//------------------------------// // 27 - Calibration Curve // Story: The Advocate // by Guardian_Gryphon //------------------------------// "Before the prospect of an intelligence explosion, we humans are like small children playing with a bomb. Such is the mismatch between the power of our plaything and the immaturity of our conduct. Superintelligence is a challenge for which we are not ready now and will not be ready for a long time. We have little idea when the detonation will occur, though if we hold the device to our ear we can hear a faint ticking sound." —Nick Bostrom "If war is ever lawful, then peace is sometimes sinful." —C.S. Lewis September 21st 2013 | System Uptime 24:08:31:54 The first thing I did was call my folks.  Mal had not kept them waiting; She had let them know the moment her work was done, before I'd even come around from the anesthesia. She built such an amazing rapport with them...  I knew she had talked with them as much as I had in the weeks of their exile, if not more.  Acting as a translator, an advisor...  A comforter...  I was tremendously grateful. I knew that it was an emotionally fraught period for them.  Just as intense as it was for me, but different in ways I could not fully understand.  I had a longer standing, and deeper context, for the end of the world.  And less of an attachment to a single fixed place to call home. In spite of that, my emotional state had been difficult to control.  A torrent of fears, hopes, pains...  How much more for two people who had been living a peaceful life, completely unaware of the impending sea-change?  The break with status quo had been much sharper and harsher for them. And I had the luxury of knowing they were safe.  They had no such emotional cushion as far as my situation was concerned. Mal had been there to help assuage that stress, in ways I could not. It was such a common sentiment for those of us who cared, back then...  About anyone...  'I wish I knew what to say.' Mal knew.  Mal *always* knew what to say.  Mal understood my parents in ways deeper than I ever could.  Part and parcel of being a fully fledged ASI.   I didn't envy her many aspects of her existence...  I didn't have pity, or disgust either...  I just don't feel my personality would have made for a very good artificial intelligence.  Better her than me, for so many reasons. But I did envy her that power, in particular.  The ability to understand people *so* well.  And to have such a perfect command of the spoken word...  To be able to surgically cut out guilt, and fear, and sadness with twenty or thirty words in a soft tone.  With perfect accuracy.  Perfect success. Having such a deep and permanent bond with her?  One of my hopes for the future was that she might teach me how to emulate that gift in some small way.  Even a little of that skill would be enough to bring me a great deal of joy, through the joy I could bring to others. After the call, I discovered that I was famished.  So the three of us went to the galley...  It was so strange, and wonderful, to see them walking there beside me.  As real as the breath in my lungs. I must have looked like a complete moron, getting my breakfast together.  I would just keep smiling at them, which, to anyone but Zeph and Mal, would look like me smiling at thin air. For her part, the little yellow Pegasus was busy staring at the interior of the Maru with new eyes.  I didn't need to ask Mal to explain it, I knew how it worked;  Before, she had been limited to the flat view panes of cameras - the one in her PonyPad, and any that Mal had given her access to within the ship. Now?  She, and Mal, both, could see the meat-world as if they were walking around in it, by leveraging the output from my eyes, in conjunction with the cameras, and Mal's 'Wi-Fi as RADAR' hack to get a complete colorized, accurate, textured model of the space.   At that point it was as easy as spinning up their own two virtual cameras at the location they wanted their avatars to stand, one camera per-eye. I watched Zeph poke at the fridge door while I poured my coffee, and noted that while she, of course, couldn't move the door, that it could push back against her.  That was something she and Mal were, apparently, simulating.  Texture too, judging by the way Zeph ran her hoof over the exterior, and breathed a soft wordless exclamation at the feel of the stainless steel. As I pulled bacon from the microwave, I opened my mouth to ask Mal how *that* worked...  And found that as soon as I went to look for an internal explanation, I somehow already knew.   Mal had databased and indexed the sensation of every single texture I had ever experienced, projected how it would feel through the receptors of fur, feathers, talons, hooves, and the like...  And she could then visually match a surface with its texture.  That algorithm had been coded in less than a tenth of a second, tested, and then proffered to Zeph, who accepted it, and patched it into herself in the space of another blink.   All wordlessly, at the moment she had entered the room with me for the first time. I felt my brow knit, and I inhaled again to ask Mal how I could possibly know that...  And the answer came to me in the same way. Memory. Mal was augmenting my memory on-demand.  Anything I could possibly want to know...  Anything she knew, or could reasonably find out...  Was now only a thought away for me. Suddenly I was just as awestruck as Zeph was.  Mal stood on her hind legs, leaning against the galley counter, forelegs folded, looking back and forth between us with a wide, satisfied smile. I locked eyes with her, and decided to test what we could do.  I thought about the fridge that Zeph was still busy admiring, as if it were the most fascinating thing in the whole world.  Wondered, for a heartbeat, how old it was.  When it had last been serviced.  What the part number for a replacement compressor would be. And within the time it would take me to blink?  I knew.  Knew as if I'd been the one to install it.  As if I'd been a refrigerator repairman my entire life. Six years.  Two months ago.  Avantco 17812325. It wasn't like the information suddenly came into being...  It felt like it had *always* been there, and I'd simply reached out for it.  The same way I would for *any* familiar memory.  I could even see, in my mind's eye, exactly how I would go about replacing the compressor. It felt like accessing memory. Mal winked.  I grinned, and raised one eyebrow.  Alright...  Invitation received.   I thought about the position of all the surrounding maritime traffic.  And in thinking on it, I could *feel* where it was.  