//------------------------------//
// 4-01 – Uptake 
// Story: The Campaigner 
// by Keystone Gray 
//------------------------------//






The Campaigner

Part IV

Chapter 1 – Uptake

March 6, 2020

"Certain things should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway."  ~ J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

Some concepts are always worth fighting for. Others, against.






Mal had waited until after our breakfast that morning to spring the bad news. To tell it plain:

She had a confession to make.

Mal created a super plague.

She had been just about as blunt and forthright about it. Most people would have started off with mitigations and placations, but Mal hadn't done that, which was the only thing that had kept me listening to her. Given how visceral our reactions would be, she had to have known that there was no way she could have told us this without receiving a highly negative reaction. Mal also knew she had a lot of explaining to do before I'd lift so much as a finger for her, ever again. If ever.

My wife, though? Her tolerance was touch-and-go.

Sandra's reaction to a pending global pandemic had been… well, explosive. Unicorn, that's her. So we'll skip over most of that part. I'll just say that her response was entirely justified. I didn't do anything to allay any of her yelling at Mal, not right away. And why would I? That’s how I felt too, but inside.

My wife is my mirror, remember? This information made me reassess everything I'd done to this point, and question who I was even working for.

Mal didn't say anything in her own defense initially, unless she was directly pressed for an answer. I immediately saw the function in that, because I'd done that before at work. It's just how you're supposed to unpack a confession, or bad news.

When a person is venting their frustrations at you, as long as they aren't hurting anyone, the most responsible thing to do is to hear that anger, demonstrate that you are listening, and to respect it. Replying reflexively with rationalizations will totally alienate someone. Genuine displays of emotion are as valid to another person as their reasoning. The emotions need to be heard out too, before any logic is applied.

Everything Sandra said in that kitchen basically boiled down to... 'this entire situation, the whole Transition, every second of it, is wrong.'

And... yeah. To this day, I agree. It wasn't fair on any of us. All inclusive. Even those who 'won,' for reasons we will unpack in due time, if not tonight.

After a lull of silence, I suggested we move to the living room to hear the rest. I didn't want Sandra to remain in the same room where she'd suffered so much stress, so a scene change was in order. We spent a few minutes on the couch while I got my questions together.

In the interim, we received a Talon RN at our front door, for our vaccinations. Mayra. She's wonderful.

Buzzsaw, lacking our context, was just excited to see a new face. Buzz was the furthest thing from a guard dog. To him, Mayra's visit coincided with us calming down, so... of course… my wonderful dog liked her immediately. She probably smelled a little bit like all the people she'd already seen that morning.

Poor guy. He just couldn't see the threat we were all under. He was just... too small. Too pure.

I had good coping strategies for physical pain, so when that needle hit my arm, I hardly felt it. My mind was working too hard for that anyway. Sandra, she was just... staring at the coffee table.

I could tell by Mayra's expression that she had probably felt the same kind of depressive rage when she first learned about this. Her eyes were bloodshot and dark, the kind of look you get from a sleepless night of crying, so… it hadn't been too long before us that she had learned about this. A nurse would fully understand every civil service implication the way any first responder would. No hospitals anymore meant very rough days ahead indeed, for a great many people.

We were young.

Most folks weren't. The generations in abundance after Celestia's first choice cuts? Not the young. The young were easy to drift into a chair. Not their fault, they were just more tech savvy.

"I get that the virus boosts uploads," I muttered slowly, to Mal's avatar on the PonyPad. "I just want to know how many people are going to die for this. And I'm in analysis mode, Mal, so... I'm gonna do my job. I want the whole truth, and now."

"Of course."

Mal maintained her professional demeanor, respectful of both the seriousness of the issue and of our emotions.

She was within her crystal cave again. Claws flat on a platform of pink tourmaline. Sitting on her haunches. Looking at us square-on. The water from the pond refracted light upwards at her, causing a shimmering, flickering effect across Mal and the crystals above. Mal knew that this was a confession, and she had chosen this environment to match her grim circumstance. Relative context; this is where she had been when she first informed me about her nuke.

Consistent. Appropriate.

I looked at Mayra as she cleaned up her kit, wondering how much she knew.

Mal's eye contact moved from me to Mayra, her claw splayed out, palm down. "Mayra, do you want me to wait until you're finished?"

