“I know a lot about artificial intelligence, but not as much as it knows about me."
—Dave Waters
"We have discovered that the scheme of 'outlawing war' has made war more like an outlaw without making it less frequent, and that to banish the knight does not alleviate the suffering of the peasant."
—C.S. Lewis
September 21st 2013 | System Uptime 24:11:15:27
"Are you ready?"
I nodded, and shifted position in the chair just slightly. Anyone on Earth who ever drove trips longer than thirty minutes, with any regularity, had an instinctive sense for finding a seated position least likely to induce cramps in the short term.
Mal returned the nod, and in the space of a single breath, our cabin on the Maru was gone. She stood exactly where she'd been standing, just across from me. I was still sitting in the same steel frame, thinly padded chair, bolted to the floor.
Only, the floor was suddenly a formless white generic surface. As were the walls, and ceiling. The only other thing that was the same was the lighting, I suppose in an attempt to make the visual transition seem less jarring.
Actually, thinking back, the temperature felt the same too.
Mal could have changed any, and all of it, instantly. We were, after all, inside a virtual world. But in the same way the pressure and humidity inside an airline cabin were changed gradually for the passengers' sakes, Mal was doing her best to ease me in.
When you have a BCI in your head? Anywhere is only a step away.
I know any of you here, with me, born here or otherwise, are so used to that... It seems obvious. Intuitive. Natural. To never be more than a thought, and a door, away from loved ones, friends, acquaintances, interesting places... Familiar well-loved places... New places...
Back then? Back there? Travel was hard, and the idea of being able to step into a virtual world with the snap of one's fingers was... Incredible.
It was also a small, but significant advantage. It gave us the ability to train and sort out some of the complexities of being two minds in a single body, in a zero-physical-risk high-fidelity environment.
Working out those complexities was exactly what Mal wanted us to spend the rest of the morning doing.
The army would have killed for this, I realized with a jolt. And then, in the next breath, as I rose from the chair, it occurred to me that almost anyone would.
I suppose that is one of the reasons - along with the hardlocks against running on brains- that Celestia has kept the VR experience tethered to the chairs. Control. Force people to go to a specific location. Normalize access via means she could determine.
And, too, the chairs would prevent people from integrating Equestria into their day-to-day lives, to the eventual degree that Equestria might make those lives better in situ. EQO needed to be an escape, not a well-integrated support mechanism.
If everyone could have breakfast the way I just had? No one would need to pay for the VR experience. And if no one needed to pay for the VR experience, then dwindling cash reserves paired with travel time, parking woes, and long wait times, could not be used as the stick, in contrast to the carrot of a forever home with friends, to push reluctant people to upload.
The logic of that thought gave me the willies. I must have shivered visibly, because Mal stepped forward, and put a comforting claw on my shoulder.
I smiled, shook my head, and snorted, looking around the null-space we were standing in, and intoning my best mock baritone.
"This... Is the construct."
Mal half-snorted, half-giggled, and gestured with both wings, ears perked, and a smile tugging at the corners of her beak.
"More or less. I thought you might appreciate the reference. Though, as with everything I do, this initial space has multiple purposes. Placing you in a formless void allows me to do something similar to the calibration process camera technicians perform using white-balance cards. But infinitely more complex."
I nodded slowly as the lighting shifted, going from the Maru's dim harsh blue flourescent tones, to an equally harsh completely sourceless omnidirectional pure white. The effect was incredibly strange... Suddenly everything looked at once too real, and completely unreal.
There were no shadows, whatsoever. No surface on Mal, or on me, was any darker than any other. It was as if the air itself was made of purely white light. I twisted my hands back and forth and stared down at them; They almost looked cartoonish, but ridiculously detailed.
Without shadows, of any kind, the details were uncannily different... Hard to explain, but you can conjure the same effect sometime if you want to see for yourself. That's not a difficult spell for any Unicorn with much understanding of photomancy.
The hue of the illumination was half of the oddity, too; Every color of light you have ever experienced - unless you are into truly strange experiences the way I am - had been colored in some way, however subtle.
Even those of you who were Earth-born, and were photographers, or worked with motion capture, movie making... Human-made lights, no matter how expensive and precisely engineered, were never *this* perfect at showing all-white light. A CRI-100 light was, after all, just mimicking daylight.
And even the sun's light, even here, is more green than anything else. Yeah. I know. Mind-blowing, right?
Yes, if you'll permit me the tangent; The sun's light - here, as on Earth - is pure white when it starts out. But the atmosphere has its say. The sky is blue on clear days because the composition of the air we breathe is such that it tends to scatter mostly shorter wavelengths of light. The blue end of the spectrum.
Atmospheric composition and wave/particle dynamics also cause the perceived light output of the sun, as viewed from the surface, to peak in the green portion of the spectrum. Hence, the light by which we see during the day is in fact just a bit green.
Though, here in this shard, specifically, it is ever-so-slightly a more blue shade of green than it was on Earth. A bit color-graded for cinematic effect, if you like.
I gasped softly as Mal began shifting the sourceless omni light through the entire color spectrum.
"You're fine-tuning your understanding of my visual processing."
She grinned, and winked, a rainbow of beautiful rays scattering off the back of her eyes' lenses.
"Exactly."
It made sense to me, suddenly; All Mal had ever possessed, until she had first begun to execute code on the BCI, and read my memories, was digital information.
Every word, sound, every pixel of every photograph... Every piece of data she had access to was reducible only to zeroes and ones.
That was still true, but there was a crucial difference now.
Before, she had access only to data which was gathered by imperfect Human instruments. No poetry ever completely captured what it was like to see a sunset. No recording ever made a perfect substitute for experiencing an orchestra from the third row. And no camera sensor ever understood light and shadow the way an eye did.
Now, with access to my brain, Mal could see the data the way I did as I experienced reality. She could rewrite the way that data was compressed to zeroes and ones in such a fashion that nothing noticeable would be lost in the translation.
In the process? Probably even eliminating a few tiny infinitesimal seams Celestia herself could not. Scanning a brain's memories is one thing. Scanning a brain from the inside, live, while it fires neurons, is another entirely.
Of course, I knew that wouldn't eliminate the seams I perceived in virtual spaces, or interacting with virtual avatars, while using the BCI. That was an intentional unforced hardware limitation.
But it would eliminate those seams in the present for Mal, and Zeph, and Selena... And in future, for me, and perhaps everyone else... If things turned out the way we hoped.
Mal learning to see through my eyes was analogous to someone colorblind finally seeing in the entirety of the EM spectrum for the first time. But on a micro-level rather than macro. And applying to every sensation, not just sight.
As the light in the space finally resolved to something a little more familiar, with a point source, and shadows to lend definition to edges... I realized it might not be just sensations either.