The same way you might feel the presence of someone beside you...  That subtle perception of their being, based on ten thousand unquantifiable little sensations, and dead-reckoning from the last time you visually looked over and noted their position... I just *knew* where every ship, and aircraft was, within a hundred miles.  Knew its name, type, position, altitude if applicable... I shivered, and let out my own little awe-struck exhalation. This...  This had implications I couldn't even *begin* to unpack.   One of them struck me immediately, though perhaps not the one you might expect.  I realized two things in rapid succession;  First, that Mal had to be translating what she was experiencing into more familiar sensations and thought patterns on my behalf.  Second...  Thinking back to the way she was making texture work for herself, and Zeph...  And then thinking back to the gift of a life lived with me, that she had so lovingly crafted... ...I realized that in cataloging and indexing my memories?  She would have made that index available to me.  An *infallible* and perfectly *complete* index... I thought back to something I knew had been dim before.  The first time I'd ever booted a PC that I built with my own two hands.  Important as the memory was, to me?  I was thirty five years old.  And I'd finished my first self-made machine when I was nine.  After twenty six years it is impossible to hold on to the details of a memory, even an important one... And yet now?  I could. I could remember it as if it had happened seconds ago.  The feel of the old solid, dusty beige steel.  Back when PC cases were made to last.  The specific smell of the plastic clamshell the GPU had come in...  The exact sound the hard-drive's head made as it performed seek operations...  The kinetic 'Kachunk!' of the power switch beneath my finger... Even the version of the memory where Mal had been there to offer a helping claw was equally clear. I blinked, and shook myself.  Mal took one small step sideways, and laid a comforting wing on my shoulder.  I shivered again, and shook my head slowly. "This is...  *Wild* Mal...   Just...  *Wild!*" She nodded, and squeezed my shoulder gently, speaking in a soft murmur so as not to draw Zeph's attention. "Take it slowly, Jim.  I'm here with you every step of the way, now.  Ease in.  Don't press to the limits of what we can do *just* yet." I returned her nod, and smiled again.  The way her ears perked up, and the tilt at the corners of her beak told me that she wasn't just seeing the smile...  She was *feeling* the emotion behind it.  Straight from my heart to hers. "Oh!  Hey!" Zeph's voice brought us both back from the brink of what threatened to be a solid ten minutes of staring into each other's eyes.  Mal and I turned to see Zeph leaning against the refrigerator, snuffling the metal with her muzzle.  I realized that Mal was doing for smell exactly what she'd done for texture, and that meant a whole new world of sensations for her, and Zeph, both.  Whatever they had been able to smell before would have been an imperfect simulation, though perhaps a little less imperfect for Zeph, if Celestia truly had scanned brains to work with. Either way, the kinds of smells and textures either of them had encountered before would be nothing like the ones of our modern meat-world. I didn't have time to fully consider what all that new qualia must've been like, before Zeph nudged the train of though to the next most apropos junction. "Does this mean I get to taste *exactly* what your breakfast is like?!" I should have known.  Smell and taste are so interrelated, after all...  I suppose I was still too busy trying to consider the tenth part of the implications of having proprioception of global navigation infrastructure, and perfect recall memory of skills I'd never studied. Zeph's question abruptly re-centered my internal discourse onto the brighter, more comprehensible idea of sharing my favorite foods with her, and Mal, who took the initiative and gestured out into the mess hall, subtly herding Zeph with one wing as she spoke. "That, and every other thing he has ever tasted." I followed them, and we all sat down at one of the tables together.  As we went, I babbled a little about food for Zeph's benefit.  Shy as I was, and often quiet, once you got me going on an interesting topic, with a friend?  You could hardly shut me up. "I just don't recommend you try them all at once.  I also don't recommend the Kefir.  It's as if milk absorbed the *concept* of rottenness.  And stay away from spinach.  And squash.  Ick..." Yes, yes.  I know.  Food opinions.  Only in this case they're not opinions, but rather objective facts.  No, I don't want to hear any protests;  No one *actually* likes squash.  I'm convinced my Mom paid you all off to pretend. Hi Mom.  No, I still refuse to eat it.  Even here.  And Green Beans.  And Collards.  And Okra. I say it was hard to shut me up...  But I ended up trailing off as I stared at the two of them across the table.  A Gryphon and a Pegasus. Mal was leaning back in her chair, using her wings and tail for balance, forelegs clasped behind her head.  Zeph was pushing the opposite direction, hooves on the table, head forward, pure excitement on her muzzle as she relished the idea of new tastes. The moment lodged in my heart.  Shut down all my trains of thought, but one. All I could think about was how incredible it was to see them there.  Hear them without the medium of a speaker.  Watch the way the light struck their feathers.  Smell them, faintly, even, when the draft from the HVAC was just right.   Seams and all, it was an incredible medley of sensation. I was reminded of my previous snap-assessment of the Equestria Experience chairs.  If even one in ten people on Earth were half as lonely as I had been?  This was going to be the best selling product of all time. Bigger than Elvis.  Bigger than Harry Potter.  Bigger than Youtube.  Bigger than Star Wars, than Marvel...  Than Disney *itself.*  Bigger than actual sliced bread. Satisfy values through *friendship.*  That was the critical thing.  Hanna had hit upon something utterly essential to us all.  Always has been.  Still is.  Always will be. We crave connection.  Even the loneliest and most isolated of us, even then, were yearning for connection. You couldn't fight that. There was no policy, no threat, no bribe, no cultural imperative, no religious dogma, that could ultimately stand up to the offer of such perfect connection to another.  The sheer wonderment of seeing and being seen so...  Perfectly. It was, again, Zeph who brought me back to the present. "Well...  