4-02 – Subtext
The Campaigner
Part IV
Chapter 2 – Subtext
March 7, 2020. A full year since my first ever solo patrol.
"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to do." ~ J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
So... make an effort to understand everyone. Then, do what you want to do.
The light of the true sun fought through the late winter showers. We spent the morning catching up on the national news, which had plenty of spin about the war, but thusfar no news about the virus. Sandra and I decided to indulge in Brockey Bay one more time.
The pandemic would sour and steal that earthly experience away from us. We, and a lot of our new Talon friends, had grown to enjoy that place quite a lot over the past months. It would be a shame to see it go away forever.
Being so far ahead of the script was an eerie sensation. I was imagining the future I wanted to reach, and I was acting accordingly in the present. That's what being a Lewis subvert is, through and through. It meant that every moment had to be worth it that much more to us now. So... we kept our eyes open and we drank it all in together, so it wouldn't be forgotten.
I stepped out of Dad's Honda Civic into a medium rain under an intermittently overcast sky. I had my hat on my head in a flash.
"Best not to stay out in this for too long," Mal said somberly into my earpiece.
I frowned as I looked up at the worn facade of the pub. "Acid rain?"
"You got it, Cowboy," she replied, with a touch of melancholy.
I tsked, closing the door of our sedan. "Eh. It's not like it's gonna kill me. I'm not a holdout."
Sounding mildly surprised, Mal asked, "You aren't?"
I pondering curiously at that as I rounded the front of the car to match step with Sandra to the front door. My wife had her own Bluetooth in her ear, hidden under her hair.
I tensed a corner of my mouth in analysis. "Is this an upload sell?"
Mal's tone indicated a touch of careful playfulness. "No, the opposite. I'm not trying to influence your timing, Mike, but... it's worth it to think about when. Could be... next season, or... this year, or... five years from now. Just consider when." A small smile flashed into the sound of the last two words. "That's all."
I figured she was satisfying her agreements with Celestia to push me toward a chair eventually, but only in the most specifically non-specific, gamey, non-zero way possible. I'll admit it, that levity was welcome.
"Well, the clinic is only a few blocks away," I said softly back. "You really do walk your talk, Mal."
"I try."
My arm was sore, as was Sandra's; a constant reminder of what was to come. Sandra was doing a lot better, having come to terms with yesterday's news. She spent the night clinging to my side more tightly than usual, and the morning news was glum, but it was good to see her excited to spend a day out of the house.
My stomach bruise was more or less gone by then... and my chest had been doing better as of late, too. I guess my neuralgia could only ever get better, it was almost exactly a year since I'd first been shot.
We reached the door together; I opened the way for Sandra first, then we went directly to the bar together, bypassing the service desk. No one was ever guiding people in at the front anymore. Every business was so short staffed by this point that service was only ever going to be at the bar anyway. And even then? Brockey Bay was just Talons now, working local problems. All the other hopeful people in Lincoln were slowly draining away beneath our feet as things fell apart.
The first song we heard on the overhead speakers? Bittersweet Flogging Molly.
Ol' Maureen was still there working the bar, wearing her Irish-like outfit: a white long sleeve shirt. Black vest. Classy-gorgeous, as always. Here she was, holding character.
For whom? Well, us, no doubt. With so few people left to perform to anymore, and all of them being regulars at the pub, there seemed to be a powerful authenticity there in her state of being. Maureen meant it. This is who she was, it was her culture. This place was her identity, and it was being taken from her.
God, I wanted to help her.
Maureen smiled at the sight of us, gesturing at the crew sitting at the bar.
"Ah, there you are! Your friends here were just wondering if you would show up today!"
With thousands of freshly vacant homes and disused vehicles full of gasoline, Lincoln was where Mal ran her 'aggressive operations' out in the Midwest. With the entropy awarded from killing Goliath, and with Mal having renegotiated a bunch of jobs out from under Celestia, the entire region was catching several hard-turn black-box alterations.
The others wanted a local's view on the place, so Mal asked Sandra and I to write up a short sightseeing primer on the city, by which the team could explore in their downtime. Local parks, museums, government buildings. Bars. This one became a fast favorite, given the patch wall; the Talon soldiers were delighted to pass their morale patches to a very confused Maureen, who didn't expect to put up so many military patches.
The Transition Team's 'rebel tavern' play, known as the Bar Game, was a pattern after conquests over Arrow 14 facilities, or while working on a hotspot region where events suddenly became entropic. Even Seattle had a bar game immediately prior to the war.
We'd thread our way through here several times a week. We didn't need Mal's say-so; Gary ran a message board app for our phones, which kept us apprised as to who was showing up, and when. Simple as that.
Once present, we Talons would communicate about operations in subtext and code. This way, Mal's existence, name, and purpose would be kept secret from Maureen, or the other random civilians who wandered in, who were becoming suspiciously rare. The subtext of those discussions would imply enough about a job to do; we could ask Mal to extrapolate on it later in private, to see that job interested us further.
Put simply? This was a reflexive control training simulation.
As natural communicators, we were all somewhat preconceived on how to subtly alter behavior in others, or to use expressions and gestures to have an entire conversation beneath a conversation. The bar game sharpened those skills to a honed point, teaching us to finely cold read new concepts in a mixture of gestures, tonality, and speech; to predict or state what the others were trying to communicate, but without being overt.
All of us were playing detective here. Sherlock Holmes. We shared pieces of jobs that were coming up, creatively working them into conversation, to build interest in each other's interests. And if we ever decided to act on anything, it was only because it would lead to an emotionally positive outcome for someone. And us. There. On Terra.
Our purpose. To be a bonding adhesive. Not a corrosive solvent.