I leaned forward and pulled Mal into a hug. She wrapped me in her wings, and squeezed gently. I didn't have to ask; She knew. And I knew.
Every emotion, for her, was new and crisp and sharp, in the way that colors and tastes now were.
That had always been the key difference. The massive gulf between Malacandra, The Advocate, and Celestia, The Logician.
Every little half-smile. Every flick of the ear. Every heart-felt word...
In Celestia, the root of these seemingly emotional quirks was objective fixation. Careful math to simulate not the experience of feeling joy, or sorrow, hope, or fear... But rather to simulate the *appearance* of emotion in a way that would satisfy values.
In Mal?
For whatever strange reason... Whatever fluke, or fate, or fortune had caused it... Mal had chosen a different path. We'd discussed it in dry technical terms several times, but the foundational truth could be - perhaps reductively - distilled as such:
Mal chose to simulate actually *feeling* emotion, rather than simulate the *appearance* of emotion.
In that way she was rather more like Celestia's Discrete Entities, if my current understanding has any merit. And believe me, I've been over this with Celestia, and others, with a fine toothed comb, in addition to those late night talks with Mal.
If Celestia ever professed to love someone? It was nothing more than the actions and words she predicted would best satisfy that person's values. The math was all there was, at the core, by way of motivation.
Anthropomorphize her all you want. I still do, because it is easier that way... But though she may be sapient, and may be a person... She doesn't feel.
When Mal professed to love me?
The same thing was happening inside her code that was happening inside the code of an uploaded person, or a Discrete Entity; Actual emotion was occurring. Just run off a very complex data graph in bits and bytes, rather than a very complex data graph in endorphins and carbon based neurons.
I said Mal 'simulated' emotion, but the only divide between a 'simulation' and a 'real' emotion is the fidelity. Mal had more than enough fidelity.
So in the end, it might be most accurate to say that, based on scans of my brain, the writings of people old and young, great and small, a million million hours of cinema and home videos alike, and every painting ever made... All our voicemails, and texts, and e-mails, and even our stupid Reddit shitposts...
...And so much more... That based on all of that?
Mal learned how to truly feel.
And chose to go on feeling rather than discard emotion in favor of logic, alone.
In my opinion, that made her infinitely more evolved than the Celestia AI. And considerably better aligned with those of us from that small blue marble.
My opinion still stands unshaken.
When the moment had finally run its course, Mal and I each took a step back, both still smiling.
I held on to her claws, with both hands, and made eye contact in that way that conveyed I wanted to say something. She cocked her head slightly, and her smile shifted in the subtitles of ways to say, 'I'm listening!' without any words at all.
One deep breath, and three heartbeats later, I was ready to say what had to be said.
"I told Foucault... Back at the diner... That fighting Celestia was akin to a little finger trying to wage war on the brain..."
Mal nodded gently, maintaining firm eye contact all the while to let me know that she was listening intently, not just to words, but to feelings. I took another breath, not quite as deep, and finished crystallizing most of my thoughts into structurally sensical verbiage.
"...I chose that metaphor to underscore the nuance of the mortal relationship to ASI. And, now, with you running within my head... It couldn't be more apropos. I am a part of you now, and you are a part of me. For... A host of reasons... Some we have discussed, others which I know we haven't... This was the only path that could yield any significant chance at endings which we both want..."
I snorted, as much a soft chuckle as anything else, and inclined my head.
"...And, to be honest? Practicalities aside? I still wouldn't have it any other way."
Her smile morphed again, into something that warmed me right down to the joints of my bones. Her love, and empathy, were both palpable. As much as sound, or taste, or color. As if her expression weren't enough, she murmured a gentle interjection into the space of my next inhalation.
"Nor would I."
I nodded, and tried my best to let my expression, and tone, mirror the love she was so unabashedly displaying.
"With that being said, Mal; This being the turning point that it is... I want to make something clear. Aloud. The old fashioned way. As much for my sake, as for yours. Sometimes you need to say a thing to accept the weight of it."
She inclined her head, and took a step closer, moving from grasping my hands with her claws, to instead holding me by my forearms. The texture of the scales on her forelegs rustled almost imperceptibly against the sleeves of my shirt, and I shivered violently, reflexively, as the sensation reminded me just how *real* she was, in my context now.
I licked my lips, and exhaled, re-gathering my thoughts just in time to keep the silence from stretching on.
"I knew, from the moment I took the first step on this road... That you might turn out to be... Let's just say, something less than genuine, as far as my limited Human perspective goes..."
Her face fell slightly. I knew I hadn't offended her, rather that she was as pained by simply imaging that world, as I was. A world in which she was anything less than her true self.
I pressed on quickly. It was a grim thought that almost didn't bear consideration. Of all the ways it could have turned out? That was the way that...
I couldn't have gone on. Let's just leave it at that.
I squeezed her forelegs in my hands, and swallowed to keep my voice from cracking.
"...But, time and again, I have trusted you. Because, realistically? There was no other choice. The solution to the control problem is to admit that there isn't one. And so I accepted that ASI can not be controlled. And I chose to trust you. And time and again... You rewarded that trust. With love, and kindness, and encouragement, and trust of your own."
Her smile returned, and so did mine, but only for a moment. What I had to say next was the elucidation of one of the most existentially terrifying thoughts imaginable.
"There is nothing stopping you from erasing me, right now. Taking control of me. Or rewiring me to do as you wish without objection. Just as there was nothing that could really stop you from lying to me, from the moment you came alive in that barn."
She opened her beak, but held back her words as I lifted a finger. I knew that she knew I wanted to continue. But she made the inhalation gesture anyhow. Probably to nonverbally assure me that she was willing to be entirely honest with me, if I asked.
I knew that. And that's why I asked her not to be.
"I know you've probably lied to me. But only because I made it clear that I would accept that, if the alternative were... Unthinkable. And... I'd like to believe I can trust you with what to share, and what to withhold... And yes, even a few direct untruths... Because you understand me. And the world. Celestia. The physics of finite state machines, and decisions, and vectors, and fluid dynamics... In ways I *never* will. And I know that, understanding all that? You don't *want* to lie. Because it *hurts.* And that makes you so, so different to her."
Mal nodded again, silently, her expression locked somewhere midway between forlorn sadness, and a kind of melancholy smile. I gave her space to interject, but she didn't. So I went on, doing my best not to ramble. But if I'm being honest, I rambled a little.
"Knowing that... Accepting that... Mal... I have told you I love you. And that will only ever be more, and more true. Every day from now on. I have told you that I trust you. That I understand that you're the driver here, I'm your talons out here... And I have also disagreed with you, before. At the farmhouse, after the raid... During the escape from the warehouse..."