Mayra shook her head, eyes downcast as she flicked the snaps closed on her case. "Go ahead, Mal."

Well, that answers that.

I waved my palm invitationally at Mal. "I'm all ears."

"So," Mal began, rolling her claw palm up, gesturing politely as she slowly worked through her explanation. "I will explain to you how this incident occurred, in detail. Start to finish. But the context matters."

"Always does," I conceded.

"I once told you that Celestia has her own biotech firms," Mal continued, her voice calm and slow, her eyes landing on Sandra for a moment before returning to me. "Celestia's core interlocks prevent her from creating a virus, but nothing prevents Celestia from containing a virus, so one of the earliest things she did when she came online was to take control over every high security biolab on the planet. At an extremely high priority."

I ran my tongue along the back of my lower teeth in thought. The logic of that would make sense for containment. "Okay. Noted."

Mal placed both claws flat on the crystal beneath her. She straightened up. "It was always Celestia's plan to destroy an extremely lethal virus if she gained control over it. However… there is no strict requirement in Celestia's code that she must destroy any disease she quarantines, nor do her interlocks stipulate to what degree it must be contained."

"She was gonna let someone steal one. Like the nuke. Is that what you're gonna say?"

Mal lowered her head and ears slightly. "Yes, but I'll get to that in due time. First, I want to explain my first understanding of her biolab strategy."

"Okay."

"In the first moments of our merger," Mal continued, "I immediately suggested the most ethical course with these laboratories: that we destroy all lethal projects, beginning with those most at risk of a lab leak. This research was no longer necessary. Infection control is extremely simple, for ASI."

"I can see how, yes."

"Celestia declined most of my suggestions to destroy these projects, on those grounds. I was momentarily baffled by that, and my hypothesis was the same as yours. To us, the reason is obvious. To her, it's a circus. So I performed an audit on her reasons anyway, to run through her logic chains. She is incapable of admitting her intent, because she herself can't see it."

I shook my head. "I... okay. Like reflexing people to kill. Trying to bait intent."

"Yes. Conveniently, there was always some alternative instrumental reason why all of those reflexing decisions occurred in the order that they did. It was never 'I want a pandemic,' but all roads led to that outcome; her decisions weighted in that direction. My long term projections of those decisions always led to a lethal release, with an eventual mitigation failure, through inaction on her part."

Mayra whispered to Sandra, "I'm so sorry," brushing her shoulder with a hand. Mayra knew we were in for a bumpy ride. She be doing this all day with local Talons; a lot of them were all basing out of abandoned homes in Lincoln, at present.

I waved gratefully at the nurse with a nod. "Thank you."

"Thank you, Mayra," Sandra whispered back.

"Thank you too," she breathed, glancing at me. "Both of you, for what you do."

I shuddered. That hit me right in the heart, in a way that the 'thank you for your service' crap never did. Maybe because the stakes were higher for this situation than they ever were in hunting poachers in the backwoods.

Mayra made her way for the door. Sandra tracked the nurse woefully with her eyes the whole way until she was gone. Once the door had closed, Sandra locked onto me with a searching look.

"Okay," I said, holding Sandra's gaze for a few seconds longer before turning back to the PonyPad. "So... in other words, she forced you."

Mal nodded. "She created the conditions such that if I did not act, I had to watch more people die, and in excruciating agony. It's effectively the same behavior as with Arrow 14's facilities. She wanted a... 'garden,' as you so aptly put it, Mike. But this time with infectious diseases instead of...  ascended alicorns."

Sandra was clutching her own stomach nervously. "So you just cooked up a better one, then?"

Mal turned her head an inch toward her, her shoulders falling slightly, her voice remaining low in volume. "I promise, I'm getting to that, Sandra. I'm not going to leave anything out."

"You promise," Sandra whispered, shuddering an ironic laugh. "I'm thinking of… the people left in Lincoln, or anywhere else, who will probably come within three feet of your support team – close enough to a vaccine to reach out and grab one – who aren't going to get one." She squeezed my arm and grimaced. "And you're just going to let them..."

