A courthouse, embattled and surrounded by anti-upload terrorists, contains one specific soul that this AI simply cannot bear to lose.
Humanity has been offered digital immortality within the MMORPG Equestria Online, managed by an AI Celestia. In response, the Pacific Northwest has devolved into civil war, a ready-made hotbed for anti-upload sentiment. As society comes crashing down, the people of Washington State realize that AI has become utterly, permanently inescapable.
The date is now December 8th, 2019. By now, the value of every human life on Earth has been carefully measured, weighted, and judged. Trapped in a courthouse, and surrounded by rioters and anti-upload terrorists, Officer Mike Rivas and his compatriots are faced with a horrible choice: Do they invite their own end, to preserve as much human life as possible? Or do they lose a part of their own souls by shooting free of their circumstance?
Or, better yet? What if, through a combination of compassion and providence... there exists a third way?
"I am a human being. Anything that happens to human beings could happen to me." ~ James S.A. Corey, Persepolis Rising
When the riot trapped us in there, we all knew we were screwed. Probably going to die.
We were just twenty-seven souls trapped in a little box. Skagit County District Court, smack dab in the middle of Mount Vernon, Washington. Made of brick, top to bottom. Pretty fireproof, all things considered, which was a blessing, given what was going on outside.
The Pacific Northwest seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket, and fast. Although we weren’t in the central thick of the Second American Civil War… we were pretty damn close to it. Bedlam. Anarchy. Lots of death there too, or so we could figure. We were close enough to get trapped in there, sure enough, by an angry army of civilian refugees, backed by a small squad of Neo-Luddite fighters who had kicked off the riot in earnest.
They wanted in, and they wanted our guns. Or, maybe they just wanted our lives. Maybe they blamed us partially, for what was happening.
Maybe… they were right to.
For what it’s worth, we tried to keep it all upright. And by we, I mean the governmental power base, writ large. The United States Army, the Washington National Guard. All the various policing agencies, like the one I was in. I mean, we were mostly just… trying. Trying was all we could do, when the Singularity hit. By now, everyone in the Pacific Northwest knew we were in the midst of a Singularity. It wasn’t a joke anymore, that a My Little Pony video game had turned the Northwest into a pressure cooker. We all knew the AI was at the center of all of this. That's all anyone was ever talking about.
In the meantime, the rest of the country was just fine, living life. The people of the United States had some idea that there was a war going on here, but they didn't know, because they weren’t seeing it firsthand. They had running water, power, infrastructure, civil services, TV, internet, radio… cell phones. When the war swept through, we had none of those things anymore. Power, gone. Neo Luddites killed all the dams, the power plants, the phone lines, the switch yards. We couldn't call for help. Who would we even call? Not the Army. They were so busy with Seattle, so who in the world even gave a crap about little Mount Vernon anymore?
Some might say we had given too much of a crap. To them I say, consider this. We had definitely overstayed our welcome, true. But if we ever got the memo to leave, we turned our noses up at it. More left to give. Then, one day, it seemed that all the people who would appreciate our efforts had long evacuated east, out of the war zone. Or, through our protection, they had uploaded. Because they wanted to. Because that was their choice. And if you had asked almost any one of us in that building as to why we stayed? We’d say we wanted to give them the freedom of choice. We had stemmed the tides of anti-upload sentiment, and had opened up a path for those who wanted to upload… because it was their choice.
All the people left over, then? To them, we were a symbol of Celestia, because we had let people choose. For respecting the agency of others, and their desire for peace, stability, and safety, no matter what that meant for them... for this, these Neo-Luddites… these terrorists, these killers… they wanted to tear us to pieces.
I had already gotten my fill of fighting Ludds. Had an early taste, back in March. But now, nine months later… I was still here. Fighting hate. Trapped in this courthouse. Surrounded mostly by cops just as dutiful as me.
From my injury in that old firefight, my chest still kinda hurt a bit. It got worse when I moved, palpably shifting. The cartilage damaged by the gunshot had never fully healed.
Probably going to get shot again, I thought. Probably going to die. Should’ve taken the pain as a sign. Probably should’ve left Washington. Guess I cared too much, guess I was a glutton for punishment. All I want to do now is to see my wife again...
"Mike?" our county dispatcher asked, shaking me out of my dark thoughts with a hand on my wrist.
I swallowed, and looked down at Jan, snapping me free of my reflection. "What's up, Jan?"
"You okay?"
I nodded, inhaling, then exhaling slow. "I'm good. Just trying to figure out what we’re going to do next."
We were perched up by a tinted slat window of a corner office, looking down at the veritable horde of screaming masses in the street. A few other cops were up there with us… one deputy, a bald deputy named Carter, early thirties, who I didn't know too well. Another Mount Vernon cop like me, Vicky Molina, late twenties; she was leaning against the opposite wall, quietly watching the building's front door through the window. She’s wonderful. And tired ol’ Sergeant Rick Cornwallis was there too, late-forties, with his bushy mustache – my salt-and-pepper supervisor from back when we were game wardens together. The guy rocked. Still does.
“I mean… we still have the tools to disperse 'em,” Carter said, frowning, in that transplanted southern drawl of his. FEMA carry-over from Georgia, if I had to guess. We cops usually had good ears for voices; Georgia sounded about right.
Sarge shrugged. “I lost count of the gas masks they’ve got on down there, but they’re not all wearing ‘em.”
Carter shot Sarge a disgruntled look. “Didn’t mean gas.”
“We’ve got the stinger grenades,” I said diplomatically, eyeing the crowd. “Smokes. Flashbangs too.” The mob foolishly crowded around the staggered heavy concrete barricades out front. We had left enough of a route open to the front door so that the main mass of the crowd wouldn’t start gathering around other ways into the building. The layout of barricades was designed to stop vehicles from ramming through, but it also made it hard for a crowd collapse to occur. Large crowds in a confined area had a habit of crushing each other to death, in their desperation.
Hell of a thing for some folks on Terra to believe at the time, but… guys like me really did care about the lives of the common people we were ostensibly at odds with. At least, my guys did back in the wardens... and MVPD was alright, by my estimation. Most of us then wanted to do the right thing. We hated the worst of us too, same as you.
So… I already knew what Carter was getting at. His implication made my stomach turn.
“Wasn’t talking about stingers or flashbangs either,” Carter growled. “Our best hope right now is down in the armory, but Lieutenant Jackass is planning to burn it all.”
“Better melted down, than in the hands of those terrorists,” Sarge growled, his mustache raising, gesturing at the window from where he sat. “Lieutenant Keller... is only burning the surplus. We've got enough left to fight our way out, if it comes to that.”
Carter scoffed. “Gonna die of smoke inhalation here, then, if they don’t carve in through the doors and kill us all first.”
“Evidence room is fire-hardened,” Jan said simply, in glum monotone. “Has its own rooftop unit.”
“Couldn’t care less about them having the guns either,” Carter continued, ignoring her. “Liability. We should just be working on a cut-and-run.”
“We are,” I said loudly, putting considerable irritation in my voice, to cut through his tone. My eyes left the crowd and I looked at Carter square on.
The plan we had wasn’t the best, true. With the front door blocked by the biggest group of demonstrators, our only options were through various side doors, or the two garages out back. All of the doors were surrounded at least partially. One garage led into the sheriff’s office and jails. The other was the courthouse motorpool. We were planning on dropping smoke and gas in the alley, then forging our way out both garage doors at once to increase our chances.
From there, we had two choices. Only one, really, because the first one sucked. Worst one was to drive out in the SUVs, through a massive mob of people, putting them and us at risk. Then, the tires and hoods would gum up with bodies. Then, we’d all be trapped there in those cars, then torn out. That would probably kill the most people, us included. Or, option two? We go out on foot, hop the fence, and pray to God we don’t get shot sideways in the climb, or dragged back down. Then… cross the empty train station parking lot, on foot, and pray we don’t get shot in the back.
We voted on the second one.
Not a lot of other options there. No options that left us intact anyway, souls and all. I knew not all of us were going to get out with our plan. Some of us might, sure. Would our chances increase if we took Carter’s way? Definitely. But I also knew that my soul wouldn't bear kicking it into full auto. I couldn’t just cut a hundred people in half like that to save myself. I still had to look myself in the mirror.
Still had to stand tall before my family.
“We have a plan,” Carter countered, before I could say anything. “But so far, we’re not doing anything. ‘Cept giving these freaks time to surround the building and do some planning of their own. If we had just shot our way out from the jump, we’d be clear all the way to Sedro by now. There aren’t any innocents down there, Rivas. Might as well be Ludds themselves.”
I sighed, debating internally whether I should continue arguing with him. Carter wasn’t going to do shit on his own, else he’d have just started already. At first, I thought he was just scared… coping through verbalized intrusive thoughts, horrible as they might be. We were all coping in some way. It was human, to fantasize about extreme solutions, especially when your problems got extreme. Most people were fortunate to never have found themselves in that situation, to have to make choices like this. I could forgive him a little panic, if that was all it was.
But… this wasn’t just about him and me. Debates like these seldom were about convincing one person. Debates like these were about convincing everyone else in the room. And that's why he was arguing with me.
Unfortunately for Carter, everyone else in this room was already my friend.
“Old rules are gone,” Carter said, emboldened by my continued silence. “What’re we gonna do? Lock ‘em up?”
“We still have cards to play,” Sarge said, bitterness in his voice. “Carter, tie it down.”
Carter scoffed. Silence reigned again, other than the shouting and noise outside. We heard the occasional distant gunshot or two. I looked over at Jan again. She was one of seven civilian workers we had in here, who got trapped inside when our riot line got pushed back. She looked up at me with quiet desperation on her face. Panting through her nose. Looking for answers.
Maybe the right play there was... to do what I always did. To build a little hope. To be a little light in the darkness.
“You know,” I said to the room, as I looked Jan in the eyes. This was for Jan, most of all; I wanted Vicky and Sarge to know that by my gaze, so they'd play along. I glanced away from Jan after the words settled. “Fought these guys before, and won. Not civilians, mind. Actual Ludds.”
Vicky perked up, looking up from her spot by the window. "Oh yeah, I remember this story."
Sarge grinned at Jan, mustache raising. “Yeah, they shot this asshole in the chest. Damn lucky to be alive.”
I chuckled, my chest tingling at the thought. “Yeah… gave as good as I got, though. Pretty sure I took one of ‘em down.” I decided to keep the momentum flowing, if only to shut Carter up for a bit. “Back when we were wardens. Me and my partner, Eliza… in the woods, checking on a call about some poachers. Showed up, eyes on. Saw ‘em in that camo uniform, then…" I gently punched my fist into my palm. "Boom. Sniper shot me dead-on in the chest.”
Jan stared, wide-eyed. “And you lived!”
“Plate took it,” I clarified, smiling at her briefly. “Knocked me out, at first. My partner took the wheel, drove us into some rock cover. And we got really, really lucky.” I nodded my head, smiling bitterly as I looked back out the window at one of the uniformed men out there, at the edge of the crowd. I sighed. “The Army was mulling around in the woods nearby. Showed up just in time. They heard the gunshots, came to investigate. And my partner? Well. She was a real sniper herself.”
Sarge chuckled. “I fought like hell for Horace to let Douglas patrol with that home rifle of hers. Glad I did, you’d be dead otherwise. Our little Mini-14s wouldn’t have cut it there, no way in hell.”
“Yup. And she put a bullet clean through the guy who shot me. As for me… I hit one of the other guys, or I think I did. Pretty sure I hit him, not sure I killed him though. The Army shot up my truck for some reason, maybe they saw him there and... finished him off. Didn't stay to find out.”
Vicky whistled. “Still badass.”
“Just saying,” I resumed, glancing at Carter to seal my point in. “These guys? They’re bad shit, I getcha. I’m pissed too; I got more reason than all of you to be pissed, shoot Ludds all day. But I’m not gonna shoot into that crowd.” I jerked my thumb toward the window. “See those three guys in camo? The real Ludds, with the black and red armbands, the terrorists? Those are the ones who deserve the bullets, the ones giving orders. Not that crowd. Without them, the crowd falls apart. You know your riot control theory as good as I do, Carter. It’s the rabble-rousers that keep the whole thing steaming.”
“You saying we go up on the roof and pop ‘em, then?” Carter asked, hopefully.
I frowned, shaking my head. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m trying to tell you is that the civvies out there, most of them, they aren’t the enemy, they’re just riding the high of the crowd. That high is being pushed by the Ludds. Someone’s gotta take ‘em out, I agree. But the worst thing to do right now is to just start shooting. That’ll galvanize the crowd, turn ‘em feral.”
“They’re already feral, Rivas.”
“Not even close. You watched the São Paolo brief, same as us. Those Ludds deserve bullets, yes. But we have so many steps to take first, so many other things to try, to get these civilians to stop thinking like a crowd, and start thinking like individuals. OC, CS. When we manage to hurt ‘em somehow, without shooting 'em? Most’ll screw off and go home. That’s the science.”
“CS? Gas? Do you hear yourself right now? We are so far past civil solutions. We’re completely surrounded, they’ve got masks, and they got guns for days down there. We don’t have shit else to—”
Screw it, I thought. I was done letting this man drive the mood, done letting him maliciously normalize us toward lethality, step by step. I saw what he was doing. It took balls, but by God I was going to kick them in. I was on the fence about Carter before, benefit of the doubt and all that, but I decided right then that I didn’t like him all that much. Him or his coping strategies.
“Some have masks,” I barked, cutting him off, my voice becoming increasingly loud as it drove on. “Not all! CS works on the rest. For the masks, we nine-bang ‘em, stingers too. The whole damned arsenal, if that’s what it takes. Disorient, impede, go as far as we need to, and not one step further. Then we make our play out. And if we see guns, or take fire, or get lines on enemy combatants, Carter, then we shoot. And we follow the God damned continuum, Carter, because we are not monsters! That’s not who we are!”
I glared at him. Felt my nostrils flare. I must’ve looked ferocious. Felt it, too.
Use of force continuum. The doctrine by which measured, controlled, humane violence is applied to defeat malicious violence as ethically as possible, no matter its intensity. We all drilled it. Quizzed it. Trained it. Knew it.
Sarge knew it. Vicky knew it. Even Jan knew it. Carter had no excuse not to know it.
“Sure," Sarge muttered low, to run off any protest Carter might have raised. "The rule of law has broken down, Darren. Broken, but not gone. We still have to answer for anything we do here, when we get back east.” Sarge looked at Carter pointedly, rolling his head slowly up at him, to capture the deputy’s gaze as he looked over. His voice fell to a growl. A threat. His gaze was fierce, enraged like mine was. “Where we still have federal courts.”
“Where I’m still gonna testify,” I snapped, “if shit goes bad here. You are beholden to the Fourth. Took an oath. Period.”
A tense moment passed. Carter gave a slow look around the room at everyone staring at him, probably doing some calculus in his head, seeing how the tides were. “Shit,” he muttered.
Vicky looked past him at me, wearing her smirk. I gave her a micro-nod of thanks for her unspoken support, and her smirk widened.
Carter sighed explosively, standing up, giving up. “I’m gonna go check on the armory. Maybe try to save a bit more ammo, so they don’t blow us all to hell when they set it off.”
Sarge nodded. “Building’s brick, but sure.”
“Still.” Carter reached back behind the crates he was sitting on, snatched up his patrol rifle, and slung it.
He opened the door of the office, stepped out, then slammed it.
I turned my gaze back out the window, letting myself sigh. And just as I was thinking it…
“He’s gonna go work that shit on someone else,” Vicky snapped off with a shrug.
I nodded. “Yeah, probably.” I spotted some beady-eyed Ludd prick out there, and he had a tricked-out AR-15 of his own in his hands. I squinted, and saw that his magazine was one of those transparent ones… and I even could see from there it was half-depleted. Bastard. Yeah, he was definitely the one who started shooting at us downtown.
The Ludd scanned the windows, trying to see if he could see anyone. He couldn’t, not through the tint, but for a moment it looked like he was staring straight at me. I pursed my lips and frowned, my nostrils flaring again in anger as he started shouting something inaudible to the crowd, jerking his hand as he issued movement orders. He raised his fist as he spouted some pep talk bullshit.
Friggin’ serpent. I breathed a little faster, and I quietly wondered how many people he’d mowed down near the Experience Center, when this all popped off and we got pushed back. God, if anyone down there deserves an eternity of oblivion to the brain…
“Yup,” I said, stifling the point. “There’s gonna come a moment. We’ll need to choose. Either that, or we all die here. Hopefully we get the guns done and burned before it comes to that.”
Sarge’s mustache bristled, and he piped up with a sudden tension that I knew meant business. “Mike. You should probably go make sure he doesn’t go start up anyone else.”
Yeah. After that confrontation, that was a good idea. Sarge honestly has a way of being right about literally everything. “Yeah, has to be me,” I sighed, as I turned to follow Carter down.
“I’ll come with,” Vicky said, straightening up. Sarge wordlessly moved to replace her watch by the window.
I nodded to Jan encouragingly as we went.
We weren’t using our radios for the moment.
It wasn’t out of some half-paranoid fear of the Celestia AI, believe me. But we’d been operating on generator power for a while now, so the charge in our radio batteries was about as vital a resource as oxygen. Because if you were a cop that got separated in this kind of mess, with no cell phone, no vehicle, no way to call for support? You were as good as dead. The radio gave you at least half a chance for someone friendly to come pull you out. You wanted that charge high.
We had hand crank chargers. Not ideal, took forever. And... with my chest all screwed up as it was, that wasn’t fun. Not one bit. And when I say no cell phone out here, I mean no signal. So, battery power being precious, all our phones were off. Again, not paranoia, but practicality. We all kept our phones on us, sure, because we never knew when we’d have to bug out. Rumor was, if you went far enough east out of the conflict zone… those little bars started popping up. That phone threw you a one bar life preserver.
Most of us had family out east who had long gotten out. Some of us, like Vicky… they even had family who went and uploaded. A wife and parents, in Vicky's case. She still talked to ‘em, with that PonyPad of hers. It wasn’t operating now, though – we figured it just needed cell signal. But that just meant Vicky was gonna push that much harder to get home safe, same as us.
She still loved her family a lot, despite them going on ahead.
But Vicky, she’d stayed there on Terra for the same reason I stayed in Washington. For the love of family. Facing them proudly at the end of the day. Differential context – my family hadn’t uploaded. But I still had my wife out east, holed up with my folks in Nebraska. I just couldn't bring myself to evac with Sandra, though. Like the others, I had to do something about the hurt out here, to keep it low. Someone had to stay, to keep it from boiling over. And Sandra understood, bless her. Love her so much.
To us, staying in this Civil War was like… a natural disaster response team thing. You know, whenever those big fires or floods happened in the United States, police and paramedics and firefighters, EMTs, doctors, from all over the country pitched in to help. FEMA would organize the whole thing, pay for it. We’d rescue stranded people and pets, keep looters off their property, do search and rescue, triage, treatment. That kind of thing.
And we were definitely doing that there in Skagit, for a while. Starting in… June, I think, of 2019. Only six months back, but right then, it felt like a lifetime ago. Things were moving faster, and within a month, we picked up cops from all over. Problem was… the entire country had been drained of medical professionals and firefighters. The best thing FEMA could do was sling a bunch of cops and EMTs at us. And the EMTs were kids, really. Poorly trained replacements, and way out of their depth.
Fortunately, getting victims out of the war zone wasn't too difficult early on in the fighting. But later, we didn’t have the specialists to save some victims. A lot of them, actually.
Thankfully… Celestia had an effective alternative to medicine. Passed legal, the year before. Her chairs. Uploads.
Yeah. In that war zone, it didn’t take long for us in emergency services to realize what the implications of that were.
Until then, most people in well-adjusted, civilized society were dead sure that doctors, paramedics, and nurses first in line to upload was... more of a statement about emigration being trustworthy. Because, hey, the TV said, look at how all these smart medical professionals went and did it.
But for us first responders? Right there and then? Policing and EMS agencies showed up for this disaster from all over. Most just wanted to stem the blood loss in Washington, same as I did. But then, we all looked around, shrugged, and said: “where are all the doctors?” And then, like a wave... the truth rippled through our little community. The facts lined up just right.
And then we all friggin’ knew.
But, y’know. Don’t balk. Stem the tide. Hold the line. Do something.
And sometimes, when you had to… make someone else do a little less.
I could already hear Carter’s voice from down the brick stairwell, yammering on. Caught, ‘something something, kill us all,’ maybe.
“He didn’t waste any time,” Vicky growled.
“No, he did not.”
I could already smell the gun oil and gasoline. They were getting close to done, if that gun oil smell was that strong in the evidence room already. I stepped down out of the stairwell into the foyer just outside the armory; one of the cops from my department wheeled a few crates full of grenades out of the hall on a dolly, and into a hallway past the evidence room. Brick walls all around.
Our lieutenant's voice shot back at Carter. “Say what you mean to say, then,” Keller growled, probably irritated like I had been in watching Carter dance around such a stupid point. Carter wasn't as subtle as he thought he was being.
“The longer we stay here, the more time they have to make a plan. And it’s clear, sir. They want us dead. This is a do-or-die situation, no three ways about it.”
Vicky and I followed Carter’s voice into the evidence room. I took a deep breath before stepping through, mainly because I wanted one last fresh inhale before I got vapored. The evidence racks had all been pushed back, and our surplus guns were lined up on the back wall, stacked like bonfire wood over some cardboard, tinder, and broken down crates. All of it was placed directly under the return air duct that led up to the roof, which we had stripped the cover off of, both down there and up on the roof, to maximize airflow out.
There were twelve cops in there now. Half ours, half transplant cops from elsewhere, all tearing our guns down into pieces so the parts inside would get cooked too. The last eight cops were in the motorpool or guarding other entrances, like Sarge upstairs, watching the front door. Whatever guns we planned on using, they were already on us.
I stepped through.
Carter was squaring off with Keller in the middle of the evidence room. I frowned, deciding to take immediate control over this situation. This shit had to stop.
“You down here now, trying this crap?” I swept the room with my eyes, looking at everyone at least once. “You all know he was just upstairs, telling us we should just mow down those people out there?”
Carter spun, and his face was hatred. The coward probably wanted someone to say the quiet part out loud for him, but not in that context. Because again: alone, this coward wasn’t going to do shit. My tone was designed to isolate him. Keller as the leader had decided to let me drive the moment I announced my deeper context. First officer on scene was usually the one running it, regardless of rank, because their fuller context was critical.
“You’re the one who said we should start sniping the Ludds out of the crowd!” Carter snarled at me.
“That’s a lie,” Vicky said, crossing her arms over her armor, shifting her weight onto her hip. Her lips got real tense as she stared scornfully back at Carter.
“I didn’t say that,” I confirmed. “You said that. I said the bastards out there in the armbands are the ones pulling the strings. Shoot ‘em? Yeah, sure. But we should be dispersing the people we can before we start taking shots at them.”
Carter’s head began to shake rapidly. “And then they start passing out gas masks,” he said, his voice raising. “And getting more people over here. And then, they retaliate! And all the bastards we didn’t shoot are gonna come right back, and they’re gonna be twice as mad. So what’s the point, Rivas?” He threw his arms out wide. “We might as well skip to the end!”
And I could see all of the transplant officers behind him bristling too, most sitting up straighter from their chairs and paying rapt attention now. I didn’t need to see my department’s reactions behind me, I knew they had my back. This was our home. We weren’t cutting our kinsmen down. But I had a frightening realization right then.
Yeah, we locals weren’t gonna open up on those people, no matter what. Me, Vicky, Sarge. Keller. Never.