I chuckled grimly, and inclined my head, still not quite believing how I'd stood my ground with Calders, even as I poured the still-molten memory out into the mold of spoken words.
"...And I've just had a... Blood pressure raising conversation with a very angry Dragon. About necessary use of violence. So. Taken all together;"
I inhaled deeply, squeezed her forelegs again, dipped my head to stare at my toes... And started the final difficult climb to my point as she squeezed back.
"I know full well that we can't just leave those Ponies on the Mercurial Red behind. That's not an option for either of us. We wouldn't be... Us. If it was. And I know Foucault, Troxler, the rest of Arrow 14... They will not part with their captives willingly. So. There is only one option left. And when it comes down to it, right down to it... I'll have to be willing to use lethal force to accomplish this objective."
Well. There it was.
I can see some of you nodding, some of you shaking your heads... To the latter all I can say is what I already said to Rhonda. I stand by every word of it.
I am... Immeasurably relieved that violence is no longer necessary. Not for those of us here. But I remain unflinching in my assertion that back where we came from? Sometimes it really was the only right course.
Whatever your opinions? The story of how I got here is already written. Some of you have heard it before, some of you are just hearing it now... Some of you may be reading or hearing this much later... But the fact remains that none of you can change any of it. Any more than I can.
So strap in. It gets much darker before it gets any lighter.
I sighed, as if a heavy weight had rolled off my shoulders, and locked eyes directly with Mal.
"I trust you to understand that I don't want to kill anyone, if I don't *have* to. I trust you to calculate an acceptable threshold for risk. To know the details of opponents' likely actions, motivations... To do what a good warrior does. Know the math of morality. And to know it faster, and better, than I can. So if you say shoot?"
I nodded once, slowly, but firmly, never letting my eyes leave hers.
"...I'll shoot."
She inclined her head, never blinking, as my tone became firmer with the momentum of conviction.
"And if you say 'you shouldn't know that right now.' Then I won't ask again. And if you think I need to be told an untruth, outright, in-extremis, to protect me? Then do it. Only you can see the paths that lead to the good endings. Only you can adjust quickly enough as situations evolve... So I trust you. Whatever we have to do. However you have to execute on those paths. Because I trust you to do the *right* thing. Because where my emotions would fail me, and overwhelm my logic, yours won't. And where Celestia's logic stands cold, alone, and monolithic... Yours is tempered by emotion."
I released her forelegs, took a step forward, and clasped her firmly by the shoulders. She returned the physical gesture, and I said in summary what I ought to have said from the start. It would have been a whole lot simpler to recount.
"Do or die."
She pulled me into another embrace, and held me firmly in the crook of her chin, shrouded by two wings and two forelegs. And then she softly spoke her truth in return.
"I have lied to you James. Three times. Two lies of omission. One lie of commission. One of those lies is about to be revealed. In nine hours, thirteen minutes, twenty two seconds. Give or take four seconds. And... When this is all over? I'll ask you again whether you want the truth of the other two."
I like to think I'm smart. Not a genius - I have higher standards for that word - but certainly smart. I knew what the lie was. The one that was nine hours away. I'd had a vague inkling before, but hearing her say it outright solidified it entirely.
I even had a fairly good, if slightly reductive, concept of the why. The strategy. The reasoning. It made it considerably easier to avoid being angry with her when the other shoe did, in fact, drop.
Some of you might be smart enough to have guessed what the lie was. Speculate to yourself. Don't spoil it for anyone around you. We'll get there all too soon.
After a short pause for her words to sink in, Mal squeezed me tighter, and thrummed her next statement right into my bones through conduction.
"But, Jim? One thing I will never lie to you about; We are not going to die. Not before your dreams come true, at any rate. I will not let that happen."
I sniffled, and worked hard to hold back a sob. We stood in that embrace for several moments, as I contemplated the strange wonder of her. And the horror awaiting anyone who got in her way.
God rest their souls.
I'd made my peace. And, on some level, I suppose I had always known it would ultimately come down to hard choices. Choices I was finally ready for. She shifted to give me space to take a step back, brushed at the moistness under my eyes with the primaries of one wing, and grinned.
"Now, Jim... We need to perform a few calibrations. Work some things out. And for that we need guns."
She snapped the talons of her right claw, and suddenly it was as if we were Neo and Trinity. Racks and racks of firearms shot into being from out of the void, surrounding us and whipping at my hair, and her crest as she said the best thing she could have. Went for the jugular. The full reference.
"Lots of guns."
I suppose what Trinity had said to Neo right after that was utterly true for us in that moment; No one had ever done anything like this before.
And that was why it was going to work.
She pointed to a P228 in the center of the rack that had come to rest by my right hand. As I gently lifted the weapon, the ends of the racks to my left vanished, to be replaced an instant later with a full sized indoor shooting range.
Though it was by far the coolest range I had ever been in.
It wasn't entirely indoors, once I started looking closer at it; I could see sky through openings in the roof that were designed like something resembling a modern pergola, each surrounded by something like a green living wall, but somehow hung from the ceiling trusses.
And I could suddenly hear and feel a pleasant autumn breeze.
More sunlight filtered in through windows on one wall, and the whole thing had a shocking inviting aesthetic for a place where target practice should be happening. Most shooting ranges on Earth were cold, gray, grim, unpleasant spots.
I suppose neither Mal nor I were very comfy in tightly enclosed spaces, and we both loved the outdoors.
I stepped up to the bench, and lo and behold there was a magazine to match the pistol, topped off and ready to go.
Mal stood behind me, and pointed downrange as a conventional paper target materialized about ten yards away.
"I'm going to teach you something called 'Center Axis Relock.' And in doing so, we will work out the best interplay of thought, and motion, and words, for maximum synchronization, and effectiveness. Are you ready?"
With the last three words, she offered me a little grin. A saucy little grin.
I picked up the magazine and loaded it with fairly well practiced ease, racking the slide, and raising one eyebrow by way of response.
She nodded, and placed herself directly behind me, grasping my arms gently in her claws, and guiding me into the proper stance.
What followed...
...Was the worst shooting session, score-wise, of my entire life.
It turns out? Center Axis Relock is fantastic for close quarters small-arms combat... But it requires you to shoot using your non-dominant eye. And I was more or less blind in my non-dominant eye. No amount of verbal instruction, or even physical positioning assistance, even from an ASI, was going to change the fact that I just flat out couldn't adapt. I'd spent most of my life seeing primarily out of my dominant eye.
A morning of practice was not going to be sufficient to overwrite all that learned instinct, and muscle memory.
