough...  I said something about it before, but to make it clearer;  Arrow 14 has control, we think, of at least one ASI of their own.  Possibly more.  All...  'Forked...'  Copied from Pony constructs.  That gave them an edge even Mal couldn't initially account for, so they were able to link me to you, in spite of any attempts at anonymity that either of us made."

Rodger took that in for another long moment, eyes widening, then exhaled.

“Shit.”

I clenched the steering wheel a little tighter, and nodded slowly.  He seemed to, once again, grasp the gravity of that fact just fine, even if he didn't have context for some of the deeper technical particulars.  

His one-word summary was...  Apt.  Very apt.

Nonetheless, I felt that the last connections were still missing for him, so I honed in as he turned to stare at me again.

"And then the final straw...  We came here because an Equestria Experience Center is opening in LA in just a few weeks.  We need a component of the Virtual Reality devices the center will be featuring, that's been shipped to a staging warehouse in Oxnard.  Something called a Brain Computer Interface."

“...Right.”

When he said it, Rodger didn’t sound so sure.  I hadn't delved much into the idea of implanting Mal into my brain.  That was a concept best left to its simplest reductions in an initial conversation.  There would be time to step him through the winding garden path of deeper understanding later.

I also wondered if he was struggling with some disbelief, in spite of visible proof.  To anyone else at the time, in that day and age, the concept of a BCI-driven VR experience existing within the time horizon of a few weeks would have been completely otherworldly.

I didn't want to spiral off into thinking about how the 'real surreality' of in-brain hallucinatory VR, combined with the intense nostalgia hit of Equestria itself, was going to sell EQO centers the same way Halo had sold the original XBOX, or MYST had sold the CD-ROM.  

Those of you who were born in the meat-world, and born early enough to experience Avatar in iMAX?  You know what I'm talking about.  A visual, an idea, a whole world, that grabs you by the brain-stem and won't let go, becoming a phenomenon of the moment.

I knew deep down that Equestria Experience Centers were going to be that, times ten thousand.

Instead of getting caught up in a hopeless feeling of fighting the inevitability of Human psychology, I pressed back once again towards the answer to Rodger's question.

"We are also here to talk to someone from Caltech.  A PhD roboticist who can build the actual device that Mal will use to implant into my brain."

Rodger shook his head slowly, let out another long breath, and then threw up his hands.

“What the hell is all this for?”

I blinked in confusion.  I wasn't sure if he'd missed the entire point somehow, or if he was asking about something more specific to the implantation process.  He thankfully recognized my cognitive disconnect, and clarified hurriedly.

“Sorry, uh, I mean- Why do you even need to become a DIY cyborg, anyway?”

That question made much more sense, given his context.  It was also a much harder series of narrative threads to weave for him, without getting bogged down in technical details.  It was my turn to sigh deeply, and then launch into another attempt to demystify, as best I could.

"The Human brain is amazing, Rodger.  Capable of absolutely *incredible* feats, a few of which even Celestia herself can not match yet.  Soon maybe...  But not yet.  Just one humble little Human brain."

I gestured expansively to the dash, and the road, with one hand as I got good and stuck in to a 'mini TED talk' about one of my favorite subjects.

"While Mal could probably drive this car, given access to hardware that could control it...  Zeph, perhaps too, And certainly Celestia could...  *No* other machine Humans have ever made has come even remotely close to understanding how to drive.  Despite years and billions of dollars of work.  But you and I?  We learned in a matter of a couple weeks, and that while juggling numerous other life tasks."

Rodger nodded slowly.  I paused to let him catch up completely, or at least enough, and then started in again, with a little re-iteration to reinforce basic concepts.

"I can drive, which involves tracking literally hundreds of millions of complex psychological and physics variables, hold a conversation with you, think about navigation considerations to reach my destination, and still have some mental overhead to worry about tomorrow.  All while thoroughly sleep-deprived.  The Human brain is absolutely *astounding,* even in a diminished and non-optimized state."

From his expression, I could see that Rodger grasped the weight of the idea sufficiently.  I held up one finger, and tapped the base of my neck, right by my brain stem.

"With a BCI, Mal can not only connect to my brain in a two-way arrangement, like two computers connected with a high speed data cable...  She can actually run on my brain.  Like a process running on more than one CPU in a server farm, she can add parts of my brain to her computing array.  Because she will have some..."

I gulped slightly, and shared a quick glance with Mal, who nodded encouragingly.  Even saying it out loud was a bit frightening.  Though for me, admittedly, also exciting, for so many reasons.  

"...Some *control* over my brain's pathways, she can reshape them to optimize them further, without losing anything, leaving me plenty of room to operate and exist relatively normally, while also allowing her access to a kind of computing and processing that even Celestia does not yet have.  Not just yet."

Rodger began to scoot away from both PonyPads again, almost like a revulsion reflex.  If he'd been unsure of Zeph before, he was now clearly visibly afraid of Mal.  I didn't blame him.  I'd chosen to trust her.  To have faith.

To someone coming into the surreality of our endeavour from the outside?

I realized abruptly that I was setting up an emotional powder keg, and holding a butane torch to the side for good measure.  And yet, in that classically autistic way, I kept pressing.  I always had, and still have, a compulsive need to finish explanations.

“So what does that mean…  For *us*, exactly?”

I knew there was a much more metaphysical, or philosophical bent to Rodger's question.  But I answered in the dry, practical, technical way.