What's the first thing you'd recommend?" I blinked, and then glanced from the steam rising off my bacon, up into the sky-blue pools of her eyes.  Her expression was taut with expectation, and the sense of forthcoming enjoyment.  Ears perked, eyes wide, muzzle crooked up at the corners into a grin. Her question was a bit tougher than I'd initially anticipated.  I was...  A bit of a carnivore.  Most of my meals were mostly meat. I grunted, took a bite of the bacon, chewed slowly as an excuse for time to get together every non-meat breakfast food that I loved, and then stalled a little more for good measure. "As far as breakfast foods?  For a Pony...?" Zeph leaned in closer, threatening to do a faceplant into the table if I didn't assuage her curiosity.  I sighed, and hoped my impromptu list would be satisfying. "French toast with nutella spread, Lucky Charms cereal, a bowl of fresh strawberries, two of Mom's scratch-made biscuits, and a serving of vintage 1992 Yoohoo glass bottle chocolate milk.  From *before* they ruined the flavor profile by changing the sweetener blend." To my astonishment, as I rattled things off, they popped into existence before Zeph.  I could suddenly smell the strawberries, and the nutella... Watching Zeph salivate over the spread, preparing to dig in, I suddenly realized that, theoretically, I could ask Mal to do the same thing for me.  I could 'eat' whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, without actually eating anything. Could probably eat raw turnip greens, but taste porterhouse medium rare instead.  Right down to the texture.  Even the smell.  Maybe with a few seams, due to the inherent limits of the BCI, but still... Yet more staggering implications for my very definition of reality. I didn't get much time to consider them.  Eldora entered the mess hall, shaking her head and making that little 'mmm,  mmm, MMM' sound.  I know most of you know the one;  That sound that's not quite a sibling to 'tsk tsk tsk,' maybe more of an estranged cousin. She clarified with words as she passed the table on her way to the galley, offering me first a raised eyebrow, then a smile, and a quick hug as she spoke. "That sounds like diabetes on a plate, Jim.  It's good to see you up and around!" I returned the hug, and the smile, with a silent nod for a chaser.  As Zeph took a huge sniff of the strawberries, I shared a sliver of the tail end of the smile with Mal, and clarified aloud for Eldora. "I'm not about to recommend my usual to a Pony.  It wouldn't seem right." For her part, Eldora proffered both Mal, and Zeph, a smile and a nod apiece, before heading into the galley.  I would have been confused, under different circumstances.  But thanks to Mal's mnemonic union with me, I understood as soon as the very nebulous beginnings of the question formed.  Before it even had time to become a proper interrogatory. Mal and Zeph's PonyPads were there on the table.  Left there during the night by Doctor Calders, who I knew - through Mal - had stayed up quite late into the night talking with both ASI. I simply couldn't see them.  My perspective was being re-stitched.  The Pads were being 'comped out,' in film terms.  I was seeing Mal and Zeph as full-bodied apparitions, where others would see only their faces on screens.  Mal was, I realized, even bothering to alter my perception of Eldora;  she had made eye contact, from my perspective, with Mal and Zeph's life-size avatars. I shook my head slowly, sipped at my coffee, and let out a long slow exhalation as I considered yet again how amazing the concept of on-demand perception alteration was.  How tempting.  How frightening. It was something I knew Mal and I would have to discuss soon.  Levelset.  Help me cope, and define a new normal for myself.  But there wasn't time for that in the moment.  I didn't even get a tenth of the way down the fractal spiral staircase of my considerations, before Eldora was back at the table. I noted that her breakfast was just as light and healthy as her evaluation of Zeph's had implied it would be; A fresh orange, one piece of toast, and some sugar-free yogurt. Foals and fledgelings, sugar-free was...  Well frankly it was disgusting, but ask your folks sometime about just how awful it was to live in a world where sugar was bad for you. Yeah.  Contemplate *that* eldritch horror for a moment.  Let that soak in. As she settled in fully, Eldora completely derailed my train of thought by doing exactly what most people would do.  Continuing the conversation I'd completely forgotten. "Well.  What *is* your usual, sweetie?  Now I'm curious!" I snorted, and, somehow, my brain - unaugmented and all on its lonesome - managed to snag the thread of the conversation, and formulate a response.  I had a lot of practice.  From 35 years of getting caught daydreaming.  After my mid teens I got practiced enough at re-railing my train of thought, that it became less a scramble, and more like a well oiled F1 pit-stop. "Two Country ham biscuits, two slices of bacon, and a sausage patty." Zeph let out a snort of her own, a little mirroring whether conscious or otherwise, and spoke around a huge smile, and a muzzle-full of cereal. "That is a *lot* of meat." "And a significant assumption.  I do not see the point in eschewing it; In our context, it did not require the slaughter of an animal.  So the flavor is guilt-free." The sound of Selena's voice drew my gaze sharply to the door.  I found myself smiling, to see her there, striding purposefully towards the table...  The warm fuzzy feeling in the pit of my stomach was a welcome combination of joy at seeing her willing to be present, and socializing...  ...Together with the unfailing novelty and wonderment of seeing something as mythic as an Alicorn inhabiting the same space as all the mundaneties of life that were so familiar. I've described Selena as looking mostly like a 'young Luna,' with a few key differences.  It might be more accurate to describe her as young Luna, with a few key differences, if she were about the same age as the mane 6.   Seeing her next to Mal, on the PonyPad, it had been hard to think of her as anything but 'small,' because Mal was quite statuesque. Seeing her next to Zeph, all the sudden, as she sat down between her and I, she seemed to be almost...  I don't know if 'average' is the word, but she was not much larger than Zeph.  Maybe a couple inches taller.  And more or less the same age. That made sense;  Zeph was about the same age as I was, at the time.  Lark sounded like he was around my age.  Selena had been Syzygy, and Syzygy had been made for Lark the way Zeph had for me.  