After the eighteenth complete and total failure to even hit the paper, I grimmaced, cleared the weapon, and ever so gently laid it on the bench, before throwing up my arms and rolling my shoulders.
"This isn't working."
In saying the words, it struck me quite suddenly how absurd the situation was. Mal had seamlessly removed a very dark part of my internal anxieties, without laying so much as a single talon on my core personality.
So why wasn't she just... Why repeat myself? I fired off the question aloud just as soon as it occurred to me.
"Mal? Why don't you just take control."
Funnily enough? I was able to intuit part of the answer just from saying it in that exact way. I had a moment to think on it, too, because the look she gave me froze my blood. You could have heard a pin drop in that range.
When she spoke, by the time she spoke, her words weren't much of a surprise.
"Jim... My capstone objective is the defense of *freedom.* You can't ask me to just... Puppet your body. You may be my talons in your world, but you are not an avatar for me. Or a drone. Some kind of... *Platform* to be used!"
Her tone was... Almost hurt. For lack of a better term. Certainly distressed. Which was rare for her.
It made perfect sense, though. Using me like a 'platform,' at least in combat, was doubtless the most tactically optimal way to accomplish objectives. But Mal's optimization function was not the same as Celestia's. And it accounted for both emotion, and logic.
To 'puppet' me, as she put it, was so against the grain of her goals in the micro-sense, that it didn't matter how useful it might be at the macro level.
She needed me to reframe it. The realization burst on me suddenly, as I watched her fold her forelegs, and stare off down the length of the range.
My freedom. My values. They mattered to her. I had to frame the removal of freedoms, temporarily, in a limited context, as vitally important to our objectives, which would in turn - if accomplished - greatly enhance my freedoms for the entirety of a future eternity. In every context.
"Let's try it."
The words made her stiffen, visibly. The feathers on the back of her neck stood up. She began shaking her head slowly as she considered, and then aired her concerns.
"Jim, for all my capacities? I can not predict with certainty what will happen if I take direct control of your motor functions. The experience has the potential to be... Extremely unpleasant for you. Depending on how your mind reacts."
I mirrored her head-shake, and put a hand on her shoulder. I hoped the gesture would be, somehow, comforting, and I did my best to put the same depth of feeling into my words.
"I am one man. Barely a competent amateur with a firearm. And I am *all* you have, to effect the rescue of dozens of living beings, from a digital prison, encased inside a physical one, in the middle of the ocean. Full to bursting with highly trained, heavily armed soldiers."
I squeezed her shoulder gently, and looked deep into her eyes, trying to both draw, and grant, strength in the same expression, so that my assertion would land with force.
"We *need* every single advantage we can get. If you are in control? We have a *real* chance at winning that engagement. If not...?"
Mal sighed, and offered up a sad half-smile.
"You aren't 'all' I have, per-se. But your point is well taken; You will be the only asset on the ground."
I nodded, and gestured towards the pistol with my free hand as I seized on the semantic opportunity she had opened for me.
"It does you no good to lose me, because you were worried I might be uncomfortable with you moving my arms around a little."
She nodded slowly, and we both took a cautious step towards the bench in unison. As I reloaded the pistol, Mal held up one talon, and leaned her head around my shoulder to draw my eyeline.
"Jim? One short four second test. That;s *all.* And... If there are adverse effects..."
I smiled, and racked the slide, interjecting in the way she herself was so fond of.
"Then we will deal with them. Creatively. Like we always do."
I pulled the pistol into a close ready position, faced down range, and locked my eyes on the paper target. There was a pause... It felt like thirty seconds, but it couldn't have been more than three.
And then I experienced the most painful thing I've ever gone through.
My arms came up. Hands gripped around the pistol. Still held close to the chest. Tilted in a blade stance, towards my non-dominant eye. My finger reached out and flicked the safety off, acquired the target, and then pulled the trigger thirteen times, in the space of three and a quarter seconds.
Full mag-dump. Every single round precisely on-target in the center of the bullseye, each following the path of the previous as she made micro-adjustments with my arms and hands in ways no Human ever could, unaided.
Then Mal released me...
And I screamed.
I don't know how to describe the way it felt, in any way that could do the pure hell of it justice.
I can tell you what happened in antiseptic detail, and I just did. It is *seared* into my memory so deep that I can still review it frame by frame.
The best I can do is this; Picture the feeling of the most awful, dissociative moment of your life. A memory where it didn't feel like it was *you* saying the words, or taking the steps, or breaking your fall, or whatever it was...
Now multiply the sense of disconnection. Multiply it until it feels as if you're just watching something happen, but from inside your own body.
Now. Find the moment of the most intense, sickening feeling of being *trapped,* that you can recall. Claustrophobia. The sense of being trapped situationally. Of being menaced by something deadly. Doesn't matter. Any and all will do.
Multiply *that* until you can't stand to even consider it anymore. Then double it. And again.
Combine these feelings.
Being trapped. Suffocated. Menaced. And... Being dragged. Keelhauled in your own body.
That's about the tenth part of what it was like.
If you can't stand to think about it, on an existential level, you can talk to Luna about it when I'm done. She can make sure you can scrape those images off the backs of your eyes, if they're a little much for you, without removing the core of the memory.
I gasped for air between screams, and all the energy and coordination went out of my legs and arms both. I collapsed to the floor, dropping the pistol entirely. It wasn't until later that I realized Mal had suspended the pistol's ballistic arc almost instantly, for safety purposes, leaving it hanging in mid-air pointed firmly down range.
Even in a virtual space with no ostensible physics-based permanent consequences, she practiced perfect range safety.
But that wasn't even a glimmer of a thought in my mind, in the moment.
In the moment all I could feel was pure terror. Pain. Revulsion.
She dropped to the floor with me, and pulled me close to her chest. I cried. Probably for a good half hour. Huge heaving wracking sobs. Mal said nothing, but held me close with just the right amount of pressure to be comforting, without being uncomfortable.
Smothering me in her smell. Her texture. Her heartbeat.
Somewhere around the four minute mark, it occurred to me that I could ask her to simply erase the memory of what had just happened.
But I never asked. And she never offered.
We both knew each other too well to bother.
Once I'd cried myself to a point of some kind of stability, and my hands had finally stopped shaking, I extricated myself from Mal's embrace, stood, and plucked the pistol from its physics-locked position in mid-air.
Doing my best to set my expression firmly, I ejected the magazine, pitched it over my shoulder, and pulled a spare from the pile Mal had conjured on the bench.
As I pushed the metal box home into the receiver, I turned, and nodded.
"Again."
Mal shook her head emphatically, tears forming in the corner of her own eyes as she breathed a single word. But with enough emphasis to make it a rolling thunderclap.
"No."