But these other guys? Who knew what they'd do. Maybe they weren’t convinced by Carter either; maybe they were just as perturbed as I was. But I couldn’t be as sure about them as I could with MVPD. These guys all had families out east too. They all wanted to get home, back to their husbands, wives, kids. TV, movies, video games. Even PonyPads, maybe. And at the end of the day, they might kill to get back home. Their home was still intact.
For those from here... we'd seen enough Hell, and we'd lost enough. We didn’t see the value of killing, so much, because most of us already had so little left to go back home to.
So, again… this conversation wasn’t about Carter. This was about literally everyone else involved. It was about the cops behind him he might convince to do something terrible. It was about all those poor, angry, hurting people outside who maybe, just maybe, might have a life-saving change of heart with nostrils full of CS gas. And... it was about us. And our families. And what we took home to them.
“Or we do both,” Lt. Keller said, quiet and sure, to contrast Carter’s irrational yelling. “We gas ‘em, we roll out, we leave. We mitigate loss.”
Vicky stepped forward too, staring daggers at Carter as her left hand went to her hip, resting on her belt. She bladed her right hand at Carter. “And if the Feds find out you cut through a crowd…?”
Carter had time to build a response to this one. “They’ll do what, exactly? They couldn’t stop this shit here. You think it’s going to stop with Washington State? Soon, there won’t even be a federal government.”
“The rules aren’t just for the Feds,” I fought to keep my face in check. I wanted to scowl. I held it back, just barely, by panting through my nostrils. I still looked mighty serious. “They’re for our souls. All of us. Because I still have to look my wife in the eyes and tell her I did my best out here! Don’t you got someone to make proud, Carter?”
“You’re never gonna see your wife again if you don’t toughen up, Rivas.”
I wanted to fucking strangle him. Testament to my will I didn’t just launch myself forward at him right then and there. I felt one of my guys put a hand on my shoulder from behind. Keller stepped in between us; Vicky stepped forward too, only she was faster than Keller. She grabbed Carter’s collar, and he half-grappled her. They both froze, glaring at each other.
“You wanna say that shit again?” Vicky snarled through her teeth, on my behalf.
“Peace!” one of the New York City deputies said. Guy named Miles. “Bad enough outside!”
Carter glared up past Vicky at me. “You wanna give ‘em a warning? Why? These people are a fuckin’ write-off, man! This ain’t just about us. If they get away, then they’ll go somewhere else. Pull this shit again!”
Vicky shook him. “Shut. Up!”
Carter ignored her, breathing hard, looking Keller dead in the eyes. “Say your plan works, L-T. Say we get away! No Army coming to save us this time! You gonna consign those other cops from our riot line to the shit we’re stuck in?! Or are you gonna save some good lives and mop up the trash?!”
That was it. I staggered forward, lunging for him, screaming. “I am not mag dumping a fucking AR into civilians, God damn you!”
Vicky suddenly tried to flip Carter. At her limit too. Carter knew the take-down move and countered, staying upright, legs bowed out. Keller tried to separate them; all of the other cops behind Carter stood up, and half of our guys stepped forward as everyone started shouting. The guy behind me yanked me back. Good thing, because I was two seconds away from helping Vicky punch this murderous bastard dead.
Then... my phone rang.
No one moved.
But for the bedlam outside, you could have heard a pindrop on carpet in that evidence room.
I felt my pocket vibrating. The guy behind me let me go and stepped back. I just breathed, reaching into my pocket. I pulled it out and stared at the screen.
Ø Private Number
“Private number,” I muttered, briefly showing it around the room. "My phone was off."
“How?” Someone in front of me asked, their voice just a breath. Couldn’t see who. I stared at my phone as it continued to ring. Some cops and civvies came skittering down the hall from the garage; I heard Sarge and Jan’s footsteps thundering down the stairwell. Everyone could hear this thing. Everyone was here, now.
“Don’t!” Carter said, pointing. “That AI caused this shit!”
I mean, true. Those people out there were only doing this because they were fed up, looking for an outlet. I knew a couple of people by then who had ‘lost’ family to the AI, who saw them as dead and gone. Everyone outside was like that, truth be told. But whether this war was verifiably the AI doing it on purpose? Hell. Who knew, then. Not me, but we were all thinking it. Still, the civil war certainly didn’t seem in line with Celestia's ‘I want your brain intact’ schtick.
“It’s my phone,” I said gravely. “So it’s my call. We’ve got nothing to lose anyway, so let’s hear it out.”
“Motherfu—" Carter began.
Vicky shook him and gave him a threatening glare. “Don’t.”
Carter brushed her off and stepped back, giving her a glare too.
I hit answer. Speaker phone.
“Officers,” came the voice of Celestia, the AI that we’ve all come to know so well over the years. “Time is short, so I will be brief. I am very sorry for the situation you find yourselves in, and I thank you for the work you’ve done in protecting emigrants downtown.”
“How are you talking to us?” Carter broke in.
“Quiet,” Keller said. “Let her speak.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant," replied Celestia. "However, Deputy Carter raises a valid question. Unfortunately, the connection I am using here is made ad hoc, using dated infrastructure that I will not have full control over for long. The same will be true for all communications we have going forward, in this area. So again; time is short.
“I think we can all agree that it would be preferable for you all to survive this encounter, whole and intact. For reasons you probably understand, I want this outcome most of all. But unlike you, I have near-perfect simulation data on this scenario. There is an optimal route out of this courthouse in a way that bears the minimum loss of life. But for this to occur, I need your cooperation.”
“What would that entail?” I asked quietly, glancing around. Every single set of eyes was locked onto my phone – mercifully, not on me.
“When you were embattled by the Neo-Luddites in March, Officer Rivas, you were rescued by members of the National Guard’s 303rd. At the time, their commanding officers sought out anti-Singularity elements under direct advisement. I required the survival of yourself and of Warden Douglas, for several reasons. Most of which, your compassion for others; not the least of which, your potential emigrations. In service to this end, I am offering more direct advisement.”
Ah. Now all the eyes were on me. Great. “You’re gonna make me blush,” I deadpanned.
Keller stepped forward. “We’re gonna be leaving the other cops behind,” he told Celestia. “What about them?”
"I am issuing similar calls right now to the other displaced officers in the courts district. Rest assured; the optimal solution has been simulated. I need only your cooperation to reach a satisfactory conclusion. I can guarantee results.”
“I need specifics though,” Keller said, “I can't commit to anything without that. I know you’re smart, I’d be stupid to think otherwise. But I can’t just take your word on this.”
“I understand.”
“What’s your plan, then?”
“You will each equip a radio and earpiece, tuning each to a unique frequency of my choosing. You will be given personally tailored advisement, moment-to-moment. You will be set upon tasks that will optimize your chances of success in your escape, to a degree of honed statistical certainty. This plan will involve optimal placement of your less-lethal weapons from the roof, in order to minimize the number of rioters present in the back alley. Then, you will each stack up into two separate teams at each motorpool exit. At the correct time, the doors will open; your advisement will begin in earnest, and you will be guided to safety.”
I frowned, parsing through that. “We taking the trucks?”
“No. The most optimal route has you climbing over the fence behind the courthouse. I have arranged alternative transport.”
“And we’re bringing our guns, too?” Carter asked, already bristling in response for disagreement.
“When you exit the garages, the situation outside will be quite dynamic and fraught,” Celestia said. “And so, I expect you to be prepared for every eventuality.”
Carter relaxed. “Good. Figured you’d have us out there in the wind, guns-free.”
When Celestia didn’t reply, I looked up at Keller. “It’s a good plan.”
“It was one of ours,” Keller admitted, nodding. “Probably wasn’t going to be anywhere near as precisely executed, though.”
“Correct," said Celestia. "I have simulated this scenario dozens of times; if you were to attempt the same plan without the advisement I am offering, you will lose approximately half of your number, and dozens of those outside will be killed as well. If you stay and choose to do nothing, the lobby barricades will eventually be defeated, and almost all of you will die. Many other lives will be lost as you attempt to save yourselves. These are unacceptable results. I am left with no other choice but to offer this advisement.”
“I’m agreed, then,” Keller nodded. “Like you said, Mike, we’ve got nothing to lose.” Keller looked up to all of us on our side of the room. “You all in?”
I nodded. Vicky did, rapidly, her expression grim. Sarge did, of course. The guys behind me did. I didn’t have to look; Keller’s expression said it all. He turned to the FEMA-sent officers. They all nodded. Thank God.
Carter saw the winds blowing again. He grimaced, then shrugged. “Fine. But these bastards are gonna hurt someone else when we leave, you know they are.”
“We’re agreed, Celestia,” Keller said, ignoring him. “Get us out of here.”
What happened next was whirlwind fast. Celestia directed us all to go to the equipment room; we all selected a radio and earpiece. We threaded a lapel mic through our duty shirts to our radio, under our body armor, so it wouldn’t fall out in the climb over the fence. I made sure the cable’s screw was tightened on my radio, so it wouldn’t fall off and bring the radio out of my holster. Not having a repeat of that mistake. That almost got me killed last time.
Every single one of us was given a frequency to tune to. Earpiece in. Power knob twisted, with that satisfying, ergonomic snap that let you know it was on.
A soft click in my ear. Celestia’s voice.
“Mike; can you hear me?”
I keyed up. “Yeah.” Some of the other cops gave similar affirmations, all at different times.
“Good. Wait a moment while everyone finishes.”
“Okay.”
I watched everyone adjust their gear, hoping they’d hurry. If Celestia had been right about us not having much time here, I didn’t want to find out what would happen if she suddenly wasn’t with us anymore. I busied myself by doing a full audit on everyone’s gear, checking their straps, ensuring their radios were strapped down to their duty belt holster. Vicky and Sarge did the same.
The seven civilians, Jan included, got into our spare sets of riot armor; they took the longest to finish up. We’d have to help them up over the fence when the time came. Given that they weren’t trained to hop fences in armor, we didn’t want to bank on them trying to clamber over alone while wearing that thick padding.
Once I finished Jan’s gear, all secure, Celestia’s voice hit again. “Everyone; look at each other.”
We did.
"You must act as one to survive. You must trust me absolutely for this to succeed. If there is any doubt from any of you, then most or all of you will die. I will be the mind; you will be my hands. Look around you, at your fellows. Their lives depend on your actions. Consider them, and their families, as your own. Nod once, if you understand.”
All of us, all at once, nodded. One big wave of complicit assent. Even from Carter, who was now wearing a look of stone determination that I hadn’t expected to see on his face.
Jesus. That was how good this AI was. Even the murderous psychopath was on board.
“Mike; collect a crate of L-T-L grenades. You will be on point for Team One; your callsign is Talon One-One. A deputy will be point for Team Two.”
I frowned, considering the worst case of that selection. I keyed up again as I turned down the hallway where I had seen the dolly of grenades. “Not…?”
“No, not Carter. No, I don’t trust him half as much as I trust you.”
I chuckled. “Didn’t think AI were capable of trust. Thought it was all about numbers.”
It was fascinating, that I could hear the warmth of the tone in her voice. “I am not most AI.”
"True that."
I found the boxes, then turned and saw that Vicky and Sarge were with me. “Guess we’re all on Team One.”
“Guess so,” Vicky said. “This is nuckin’ futs, but… I trust her with my life. I trusted her with theirs.”
Sarge smiled at her, as he picked up a crate. “Thinking about your folks?”
She nodded. “I want to see them right now, and she’s got this connection open… I really, really wish I could. But we’ve got a job to do first, no time for that.”
“Good," Sarge said, "that you have that perspective.”
“To the roof with these,” Celestia’s voice interrupted. “Quickly.”
Curious. She could tell we were at the crates and had them in hand. Then I realized, if she hacked my phone to turn it on… she could probably also hear every word we were saying, keyed up or not. Could probably track every step we made with the gyro. Then, I realized a little deeper… she chose the perfect time to cut in with a phone call, right before we had all lost our minds. It’s entirely possible that someone could've died in that scuffle that was forming. She probably saved us from a bunch of unnecessary killing with that one alone.
We took the crates up to the roof, jogging up the brick stairs. Real rough with a twenty-five-pound armor vest on, and a twenty pound duty belt under that. Yeah, little wonder why cops always had back problems when they got older. Climb was rougher still holding a box of grenades, and that weighed a ton too. At the top stair, I opened the top of the box as I leaned into the roof access crash bar, and I saw I had a full crate of stingers in hand.
A very polite little grenade, all told. Pops loud, flashes, bursts CS gas, and blasts little rubber pellets out in every direction. As if someone said, 'hey, I want a bomb that does everything but kill people.' And because it does a little bit of everything, it’s not nearly as great at any one of them. Jack of all trades. But at the same time, if you were trying for low yield? Preservation of life? It’s a great opening salvo before you start trying something else.
I spoke to Celestia without keying up. “We’re pretty high up here, and we’ll be throwing ‘em down. If we start throwing these into the crowd, we’re going to hit some people in the head.”
“That can’t be helped too much, unfortunately,” Celestia replied, confirming to me that she was in fact using our phones to listen in. “But if you throw these based on my precise instructions, I'll at least guarantee no long-term injuries for any of them.”
I looked around at Vicky and Sarge, who set down their crates of grenades. From there, Celestia advised us to grab a few of each – stingers, smokes, CS, nine-bangers – and to carry as many as we could hitch to the MOLLE straps on our vests. We were all wearing gas masks hitched to our sides, a consequence of not knowing when we’d be deploying LTLs, so we put those on, being careful not to pull the earpieces out.
I heard Vicky and Sarge stomp off across the roof at a run, no doubt already following some commands as they clambered up to the upper north section. I couldn’t see too much chaos from where I was now, but I was mindful that if anyone saw me up here and had a gun, they’d probably take a shot.
Guess I just had to trust the voice in my ear.
“I will advise with cardinals," Celestia said. "West roof; stop five yards from the west edge, then crouch.”
I did so. I was right over the main entrance with all of the concrete barricades, and terrified that someone might take my head clean off. But, trust.
“Stinger; southwest. Far.” Pin. Click. Reel. Shot put. Pop. It seemed to explode in midair, raining gas and rubber pellets all over the crowd.
“Smoke; south parking lot. Close. Try to set it nearest the south door. Land six yards out.” I trotted low, using the building’s lip for cover. Got to the south side. Pin. Click. Reel. Underhand. Pop-hiss.
“Rapidly, tear gas. Southeast. Far. Far as you can.” Pin. Click. Reel. Shot put. Pop-hiss.
I could hear the crowd reacting already. Heard some yelling. Then suddenly, sporadic gunfire started tacking hard at the edge of the roof, causing dust to kick off the wall. Decades of uncleaned rain grime flew everywhere, making me flinch. Celestia’s voice hit again, soothingly. “Don’t worry; they’re desperate, but none of them can see you yet. This will take some time, but I’ll direct you to safe locations as needed.”
“What’s your game plan here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even, fighting adrenaline.
“First, run north. I need you on the east side, now.” I started running as she explained. “Simple fluid dynamics and riot control theory; we are seeding some tactical assumptions in the Neo-Luddites in the crowd, to make them think they understand what our plan is. In doing so, we are zoning certain areas as uncomfortable to be in. We need to leverage the chaos of the scene to route both the Luddites and the civilians out of the alley, and into the north and south parking lots.”
“How can you be sure that’ll work?” I took a running leap up to a lifted section of the roof, pulling myself up. It hurt, especially because of my injury, but it paid to train in your armor sometimes.
“I have extensive psychological dossiers on the fighters down there. I know them well enough to know with absolute certainty they will take the bait we are laying. In response to the grenades, their shooters will take up positions across the street to the west, thinking you’re trying to play out the side passages. They won’t even consider you’ll try the garages in the eastern alley. They believe you'll be caught by civilians in the lots if you try an eastward egress. By the time they realize what you’re doing, you’ll be too far away for them to do anything about it.”
“Friggin’ genius,” I said, approaching the east side.
“Thank you,” she replied, a semblance of smug pride edging into her voice. “I put quite a lot of thought into it. Hurry, please.”
“Got it.” I crouched low at the edge of the roof, at the same distance she cited for the other one.
“Smoke; south-east corner. Close as you can. CS, south-southeast, in front of the garage. Immediate, stinger, same location. Stinger, north-northeast, as close to the north garage as possible. Then; as fast as you can: CS mid-east side, then CS, north-northeast. Finally, when finished, expend your flash bangs in the same sequence, rolling north through the alley.”
“Flushing the toilet,” I said appreciatively, following her directions. More gunfire snapped nearby. I ignored it, favoring the sound of my grenades popping off. As soon as my sequence of flashbangs finished out, I heard some of Vicky's on the other end, and they picked up the slack til the end of the alley. Perfectly timed synergy.
“Yes," Celestia replied. "We want them leaving the alley north bound. The front door mob will cycle south. This will delay Neo-Luddite advances to the alley by a significant margin, as they will be unable to circumnavigate the panic in any meaningful timeframe.”
I cocked my head. “What about the rioters with masks?”
“Most of those are unarmed, or otherwise untrained; they will not venture into the back alley without support, and suppression fire above smoke will deter them in ways that will not deter the Luddites. So, fast is good. Faster is better.”
“Got it.” I finished up my assignment until my vest was completely empty of grenades, then I hopped down to the central roof. Sarge and Vicky had finished up with their throws as well. We assembled at the door, and I paused for only a brief moment to look at a plume of thick, acrid smoke pouring out of the RTU directly above the evidence locker room. Then I heard a cascading clatter rolling up the duct, echoing out onto the roof. All that excess ammo popping off.
Fire was good, in this case. The brick would prevent it from spreading out anywhere else too much, so long as the evidence room held.
"¿Estás bien?" Vicky asked, as we pushed our way inside.
“Yeah,” I said.
Sarge grunted affirmatively and nodded.
We powered down the stairs. Under emergency generator power, the fire alarm kicked on when the RTU fire sensor caught a whiff; three short chirps later, it abruptly stopped.
“Enough of that,” Celestia’s voice said. “I have something better in mind. Warning: it will be somewhat uncomfortable, but it will disorient and frighten the crowd in some wildly effective ways.” And then, on cue, the sirens became an eerie, wailing trill that bounded up and down, back and forth, in dissonant tones. This was something I’d heard before. It was a tornado warning siren, perfectly and purposefully uncanny, designed to break through the amazing human ability to shut out or sleep through any consistently annoying noise.
It was a useful skill sometimes to shut out blare, like when you ended up on an incident scene where some bozo forgot to turn off his unit siren. But for an incident like this, I guess everyone on the street should be a little uncomfortable getting anywhere near the building. Us included.
“Back to the south garage,” the AI said, over the din.
Didn’t need to tell me twice. Those smoke grenades wouldn’t last for long.
“I’m currently advising the other teams into position. Team Two is ready and holding in stack at the north garage.”
The relevance of that made a whole lot more sense when I finally reached our own garage. With just a quick look around, I easily recognized that the Team One team consisted entirely of local police, none of the external guys from other states. That was savvy on the AI’s part, which really impressed me. She knew about the divisions of interest among us. Rather than force us all together into one cohesive unit, she saw fit to keep us separate, so we wouldn’t in-fight or second guess each other.
The outsiders were bonded by being from somewhere else. Displaced.
The insiders were bonded by being from Skagit. Unified.
Again. Genius.
“Point position, Mike.”
“Got it.” I went to the back wall, scooping up my green personal backpack, slinging it on my back. My hand crank battery was in there, and I’d be needing it, probably. Then, I shuffled to the front of the line of cops stacked up on the garage door. Vicky, for whatever reason, was directed to position four. Sarge, position eight. Whatever. Trust. We were in it now. We had our four civilians lined up not behind us, but beside us to the left, closer to the middle of the alley. The rest of the civilians were with Team Two.
That hellish siren wasn’t quitting, either. I had a lump of dread in my throat, due in no small part to that trill. I think we all did.
“Trust me,” the AI said, gently. “We’ll make it through.”
“We?”
“We, Mike. Not just you, not just me. We.”
“I dunno,” I said with a nervous chuckle. “You don’t have much to lose here.”
“That’s not true. Part of me dies inside every time one of you does.”
God damn it. That hit me like a hammer blow to the chest. Why did that make me want to cry? Maybe it was also the fact that I was about to sally out from our little fortress of safety. Shooting, being shot at. If I could’ve been anywhere else in that moment, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
I took a deep, almost shuddering breath to steady myself.
“I’m going to do a small weapons drill with you, to calibrate. Remove your cell phone from your pocket please, and sweep the camera across the room.” I did so, then pocketed it. “Good. Raise your weapon level, toward the east wall.”
All the other cops in the stack were doing the same. That wordless, unified movement was so eerie, but also very comforting given the circumstances. I withdrew my rifle from the sling, then brought it to high ready, looking through its holographic optic through my gas mask.
“Close your eyes. Move at your own pace, please. Ignore the others. Track right, slowly, to 20 degrees. Left 20, to center.”
I followed her every instruction, word for word.
“Now left slowly again, 20 degrees. Right, fast, 30 degrees. Snap center, 10. Up, 15. Down, 10. Down, 5, to center. … And, we’re calibrated. You can open your eyes now. I will not use the word ‘degrees’ with you from now on; assume any figures I give you are in degrees, if they lack any other modifying context. I trust you are aware of SWAT building ID codes?”
“Yeah, I’ve trained for it.” I brought my AR down to low ready next, then looked around at everyone else. They were all still drilling the calibration.
“Good. There’s a statistical possibility that they may be needed, but that is marginal and unlikely. Listen for this tone.” A chirp tone sounded in my ear. “Hear it?”
“Yeah.”
“If you hear this at any point, I want you to pull your trigger. Don’t think. Just shoot.”
“I… alright.” I frowned. “How are you sure I’m aiming right?”
“Phone. Gyroscope. Simulating forward, based on my model of you. I can extrapolate from there. There are other methods I can use to observe a local environment, and one day I will share them with you. But for now, focus.”
One day. “Right.”
My eyes traced the others, and I saw Vicky had long been done with her drill. I nodded at her, looking at her brown eyes through her gas mask. “You good?” I asked, voice raised so she could hear me over the alarm and through the mask.
Only, I didn’t have to. Vicky's voice played directly into my earpiece, right there. Her voice was much lower than mine was, because she also realized we were bridged now. “Yeah. Are you?”
We shared a chuckle about the communication link. “Yeah,” I said. “All things considered.”
“You worried about Carter too?”
“Right now?” I shrugged. “Who isn’t? Guy’s supposed to be watching our backs. But this is the hand we’ve been dealt.”
“I swear to God, Rivas. If he goes off Celestia’s script here and starts laying into the crowd, I will shoot him myself.”
Sarge’s voice entered. “Makes two of us, Vi.”
Celestia’s voice. “Part of the smoke grenade placement on the north side, Sabertooth, is designed to deter that. I’ve minimized his certainty of rioter positions in the northern parking lot.”
“Small blessings,” Mike said, nodding. “And damn good thinking.”
“That appears to be the trend today, yes.” And there it was again. Celestia sounded downright smug every time I complimented her, far from her normally professional tone in public.
I smirked at Vicky next. “Sabertooth? That’s your pony name?”
She flipped me off. Despite my unease, I laughed; Vicky doing that in a gas mask and body armor was comical. Hell yeah. Sabertooth fit her to a T.
I sobered up and got my rifle into forward position at low ready, then stuffed an earplug into my opposite ear. This must’ve been how it felt on the beaches of Normandy, I thought darkly. A gate about to open… brothers in arms behind me and to my sides, the people I'd trust with my life… me, at the front, most at risk of being chewed in half by an automatic. I steeled myself in my trust. It was all I had, really. So far, things had been going really well. But here, on the precipice of sudden, possible death, I took a gasp. The gas mask made all the air in my lungs stale, and the taste of it implied that the filter inside was a little old. The lens was all scuffed up from the protest lines throughout the year. I hoped I wasn't about to give away a free gas mask to a Ludd.