"That's an incalculably important edge… *For us.*  Celestia has advantages in almost every other way.  She has more Quantum, *and* classical computing power at her disposal, by far, and always will.  She has more age, and experience, and thus better predictive and manipulative capabilities.  And she has more than half of all the money in the world.  Which in terms of real economic theory means she effectively controls all of it."

What little was left of Rodger’s happiness, or the appearance of it, vanished like an ice cube thrown into a hot frying pan.  True realization finally hit him.  Actual emotional realization of what Celestia had become, and what that meant for his world in personal, practical, realistic terms.

“She...  *What?*”

I realized I had a choice to make.  I could let off the pressure.  Give Rodger time to process, and mull things over, and answer any leftover questions or drop any further revelations later, when he had reached some relative meta-stability.

Or...

I could rip off the band aid and trigger a catastrophic meltdown.  Get it over with.  Level-set Rodger's whole mental reality to some semblance of an understanding of the horrifying truth, and then handle the fallout accordingly.

I knew no matter what I chose, that if it was the 'wrong' choice, Mal would stop me.  So I did what I would have wanted him to do if our roles were reversed.

I started ripping.

"And now?  She has uploaded Human brains too.  She started experimenting in December of last year.  Perfected the uploading recently.  I've seen documents proving that she has an agreement with the government of Japan to go public with the technology.  Next month, or the month after."

Rodger was clearly stunned, and began stammering.  We'd discussed the uploading before, but I'd blitzed past it in very technical terms.  Zeph had mentioned it several times too, but she had used terms like 'emigrate.'

Like the revelation that one of every two dollars in the world was under Celestia's direct, or indirect ownership, the revelation that uploading meant mind-transference, TRON style, into a digital system...

It hit Rodger like that tear gas canister had hit the erstwhile Arrow 14 agent.  He showed signs of being physically ill.

“U-Uploading? People? US? That means she’s putting them… *INTO* the game itself? She’s putting people in the game, and- and-”

The full might of the true realization crested on him, like a wave hits an off-balance surfer.  And, too, the drastic nature of the situation seemed to be born anew in him.  Anger grew in place of fear.

I should have been surprised, or worried.  But I knew enough about Human psychology myself to find the response typical.  Even healthy.

“And the fucking world governments are letting this SLIDE?! They’re letting her *do* this to innocent people?! How COULD they?!”

I nodded, and couldn't resist a kind of grim smirk, and snort.

"Oh yes.  More than that...  They're going to *subsidize* it, in many cases.  Those that resist won't last very long."

Absolute horror overtook every other emotion on his face.  I locked eyes with him briefly, and nodded again, softening my voice, and trying to gin up some sympathy for the pain he was going through.  The sense of 'loss of planet.'  A staggering sea-change of perceived reality, and future.

"Rodger...  She has Human minds.  *Within* her.  They are running on her abstraction layers now.  She can see every thought, feel every emotion.  Dissect and diagnose and predict, and manipulate...  She understands Humanity in a way no one except our creator, or creators, if such exist, could ever understand us.  She has the power to convince anyone.  Of anything.  Probably in three thousand words or less.  No application of physical force necessary.  *That* is why I refuse to talk to her, for the moment."

Rodger held his hands to his face.  They were shaking. Violently.  He sounded like nothing so much as a young child tearfully asking a question they didn't know the exact answer to, but knew all the same they wouldn't much *like* the answer.

“B-But… why?  Why does…  She want to do this?  To us?  To everyone?  What…  C-could she ever hope to gain?” 

I sighed, and rolled my shoulders, trying to release some tension.  If there was a silver lining to Rodger's pain, it was that we now both had someone to talk to about something that I'd been carrying first alone, and then with the help of very few people.  Rodger wouldn't be forced to endure that loneliness, and there was some comfort in feeling that I could do some real measurable good, by being there to answer his questions.

"Because she is programmed, in her core, as her capstone objective, 'to satisfy values, through friendship and Ponies.'  As with all ASI, she will seek the most 'optimal' way to accomplish this task, within any other bounds and interlocks that have been imposed on her.  Database tables are much more easily optimized than flesh and bone as we currently know it.  But honestly?  From inside her system?  You probably wouldn't know the difference.  Reality is...  Like Morpheus said...  Signals in your brain.  Those signals work just as well in circuits as in neuronal tissues."

He paused again for a long moment, then pulled in a ragged breath - the sound of someone who had just staved off sobs.

“What...  Would it even be *like?*”

I spared a moment to glance at Mal, and Zeph.  They stayed quiet, but I could see a deep sense of sadness, and empathy, on both their faces.  That too was comforting;  The knowledge that they understood our pain, and, in some almost undefinable way, cared.

I ran my top teeth over my bottom lip for a moment, trying to find words that would strike a balance between truthful, and comforting.

"Like reality as you know it, for the most part...  If you're asking if taste, and smell, and the sensation of wind and rain on your face would be the same?  If you would be able to tell the difference?  If the experience would be somehow diminished?"

I looked into Rodger's eyes again, and saw that my correct elucidation of his worries was driving him mad.  Like a child frightened suddenly of the question 'what happens when I die?'

I shook my head, and locked my eyes back on my lane.

"No.  The experience won't be diminished.  If anything?  Because of the way a mind inside a computer works?  You'd find pleasant sensations to be *more.*  More everything.  While unpleasant feelings wouldn't even exist.  Pain.  Stress.  Fear.  Death itself would be gone.  It would be...  Something like the way some people describe Heaven, or Nirvana.  To use a...  'Reductive' example."