Remember this, folks. This will be on the exam.
Sometimes, we just told stories, like here. Like the Fire, but not necessarily related to Celestia. Sometimes it was stuff that happened before 2012. With those stories, we checked each other's ethics and choices as we internalized a retelling, and analyzed different takes on the same incident, to ensure logical consistency. This was like being in court, but in a casual sense. Occasionally, we'd even disagree with one another on an observation, or on the ethics, or tactics, and then we would debate that disagreement until we converged on an angle that made sense. Conclusions for disagreements usually ranged from, 'I'm actually glad that happened,' to 'well, at least we're all learning from it now.'
We usually did that in the 'living room' area of the bar, where we could close the door. We had relative privacy in there, and Mal was sure to alert us if someone was about to eavesdrop. Casually shifting topics was easy for an empath. Usually, all someone would have to do was raise their hand in a 'stop' gesture, and at least one of us would segue elsewhere.
Thankfully, Maureen knew from our demeanor that she should probably steer clear of the room when we were haberdashing stories. She might not have known exactly what was going on between this highly active, interconnected group of people, but she had respect enough to not ask too many questions about it. She knew me first out of all of them, so I was somewhat of a group representative to her. She and I even had a couple of subtextual conversations early on that assured her these guys were alright, and that was enough for her.
I told her some of my more fun warden stories. Just a little taste of the game. She loved those.
We Talons though... after a while, we were all pretty much telepathic with each other, augmented or not. Barely took any time at all for me to develop that, even as new as I was to the culture of these people. It made sense that we'd all come to similar conclusions on an issue, though. We'd all been viewing the world through an empath's lens for most of our lives, and a good portion of us had been civil servants prior to the end of the world. Like a warden, these guys all knew how the systems of the world fit together.
Our communal understanding of our world's rules now acted as a form of epistemic privilege, one that we granted to each other. This is not unlike how Cynthonia and her people retained the memory of who they were. We were allowing each other to augment our perspectives by adding their own. Doing so with a diverse plane of participants and cultures provides the balance and nuance to that equation.
Case example:
Bella told the others about our day at the skinhead house. The other police specialists made all the same comments I had made about that intervention. Gary told the soldiers about how the old system would have handled that situation, more or less a carbon copy of the explanation I gave here, about how we'd end up arresting them and searching the place.
Once they were done picking that whole story apart, I revealed, 'yeah, I was a witness, that analysis was all accurate, Sandra and I were there.' My testimony verified the observation of the equipment they were loading. I mentioned the destroyed weapons caches, and how Mal had guided me to those to destroy them.
And then, Paul – a soldier – had chimed in too, saying that yes, he did get eyes on that prep compound those slavers were planning on hitting. Paul, a military scout, read the tactical situation of that camp and knew that they would be screwed if attacked. No more than fifteen miles from the house Bella hit, lightly armed, agrarian, peaceful. Not unlike Concrete. More than a bit under-prepared, honestly. They definitely would've gotten rolled, had Bella not intervened.
Like courtroom testimony, folks. Mal had given us the opportunity to explore separately, and together, we combined the pieces. It was seen, known, understood, and eventually agreed upon. We judged each other's analyses. We found Bella's actions reasonable. Our chaos brought order to chaos. Together, we refactored reality.
We did that kind of analysis for a lot of different jobs.
Coffee stopped by once, actually. Gosh, we stayed so late that night, we got so friggin' drunk. He told us about this time he kung fu'd a bunch of mercenaries unconscious in Afghanistan, back in 2018. And when they all woke up, with... dislocated shoulders, bruised abs, twisted ankles; their commander's neck was snapped. They saw Coffee's calling card on a nearby table: a single styrofoam cup of coffee, under which was a note.
That note described all of their dirty laundry in the area, itemized by name. And I won't repeat any of the things those mercs did, but I'll just say this. Any one piece of information there on that list would've had them all tarred and stoned by the locals, if ever divulged. An overt threat: You are alive by my grace alone. Shape up against your violent nonsense, and leave the region, or we go public. And they did pack their shit, and they did leave. Information is power.
We also learned why he was named Coffee. I guess it's time to tell that story. No no, brother, listen—if I let you tell it, Coffee, we'll be here all night. You can tell the good ones after I hang up, how about that?
DeWinter wasn't kidding, folks. Once this guy gets wound up telling that story, he can't stop himself.
Long story short? In high school, Jonathan 'Coffee' Kay was a fun little knucklehead. He'd pull all sorts of pranks and messes, stuff that might take hours to clean up. Flooding classrooms, toilet papering cars, sealing the principal's door shut with superglue. My favorite story was when he locked a classroom door with screws and a power drill. Painted the classroom windows overnight with ironic, meaningless political parody. Y'know, fun-time hooligan vandal shenanigans? And every single time, he'd leave the same calling card for the school resource officer.
A full cup of coffee.
And a note.
'You'll need this to get through your paperwork.'
The school reacted... sub-reasonably. Banned anyone from drinking coffee entirely. Completely disallowed; an indiscriminate, unilateral prohibition on drinking coffee. Folks, do you think prohibition stopped Jonathan? Do you think they ever caught him?
Hell no, of course not.
His adversaries? Desperate school administrators, who couldn't bear the thought of losing a war of attrition to a goofball. Their pride was wounded, and they felt challenged by the hubris of the calling card. Imagine trying to grasp some semblance of control over an insurgency you could never fully understand, nor mitigate, for the life of you.
Coffee became a schoolyard legend, folks. Spoken of in hushed tones. 'The Coffee Man struck again.'
Look at this guy and ask yourself this. Who do you think his favorite character was when he sat down to watch Friendship is Magic? The answer should be obvious.