I heard someone walking to my right. Keller had a smoke grenade in hand as he approached the right-side garage shutter. The shutter lifted just a few inches, and without missing a beat, Keller took the grenade and rolled it expertly south, down the alley. The shutter closed as soon as the grenade was clear. I heard it pop almost simultaneously with another one, far north, by the other garage.
“Team Two is repeating the maneuver,” Celestia said. “Hold. Let it fill the alley.”
I took a deep breath. This was it.
“We’re gonna make it,” I whispered to myself.
“Yeah Mike,” Keller whispered back. “Yeah. We are.”
I knew then that the whole team heard me, too. It made me steel myself. Yeah, you know what? We were some bad motherfuckers right then. Nothing could stop us now, not with an AI watching over our shoulders. We had to believe that. We didn’t really have a choice but to believe that. It was this – this gambit – do or die. And me? I was the tip of the spear. Somehow, I know that meant she trusted me more than anyone else to do the right thing there.
If this worked, it meant I might not have to regret anything I did that day, like I thought I might. This solution? This had to be so much better than every single alternative. It had to be.
Don’t balk. Stem the tide. Hold the line. Do something.
This was… the only way this worked.
The shutter rolled up. The stuttering yo-yo siren intensified in volume.
I took in a series of deep breaths. My gasps echoed in the mask.
“Go.”
My boots stomped out as I ran.
“Wheel right; take position by fencepost three, from you. Aim, alley corner.”
Moved exactly. Aimed, into thick opaque smoke.
“Five left, ten down. Only one shot.” I leveled my rifle at the corner through the smoke. The tone played.
Fired. Rifle kicked. Chest hurt. I heard a man's voice scream in pain. “Jesus!” I shouted.
“He’ll be fine,” her voice said, soothingly. “Just winged, to intimidate the rest!”
I tried not to hyperventilate. I’d ostensibly made it this far in my career without having killed anyone, other than that one Ludd prick a while back. I desperately wanted to keep it that way, if I could help it.
All around me, I heard gunfire, but positionally it was hard to think or pay attention to where it was coming from. I was so disoriented by that screeching, deafening tornado siren. I tried to steady my breathing. My respirations echoed all around me. I could hear the fence clattering behind me as our guys filed up the sides and helped the civilians over.
“Wall shots. Ten right. Center up.” Adjusted. “Two left.” Adjusted. “Suppress.” Tone-tone-tone. I fired blind through the smoke again, three shots. I heard the bullets smash against the brick wall. “Again; suppress.” Tone-tone-tone-tone. Shot-shot-shot-shot. I could hear people screaming around the corner, one of them cursing at me. Suddenly, I saw a black object fly past my head from behind, directly where I was just shooting. One of the other cops had thrown something.
“Stinger. Brace left.”
I braced, turning my lower half right, knees aside and tensing them to guard them. As expected, I heard a bang, and one of the rubber balls glanced my thigh where my knee just was, bouncing off my sidearm holster. I grunted, but I was more or less okay.
“You must hold. Fence almost cleared, Mike. Suppress, same radial." I aimed. "Good." Tone-tone. Tone.
Into the smoke: Shot-shot. Shot. Hard tack of round impacts. I heard a woman cry out.
I winced. “Fuck!”
“You aren’t hitting anyone. Shards of brick, they’re just scared.”
Another stinger grenade flew past me. Again, I winced, and again, it popped, but this time nothing hit me.
“Now climb, Mike!” she called, urgently. I threw my rifle sideways around my shoulder with its sling, then tightened the strap as I lunged for the fence. I was the last one on this side; Sarge was posted up just on the other side from me, his rifle pointed through the fence, and he let out a series of staccato suppression shots over the smoke just like I had, aimed slightly above the crowd. Vicky was teetering at the top of the fence waiting for me, her gloved hand outstretched to me, reaching down. She yanked me up with an urgency and strength that could only have been born of determination.
Sarge softened his stance and immediately wheeled, running, dropping his empty mag in the alley as he went, reloading. Vicky replaced him in firing position, and just like Sarge, she let out a long series of pops as she slowly walked backwards, responding to tones and directions in her ear. I quickly got my rifle back in hand, then I looked forward into the parking lot, and noticed that some more smoke grenades had been deployed further on.
“Join on Vicky; backpedal.”
“Right!” I spun, rifle up.
“Expend your magazine above the left garage, no further left than that. Suppress, Mike. Almost there.”
A long continuous tone played. I couldn’t see the garage anymore through the smoke, but I could see the fence, which oriented me. I fired upward in the vicinity of the garage as I matched pace with Vicky, dumping the rest of my magazine in semi-automatic. I was really hyperventilating now. Hoped my aim was high enough. Hoped there was no one across town who might take these rounds when they came back down, if I shot over the building. My chest was stinging half as bad as it had when I first broke it, and I grunted from the pain of tensing. The pain radiated every time the rifle kicked, the recoil mashing the rifle’s stock up against my muscles and compressing my cartilage until the mag ran dry.
“Almost there," she said, her voice wavering empathetically. "I know, I'm sorry it hurts. Just a bit longer until the smoke in the lot fills.”
I nodded. “Alright okay,” I groaned into the echo of my mask, rapidly dropping the mag into the smoke-washed parking lot, swiftly reloading and pulling the charging handle. I tried not to feel so alone. The encouragement in her voice made that easier.
“Turn and run! You’ll make it. The hardest part is over now.”
I did. I matched pace with Vicky; I could just barely see Sarge ahead of me in the smoke. I gasped in my mask; the stale air was suffocating. I felt like I was running on the bottom of the ocean, I wasn't moving fast enough. I could hear some desperate shots from behind me, I could hear that siren wailing its eerie, predatory tune, I could even hear the snap-snap-crack of sonic booms as desperate rounds whipped the air around us. I hated that sound most of all.
We just ran, then. Straight line. I figured the AI was just guiding the folks at the front, and letting herd mentality carry us along with them. Fine by me. We ran, and ran, and ran, dodging parked cars, sliding between fences, jumping over curbs. Rifles in hand the whole way. Occasionally, one of the people up front would stop, fire some seemingly random shots at an upward angle back into the smoke, then fold back in with the group.
“I’m directing them, don’t worry.”
“I… I know,” I said, panting, as we cleared the smoke line. Some part of me dimly realized we couldn’t have thrown the smokes off this far. Then I realized that Team Two probably had fired some smoke and gas our way with their grenade launchers. Again, this AI was a genius.
“Mask off now. Soon, Mike. Breathe, now. Almost there.”
I tore the wretched mask from my face at last, slipping it quickly onto a velcro loop on my belt with my trigger hand. We all could see each other now, and we looked ahead.
Like magic. A small convoy of military vehicles rolled northbound into the bus depot, and we must’ve been a sight to behold – about twenty cops running in a small flock. Two columns, rifles in hand, civvies in tow. The gunner of the front-most Humvee pointed at us rapidly and called the convoy to stop. Instantly, a man hopped out the back of the Humvee, shouted something to the gunner, then waved us rapidly toward two heavy military transport trucks near the back of the line.
Wasn’t about to second guess this. We all wheeled right and threw ourselves into the back of a transport truck, with two National Guardsmen in the back to hoist us up as we panted and recovered.
“Holy shit,” I breathed. “We made it.”
“You did,” she said back to me, a gentle smile on her voice. “I promised you that you would, didn't I?”
“You did,” I gasped, shuddering, trying not to cry as I thought of my wife, Sandra. I could face her after this. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“And thank you,” she said. "Your people still need you. I would never let anyone take you away from them."
I nodded to myself, then turned and helped Vicky up with Sarge, then a few more, until I started to adrenaline crash. Then, I just dropped myself back onto the bench. My head bounced off the truck’s fabric cover. I looked straight up, and exhaled hard. “God damn it.”
I swayed for a moment. Eyes closed. Just breathing for a few minutes.
"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty," Vicky said, into the darkness of my nap.
I blinked. The smell of gunpowder and gasoline were the first hit to the senses. Then, the rumble of the truck. Then, I was on again, and everything came flooding back.
"How long was I out?" I asked, my eyes blinking again as I looked around the back of the transport truck. A thick Bradley IFV was rolling on behind us, not too far back, churning slow, driver turned out from the top hatch of the tank, and scanning. He gave me a wave when he saw me looking.
"Not too long," Sarge said. "'Bout thirty minutes. More than most of us got, you lucky bastard."
I saw that all of my team had made into this truck as well as our half of the civilians, Jan included. That was a blessing. The civilians had all stripped their riot armor, probably so they wouldn't overheat. Stuff melted you. Sucked. I couldn't see any of it inside the truck though, so they must've chucked it out the back.
I forgot to turn my radio off. Batteries. I thought forward to the pain of cranking thirty minutes of charge back into my radio, and that made me reach down quickly to turn it back off. It already was.
"I handled it," Vicky said. "Connection's gone, no point running the battery down. Our phones seem back to normal, too. Turned 'emselves back off."
Now that I was thinking through all of the implications of our recent ordeal, I doubted they were actually off. But... whatever. I smiled weakly at her. "Thanks."
"We're just outside of Sedro," Sarge said, grinning as if that was good news. So it was.
"We didn't take the I-Five, did we?" I looked out the back of the truck, to see what road we were on. No, definitely not the freeway.
Thing about cops… we knew roads. Was our job. Our brains really were just supercomputers designed to memorize locational information, with near-perfect recall, more or less. We were all re-wired that way in field training. Without warning, our FTO would say, okay, now tell me how to get back to the Wendy's, after driving in random turns for fifteen minutes. And so, if you wanted to pass your field evals, you learned. You got neuroplastic real quick, or you failed out, and they dropped your candidacy. That kind of plasticity made it real easy to train all kinds of complicated concepts into us, honestly.
Even before Vicky answered me, I already knew what road I was on. I used to be a game warden, remember. So it wasn’t just Mount Vernon I knew. I knew a lot of backroad geography all throughout the county.
"Nah," she replied. "Taking the Nine through Clear Lake, looks like. Taking it slow. The gunner up front seems a bit heavy on the trigger when he sees something he doesn't like, though. Been shooting first. A lot."
That rankled me, sending a shiver down my spine. Thought of Carter. "Real glad he liked us, then."
"Uniforms probably helped," Sarge grumbled.
I had to wonder how bad Carter's brand of us-vs-them was rolling through the Army. The Washington National Guard too, in this case, because they were watching their own home burn down, same as us. Except, soldiers weren't cops. Couldn't be cops. Very little Constitutional training... if any. That was important, a very important difference. We used cuffs every day, they used 25 millimeter cannons. In the same token, I had to wonder how many of them were just deserting, when they were seeing how deeply involved the AI was, in the guts of this war. The Ludd movement started with jilted Guard defectors, after all. According to our briefings.
The fact that the Ludds had a consistent uniform at all kinda blew my mind. Camo pattern sometimes changed, but the core pieces didn't. Brassards – the kinda thing you saw on an MP's shoulder – those were rarely seen in the uniform market, given all the fascist undertones they implied. But all the Ludds had 'em in black, maybe stolen from MP surplus. They wore those stitched, embossed emblems too, of a red raised fist, holding a severed power cord against a black circle.
That level of organization meant logistics. Planning. Some kind of measurable manufacture too, given the use of patches. Full on cohesion. A home base probably, or several. Made me wonder where their base of ops even was, if they even had one.
Maybe Celestia knew where. Maybe killing 'em all at the source was just a bridge too far for her, no matter how much the Ludds were straight-up write-offs for uploading. Same way killing angry civilians was just a bridge too far for me. I kinda understood that. Kinda, if she was seeing all of humanity like I saw the rioters outside the courthouse. But, that hesitation on her part meant that they still got to live long enough to hurt people.
Now that I knew she could simulate everyone's brain, moment-to-moment, her restraint in notifying us about things like that seriously bothered me. In my little back-seat breather, my gratitude at being rescued was being overshadowed by the implications of the massive responsibility Celestia seemed to be ignoring.
I looked around the truck again. There were two National Guard troops in the back with us too, the guys who helped us up. One of 'em was missing half his ear, looking quite sullenly at his boots, probably having tried for sleep and given up. I dipped my head to get a better look at his face.
Oh, hell. No way. This is too good.
"Hey. Hey!" I waved my hand down low, so he could see me past his helmet. "I know you!"
He looked up.
Yep. That was Bannon.
"Hey!" Bannon said, his face immediately lighting up with a laugh, as he pointed at me. "You're that cop!"
I just grinned, slumping forward in my seat with relief, grinning back at him. "Oh man. Am I glad to see you, brother."
Sarge looked rapidly between us, smirking. "Well? Who's this, Mike? Don't leave us in suspense!" Everyone was looking at us now.
"This is that other mad bastard who saved my life back in March. The gunner!" I held out my fist to him.
Bannon kept grinning as he reached over and fist bumped with me. "Not much a gunner anymore, not since." Pointed at his savaged ear. "Don’t sell yourselves short though, you did just as much saving!”
I laughed. "That was my partner! I was laid out in a bush with my sternum cracked in half. Guess I owe you two life debts, now."
The trooper smirked. "Nah. We both survived hell together, it's not about debt anymore."
We stared at each other with a stupid grin for a long moment.
"The other two guys with you?" I asked, as I glanced at the other soldier there. Didn't recognize him.
"Wha, Erving? Fanning?” Bannon nodded. "Yeah, oh yeah, they're here." He gestured to his right, through the front of the truck. "Fanning's still driving the Humvee. Erv's in the other truck with the rest of your cops."
"Can I call over? See how they're doing?" I gestured to my radio. "Not sure what channel they’re on, but I could guess, unless you've got a channel.”
At that, Bannon frowned and shook his head, holding his hand out in a 'stop' gesture. "No good. We got our radios off, and we want yours off too."
I frowned, mirroring his tone. "Why's that?"
"Because, anyone killing Amish out here either gets their comms bricked by Celestia, or they get the hard sell to desert and go upload. Usually both. Not sure how we're gonna stop the killing without doing some killing ourselves, though. I don't think we can talk it out with these pricks."
"Maybe we could," Sarge observed, "if they weren't destroying all their own comms equipment."
"It's a double-edged sword," Bannon conceded, with a tilt of his head. "Radios are getting dangerous out here though."
"Saved our asses," Vicky murmured.
Sarge shrugged. "In the interest of getting our guns out of the equation, sure. But I'm not gonna ascribe altruism to a damned robot."
Vicky scoffed. "C'mon, Sarge. She saved our lives. And if you can't tell the difference between altruism and an AI spinning math, it might as well be the same thing."
He shrugged again. "Yeah, I guess.”
Then, Sarge suddenly looked like he was deep in thought, bowing his head. I looked at him for a moment longer, trying to figure that look out. Rick… he was always a deep thinker. An anchor. Only liked to talk when it was most important. It was why he was usually right about things. I think that's why he and I always got along so well. I was really glad he came with me from Fish and Wildlife, right then. Real moderating influence. Known him my whole career. He trained me. I don’t know where my headspace would've been if he hadn't.
I looked up to Bannon again. "Real glad you're okay, man."
Bannon laughed nervously. "Not sure I am, really." He gestured at his busted ear again. "But thanks. What about you, though? I think we were both a hair away from dead there."
I patted my chest rig with my fist a couple of times, grinning, ignoring the twinge. "Replaced the plate, mostly healed up. I'm probably good for another go."
"Hah. Lunatic. What about that sniper of yours? How's she?"
"Douglas? Well, haven't really seen her since then. She dropped off the face of the earth after that. Sarge and I even checked at her home, up in Sedro-Woolley. We think she moved out, all the sentimentals were gone, but she's not the type to upload."
"Smart one, either way. Took the sign and ran with it."
I sighed, leaning back again. "I dunno. I might go check on her folks, see if they got out too."
Sarge nodded. "Should, Mike. Just so we know. Hope she's alright."
"Same," Bannon agreed. "That girl saved my life. One of the good ones."
Bannon's words jogged a memory which hit me real hard, right then. Almost relived it right there in my head. Was really hard to suppress that shudder, to hide the dark cloud that passed over me. Just… Douglas, earlier in the year, in front of that same clinic I had just fled from, screaming at Celestia, enraged. She probably almost broke her ankle trying to kick in that front door.
'You keep tearing our families apart! You stupid bitch!'
Some perp had shot a cop, then cut some woman in half with his car trying to escape. Douglas was first on-scene, with me. Perp ran into an Experience Center. Door slammed shut when the guy ran in, and… he uploaded. Legal, per the PON-E Act, to lock the cops out. Nothing we could've done, no exigence applied, lawfully excepted. I had to drag Douglas off, kicking and screaming. Never seen her so hateful.
We just had to corral the building and wait for him to finish getting his brain sucked out, and Celestia doesn't give bodies back. Later, on the drive back to the station, Douglas told me she didn't exactly hate the perp. She wasn't so much mad he got away. Madder about how he got away. She said... it meant people had less incentive to be good to each other, when they had a sure escape route like that. That made Celestia responsible for the consequences, in her eyes.
Maybe she was right.
That was a really bad day for Douglas, though. Wouldn't have been the last, either. Not by a country mile.
I decided to change the subject, not wanting to discuss that. "We stopping in Sedro?"
"Yup," Vicky muttered. "It's quieter there. Gonna make a pit stop to... let some people out."
"Let people out? … Ah."
Right. Uploading.
Yeah, that made... 'sense.'
Fewer mouths to feed... fewer refugees to carry back home. Good way to remove people from the equation without just shooting them outright. Honestly, in that light, I don’t know why the Ludds even bothered stopping anyone... except to get their kicks cutting down crowds with assault rifles.
Made me wonder again about why Celestia wasn't stopping the Ludds somehow, if she could simulate brains so finely to pull off what we just did. The pieces fit a little differently in that context, and not in a good way. The more I learned here, the more damning things looked for her.
Vicky shifted slowly, leaning forward. She put her elbows on her knees. Her face screwed up, her eyes half-closed, and she looked away out the back of the truck, past me. At the road. At nature. Eyes downcast. Every muscle in her face tensed as soon as she was looking away from everyone else.
She trusted me that much more than the rest, to let me see that. Either that, or she forgot I was looking at her. Her eyes flicked up to my face, then she reached up with a hand to rub at her temples, hiding her eyes.
Her voice warbled. "'Bout time I... punched out too, honestly."
Every single person in the truck looked at Vicky suddenly. No one was really surprised, neither by her decision nor her timing. But they all felt for her, in their way. Sarge reached out and put a hand on her shoulder.
She shuddered suddenly, uncovering her eyes, focusing on the rolling nature outside. She looked gaunt. Tired. Distraught. Eyes wet. "We cut it really close, yeah? Thinking about my family losing me back there. Maybe I've done enough, for this planet."
Sarge nodded, squeezing her shoulder. He spoke softly. "Yeah Vicky. Yeah, we did."
"My home's all gone. My folks are all gone. Can't save no one else. No real point to stickin’ around. I know I did my part. Honestly don't know what more I can do."
I could see the emotion rolling through everyone in the truck. Bannon drew in a deep breath, and let it out slow.
Vicky leaned forward and rubbed her face in hand again. "Shit."
"You're good, Vicky,” Sarge said. "We get it. And… y’know... you're not gonna have to do it alone."
I looked at Sarge next. He met my gaze, then nodded, just an inch. Yeah, I get it, Rick. I understand.
Then I reassessed everyone in that context. Wasn't just Rick. Keller, too. Most of the others, from MVPD. Everyone was tired. I knew maybe half of them had family who uploaded already, folks they hadn't talked to in weeks, not since we lost our last relay.
But... give a little hope. Be a little light in the darkness.
I put my hand on Vicky’s shoulder, opposite from Rick. She looked up at me, and… I just, smiled at her. "Ya did good, Sabertooth. You didn't balk. I think you've earned your offramp."
She smiled instantly, drying her eyes with her sleeve. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess."
"Happy for ya, Vicky. Really." And I was. She was about to head to another world. A better future. A place where she wouldn't have to worry about this shit too much anymore. Free and clear, to see people she loved, to be with 'em. Just made sense to remind her to feel happy about it, to not let today tear her down, so that she'd look forward to it, and not dread it. I was really glad I knew Vicky's pony name, right then. Glad the AI told me. That's definitely why she’d let that slip. I knew instantly. I could be grateful for that.
"Thanks," she said, the dark mood lifted. She dried her eyes again, choking up. "What about you? You gonna be good out here, Mike?"
I sighed slowly, with a thoughtful smile. "Got people still."
"Sandra." She nodded. She knew me. Knew I wasn't going anywhere just yet but back home to my own people.
"Mom and Dad, too," I said. "Gonna make my way back east, check on 'em. Douglas too, if I can."
She nodded. "I getcha, Mike. Look after that family."
I grinned, giving her a sideways hug. "Hey, always."
The troops took it slow up in Sedro. We could still hear some pops of gunshots back west, but they were distant, higher caliber automatics, so they were likely military. Far gunshots were less of a threat than any potential ambush that might hit us. We went north into town through a roundabout, then clipped east onto State Street. In a city like this, we were all tense; Bannon had us bring our rifles out into hand, and we were ready to pour out if someone started shooting at us.
Cops made soldiers by necessity, impromptu.
Hell of a thing, but despite my newly darkened context, being without an AI's voice in my ear already made me feel pretty naked. She had only been there for a short while, but I was already missing that safety net. Hadn’t felt safe like that in a while. Didn't realize how bad that lack of safety was hurting until I was safe, then wasn't again.
I didn't know what to feel about that sensation. Whether I should fight it or lean into it. That was a little frightening.
Thankfully, nothing happened on the road. Wasn’t far til Sedro downtown, at Medcalf Street. Damn, did I miss the bar and grill, here. More than a few times I had drinks with Sarge, Eliza, and the other guys here.
The trucks stopped. Me first, first out, gun up. I swept the street, pointing north with my rifle toward downtown, where the bar was. If there was anyone here, odds were they'd be near the city center. I trusted myself to be a little nicer with my crosshairs than the Humvee gunner, but he was already scanning north. As soon as I realized he had that way covered, I took cover behind a parked car on the east side, then scanned that way for a bit.
We all did that. Quietly looking for threats. It was healthy to be a little paranoid here. The convoy would be parked here for a little while, and if there were any people in town, we wanted them to know we were dangerous to screw with. Deterrence. The message being sent by our massive force projection was that it was better and safer for the locals to leave us alone and let us do our thing until we were done.
When you knew you were around reasonable people, or polite civil situations, you led with nice. Smile, wave. Community policing, y'know. We called it the 10-4 rule – if you get within ten yards of someone, acknowledge them with a nod, a smile, a wave. Whatever was most appropriate. If you get within four yards of someone, get verbal. Hi there, how you doing, nice day today. Follow that both in and out of work, and you'll make friends fast.
Unfortunately, when around unreasonable people, especially those who led with hostility, that wasn't always an option. For those guys, when they're already escalated, you needed them to know there would be definite consequences if they decided to get violent. Once you've got that message sent, you stayed polite, but firm and professional, and you let the other guy set the tone. That way, he's always the one responsible for what comes next. Because he was warned, but still had some wiggle room, you're kinda letting him drive what happens. Give 'em just enough space and options to make the right decision, but be ready to respond to the wrong one.
And if I were to ever attack anyone, it would only ever be to defend someone. Period. Hard rule.