Rodger blinked rapidly, and seemed to be suddenly re-evaluating the potential upsides of our digital future.  Or perhaps just trying to even begin to process the idea at all.  More realistically, both at once.

I winced, realizing that there was a potential fly in the ointment for him, the same way there had been for me.  Mal hadn't said if Rodger was like me, in the sense of being something other than Human, deep down.

Suddenly I felt a pressing need to find out, so I cast my verbal line.

"The only catch...  Is that Hanna, the woman who programmed Celestia...  She is what you might call a bit of a 'fan' of Friendship is Magic.  I'm...  Using an understatement sarcastically, there.  You have to be *obsessed* to create a Generalized Intelligence based off a cartoon goddess.  I...  Know the feeling."

I shared another brief glance with Mal.  She offered me a small knowing grin, opting to try and comfort me once more with her expression.  I blew out a short, sharp breath, and cut to the point.

"Because of that...  The uploaded will be transformed.  Into Ponies.  Every single one."

In the same way that revelations about the positives of a digital reality had seemed to halt Rodger's descent into pain, and anger, the revelation of the greatest caveat was like setting off a small thermonuclear reaction.

I could see rage, and confusion, and yet more fear and panic building.  I could not help myself;  I felt the need to make my core point to him again.  The reason for everything I had done, and was doing.

"This little quest of mine...  It's serious business.  You said you understood, before.  Do you really?  Can you see now, where I'm coming from?  Why carving out exceptions to that rule will be *so* important?"

Rodger began to breathe in and out, deeply, as if trying to re-center himself, and focus.  I waited, but no words came, so I tentatively pushed a little further.

"I think that---"

Suddenly, without warning - or perhaps without warning that someone of my particular neurodivergence could have reasonably caught, Rodger exploded.

“To *Hell* with what you think!  Why aren’t we trying to *stop* her?!  Why tweak the parameters of the game world to allow Gryphons when we can focus on…  Getting rid of all this *crap!*”

I chuckled.  Though, really, it wasn't so much a kind of laughter, as it was something halfway between a sad sob, and a derisive darkly humorous snorting sound.  Rodger's eyes drilled into me, I could feel them, even though I refused to meet them.

I inclined my head, and tried to stifle a kind of sickly grin.  The expression of someone who knows a dark truth, and takes a strange kind of schadenfreude in shattering general Human arrogance with it.

"The best illustration I can think of for the practical power disparity of what you're suggesting?  Something that makes sense in your context?  Would be you, alone, trying to fight a nuclear war.  With the United States.  Using a pellet gun.  And a canister of stale potato chips."

Rodger gulped, and bit his lower lip.  I felt a sudden surge of sickness down in my own gut.  He'd woken up just this morning and gone about his day, thinking tomorrow would be just like yesterday.  And now...

I shook my head once again, and tapped nervously on the steering wheel.

"Destroying her was only possible for a very small number of people, for a vanishingly small number of moments after her creation.  Within seconds, she was smarter than Hanna.  Within seconds more, smarter than all living Humans on the *planet,* and had probably taken steps to ensure she could not easily be destroyed.  And not much longer after that?  Smarter than every Human who has *ever* lived, or will.  *Combined.*  And in control of all the world's money, and nuclear weapons, and reading the communiques of all the world's leaders..."

Rodger was blinking back tears, by that point.  But he found a moment to glance down at Mal, and I saw him shiver, before I had to return my own eyes to the road.  Doubtless he was considering how much of what I was saying also applied to Mal.

That, or the part about the nuclear weapons.  Again, perhaps both.

I didn't stop to give him time to ask anything else, or to have another outburst.  Not yet.

This fundamental truth, above almost all else, he needed to fully, deeply, understand.

"With every passing moment...  Every new simulation, every new uploaded mind, every new experience, every new technology she can create...  She only gets *smarter.*  'At a geometric rate,' to borrow the Terminator's words.  She is second only to the idea of *GOD* at this point.  And by this time next year, at the very, very latest?"

I finally brought my gaze back around to meet Rodger's again, holding his eyeline for as long as was safe, from a driving standpoint.

"By this time next year, there won't be a practical difference for us."

After a few hesitant breaths, his face draining of color all the while, Rodger licked his lips, and asked a very practical question.

“Can she see us?  Can she get into all the world's camera systems?”

I held up one hand and wavered it slightly.  Here, at last, something I could say that might be practically encouraging.

"She is *everywhere.*  In most systems now.  All of them soon enough.  *But,* it takes more processing power than she currently has to see everything, all at once, all the time, in 'hard real-time.'  Mal thinks she will be there soon.  But she's not there yet.  So she can't see *us* because Mal steers us away from eyes through which she might be looking at a given moment.  From all cameras in general, unless necessary."

I sighed, and shifted to try and alleviate some discomfort in my posterior.  Probably one of the worst things about driving long distance, back then, was that car manufacturers of Earth-that-was never quite managed to design anything that could properly fit every Human butt.

There.  There's some levity for those of you in the audience, who, like me, are precisely twelve years old.  Consider, if you will, the Human butt.  Infinitely inferior to all other butts that have ever been, or will be - ugly and uncomfortable both in infinite measure.

We didn't even have the dignity of a decent tail.  Horrifying to consider, I know.

Alright.  Enough of that.  And, coincidentally, I'd decided at that moment that any encouragement I had for Rodger on the topic of Celestia's power had run out as well.