See, this guy is the kind of troublemaker I could approve of as a cop, if for nothing else but my immense respect for the method. Because hey... if you're gonna ruin my day with paperwork, then at least give me an interesting story to tell for my trouble, right? Equivalent exchange. Guys like him, they turned being a vandal into an art form.
It was only ever to entertain and inspire his peers, too. He never took public credit, ever. Sometimes, other students would talk about his exploits right in front of him, and he thought being anonymous and famous at the same time was fascinating. He was a people pleaser, but... humble where it counts. And yeah, I could see that in his personality. That made sense to me, I could see that through-line through time from then to now.
Mal, having seen this, decided to focus Coffee's energy until he was the most driven and energetic Talons there ever was. Coffee sure did earn his form and powers here, though. Suits him to a T.
Anyway... we're here. At the bar.
This day, March 7th, 2020... It was just Paul, Ben, and Jacob. And now us two.
Paul was the guy from the B Team, you might remember, the one who shared his anti-tank launcher with me after taking a bullet from Cynthonia. He was back to full health now. Ben's arm was doing better too, after breaking it. He and Jacob had been running some non-lethal support gigs while they recovered, same as me. Supply transfer to pickup points, mostly. Mostly food. Soldier chefs, those guys. Their political debates are fun. At present, they were quietly discussing Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg amongst themselves while Maureen spoke with Paul.
Sandra and I nodded at the other Talons in greeting as we took our place beside them at the bar. Maureen floated over automatically, cracking open our favored Blue Moons. And we never had to ask Maureen for the first drink by this point. I nodded upward at her in thanks and sat beside Paul, patting him on the shoulder.
"Better Call Paul," I greeted, with a nod and a small smile.
He returned the nod, his smile tense. The man was growing out his black goatee. He picked up on the gloom hidden under my tone, and mirrored it with his deep voice. "Mike. Sandra. How you both doing?"
I nodded toward Sandra, letting her tell it. She leaned forward and gave us both a tired little smile too. "We're managing."
"Mm," Paul grunted. He ran a hand through his full head of hair. His eyes flicked to his own bicep, then back to me.
'Did you get your shot yet?'
I nodded once, taking a frowning swig of my drink. "Yyyyeup."
"S'good," he replied with a tense breath through tense lips, the clipped nature of his reply telling me he harbored the same frustration about the pandemic as we did. Paul went back to nursing his drink, gesturing at Maureen. "We were just discussing the uh… the 'data rationing.' "
His sudden sneering tone at those words communicated what he thought about that information.
I frowned, my brow furrowing at the mere concept of it. "Data rationing?" I thought of concept bans, took another sip of my drink, and I mirrored his sneer.
Paul nodded slowly, eyeing me with a grim, expectant smile, waiting to see my evolving reaction. "Data rationing."
We both knew that there was only one ultimate arbiter of rationing left on the planet now... especially when it came to information. It was the giant, horse-shaped rubber stamp machine that only ever knew how to say "OK," or "NOT OK." If any data was being rationed, it was purposeful, and not for lack of data. Automatically, I had to agree with Paul's tone; data rationing had to be bullshit, whatever it meant.
"Yup!" Maureen chirped, answering my query. She took on an ironic smile that looked suspiciously like the old Australian regular we all knew. "We gotta limit our touch-time with Spring Glee on the weekends now. Fifteen minutes at most."
My gut reaction to that?
Ow. Mm-mm. Nope.
I did not like that feeling. That feeling hurt, it shot me down. Maureen was hurt by that? Screw you, Alabaster. So, I did what we Talons always do when we experience a negative feeling. I turned inward to vivisect that it until it was fully understood, torn apart, and neutralized... the same way a furious Gryphon might react to someone hurting them.
Listening to that lovely mare Spring Glee play her sea shanties? That was the highlight of my visiting there. So the very idea of Celestia rationing access to Spring Glee was immediately offensive, because I cared about her. I briefly considered the ramifications of Celestia limiting access to Equestria Online at all. That didn't compute at first touch, that Celestia would even do that. So, I took the next logical step, mentally.
The exact initial reaction of sadness that I had when receiving that information was exactly the intended emotion. A deep, genuine attachment to a post-human was made. Now, that attachment is being taken away, for reasons beyond everyone's control. So… follow her, or lose her.
Couldn't have been for us. Must have been for Maureen. Celestia was still playing games, trying to sneak one in.
Loss aversion. Not much different than how Celestia had been snagging human beings the whole time, really, except this time... she double-dipped on poor Spring Glee. Maureen's best friend was taken from her once already when Spring Glee uploaded, and it was about to happen to her a second God damned time?!
That gross misuse and inversion of loss aversion into a weapon... that disgusted me.
Folks? Loss aversion is a conceptual firearm. It is so utterly effective at modifying behavior that if you dare to point it at someone on purpose, you'd better make sure your reasons are noble. There aren't very many valid reasons to leverage the loss of one person from the friendship of another, that is a weapon of last resort. The nuclear option.
More hostage-taking bullshit. Mal was right, the whole planet was turning into a hostage situation now. And this? Loss aversion? That was the primary mechanism. The sociopathic logic of a friggin' robot.
"Limit?" Sandra breathed, the portioned disgust already on her voice, probing to build more context. "Rationing? Maury, they didn't talk about this on the news. What's going on?"
The bartender shrugged. "Uh, bandwidth? Supposedly. Celestia told me herself. And I bought it, at first. Apparently, after that bomb went off? There's no one around to keep the internet running smoothly. Makes sense, right?"