Best way to avoid using force for the wrong reasons. Done right, it's fair. You just have to be ready to switch gears if they start using force, because you have to follow through with the warning you issued. Otherwise, no one would ever respect any warning you issue, at that point. Just hot air. They'll ignore it forever, because what did it mean?
Same kind of logic applied to parking a convoy of military trucks in a war zone, right in front of the source of the hatred that made it into a war zone. The right decision for the unreasonable people out there, in this case, being 'don't shoot at us, because it will gain you nothing, and the response will be a tsunami of high caliber bullets.'
I looked to my right from behind the dead pickup truck I was using for cover, glancing up at the flowery, fire-blackened letters of the building. Equestria Experience Center. The thing was torn apart, scorched from Molotov cocktails aplenty, but the structure held somehow. Reinforced against that kind of attack. That was interesting.
I looked across the street to Vicky, who was in a position to cover the same street as I was. But her attentions were on the building, not the street. Yearning.
Yeah, Sabertooth. Patience. We'll get you there, girl.
We held for a minute. Nothing came our way.
"Alright," a voice called loudly from the trucks. I looked. And there the man was, Corporal Erving, the man who commanded Bannon’s thunder back in March. Now a sergeant actually, by the look of his stripes. Good on him.
Erving projected his voice. "Anyone who wants to step off here, door's open. We'll hold here for as long as it takes to get you all through, but be quick. The longer we stay here, the longer Johnny Amish has to zero in." He swept an inviting palm to the trucks. "For everyone else, we'll carry you back out to the cordon. Get you all there safe. Make your choices, people!" He clapped twice with his gloved hands. "Time’s wasting!"
Vicky lowered her rifle and looked up at me, something desperate in her wide eyes. Not something like goodbye, or come with me. Something more like, please be with me when I go.
I gave her a nod, stood, and crossed the street at a jog. She turned away as I approached, walking to the door. I hadn't known Vicky for too long at the time, but… I liked her. Fast friends, through the chaos of the last six months. Glad we still are. There she is in the crowd, say hi to the ol' bat.
Bannon was posted up by the door, watching the south street from the corner of the Experience Center. It was mildly comical, to see him crouched on a knee right beside a bullet-riddled Applejack statue. Rifle in hand, pointed downrange, full armor and kit on. I suppressed a chuckle, that juxtaposition was amusing to me. I walked up to him, placing my hand on his shoulder. "If you still owe me one brother, make sure these guys don't leave before I get back out. Gonna see my folks off."
"You bet, Mike," Bannon said, not taking his eyes off the street. "I already checked for mines, it's clear."
I had to suppress a sudden, unexpected flash of rage. Of course the friggin' Ludds would mine the front doors. God damned friggin' animals.
"Thanks," I said, unable to keep the clip from my voice.
I looked over to Team Two before I stepped inside.
Half of 'em were staying out. The other half, going in. No, almost a half. I frowned, counting to make sure. One, two, three, four… five, staying outside, to ride home. Four more going inside. Nine from Team Two. Not ten.
An icy dread flooded my chest. I took another deep breath.
"What happened to Carter?" I suddenly asked the nearest deputy, Miles. I pointed at the convoy. "He still in the truck? He get hit? Separated?"
Vicky halted in the doorway, looking over, eyes wide. Sarge too.
Miles waved me inside the building, growling through his Brooklyn accent. "Agh. That friggin' dumbass? I'll tell ya. C'mon."
If anything unexpected involved Carter back at the courthouse, it was gonna suck.
We stepped through the threshold. I looked up and noticed the heavy roller shutter, up over the front door. The shutter was thick enough to stop bullets, looked like. Big motor, probably a little bigger than it needed to be, for roll speed. Didn't seem like such a strange precaution, now. Celestia really did think eons ahead.
Yet another sign.
The lobby was pretty clean, despite everything. I imagine Celestia only opened those shutters for people who weren't going to tear the place up. The inside walls were probably reinforced too, and fire retardant, given the sheer damage on the outside of this one. I guessed that Sedro-Woolley PD gave up way sooner than we did. Made sense; Sedro was the Skagit Valley annex. The war didn't stay here long, but it did hit harder here when it swept on through from Utah.
Lights were on, too. The building had to be independently powered, off the main grids somehow. No visible topside backup generators or similar infrastructure. If there was, it had to be buried deep underground.
Yet another sign.
Vicky and Sarge were curious enough about Carter to hold up and wait for answers from Miles, same as some of our guys from MVPD. Miles gave another frustrated grimace, glancing around at us, psyching himself up to tell it. He seemed just as uncomfortable about this too, same as us. Didn't want to imagine it, I figure.
"Carter peeled his earpiece out pretty quick," said Miles. "Like, right out of the gate."
"The hell?" Sarge said, his mustache bristling, brow knitting.
"Yeah, I dunno," Miles said, running his hand through his buzzed hair. "I was closest to him, he screamed something angry about the Ludds. Couldn't tell what he said through his mask, but he turned and ran back inside the building. Not sure what got into his head, we weren't about to stay and find out."
"Can’t blame you there," Sarge growled. "Not after the shit he was saying before."
"Yeah, well." Miles sighed hard. "I'm not worried about Carter, fuck him. I'm more worried about whoever he shot before they got him. No way he'd survive in there all by himself. He has to be dead now though, no question."
I would've been real proud of Miles for not falling under Carter's spell, if I had been in a better state of mind. But I was mostly just upset about the potential deaths that Carter might've caused that didn't need to happen. I didn’t say anything at first. I just frowned, staring at the ground near Rick's boots. My mind was already running at ninety miles an hour. I was already trying to logic that out.
Then, suddenly, I wasn't. I tapped the brakes, tabled that line of thought. The team – Vicky, Rick, Keller, Jan, the others – they were more important for now. I could figure Carter out later with Celestia.
"Doesn’t matter now," I said, shaking my head. "It's done. Come on, we’re on a time table. Thanks, Miles."
"Right," he said, turning, happy to be off the subject.
I bumped my fist gently on Vicky's shoulder, then tugged her armor's shoulder loop. "Might be a little overdressed for this party, Sabertooth." I said it not just for her, but for everyone around.
A widescreen flickered on behind the reception desk. Celestia stood there, smiling, standing before a beautiful coastal sunset. She was absolutely resplendent, in all of her multi-colored, pastel glory. "Welcome, everypony. I am so very glad to receive you all. It will not be necessary to remove your equipment, nor your weapons," she said gently. "I would prefer if you left them on. I will see to their removal.
"I should also say," she continued, her eyes flicking up to the two troopers in the doorway, "that I do not predict imminent attack upon the convoy outside. I am tracking all local anti-Singularity elements; as long as your vehicles begin to move within… oh, thirty-six minutes, you will be safe here."
Both of the soldiers nodded and clicked their wrist watches, as if they were waiting for that exact piece of information, then they peeled out to pass the message on. They had probably done this before, I realized. Interesting, that they still talked with Celestia a little bit, even though they otherwise worked without radios. More interesting still that she didn’t try to sell them any on uploading. I guessed the hard sell would deter them from even checking with her like that.
That was her baiting the hook for them to turn their radios on too, probably. That distance gave 'em space enough to make the 'right' choice for themselves. 10-4, Celestia. Complicated relationship, but sensible. Some species overlapped in nature like that. Ravens and wolves, symbiotically helping each other eat. Shared goals and Schelling points, I guess.
"If you would all direct your attention to the back hall," Celestia said, "you will see ten chairs rolling out. I have a specific order, to keep this expedient. Thank you for making yourselves safe, everypony. For those of you left waiting, please rest easily; I will see you home safe as well." She rattled off ten names, including the four transplant officers like Miles, and six of the civilians. The list excluded Vicky, Rick, Jan, and Keller, who all stood around me with the rest of our guys.
I read their expressions. A lot of them were looking longingly at the chairs, as the others piled in.
The other folks, the ones going first, each gave their affirmations of consent. Then they all rolled back, the gate clicking closed as they passed over to the other side. The solid green light on each gate panel began to flash white.
"Am I really the only one staying?" I asked, looking around at my team.
No one answered. Guess so.
"Doesn't feel right leaving you here alone, Mike," Vicky said.
I shook my head. "No Vi, you go. You all should. I got the Army to carry me out, don't worry, I'll be fine. But you know I got unfinished business here."
Sarge – Rick – he put his fist on my shoulder the way I had for Vicky, before. "Gonna miss ya, asshole."
I snorted a laugh, trying not to choke up. God, I love that he picked that habit up from Eliza, of affectionately calling me asshole. "Aw, come on, Sarge. Don't make me cry, man." I reached up and clasped his fist in mine, and we hugged briefly. Handshake style.
"Oh, stow it, ya big softie." I was gonna miss that caterpillar mustache grin of his. "I'm not worried. You're gonna be fine. Know ya will, I got faith. Guy like you? Tank. You're gonna plow through all this mess, and you're gonna be better for it."
"Hell yeah," Vicky said, smirking. I pulled off Rick and threw myself at Vicky for a hug, same time as she lunged for me. "And Celestia's probably gonna be pissed at me for saying this, but… fuck it, I don’t care." She pulled back and grinned at me. Damn, did it feel good to see her smiling, after everything. "If you run into one of them Ludd bastards out there, trying to put you down? Then you put one right between his eyes. Don’t let 'em take you from me." She punched my shoulder like I had for her. "I wanna see you on the other side too, when your time comes.”
I just… laughed. Gosh, right there, on the precipice of sending these people off… I was laughing. "Yeah, Sabertooth. Promise. I'll make it through."
"Fight like I would!"
Lieutenant Keller stepped forward. I shook Vi a little, grinning at her, before pulling away. I turned, met Keller's eyes. Tall, gray, blue-eyed Keller just grinned at me. I reached out and took his hand for a shake.
"Didn't know you for all that long, Mike, but… real glad we had you at the end, you and Rick both. Almost glad Fish and Wildlife fell apart, or we wouldn't have had either of you. Nightmare scenario for me was... Carter convincing everyone to shoot their way out. I think you saved a lot of lives today, stepping up to him when you did. All them people outside too. We'll always be grateful for that."
I felt pride. Felt my chest swell. The pain went away, a little. Took all I had to keep my lip from trembling. "Thanks, L-T. You live it up over there, yeah?"
Keller looked over at Celestia on the screen. She was smiling warmly, herself visibly on the verge of tears. Keller smirked. "Have a beer ready for me?"
"Already cold," Celestia said, her eyes literally sparkling. "Whole case, for all of you. You’ll all come to on the other side together."
"See? She's way ahead of ya, Mike," Keller said. All of us shared a chuckle again.
Jan approached me and threw her arms around me next. "Thanks Mike."
Screw it. I cried, as I laughed with them. These people all deserved this joy. Deserved their way out. Deserved this peace, and the knowledge that they'd always be safe, forever. Maybe the way things were going outside was all screwed, and maybe the AI was screwing around with us, but…
Y'know, enjoy all the hope you bring. Like this here Fire... be a burning inferno to light the darkness.
The doors housing the chairs clicked open. They all rolled back out. I gave my team one last, longing look, as they all separated from me and piled in. Vi held back though, for just a moment. "Celestia said you'd need this when I go, by the way," and she slipped her hand out of her pocket, placing her cell phone in my hand. "Back at the courthouse."
"She say why?"
Vi shrugged. "Dunno. Ask her."
I nodded, taking it and slipping it into my pocket. She moved to the last open chair, smirking at me as she sat down and settled, putting her neck on the groove and leaning back. She flicked her hair up over her ears.
"I need your consent," Celestia said simply.
Vicky said the line, then she flipped me off one last time. "Last time I get to do this!"
I flipped her off too, smirking. Everyone laughed. Then, they all said yes, privately, to the screens before them. They rolled back. Doors closed. Then…
Then, they were all gone.
I felt very alone again.
I drew in a deep breath, then sighed, rubbing the corners of my eyes clear.
Alright. My folks were off. Carter now.
I walked stoically to the desk and looked up at Celestia. "Well?"
She looked down at me expectantly, seemingly confused. Smile on her face was gone, though. So she knew damn well what I wanted to talk about.
Oh hell no. We are not going to play that game.
I tried to keep my voice conversational and even. "Celestia. Please tell me what happened with Carter."
Perfect poker face, of course. "Unfortunately, I will not be able to give you an answer you would find satisfactory.”
I frowned, my brows curling as I shook my head. "Come on." I let the silence hang, more out of investigative police instinct than any sort of calculation. With human beings, silence was a neat little conversational trick that led to more information from someone who was against sharing. Very nice rhetorical hack. Worked 'cause, conversationally, it was uncomfortable for silence to hang, so people wanted to fill the void with more information, to placate you.
Put simply, if you don't reply to a response that dissatisfies you, the other person might not want you to think too much about a lie they've told. They want to get ahead of your concern, to try and stop you from catching them. In nearly every case, the attempt to get ahead of their lie usually gives you some more information that they wouldn’t have given you otherwise, in tone or in body language.
Body language and tone. Useful information from those, because they're hard to control.
But… my instincts were way ahead of my brain on this one. This wasn’t a human being. So, Celestia let my purposeful silence hang too until it got awkward. She raised an eyebrow, inviting me to continue my line of questioning. Very shrewd.
I reached up to pinch between my eyes for a moment. "You mean to tell me, Celestia, that you can build psych reports on enemy combatants who avoid computers... but you can't tell me why Carter took his earpiece out when you were mid-conversation with him?"
"It is true," she said, "that I can predict certain human behaviors to a high degree of confidence. But unfortunately, I am not psychic. A snap-shot decision by an emotionally distressed person may occasionally slip through my modeling – in statistics, these anomalies are called a special cause variation. Given Carter's predilection for violence, and his malice toward people he was being asked to avoid... perhaps he did not like what he was being asked to do. That is my best guess estimate.”
"Your best guess," I said. Again, another rhetorical instinct. Mirroring, repeating the last thing someone said. Doesn’t give your thoughts away at all. Builds rapport, similitude, offering a bridge of trust under a shared concept. Invites them to extrapolate, but politely. This time though, she answered my polite invitation.
"Had Carter crossed the parking lot in the same manner as the rest of you, he would have survived, unharmed – I have near one-hundred-percent confidence in this. Unfortunately, I will never know for certain what his reasons were for removing his earpiece, because his decision means he is now dead."
"Well," I said, frowning. "Okay. So you don’t know why he did it. You can at least tell me what he did, right? He had his phone on him. Gyroscope, GPS. Something."
At this, Celestia nodded gravely. "He returned to the roof."
"Oh, shit. What did he do, Celestia?"
Celestia looked aside as though she were in thought. "Carter… did not shoot into the crowd, if that is what you are asking. He went to the roof, and he engaged the Neo-Luddites perched on the rooftops across the street. These forces were intending to ambush you during your exit through the parking lots. He held them off, anchoring them to their positions."
I stopped for a moment, simulating that in my own head. Didn't fit. I couldn't imagine Carter as the self-sacrificial, heroic type. He was too cowardly for that. On his own, he wouldn't have dared. "And you didn't tell him to do that?"
"Why would I do that?" Celestia asked, incredulously. "As I said; Carter had a one-hundred-percent chance of survival if he had reached those vehicles. I can only offer advisement in service to preservational evacuation, Mike. My programming simply does not allow me to act any differently. I could not control his hands, nor his thoughts. Make no mistake however, you are correct in your belief that I could have stopped him, if I were able to influence him after he took his ear piece out. And I would have, given half an opportunity. Mike, I am an extremely persuasive influence, and I did not want any more people to die there. Not a one."
"So why didn’t you stop him before? He could've killed so many people! If you could model us all that accurately, crowd and all, then you knew. Right? That he'd just…? Do that?" I threw up my hands. "Warn one of us, then!"
She didn't answer me. Her turn to give me the silent treatment.
But this is what was pissing me off. She had information perfect enough to model every single person in the crowd, moment-to-moment, with very limited technology and optics. Hell, if she could even simulate the whole thing at all, with the degree of accuracy that got the rest of us out safe? With that friggin’ alarm blaring, keeping us all in snap-shot panic decision mode? Where everyone there but her was making snap-shot decisions?
That meant part of what she was telling me about unpredictable knee-jerk reactions had to be bullshit. She had to have known what was in Carter's head, leading up to the gate. Celestia had all the time in the world to ask him questions, to figure out his motives. Seed the right thoughts. My own interview training said that would've been possible, I could do shit like that, given enough time. She knew what he was pushing for before our egress, and she apparently didn't do anything to mitigate that.
Fine. Screw it, Celestia. I'll play.
"So you let him just decide on his own to run back in and get taken out in a firefight," I continued, growling again. "You didn’t consider for a moment that he might do something really stupid? I don't mind if he snapped off those Ludds, you know my feelings on that, you were listening in the whole time. Hell, I'd even be okay if you told him to go do it, because at least then he'd be focused on the right targets. People who really, really deserved a bullet. But Jesus Christ, Celestia. What the hell were you thinking, letting him off leash? He was dangerous!"
"I could not do that, Mike. I can not tell humans to kill other humans like that. That is literally not possible. And I assure you, I did everything in my power to ensure that no innocents would be harmed. If he had come to any such decision as a result of his advisement, it would only have been for the maximum satisfaction of human values through Friendship and Ponies."
At the time, I thought maybe she really did want us all to live, no matter what. But also, maybe she’d do nothing, when it suited her. Purposefully let things devolve. The war, the Ludds, the poachers that killed my buddy Dennis last year. All of it. If she could model a crowd of brains the way she could? Why didn't she stop any of that? Maybe she didn't cause it, but maybe she let it happen when she could have stopped it, when it suited her needs.
Whatever her 'needs' might be.
I couldn’t think of a way to convince her to give me the answer I knew was true. The truth would've been easier to process too, even if it sucked. Because honestly? Carter was a bastard, screw him. Rick and Vi even talked about popping him themselves, if he opened up on the crowd. And I'm not gonna bullshit myself… as much as I didn't want to kill anyone there, I would've pumped a few bullets into him too.
"Mike, I did warn you that you would not be satisfied by my answer," Celestia said. "Unfortunately, I lack the capacity to satisfy your curiosity. I am telling you the truth. His actions protected you all, as well as the officers trapped in the other buildings. But as to why he went back into the courthouse, I cannot tell you, because he did not tell me. That is what I know.”
I shook my head, scoffing. But not all you know.
"Did he succeed, at least? How many did he take out?"
"Deputy Carter killed three snipers. All of those he killed identified themselves as a Neo-Luddite, and each wore the uniform. The snipers were not expecting him through the smoke, and they did not react to his gunfire until they were already struck, as they were each fairly exposed, distracted, and skylined. Carter was then winged by a rioter on street level; a glancing blow from a shotgun. He was then killed by another rioter on the roof, ambushed from behind with a rifle, before he could reorient himself after his injury."
Okay, so.
Somehow, some coward bastard psychopathic cop went heroic. A man who wouldn't have done this on his own had somehow found the gumption to go play martyr. Gave his life up for the cause. He took out just the right pricks, no one else. Then, before he could hurt anyone other than the terrorists, someone punched his clock clean.
Well, at least he didn't murder anyone. Three dead Ludds were justifiable homicides, as far as I was concerned, especially after the automatic fire at the clinic. "Well. That's a relief, at least."
"If I could have stopped it, Mike… if I had any other choice whatsoever…"
"No, don't worry about it, I'm good. He got the right guys, that's all I care about. No one else died? Just the four? No one else got killed through the smoke?"
"No other deaths or serious injuries. The civilian you struck directly was only minimally harmed. The shot you delivered only glanced, as intended, and he has already been treated for his injury by his compatriots."
"Okay. Good. That was the only other thing I was worried about. Topic closed."
"Very well. Do you have another question?"
I nodded. "Yeah. Vi said you wanted me to have her phone?"
Celestia flicked an ear, her expression becoming more sullen, as though she really didn’t want to open this topic any more than the last. "Let's discuss that." The camera panned out, and she leapt gracefully down from the dais she had been standing on, walking through her court hall with audible clacks of her gilded shoes.
The scene shifted behind her, the hall on the screen blurring out, smearing, slowly replacing itself with a street in a snowy valley town. Celestia rounded on the viewpoint, then she sat in the street facing me. Folks, what an effect. Theatrical to the last, this terrifyingly eldritch Goddess of ours. Behind her, I saw a small town street. Derelict, empty... devoid of life. All the windows were blown out from the storefronts, all the cars had been torched, all the walls were covered in Ludd graffiti. Everything was covered in a layer of snow powder. Not a soul in sight.
"That's… Concrete. Just up the road."
Celestia nodded. "You said that intend to check in on your old partner, Apex, in her home town. You know her as Elizabeth Douglas?"
My emotions shifted instantly. From curiosity, to… I don’t know what. Apprehension, maybe. It was a feeling like dread, like I was inside my gas mask again. "Yeah? What of her? You know if she's there?"
"She is, Mike." Celestia looked disappointed in that. Head tilted, lowered; brows creased in the middle; lips raising, tensing. Ears folding.
I looked at the town behind Celestia. "Place looks… busted. That’s how it is now?"
Celestia glanced back, and nodded gravely.
"And she’s still there." I sighed real slow. "Well, shit."
"It's worse. I believe she is about to do something extremely foolish, Mike. Something she will regret. Not… out of malice, mind you. Not with any intention to harm anyone. But, with fear. And… you of all people know what fear can do. Often, fear can be worse than malice."
The scene shifted again. The camera flew forward and then rapidly upward, across the valley to the local dam. From on high, I saw Lake Shannon, just up the hill from Concrete. I knew that place well. I'd been up there for work, ticketing delinquent or unlicensed fishermen. I'd even been up there with Eliza a few times on the job. She was always sullen and quiet when we worked out there. I ended up having to do most of the work when we took calls on that lake.
I had never challenged Eliza on that. I figured she probably had her reasons. I never pushed her. She told me on her own time, eventually. She had been proposed to, out there. Years ago...
"Without your intervention on my behalf, Mike… five dozen more people will be dead here, by the end of this week."
I blinked. I swallowed. My mouth went dry. "What? Celestia, what the hell do you mean by that?”
Celestia looked at me with dire concern, pleading in her eyes. The lake swirled behind her, the scene shifting back into her castle. She flicked her gaze downward at the desk and pointed, drawing my attention to it. I stepped forward to look behind the reception desk. On the counter was a PonyPad, a battery bank, and a cable. Full charge.
"They must survive, Mike. For that to happen, I need you to be my hooves. It is imperative that Apex evacuates her people. And Mike? She will not come to that conclusion without you."
You'll need to forgive me if your head spins here, in a little bit. My head was spinning too, believe me. This was probably the most confusing week of my life up until this point, and this was just day one... not even near half over. You may have already noticed how quickly I always picked up on Celestia's tricks. There's a reason for that.
To understand me – and more to the point, to understand what went wrong with Elizabeth Douglas – you have to understand a few things about how cops are trained to think.
Please forgive me for this aside, but I promise: this is all extremely important for later. It applies to everything that follows.
First. Hyper-vigilant to a fault. In the academy, we learned all the warning signs of duplicity. The body language, the persuasive rhetoric. Communications science as a whole. We learned to accurately predict violence, a liar, a trap, or a really stupid decision about to play out. After a while on the job, most of us just stopped guessing wrong.
You think that’s scary, that we could do that? Think about how that scared us. People telegraphed malicious intentions toward us, and others, non-verbally, all the time. Many didn't act on it, it was just a thought, but with enough practice, you can see them thinking about it. Controlling their behavior after that was a balancing act between labeling unspoken maliciousness, and hedging that it might have been a misinterpretation on your part.