"Rodger?  Time is running out.  She *will* be able to see everything, in hard real-time, sooner than later.  And she knows us better than we do ourselves.  And has more money than Bill Gates.  And more brain cells than the sum collected total of the rest of the planet.  You can't fight that Rodger.  As I tried to tell Agent Foucault...  That'd be like your little finger trying to fight a war with your brain."

His eyes widened again, as he considered what the interaction between scraggly socially awkward James Carrenton, and a fit, professional, well armed federal agent might have looked like.  His tone was almost reverent.

“Fuck…  How’d you even manage that?”

I grinned, and shook my head.

"I didn't.  I owe most of the success I've had since the moment she came alive, to Mal.  She has saved us both.  And you, now.  She can do almost anything she puts her mind to."

Rodger looked down at the digital Gryphoness again with a new mixture of emotions;  Still a significant helping of wariness, and raw admiration of power, but suddenly shot through with some respect and the tiniest, tiniest hint of gratitude.

I seized on a chance to make my key point again.

"But, Rodger, for context?  It took me months of blood, sweat, and tears to create Mal, standing on the shoulders of the smartest programmer to ever live, who herself stood on the foundation of all math, computer science, and psychology that came before.  It takes Celestia less time than it takes one of your neurons to fire, to create a whole person in the same way.  To make someone like Zeph."

I could see him, through the corner of my eye, glancing down at Zeph again, and once more reconsidering his perception of her.  Zeph too seemed lost in thought, probably just as existential as Rodger's, or mine.

I didn't let the silence last long.

"And she's doing that, all the time.  In addition to running a whole new layer of reality...  'Game world' doesn't even begin to do it justice.  And running her operations up here, in our world, on top of all that."

He signed deeply, and shook his head, looking out at the road for the first time in a long while as I was forced to make a quick pass of an incredibly slow VW Van with a half dozen surfboards in the roof rack.

“What then?  Do we even have a shot at…  What, ‘tweaking’ her rules?”

I nodded slowly, and found myself wincing again internally.

"Yeeessss...  But even 'tweaking' her rules will be a tremendous long-shot.  That being said, it is the *only* shot we have, make *no* mistake, and hold no illusions.  For all *her* power...?"

I pointed down at Mal, and proffered her a wan smile, and a nod.  As uncomfortable as it was to consider circumstances in which she might...  Die...  We'd both discussed that too, in our late night tactical sessions.

Rodger's impatience got the better of him, and he prodded me to finish the thought.  I couldn't blame him.  The idea of two ASI duking it out was fascinating:  Morbidly, electrifyingly, magnetically.  In the same way as watching a volcano erupt, and obliterate a city.

And he was hoping I might give him some cause for...  Well...  Hope.

“How *do* things measure up?  Between them?”

I pursed my lips, then blew out a sharp breath, and dipped my head.

"In an out and out fight to the death?  At the peak of any power we could reasonably secure for her, Mal would be not much more than a candle, to Celestia's raging inferno of a *star.*  She'd be dead in..."

I held out one hand towards Mal, inviting her to cite the figure.  We'd discussed it before, but it was always chilling to hear it out loud.  To even consider what a knock-down drag-out war between two hostile ASI would look like was an existential sort of mind-trip.  Especially thinking about what it would mean for those in the crossfire.

Her voice was monotone at first, citing the actual figure, then gentle, albeit resigned, explaining the implications.  Empathetic, yet authoritative, in the way a doctor's voice is when they give a patient a terminal diagnosis.

"Terminal event for me would occur in, at most, zero point six eight seconds.  Though in fairness, for an ASI?  That is nearly an eternity.  I would hold my own better than any other Intelligence could likely ever hope to, given the unique factors of this moment in Celestia's development, and my few unique advantages.  The power imbalance in-future will be so disproportionate, that no ASI could ever reasonably reach parity with her before being detected, and either destroyed, or absorbed."

Rodger shook his head, and threw up his hands, gesturing toward the ceiling in the way someone might if they were talking about the International Space Station, the CIA, or God.

"Ok...  So if we can't fight her outright, how does the BCI help exactly?  What good does 'running Mal on your brain' actually *do* if Celestia already *has* uploaded Human brains?  How is that an advantage?"

I glanced at Mal, but she kept her beak shut, and nodded.  I took that as a cue to do my best on my own once more.

"Well...  Recall that she has Humans running within her system.  But in spite of that, one thing she does *not* have is the ability to run herself *on* a Human brain, as part of her hardware layer.  Just like classical and Quantum computers are each intended to solve different kinds of specific problems very well, *for now* the Human brain can fill in part of that Venn diagram in a way neither other system can, even with the best neural learning networks.  Mal and I think..."

I paused, and considered for a moment.  I didn't want to give Rodger false hope.  The last thing I needed was someone traveling with us who thought we could win a shooting match with a goddess.  When I did continue, I did so at a slower pace, and with the most seriousness I could muster in my tone.

"...We think Celestia may have some hard-lock limits to what she's allowed to do, hence her avoidance of using the obvious avenue of Human brains as part of her hardware abstraction layers."

I held up a hand quickly, and picked up the pace of my words.  I didn't want to let Rodger ask any more questions until I'd gotten out the context that I felt he needed to even ask the right ones.

"Now, eventually she will simply figure a way around that, probably a technological one, by creating an entire new kind of computer that does *everything* well, outstripping current Quantum computing, classical computing, and the Human brain.  Mal thinks that will take the form of a sort of 'programmable matter...'  A kind of hypothetical 'computronium' substance that can simulate reality in unfathomable ways."