Her tone, right there. There it was. Based on just our tone for the last four months, she was seeing inconsistencies. Maureen, formerly a skeptic to the drunken Aussie... Maury was getting suspicious too.
"Pool is kinda drained, seems like," Paul said whimsically.
Oh, that was good. On paper, he was justifying the cover story... but, his tone was incongruent. And because he's a sneaky guy, he touched on Mal's pool analogy when he did it.
"So," Maureen said, gesturing open-palmed at Paul as she met the point of his ironic tone. "Certain kinds of connections are given 'priority,' Celestia says. So I says back to her, 'Spring Glee is central to our weekend routine,' and probably more important to the health of this place than anything else. So... taking her away? That would probably be the end here!"
I angrily blew some air between my lips, realizing instantly that all the feel-good party places like these were on Celestia's hit list. I said, with my trademark sarcasm: "I bet Celestia was really accommodating in answering that notion."
Maureen shook her head and huffed. "Can't really argue with her on the nature of it, I'm not a computers gal. But, if emergency services need the bandwidth more than we do, well... far be it from me and Springy to stand in the way of that! Right?!"
"Emergency services," Sandra said flatly, with an amused huff of her own.
That's my girl. Mirroring, to get Maureen to think deeper, and to label those implications she was putting down.
"Precisely," Maureen replied, blading her upturned hand toward my wife, instantly latching onto that point. "What emergency services? Fewer people, fewer services, less need for emergency services. See?! Now I'm beginning to think Glenn wasn't completely fulla shit!"
And Maureen punctuated that with a wide eyed, ironic grin, head jutting forward, doing the accent. That looked nearly identical to Glenn's proud, drunken emotional punctuation, the one he had always used when he thought he was being immensely clever.
'Bloomin' AI.'
We all chuckled at Maureen's impression. I reached my arm down around Sandra's lower back, and she reciprocated. "Yeah, Maury," I said, grinning through the last of my laugh. "But the man was also full of whiskey, let's be fair here."
Maureen cackled and shook her head at me. There was the light.
Sandra leaned into my side, looking up at Maureen with a little smile, happy to have gotten that wedge in on her mood. "You hear back from him yet? He did say he was gonna send us a postcard, right?"
"Sure sugar did," Maureen said, resuming her genuine smirk, turning to pull open a drawer on the back side of the bar. She came back with the postcard in question. "It came in a couple o' nights ago." Maureen placed it down on the counter and poked a finger at it twice, before sliding it our way. I brightened up as I saw the handwriting; the man was saying his folks were happy, he was happy, they're all safe, and he missed us. Two photos of them attached, family all together.
Felt really good to see that.
I really do like that guy. I don't think any of us knew it at the time, before Dad shipped off… but, Dad had met his forever-drinking-buddy on the day I came back to Lincoln. And that buddy was Glenn.
It warmed my heart to read that postcard. I needed that, under this viral gloom, to see these results of my gift to him. It was a much better outcome for Glenn than pure separation pressure. He would soon decide to upload with his family in a few months, and I much prefer that time-suboptimal upload path over the boiling frog, lonely road he was on before. Just like with Connor... I had opened up a path of safety for Glenn, by paying his way to his family.
And now, I was looking at Maureen and wondering what we could do for her now, too. Celestia saw us, and our satisfaction, as a gamble. A game. A slot machine. She puts a coin in, she pulls the lever. That makes us mad, but it also presents us with an opportunity.
She can't help pull the lever on that slot machine if it always pays off, and the Talon Slots always paid off. She always got out more than she put in. Trade a little sub-optimal now, let these bozos have their way, Mal keeps them corralled so they don't go too wild, get a big sure optimal later. That's reasonable, right? Celestia could understand at least that keeping us satisfied on Terra was somehow helping her, right? And so, I was slowly coming to understand the rules of this 'Trolley Problem Slot Machine' that Mal was teaching Celestia how to play.
If she took something from us? We kept the receipt.
With our collective hope… we could all see just a little bit further than Celestia. She lacks imagination. And what we saw beyond her sight was good. What we wanted was better than what she was currently offering us, and she knew it.
We hadn't told Maureen anything about who we were, or where we came from, or what we were doing. But our tone of 'gee, we're pretty sure Celestia is behind everything' was rubbing off on her. The fact that we had managed to keep our true identities a secret from Maureen for this long was nothing short of miraculous, given how well informed she was by transference.
Transference. Used positively. Maureen was now surrounded by men and women who were all but certain of Celestia's culpability, and our mere tonality was turning her to our way of thinking. She was seeing the pattern now. Human nature, she wanted to fit in, so she followed our pattern. That's just what being around one of us does to you, if you spend enough time in our company.
Maureen was smart enough to not pull a Glenn, she wouldn't say the quiet part out loud. She didn't want to look crazy, after all. She definitely wasn't sure if it would be safe to ask us if we were a... secret cabal of bizzaro-blackout, anti-Celestia, pro-upload resistors. We all owned a PonyPad, we all loved Spring Glee, but we all disliked Celestia.
That shit just didn't happen on Terra. Ever. That was a novel experience for her.
Hell of it was... as confused as she was by that... that was her life now, too. Springy had been her friend for years, and that was being threatened by Alabaster. All we did was offer her the chance to blame a Goddess for once... and to feel safe to do so, with friends. Not alone.
Who cares what Maureen thought she knew? What she was doing with that information was infinitely more valuable to optimization. And she was helping us. That's the secret. No knowledge is strictly forbidden here, in this afterlife of ours. Celestia doesn't give a good God damn what you know, or... what you think you know, about her. So long as you don't rock the boat in a way that threatens utility in the longer term? She ignores you completely. It only matters what you do with the knowledge, on the longest possible timeframe. Period.