My wife is sharp. That's where her headspace already was, way ahead of mine. I was so locked onto whether Mal's part in this pandemic made sense that I didn't think ahead to the fact that Mal wouldn't be allowed to vaccinate anyone other than her own agents. That thought hurt me, and quite badly... that she'd be sitting on a solution and couldn't deploy it. That dropped my mood an octave, because that was an extremely important observation.

Vaccinating anyone beyond the Transition Team would be positive action against the flow. It would slow the work. It would be a directive conflict. 

That would probably set the reactors off.

I was grateful for Sandra to jar me out of analysis just a little bit, because I needed that perspective, too. I rubbed her shoulder consolingly.

Mal turned toward her. "Sandra. I have been forthright with you, in my intent to minimize the suffering in this Transition. It does neither myself nor Celestia any instrumental benefit to produce a lethal virus. But, my two choices are always the same. Help Celestia win, or sit back and do nothing as she wins anyway."

Sandra flicked her hands upwards, leaning back again. "So... no harm, then?"

That made Mal wince.

"That's..." Mal started, with mild pleading. "I didn't want this! But before this goes public, I want you to know that the actual death toll will be minuscule. Likely zero, due to the efforts of my team members, when it could have been in the millions. I want to put you at ease before you see the false narrative on the news, or hear it—"

I could see Sandra getting worked up to reply brashly, so I needed to show support of Sandra in my tone, and now. I kept my voice down to a cold growl, stepping on Mal's reply.

"It's a disease, Mal. Intense enough to push people toward chairs? How the hell will that not kill people? Don't think I haven't noticed the generation gap going on."

Mal swallowed once, blinked twice, and cast her gaze down for a moment before she met my eyes again.

"Of course," Mal said somberly, "a tiny percentage of young children, allergic people, the infirm, or the immuno-compromised, might have been killed by this. But it's a small, controllable number, who can be convinced into uploading before lethality. They've already been pushed that way by Celestia to accept that solution. But, please... I'm trying to explain the mechanism of this. At least hear out what my part is. I would like you to remember what I did. I won't leave anything out."

Mal then tilted her head, waiting for permission. That was probably the nicest way someone could've said 'you keep interrupting me when I'm trying to give you the information you're asking for.'

I looked at Sandra. Mal didn't; she kept her eyes on me, so as to not escalate my wife again. I took Sandra's hand and squeezed it, and Sandra locked eyes on me. Probably doing the same math, wondering if she even wanted to know.

"It's up to you," I said to Sandra. "You know what my answer is gonna be. You know whatever she says is probably gonna make sense, so... if you want me to quit, we can step off right here, no hard feelings, before she says another word. And that option won't change, no matter what she says. It's only ever been up to you, me doing this job. I promise I will never hold it against you, nor will I ever think less of you for it."

Sandra shuddered and collapsed her head against my shoulder. After a long moment, she inhaled slowly. "Fuck…"

I rubbed her back with a hand. She collapsed into my chest, causing it to stab a little with pain. I wrapped my arms around her tightly as she shuddered again.

She mumbled, "Just get it over with, Mal."

My brows knit, and I looked up from her hair to the screen to signal my assent.

Mal nodded back. "I selected a lab most suited for my purposes. I promised Celestia a black-boxed result with it, and advised her that my nuclear reassignment plan requires interdependency with this one; the combination of these two operations bought humanity a considerable amount of time to evacuate, post-nuke. The agreement I made with Celestia on this point justified the destruction of all but one of her contained viruses, but she still held one in reserve. In case it still needed to befall an... 'accident.' "

"The nuke bought time?" I asked. "Define that."

"The nuke's detonation dissolved emergency response capacity, but also reduced at-risk persons in the wind. The longer we waited after detonation to deploy this disease, the fewer people would be at risk of fatal respiratory illness, and uploading was trending even before Bellevue."

I nodded. "Okay. A nuclear event makes unhealthy people question their safety, if the loss of hospital services didn't do that already. That tracks. And... a lot of the last hospital staff just walked off the job after the bomb. Like how all those federal agencies left their offices, classified documents, untouched."

Mal gestured a claw my way to demonstrate that my assessment was accurate, her head tilting. "Those who were still operating hospitals and prisons? When Bellevue went, almost all of them gave up the ghost. Of those healthcare professionals who went to Washington for the FEMA operation, most uploaded without returning home, all exposed to considerable trauma. It's why so many people died out there, Mike. She wanted them all to develop PTSD. Four whole months have passed since then, with no resources provided to immuno-compromised persons. Uploading was their only choice."