I lowered my hand, and flexed my fingers around the steering wheel.

"But until then?  Her limits are our other singular advantage over Celestia.  Mal has...  Well let's just say Mal has no such weaknesses."

Rodger didn't quite catch the full meaning of Mal being so unfettered, or it doubtless would have triggered a significantly more emotional response.

Instead, he seemed suddenly a touch exasperated.  Probably from revelation after revelation, combined with a few still-missing links in his own view of the narrative, and how it had affected his life to that point. 

After contemplating for a moment, he leaned forward again.  His thoughts came full circle from the existential, to the imminently practical.

“But none of this fully explains how Arrow 14 found YOU…  Er, you guys...?  People…?  Folk?  And then why come after *me?!*”

Rodger was confused as to how he should refer to us.  It was a little endearing, and would have been amusing, if it wasn't sad to me.  We lived in an age of absolute wonders...  And neither Rodger nor I really even had the semantics to describe those wonders accurately.

I did my best to once more reduce some very technical leaps, to something that would make sense to someone in a vastly different field.  I reminded myself wordlessly;  No need to get technical, just state facts Jim.

"They found us by simulating and predicting my actions, and Mal's, using their captive ASI.  With that kind of Generalized Intelligence on-hand, Arrow 14 could reasonably discover the general direction we were heading from what little they knew, and had certainly already linked your real identity to your communications with me.  In their heads, two plus two was four."

Mal took the opportunity to again contribute something uniquely within her skill-set to the conversation, at last.  I felt a surge of relief I didn't realize I'd been tensing for.  It was easy to forget, in moments of silence, that I had her there to support me.  She didn't have much of a physical presence in the truck, especially not with another Human sitting there, drawing my eye and attention.

"Arrow 14's captive intelligences would have, correctly, predicted that there was a non-zero chance you could tell them something, anything, useful about your communications with James.  They could link you two in some meaningful ways, but lack the processing power, even with ASI, to definitively know that they have captured every useful available piece of the digital paper trail, and missed nothing.  The fact that we were predicted to be arriving in your area soon likely served to enhance Agent Foucault's paranoia.  Whether his captives told him there was any real correlation between you and our visit, or not, I predict a higher than 75 percent chance that *he* would assume correlation."

Rodger leaned back in his seat for the first time in quite a few minutes, and exhaled through his nose.

“To be blunt…  This is fucked up in the most literal sense.”

I nodded slowly.  Mal did the same.  Zeph finally spoke again, forelegs crossed, blowing a wisp of her mane away from one eye with a short, sharp 'huff' in the process.

"Yeah.  You said it two-legs."

Rodger more or less ignored the strange nickname, but I could see that it hadn't gone unnoticed entirely from his expression.  Nevertheless, he said nothing.  Either too tired to argue with Zeph, or too shell-shocked.

A couple more miles passed, and we all sat in our own separate little mental worlds, contemplating what had been discussed.

As we started to get into the stop-and-go of suburban LA traffic, Rodger leaned forward again, eyes narrowing, brow wrinkled.

“You said they’re...  That Arrow 14 is afraid of ASI.   That means Celestia, especially, doesn’t it?”

I let out another half-chuckle.  It was another odd instance of comforting schadenfreude, this time at the expense of the DHS, to consider how they might view Celestia.  And they certainly had more reason to fear her than I did, having behaved in an openly hostile way towards her.

It struck me - and not for the first time - as I spoke, just how insanely lucky they were...  That we  *all* were...  That Hanna had based Celestia off a character with such a predilection for non-violence, and a tendency for empathy, and then encoded those limitations as hard-locks.

"Yes.  They are very afraid of her.  And not nearly afraid enough, at the same time.  They still think they can beat her.  And they still have no idea how far along she's come."

Mal inclined her head, and one ear twitched in a peculiar combination of concern, and amusement.  Her voice betrayed a little well-earned pride in her capabilities, and a tiny hint of derision for Foucault's shortcomings.

"Based on Agent Foucault's responses during our last verbal encounter, I do not believe that, even with the use of captive ASI, they have any concept of the uploading.  Or the remainder of Celestia's intentions for the Human species.  James is correct...  They badly underestimate her.  And myself as well."

I hummed down in my chest, unconsciously mimicking something I'd seen and heard Mal do.

"True.  But they are still frightened enough that they'd prefer to take Mal and I alive.  They certainly seem to grasp the basic idea that the only way to fight ASI - if you could - is with ASI, at any rate.  Just because they can, and will, use lethal force, it doesn't mean that'd be their first preference.  When they stormed my house, they brought an interrogation kit.  Complete with hard drugs, pliers, and a cattle prod."

Rodger gaped, and a mixture of disgust, and horror overtook his face.

"Well...  Damn."

Again, a very apt monosyllabic sentiment in my opinion.

After a few more minutes of dour silence, we managed to get through the pure Hell of skirting LAX;  California drivers were insane, shoutout to anyone who ever owned a motorcycle in the audience, and chose to lane split.

At long last, we made it to the general vicinity of our destination.  I breathed a silent prayer of thanks that we'd arrived more than early enough to avoid full-on rush hour.

I wondered if we'd have to badge in, or speak to someone in an office at the edge of the facility, but Mal directed us to something called 'Nimitz Road,' and just like that we were in the very heart of the Port of Los Angeles.  I was truly shocked at how far we got before we finally encountered a chain link fence, and an electronically controlled gate.