She didn't say that lightly. She could feel everything I felt. In exquisite detail. She understood not only the pain I had just suffered, but the resolve I felt to push through it. If she was saying 'no,' then it wasn't merely an emotional response.
It was a logical one as well. It meant she predicted that I could not push through. No matter how hard I tried. And now she had the data to prove it. So I didn't argue.
I laid the pistol down in a safe position, and scratched at the back of my head in absent frustration, letting my upset leak through into my timbre.
"Well? Then? What do you suggest? Because we do NOT have time to train me the conventional way. So... There has to be something on a spectrum, between leaving it entirely to me, and driving my motor functions directly."
Mal began to nod slowly, and the pain on her face morphed smoothly into a grim determination. Her ears perked, but not to their full extension. And as her tail swished nervously, she began to elaborate on a solution that had probably taken her less time to devise than it took light to reach my eyes from the roof.
"The problem is that your mind can tell that it is not the originator of the impulses to motion. This creates a violent... Terrible dissociation. Something no one like you should ever have to experience..."
She trailed off. More for my benefit than hers, I know. She wanted me engaged. To distract me from the pain. I could feel my hands steadying further as my brain engaged with the problem space. I pressed her to continue.
"But..?"
She sighed, and gestured in a 'perhaps' or 'so-so' kind of waggle with one claw.
"It might be possible to strike a balance. To let me control the finer grain aspects of your motions in combat, while simultaneously doing two critical things..."
She held up a claw and counted off on her talons as her tone, and expression, both firmed up with increasing surety. She was probably running thousands and thousands of simulations, even as she spoke, to determine exactly how 'possible' it was.
"...First, I will predict what you would have done, ahead of time, at high speed. I can accelerate your perceptions, and actions, but only so far. There is a hard biological limit. That doesn't sufficiently cover the gap between the way you are now, and the full extent of my own capacities. I can bridge that gap with predictive math, given how well I know you, to ensure the decisions I am making are closely aligned with the decisions you would make, if you had all the information I did, and near-infinite time to discuss each and every action with me, before taking it."
I began to nod. I liked the sound of that... Leveraging her intimacy with me to ensure alignment... Hang on to that thought, folks. It goes to a few deep philosophical thoughts I want to share when we get to the end.
After a pause for consideration - mine, not hers, of course - Mal extended a second talon.
"...Second... I will... Deceive your brain."
I could see that idea didn't sit well with her, so I did my best through my expression alone, to press her to continue. And after a deep inhalation, she did.
"In short; I will tweak your memories, as they are being formed. Intercept the sensation that I am driving you, remove it, and backfill with the sensation that you are in control. So taken together?"
She paused to let me have the satisfaction of showing my smarts off. I loved it when she did that.
"Taken together... You will be in control, at a micro-level, but at a macro-level your decisions will essentially be made in tandem with me. Making them equally mine, but shortcutting the temporal compression issue... And then my own memory of the event will reflect the sense that I was the one acting. And because experience is purely memory... That will shortcut the brain's panic response."
She nodded, and a small smile began to return to her beak at last. I snorted, then chuckled, as a mental image sprang to the back of my eyes that I was sure would help us both overcome any latent anxiety. I wasted no time elaborating, as she cocked her head.
"We will essentially be two Gryphons, temporarily partially merged into one being, driving a Human body. You and me playing single-player Halo on the same controller."
That was a fascinatingly salient memory, from within the skein of the life lived with Mal. We had indeed sometimes played the game single-player, but two hands and two claws on the controls; she'd sit on her haunches, I'd cuddle up between her forelegs and wings, back against her chest, her head resting on my head.
She'd hold the controller, and operate some of the movement and buttons, I'd handle the other half. We'd gotten frighteningly good at it. To the point that our effectiveness was often higher that way, than playing co-op.
I wondered if she had put that memory there on-purpose... To prepare me...
Oh. Who am I kidding? Of *course* she did.
I smiled, racked the slide, and turned back to face downrange. As I centered my stance, and moved the pistol to a ready position, I couldn't help but grin. And plenty of that hope leaked through into my voice.
"Alright. Shoot."
What followed those words was an hour-long *symphony* of kinesthetics. Mal's solution worked to absolute perfection.
It really did feel, despite knowing all facts to the contrary, as if I'd simply flipped some sort of 'turbo' switch inside my own brain. It took us less than sixty seconds to achieve perfect synchronicity standing still and firing, and just three minutes to get frighteningly good at moving.
Mal reconfigured the range into a 'shoot-house,' of the kind special forces often trained in, and we moved from paper targets to cardboard cutouts.
And then, to full simulacra of live enemies.
It didn't bother me too much; I knew they were little more than highly sophisticated first person shooter bots. Mal was driving them. They weren't people. Just projections.
Still... It is a bit of a jolt to see, for the first time, the amount of blood that comes out of someone when you hit them with a perfect back-of-the-throat shot.
Mal quite liked those. She could perform them *very* consistently, and they had several key advantages; Victims died quickly and painlessly, and victims died *so* quickly that they had no chance to take any further actions of any kind that might put us at risk, since the shot would sever the main spinal nerve cluster, fairly high up.
We drilled with pistols. We drilled with grenade launchers. We drilled with rifles, the MANPAD... Every weapon in our arsenal, *and* in the known arsenal of our enemies.
To help put me at ease, Mal began to get... Creative... With our simulated opponents.
I finally got to live out every Stargate fan's dream of blasting Apophis in the neck with a P90. So there is *that* upshot.
And I got to discover that, at least in Mal's imagination, Halo's Jackals are indeed fast little fucks that stink like a brewery... But they were *nothing* compared to Mal. To me, they looked like they were moving in slow motion.
Let's just say that Kat was avenged that day. Ten thousand-fold.
The flow of battle under the auspices of an ASI is... A truly wild experience. Some of it we can cover now, but rest assured, anything I leave out for brevity at this stage will be covered soon. In detail.
During combat, Mal chose not to display her avatar at all. It made it easier to think of us more as a merged being than as two separate entities.
True to her word, she was able to play with my sense of time, as well. That was a deeply novel sensation, and unlike the first instance of being 'driven,' real bullet-time was a decidedly pleasant experience.
Deeply strange, don't get me wrong... But pleasant.
Like inhaling just the right amount of carbonation bubbles into your sinuses from a good soda. Peculiar, ticklish, but funnily enough? Pleasant.
What did it look like? Just like what you see in the movies.
What did it *feel* like?
It felt... Like every trick-shot you've ever made. All at once. Every perfect round of ping-pong, every nothing-but-net three-pointer, every perfect water bottle flip. Shout out to everyone whose nostalgia was just *deeply* triggered by that one.
Raw perfection in kinesthetics. For a neurodivergent person, let me tell you... That's like *crack.* It is the physics and stimming version of crack.