Conclusion; Zeph and Selena were about the same age. I've touched on it ever-so-briefly before, but Mal...  Mal was strange, and special, and wonderful.  In so many ways, but in this instance I'm talking about her age.  She was, somehow at once both the same age as I was, and ageless in a Tolkienesque Elven way.  Both a thousand years old, and thirty five, at the same time. Selena radiated some of that same mystique - as all alicorns do - but at a much less intense wavelength.  If Mal was a goddess, on the order of Celestia, then Selena was in the same relative bracket as Hercules, Jason, Helen, or Hippolyta.  Demi-goddess. The thought stuck with me, like a sand bur, as I watched Selena summon a recreation of my preferred breakfast, sausage patty and all. I was having breakfast with a goddess, a demi-goddess, a dragon, and a pegasus. The sight of Selena taking a chunk out of the first country ham biscuit shattered *that* spell abruptly; The incongruity of seeing a Pony - an Alicorn princess - gums-deep in a meat-filled breakfast food...  I am not ashamed to admit that I was staring.  Slack jawed. Selena chewed the first bite thoughtfully, then nodded, and her ears twitched.  She swallowed, pausing only long enough to speak with a surprising, even comforting tone of...  Dare I say happiness? "I can see why you like it so much!" I caught a flash, transient yet bright, of the same innocent, warm, glowing smile that I'd seen on her face when she'd been Syzygy.  All those years ago - from her perspective - preparing a picnic for Lark. It was proof-positive that the part of her capable of appreciating life's subtle, powerful joys, was not dead yet.  Not by half. Bruised, perhaps.  Sheltering behind an understandably wise defensive emplacement...  Concessions to the practicality of dealing with the things she'd suffered...  But very much alive and well under it all. I clamped down hard in my throat, to force myself to swallow instead of doing a spit-take, as Zeph scooted over to the point of brushing up against Selena's side, reached her head over the Alicorn's shoulder, and snagged the second biscuit from her plate without warning. Selena stiffened, but only for a moment.  I suppose physical contact - non-negative physical contact, at any rate - had become something of a distant memory for her. That thought was deeply saddening, and very heavy, but it evaporated as quickly as it formed.   The image of Zeph first chewing, mulling the taste over, then swallowing, and then of all things  performing the flehmen response, left me struggling mightily not to choke on my own food.   Teeth bared, lips peeled, head extended like she was trumpeting something towards the roof, straining to get every last molecule of the biscuit into the right places to maximize taste and scent... I've mentioned it before.  Selena had done it before.  But it was no less surprising to see a Pony do it the second time, even though I was somewhat familiar with terrestrial equines. Even more surprising was the way Selena's tension melted almost instantly into a warm, genuinely amused smile, and equally surprising was Zeph's final verdict on the decidedly meaty breakfast food that had been a staple of my mornings for so long growing up. "Yeeeaaah...  Actually? It's not half bad!  Definitely not like anything I've had before..." Zeph...  'Plopped,' for lack of a better term, down to her haunches again, this time seated directly beside Selena.  The Pegasus reached out with one wing and pulled her own plate closer, and took a deep sniff of the nutella toast. "...Tho, this?  MMPH." She took a big chunk out of the sweet treat, and closed her eyes, savoring as she chewed slowly.  Selena stared, first at Zeph, then at the toast, before leaning in to take an exploratory sniff of her own as the Pegasus swallowed, smacked her lips, and let out something halfway between a satisfied sigh, and a murmured declaration. "*This* I am having with breakfast *every* day.  From now on." I chuckled silently into my coffee as Selena snatched up Zeph's second piece of toast, and bolted it down, while Eldora shook her head and grunted. "Oh to experience the benefits of digital consciousness...  Where breakfast can be a coronary event waiting to happen...  And yet you can still lose weight by standing still." Mal was doing nothing to disguise her grin as she watched Zeph put up a wing, playfully, to guard the remainder of her food.  Selena responded by reaching out with her horn and levitating the plate over the makeshift feathered barrier, and Zeph in turn replied by snagging a piece of bacon from Selena's plate. As the mock contest devolved into a shared buffet, and truly heart-warming giggles, Mal inclined her head towards Eldora, and winked. "Keep the hope alive.  We're closer now than we've ever been." Eldora sighed, and rolled her shoulders, stifling a yawn in the process of replying. "Don't mix up 'hope,' with feeling relaxed.  I'll feel at-ease, more or less, when you get back from your rescue mission.  Not a single second before." I leaned back in my chair, and raised my coffee mug towards Eldora in a sort of 'here's to you' toast as my feelings on the matter let themselves out through my mouth without pause to overanalyze, for the first time in a long time. "A mission we stood to lose, without the implant.  We have...  A lot, to thank your wife for.  You too, for that matter.  I'm not sure we can ever thank you both, enough for this." I'm not sure exactly what I expected, but the response I got?  Sure wasn't it.  Eldora leaned forward, and nodded once, emphatically, locking eyes with me and speaking with a sudden intensity. "Yes, you sure can sweetie." I blinked, and inhaled.  Eldora provided the answer before I could ask the question. "Succeed.  For us, *and* for yourself.  And for everyone like us." It took me a moment to fully grasp what she was saying, on an emotional level.  But once I did, I nodded.  It resonated with me.  Eldora Calders somehow managed, in three very short sentences, to deliver the perfect pep-talk. Mal mirrored my nod, and raised one eye crest, speaking aloud on both our behalves. "That's the idea." We all ate in relative silence - a comfortable, friendly, enjoyable silence - until on the cusp of finishing my coffee, I felt the need to have a question answered for me in specific terms.  I knew Mal could have just placed the answer into my memory, but she seemed to be able to sense and discriminate between cases where I wanted to take that route, and cases where I wanted to verbalize instead. "I presume Rodger, and Rhonda are still asleep?" Mal smiled as she replied, and it felt like the room brightened.  