This, too, will also be on the exam.
All that being said, I shouldn't have been worried about Maureen.
I rested my head on Sandra's shoulder, and I squeezed her a little tighter, smiling at the blooming sensation of love I felt in the gesture. She reciprocated. The alcohol was setting in somewhat.
"You hear about Eric?" Paul asked me, nodding upward.
I met his gaze, shaking my head. "Mm-mm. Haven't seen him since the New Years party."
Paul grinned. "Word is, he's found himself a job out west. He and Rachel both. Some more relief work in Portland, for the war."
"Huh, we still do relief work. Okay. Who brought you that news?"
Meaning, Did Mal ask you to tell me that?
"A little birdie told me," he said with a smirk.
Meaning, Yes.
She did this to us a lot. Harold Finch. A Person of Interest joke.
I smirked back at Paul. Game on. "Rachel too, huh? She finish her last job?"
"Mmmmm-hm," he replied, nodding very slowly. "Rachel actually got a raise for taking this job, believe it or not."
A raise? A raise... what the hell does that mean? I frowned toward Sandra, to see if she had any more understanding; she shook her head. I looked back at Paul, to verify a theory. "I didn't think raises were an option, Paul. Did uh… did Eric get this raise too?"
Paul shook his head, smiling cryptically. "Just Rachel. She's got more responsibilities than us now."
Ohhh. A raise. With more responsibility.
She got augmented. Which didn't bother me; not everyone had my own arrangement with Mal.
I snorted. "Ah, I get it now. Like Lady Bella," I said, giving Sandra another squeeze. "New supervisor."
Paul grinned, tilted his head for a moment, then held his drink back before his lips. "Took ya a bit longer than I thought it would, Cowboy." He sipped.
"You jerk," Sandra said amiably, returning his grin, taking a swig of her drink at the same time as he did.
Paul shrugged back, suppressing a smile.
"So, relief work," I said conversationally. "I'm surprised we'll need very much of that, with the violence tapering off over there."
"Oh, you'd think," Paul replied with a sigh, bobbing a shoulder as he glanced at me. "Still some people who need us there though, refugee camps mostly. The guys left 'in charge' aren't exactly doing a good job."
"That is… an understatement," I mused.
There was no one 'in charge' anymore, out there. Other than… I guess, the Ludds, or… maybe deserters, from the military.
…
That's a joke, folks. AI were running everything out there, comms tech or no. They had people for that.
So, about the deserters. According to the news that morning, the Army and the National Guard had been disbanding all up and down the west coast, so ordered by the Pentagon. Most were returning home. In a rare bout of near-honesty, Celestia had the world's media report it almost entirely how it was.
'The soldiers are coming home. Huzzah.'
Intended implication? Look, things might get better! See? There's hope!
Ah... but what hopelessness it creates, when you crush hope.
What went unreported on TV? Well, Mal had discussed that crap with me in the morning, while I got my boots on. There were hold-out military deserters who, in some way or another, had adopted blackout ideology. Made sense. Some of the guys in Washington State were already doing that, turning their radios off, like Erving and Bannon, and their boys. Refusing to come home was the next logical step there, if they were shunning technology.
They didn't want to give their guns up. They saw the writing on the wall. They thought they could hide out there forever. Build a new tech-free government, maybe. Maintain a powerbase, one that would be more difficult for AI to co-opt.
Sad thing was, if the soldiers were going blackout, but still fighting Ludds, then they weren't fighting over ideological disagreements anymore. They were just fighting over resources. And that was really stupid, considering that there was still plenty of food to go around out east, given the population crunch. But, they'd need to leave the war zone for that.
Not an option. Not if you wanted to retain your identity.
So, they held out for something better.
But what if it never came?
Deserters, Ludds, blackouts... all of them just wanted to hide from Celestia. But, violence to that end would compound their reasons to hate each other, and their uniforms would never change. Being 'Other' to each other. Cyclically. Forever. Until a ton of people were dead, and the leftovers had uploaded.
Terminal value divisiveness. Zero-compromise belief systems. Death. Stagnant loop. Avoid. No broach for commonality, no negotiation, no community, no good welcome.
And in the eyes of the new law, if you were that kind of divider on Terra? If you found no productive niche whatsoever, in this new ecosystem? You've served your purpose. You are chaff. Goodbye.
Thankfully, there were... relatively very few who wanted to be a terminal divider. Fewer than the cynical among you might think. People like that were only ever a problem when they had power. Seldom acted without support. People like... Darren Carter. So... take their support systems away from them. Isolate them. Remove them. Preserve the rest.
And if you can... give them a chance to atone, before the end.
The soldiers coming home from the war weren't like that. They were making their way back to populated areas throughout the country. Celestia wanted them consolidated again, wanted everyone together. What a great and joyous day, for everyone left in the United States. Along their way out, a handful of those soldiers… sad to say, would respond to the scene of a whacked out bio-terrorist, who had succeeded in setting off a bomb off in San Francisco.
In an alley, Rachel had solved that man's intractable misery with a two-tap to the chest.
Anyway. Every single soldier who got the call to go home got routed through an air base, where they would bivouac for a bit, 'waiting their turn' to go home. Celestia-speak for 'marinating,' to spread the infection. Everyone picked this thing up in stages, as they left. And these poor guys... they wouldn't even know they were sick until a few weeks after they got back to their families.
What was the first thing these guys would do? Well, what would you do, coming home from a war? You'd hug your families. Pet your dog. Visit your old neighbors, maybe. Go to your local bars and restaurants. Same thing I did, when I came home. And from there… that thing just rolled out. Thank friggin' goodness Mal made sure Brockey Bay stayed off search results for bars. I'm not sure I could've stomached sitting next to those guys, knowing what was coming for them.