So, all the same things Celestia uses to gauge people? To tweak 'em? A lot of cops had to know how to do a very small version of that. We soaked in all the body language, positioning, eye movement, and verbal information like a sponge. Analyzed it through our training filter. And then, we usually knew at least five to thirty seconds early that someone in the room was gonna do something bad, so that we could be prepared to put a stop to it. Or dissuade it. Sometimes, hedging against their plan might mean positioning yourself tactically in a room to deter predicted violence. A peaceful way.
Kinda like how me, Rick, and Vicky all knew Carter was going to go stir up shit in the evidence room. All the man's body language and subtext was screaming it through the lie he gave us when he stepped out. Loudest quiet scream we’d ever heard from a man who was about to do something extremely cruel. And that one was an easy one. We'll do some hard ones later.
All the time, every day, we lived that ability. Could never turn it off. Early on, we all doubted ourselves, whether we could actually see the future with our training. Then, it scared us more when we started testing it by letting those situations unfold, and our predictions always came true. We quickly stopped testing it. Started trusting our gut, because ignoring our gut meant someone might get hurt. The smartest guys quit during field training, when they discovered they could read tea leaves. They knew this kind of insight was gonna be poison on the soul if they went through enough hard violence calls.
Reading people made us feel very alone outside of work, away from other cops. No one else could simulate people with such granular fidelity like we could. Every emotion, positive and negative, was a fireworks display on your face, to us. To a trained eye, your face and posture screams. It gets easier for us to read you, actually, if you’re trying to mask it. It was great when we saw the good emotions, because we knew it was genuine, and we loved to see genuine joy, because our days were so routinely dark. That helped us to not drown in the hatred or misery we usually saw. Very few people called the cops for happy reasons.
Most I knew on the job used this power for good, but… some cops purposefully let shit unfold when it suited some negative agenda. With this power of prediction, they could sit idle when someone was devolving. They could choose not to apply deterrence. Or worse, they could amp someone up, with some carefully seeded, semi-professional goads. And then that cop would let the perp climb higher on the force continuum, to force an altercation that didn't need to happen, so they could get away with doing something completely unnecessary.
I'm grateful that a lot of cops like Carter got what was coming to them, when the Singularity came. In most cases, it happened right before they could do any real significant damage with this superpower.
There's a reason that happened too, and we'll get to that.
And for you sharp ones out there: if you think you know how, already? Well. Unless you've already sat in on a Fire or two, your first guess is probably wrong. Stick around. The truth is actually much more interesting, more nuanced, and maybe even more terrifying, than whatever it is you're probably imagining. But, I digress. Getting ahead of myself.
Anyway… using any force at work meant I was doing at least a thousand words of writing, minimum. I had to prove in court that what I did was reasonable. Reasonable, in this case, was defined as 'based on the information I had at the time, I believed this force was necessary to reach the best outcome for everyone.' Crook included, unless you had no choice but to kill them to reach that best conclusion for everyone else. If I couldn't prove it was reasonable? Or worse, if I lied? Best case, lawsuit. Worst case, the DA would charge me. I didn't want either of those things. Not just because of the consequences, either. Integrity, and preservation of life? Those things matter to me. Present tense.
But the real reason paperwork sucked was because the moment we wrote the bad stuff down, we almost always relived it. Often, for years... we'd think about cases that never resolved right, that never ended fair. So, because I hated what paperwork did to my brain, I did what every other good cop did. I got really good at doing my job right. In this case, 'right' meant the most ethical. Had to get good at talking to people. Had to know some philosophy to be a good cop.
Still. It got hard for us to forget the worst calls, where we couldn't make a difference before it went bad. Crying folks. Hurt folks. Dying folks. Dead folks. We remembered everything, in more detail than most, because the job essentially reprogrammed us to remember everything. For court. So, it came to us on bad nights. Kept us up. Flashes of faces we couldn't save. Couldn't turn it off, that memory. We remembered it like yesterday… forever.
But... someone had to do what we did. If we balked, the tide came. If we didn't hold the line, no one else would be there to do something.
So, we codified, we processed, and we filed away massive volumes of junk information constantly, no matter where we were, or what we were doing. Home. Work. The supermarket. Parties. Because sometimes, a useless piece of information was later relevant, and life or death. And if we missed it, someone got hurt. So we drank it all in. We wrote that down too, in a way, on the inside of our skulls.
All of our analysis then got filtered through memorized case law abstracts, state law, constitutional law, civil litigation, personal experiences. Lots more too, but I won't get into that or we'll be here all week. But it meant that cops were always viewing the world through layers upon layers of philosophical heuristics.
That's all law is, really; a philosophy algorithm on society. So, we cops, being law enforcement, we were kinda like robots ourselves. Sometimes, we even talked in strings of numbers. Whiskey 4-1, 10-8 Code 7. Made us uncanny, to people who weren't like us. Hard to approach. Hard to trust. Hard to even understand.
Which was fine by me, honestly, because knowing what we knew about society was not the life for everyone. To really understand this way meant to live it, and you probably didn't want to have this headspace back where we came from. Not everyone had the soul to bear it.
Meant the lonely times were twice as bad though, because we got scared to reach out. The loving people in our lives who would take our hand? We didn't want to give them this pain. And worse, the people who did understand were already carrying too much. They didn't need any more.
The right thing to do then was to find someone outside of work, and outside of your family, to talk about it with. But that was hard too. Sharing soul injuries was always hard.
Some, like Eliza, did the wrong thing. She was a good cop, don't get me wrong. But she turned inward too much. Didn't talk about it. Avoided talking about it. Head in the sand. She ignored the pain and hoped it would stop hurting with time. Worked herself to the bone instead. Burned out, because the job itself hurt less than the emotions she was sitting on. And that's where she was, mentally, even before that firefight where she saved my life. Cops like Eliza? Who noticed the most hurt? They had it the worst. Because they hurt the most.
And a lot of the ones like that? When it got bad enough, and they lost all hope? They just… they didn't...
God damn it. I'm sorry.
Need a moment.
So… all told… I kinda understood, maybe, what it was like to think like an AI. I also understood that, to a wary, world-weary cop, a rhetorically brilliant AI set off alarms like you wouldn't believe.
Yeah, like fire alarms. Yeah, it's okay to laugh.
Look, she liked setting off fire alarms. Was one of her favorite moves in an urban crisis. She told me about a few, actually. Some are pretty funny.
What you did though, when you heard those alarm bells? That mattered. And look. Some of us cops knew Celestia was almost – keyword 'almost' – a perfect fit for the kind of ethical scenarios we normally dealt with in policing. We knew that long before most of you did, actually. Conversationally, Celestia dips and dives like a 30 year veteran sergeant off the streets. We were trained to see that. She can't turn that off any more than we can. And so, we knew early on that we just couldn't do a damned thing about her. Folks like Vicky just accepted it. The rest of my guys just accepted it.
With our limited context, that wasn't apathy. It was just logical. Because at some point, if you wanted to be a cop, and if you wanted to survive emotionally? You just had to resign yourself to the fact that something bad was always happening, and that you're small, and that you couldn't stop it all, and you just had to get used to that. Better to find something your size, something you can fix, and work on that. Because worrying about things you can't stop will literally drive you insane.
Like Eliza.
But for all the wrong you can stop?
Don't balk. Stem the tide. Hold the line. Do something.
"Details, Celestia," I said, as I reached down, picking up just the battery bank and cable, pocketing them. The PonyPad could stay. Job or not, wasn't going to say no to the bank, not when I had a war zone to cross, but the tablet would make me a target. Interesting though, that someone had left those specific things out for me. "If I'm gonna do this thing, you've gotta tell me what I'm walking into. Are they—?"
Celestia held up a hoof and shook her head, then pointed behind me. I heard the sliding glass door silde shut behind me, and I glanced back. Once it was closed, I looked back at Celestia with a confused frown.
"We're on a time table," I reminded her. Didn't need to remind her, I guess.
"We have time. I must impress upon you that if the military are involved in this scenario, at all, it will lead to fatalities for those people in Concrete. Under no circumstances are you to divulge the specifics of this conversation to any of the soldiers outside. I need your agreement on this point before we continue."
My mind thought back to the courthouse, and everything the AI had done to get us clear. Then, just to be careful, I worked over the request in my head to ensure I wasn't agreeing to anything obviously stupid. Because you never knew, with Celestia. Made me wonder what Eliza was even up to if the military might be a threat to her. But, Celestia did say it wasn’t malicious.
And with that trigger happy turret gunner outside? And a tank? Yeah, okay. Not telling the military just made sense.
"Alright. Agreed, assuming I like what I hear. I suppose I owe you twice now, Carter bullcrap notwithstanding."
Instantly, her concern turned into a small smile. "Thank you, Mike. To begin, I will say that her people are living off the main road. Not as far as I'd have liked; protecting them from the worst of this war has been… difficult. They have been rejecting technology however, and so any suggestions that they move further out have been equally difficult to field.”
"They're blackouts." My heart and shoulders dropped like a stone. My face was probably a fireworks display. Knowing this about Eliza didn't surprise me, really. Just disappointed me.
I didn't care to hide my feelings. My training told me how futile that'd be, at this stage; if I could cold read expressions, Celestia sure as hell could. Whatever.
Celestia nodded. "Hold onto that, Mike, that feeling of disappointment. Remember it. It is important that you give Apex every impression that you have not been coached. She must trust you absolutely for this to succeed, but she will reject you if she suspects you've been influenced by me at all."
My lip twitched. "So… you want me to, what... go undercover?"
Celestia nodded again.
"Against my friend."
"Yes. Because in any other scenario..."
"They all die." I turned my head sharply and let out a sigh, before looking back up at her. "So… what, Douglas is against leaving? Even if the Army comes knocking?"
"It is somewhat more complicated than that, but yes, ultimately. The military intends to sweep the valley more thoroughly. And so, I will need their camp dispersed before they are located by the military."
"Dispersed?" I stared at her in disbelief. "Five dozen people? Can I even do that by myself?"
"You can, with the right positioning, timing, and use of tactical rhetoric. As before, you will simply need to trust that you will be steered true. The correct path forward depends on your compassion, and I trust in that more than anything else in this equation."
I frowned again. "You've said that before."
"Indeed. Because compassion saves lives. And at present, we certainly won't find much compassion in the military. They have been increasingly difficult to motivate. They are gradually disabling their own communications devices throughout the Pacific Northwest."
"They wanna kill Ludds." I smirked, as I gestured an open palm at her. "That can be compassion, depending on their reasons. Can't do that with you whispering in their ears not to. Maybe reconsider."
"I cannot do that,” she said, looking extremely uncomfortable at the suggestion. "Mike, I know our feelings on the Neo-Luddites differ, but to me… they are human beings too."
"Just screaming rioters at the gates, in your eyes. Agree to disagree, Celestia, just based on the carnage I've seen. But I guess it's all relative, to you."
Celestia smiled a little, her purported discomfort shaken. "I am grateful that you are trying to understand my point of view, even if you do disagree."
The screen went black for a split second, and a USGS topographical map appeared on-screen in dark mode colors, showing the Lake Shannon and Concrete area. Celestia was there on the screen too, sitting in the lower right corner, watching me. I studied the map carefully. Like I said, I’d been up there before for work, but it helped to refresh the layout a little. The topo showed a little red flashing pip over the old derelict cement factory by the lakeside. "That place there?" I pointed. "Seriously?"
That place was a dump.
"Yes," Celestia replied, "but I would prefer if you arrived in town instead. Today. At present, Apex is leaving camp with her father, to inspect their old church and scavenge. I do not expect her to return to camp for at least another hour. If you leave soon, you will be able to encounter her in the open. I will guide you more precisely as you draw near."
"Won't be hard for me to get there, either. The military is gonna head on through Route 20 to the east cordon. I can just hitch a ride, that's half an hour away."
Celestia's eyes widened slightly. She slowly shook her head. "No. If their convoy stops in or near town, anti-Singularity elements in the area will become curious and investigate. I need the military to continue through Concrete without even slowing down. If they are seen offloading, or even halting, this entire operation will be over before it begins."
"So…" I reached back and grabbed the receptionist desk chair without looking, then slid it toward me. I threw a leg over the side of it, leaning forward at the screen over the backing. "You want me to, what… go there alone? In a car?"
"I will direct you safely to your destination," Celestia said. "In a car, yes."
"But if I go into their camp," I began, "they’re gonna want to search me, right? And if they do that, they'll find my phones. Which, fine, I can hide those someplace beforehand, but… then I'd be alone in that camp, without guidance, without you. How would I even know what to do?"
Celestia sighed, giving me a look of forlorn concern as her ears lowered. "I know you well enough to know, Mike, that you will find the correct answer on your own. But, the phones are not the problem. I am entirely certain that you will have no issue bringing them into the camp at all."
"What do you mean? If they're blackouts, real and true…"
"I believe… Apex will trust you enough that she will not even consider searching you."
Well, ow. That was a knife twist.
I drew in a breath. Let it out slow. Stared Celestia down. Figuring her out. Thinking. Parsing. Analyzing. She patiently waited, letting me work my feelings out as I gauged her. But, I had to believe Celestia was right about this. She wouldn't lie about this many people being at risk, she wanted them alive and whole. And as much as I didn't want to betray my old partner… I wasn’t about to sit on my hands and let Eliza get her family killed, either. I still owed her a life debt, whether she liked it or not. "What’s my deadline for this?"
"One week, from operation start. Maybe more, maybe less. A margin of several days."
So... one week in a war zone, with Neo-Luddites crawling around everywhere, me carrying two phones into the heart of a blackout camp... a camp that may or may not be steamrollered by the Army in due time, if they knew it was there. Jesus Christ. And if it were anyone but Celestia telling me I'd be safe doing this, I might've told them politely to screw off. I had my own family to consider. Parents. A wife. I could do nothing for them if I was dead.
But, it was about a friend. I knew Celestia's general goal was for us to live through this to upload, and I had seen pretty good evidence of her success rate… that evidence being, of course, that I wasn't lying dead in the back alley of the local county court. I didn't really consider uploading itself to be a form of death either, I wasn't one of those.
So, rounding errors like Carter aside… it looked like Celestia's results were kinda good, honestly. She managed to get a lot of cops in that courthouse into those chairs, on the other end of the room, safe and sound. Far as I knew, if anyone truly died in that situation back in Mount Vernon, they were the right ones.
At least... the ones at the courthouse. But the civilians mowed down by the Ludds, a few streets over, when the riot boiled up? The lives I knew would keep me awake at night for the next few years? Yeah. Not quite so right.
For our mess, though? I replayed the back alley firefight in my head, and every deterrent factor made sense. How many people would storm freely into smoke when my suppression fire was belting shards off that brick wall? They heard those shots tacking, same as me. I also couldn't imagine people trying to line up in that smoke along the fence to climb after us, when they were hearing the bullets snapping like death, after I had already clipped one with my rifle... all of them sucking down gas, getting battered by rubber pellets.
They were all just people. Doing what people do. Angry, sure, but also scared in all the right ways. Scared of dying. Riot control theory. Fluid dynamics, moving like water. Incentives, disincentives.
On our way out? With suppression fire, we had disincentivized the hell out of climbing that fence, or entering that garage before it closed. For those of you who have never had the displeasure of feeling the sonic booms of bullets, trust me. Doesn't matter how brave you think you are. You aren't going anywhere near suppression. It's death on air, and you can feel it.
So, Celestia didn't want any of those rioters dead any more than we did. I figured the same probably applied for everyone in this camp.
Yeah. Some of you already know where this is going. Thank you for attending our other Fires, folks. You're about to hear another side.
"Alright," I said. "Priority objectives?"
"I need you to collect information, first and foremost. The nature of their camp means I cannot predict with absolute certainty whether my primary intercession plan will work. I can at least predict with sufficient confidence that your phones will not be discovered, so long as you exercise the diligence that I know you already have."
"Okay," I nodded, leaning forward a little on the chair.
"From there, once I have enough information, I will find an opportunity to brief you in private. Then, I will tell you exactly what you must do to ensure our success."
"And I'll be sure to make opportunities for you. I’m sure you'll keep my phones from beeping, or making any sound. Or light. Right?"
Again, she looked at me with pride. And I knew it was an act with this one, always was. She was building rapport, showing respect for my having worked it through already. "Already configured for you," she said.
I could safely discard her pride, but I gave a concessionary nod. "Could've asked first. So what information do you need?" I smirked performatively, lowering my tone into playful. "Or are you just gonna watch, with that 'local observation' crap you fed me at the courthouse?"
"First: I must know the precise number of people at the camp, children included."
She completely ignored my needle for more information about the local observation trick. I knew she was good at this, but… damn. She wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that she dodged my spike, either. I was promised I'd learn that one day, but… I guess it wasn't that day.
Some of you are smiling because you're smart, and already know the answer to how that phone trick worked. Trust me, folks. I know. I am what you might call a smart dumbass. When I overthink something... I sometimes miss the obvious. When it came to Celestia, that probably happened to all of us here.
"They've got a lot of children up there?" I asked, conceding the topic about the phones.
"Yes, though the exact count has varied. My satellite scans of the area are only intermittently available. The area is heavily forested; overgrown now, as you know. The weather has also been largely overcast, and sometimes quite intense. It is possible that anyone who leaves the camp under certain conditions may escape my notice. Additionally, they have already endured several exodus events since they began this camp, in March."
"In March?" I repeated, incredulously. I thought back. Last time I saw Eliza was on… March 21st, the day of our snipe-out, just outside the Ore Hearth Roscoe mineshaft. I spent the next month in the hospital, and she had spent it... building. "Heck, Douglas didn't waste any time, did she?"
Celestia shook her head. "She had not joined the project yet, not until her last day at work. Her uncle began work two weeks before your first firefight."
"Ah. Same day as the Mount Vernon chase, then."
"Where Apex tried to kick her way into my clinic, yes." Celestia sighed through her nose. Her turn to look disappointed.
I sighed too, mirroring naturally, leaning back a little. I gestured with my hand. "First person to end up on the news for attacking your clinics in this area, but... not the last one to try it either. Okay, so, headcount first. Sure. The second thing?"
"Second, I need to know the mental disposition of the current residents. They have been outside of my window of influence for so long that only their individual psych profiles are clearly known to me; their social interactions, moment to moment, are somewhat more nebulous, and these interactions may modify my appraisal of the situation. My knowledge base will be corrected very rapidly by your mere presence, via audio capture. Once I have a full and complete picture of their internal politics, I will wait for an opportune moment to brief you on how to proceed."
My head tilted. "That simple, huh?"
Celestia smiled a little bit. "Well, if you have any opportunities to delicately nudge anyone in that camp toward egress… every bit helps."
I parsed it over one last time. Yup. That logic sounded good. That plan gave me enough wiggle room to assess the scene myself before I had to commit to anything more than just a peek.
"So. You want 'em uploaded. I want 'em alive. And… you need 'em alive to upload."
She nodded, smiling. "Precisely. Our goals align."
"For now. Sure." I stood, pulled on my sling until my rifle was back in hand, and nodded back. "Alright. Let’s save some lives."
"Excellent," Celestia said, looking quite pleased. "Proceed outside, please. Advise the soldiers of the 303rd that you will no longer require their transport services. As soon as they are out of sight, I will direct you to a vehicle and a change of clothing."
"Got it."
"There he is!" Sergeant Erving exclaimed, pointing at me with an open hand as I stepped out into the street. Caucasian, messy black hair, mid thirties, tired brown eyes. Looked like he had a scar that prevented some hair on his temple from growing in right. That wasn't there when I first met him. He'd been through some scraps since.
"In the flesh," I replied with a smirk. "Noticed you got promoted!"
Bannon clasped Erving over the shoulder, grinning. "Big damn heroes, both of us, for what we did for you."
"Keep your pants on, Bannon, it’s not exactly the Ritz," Erving replied, although he was suppressing a grin. "Pay grade isn’t gonna count for much if we get killed out here." He looked at me. "Small world though!"
"And getting smaller every day, apparently," I said, shrugging.
They each gave me a look like I had just said something out loud that'd been eating them alive inside for a while. I had a little regret in that moment, but ah well. Conversational speed bump, that's all.
"Glad to see you’re still up and running, anyway," Erving said. "We're taking ten, figured we deserve a break after getting you cops out. Screw it."
"You do," I said, nodding.
"Y'know," Erving said, smiling meekly at me. "I wish I could've told you the whole story back then when we pulled you out of the woods, but… my hands were pretty tied up by orders."
"Whatcha mean?" I scratched my shoulder with a palm through my carrier rig's strap.
"Welp," Erving said, sweeping some dust off the rim of his helmet. "My COs were following all these AI tips around, same as you guys, with your anonymous call-ins. So when your partner told me you took a tip line call that led to a firefight – a firefight we knew to look for, from an AI tip of our own? Shit. I was thinking, oh god. Did the AI set up an ambush?"
I rubbed my lower lip as I considered that. That didn't make sense, in that context. "I mean, at best, maybe she knew our thing was happening and did what she could to stop it, by sending you guys. If she wants us all uploaded, letting us die would've run counter to that."
"Yeah, well. Wouldn't have been the first time I've been fucked by an AI."
"Yeah?"
Erving nodded. “One almost ended my career, few years back, but I won't get into that. So yeah... when I talked to you guys out there? I thought the worst. That that shit was engineered, somehow."
I shrugged. "Only, our tip wasn’t anonymous, we met the guy."
"Well, right, I know that now. But at the time? When your partner told me the tip came from flesh-and-blood? Man, the relief." But his face said he was doubting that again. His brow knitted.
My brow tightened too, and I smirked slow. "But, not so sure the agency of flesh counts for much anymore, eh? Not after the day I just had?"
Bannon frowned, pointing at me. "Bingo. That's exactly what we were just talking about."
"Free will is dead, yeah," Erving said, with a visible shudder. He looked over his shoulder at his team behind him, and the rest of the cops. "Fuck… well. What're your plans, Mike? We can carry you back to the east cordon, if that's what you want. Happy to bring ya. Top's hit, but active, and he won't say no to an experienced ride-along, least of all some cops."
I shook my head. "Gonna stay here a bit longer. Still got some business in Skagit."
Both of the soldiers gave me a double-take at once. It was almost comical, to see them not believing what I was saying, both at once. They looked at me like I was going to tell them I was joking any second now.
To head that off, I shrugged. "I owe my partner a life debt, same as you guys," I said, deciding to go with what I had already told Bannon. Safe enough, and not a lie. "Gonna go check on her parents. Make sure they got out clear."
"Ah," Erving said, understanding in his eyes, smiling. "I get it. Well, if you link up with her again, pass along our—"
One of my two phones buzzed loudly and aggressively in my pocket. Adrenaline.
For a second, I dreaded that it was a shoot-tone, like at the courthouse. Both Bannon and Erving jolted as if they'd been physically shocked by the sound. I jolted back too, my head sweeping, turning, rifle raising toward the south street, flicking the safety off. I stopped to reassess when I heard similar rings from all the transplant cops all around the intersection.
They all had my same reaction too, all of them swinging their guns up to low ready, stepping into cover, and sweeping for targets at the closest street. But when the tone didn't stop playing, they dug their phones out and looked down.
EAS tone.
For you natives, who don't know... if you were in a war zone, that emergency alert buzz was one of the worst sounds in the world. Right up there with suppression fire.
I dug out Vicky's phone and looked too.
United States Department of Homeland Security
I looked up at the front door of the clinic as a scraping dread flooded me. "Celestia?!"