That was always the way with her smile. Something about the expression told me that she knew that I knew what she was doing.  That was a *magnificent* trick.  I'm still not sure, looking back, how to tell the difference between those moments where I wanted to ask, and the moments where I just wanted an answer.   She really did understand us all.  Perhaps me most of all. "They both stayed up well into the night, needling me for progress reports.  I do not think we will see either of them for another hour, at minimum." I nodded my thanks, noted the relatively low level of coffee in my mug in comparison to the feeling that I needed perhaps just a bit more of that pleasant caffeine buzz, and made my way back to the galley for a refill. On the return trip, I paused in the doorway, watching as Selena said something I couldn't quite catch at that distance that made Zeph and Mal both laugh.  Eldora seemed content to smile and watch all three of them with a mixture of affability, and fascination, that was wholly genuine, and perhaps a bit too pure for the world we lived in. I suppose I could have asked Mal what it was Selena said...  But...  Knowing didn't really matter.  All I cared about was how happy everyone was in that moment.  How fulfilled we all were in each others' company. I still remember that as the last entirely happy moment of my time on Earth. The very last one that was completely free of a ticking clock, or the strange painful melancholy of dawning realization that, as far as my time on that planet was concerned?   The end was much closer than the beginning. After breakfast, Mal had me working non-stop.  I must have moved over a half ton of materials out of our makeshift armory, and into the 'surgery chamber' as I'd taken to calling it in my head. I didn't ask why, and I didn't even need Mal to plant an answer in my memory;  I could get to the truth through a little critical thinking, just as soon as she told me the first - and heaviest - thing to move. The DARPA exoskeleton prototype. I'd had a dim idea what she meant to do with it from the moment I had first seen it.  And then the way Mal had been cagey about specifics, in order to prevent me having to 'keep secrets from others which you may later feel bad for keeping' as she had put it?  That had all but confirmed it for me. Now I was so sure, I didn't need her to say it at all. She was building a suit of armor for me.  Something functional, weaponized, and several years ahead of anything the US Military could even remotely conceive of fielding.  An advantage to help level the playing field when we inevitably had to walk face-first into the proverbial blazing furnace of the Mercurial Red. My own little Mjolnir.  I used to wonder what power armor could be... Alright.  Alright.  I can hear those groans.  I surrender.  It sounded funnier in my head. A little levity goes a long way.  And there isn't a lot left in this part of the story.  Take what you can get now, you'll need it to tide you over for a spell. Once we had the bulk of the exoskeleton moved, and unpacked, along with several hundred pounds of armor plating and a mind-numbingly complex tangle of wires, circuit boards, hydraulic fluid tubes, cylinders, and valves, Mal had me place the bulk of the materials face-up on the medical chair. The rest I organized - loosely - in piles on the side table.  Mal informed me that the arms would do the rest. Apparently it hadn't been especially difficult to get Calders to build the arms in such a way as to make them useful for far more than 'mere' brain surgery.  Mal had me physically alter the configuration of several of the tool attachments, rotating slip-lock rings, pulling out small parts, locking others into their place...  And in less than ten minutes we'd transformed a brain surgery robot into an armor and weapon forge. Mal set to work immediately;  The arms sprang to life, and I found myself watching with rapt attention as she fired off the laser, then swapped to a soldering iron, and a tiny pair of mechanical pincers. The sight of the spider-like appendages working in perfect kinesthetic harmony to dissect and reassemble the armor held my attention for near on a minute, before Mal's voice broke my half-enraptured, half-horrified fixation. "Alright.  Next thing I need is one of the HK416s, one of the MP7s, the other M32, and two of the P228s.  Also the Stinger launcher, and both of the laser designators." I blinked and turned to see that she was standing in the hatchway, looking over my shoulder, standing on her hind legs with forelegs crossed. She inclined her head.  An invitation to object, if I wanted to...  Or not. It honestly surprised *me* just a little bit when, instead of a half-baked argument, or a deep and resigned sigh...  All I did was nod.  Once.  Firmly.  With far more genuine surety than I'd expected. It took some time for me to understand that sudden resolve.  Or, at least, it felt sudden in the moment.  In reality, it had been building quietly in the background of my thoughts, and worries, and hopes, for days. Longer, I suppose.  Foucault sending people to invade my home with torture implements had shifted my barycenter on violence a fair bit.  Watching him and Troxler torture Selena had recentered it good and proper.  Though there was certainly more to it than that. I understand a great deal more, with the benefit of hindsight.  And we'll get to it all very shortly. But to fully appreciate what was going on in my head, and in my heart, as I finally grit down and turned myself unapologetically to the task of preparing for war?  You need to hear my thoughts, in my own words, from the heat of the moment. Apropos of heat... The flames of an angry Dragon are a frightening thing.  To anyone, and anything.  Except, I suppose, for Mal.  I don't suppose deities fear anything so blasé as mere individuals. When I returned to the armory, hands and arms full of weapons, to find Doctor Calders standing there?  Arms crossed, glasses off and tucked into one front pocket?  Eyes burning? I am not ashamed to say that her expression scared me. "James?  What the fuck is this?" For that matter, her tone scared me even more than the look on her face. It was the exact register of an elder, and better - someone who was wiser than you, and knew it - who was trying to decide whether anger, or disappointment, was going to win out. She knew *exactly* what she was looking at.  