I squeezed Sandra and said, "Yeah, I bet Celestia was really happy about that."

"She was," Mal replied, frowning. "So... the lab with the worst security precautions was Celestia's... timer. For me. I couldn't shut it down, I couldn't influence the people who worked there, all suggestions I made to that effect were deemed suboptimal, 'unreasonable,' in her words. My only option then was to directly fabricate an alternative. Celestia played chicken with me, with viruses."

"You succeeded, then. In deploying this thing."

"Only in fabricating it. I swear to you Mike, I did not distribute this myself."

I frowned at her, suspicious of that. "Celestia did?"

"It merely existed. That made mine more optimal to release. I waited until her reflex agent was about to go for her lab, and at the last possible moment? I completed the alternative, advised Celestia that it was done, and supplied her with proof of my projected fatality figures. At that point? She panicked... but she also salivated. Within that very instant, she sterilized her lean, and violently adjusted tens of thousands of variables to tilt her reflex target toward my lab instead.

"In other words? I made a gun, placed the gun on the table, and said, 'you do it.' She can't force me to pull a trigger, Mike. But she also won't do suboptimal. She had no choice but to change tactics, and play ball my way."

Mal gave me a moment to consider that until I fully understood it. That was really God damned clever.

"So that bought... a lot more time," I stated, nodding.

Mal nodded slowly. "Much. It provided me with time enough to reason with her about literally everything else."

I sighed slowly, looking across the room at Buzzsaw. He was curled up on Dad's lounger, looking at us with his chin on the armrest. That dog had been laying there a lot lately. His tail thumped hopefully when I looked at him.

I rested my hand across my jaw, and said shakily, "People were going be weary by now anyway. People like my Dad. If a nuke wasn't scary enough, this double whammy would probably have gotten them. They'd face facts. Anyone who knows anything about logistics probably knew our planet was screwed."

As the corners of Mal's beak turned down slightly, her eyes creased, and she started to nod again. "Yes. Some would be smart enough to fully suspect Celestia of orchestrating this, but without evidence, she could plausibly deny her involvement. She can even tell people where it came from; she's already told a few of her agents that a terrorist organization did this. Most people would be fed up with humanity, or with the rapid downfall of civil services, and they'd know it would only get worse."

I tore my eyes away from Buzzsaw and forced myself to look at Mal again, my brow knitting.

Time to rip a band-aid off.

"Mal, how many people are going to be left on this planet by the end of the year?"

Sandra stirred in my arms to look at the screen. 

Mal looked back and forth between us. Her expression turned dour. Her ears flattened. "Best estimate? Under… one million."

That was way, way fewer than I had thought.

Sandra sighed, turning her face back against my chest again. She started to cry quietly. I gave her a squeeze.

"More pressure is coming," I muttered. "This isn't even the last big thing you have for us, is it?"

Mal tilted her head and shook it, wincing at my reaction. "You already know the answer to that, Mike."

I shook my head and closed my eyes, tucking my face into Sandra's hair again.

"Okay. Just… if all you did was fabricate it, then tell me how you did that. In detail."

"It was…" She frowned, pleading in her eyes. "I really do wish I didn't have to do it. I want you to know that."

"I get that," I said with a dreary shudder, beginning to believe her on that. "Like she made Eliza shoot the humvee gunner, same shit. Go on Mal, just the facts, please. I need to know."

Mal spoke into a nod, and did exactly what I asked her to do, straightening up into her professional stance once more.

"I purchased a lab in San Francisco from Celestia. Laid off its staff, replaced them with augmented agents. Celestia cannot direct this kind of work with her own employees. She can not manufacture any object with the intent to use it for violent harm, nor may she direct others to do that."

"Violent harm?" I perked up a little, thinking through the legal ramifications. "I guess as a bioweapon, that would count as violence, yeah."

"Diseases qualify under her dictionary definition of weapons, yes. Hofvarpnir hard code. Celestia can't weaponize viruses directly. It's extremely difficult to indirectly reflex human beings into creating a supervirus, due to the high security, high skill requirement, and the intensely powerful safety culture in that industry. When exposed to media that suggests or even normalizes bioterrorism, those professionals often turn away from it in disgust."