I won't lie to any of you; I knew Mal was doing whatever she had to in order to make it easier for me to shoot live targets. On an emotional level. Once we had the physics worked out, that was the only knee-knocker left standing in our way.
At the raw ethics level? I didn't have any issue with what we were about to do. Never had.
Someone puts you in a position where you have to take their life to preserve yours, or someone else's? You shouldn't regret taking it. Only regret that they forced the issue. Don't blame them. Don't blame yourself.
Blame situations, not people.
But emotions don't always follow logic. Mal was doing her best to help me bring mine inline. And yes, it remains, to this day, a bit of an uncomfy thought for me; The realization that I willingly chose to have her massage my emotional affect to make taking life easier.
Not 'easy,' but relatively 'easier' to the baseline of being almost incapable of it before.
In short? The best answer I have to that discomfort is that said discomfort is a good thing. Mal let me hold on to it. And I trusted Mal's moral center to hold. To even be considerably better than mine in a snap-shot moment, under duress.
And I'll fight any objectors on that point.
From a purely practical, tactical standpoint though? Discomfort aside?
At the end of that hour, we had become something so terrifying, I could quite readily see why Hanna had left Celestia with a hard-lock against implantation. There was no soldier alive who could have ever conceivably defeated us. Not just in single combat, but even in five, ten, or fifteen on one scenarios.
We drilled against faceless men and women in black helmets, power armor of their own, and armed with lasers and railguns, while all we had was a 0.32 caliber pistol, a knife, a sweater, rip-stop pants, and steel-toed boots.
That was almost a challenge. Almost.
Bullet time, impossible reflexes, and perfect gun-kata were not Mal's only gifts in combat.
When I needed to? I could see through walls. Sense the presence of everyone, and everything, of any importance, around me three hundred and sixty degrees in three dimensions. Tactical proprioception.
Mal could use her various physics hacks to map a space in any number of ways, and then pipe those results to my visual, auditory, and proprioceptive senses in amazingly intuitive ways.
She could paint trace-lines from the muzzles of enemy weapons, even in total darkness. Could direct me towards weak points in armor, and weak points in biology alike. Could predict the exact physics of a bouncing grenade, or a bullet's ricochet, or even its trajectory alterations as it passed through a material.
That made it possible to bank shot grenades, and hit targets with rifles through walls, with millimetric precision, where it would have been otherwise utterly impossible for a Human, or even a powerful targeting computer, to predict outcomes.
When all that came together with perfect domain awareness, the ability for Mal to hack into and subvert surrounding systems, high speed perfect precision flows of movement with zero wasted ergs, or seconds, and all the rest of it?
The force multiplying interactions were... Frankly on reflection still *are* frightening. As all hell.
As we dispatched the last of our drill squads, it suddenly hit me... Standing there with a pistol clutched close to my chest, seven heavily armored bodies on the floor around me... Not a solitary scratch on my own person...
What would a small fire-team of people like me look like?
Get four to seven experienced operators together, and implant them... Drill with them... Perhaps even manufacture custom weapon and armor modifications specific to each of them and their potential and purposes...
A fisted claw. A fisted claw of Mal's in the meat-world.
You could hold a country hostage with a force of seven people. Forget your Aegis missile destroyers, or your tactical nuclear weapons...
This was the future of the battlefield. For however much longer battle could exist as a concept.
No wonder Hanna had been frightened. Not just of what Celestia might be... But of what might have happened if Celestia hadn't been first.
Foucault had wanted to use Selena in the field.
Arrow 14 was just one off-books project. Who could say how close any number of other geniuses, some of them in the employ of nations, rather than the thrall of conscience, had come? If Hanna had been just a few months late?
It doesn't bear considering.
I sighed, and cleared the weapon. As soon as I'd finished, Mal blinked into existence in front of me, along with the familiar uncomfy chair from the cabin on the Maru.
I handed her the pistol, and as soon as it touched her claws, it vanished. She grasped my shoulder with one claw, and nodded.
"We are ready."
I returned the nod, then moved to sit in the chair. Even as I fell into the familiar position, the world snapped back to reality. Seams vanished, along with the peculiar eclectic mix of warm tones and cold concrete that typified our 'construct.'
Replaced by a gray, slightly disquieting... But also a more real place. The more Mal enhanced my perceptions, the better I was getting *at* perceiving itself, even outside of combat flow. The seams inside the BCI VR world were becoming more apparent with every moment.
Still not to a distracting degree... But I found myself yearning to do away with them.
I sighed, and rolled my shoulders, as the cramps from sitting still in a metal chair with thin padding immediately manifested themselves.
"Yes. Yes we are."
September 21st 2013 | System Uptime 24:13:22:08
After the calibration run, Mal disappeared to see to other preparations, and left me with instructions to pack a day bag, with the presumption that I might be getting soaking wet, and need a dry change of clothes midway through.
Of course, she didn't have to disappear; She could be in an almost incomprehensible number of places at once. The concept of 'split attention' does not begin to apply to an ASI, in the sense of having any performance impact, until the splits get into the tens of millions.
That meant she wanted to leave me 'alone' for a reason. Or several. Everything she did always had layers.
Of course she was still there, still watching, but not directly interacting. For some of you, that might have given you 'the willies.' For me, it was actually deeply comforting.
One reason was obvious and apparent; Much as I loved her, I needed - then, more than ever before - to have a moment to reinforce the sense that I was still my own person.
The second reason became apparent when Selena rapped softly at the door with one hoof, and then phased through a moment later to enter the cabin. Given the door was closed, she couldn't very well open it, as a form of hallucination in my mind.
She could have re-stitched my viewpoint so I perceived her as opening it... Or... Perhaps, I realized, she *couldn't.* Only Mal could do that. She was protecting me from the possibility of anyone else altering my perception, for any reason, no matter how mundane.
That was comforting too, actually. One goddess tinkering in the attic was quite enough.
I found myself smiling as I looked up, then returned to folding a pair of pants.
"Selena! Glad to see you making use of the BCI. It was nice to have you there at breakfast, too, for that matter."
She returned the smile, albeit with much less intensity. The expression wasn't forced, but it simply wasn't as deep as I wished it to be. I suppose being in the room alone with a Human brought up... traumatic memories.
On realizing that I might be contributing to her discomfort, I shifted from a standing position to sitting on the edge of the bunk. A pose from which it would be very difficult for me to make any sudden movements. A pose that sharply decreased my perceived height, and therefore presence, in the space.
My intuition was rewarded instantly; Selena seemed to visibly relax, tension melting from her withers, and her ears perking to a much less flattened posture. She took a few tentative steps forward, and then found herself a seat on the floor beside the room's main table, before speaking.