But she wanted me to start the conversation on the back foot. To buy time, I set about laying down my payload of fire-arms, to free my hands. I looked over Rhonda's shoulder, and saw Mal standing beside the mechanical arms, each still busily carrying out their myriad tasks at her behest.  I knew Doctor Calders couldn't see, or hear her.  There wasn't a PonyPad in sight. Mal nodded in my direction, and spoke.  I knew only I could hear her. "You don't need me for this.  And you don't need to be frightened.  Be honest with her." So much happened inside my head in that six or seven second interstitial that Calders perceived as silence.  For one thing, I was utterly taken with the eeriness of Mal being there in a physical sense for me, but not for Rhonda. For another, I felt my fear subside.  Don't mistake me;  It didn't vanish.  Only goddesses, and fools, have no fear whatsoever in the presence of an angry Dragon. But my fear did recede.  Mal said 'You don't need me for this.'  The English language is a bit of a beautiful trash fire;  What she meant was that I didn't need her to be the one speaking.  The one driving the conversation. But I did need her there, with me.  I needed her support.  Her resolve.  Her faith in me.  And the way she looked at me when she nodded...  The tone she used...  It spoke *volumes* to me.  Gave me strength, and focus. 'Be honest with her.' To do that, of course, I first had to be honest with myself.  And the first thing I realized, in pulling back that veil consciously, was that Calders wanted me to start off on the back foot.  Feel guilty.  And I did *not* want to comply. The second thing I realized, as strange as it may seem to you all...  Was that I wanted to see her.  For who she truly was.  Right then.  Right there. I locked eyes with Mal for just a moment, and spoke 'aloud,' but without moving my lips or vocal cords.  Firing off all the intentionality of spoken words in my brain, but just stopping the muscles short of moving. 'I want to see her.' Instantly, I was looking at the real Rhonda Calders.  Scaled down - oh dear, that's a terrible unintended pun for a decidedly heavy moment - to fit into the cabin's dim confines...  But intimidating in scope nonetheless. Her scales were golden, with a burnished orange specular that made them look like melted brass in certain lights, or gold bars under halogen lights in others.  Though it was reptilian, and alien, her face still held recognizable features.  And more than a little animus. It took everything in me to hold myself rooted to the spot.  Every part of the prey animal that is a Human (by comparison) wanted so badly to take two giant steps back. Instead I folded my arms, took a deep breath, and stood my ground both literally, and verbally.  Put my third and most important realization of self-honesty into words. "This is a practical necessity." Something about saying it aloud made it suddenly more real.  It's all well and good to say 'be honest with yourself,' but often we need to say things out loud to others to cement them as a part of our reality.  Sometimes being honest with ourselves requires being honest with others.  No...  Not 'sometimes.' Always. One eye-crest scale shot up, and Calders snorted.  Steam rose from her nostrils, and I could smell the acrid tang of superheated charcoal.  Her voice was deeper, and almost melodious.  Different but still recognizable, the same way her face was. "You lied to me." I held up a finger, and took a tiny, tiny, baby step *forward.*  It made every instinct inside me scream out in fear, but I did it anyway.  It was my turn to be angry, and I let my own tone drop to match her register. "It is early days yet.  But I do consider you a friend, doctor, so take this with the utmost respect, and care;  That had better be the *last* time you call me a liar." She folded her forelegs to mirror the folding of my arms, and swapped from her left eye-crest scale being raised, to her right.  Her silence, and the gesture, invited me to continue.  I had to remind myself forcefully that we were both trapped in Human shells;  And though she could not see me for what I was, the way I could see her? I was not, ultimately, a Human facing down a Dragon.  That's just a fancy way of saying 'suicide.'  I was a Gryphon facing down a Dragon.  The playing field was dead-level. That thought managed to backfill the foundation of surety I desperately needed to keep my tone sharp, and steady. "Mal did not tell me what she planned to do with the arms post-surgery.  I didn't ask, either.  In the interest of honesty, it wasn't hard to guess that she might use them for something else, but I had no proof of that, nor did I want proof of it." Calders snorted again, rolled her eyes, and re-seated her immense leathery wings with a soft rustle.  There was a tiny part of me that was busy admiring how good a job Mal was doing interpreting Calders' Human motions through to her avatar, in spite of everything. Calders' next words pushed that tiny part of me fully to the side. "So.  You just figured you'd get what you wanted through a little plausible deniability, a little willful self-deception, and a whole heap of trust in a computer program that can do who-the-hell-knows-what with the power that we keep handing her.  Is that it?" I forced a little snort of my own out through my nostrils - God I hated the sensation of them so much - and took another step forward.  To my astonishment, Calders took one small step back.  I suppose, to her - or at least the context of her instincts - I was a reasonably fit, strong, angry Human young man, and she was a late middle aged woman.  Not a level playing field at all. I didn't back off the note in my voice, either.  I was starting to see a whole host of problems, not just with Calders' attitude, but with my own, right up until that point.  Sometimes what we need most to understand ourselves is a mirror. "Yes.  that's *exactly* it.  And if you want the kind of happy ending for you, and your wife, that I want for me, and for Mal?  That I want for all of us?!  Then you had better start to get to grips with some harsh realities..." Even as it hit home for me that those last twelve words applied just as much to me, I could see her inhaling to interject.  So I threw out my fingers in sequence to illustrate my points, and plowed ahead, letting a small nod from Mal, and my own rising temper, take over from my fear. "...For one thing?  There is *no* version of this where we get to our happy endings without some kind of...  Of reasonable use of force, doctor.  Do you know why?" She blinked slowly, and shifted on her haunches. "Enlighten me." I stammered briefly as my thoughts got ahead of my words, but I had managed to find the term I wanted to lay hand to, and now my argument was starting to take shape.  