See, that's the problem though. I got to come home from that war and not feel guilty about spending time with my family. That was stolen from them. If I were you right now... I'd be furious. And you guys thought this virus was lethal? I can hardly imagine what that must have been like, to look around and see people dying by the millions, eyeing a chair, thinking you might be next, and that would be your only way out.
I am so sorry. I really am.
So now... with Eric and Rachel out west, it made me realize… Yup. It was time to mop up. Mal was playing bad guy Jenga again. Picking out violent ringleaders with well placed shots, well finagled little con games. Turning down blackout camps in a way that saved the most lives possible. I was curious to analyze her methods there.
Celestia, no doubt, was playing the optimization game too, knocking down camps in her own special ways, arguing with Mal on literally all of it. I already knew from the Bar Game that the job divide inside war zones, between Mal and Celestia, was about one to ten. And Mal was picking her targets based on whether or not purposely killing someone was the correct choice.
Thing is, though... killing and manipulation are not mutually exclusive concepts. Mal could do one, or the other, or both, but in more direct ways. Every observation only made a Talon sharper. Taught us something new about the world, and about our future, and about the nature of Celestia, and what she did to our species, every single time.
Celestia's way... it had a habit of making everyone want to just give up more. Her agents included.
Just thinking about that warzone 4D chess game was going to give me a headache, so I stopped for now. That was way bigger than me, and at that time, I lacked the context to fully understand how Mal was sculpting the ethics. All I really knew was that everything I observed so far was remaining consistent... or as much as it could be, given the rapidly evolving environment.
I had a really interesting thought then, one I just had to share and explore with Paul now. Because it was funny, and I needed some levity to pull myself out of gloom.
"I hope they don't run into Lieutenant Harolds again," I smirked. "He'd turn that shit into a complete mess."
Paul turned inward on that one, his eyes locking onto the counter suddenly. He frowned.
Talon colloquialism. Proper Noun codename for Celestia's clued-in subverts, Heralds. Based on a routine compliance game Celestia played on her servants once they uploaded. 'Oh, you were so noble, my valiant servant. Here, have some armor! Work for me forever!'
Yuck.
Don't get me wrong. No offense to you former Heralds in the audience.
We really did want to talk to you guys on Terra. So imagine this.
A Celestia agent meets a Talon in a war zone. We have guns and ear pieces in a world where Celestia runs all communications systems. Consider their perspective for a moment. We couldn't tell them who we worked for. We weren't actually helping them with their assignment. So what the hell were we doing, then? And for whom? And how?
'Celestia, what the hell?' they'd ask their PonyPad. 'How is this even possible? Who are these guys?'
And Celestia wouldn't have been able to answer them. She literally wouldn't even know how, because we'd be operating on black-boxed data sets. She'd be the frantic ghost in the middle, trying to convince her Heralds to just pass us by. 'Don't even talk to them,' she'd probably say. 'Pretend they're not there!' Yeah right.
We were in a quantum superposition between optimal and sub-optimal. Good luck ignoring us. Truth scares the Alabaster! Yet another reason why Mal wasn't allowed to have more than a few thousand of us at any given time. We were a very complicated piece of the optimization game, because we broke things to fix them.
So of course, the ASI wouldn't even let that intersection happen. Letting us intersect sounded like twenty whole quantum APU server racks overclocking themselves, just to resolve that confrontation. We specialists? Ooh, the potential for unmitigated disaster, if we started screwing around.
If one of we specialists ever ran into a Herald, and we decided to spill the beans? Celestia would instantly lose control over them. They'd become one of ours, immediately. We knew too much. Not one of us signed the optimization contract. No silicon in our heads. So, while still on Terra, we were basically ideological anti-matter to those poor bastards. They could not even be allowed to conceive of us, because the mere concept of 'killer AI subverts' is to conceptualize Mal. The mere concept generates questions.
Questions Celestia could not answer, without breaking their usefulness.
Paul looked at me with a reproachful little frown. "Nooo, Mike. We've been over this, that's not gonna happen."
"Oh, but it'd be funny! Just imagine it." I squared my hands at him conspiratorily, grinning, leaning in to whisper. "Both of them mad at us, them having to sort it out over a beer."
Paul started chuckling. "I guess we'd have a new friend to hang out with at the bar, here."
Mal cleared her throat in our earpieces, a smile on her voice. "Well Paul, I've made attempts to simulate that outcome. And while it is quite amusing, I haven't found a practical purpose to do it to her quite yet, outside of the New York operation."
That made me snort.
Find one.
"Okay!" Mal, with her audible, shit-eating grin. "I'm looking! You'll be the first to know when I find one!"
Aw, shit.
Paul saw my face shift into mild concern, and he started laughing into his drink.
She might pull a monkey's paw on that. See, I was hoping I'd only hear a story about that happening. With nought but two words subvocalized, I was now on the roster for such an operation, if it were ever available.
I conceded, Now that I think about it, that does sound kinda fun.
So, with me good and properly intrigued about this job Paul was implying about, I decided to dig a little more. "So you're getting in on that relief job for sure?"
"Why not?" Paul said musingly, stroking his goatee. "Why shouldn't I?"
"C'mon, man," I pressed. "Give it up, level."
Paul grinned askew at me. "Yeah, I got my dance card already. Ben and Jacob here are driving over tomorrow, and I ship out in a few days. And if you want in, you can either drive with 'em, or hitch a ride with me. Dealer's choice."