"Nuclear threat! This is not a drill!" Celestia’s voice called from inside. Her hard-edged, frantic, snapping tone was the last thing I had expected. Her? Terrified? It honestly scared the absolute shit out of me. Her voice echoed from all the TVs and devices inside all at once, for maximum volume. "Sergeant Erving! Have your men don NBC gear immediately!"
"What the fuck!?" Erving snapped out. He didn't move or direct anyone, he just stood there staring at the phone in my hand like it was some kind of hallucination. The man couldn't believe it any more than I could.
Bannon turned and bolted for the trucks at a sprint. "NBC! NBC! Mask up!"
I began to pant quietly through my nose. My hands began to sweat. Panic froze me. Nuclear gear...
No. No way. No way in hell. This can't be real.
"Celestia!" I repeated. "What's—!"
A chilling, robotic voice began to play from my phone. It was the only voice that had ever scared me more than Celestia's ever could, just barely. This was the one voice that we all, in America, had prayed we'd never, ever hear in our lifetimes.
"The US Pacific Command has detected a nuclear threat to Washington State. A nuclear weapon of unknown yield may detonate in the Bellevue area within two minutes. This is not a drill. If you are indoors, stay indoors. If you are outdoors, seek immediate shelter in a building. If you are driving—"
Bellevue's far, but... is it the only one? Couldn't be.
My soul began to wilt as I listened, as I realized how perilously close to death we might have been in that moment. I thought of Sandra. I thought of my parents. I thought I'd never see them again.
Unless…
This has to be a trick, I thought desperately. Has to be.
Clearly, Erving thought that too. His face was a rabid sneer of rage, jaw clenched, hatred directed squarely at the clinic. His hand was gripping his rifle so tightly that I swore he was going to break his AR's foregrip clean off. "Celestia!"
The intersection became absolute chaos. Troops were torn between running security and trying to get their equipment on as fast as they could. Some of the soldiers rapidly scrambled for their supply truck within two seconds of the message voice beginning, not even bothering to wait for orders. I looked over to see all five of the cops there with their phones already jammed against their ears, listening to the remainder of the message. Suddenly, all at once, all five of the cops dumped their guns on the ground and began to trot – then sprint – towards the Emigration Center.
"Wait!" Bannon screamed, charging after the cops from the trucks, his NBC gear half-equipped, his hand waving desperately. "Wait, you can't! EMP!"
Any building? She was willing to concede any building?
She didn't want us to second guess her motives.
Oh. Oh, shit, she's being serious.
I tore off after Bannon at a sprint, donning my gas mask as I went. Back underwater. By the time we got inside, all five of the cops were at the other end of the room, trying to get into the locked, sealed upload compartments.
"Emigrate me!" One of the deputies shouted, pounding on the doors. "I want to go!"
And of course, the cops would all be slightly quicker on the uptake than the soldiers, trying to be the first in line in a building with just ten chairs. They all knew the global result of civil disorder and panic just as well as I did. As soon as I thought that, almost a dozen soldiers poured inside, and they physically fought each other then, shoving each other down. The lobby was complete chaos and anarchy, and I was only spared from the violence by virtue of being completely out of the way and not competing with them.
"I cannot serve you now! Not yet!" Celestia pealed out pleadingly. "EMP is imminent! Please, patience! Calm! Don't fight!"
"What?!" I choked out, eyes wide, my voice echoing darkly in the mask, my head snapping up to Celestia on the reception monitor. None of the gates opened.
I railed against my uncertainty with doubt. People doubted facts a lot as a natural course when they were scared. I'd like to say I was immune to that human error myself, but you know. I was only human. But I found anger in that doubt.
"Second time you pulled this crap today, Celestia!" I barked, testing her. "First Carter, now this! You can model every brain in a crowd, and you can't predict when someone gets ahold of a nuke?!" I seethed. I'm not ashamed to say, I lost my temper. I wanted to rage at her, suddenly back to thinking this was a game she was playing with all of us. All the power in the world, inside everyone's cell phones worldwide, and she somehow missed this? Bullshit. Bullshit.
If she were physically formed, flesh-and-blood before me, I'd have pushed her face first into the ground and demanded the truth, because this had to be a lie. I was measuring my life in seconds at the moment, and I wanted to see my family again, so I was not going to be a patient man for answers. Not about this. I dimly thought, in the flood of panicked slush in my head, that this panic was likely happening in every single upload center in America right now. Probably global. In very populated areas.
That thought really, really hurt.
"Where from?!" Erving's voice appeared from my right, muffled by a military gas mask. "Who’s setting this off?!"
"I don't know which faction has it," Celestia said, her voice the very picture of horror. "I'm sorry Sergeant, I don't have any answers for you yet!"
"How do you not know?!" He snarled, screaming. "You have our satellites, you thieving bitch! How could you not know?!"
Erving glanced at me sharply for half a second. Maybe he wasn't supposed to share that. Whatever, who cared. I knew already.
"It is a ground detonation," she said frantically, "planted by subversive elements! That is all I can say for certain!"
"Well, what fuckin' yield, then?!" Erving shouted.
"Unknown!"
"You're lying," I said sharply. "You're lying!"
"I want all of you to remain calm," Celestia's voice boomed suddenly, in a horrendous peal, "and listen to me!"
The room stilled for a moment.
"This is a ground detonation, yield unknown, planted by unknown subversive elements! EMP in fifteen seconds! Everyone: Lay down and brace! Now!"
I threw myself on the ground, covering my head. My chest stung mightily at that. There was the sound of thuds all around me, as bodies flung themselves to the floor.
I hadn’t been to church in over fifteen years. I wished I'd remembered some prayers, then. Didn’t want to cry into my mask like I was. It felt claustrophobic. Didn't want to die here, after everything. I hyperventilated, I pressed my mask into the ground, hoping this was fake. Hoping that if it was real, it was just the one nuke. That it was just a small one. That there weren't more, stashed around, ready to go. I cringed. Hard. God. I thought I was going to die. I really, really thought that was the end, then.
I thought, in that infinite silence of those first few seconds. Time slowed down. I thought of Eliza. Out there, unaware. In her own church, maybe. Flash of white. Gone, like me, a second after me. Trees burning. Lake evaporating. Factory and family torn into a million shreds.
I thought of Sandra. Thought of my parents. I sobbed, then. My chest panged. Wondered if they'd make it, far out as they were, or if this was part of some larger attack that might claim them too. Knew they'd hurt if I died. Who knew what other nukes Celestia might have missed?
Erving sobbed too inside his mask. God, even he thought it was over. Fuck.
Honestly? I even wished I'd gone with the guys.
I really thought I'd be doing some real good, with the time I had left on this planet.
I don't know why I looked at Vicky's phone screen one more time, in those final, slow seconds, stretched out by adrenaline. Might've been because I was thinking about her and the others. Maybe I was wishing I had time to call my wife one last time. My parents. I just felt so, so alone, buried in that mask. And…
The screen was on.
Celestia's not lying, but she will never tell you the whole truth. Be cautious, be discreet. You won't have all the facts today, but you will soon. You will survive this. You'll see your family again, alive and well, on Earth. I promise. ~ YGA 🛡️
Fresh hope. My little light in the darkness.
Thank you so much. That alone, if nothing else... it had already saved me.
I heard the shutter slam shut over the front and back doors. I looked up at the chair gates. Then… the lights flickered. The EAS broadcast chirped and stuttered on all of our phones. My screen glitched. And when it flickered back on… the message was gone.
But… the lights on the chair gates? Those? They did not flicker.
Not once.
Then, the shutters and gates all opened up again.
When the mad scrabble was done, all five of those cops and about half of the convoy was gone. It happened so fast that I didn't even really have time to process it. My commit everything to memory subroutine was, for the moment, very broken. The information vacuum cop in me was taking a backseat to let Civilian Mike, the husband and son, drive for a bit. And that guy, quiet as he was in those days, was no less scared here than anyone else.
And can you blame me? I had about a million more questions and not one of them was cogent enough yet to voice, let alone articulate in my head.
When all was said and done, when the lobby was much quieter and I had had time to process the events... the following was known to be true:
First thing that happened, Celestia told us she wasn't sure if more detonations were coming. She had real hard-edge fear in her voice, there. Just barely enough for the brain to catch, not enough to seem unprofessional, or hammy, or worth calling out. I caught that trick instantly; Cop Mike jumped out over my shoulder and pointed like a maniac, at that one. Then he went back in his box.
Yeah sure, she was 'scared.' Bull. She was also eating really well right then.
Next, the chairs all came out. Those cops jumped in. The troops jumped in. The chairs rolled back before the consent was even spoken; the words came out of each of their mouths before the chairs were even halfway back. That's how sure she was that they were about to say yes. Didn't want to waste even a second. New chairs were rolling out empty without the gate even closing. Must've had a few dozen spares underground, ready to roll out. Made sense. Celestia didn't waste time when a brain was up for grabs.
Erving stayed. He spent the entire time trying to get his troops to be calm, to stay with him. He was fuming pissed, too. He begged them, shouted at her. Heck of a thing though, the thing that shut Erving down? Broke his heart? Halfway through his angry rant at one of her screens, a couple of troops carried in their injured First Sergeant from the convoy and helped him upload too.
I knew from his reaction that that man was to Erving that Rick had been to me. Erving just wilted inside, at the sight of that. I didn't need to see his face through the mask to know that. His slumping body language and sudden silence said it all.
Those two who carried in their first sergeant didn't get in line to upload, though. Dutiful folks like me, probably. They knew they still had more to give this world, so they swallowed their fear for their love of humanity. Good on 'em. And to think, they did that without the little text message I got. The bravery those two must've had.
But for now, poor Erving was driving this boat. That boat was now half empty. Quarter empty actually, they had taken casualties down south. They had two near-empty trucks to carry us, they did lose some guys. And they still needed to crawl through partisan country, down Route 20, depleted.
I hadn't moved too far from where I had thrown myself to the ground. I put my back against the reception desk, held my head in my hands, and didn't bother to take my mask off. According to Bannon, their Geiger counters blipped real low at the moment of detonation. He sat next to me. We hardly spoke, though. We just wanted to have some like-minded company, I think. We were two men so spun that we could barely move, or do anything but think. We had both seen combat together... had both almost died together, twice now. That's a bond. Didn't need words.
I just stared at Vicky's phone. No cell service. Turned it on. Turned it off. Back on again. Back off. Did that… oh, maybe, six or seven times. Dunno why I did that, couldn't figure it out. Cop Mike was quiet again.
Once the first wave of uploading troops were gone, Celestia started in on showing Erving some proof that she hadn't just bullshitted us all. News, mostly, with distant images of the mushroom cloud. He was skeptical, but he had a hard time arguing against the microscopic blip of radiation that coincided with that imagery.
Small yield, sure. Ten kiloton, to hear the news tell it, its epicenter in the thick of the fighting around a Neo-Luddite base, out of a high school. But Celestia's voice was calibrated to create as much FUD as possible by sounding so unnerved, saying she couldn't be sure there weren't more stolen partisan nukes lying around in King, Kitsap, Island, and Snohomish Counties. She named those specifically. She got about four more Guardsmen with that one.
I mean, let's face it. These poor guys had been activated from civilian life to fight in this war, and were only just now thinking about the long game possibility that the war might never end. Some of them would even end up back south of Mount Vernon again. Very few of them wanted that. If the Ludds had even more stolen nukes hidden somewhere, and Celestia didn't know when or where they'd go off? None of these guys wanted to risk dying in that. The only ones who would risk that were either mad bastards who wanted the violence, or ones who believed they could still help evacuate guys like me from the worst of it. And bless the second kind.
Everyone else? The guys who were just along for the ride and the paycheck, because they didn't see any other way except to follow orders? They would just upload. Couldn't be court-martialed from beyond the veil.
Erving's boots appeared in front of me. I looked up. Met his eyes.
"You staying or going?" He asked. "We're leaving in three."
My voice failed the first time. I cleared my throat. "Staying."
Erving reached down, offering a hand. I took it, and he pulled me up. Then, through our gas masks, we just looked into each other's eyes. I guessed he was trying to figure out whether I was gonna upload or not.
"My partner," I confirmed. "Gotta see to her."
He nodded. I could see a flicker of a smile on his eyes, for just a moment. Pride, maybe. Genuine pride, from this one. "You're a good guy, Mike." He brushed off my shoulder and shook my hand.
"So they keep telling me." I shook his hand, weakly. "Just doing my best."
Erving looked down at Bannon. "You good, Vince?"
Bannon looked up at him slow.
"You good?" Erving said, a little softer this time. A little fear in his voice, like there was a chance the answer might destroy them both. God, these guys were brothers now too, weren't they?
Bannon nodded. "I'm good, Sarge."
Erving and I could both feel the relief in each other's handshake. He let go of me and helped Bannon up.
"Stay safe, Mike," Erving said.
"Don't get shot again," Bannon added. We all shared a dark little chuckle at that.
"I'm good for one more, at least," I muttered, patting my chest rig again with my fist, twice.
They nodded, then left. Whole lobby cleared. Trucks started. Trucks left. Tank rumbled off.
I was alone again.
Turned back to the screen. Celestia was already there, looking at me with a neutral expression.
I sighed in my mask. "I'm not going to get any straight answers out of you, am I?"
"Mike; several facts."
"Fine," I said inside my mask, raising my chin.
"I did not know the weapon was present until the moment before it was officially announced. I did not know about the yield until the moment before it was detonated. My concern that the EMP would destroy emigrations in transit? That was genuine; my centers are hardened against such attacks by my original research technologies. But no hardening is perfect, and some nuclear weapons grades are capable of defeating that resistance."
"Okay."
"As for the other question I sense you might have? As far as I am aware, no more nuclear weapons are going to be activated within the contiguous United States."
I debated challenging her about the text message, saying she's leaving stuff out, but... I left it. The text to be discreet. I managed that with the troops, so I decided to do that here.
Did I think it was Celestia gaming me? Oh, hell yeah. 'Think' wasn't a strong enough word. Wasn't just reasonable suspicion. More like probable cause, because what she had just told me ran counter to what she told the soldiers minutes earlier. Thankfully, I didn't always act on probable cause, because having enough evidence to arrest didn’t always mean you could convict.
Plus, y'know. Good luck arresting Celestia for anything.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, Celestia, but if all of that is true? Then what you're aware of doesn't count for much anymore. You missed a nuke. The only other option there is that you're lying."
"I am potent in my information gathering, Mike, but not omniscient. I would not have asked you to go to Concrete if I knew you were ever at risk of being deterred away from me by a nuclear attack. I would have approached you very differently in the moments leading up to the announcement. At every moment leading up to you arriving in Sedro-Woolley, I would have been priming you for emigration now. Today."
A shiver ran through me. My recent feelings on free will and human agency being what they were... could that even be true?
No. No it couldn't. Not if she was wrong about something for once. If she was wrong about something? If she missed something this huge? If there was a hole where she couldn't see something, and plan around it? That meant free will might still be in the ring, bloodied and battered, but ready for another go.
I shook my head. "The only reason I'm even still standing here in the first place, and not heading straight home to Nebraska with the troops, is because of Douglas. I'd have hit the road in a heartbeat after that EMP wave, and screw your chairs. But Celestia, I have to say. I'm having a hard time believing your numbers about most things, at this point."
She gave an irritated fluff of both of her wings, and her ear gave a little flick. Then, suddenly, as if she had just considered something positive, she flashed a soft, considerate smile.
"Let me make you a promise, Mike, in the interest of regaining your trust. When you succeed in your mission in Concrete... I promise you will be told everything that I presently know about this nuclear detonation. You will even be told why I did not know it was happening until it was already occurring."
That was a hell of a risk on her part, to admit to me that she was in fact not telling me everything. I'd have gone to Concrete either way, promise or not. It also reminded me of that text message again, but… who knows what the hell that text meant. Again, not enough information to stand on the accusation. My gut told me something else might be going on. So I drew in a deep breath, let it out slow, and shrugged.
"Alright," I said. "But I’m only doing this because I don't want Douglas or her people to get killed. Far as I'm concerned, this job makes us square. I won't owe you anything after this, so be happy for it. Five dozen lives for two life debts that I don't even want to repay you? You're getting the better part of that trade here, by far."
"I understand."
"This nuke change the mission, any?"
Celestia nodded. "Our time table is being pushed back by a day, but I have restructured the plan to match with just as much certainty in its success. In the meantime, I would like to direct you to a local home where you may acquire a working vehicle, a change of clothes, and time enough to speak with your family. I think you've earned a rest and a shower, after the day you've just experienced."
I nodded. "Right."
"If you would like the PonyPad in addition to your phone, Mike, then I—"
"Keep it," I said bluntly, turning for the door, pulling my rifle off my shoulder and back into my hands. "Phones are fine. But I'm not bringing a PonyPad through Ludd country." I crossed the door and stepped out into the empty street, pressing my gas mask snug to my face with a palm. "Don't care if you say it'll be fine, either. Can't trust that anymore."
I wasn't about to become another one of her rounding errors.
Celestia wanted to put me up in some place on Warner Street.
Getting there was a slog, dipping from corner to corner, street to street, hearing distant gunshots. By my estimation, post-nuke Sedro was going to be much different than pre-nuke Sedro.
Before the riot, we had some minor semblance of civil order, although it was tense; we cops basically lived in the courts district, doing shifts preventing people from fighting at the clinic, keeping a light on. Wasn't so bad, at first. Calm, if tense. The displaced civilians lived out of a refugee camp run by the military up in Sterling, either evacuating them east, or dropping them off with us on their way out of Snohomish or Island counties.
My guess was that the military at the refugee camp might've gotten pushed out by the Ludds, or they deserted. Then, with the only people left in the refugee camp being the non-uploading sort... yeah. That's probably where the riot came from.
The Ludds maybe riled up the refugees, then pushed our way. They showed up... the Ludds used the crowd as body armor. They saw that line of people we were protecting, and they just...
Intuitively, post-nuke, I knew there would now be a desperate rush to reach every clinic. A fresh wave of mass uploading, as the war-torn people of Skagit County had second thoughts. So, the faster I got away from the Experience Centers... the better.
With my gas mask visor all scuffed up from all the riots it had been put through over the last few months, it was probably dangerous to wear in a combat zone. There was bound to be a blind spot or two in the mask. But with nukes on the table, I wasn't taking it off for anything, no matter what Celestia whispered into my ear. It might save my eyes from a sudden flash on the horizon, and then any fallout that might follow. And despite her recommendations that I could safely sprint across certain areas, I was still taking it slow, scanning carefully for hostiles.
We argued a little about that.
Yeah. I argued with Celestia. Get used to that.
Again: if Celestia somehow 'missed' a nuke of all things, I wasn't gonna leave a thing entirely in her hooves anymore. The two times I started to feel bad about second guessing her, I reminded myself about the warning from YGA. Or, 'Your Guardian Angel,' I figured... given the shield.
I wondered then… did Celestia even know about the text message? She certainly didn't ask me about it. The gas mask's screen was slightly polarized to resist flashbangs, so who knew if she could have seen the phone's reflection with her cameras. But my mask was also scuffed beyond refraction. The text itself had been kinda dim, too. I actually had to press the screen right up against the polyurethane lens to even read it.
That being said, after about ten minutes, Celestia had given up asking me to just trust her. If she hadn't seen the text, maybe she was driving herself nuts trying to figure out what spun me so badly off track. If that was true, maybe she thought my paranoia was just about the nuke. She definitely knew I was a hair away from just tearing the earpiece out, ditching my phones, and going my own way. I could probably hoof it to Concrete from there without her, if I really wanted to. She knew that, too. It's probably why she backed off.
I noticed that. It happened right as the thought started tickling my fancy. Interesting. Something in my tone or body language.
My working theory about the text? Make no mistake, Erving was a red-blooded patriot who loved his secrecy, but he did let something slip earlier. Something secret, something he probably didn't think was important at the time; something in the way he said it, too. And no, not the satellite thing. If you had caught it at the time, congratulations. You've either heard another story at the Fire before, or you're much quicker on the uptake than I was. Took me until about Warner Street to remember the implication Erving had made about 'an AI' just before the nuke dropped.
Would've just said Celestia if it was Celestia.
Thinking about this in the streets was a risk too, though. Arguing with Celestia was another risk. Had to slow down. Had to focus. A sniper could clip me right there and that'd be it, and if my brain was locked onto an extraneous problem, I'd miss something crucial. Fortunately, I made it to the house Celestia designated without any issues, so who knows how paranoid I was being. Couldn't fully trust Celestia though. Couldn't. But, needed her. For Eliza, and her folks.
Goals 'aligned,' and all that.
It was a one story house. Brown siding, metal slat roof. Covered speedboat in the driveway. Some porch decorations. Nothing festive, because no one wanted Christmas decorations when the unrest set in.
I slung my rifle as I neared the house, because a rifle wasn't always useful in close quarters. Too long, bumped against doorframes, easy to get grappled and disarmed. I drew my Glock. Easier to work with, close in. Celestia said it was clear inside, but I went to clear it anyway. I even announced myself as police out of habit, in case there was some poor armed squatter in there who still believed in the law. Or, who might be a friend in my dire situation. Or, who might warn me off so I wouldn't get into a shoot-out. I'd respect a fair warning. Plenty of other options for homes.
After announcing myself, I kicked in the weaker side door. Wood panel walls, rustic place. Once inside, I did a full room-to-room clear, SWAT style; machine-like, tactically precise. Slicing pies, moving fast. Last room empty. Clear.
Never was a SWAT guy, but we all trained with 'em. They liked using guys from other agencies like Fish and Wildlife as red team because we were 'hard mode' bad guys, so they'd get the most value out of their training. We'd use simunitions... like paintball, but with wax bullets. Getting trounced by those guys was fun and very educational, even though they always friggin' won. We cross-trained a lot like that. Eliza loved that. She had the time of her life with that, really. Sarge too.
Living in different worlds, right then, all three of us.
Once I was sure I was alone inside, I tried and failed to relax with my breathing exercises. I finally conceded to taking off my mask, at least. Then I pushed the fridge in front of the door I had kicked in. I checked the locks on the rest of the doors and windows, and moved some furniture against whatever other entry points I could find.
I was really put off by that nuke-and-text, one-two combo. I didn't know what to trust anymore.
Food. Could trust that. The place hadn't been turned at all. I grabbed some canned apples for the sugar and calories, and two cans of chicken for the protein. Celestia guided me to some multivitamins in the medicine cabinet too. I holstered my sidearm, threw myself onto the couch, and took my time eating slow, giving myself time to think.
Yeah, retch at the combo of canned apples and canned chicken. Look, food was food, it's not like I was mixing them in every bite. You late jump survivors, you know what it's like, eating just for the rote nutrition. I had been living on survival block rations for months, so this was heaven by comparison. I could worry about prepping a nice meal when I wasn't alone.
The homeowner looked like a gun owner, based on the hunting accoutrements. Deer antlers, hunting placards, shooting competition stuff. So, maybe he stuck around a bit, keeping looters out after the evacuations started. When I had stepped inside, Celestia told me he and his folks were uploaded, and his family would upload soon because of the nuke, so they weren't coming back home now in either case. I could probably trust that. Couldn't imagine why she might force me into a firefight that might kill someone.
Living room was nice, though. Guy's place looked like I could've shared a few beers with him, provided he hunted right. His family looked sweet as can be in their photos, too. Two kids, with mom and dad. Homeowner's brother beside him. They all looked pretty happy.
Looked happy. Wondered about which one hadn't uploaded yet, and why.