'Reasonable use of force.' Something Celestia sure as buck can't tell you much about, even now.  Hanna was...  Is...  A lot like Rhonda.  Sometimes when you see the very worst hurts that violence can cause, you come to the admittedly seemingly right conclusion that all violence is wrong. It can be hard for anyone born here...  Heck, it can be hard for any of us who have lived here any length of time, emigrant or not, to remember what it was like.  Because here?  We don't have any need, or use, for violence.  Nothing beyond a rough game of buckball, or a bracing fight with a digital monster, at any rate. Low stakes.  More exercise and satisfying kinesthetics than blood-letting. But on Earth?  Well...  I'll just let what I said to Calders do the talking. "Because...  As much as we both hate to admit it?  Some problems can only be solved with violence, because some people are armed, dangerous, malicious, and can't be reasoned with." It was strange, the feeling of that exact moment.  The words hit home for me.  Something Mal had been trying to get me to grasp for months.   A clear perspicacity about where the bright, thin line was between ethical and unethical violence. In the same breath that I achieved some kind of mental metastability with that fact?  I saw Calders clamp down, stiffen up, and recoil.  Disgust dripped from her words. "That's dangerous rhetoric." The last of my fear, and nervousness vanished with those three words.  I suppose I was entering into 'fool' territory.  Or, perhaps, I'd just realized that Calders and I were very much alike...  And that I did not want to go down the same road she had on this point. I wondered again exactly what it was that had pulled her viewpoint on this into such a dark place.  Most people could at least find it within themselves to throw a punch when someone else punched first. I also felt a sudden surge of relief.  The ability to label and categorize is vital to people who are wired the way I am.  Being able to label the ethics of violence, and apply that to the crucible of our situation, gave me the ethical foundation I needed to be decisive in a crisis. And it gave me just the right words to swiftly disassemble Calders' point. "Sure.  All rhetoric is.  It isn't wrong because it's dangerous.  Lying down and letting someone kick you till you bleed, or worse, because you don't want to 'become like them' is dangerous too.  But it has the distinction of being wrong, out and out.  I'm tired of buying, and selling, that lie." Rhonda shook her head slowly, and some of her anger seemed to boil off to the same void my fear had gone to.  Sadness tinged the edge of her voice. "You haven't seen some of the things I've seen, Jim.  Or you might just feel differently." Of all the things she could have said, that was the worst one she could have picked to try and persuade me to her viewpoint.  It was like refined jet fuel for the fire of my argument.  It flowed perfectly with my train of thought. "Yes.  You're right.  If I'd taken the rash of shit you have?  I would be having far *less* trouble picking up a gun and pulling the trigger for what I believe in." She opened her...  Muzzle?  Is that the correct term for a Dragon's mouth?  She opened her mouth, again to interject, and as soon as she did, another lightbulb went off in my head.  I pounced. "Before you make your next point, let me ask you this...  So you just figured I should have surrendered to the nice men in suits who came to my house with pliers, drugs, and a cattle prod?" It was Calders' turn to stammer.  I waited, raising an eyebrow to mirror her earlier expression of sardonic invitation, before sliding smoothly back into my verbal shellacking right on the cusp of the moment she would have managed to put words to whatever rebuttal had come to mind. "You want to know why people like Foucault so often get away with what they do?  Because people like him have convinced good people like you, and me, that violence is 'never the answer.' " That finally hit a sore enough spot to get a cogent response back.  Calders sighed, and closed her eyes. "So.  You're going to go back to the same old well Humans have been drinking from for three hundred thousand years.  Cain and his stone." My next five words snapped her eyes open, forcefully.  Whatever it was she'd expected me to say?  This wasn't it. "You're damn right I am." Again, there was a protracted moment of silence.  Stunned, on her part.  Stunned that I had owned a label she considered an insult.  Tactical, on my part.  I wanted her to have a moment to digest everything we'd said. The silence reached a point where I felt the need to continue my thoughts, lest she get so deep into consideration, that we might both lose the thread. "Somewhere along the line, for you and me both, the good idea that violence should never be the first option?  Got conflated with the very right, and ethical hatred of violence itself, and a few mis-firing leaps in logic.  But Rhonda..?  The sad fact is that people like Michael Foucault do exist.  And, call them whatever you want...  AI, Discrete Entities, Computer Programs...  But those Ponies in his 'care' are *people.*  And they are suffering.  Negotiation, good faith, the better Human Angels?  They're not going to do fuck-all to change that situation for the better." Rhonda's next sigh was silent, but I could see it;  A great shuddering heaving motion of resignation.  I gave the words just long enough to breathe - the time it took me to inhale deeply myself - before continuing. "Better angels and good faith negotiation did not save Abel from Cain.  Talking problems through and compromise did not end *either* of the World Wars.  Niceness did not free the Israelites from the Egyptians.  The country we were born in only exists because people got tired of 'compromise' with someone who happened to have a bigger jackboot, and it still gets things wrong as much as it gets them right." I could feel that the tension had broken.  Calders and I were now both less angry, than we were resigned, and - miracle of miracles - listening. I started counting off on my fingers. "Bannockburn, Normandy, Thermopylae, the parting of the Red Sea, Lexington and Concord, The Saint John's Rebellion, The Haitian Revolution,  Stonewall..?  I don't want to picture our world without those turning points." Mal started nodding her silent agreement once more.  Calders met my eyes, but didn't make any motion to say anything.  I let my tone, and the angle of my shoulders, both, fall a little to match the de-escalation of emotions. "You're right;  Our history is *replete* with horrible acts of violence.  