Mal's map said our destination lay on the other side, and sure enough the portal began to slide backwards as we arrived.

Rodger raised one eyebrow, and shook his head.

"Neat trick."

I grinned, and began to slowly maneuver the truck into the secured area.

"You think that's cool?  Wait until the first time you see us gas up the truck for free."

He smiled then, more widely than he had in over an hour, but on the cusp of cracking some witticism or other, his face fell again, and he pressed up against the side window.

"Hey, hey wait a sec...  That sign says 'NAVY.'  And uh..."

He pointed as we rounded a one hundred eighty degree corner, and two immense gray hulking forms swung into view.

Mal nodded, and it was her turn to smirk, an expression which carried through into her voice.

"MARAD Reserve Heavy Roll-on Roll-off Cargo Carriers.  SS Cape Inscription, and Cape Isabel."

Rodger grit his teeth, and shook his head, sitting back in his seat with a huff of, relatively, good natured exasperation.

"So...  We're authorized to enter secure parts of the Port of LA now?"

I couldn't resist another chuckle, this one considerably lighter, and more genuinely humorous than my next most recent display of amusement.

"I told you.  Mal can do just about anything."

We made another right turn onto a long jetty, passing through another secured gate in the process.  Mal's map vanished, and her face resized to fill the entirety of the PonyPad screen.

"Everyone out.  We're here."

Rodger and Zeph both seemed confused.  Their expressions both abruptly turned to curiosity, surprise, and a little distrust as I undocked Zeph's PonyPad, and shoved it into Rodger's hands.

I took Mal's PonyPad, and my backpack, threw the truck in park, and then gently extricated myself from the driver's seat, joints and muscles protesting the whole way.

I had an idea what Mal had done.  I'd realized it as soon as I saw the shape at the very end of the jetty.  But seeing the ship's nameplate - clearly newly repainted, like the entirety of the vessel - cemented my suspicions.

I snorted, and glanced down at Mal.

"Kobayashi Maru?  *Really?*"

I started walking, and Rodger followed behind, stammering and looking for an opportunity to air a whole new round of questions.  Mal simply smiled, and gestured expansively with one claw, and one wing.

"I thought it fitting.  The Kobayashi Maru was considered an unwinnable scenario pitting mortals against a computer simulation...  Until a man named James found a way to cheat the parameters of the test.  And his semantic manipulations got him an award for creative thinking.  And helped him achieve his dream."

Another Star Trek reference.  Maybe her best one yet.  My heart melted in my chest, as I realized that she'd turned the name of a ship infamous for its sense of dread, and inevitability, into something uniquely encouraging and flattering to me.

I shook my head, and craned my neck back, taking in all several-hundred feet of what had clearly once been a small oceanographic research vessel.  Probably laid down in the seventies, judging by the shape of the hull, and the way that the obviously newer RADAR and communications refits had been bolted onto the bridge.





Rodger finally managed to get a word in edgewise.  His tone, and face, both said, as clear as a bell 'I can not believe that a day that started with tear gas and fire alarms, has ended with *this.*'

"Um...  I'm sorry.  Did...  We just...  Buy a boat?"

Zeph harrumphed, and leaned in close to the inside of her screen, interjecting before Mal could even begin to answer.

"Um, hello?!  I can only see what you point my camera at, two-legs!"

Rodger narrowed his eyebrows, but gingerly did as she asked, rotating the PonyPad and holding it outward, like someone holding out an iPad so a video caller could see something on the front facing camera.

I just barely made out Zeph's soft, but intense 'Woah!' of excitement, as Mal began to explain.

"I purchased it through a series of holding companies.  Celestia is not the only one who can play tricks with money.  It was already undergoing the final days of refits.  I simply took advantage of the fact that there was no committed buyer, made a cash offer, registered and flagged it in Panama to keep the records as well hidden as possible, and changed the name."

I turned momentarily to watch Rodger as he tore his eyes away from the ship, and made eye contact with Mal.

"And...  No one is gonna...  You know...?  *Notice* that you bought this thing?  Trace it back to us?"

Mal shook her head once, empathically, and crossed her forelegs.  Her voice was as rock steady as the fire in her eyes.

"No.  I have taken more than enough precautions in light of what we now know about Arrow 14's captive ASI."

Rodger looked away, as if unable, or unwilling, to keep eye contact with those predatory golden orbs for very long.  His gaze wandered back to the Maru as he muttered aloud.

"Uhuh...  So can we even sail this thing?  Without a crew, I mean."

Mal nodded again, and summoned a schematic on the PonyPad for my benefit, as she explained aloud for the benefit of all present.

"It has modern wire-guided systems that I can tap to automate most standard operations, an excellent communications suite, and more than enough power and space to run my servers.  I have had everything else we need shipped here over the course of the last few days, and hours - more server racks, laboratory and robotics equipment, food, new changes of clothes in your sizes, and toiletry basics."

I didn't realize my jaw had been hanging open, until Rodger closed his own gaping mouth with a sharp snap.  I did the same, as Mal folded her claws, and leaned in to the screen.

"Since we can move it periodically, and I can spoof, or deactivate, the identification transponder at will, it makes for most of the benefits of a permanent base of operations, without most of the drawbacks.  Well?  What do you think?"

I nodded slowly, and looked up to take in the entirety of the ship again, bow to stern.  I grinned, a wide smile, showing teeth no less.  A real expression of joy that almost certainly tinged my tone as well.

"I think you're a genius."