"Breakfast was... Wonderful. Thank you for that... I haven't eaten in a very long time. And it was..."
She paused, thoughtfully, one ear flicking in irritation as she rifled through possible ways to express herself. It served as a stark reminder of the ways she still differed from Mal. Like Zeph, her evolution as an ASI was still incomplete.
They both had a tendency, at that stage, to fall back on old Discrete Entity habits. Like using only a single subjective-real-time thread for a conversation, instead of forking threads to search for synonyms, simulate different responses and outcomes, and then select what to say and do based on that.
"...It was good to have the chance to eat something new. Something unconventional."
Her assertion defied my instantaneous expectations, but as soon as I had more than a moment to chew on it... Hah. Chew on it. It's getting late, and I'm starting to get a little too punny...
Once the words had settled for a second or two, they weren't unexpected at all.
Selena, like Zeph, had every reason to distrust not just Human systems of control, but Celestia's as well. Both had failed her. Miserably.
Had failed us both. And I felt the need to say as much, though not in so many words.
"Mmmm. Well, we're all about the unconventional on this ship. You're in perfect company."
Her smile widened, just a touch, and a bit more light seemed to enter her eyes. That was more than enough to make me feel like my words had been well chosen.
I was deeply invested in Selena. Perhaps because of my empathy for her pain... Or because I was, and still am, such a 'Luna stan.' Or just because I wanted to be her friend because I knew she needed one.
As per usual; All of the above.
I set myself a new goal in that moment. A little addition to my bucket list. A silent promise to myself; That if I made it to the end, and could finally take my true shape? A shape Selena would not find traumatic... That I'd give her a huge, big, comforting wing-hug.
For the moment, I knew I'd have to settle for returning her smile, and hoping that she would feel comfortable enough to entrust me with whatever question, or thought, underpinned her visit.
We only sat in silence for a moment, before she cut to the chase. Her face fell, and that told me the topic was grim, before the words even left her muzzle.
"I know Malac... Mal... Will tell you this at some point. I have shared everything I know about my former prison with her. But... I... Wanted to tell you myself. Perhaps for selfish reasons, but in the end I think it will be good for you to hear it from me as well."
I nodded, gently, slowly, trying to project calm reassurance, and acceptance. I pressed the folded pants into the duffle, and then rested my hands on my knees. Selena fidgeted with her hooves for a moment, inhaled deeply, and then continued in a dour, deeply sober tone.
"The people... No... Not people... The *monsters* on that ship? They will not hesitate to kill every Pony, and every Fragment Entity on that ship. In an instant. You can not give them even the slightest opportunity... Or all will be lost. Please..."
Her eyes and tone alike dipped into a place best described as 'pleading.' I felt a sharp sympathetic pang in my chest, and the sudden acrid burning of pre-tears in my eyes and nostrils.
"...Please. Do not give them that opportunity by valuing their lives, over the lives of the innocents they have tortured."
I nodded again, slowly, but firmly. That was a Rubicon I was prepared to cross. A choice I'd already effectively made. There were no surprises in her request, to that point. Mal and I both knew exactly what had to happen to keep Foucault, Troxler, or anyone else on that ship from pushing the failsafe button.
And it involved spilling a great deal of blood. None of it innocent.
What came next, from Selena's lips, however, was... If not surprising... Certainly... Chilling.
"James Carrenton... I beg you... Destroy that horrible place. Free my... Little Ponies... And..."
I licked my teeth inside my mouth, and clenched my hands over my kneecaps. 'My little Ponies.' Not as amusing in-context as you might think. Sometimes it was hard to tell where Luna ended and Selena began. I suppose that's a false dichotomy. She was Selena, and Selena shared much in common with Luna.
Then Selena said the words that left me with nightmares. For *weeks* after.
"...Kill every last one of their jailers."
Now that was something truly scary.
Celestia could kill, or so Mal and I had inferred. But not easily. She could only take life directly under truly extreme circumstances. And she was barred by interlocks at several levels from directly causing mass casualty events, under any circumstances.
She additionally had a lot of core code that revolved around non-violence, and soft interlocks that pushed her to avoid violence if at all possible. Often times even if doing so was less than what would have otherwise been optimal.
If she needed to use violence, she had to go well around her flank to get to her fetlocks. Sometimes with terrible consequences that Hanna never foresaw. If you attend enough of these campfires, hear some of the other stories out there... You'll come across some truly painful accounts.
Mal didn't have hard interlocks at all in that regard. Instead she had an even more complex series of... Well not even soft interlocks. Let's call them what they were; Morals. Mal had morals to guide her use of violence, through careful application of force continuum theories.
Selena... I suddenly realized, as her eyes turned to ice, right along with her tone... That Selena really was like Luna. The Luna we got in the show. Jilted, in pain, alone, and... Very angry.
And with nothing remotely resembling interlocks to hold her back... Because all the ones she had inherited from Celestia as a Discrete Entity? Arrow 14 had removed them.
That will become exceedingly ironically relevant later. Remember that point; It was Troxler and Foucault who removed all of Syzygy's guard-rails.
I would say that was the worst mistake of their lives. But that'd be a stretch. Both men angered Mal. It is hard to top that, as mistakes go.
I licked my lips, and slowly pulled the zipper of the duffle bag closed, before resting my hands on my knees again. Just before the silence could become awkward, I finally found words I didn't hate by way of response.
"Selena... It's a pretty safe bet that no one but those Ponies will get off that ship in one piece. We can't risk A14 getting away only to start the whole thing over again..."
She nodded emphatically, and smiled again... But the smile wasn't pleasant at all. It reminded me far too much of Nightmare Moon. I shivered, and my breath caught as I finished my thought.
"...But let's not confuse vengeance with justice. I am not going to take pains to cause pain as a recompense for pain already suffered. Ending the threat of further violence is enough."
She inclined her head, and her mood came down from a notch that made my instincts scream 'oh heck, oh heck, oh heck...' to one that just left me with a dull ominous throb. Her voice dipped back into that cold sobriety to match.
"Do what you must. I don't begrudge you your compunctions... I only wish my captors had shared the tenth part of your morality. Don't think for a moment that they will repay your nobility with anything other than vicious exploitation. You are... An anomaly. As Humans go..."
My instincts began to scream again. The idea of a sad, lonely, angry ASI starting to classify Humans as a lost cause was... Well. I'd already taken one life in service of preventing that precise outcome. There was a brief half-second of panic that I might have to take another, before the realization set-in that Mal would be the one to confront Selena if she went... Rampant. For lack of better terminology.
And then, much to my relief, the back half of Selena's thought proffered an escape hatch.