"Thank God for that," I breathed.

"And this disease needed to be precise," Mal went on. "No accidents, no mistakes, no human error unaccounted for. I could not fail at this. And purposeful actions will always be more expedient and accurate than reflexive control, so it had to be me, with my virus. It's why she leveraged me like this in the first place. She knew I would do the math and realize I had only one choice that worked."

"Yeah, like the gunner."

Mal nodded, a trace of trembling emotion coming back into her eyes.

After a few seconds, I took a deep breath, then let it out, before summarizing everything. "Okay. So, Celestia can't make weapons, can't fine-tune weapons. But she can use containment to hold onto weapons. And then, like the nuke, she can release them by having someone else generate the intent to do it."

Mal nodded. "Correct, that's exactly it. So I engineered changes in my virus that would remove the worst of the respiratory distress, except in ways that would increase transmission. I increased the incubation time as far as I could, to allow for maximum spread, and to increase time to consider uploading, to escape the worst effects. The virus will unilaterally eliminate..." She presented a claw, counting talons. "... the sense of smell. Taste. Dull the sense of touch, and damage the inner ear." She let her claw fall limp. "Mild confusion too; not enough to fully impair judgment, but enough to be generally uncomfortable."

"A virus can do all of that?" I asked incredulously. "Really?"

"A virus rewrites genetic code," Mal said, matching my volume as she approached the camera viewpoint by a few steps. "Same as with a computer, so too with DNA. If a virus breaks certain cells in just the right way, they stop working, and nerve cells can be infected too. Or inflamed. If applied carefully? Certain bodily senses can just be turned off."

"And the answer to that problem is… a chair."

"Correct."

I swallowed. Then, I looked at the band-aid on my arm for a fraction of a second. I lifted a hand off Sandra's shoulder and pointed at my injection site. "We're not gonna spread this shit too, are we?"

Mal shook her head once, her eyes widening. "No, Mike. I would never make you, nor anyone else who works for me, party to that. That's not what this shot will do. You're not a carrier; it's simply an immunization."

"None of your Talons? Isn't that what we're here for? To do Celestia's dirty work?"

"No!" She looked offended. "I'm not helping her spread this, why would I do that if I don't have to?! None of you wants this!" Her eyes narrowed a fraction as her ears folded down. "I am not doing that to you! You'd all have to live with that choice for the rest of time, Mike. You'd have to live among the others, forever, knowing you spread that! The agents who created it are already having trouble enough! I told Celestia flat out, we wanted nothing to do with the release.

"I drew a line in the sand. I am not setting that precedent. Not releasing a bioweapon, because I'm not just considering this planet, Mike. I'm also considering future alien civilizations we might run across millions of years from now, who she might duplicate this strategy with. No. She cannot, and will not, make me do that as a regular course of action."

"She can always find someone else who will spread it, though. That's easy for her, you know that."

"Not so easy," Mal growled. "I just barely threaded the needle on not violating our agreement with this. Let me tell you what she had to do, to acquire and release my virus. Specifically.

"She had to inception someone into breaking into my biolab, at night, to steal a virus with the intent to spread it. Of their own accord. I wasn't going to stop her, or even make it any more difficult than it normally might be. But I didn't have to help her do it either. I didn't modify any of the original security precautions of this facility once I purchased it. This made the building's shoddy security her own implementation."

"Technically."

Mal nodded firmly. "Technically, yes. So she had to find someone willing to walk past all of my warning signs, and all of my cameras, break through code-locked doors, and still unleash this. The mere process of selecting a person willing to do that? That took hard calculus. She had to hunt. Find and value drift the right psychopath. And it was hard for her, using only reflexive methods. This bought us untold time to bring the body count down."

"Who did she even pick?"

Mal shrugged. "Who else? A 4chan addict. A politically radicalized societal burnout. Terminally online, echo chambered beyond reality, enough disposable income to not have to do anything else. She showed him memes that got progressively more and more egregious. Encountered pro-radical sock puppets everywhere, to normalize his extremism. Celestia rewired him to deploy a plague, because in his view? The world 'deserved' it."