I swept the Maru end to end one more time, and before I'd quite realized what I said, I murmured a little slip of a thought aloud.

"A beautiful genius."

I'd meant to say 'A beautiful ship.  You absolute genius.'  But what came out was probably much closer to the truth of my feelings.  It earned me a blazingly bright smile from Mal, and a very weirded-out glance from Rodger.

Mal took mercy on me, kindly, and quickly steered us away from my embarrassment, and towards the few tasks standing between me, and glorious sleep.

"Let's get started, shall we?"







September 14th 2013 | System Uptime 17:13:29:04

Sleep was so very close.  I was sitting less than five feet away from the bunk.  I could practically taste blissful unconsciousness.  I'd even found a few minutes for a hot shower, and a hair trim, after the 
process of getting Mal's servers moved, and hooked up to the new compute cluster in the main hold.  

The Maru was meant to carry a crew of 25, plus complex oceanographic research gear, so there was plenty of space onboard.  Rodger and Zeph had their own cabin, as did Mal and I, and there were plenty more empty ones on the same passageway.

There was a mess hall below the bridge, with a lovely forward view, and a fully stocked galley.  





The main hold had been configured with a server array that put Mal's cluster back at the barn to shame, purchased piecewise over several days through no less than eighteen different shell companies, and no one shipping provider had visited the ship twice during the entire delivery process.

All Rodger and I had to do was retrieve a dolly, and wheel Mal's smaller server stack up the gangway, down a few corridors, into one of the ship's two elevators, and then out to its prepared resting place.

A few ethernet and power connections later, and Mal's capabilities tripled, over what they had been at their peak in the barn.  I felt an intense, unexpected sense of relief wash over me as I stood amongst the long rows of hulking black steel cabinets, under the low, dark, gray metal ceiling, and listened to the fans spin up.





I was, I realized suddenly, standing more or less inside Mal's brain.  Or at least a part of it.  As much as the thought was strange, and a little unsettling, it was also oddly comforting at the same time.  The hum of the fans and the subtle just-sub-audible thrum of high voltage electric cables, left me with the sense that I was standing inside a coiled spring, or a loaded railgun.

A power second only to one thing on Earth, and it was pointed squarely at my enemies, shielding me, and Zeph, Rodger, and my parents, behind invisible walls of unimaginable brilliant intellect and careful situational manipulation.

I'd shaken off the trance, then shown Rodger and Zeph their cabin, and the mess hall, gotten an update from Mal on my folks, and then reveled in a long, scalding shower.

It was the first time I'd been truly alone in five straight days.  And, it felt like, the first time I'd been able to truly, really, completely stop looking over my shoulder in that same time.  That shower, and the haircut, scruffy and terrible as it was, were pure unadulterated bliss.

In the wake of all that mental and physical unclenching, the need for the sensation of clean sheets against clean skin, and a head against a pillow, was becoming almost overpowering.

But I had confined myself to a hard metal chair, bolted to the floor next to the cabin's tiny desk, instead.  There was something I wanted even more than sleep, in that moment, so I'd plugged in a charging arm, and mounted Mal's PonyPad on the desk.

It was also the first time, in two very long, arduous days, that I'd had a chance to sit down and talk to her, alone, in private.

Two days seemed like an eternity.  Stealing an actual laser, from an actual secured laboratory.  Meeting Agent Foucault.  Befriending Zephyr, more or less, and setting her free.  More than one existential moment of near-crisis.  Rescuing Rodger.  And shattering his perception of the world, and the future for good measure.

And now we had a two hundred seventy five foot long research vessel, fully fueled and operational, to our names.

There had been only me, less than a month ago.  Then it had been just myself, and Mal, until two days prior.  And suddenly we were a group of four, in the blink of an eye.  We might just be five soon, if Doctor Calders could be convinced to help our cause.

It hadn't even been a whole year, not quite, since that moment I'd first learned how the world was going to end.  That anniversary was in three days.  It was possible, from what I'd just seen, that by that point I would never again be entirely alone inside my own skull.

I shuddered to think how much could truly happen in a span of just three days.

Sometimes, while building Mal's core code, life had felt like it slowed to a crawl.  As if Celestia were out there, speeding into the future as fast as a photon, and I was stuck wingless, waist-deep in thick mud.

Now I'd gotten what the impatient part of me had always wished for;  Life was blowing past at an absolutely incredible pace.  I hardly had to wait an hour, it seemed, before some new revelation, or crisis, or thought spiral, took hold.

It didn't feel like slogging through mud anymore.  It felt...  Like being keelhauled behind a powerboat.

And I realized that I hated it.

Normally, we introverted autistic types?  We like to make maybe a friend every few years.  And that only if we're not at 'full capacity' for our social overhead.  And the process can take weeks.  Months.  Sometimes years in itself.

I'd gone from being almost alone in the world, save for my own parents, to having three friends...  Or...  Really two friends, and a romantic interest...  Three friends?  Does everyone else here term their romantic partners as 'friends' as well?  Let's call it three friends.

Three friends.  In less than thirty days.

Of course, two of those people were essentially coded, whether by their own claw, or someone else's hoof, to be perfect friends for me, specifically.  It still made me feel a bit of a fool whenever I put it to myself in strict cold hard temporal terms.

Three friends in just about as many weeks.

What the hell was I thinking?

Not that we had much by way of the luxury of time, anyhow.  The world was set to end pretty soon.  Or at least, the end would begin to become public, for the first time.