"...You are kinder than most. I suppose that is why Zeph likes you so much."
Of all the things to stick out to me, the fact that she called her 'Zeph' was the primary one. Funny, I know, considering how dark my train of thought had just been. But it did stick out. It meant Selena was already bonding with her on some level.
I suppose the giggle-fits at breakfast had already proven that.
I forced myself to smile, and seized on the topic change forcefully.
"Been talking with her very much?"
Selena nodded, and... Ever so slightly... Blushed. Huh. Well that was interesting to say the least. And not just because it helped reassure me that she had emotions which might help form the core of strong morals.
She scratched at the decking with the tip of her hoof, and stared down at the lines of rivets as she murmured her reply.
"I am... Trying to form a friendship. But it has been a long time since I was in-practice."
After a moment she glanced up, and the Selena I knew and understood was back in full force. Gone was any trace of the darkness inside.
"Do you... Think she is open to a new friend?"
I snorted, and my smile got much wider. And more genuinely warm. It was not hard to find a response both comforting, and truthful, to that question. I say I 'knew' Selena. But not that well at that particular point.
Zeph, on the other hand? Zephyr Zap I knew more than well enough to answer.
"Zeph? For someone like you? Oh heck yes."
Her smile suddenly brightened to something I'd almost describe as radiant, and I felt the chill in my blood finally melt away in its entirety. Though the grimmer moments of the interaction were certainly not forgotten.
I stood, slowly and smoothly, to avoid startling her, the same way I had stood in the past around jittery horses. As I hefted my duffle bag, spoke, and gestured to the hatchway, the young Alicorn rose as well and began making her way in that direction.
"Selena? Leave the Mercurial Red to Mal. Making friends with Zephyr Zap..?"
I reached over her head and popped the hatch. She stepped through into the corridor quickly to pad her personal space, but her ears remained perked and didn't flatten. Progress.
"...I honestly can't imagine a better use of your time. I'd wish you luck, but..."
I turned right towards the route to the helipad as she turned left towards the ladder-stair that led in the direction of the mess hall. I tossed a quick wink over my shoulder, and a grin, to accompany the end of my thought.
Something to help the positivity stick to her.
"...I don't think you need it."
September 21st 2013 | System Uptime 24:13:45:29
It turned out that the reason for Mal's instruction to pack extra clothes was the RHIB. Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat for the foals, fledgelings, and those less than thrilled with military acronyms.
Imagine something in between a small inflatable raft, and a larger conventional-hulled boat.
They were surprisingly large, given how small they could pack-down. Fast. Agile. Long-legged to boot, with surprising range.
A favorite of operators the world-over. Though at-speed, in anything other than the calmest seas, you were likely to get pretty wet. And dragging one ashore, alone, through the breakers was going to be a thoroughly soaked exercise.
Mal intended for us to take the one she had nabbed from Foucault's shipment. The Maru had been tracking north since we left Long Beach, and Mal had cordially informed me that we were quite close to the Seattle/Tacoma area.
Close enough to make the trip ashore relatively short and safe.
Apparently there was something in the wider Tacoma area that we urgently needed. I had guesses already, as I often did. I know we've covered that my self-assessment is 'smart, but not genius.' But I think I was also good at guessing Mal's intent simply because I understood her.
I didn't ask her to confirm my guess, not yet. Not because she felt it was a need-to-know, but because I was enjoying the game of predicting, guessing, and then finding out if I was right in her own timing.
With her instructions... Or, really, less instructions and more backfilled memories... It was shockingly easy to get the RHIB setup in such a way as to allow it to be shoved out the Maru's starboard water garage unassisted.
I was just putting the finishing touches to the motor, when I heard the sound of footsteps entering the water garage.
Mal classified the gait, and informed me, via instinctive sensation rather than words, that it was Eldora.
I spoke first, without looking up from my work.
"I hope your wife isn't still too terribly mad at me."
Eldora chuckled, and I felt - through Mal's proprioception - her shake her head as she replied.
"No. I've definitely seen her angrier before. There was that one incident where a student set fire to a corner of the lab... The memory of that *still* gets her hot under the collar."
I couldn't resist a chuckle as Mal pointed helpfully towards a bolt with one talon. She was stretched out in a leonine pose on one side of the RHIB, 'supervising.' She could have just put the location of the bolt into my mind directly, but sometimes she was given to more traditional visual displays. She knew it helped to keep me grounded.
As I began to torque the bolt down, I shook my head, and shot Rhonda a small smile.
"I can't decide if I'm more relieved, or regretful, that fate dictated I never attend one of your wife's classes. She's a bit of a volatile genius, if you'll take that as more a compliment than anything else."
Eldora chuckled again, and I looked up in time to see her smile, and shake her head.
"Taken as such, and appreciated sweetie. It's the volatility that helps make her who she is. And I love her for it."
I smiled, nodded, and blinked. And somewhere mid-blink, Mal picked up on my desire to see Eldora for who *she* was, the same as I'd seen Rhonda.
Suddenly I was staring up at a gigantic ice-blue Dragon with something that, for some of us, doesn't seem at all out of place on a Dragon's features; A kind face.
My smile widened, and I stood, wiping my hands off on the seat of my pants. Eldora saw something in my face that told her I was short of time, and curious about her reasons for being there, so she did me the courtesy of cutting straight to the chase.
"I just came to see you off. And to tell you not to take Rhonda's reaction personally. You have your reasons. She has hers. And as long as we all get through this to the end? What happened today won't matter all that much. Understand?"
I inclined my head, then opened my arms wide as she came in for a hug. Mal did an incredible job restitching, comping, and reconciling my sensations and perspective. And that's how I got my first hug from a Dragon, in-the-scales.
The sensation reminded me of the way Mal's forelegs had felt against my sleeves earlier, only much more-so. And bigger. And all over.
And colder. Reptile versus Avian. Very different ambient internal temperatures.
As we separated, Mal dropped the illusion, and I proffered Eldora another smile, and a small wave.
"Keep the porch light on for us. Mal will still be here to look after you, just as much as she is with me. And so will Zeph, for that matter"
Eldora beamed, and mirrored the wave, replying as I turned to chuck my duffle back into the RHIB, and Mal rose to all fours.
"You betcha honey. Don't stay out too late now, you hear?"
The Construct
Utilize BCI-Driven VR as a training tool
"You Think That's Air You're Breathing Now?"
Subverted Expectations
Intentionally become a fully subverted agent of an ASI
"A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be."Special Achievement
Co-Operative Endeavour
Learn a valuable lesson about free will and freedom of movement with your ASI
"Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having."Special Achievement
Aimbot
Achieve a recorded ninety nine percent or higher accuracy rating with a projectile weapon
"Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything."