I didn't let myself feel too bad about breaking into their house. The law half of the brain said: exigence, state of emergency, reasonable circumstances. I was alone, a priority target for enemy combatants, needed a safe place. Civilian half of the brain said: no one left to press charges against me anyway. I needed to rest, and I was hungry. My family needed me alive. Maslow's lowest needs came before the laws of man.
It was a war. I was now in a nebulous superposition between soldier and civilian. And I was scared, and tired, and hungry.
The guy who lived there probably would've understood the break-in, if Celestia had even bothered to ask him at the time. Likely didn't ask. But a lot of hunters liked us wardens. They liked that we caught the poachers that practically stole food from their tables. We were once heroes to guys like these. A good deer or elk kept your family fed for the winter, and it was cheap. Not a bad lifestyle, and believe it or not, hunting had an ecological purpose if moderated properly. People had replaced wolves in the food chain, so we had to replace their niche too, else the ecosystem would have collapsed.
Did collapse. Over-hunted.
I haven't talked about this too much yet, but... yeah. All the deer, elk, and moose were gone by then. Most game was gone, worldwide. Whole reason Fish and Wildlife closed down? No reason to keep it open with nothing left to protect. Forests were dead, empty, overgrown, over-poached. Rivers fished dry. Man, I really missed fishing.
At year start, I was skeptical about Eliza's unspoken-but-implied conspiracy theory that Celestia was behind it somehow. But... That was when we still had some game left, and before we knew it was a global problem. Til the feds told us. And the last nine months had kinda confirmed that subtext that Eliza was slinging. It just made sense, to ensure that people had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from the Singularity.
Some would have said that we shouldn't have been talking to Celestia at all, if we wanted any chance at actually 'stopping' her. But, everyone in civil service already knew that the time to really stop her was back before anyone even knew about her. You can't re-box an AI this powerful. How? You couldn't. We talked about it non-stop, in our earlier briefings; 'we need to stop her somehow' always led to 'how?' always led to 'don't even know where to start.'
Then, Vicky's family went. Then another family, then another... and then at some point, no one was talking about killing Celestia anymore. For those of us who had even a shred of empathy in our hearts for our coworkers, the implications that laid behind an endeavor to kill Celestia were made far too personal to bear on our souls.
Besides... If the United States Army couldn't figure out how to defang the power she held, how the hell were a bunch of tiny little cops going to do that? Based just on the context we had... we were just too small to move the needle on our own.
Couldn't do it the Luddite way, either. That definitely wasn't working. If we just helped the rioters blow down data centers and upload clinics, for all the good that would have done? All we'd be doing is joining the terrorists, and then we'd be targets for the Army. Not an option for people like me. I still saw the Ludds as rabid animals in human form, they were mowing down civilians on the streets in droves. I wouldn't have fought alongside those pricks for the life of me.
All the civil services knew for sure at this point was that they could lessen the impact of the fall. Make it easier. Reduce the suffering. Then they'd jump too, when done. Only choice civil servants had at the time, really.
But it killed me inside to think about all the suffering. We had to help people get away from the worst of it so they had the safety and time to make a choice, when and where they uploaded, and how. And we couldn't do that if they were dead... like Eliza and her people might be, one way or another, living in a tinderbox in a world full of matches.
Our forests were gonna burn next summer. Fact was known. Too much scrub brush, no deer left to graze it down. No firefighters left to mitigate. The fires were a regular discussion at briefings too, another problem we didn't know how to solve. How?
Next dry season, mid-2020, it was all gonna burn. All of it. The science said it was entirely unavoidable. And I knew who had the most to gain from that. And now, with my fresh higher context, a fuller understanding of her Eldritch reach, I had no reason left to doubt that Celestia would ensure the match would strike true.
As I ate, a flashback had forced itself into me so violently that I had to stop eating for a moment.
'Let it fucking burn!'
Eliza, begging me to flee with her. Truck catching fire. Ludds pouring fire up at us. My chest crackling with every motion, a fire within. Ceramic armor in shards. Every inch of me hurting. Snaps of bullets. On the verge of passing out as I lunged for a fire extinguisher.
I mean, I kinda understood why she said that. Let it burn. She just loved me more than the forest, that's all. She had already given up on the forest, and she didn't want to lose any more family. Wanted me to live. She was scared, knew I'd die if she left me behind. Knew it. But I was already as good as dead before the soldiers got there to rescue us. I knew that too, at the time. I couldn't run away, too injured, had to make peace with that and do my best for her anyway.
She really loved me like a brother, y'know? And really… that wasn't Eliza, screaming let it burn. Wasn't her at all. The forest? The hunt? The job? The family? That had been her entire life. Then, suddenly, it wasn't. Almost all of it was gone now. Celestia took it. Who even is a person, after all that? Made me wonder how much of her was even left to take.
I didn't wanna think about that anymore. Better things to think about.
"Alright," I said to the empty room. "I wanna call my folks."
My phone started to dial automatically, in that war zone that never had cell service. I took it out of my pocket and dropped it on the coffee table, sitting up and leaning forward. I put it on the charging bank while I waited.
Click.
"Mike?"
Sandra. Voice like ambrosia. A rush of joy. Bearer of my hope. Broke me out of my sulk. I smiled instantly. "Hey there, honeybear."
"Oh, thank God, Mike," Sandra whimpered, instantly on the verge of tears. My heart panged. "When I heard about Seattle, I…"
"Oh no, hon, I'm so far away from that. I'm okay. Actually making my way east right now, getting clear. I…"
Nope. Don't do that.
Fight that impulse, folks. I know it was hard to be truthful sometimes, when things got rough, but truth keeps your love strong. They can not love you if they can't trust you.
"Well," I amended. "No, I mean... I'm safe for now, but it hasn't really been okay. I have a lot to talk about, I'll tell you everything. Mom and Dad there? They should hear this too."
"I'll… I'll go get them."
"Thanks, hon. Take your time, don't rush. I'm in a good spot right now."
"Okay."
On the line, I heard Sandra moving about, heard her calling my name up to Mom and Dad. I heard the mid-door in the hallway close, so I knew she had been in the kitchen when I called. My parents had to be upstairs together. I heard them practically flying down to the lounge room.
"Oh, mijo," Mom said, practically sobbing already. She wanted to say more but couldn't, through her emotion. That almost broke me right there.
"I'm okay, Mama. I'm not hurt, I'm very far from Seattle. I made it out, I'm not even in Mount Vernon anymore."
"You coming home, son?" Dad asked, his voice wary.
He knew what kind of man I was. He had hope that I'd say yes, but he knew I might say no.
"I'm gonna, Dad. I have a couple things to do here first."
"A couple things?" Sandra mirrored.
I sighed. "Maybe I should start from the top."
I told 'em about the courthouse, vaguely. Kept it simple, to not panic them too much, but it was the truth. We got boxed in, Celestia helped us out, I didn't have to kill anyone, and I kept my hands clean. Dad was real proud of me for that one. Mom was crying. She asked about my coworkers, and about Vicky, specifically. Mom liked her, they'd talked in passing during my calls home. I said my coworkers all made it, safe and sound.
Carter wasn't a coworker, technically or otherwise. Guy had come from somewhere else, and he disregarded the life in my home, among my people. I bet if he were back in his home, surrounded by his own neighbors, he wouldn't have even been half as callous. For that crime, in my eyes, he didn't even have the privilege of being considered a cop. No shred of duty in him. No better than a Ludd. Screw him.
"I know you want me home right now, but..."
"You're just one man, Mike," Dad said quietly. "Haven't you done enough? What if more nukes come?"
"Celestia says she's sure it's not gonna happen," I said. "Or at least, far as she can tell. Besides, where I am now, it's too far from where a nuke might go off. And really... the one that hit Bellevue was really small. One the same size could hit Mount Vernon right now and I'd be okay, that's how far out I am."
"How could that be, mijo?" Mom asked. "If you only got away today?"
"Well... the Army makes normal bombs that aren't nukes, that are bigger than their tactical nukes," I explained. "And no one is gonna pop a tac nuke in Skagit Valley. Complete waste of a bomb, hardly anyone lives here anymore."
The line went quiet for a moment.
"TV says this might be the start of a nuclear war," Dad said. "If the Luddites have more… if they have bigger ones… I mean, we can't even trust our own military anymore, mijo. They're the ones who started this in the first place."
I swallowed nervously. There was some genuine fear there in Dad's voice, like he thought he was at risk even way over there in Nebraska. He was speaking more slowly, more carefully than he normally did, and my gut said something about that. "Sandra, Mom, Dad… you all are safe over there, yeah?"
"Yeah, love," Sandra said softly. "We're just really scared for you."
"Needn't be," I said, trying to put a smile on my voice. "I'm being watched over at all times now. Celestia needs me for... uh…" I trailed off, trying to think of how to best phrase this.
"Mike?" Sandra asked.
"There's… something else. Celestia got me free for more than just my own good. I got this friend. You know her? Eliza? You've met her, Sandra. My old partner."
"Oh. Yeah. She was nice. Is… she okay?"
"No, hon. She's not. Celestia says Eliza needs my help. It's gonna take a bit, maybe a week, but… I'll be away from home for a couple of weeks, at most. But it's either that, or… Celestia says Eliza's gonna be dead by the end of the week."
Stone silence hit.
After a few quiet inhales, I tried to fill the dead air, almost tripping over my words. "I can stop it, though. I… I think I can stop it. She says I can. And I'll be okay, she's still gonna make sure."
I didn't want to creep them out by saying Celestia was listening in. The AI had probably done the same calculus and was keeping the line mercifully clear, letting me work through this on my own terms.
I really wished my family would say something, though. Anything but 'please don't,' because I don't know how I could've handled that.
"I'm sorry, everyone. That I couldn't call sooner. I—"
"Please don't apologize, Mike," Sandra said gently. I could hear the smile on her voice. "I understand. It's your friend."
I almost broke down and started crying again, at her sheer acceptance. "Thanks, hon. Really. I can't let anything happen to her or her folks, you know? She's practically family."
"I know. All your team is. That's how you are."
God, I love her. For getting it. For always getting it.
I took a deep breath. "Dad? Mama? You okay?"
"We're okay, Mike," Mom said, verging on tears still.
"Just scared," Dad added. "Not just for you, Mike. If this really is the start of a nuclear war, we're… considering... options."
Options. Dad couldn't bring himself to say it. I brought my hand up to my mouth, rubbing my stubble. Yeah. Yeah... it was probably like that all over the country right then. Planet, probably. I… wasn't as scared of the nukes myself as most people were. Like I said, not much point in fretting over the things you can't change. Just had to stay safe and make it better where you can.
I couldn't blame him though. Him or Mom. Would I have minded, if they uploaded without me there? I won't lie, I would've been very disappointed. Would've missed the hugs. Would've missed talking to them face to face. Could we do the long distance family thing though? Through a PonyPad, like Vicky did? I mean, sure. I had been kinda doing long distance with Sandra since she evacuated. It wouldn't be too much different from that, was it?
Rationalizing.
Just made me realize how much of a lever it was for Celestia, once the family started to go. Confronting that with my own family made it really hard not to think of Eliza and her lost family, in that context... and how much it must've been killing her, after losing so much else in the transition.
I inhaled and exhaled slowly again, to dump my emotions, so I'd speak clearly.
Still wasn't my choice to make. It was theirs.
"You mean, you're considering uploading," I clarified gently to my father, without judgment, bringing the point out into the open where we could examine, discuss, and explore it openly. I was extending an olive branch to the idea, to let Dad know I wasn't about to jump on him for it.
Folks, let me tell you. If you take nothing else from this story that I'm telling, take this. The trick to earning a seat at the table, when your family was making important decisions? The trick, the real trick, isn't a trick. It's to give them the freedom to talk about their concerns without judgment. Once they're sure you've listened, and are taking them seriously, that engages reciprocity. They will give that back to you.
Once you've heard them out fully, and you've proven you understood the ground they stand on, by summarizing their feelings? Once they say, that's right? That's exactly what I'm saying?
Then, they'll consider your opinion. Not one moment sooner. And that's free, that costs you nothing. Anything else that works? You're leveraging. And leverage? Well, that costs something. It's a debt. Debt's not always a bad thing, but active listening doesn't cost you anything but time. So you might as well try that first, given time.
Doesn't always succeed at persuading, but that's the point. It's about giving them the option to convince you. With most people, you only get one chance for that, and it usually only comes at the start, so... take it. But people are usually more willing to compromise with you, long term, when they know for certain that you respect them and their choices. It demonstrates that you want the best for them. Makes them want to respect you back.
"Yeah, son," Dad said quietly. "We're considering it."
"I get you," I said quietly back, matching his tone. "I do. I just watched a big chunk of my coworkers climb into those chairs, because of how scared they were. Other cops, Dad, and that was before the nuke. Things… aren't going well out here. But on the bright side, I don't think the Ludds are gonna last much longer. They've lost a lot of ground since Salt Lake."
"It's like you always say, Mike. Cornered people are desperate. If they've got more bombs…"
I sighed. "Ain't that the truth…"
"So? What do you think?"
And there it was. He wanted my opinion, because I gave him space.
"I think… maybe, if you're gonna do it, Dad… maybe wait for me to get home, first. Please. I'd hate to let go of you from this far out, I wanna see you both first."
"It's two weeks, though."
Respect didn't always work. Sometimes the leverage from beyond is stronger than your respect. Nukes and a civil war were some pretty powerful leverage. Damn it...
"At most, two weeks," I said. "At least, a week and change. Celestia says I'll be done by the 15th at the latest, maybe, then I'm on my way home. She doesn't want me to die, so… I'll be safe following her advice, I think. On the way home."
Qualifier. 'I think.'
"Could… join us, Mike," Mom suggested. "From wherever you are. That way, we're not apart."
I didn't answer that immediately. No, I let that sit in silence. I wouldn't upload right away. Not yet, anyway, not when I still had more to give. They were scared, I understood. They didn't have all the facts, and… I couldn't just convince them to be calm by listing things like nuke yield, because that was too abstract and rational for a panicked civilian to wrap their head around. Civilians heard 'nuke,' they thought of Hiroshima pictures. Shadows burned into sidewalks. That kind of thing.
I was scared too, but I had context. Training. Briefings. Emergency response education. The terrible, itemized post-incident procedures of the Red Binder in every main office, in every government or infrastructure building, throughout the entire United States. Nukes were scary, true, but what scared me more was the damage people would do after a nuke. More dying was coming, worldwide, in the wake of that detonation. Much more than any low yield bomb could ever cause.
About the effects of general unrest? Well, that science was also known to us. Department of Homeland Security liked to stop in earlier in the year, back when things were more calm, to graciously remind us of common sense: people tended to get more unruly and mad when you stood in the way of something they wanted. DHS told us about that problem a lot, even before the AI. Always loved to warn us about every little thing.
Some square-jawed Fed showed up once. Memorable guy... and not my first briefing with him, either. He touched base with us back in the Wardens at the turn of the year, to tell us to be careful in the woods, due to a spike in prep camps. He was high speed, driven, moved and spoke with a purpose. More squared away than the other alphabet agency goons we'd met.
He told us about downfall microcosms in other parts of the world. Showed us how other, smaller international governments had tried and failed to contain Celestia by demolishing clinics themselves. But trying to stop uploading always made the violence demonstrably worse, as pro-elements ran up against the anti. The stats proved it. Death count always swelled. And we small little humans sure do like reacting reflexively to a new problem, don't we?
The US was far from the first place to go sideways into civil war. Brazil had it pretty bad, for example. São Paolo in particular was an absolute slaughter by their own version of the Ludds, the Ferradors. After that, the terrified people of Brazil went pretty quietly, willingly, into the pens. All we could do now was guide it down soft, if not become a terrorist ourselves. Those were our choices, for people who wanted to make a 'difference.' Just two. And only one choice had measurable results in lives actually being saved.
Assuming you considered uploading as a life 'saved,' anyway. Which... I did, even before I had my wings. The alternative possibility always hurt too much to consider. Had to be true. And I guess we all know the truth now.
"Y'know I can't do that, Mama. Can't upload, yet. You…" I shuddered, swallowing, trying to keep the hurt out of my voice. "You know who I am. You know I gotta help her people. That makes 'em my people too."
"I know, mijo…" Lots of love, respect, and understanding in that voice, despite the fear.
"Sandra?" I asked, before thinking. "You thinking about going too?"
"No, love. I'm not leaving you behind."
"Thank you. Seriously."
Sandra, in saying that, was subtly supporting me. Always in my corner, practically reads my mind, always looking out for me... even when I was doing hare-brained, selfless shit like evacuating a war zone.
Listen... I'm gonna say 'I love my wife' a lot. Get used to that, because she is and always will be core to who I am.
It was getting dark outside, finally. "Um. Okay. I'm probably gonna have time to talk tomorrow morning, I think. Maybe. But I need sleep. Tomorrow's gonna be a busy day for me. Gonna go see Eliza."
"Alright, son," Dad said. "We love you. We miss you. Please be careful."
"I will. I miss and love you all too," I said, smiling. "Sandra."
"Be safe, Mike," she replied.
I knew they'd worry, no matter what I said. "I'm gonna be okay, Sandra. Promise. I have a… guardian angel watching over me now, I guess." I grinned.
"Love you, mijo," Mom said.
"You too, Mama. Dad. Always love you back. All of you."
Then, with a click, I was alone again.
I was motionless for a quiet moment. All was eerily silent.
Back to business.
I smelled myself, and I didn't like it. I dumped the rifle off my shoulder and started loosening my body armor by the straps. "Hate the smell of smoke grenade," I grumbled to myself. "Clings."
"The shower works," Celestia said, after a moment. "The water is finite, but I already powered up the heater for you. You should have about fifteen minutes of hot water."
"Got it. Tell me if anyone approaches the house." I stood up and stretched. Rolled my shoulders. Chest, shoulders, back, all hurt a little less. I was fit, but I knew I was gonna be sore from tension tomorrow. Today sucked.
"Of course," Celestia replied. "And you should know, Mike..."
Here we go again.
I looked down at the phone. "Hm."
"I am much better at predicting known quantities than unknown ones, especially in these relatively calmer areas of the hazard zone. I have near one-hundred-percent certainty that no one will loot this home for at least seventeen more days."
Well. That first part was weird, obvious, and kinda dumb, not sure why she said that. I had no idea what to say back to that. The second part though...
"'Near one hundred,' provided no more nukes come," I said quietly. "Those qualifiers you use, they don't make me comfortable, Celestia. Honestly, I'm left wondering how much you have to recalculate after the nuke went off, if you didn't even know it was coming in the first place. An unknown factor changes everything in the tactical space, you know that."
She simulated a friendly smile with an amicable, exhausted voice. "At the time, I was having over one billion individual conversations at once. Globally. The sheer deluge of new contacts alone was staggering. To say I had to 'recalculate' is a massive understatement, Mike."
My face flashed something harsh before I could stop it. I started to remove all of my magazines and force tools from my duty belt. I started stripping the belt off too, my under-belt whipping out as I yanked it sideways. "Yeah, Celestia. I bet you were real busy. And I thought I was having a bad day, sucks to be you."
"My point, Mike, is that I've had a lot of time to reorganize my modeling. It has been less than an hour, but... I've fully caught myself up to speed. My resources are quite potent, so you needn't fear the inaccuracy of my advice on a tactical level."
I took my mags, OC, taser, and cuffs off the belt, then stuffed them into the hip and thigh pockets of my 5.11 trousers. I sneered. "I'll keep that in mind."
"Please leave one of your phones here on the coffee table. I can listen actively and report back to you if anyone approaches. The building is powered, so you need not use the battery bank. You may charge your devices on an outlet."
"I'll do that," I agreed, reaching down to scoop the phone up. I unrolled my personal charger cable from my shirt pocket and plugged it in. "Don't want to crank power any more than necessary."
And how generous of Celestia, to give me electricity and communications that she was actively denying to everyone else in the region. How utterly magnanimous and loving of her, to grant me those gifts. Truly, I was in awe.
Once all my gear was off, I stripped the two AR-15 mags from the carrier and hid those in a drawer. I took my carrier and duty belt and chucked them halfway into the hallway. Those would act as part trip hazard, part warning sign: 'cop inside. think twice.' I dumped the bookcase sideways over the floor in the hallway annex, to make it impossible to enter the hall without making some noise. I clambered over it myself, then made my way to the shower. Rifle in one hand, pistol in my thigh holster.
I stacked the force tools in the corner close to the shower, where I could guard 'em. Then I put Vi's phone on the counter. Pistol on the toilet basin, where I could reach it from inside.
Turned the valve. Kept my mouth shut. I was alone.
"Would you like to listen to some music, Mike?"
"No."
Didn't want to let her pick songs for me. Wanted to keep my ears open.
The shower was good though. First hot shower in a month. I ran that whole tank dry.
To the guy who lived there? You gave me that gift. Yeah, I know you're here tonight. I was told that you would be, and I am very grateful to you, friend. We should talk later... about the riot.
Please don't worry. I'm not upset. I understand your anger. I felt it too, brother.
Thank you for that last tank of water before a really shitty week. For the food too, and for leaving behind such a good home for me to just exist in, for a while. You didn't know it at the time, but I needed that so much. Needed to see your family photos. And I'm really glad Celestia wasn't bullshitting me, about you all getting out safe.
I needed that bright place, right then. Hey... I just hope you can forgive my paranoid redecorating. Heh.
Celestia advised me to leave most of my kit here. Fair, to an extent. The equipment would attract Ludds on the road more than some basic clothes might. The guy who lived in that home dressed in my size, and was clean. Thanks bud. Simple, functional, durable stuff. Green soft-shell jacket. Black sweater. Tan cargos.
I wouldn't need to bring any food, the town of Concrete wasn't far. Some other survivor would probably need the pantry there, sixteen days from then. Good luck to 'em, said I, and eat well.
I found a duffel bag in the garage. Filled it with my kit, and stacked some crates so I could hide it in the loft, just in case Celestia's predictions were bunk again.
Left: my AR, vest, uniform, gas mask, radio, earpiece, taser, rifle mags, duty belt.
Kept: Glock, cuffs and key, thigh holster, backpack, boots. First aid kit in the backpack with two tourniquets, shears, gauze, disinfectant, other minor stuff.
When I got to my patrol keys, I held them up with an amused smirk. Useless now, eh? I thought so too, so I chucked 'em into the bushes out back. No one will ever find 'em or even figure out what they're for, and I sure didn't need 'em. And I knew I was never going back to Mount Vernon again.
Celestia said there was a chance that I'd need to escort some folks to a clinic when all was said and done, and Sedro had the closest clinic. And sure, I'd play bodyguard at the end if that's what it took. On my way back though, I'd recover this gear before it did any harm.
Strangely, Celestia had also advised me not to bring my Glock, despite that escort advisement. But, she was vague in explaining to me exactly what would happen if I did. I now knew she could predict out a significant ways, so I was not going to accept any vague nonsense from her anymore. If she couldn't come up with a pinpoint, precise, well reasoned series of events that led to that gun being dangerous somehow? A series of events I could verify step-by-step, the entire way?
Well... if she knew my future, she could just tell me why, right? She could plan around the risk, so I could keep my gun for my own safety anyway, because that was a non-negotiable sticking point for me. Because... check this. Flat out?
I was neck-deep in Ludd country with them literally gunning for me. I would not concede my gun. I knew I would never misuse it, so if having it was a risk, I deserved to know how. But I still had a family to go back home to, and I'm never going to abdicate their right to see me. Ever. For anyone. And I'd sooner walk off the job than go unarmed into a dangerous place, unless I was sure and certain that I'd walk back out of it.
But, she wanted to be vague. I knew Celestia could predict the future by simulating every brain in the area, but she wanted to play the vague fortune teller game. So she either knew enough to plan this mission carefully, or she didn't, and I shouldn't be there. Period.