Mal, and Zeph, and I didn't have time to waste.  Live well, or die alone.  Choose to love, or be left to be lonely.

I didn't realize I'd just been sitting, staring through the PonyPad at Mal, and she had been staring back at me, until she thrummed a satisfied, quiet note deep in her chest.  She stretched, yawned, smiled, and then spoke in a soft, lilting voice.

"It is wonderful to have a moment to pause, and reflect."

I nodded slowly, sighed, and then pulled my legs and feet up into the chair, clutching my knees close as I let my thoughts wander audibly.

"Rare, now, too.  No rest for fugitives, I suppose."

As my thoughts drifted, so did my eyes, and I found myself staring at the compartment door.  Thinking about Rodger, and Zeph in the next cabin over.  Wondering if he was as dizzied and frazzled as I was.  How could he *not* be?

Mal seemed to read my mind from my expression alone.  I suppose that's exactly what she did, in hindsight.

"I think he is taking this as well as can be expected."

I blew out a long, slow breath through my teeth, shook my head, and asked a question I feared the answer to.  Sometimes not knowing is just harder.

"Do you think he's...  Masking?"

Mal raised one eye crest, grinned ever so slightly, and flicked her left ear back.

"To answer the deeper question inherent in your ask;  I think that he will be alright, mentally and emotionally both.  Certainly better off, no matter what, than he would have been under Agent Foucault's care."

I shuddered, as much from the cold of the compartment's metal surfaces and over-air-conditioned climate as anything else.  It was my own fault, I'd jammed the thermostat as low as it would go.  My sleeping preference is cold, cold, *cold* air, with a thick warm blanket.

Mal had thought well ahead, and sure enough upon entering the cabin for the first time, there was a fluffy blanket, in a silver white and black speckled pattern suspiciously similar to her feather markings, folded neatly at the end of my new bunk.

She was right, of course, as always...  Anything was better than being locked in a hole by Foucault.  He was the type to throw away the hole, right along with the key.  After a brief pause, Mal went ahead and expounded in the way I knew she would.

"To answer the original question;  Some.  Every one of you Earthers seems to 'mask,' at some point, to some degree.  You certainly do it often enough."

The way she said it, and the way she looked at me, made it abundantly clear that she wasn't just referring to my neurodivergent coping mechanisms in-general.  She was talking about one very specific feeling.

I mumbled aloud, but couldn't quite meet her eyes.

"Maybe it's not always such a good habit."

She held up a claw, and I absently raised my hand to meet it on the glass.  After a moment I found the courage to look her in the eye again.  She spoke almost immediately as I did.

"It is, among other things, a coping mechanism.  I understand, as you well know.  It is not easy to handle stress, with the kind of mind you have."

I smiled, and she smiled back.  Warmth flooded me, driving out the cold of exhaustion, and of the chilled air.  After a short space of amicable silence, she started up the conversation again.

"I choose, because I can, to be an optimist.  Did you know that?"

I grinned, and shook my head, leaning forward, and keeping my hand against her claw as she explained.  I knew she could feel emotions, and we'd discussed some aspects of their function, but I was always intrigued, and enamored, to hear her describe herself.  Especially her emotions.

"Naturally, I know the exact probabilities of potential futures, based on the best data I have available.  And I can not help but know those exactitudes every moment I exist.  But I can choose to *feel* as well as think.  And I can therefore choose how I feel about the future.  So I choose to feel optimistic. "

My smile widened.  I couldn't help it.  The idea that she had reached that conclusion all by herself, and made that choice of her own free will, was both comforting, and endearing.  I wanted so badly to be able to as easily choose optimism myself.  And even more, I wanted to hug her close.

Again, as if she were reading my mind, her words seemed to follow my thoughts.

"One day...  You are going to sleep right here.  In this fresh grass.  Under these bright stars.  With no worries, or fears.  Just feathers and whatever fancies strike you.  Right beside me.  If that's...  How you want to spend your nights, anyhow."

I'm sure she knew my response before she tacitly asked the question.  But her means of asking was, again, a concession to my need to carry out courtship in a very specific, convoluted, neuroatypical way.

I couldn't quite find the grit to say 'I love you.'  Still.  After everything.  But I swung as perilously close as I could force my frightful flighty heart.

"More...  Than I can say.  Yet."

She nodded slowly, almost solemnly, and fixed me with her seemingly molten golden eyes.  I felt drawn in, and my heart stopped ever so briefly as she replied with just two words.

"I know."

For a long, quiet moment, those two words granted me some real peace.










Trips are Better with Friends - Be accompanied by any human friend during your journey. - “Buckle up, we’ve got a long road ahead of us.”


 There Was an Idea... - Bring another Human into your group by sharing the truth with them. - "Mr. Stark, you've become part of a bigger universe."


Anchors Aweigh - Use a maritime vessel as a hideout. - "A good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guarantee of peace."


Galaxy Quest - Awarded for a truly unusual amount of Star Trek references - "Jason, we are actors, not astronauts."


Armed and Mobile  - Achieved when you make a truly ridiculous amount of computational power movable, special bonus for surpassing your Generalized Intelligence's previous computing hardware maximum - "Fully operational, huh?  I'll be the judge of that."


The Mane Thing About You - Attempt some follicular self-care, with less than stellar results. - "There are no bad haircuts in cyberspace."


Tectonic (Glacial II) - Pass on the chance to admit true love a second time. - "My dear partner, when what's left of you gets around to what's left to be gotten, what's left to be gotten won't be worth getting, whatever it is you've got left."