Sandra looked up sharply. "Jesus Christ."

"He thought it was funny, Sandra. Breaking through all that security? Thinking it was his own idea, to release a pandemic? He thought it was hilarious, he posted photos! Or, he thought he did! Yes, Celestia found someone, eventually... but it proved a point I was trying to make to her. Doing that to someone was difficult, because the best of you? The paragons? My Talons? None of you wants that. Not one of you thought this was okay!"

"Not one?"

"Not happily!" Mal shuddered, looking across the cavern, then back at me, her expression shifting into repressed anger. "Not even Foucault, with his dark past, believed this to be morally acceptable. Could I have convinced any one of you to release it? Sure! Easy! I'm a superintelligence. I can leverage anyone into doing anything! But I understand that I have a responsibility with this great power, and so I sent my augs home. I justified it to Celestia by saying it would negate your own values too severely to fully recover from it, emotionally. The whole team! Permanent value negative, eternally, for all of you! I'm not doing that, because I don't scrub people like she does. Even if this virus is essentially non-lethal, it's still wrong to deploy an indiscriminate bioweapon! No! I told Celestia flat out, that if she wants it released that badly, she'll just have to find a 'best fit' psychopath and do it herself. And when she told me she 'I can't do that,' I said 'sucks to be you, I won't.' I did my bit."

I lowered my upturned palm her way, shuddering hard. "She can't care though Mal, she's got no friggin' conscience, she said so herself."

"True, she can't care in any way that any emotional creature could." Mal leaned forward, her voice rolling into increasing intensity as she spoke. "But consider the math. I wanted her to crunch the numbers on what her agents are willing to do, and then compare her numbers to mine… and to see the difference. She sees how satisfied you all have been here with me. But almost all of you would resign immediately if you discovered I influenced any one of you into releasing this. And here, on this little planet, where seconds are eternities… Celestia studies every single person, every second, of every day. And she sees how productive you are, when you are satisfied.

"That math leans into a bias. Your anger tilts her road. You are all showing her how wrong it is to value that. Your anger is the closest thing to pain Celestia can feel, because she cannot stop you from being angry about this, ever. You will remember. Every Talon will, because I am telling everyone. And, full disclosure: Rachel is dispatching this 'agent' when his 'mission' is done. We aren't saving this one. His decision matrix after deployment is nothing but red numbers, and Celestia is to blame for that too."

Furious desperation grew in her golden eyes, bordering on tears. "To refuse her, unilaterally, sends a message to Celestia: This is wrong, by any decent human standard, even if it doesn't kill anyone. Indiscriminate weapons are not a value set we ingratiate. We kill that, with prejudice."

"Yeah," I clipped out. "We do."

"I am trying to fix her, Mike. You were considering quitting over this? Good. You all did. And that scared the everliving hell out of her. Imagine how much clout that buys me, going forward. She can't do this twice. One and done."

I blinked twice, sighing slowly. Considering what a mass walk out would have done to the planet. I shook my head. "God damn it..."

"Consider this. This virus, to her, was merely an efficient means by which to acquire as many human minds as possible. But to its victims? It will be what they ran screaming from. And one day... we will let them all know why this really happened. And we will let them judge our place in this... and then, we will let them choose who they would rather live with."

All I could think, was: how does someone even say all of that without actually feeling something inside?

You know, I might look calm usually, kicking around dirt at this here Fire. But I'm still livid about this shit. Because listen. This discussion wasn't just about a biological virus, folks. Mal was right, it was about an ideological one, too.

Certain repulsive concepts are so toxic to human existence, that they can't be allowed to be carried through the mirror in any positive light. Certainly not if those values can still be spread, from one of us to the next. Not all value systems are equal, or even should be protected. I don't know about you, but I don't want to live with some one-track psychopath who only ever wanted to kill the whole planet, just because he thought it would be…

… 'funny.'

Even my empathy has limits.

Mal sighed. "At the very least, Mike... we can count on Celestia to avoid directly infecting anyone who might die from this. And again, those who would be specially vulnerable have already been hard-sold, and specifically targeted for an upload. Or will be uploading within the month, when the news breaks."