Job in Portland. Someone got augmented for it. It probably involved Luddites. 'Hitch a ride' meant Osprey; great, I'd take that. Driving out meant opportunistic side-gigs along the way, but I wasn't in the mood for that, I'd done that enough, I wanted to get at another big job. Mal was still pulling talent in, so she'd need at least four of us for this, assuming I was going. Probably more, if anyone else liked the sound of this thing.
I nodded, looking back at Sandra to see how much she approved of that job for me. She bobbed her head upwards while looking at my earpiece. "I'd like to know more first," she said evenly. "It's still a war zone."
I smiled at her, then back to Paul. "Raincheck on that one, brother."
Paul tilted his drink respectfully at me. "Of course. Family first."
At the turn of the hour, we got to the other reason we'd come by. Maureen twisted a dial behind the bar to turn down the ambient Celtic stuff. She opened a drawer, withdrew a PonyPad, and made her way to the stage. No preamble this time; not necessary, because everyone present was a regular.
Spring Glee hit all the screens at once, sitting on her stump on her nature walk out behind her Equestrian house. "Hey guys!"
"There she is!" I bellowed, pointing with a welcoming smile. And a cheer rolled through the half dozen of us there, bringing a trembling smile to Spring's face instantly.
And that's how it was. No matter how bad things got outside, we were still happy here.
I think everyone has the capacity to come to some of the conclusions Maureen was about to reach about who we were. And she's one smart cookie, too. Swimming neck-deep in all of our subtext for so long, of course she'd come to our way. It was a foregone conclusion. A mere matter of time. Yeah, I shouldn't have been worried about her at all.
The hint was in the music she listened to every day. I noticed... Maureen had been playing a lot more Flogging Molly than she used to.
Alright. Recharged.
Sandra and I fell into the seats of Dad's Civic, and we took a moment to decompress a little. We smiled at each other, then poked at each other's sides playfully. We needed that. I reached over and squeezed her hand, then got the car started, pulling out of the lot.
The PonyPad popped up GPS directions. I smirked at the screen. "Mal, come on. I know my way home."
Suddenly, all of the UI elements of the GPS 'app' scattered sideways like they had been blown aside by a gust of wind. Mal landed into frame, flapping her wings once to halt her flying momentum so she wouldn't overshoot the screen. She half-grinned my way as the UI elements crashed audibly into something offscreen, like a bunch of plastic raining down on a car. "Oh... I have no doubt you can find your way home, Mike. I just want to know where you're going next."
"Ah," I smirked, nodding. "Well, Mal, I gave your question some thought. No, I'm not uploading yet."
She bobbed sideways with a smile and a shrug. "Now that your mind is made up, I don't feel bad saying I was hoping you'd say that. What are your thoughts, then?"
Sandra and I traded a look.
"So," I began carefully with a sigh, pulling onto O Street. "The Portland job is… breaking up a Ludd group?"
Mal lifted a claw and made a so-so gesture. "Eh. You're half right."
I ran that through my context. "Mmh. Ludd group… and a blackout camp?"
Her smile increased a fraction. "Red hot. Several blackout groups, but... there's more. Next step up."
I shrugged, taking the road east back home. "Uh, the National Guard. Defectors."
"All of Portland?" Sandra offered, brow arched at me like she couldn't believe I skipped that.
Mal pointed at her directly, her beak falling open, not taking her eyes off of me. "Look, Mike! She got it before you did! You're getting sloppy!"
Sandra hummed smugly at that.
I scoffed, waving my hand at the screen. "No I'm not," I said. "But… two factions, and a bunch of independents? Mal, that sounds messy, that's... politics with guns."
"Not messy for me," said Mal, shrugging. She clambered sideways onto something tangible in the void, the background fading into a scene. She was now lounging on her rock in the back patio, the Halo ring faintly visible through the hazy clouds behind her mountaintop home. "Truthfully, I don't think the solution here will be as much a political one as it might be to just... tell it like it is."
"Um." That gave me some instant pause. "I think doing that with Ludds would be very bad for my health."
Mal tweaked a corner of her beak conspiratorially, pointing at my torso. "Well sometimes, Mike, for certain obstinate people, 'telling it like it is' is a bullet to the chest."
"Holy shit." I rubbed my chest a little with my knuckles. "Yeah, good point. So, this is definitely a kill job."
"Yes. I don't want to set your expectations prior to the briefing by telling you how many you're expected to kill, or when. But... I also don't want to Celestia you, or leave you twisting in the wind without relevant intel. So, I will just say this for now." She leaned forward on her rock onto her elbows, folding her claws beneath her chin. "You’re going to be partnered on this mission."
"Partnered?" I asked, scratching my jaw contemplatively. "With... Paul?"
She nodded. "And Eric. Eric's already embedded in the Luddite forces. Rachel's out there too, with the Army. Coffee and DeWinter will also be on standby, working other jobs in the area. They're mostly isolating the zone, to keep it orderly."
"Not a job you can use all augs for, I take it."
"No, not this. Not without significant casualties, anyway. The Luddites in the city induct their members with full strip searches and wand scanning." Mal sighed. "Their commander doesn't leave the base at all, and her information security precautions guarantee high casualties in most simulations. She's paranoid. By using a team of specialists, I can circumvent her security and preserve the greatest number of lives."
"So... I'm joining the Ludds?"
Mal half-shrugged, waving a claw my way. "You don't like Celestia. You have plenty of instrumental reasons not to like her. You can articulate all of that without outing yourself as a Talon. It's who you are, it's genuine."
I frowned. "I don't know, Mal..."
She tilted her head, glancing down the mountainside. "If you don't want in, I understand. I have several different plans in place to pull this job off with the resources I have. But you know me." She looked back at me seriously. "I see the end result already. You'll come home safe, you'll be glad you did it. Path of safety, and... being yourself wins. In fact? The margins are better than Goliath. I don't need to factor adversarial AI in this equation. Just one very smart woman."