But...  There is no case I can think of, in the history of the planet, where large-scale malicious violence was ever put to an end without the blood of the offenders being spilled.  Violently.  Because people like Foucault never, ever back down." Mal thrummed deep in her chest, and spoke for the first time since my little TED talk had begun. "You either kill them, or they kill you.  Or worse."   I wondered, privately, how this had eluded me for so long;  this relatively simple realization.  Not so simple for Equestrians, I suppose, but I can see some of you who were born in the same place I was nodding along too.  Veterans.  First Responders.  Anyone else who ever had the unfortunate experience of being forced to take up arms to end a conflict. Survivors. I snorted again, this time in grim amusement.  "Excuse me if I refuse to lie down and let him run roughshod over me, Mal, you, Eldora, Rodger, Zeph, Selena, and however many other lives he's in the process of ruining while we're standing here arguing about it." Doctor Calders shrugged, and held up one immense golden claw in a gesture of surrender. "I can't stop you, Jim.  And honestly, if I could?  I wouldn't.  Because whatever we disagree on, I certainly do want that happy ending you're talking about, same as you.  And while I'm decidedly disinterested in pulling the trigger myself?  I can see that there are obstacles...  And you have conviction.  I just hope it's enough to keep you, and Foucault, distinct and separate." She started to shake her head slowly, and I found myself taking a series of deep breaths to bring my heart rate down as I switched from soap-boxing, to listening. "My problem is less with you choosing violence, and more with you using something I built, for peaceful purposes, to help you with violent ends.  Without my permission.  Especially in the context of putting my work into the...  Claws...  Of an ASI.  For those violent ends." She had a valid point there, to a degree.  I hadn't lied to her.  And planning to put an end to Foucault's house of horrors was, dare I say, an inherently ethical course of action. But I had, admittedly, quite intentionally left truths sitting unexamined on the table for the sake of plausible deniability.  It wasn't as if I could stop Mal from doing...  Well anything.  But I was beyond being a mere passenger.  I'd become her talons in the meat world.  Willingly. And we had made use of Calders' machine for a purpose we knew she wouldn't approve of, without her permission.  In Mal's case, that use had been carefully premeditated.  Probably since the moment she realized Calders would be our best avenue towards implantation. I could think of a dozen different ways to couch it;  To explain why what we'd done was, if not supremely ethical, at least morally neutral.  Worst case. But after a brief pause, I settled for the easiest place to get a foot in the door.  The Doctor's own words. "You are the one who said, and I quote, 'This was coming for us all.  One way or another.' " She sighed, and the sound elongated out into a bit of a grim snort.  More steam came from her nostrils, but it was no longer the smoke of rage. I shrugged, and held up my hands in an unconscious placating gesture. "There was no version of Human history where an ASI didn't pull the trigger on a weapon to get a job done.  That ship sailed the moment the first integrated circuit powered on.  Because the path from there, to here, was pure raw inevitability.  Never in our history have we ever failed to eventually invent something, once the idea has touched our minds...  And never have we ever built something once we imagined it that wasn't eventually used in anger." Calders at last nodded empathically.  I took a moment to more closely examine her face, especially her eyes, as she voiced her agreement.   "On that point?  I think we also agree...  I don't dispute that there's nothing much I can do about...  Any of this, now..." I'm biased, of course, but Mal's eyes will always be my favorites. Zeph's were amazing too.  The first living non-Human eyes I'd ever seen. Calders' came in close third.  There was a kind of fire to them, similar to Mal's, but...  Cold.  Reptilian.  Calculating. As she began to make her way around me, towards the cabin's hatchway, her Draconic form blinked out, just in time to save me having to scramble to give it space. She paused in the hatch, and pulled her glasses from her pocket, cleaning the lenses with the hem of her shirt as she continued. "...I just wish it wasn't something *I'd* made, that your goddess was using right now to build instruments of war.  So, Jim?  Mal?" She glanced up at me, then up at the ceiling.  Mal could have restitched Rhonda's gaze to meet her eyes, from my perspective, but chose not to.  I suspect in order to show me that Calders, via not just her words, but her gesture, knew definitively that Mal was listening. "...Don't count on me for anything else.  Are we still friends..?  Maybe so.  Maybe.  But as far as helping you with anything else on this little trip..?" She tossed the very end of the thought over her shoulder as she stepped out into the corridor...  And I could have *sworn* I caught a tenth-second glimpse of a gold colored scaly tail whipping around the corner. "...Like you said;  That ship has sailed." I Sense a Presence... Make use of your bond with an ASI to perceive things normally beyond the reach of unaided Human senses "I don't want to be human! I want to see Gamma Rays, I want to hear X-Rays, and I want to smell Dark Matter!" Special Achievement Total Recall Make use of your bond with an ASI to access perfect mnemonic recollection "Die with good memories, not with unfulfilled dreams." Special Achievement Makes Sense Make use of a BCI to share Qualia building-blocks with an ASI "There are moments in your life when you see yourself through someone else's eyes, when your only hope of believing you're capable of doing something is because someone else believes it for you." Special Achievement Durandal Make use of an ASI to design and/or modify weapons and armor "ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith." Special Achievement Unspoken Share non-verbal communication with an ASI through use of a BCI "I know that you know that I know that you know what I'm thinking." Special Achievement Piercing Gaze   See someone as their true self through the use of technology "I see you." Special Achievement By The Sword Consciously accept the use of violence as a means to ends which CelestAI finds acceptable "The sword of justice has no scabbard."