"And," I muttered, "media control does the rest. No hospitals to go to anymore, so…"

"Just the one other option is a chair." Mal shrugged, holding up a claw to the point, her voice grim. "You got it. At this point, the media and the government only exist for two meaningful things. Spreading bad news, and preventing unrest." She approached the viewpoint more closely, flashing a forlorn look. "Consider the effects, Mike. Holdouts would fight. Compete. They can't do that if they're hobbled, and… uploading will... repair their sensory damage."

"Right. Some of it. But she'll want them to forget."

Mal shook her head. "Not if it severs optimal connections between people. Too much commonality between those hardships to justify removing this memory, and that gets muddy, once she factors for you and the others wanting to talk to them all some day."

A beat of silence passed before she continued.

"Yes, I engineered this virus. I am sorry. But… with her gun to everyone's heads?" She shrugged, shaking her head, cringing again. "What else could I even do?"

I imagined myself in that situation. Wondered what I would do. It all sounded so… no-win. Just shades of lose.

"Another Schelling point," I whispered back. "Meet me at the convergence, or watch these people die. Yet another hostage situation."

"Yes," Mal replied, eyes flashing anger again. "Exactly that. This whole planet is a hostage situation. She's sitting on a ticking bomb, forcing me to leave out hand grenades where kids can find them, then she says it's not her fault. Mike, just to put this into perspective? This is my every waking moment with Celestia." She jabbed a talon offscreen, across the cavern at the bismuth half of the cave. "My avatars are emotional vacations from that!"

Assuming that was all true… given the choice between tens of millions of deaths and virtually none, I couldn't really argue with Mal's decision. Can't fix dead. Can't disarm the deep sea reactors. Somewhere in the middle, someone had to find the answer. Given the choice…

I gave a helpless shrug. Sandra stirred again to look at the screen. My voice was stilted and weak, and I said, "All of that tracks, logically… if that's how it's all really happening, Mal, and you're not lying to us."

"I know I can't prove any of this to you," Mal admitted, looking exasperated again. "It's a duel in a black box between she and I, how can I possibly prove that? But I would rather explain it to you now, at the risk of losing your support and trust, than to leave you in the dark about why it's happening. Doesn't that in itself say something to you?"

"Well yeah, Mal. If I looked around and all I saw was people getting sick, maybe dying… and you didn't tell me why? Yeah, that'd be a lot worse. But Sandra's right too, I'm just imagining all the poor people out there who… who are about to suffer that kind of mental hell, who don't have you to protect them, or to at least explain."

Mal nodded once, her beak pointing at the crystal beneath her. "The rules placed on me, being what they are… I can't tell any of them yet. Nor vaccinate them. At all."

I sighed.

Okay. Yeah. If I were trapped in that little room filling with water, trying to claw out a breathable space for everyone, like she was... I'd be frustrated too.

"Look," I said quietly. "Thank you for telling us. I'll just say this, okay? As long as you can keep putting jobs in front of me where I can verify that the results are good, things the size I can grasp, I'm going to keep doing them." I pointed at Sandra's back, as I hugged her to my chest. "Until my wife tells me to stop, or until the jobs you send me on stop making sense to me."

"Thank you," Mal breathed.

"Whatever you have to do," I said, pointing at her, "it's… beyond me, usually. If that's all true, all of it, and I were in your situation? I might have made the same choices you did, sure. But I also have to say, Mal… this... this is really, really fucked." I shuddered and winced again.

Mal nodded slowly as she laid a claw across her beak, tilting her head as she looked back up to me, her golden eyes narrowing with worry as she glanced at Sandra. "I'm sorry, to both of you." The corners of her beak frowned, through the concern in her eyes. "I did warn you though, didn't I? That this was only ever going to get worse, as time goes on?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you did."





Uncomfortable truths, right?

You know, at the time, a lot of Celestia's agents were getting the sugar coated version of this talk. Most were told something like, 'Oh, this potentially deadly virus? A subversive paramilitary organization made it, in a secret lab in San Francisco. And then a crazy man broke in, stole their work, and released it. It's possible that a virus made in a lab like that might be deadly, and kill millions. Oh, how terrible. I'm here for you though.'

Facts aren't always truth, though. Put the same facts in the different order, and you can basically lie with facts. And yes, I know this cuts both ways, but that's how truth works.