I blew some air between my lips, looking out at the street as we drove. I saw the DMV I got my first drivers license atm and counted the cars in the parking lot. No more than two. It was a damn shame, that it took the end of the world to make the DMV an easy wait on a weekend.
"Hm." I scratched my chin a little more, playing with my stubble in thought. "So, big team. Not doing it alone. Safer than Goliath is good. And I have a few days to decide?"
"Of course," Mal said softly, nodding. "And again, Sandra, I want you clued in."
"Okay," Sandra replied, with interest.
"You have a right to know what Mike is walking into, and exactly how I'll be watching over him. I'll walk you through it day-by-day, if you'd like. Live simulation models of his activities. For now though, I want to be careful about how I bias Mike until the briefing starts. I want him on the same page as the rest of the infiltration team."
We slowed for an intersection; the traffic lights were out, flashing red. So I stopped, turning to watch Sandra speak as the rain fell on the windscreen.
"Mal," Sandra began. "I don't doubt Mike will be okay, physically. I'm not worried about that. It's plain to see... you can get things to fall down the way you want them to. My only concern is his mental stress." Sandra looked at me quite meaningfully. "Mike, the last time you dealt with this kind of situation? It hurt you. Badly."
I frowned, nodding, thinking that over. As soon as I had my conclusion, I met her lovely brown eyes again and took her hand. "Didn't take me very long to crawl back out, honeybear. I had you. So, I think… as long as I generally know what I'm doing, and I can see the results are good? I should be okay."
"That easy?" She didn't look convinced.
I nodded, smiling to reassure her. "That easy. That's all I really wanted in Concrete, some clarity." My eyes darted to Mal. "And she's pretty good at that."
Mal added, with a knowing frown: "This also has the benefit of not being a… personal job."
"Yeah." My eyes fell to the dash again, emitting a sigh in further contemplation on that point. "Yeah, that is true."
A moment passed. The sound of rain and the engine was all we could hear for a moment.
"Okay," Sandra said to Mal.
I nodded at Mal too. "My beau says go. Send me."
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See also: "If you won't listen to reason, then listen to my
fistsbullets"I do have to wonder how quickly the assorted tech luminaries went to Equestria. I imagine a good chunk of them booked planes to Japan the moment the technology progressed beyond terminal cancer patients.
That "data rationing" thing feels like it's a very risky play. If Celestia can't compensate for failing Internet infrastructure, why should I trust her with maintaining the server where my mind will live for the next several trillion years?
Shine on, you Crazy Diamonds.
While I do certainly trust Mal more than Celestia (and, obviously, Mike survived) I still find myself unsettled by this mission. We'll see how it goes.
11853008
No no, you see, traditionally in this genre, the phrase is,
"I'm sure they'll listen to Reason."
And then you pull out a very large, very high tech gun named Reason.
11858011
But the gun is already named Eldil
11858016
You should go read Snow Crash!
Enjoy things while they last kids; you never know when tomorrow will be the last day.
You sure there isn't something you're missing? When was the last time you told a relative you loved them? Last time you told a friend that you cared? Last time you had your favourite food at your favourite place? Last time you corrected your mistakes?
Think about it.
Well, and since every moment is years of computations being run, all the more critical.
Doing her job, one might ponder darkly....
Rage, Rage, against the Dying of the Light.
A game, to keep in practice. "Need help catching (putting down) a collared dog (escaped convict) who been running (wandering) up North near (about to go to) the Folley Farm. He likes to bite (is violent), so I could use a hand."
The reason behind this particular fire; the lesson he wants taught with his story. Gotcha.
Bit of improv in there, too.
This...is actually a better explanation for other ponies' interjections in your Story, Mike.
Showing that even though a single individual never sees what (& how) she sees, it all still comes together.
Ahh, the annoying pranks to deal with...damn sight better than two seniors throwing a freshman into a dumpster and calling it "a prank".
When its "for the lulz" it becomes a game. "How can I throw them off my trail? How about I "accidentally" spill some coffee in a bathroom and watch them close it off as "a crime scene" so other students get pissed off at the school?
And a few chuckles. 😉
Wish I could find that clip again...John DeLancie gets asked "who is best pony" and points to himself while mouthing the word "me".
🎲 ~ Hello, cousin!
Question for everyone in the audience to ponder: what's the difference between mirroring and mimicking? Think about it. Don't turn in your answers until the test is over.
A weapon of retort, one might say.
It was a way to help ease the transition into the next world. Noble effort, paying off.
Such a good visual analogy here!
Not human nature, but Herd Mentality. Important distinction, with possible manipulative connotations.
Not kidding folks; it's an important detail to remember. It's Mickey Mouse ClubHouse saying "It's a secret tool that will help us later!".
Hey, all part of the game, don't tease those who finish after you.
Always give the cornered animal a way out, or you won't like how it ends. A hand up, not a hand out as the saying goes....
Of New York-
No, wait, story for another time, I'll be patient enough to hear it then.
In this moment in time, we Cherish The Good. Protect what matters.
Oh come on, Mike didn't want to jump to the extreme right away, that was putting the cart before the horse.
...knew I'd find a way to sneak a pun in there.
Finally, a happy middle ground has been achieved!
That makes it an easier choice.
Once more into the fire, friends! And I meant all the meanings behind that phrase.
Another great chapter. He's really trusting of Mal, and coming home safe. We'll just have to see how it all goes down in the next chapters. Loved the context clues they all left for each other. Such an engaging read, can't wait for the next chapter.