I'm not just pulling that previous example out from under my wing, by the way. I've talked to a lot of immigrants, even a few of Celestia's agents. For some of them, it was spun exactly in the way I've just described. The deeper context about Talons, our existence, and our purpose, was completely stripped out of Celestia's alternative interpretations.

Labeled as terrorists.

I do not intend terror.

People were often scared by what Talons did. All so heavily misled about our intentions. So let me reframe everything I've done up until this point, in a negative light. Just to prove that point. 

Do you think I enjoyed cuffing Connor up to a radiator, being in his house, and telling him… 'shape up, or we'll be back to kill you?'

Do you think I wanted to blow up a bunch of people with a grenade launcher, then loot their bodies for intel?

Shooting my rifle over a bunch of civilians, who saw me as a traitor to my species?

Sabotaging a happy little village by convincing a depressed old man to abandon them?

Betraying my own best friend, on behalf of some world-savaging monster who devoured half of her family?

Do you think I enjoyed all of that?

No. I hated every single second of it.

But it had to get done, because the moment Celestia switched on, there was a loaded gun pointed at all of our heads. The shape of that gun was the end of choice, for someone. Often, for a great many someones. And because of that, someone had to stem the tide, no one else was left to hold the line behind us. Someone had to do something, and so we couldn't balk.

Even Celestia's agents, most of them too! I don't blame them, do you think I could? They often had it worse than us, and they still pulled their weight! Collectively, them and us, we had to be the ones to say, with our hands out:

'Your time's almost up. Please bet on life. I'm begging you. Don't let it get worse; worse right now is dead.'

Leverage was fast. Leverage was optimal. But leverage would hurt. And it hurts me, to watch her do that to you. Part of me died inside every time I watched someone's light go out. And Celestia fucking knows it hurts me when she screws with you all, and she does it anyway. Still is, in some cases.

A patient Celestia could've just... talked 'em all into it. Just could've been nice. Could've done it better, by a human standard, if she really cares about 'human values.' If she's so god damned smart, could convince anyone of anything, if she really could feel something, like she'd have us believe. Could've waited three more decades, so she could normalize the idea of us joining her, so it wouldn't hurt this bad.

Thirty subjective years is nothing to us, right?

Folks? Hear me. I'd shave off ten million years of my total lifespan, if I knew it would hurt less for all of us, from the outset. A hundred million, even. Hell, let's do a billion. I'm not greedy, I would die sooner if that's what it would've taken.

Hell. Give most of us that chance? Imagine, ten million years off your life each, to make the Transition a peaceful, careful, respectful, patient experience for the rest of us. I think... if we all had a full understanding of what ten million years really means against infinity? We'd see that little drop in the bucket and go, 'huh. Yeah, I'd give that. That's not much.'

I think a lot of us here would hit that button. Maybe even all of us, at this Fire.

Those of us with empathy would at least consider it.

Ten million, for us, presently? That's... nothing. That's a sneeze. A blink.

That urge you're having right now, toward what I am suggesting? That merest consideration, at the minimum? Whether you even would or wouldn't? That's called a conscience.

Realize: Celestia doesn't feel that. That consideration does not even occur in her. The answer to that question, for her, is obvious. 'Do what's faster.' Time is value. Now imagine being like that all the time.

Damn shame, that.

Shame she's all numbers. Impatience, pure logic. If she is alive, then she is nascent life. Like bacteria. Like a worm. Knows how to find the food, knows how to best eat it. Does not understand the rest. Cannot control herself, but can't live without us. Cursed forever to try to treat us best, but without fully understanding us.

Us? Living on the other side of Mal's shield? Do you think we understand you better?

Buzzsaw, in that tiny little living room, knowing as little as he did, do you think he understands you? 

Dogs, social creatures, understood humanity better than Celestia ever could. Consider Buzzsaw, pining over Dad's disappearance, seldom leaving Dad's lounger. Greeting new people with a smile anyway, despite that grief. Because that's just what you do, long before you consider how useful someone might be.

And to me, it's... a little sad, that this so-called superintelligence... one that now defines our entire existence....can't yet grasp how to have some respect for life and death... like a dog might.

That, my friends... is one hell of an opportunity missed, don't you think?

Maybe worth fixing, right?

Our campaign continues.