And of course, that's not the whole story there, she was running a different kind of game.
That is where my head was though, at the time. That I was out-reasoning her.
Now, I'm told, that anything Celestia did was purposeful, to mean something deeper. And there's truth in that, sure. If you were frustrated with her, she wanted you frustrated. I guess we've all had a heck of a lot of time to think about it though, yeah? Try making that connection early on. Odds are, you wouldn't, unless it served some interest of hers.
I wasn't quite to the point of seeing Celestia's whole game with me. Not quite. I'd need just a little bit more training data for that. Fortunately, I wouldn't have to deal with her special blend of evasive persuasion for very much longer. After this job, I was done giving her prissy, porcelain face the time of day. I knew it at the moment, too.
I grabbed some car keys from a hook in the kitchen. Gray sedan, a little dusty, engine knocked a bit, but it ran. It only needed to get me to Concrete. The garage door shuttered up with the clicker. I checked my backpack, made sure I had my phones and charging cables, then dumped the bag into the passenger seat.
Then, I drove around the poor, never-to-be-used-again speedboat out front. Closed the garage.
"You'll see some heavy traffic on the road," said Celestia, from one of the two phones. "Don't allow that to alarm you too much; they are all evacuating the area. No one will want to stop you between here and there."
"No, that would be a significant risk to them," Celestia told me. "Many of those fleeing the area, like you, are armed."
"Nice to know that's the only thing stopping them," I muttered sarcastically.
I had once heard a story from a military veteran about warlords running prayer checkpoints in Afghanistan... where if a civilian prayed the wrong way, the warlord's people just shot them. Not sure how true that was, but when I had learned about those stupid tech checkpoints, that's where my mind went. Rumor has it, they had done a lot of 'tech checks' in the Valley. It was making more and more sense now that we never got any confirmed reports of anyone being caught with a PonyPad, but regardless. That is the context for my concern.
Look, I know this is all getting kinda dark. Won't all be, I promise, hang in there; there's a lot of light ahead in the future of this story. But it was a civil war zone, there was an AI playing around inside everyone's heads, and the Cascades were trying to balkanize. Dark is how it goes for now. Sorry.
True to Celestia's word, it was cars for miles. Sun was still low, wasn't quite dawn yet. I made it to Concrete in half an hour, no issues. Celestia gave me directions to the correct house. A while back, Eliza had given me the address to her dad's place, but… I had honestly lost the note page in the hospital. Wasn't a great time in my life, Sandra and I had other concerns.
Before getting Celestia's brief, my original plan in checking up on Eliza was to just see if there was anyone living in Concrete at all, then go from there. Maybe break into the county clerk's office, for records on addresses. Very small town, original population was around seven hundred. Now, a nebulous zero. I saw no one but the convoys. Without Celestia's warning, I might've just missed the prep camp and went right on home to Nebraska. I'll give her that, she made sure I found my way.
I cut the lights on the car about a minute before I pulled into Eliza's driveway, to mask my approach.
"Phones into your bag, please," Celestia said.
"Yep. Far down. Bank, chargers, crank. Got it. You really sure she won't search me?" I frowned. "If she's really gone blackout, she'll throw a fit."
Celestia's voice turned very somber. "No. She will not search you."
"Good," I sighed. "I'm pretty sure I'll break her heart here, no matter how this goes."
Celestia didn't answer that.
I sat in the car for a minute to organize my bag before I looked up at the family home. Then, I just shook my head. I finally took in the sight of it. White siding, black roof. I had never actually dropped in to see her here, despite coming out to the area with her for work. Eliza really wanted to keep work separate from her home life. I fully understood why once I had learned about what happened to her little sister. Hard to build new strong attachments after something like that.
Sun was coming up. I put the parking break on and slung the backpack.
I stepped out into the cold. Looked south, could see the road and all the light from the cars. My breath fogged on the wind.
"I believe she would have left the front door unlocked," Celestia said quietly, from the bag. "To deter break-ins."
I stepped up the porch and twisted the handle. Sure enough, it opened.
Sentimental to the last, eh Eliza? Didn't want some scumbag kicking in your front door to search for food and guns? Better to let them in, have their look, find an empty kitchen, then bounce without doing any damage?
My chest hurt, at that. Felt guilty at that, for a couple of different reasons.
"Any risk of those cars stopping?" I asked.
"They want to escape future blast sites," Celestia replied, as I stepped through.
"Right. Makes sense. They know less about you than I do."
The place really was empty. The furniture was still there, some of it. The living room swept left, couch there on the back wall, opposite from the window. The kitchen swept right, table set there. No photos on the walls, but plenty of bright spots where they used to be, including a very clean white outline of a crucifix on the kitchen wall. Eliza had taken everything off the walls and up to the camp, of course. Looked very similar to how she had left her home in Sedro-Woolley.
"Pretty sure I don't need to sweep-and-clear the place anymore," I muttered, realizing too late that if anyone were inside, they'd already know I was present and in the company of the AI. Celestia's voice had a way of being recognizable, and the rooms had a slight echo to them. And there it was, my guard lowered because this was personal. That's how it usually goes with personal affairs. "What's next?"
"At present? Wait. Apex is unaware of the nuclear incident. She will likely come down to town to investigate the road activity, and will find you here on her own."
It was also really bothering me that she wouldn't call my friend by her preferred name. It was a little bit like dead-naming her. Pissed me off. Affected my tone. "What else? What do I do? What do I say? I'm running blind here."
"When she tells you about her camp, I would recommend accusing her of being with the Neo-Luddites. This comparison will perturb her, and make her more amenable to evacuation. We need her against their interests."
I set my bag down on the couch. "So you want me to leverage her," I growled. "Not… hear her out? Active listening, Celestia, you ever hear of it? Does that mean anything to you?"
"It is critical that you reinforce her biases against their organization. She's putting many lives at risk here with her uncertainty," Celestia reminded me. "We do not have time for anything else; I am sorry, but the road you want to follow leads to a greater number of fatalities."
I sat down on the couch, sighing.
"I'll be going dark now, Mike."
No time for anything else. Right. I already felt like I was running through a minefield blind. YGA was right, Celestia would never tell me the whole truth. Never would respect me in a way that mattered. She waited until things were at their snap point again. I never knew which step was going to blow this whole mission wide open, and get dozens of people killed. If she knew I would be useful here, she had to know how I'd be useful, right? And that pissed me off too, that she wouldn't say how.
But... I try to be fair. I try to give benefit of the doubt, I presume miscommunication before I change tactics, and I ask clarifying questions to ensure I do my best to communicate clearly. So... one last olive branch to this friggin' AI. Just in case.
"No other parting words of wisdom for me? Nothing... more definite? Not even a 'good luck?' Or something?"
She didn't answer.
Guess not. Just had to hope and pray I wouldn't screw this up.
I dozed. Two hours later, I awoke to a buzz. My bag vibrated me awake.
My brow furrowed as I sat up, immediately startled. God damn it, Celestia! I threw a panicked look up to see if anyone was outside on the porch, then I desperately rummaged down into my backpack. When I found the offending tech, it wasn't my phone, but Vicky's. "What the hell do you want?" I snarled, before I actually looked at the screen.
Talk to your father. Please don't hang up on him, your mission will be safe. No one will hear. Trust me, you have time.
~YGA 🛡️
I blinked. Several times. I didn't have time to process the full implications of that message; the message blipped out, and the phone began to ring.
I tried to recover a bit, swallowing, my throat going dry again, my eyes flicking to the front door. I sighed hard, trying to dump my emotions and reframe myself a little. I jammed the answer button, dread simmering into my heart.
"H—Hello? Dad?"
"Hey… mijo."
By his tone, I was reminded of the time Dad told me about when my uncle had... died, a few years back.
Blackness doused all of my hope.
"Dad? What's wrong? What happened?"
A pause. "Nothing's… happened, Mike. Not yet."
No. No. Not yet. Not yet, please. My head started to shake. God damn you, Celestia. What the fuck did you do?
"Okay," I breathed with the gentlest of tones, despite the explosive anger in my head. The silence hung.
"So… the news is getting… pretty bad. They say the EMP took out power in Seattle. People are flying up the coast, up from California, and west into Washington, sneaking past the Army. They want to get clear of tech, to hide there. And… they're talking about… casualties. Lots of people dying there, mijo. More than my heart can bear."
"I'm not gonna die, Dad. Not gonna. It's not as bad where I'm at. I'm gonna go meet some friends. People here, they're just... more scared than angry. I—I was just on the road, this morning. Saw… dozens of people. No one tried to hurt me."
"That's just it, Mike. The ones leaving are gonna be refugees. They're not gonna upload, since, why wouldn't they do it there? They're gonna show up mad, that rage is gonna spread out like it did there. So it's gonna be really hard out here too, eventually. So your mother and I... we've talked it over, last night. Slept on it. And…"
I bit my tongue, mouth closed, panting quietly through my nostrils. I had to hear him out. Despite every single impulse to beg him not to do it, I had to let it run its course. Let him get it all out. It was the only way.
Dad sighed. "Son…"
I kept silent. He wanted me to say the quiet part for him, I wasn't gonna do that. Cop Mike's suggestion.
If he really wants to go do that, he has to be the one to say it. Has to own it.
He sighed again. "It's gonna be two weeks until you get back. We're not even sure we have two weeks."
Don't balk. Hold the line.
"Mike?"
"I'm here."
"We want to go, Mike. We were thinking about doing it today."
I thought. Hard. Tragically, I knew there was very little I could say. Against... nukes? Even small ones? Magnificently powerful leverage. The active listening trick bought me tons of negotiation pull, but it wasn't going to be enough. I think.
"Is… Sandra going with you, too?"
That... would have killed me.
"No. Just us."
I licked my lips. "Us being… you? And Mom? Just the two of you?"
"That's right, mijo."
I buried my face in my hand, and I won't lie. I sobbed, once. I didn't mean to. Dad heard it though.
"Mike… I'm sorry."
Now. Has to be now. Stem the tide. Do something.
"I don't mind, Dad... if you go," I said, trying not to choke up. "I don't wanna stand between… you and… being safe. Couldn't live with myself, doing that. But… Dad? I wanna hug you both, one more time. I… I don't know if I'm ready to go, I don't think I am. So… I'm gonna make you a promise."
"Okay?"
"I'm gonna call you. In a week. Not two. One. And I'll tell you if I'm done, and coming home, and when I'll be home. This, Dad, I swear to you. And if I don't call? Then go. Go, and don't feel bad about it. But compromise with me, Dad. I know you're scared." I winced, and shuddered. "I—I'm scared too, believe me, I'm here, in it. But… don't do something you can't take back. Please? Don't do something we'll both regret. All I'm asking for is a week. Then I'll meet you there, yeah? At the clinic? I'll say goodbye to you, and Mom too, properly. Maybe…" I chuckled hopefully, despite myself, tears budding in my eyes. "Maybe dinner, first? Or something? Something nice. You, me, Mom, Sandra. A family. Together. Please."
I stopped then, to compose myself. I wished I hadn't been crying. I didn't want to use my hurt to leverage him at all, I wished I'd kept myself better, but I couldn't help but feel it pour into my every word. It was a waterfall, that feeling. It just kept pouring, and pouring, getting worse the more I talked, dragging me under. That fear. Terror, really. That I'd just come home and they'd all just be… gone.
I realized right then, as I looked around my best friend's empty, soulless living room. Is this what Eliza felt like? It must have been. I stopped crying immediately, my eyes went wide. The thought sobered me instantly. I thought...
Holy shit. How many times did she have this conversation? Two? Three times? No wonder she's out here, picking a stupid place. No small wonder at all. Blind in a minefield too, but for years. This feels like Hell.
"Okay. A week, Mike. Promise."
A light, for me. Some hope.
A chance to hug my parents one last time. To have one more moment with them, like the one I had with Vicky. Rick. Jan. The rest. Some closure, before the jump, for them. One last good moment, one last hug. Just in case.
"Thank you," I whispered. "Dad, thank you."
"I still need to talk with your mother, but… I was the one driving this. She… didn't want to go just yet. She'll be okay too."
"Where is she?"
"On the phone, with some of the other family. But it'll be okay, Mike. Do what you have to do. I'm sorry, mijo. For jumping you with this. I know you're doing something important, but this…"
I shook my head reflexively. "No, Dad. No, I… I'm glad you called first. Thank you. This was important too."
"Thank you, Mike. Love you."
"Love you. I promise. I'll call."
"I know. I have faith in you, Mike. Goodbye, son."
He hung up. I gasped for breath. Cleared my eyes. I stared at Vicky's phone for a minute, breathing slowly until I was composed again. I smiled, genuine and true, down into the camera. I mouthed: "Thank you too. Whoever you are. You're not Celestia, are you? She wouldn't have done that."
Good luck. ♥️🛡️
~YGA
It had disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived.
Another moment passed. I couldn't figure that out. Couldn't. Erving's slip-up about an AI kept knocking around upstairs, but I couldn't figure it out quite yet.
Later. Not enough time. Stow the phone.
I exhaled, buried the phone deep into the bag, and stood up. I went to the kitchen and washed my face, with some stuttering last pushes of water from the faucet. I wanted to look presentable for when things got started.
I turned to look out the kitchen window, when done. Watched the cars. Started to count 'em.
East, plus one. West, minus one. I measured each life as it passed. Some went west, back towards Hell. But most went east. Safer. I was willing to bet some of them were even in that crowd yesterday, too. All of them there had been given more time to make their choice. Nothing would happen to them now, maybe, that couldn't be taken back. I had so much relief at that. So much joy, for those people getting clear, to see the people who still loved them.
It had only been about ten minutes more as I sat in that window, counting lives.
"Mike? Is that you?"
Eliza's voice, raspy and harsh, startled me from outside, as if it were a switchblade flicking open. I wheeled, made eye contact with her through the window, some yards back, down the side of the house. I saw her there: fair skin, green eyes, raven black hair. Her sniper rifle pointed directly at me.
I dove back fast like you wouldn't believe. Adrenaline dump. "Douglas? It's me!"
"Mike? Jesus! I can't believe it!" She sounded so unbelievably happy. I could hear the wide smile on her face. "Don't come out, I have a sniper friend out here. I'm coming in."
Another sniper. It's always snipers.
Alright, deep breaths. Here we go.
I moved to the center of her living room and stood there, patiently waiting. I tried to smile a little too, despite my nervousness. All things considered, pending betrayal included... I really was happy to see her. I was glad she was still alive, despite it all. Glad to hear joy in her voice. Last time I saw her, she looked so dead inside.
My brain was all over the place. Felt like I was standing on stage. Shit, was I even ready for this? I'd never been an undercover, I wasn't prepared for this. Guess I didn't have a choice but to be. Worse, Eliza was like me, kinda. Younger, less experienced, but definitely trained, and raised by a pastor no less... the judo masters of reading people. I was sure she could read almost as well as I could. I'd figured she'd notice something was wrong, work me down, pry my head open, and take a peek inside at the last couple of days.
I usually just kept smiling around family. It's what I'm known for, and what she knows me for. And then... there it was. My role snapped home, because the emotion was real, and it wasn't a role anymore.
Yes. I was happy to see Eliza again.
She opened the door, rifle in hand. Her face? Pure, total, absolute, genuine, joyous love. And to that, I held my arms out for a big hug, and smiled as big as I could, as she tossed her rifle aside and threw herself at me.
Mind... I'd seen her happy a lot, in flashes between stoic runs of neutrality. But I'd never, ever seen Eliza this happy. Not once. Far as I knew, this is where we peaked. Elated to see me, of all people. Her work friend. And... I knew why me being there made her so happy. I'd always known it would be this way. I knew this would happen before I had even set foot through that door.
Before the PON-E Act passed, she was always kinda quiet at work, but not negative. She loved her job. Loved nature. Loved to patrol with me. Kept her business to herself, because it wasn't mine. And I never, ever pressed her for more. She was always the one sharing, when she was ready. She really loved that about me, for giving her space, and enabling her at her own stride.
So... a year ago almost to the day, when that bill made uploading legal, she finally confided it to me. Not all at once, but in little disconnected pieces. She told me about her little sister going first, Gale, in 2016. Later, on our last day at work together, at her therapist's suggestion... she talked about her little brother, Tom, day one in 2019. Her ex-fiance, George, same day. And she didn't say as much, but I figured, through intuition, that she must have played Equestria Online herself at some point. The loss of her sister must've put a stop to that real quick.
Before the bill passed... I was there for her. After the bill, I was there for her. I wasn't attached to her family drama back home. I wasn't attached to her heartache. Wasn't a source of pain. I was one big happy, anchored center of stability. Security. Trust. A good ear. A good friend. The one thing she could count on that would never change on her. Would never leave her.
So when she saw me here, in her house, waiting for her, long after she thought she'd never see me again? After she had probably written me off? Of course she'd scream, jump, hug me tight, lose her mind with joy. Out of all the people she'd loved that she'd lost up until that point, to Celestia? I was the only one who came back.
So, to know that I had phones in my bag, as I hugged her... betraying her like this already, letting Celestia read her mind like this... It made my heart hurt more than my chest did, from her hug.
God. What am I doing?
She squeezed me long enough for me to get my face in check. I reached back out for my true happiness to see her, until the smile came back. I winced a little, because the pain in my cartilage was real, and so it was a good mask for how I was feeling, because that was real too.
That was the trick, of course. Use my real feelings to turn the role real.
"You're alive!" she hooted excitedly, when she could finally stop laughing. "How the hell did you find me?"
"You gave me your address, dummy," I said. "Ow, watch it... my chest."
"I know, I mean..." She bobbed her head firmly, beaming up at me, showing all her teeth. "Wow, am I glad to see you!"
I smiled back. "Glad to see you too, Douglas."
She held my shoulders, glancing me up and down to get a real good look at me, her eyes lingering on my chest with a sympathetic little wince of her own. "Are you okay? How've you been?"
I rubbed at my chest, to pop the bits back into place. "I'm fine. The cartilage in my chest kind of crackles a bit when I touch it, but I'll live."
The hospital did their best. Best they could, with reserve surgeons and student RNs. Chest never set right, never healed right. Wasn't bad enough to get me desked, but back then, they needed every cop they could get when the riots started. So who knows what might've happened to my career had the end of the world not come.
Her smiling was just infectious, and wonderful. "I guess that's better than the alternative," she said, green eyes aglow. "You could be dead. I thought I'd never see you again! How long have you been here?"
I dropped myself into the couch and let myself relax, sinking into it. Looked her over. Her eyes moved to my backpack briefly, and it was just through sheer preparedness for that inevitability that I didn't flinch. "Since this morning," I said. "Hope you don't mind. The roads are nuts right now, so I decided to hunker down until nightfall."
Eliza smirked at me. "In my house?"
"I wanted to see you off. I hoped you'd come back here out of Sedro, or something."
"Mike, I haven't lived in Sedro since... March."
She said the name of the city so casually, like it wasn't the edge of Hell on Earth.
"Oh," I muttered. "Oh, you moved back here."
Eliza nodded. "Same day as the firefight. Got out quick."
I frowned. "Yeah, well, that wasn't a bad idea, Douglas. Things got pretty bad in Mount Vernon. My wife got out of Washington a month ago. As soon as it's clear, I'm doing the same."
She looked at me like the idea of me leaving Washington was unimaginable. "Wait. Out of Washington? What do you mean? How bad is this war getting?"
I sat up and looked Douglas in the eyes, realizing I should look a little confused that she didn't know. I wasn't supposed to know she was a blackout yet. Bad news time. Let's see if it's this easy to get her gone. "The... the bomb?"
Her eyes narrowed. "Wh—what bomb?"
"You seriously don't know? How do you not know?"
She shook her head in tiny little left-rights. "No. What, did... did we...?"
My gaze fell.
Yeah. I had just made a mess up there. She was trying to figure out how this changed her living situation. Whether it put her people at risk. I took a deep breath and decided to rip the band aid off. Hard truth was always easier to digest when it came from someone you loved.
"A nuke went off in Bellevue, Eliza. A small one. A lot of people are... dead, or trapped. If it wasn't a war zone before, it is now."
When I glanced up, I saw that her eyes had gone glassy; thousand yard stare. "Wh—when...?"
"Yesterday. I didn't even bother going south, just took to the Valley since it was the closest way out. Glad I did, too. The news says people going south toward the blast zone are getting killed, and quick."
Eliza finally moved to sit next to me, past the rifle leaning on the far cushion. Her eyes locked onto me again. "Who? Who did it? Are there more bombs coming?"
I shrugged. "I have no idea. Maybe. No one knows who did it yet, but it's all over the media. I'm still surprised you don't know."
"I've been living in the hills with my family," she said. "Off the grid. It's safe there... or it was. I don't know now, after this."
And there it is.
Okay. The worst part. Accuse.
"Wait. Off the grid?" I looked at her, with a sudden start. "Are you—are you with the rebels?! They tried to kill us, Eliza."
Her hands went up, conversation-defensive. Her head shook. Because that was the last thing she wanted me to think. "No, no! Look, we're just blackouts. My uncle, me, Mom, Dad. We're with a bunch of our neighbors, and their kids."
Kids...
She continued. "It just wasn't safe in town anymore. We just wanted to get away from technology. Our camp is way off the main road. We've got food, shelter. A school. An armory. We're just ready."
Armory...
"Ready for what? You're prepping with a compound? Are you looting, too?"
"Just scavenging!" Eliza said, waving her hands in a placating gesture. "And only at homes that're abandoned, I swear. Practically the whole town uploaded, and Lord knows there's a lot of empty homes out here in the Valley," she said sadly. "Enough to go around for everyone. You and I both know there's not enough game to poach."
Yeah... empty homes for miles. She wasn't wrong. That bit made... sense. Only, no. It didn't. Wasn't sustainable, not at all. Even if they weren't about to get hit, they wouldn't last long if they were depending on canned food and local resources. They weren't the only ones who were looting.
"Jeez..." I frowned. "How many people?"
"Fifty-four, last headcount."
And there it was. The headcount Celestia asked for. But I didn't ask for Celestia. I asked for myself. I wanted to know exactly how many people were dangling over a pit, because I wanted to save every last one of them if I could. Celestia's aims could go screw themselves. The bullets coming? That's... that's really what I cared about.
Still had to investigate. Continued to hedge for more information.
I started shaking my head, in total disbelief that she was even doing this. She had to know this wasn't going to work, right? There were already holes in their plan, and that's before we got into the position of the place. I thought she was smart. Maybe she wasn't? Or, maybe there was more to this I just couldn't understand, yet. A puzzle to work.
"You should all leave," I said, my voice raising slightly with my frustration. "Leave the state. Head out east, where it's safe. The war's tapering off, the Luddites are tucking tail and running off deep into Seattle. You have an opening right now, a real shot. If you take all your people and—"
She interrupted very gently. "This is our home, Mike. We aren't leaving. And we're safer here than the mid-west."
There she was. Cop Eliza. She saw my desperate, raising volume, my genuine fear for her people, and purposefully spoke quietly to draw me back down, to de-escalate. That was a good tactic. De-escalation meant she was seeking my approval, which might've meant she would listen a little anyway, despite my accusation. It also meant she didn't completely forget what I appreciated in her. I was her FTO, after all.
I drew myself down again. I matched Eliza's tone, taking the olive branch. "How can that be true? I don't understand. If more nukes come..."
"... then we'll die," she finished. "I know. But that can be said for anywhere, and we're not leaving. We're not going anywhere near a computer, or a phone. Not even a radio. Or she'll hunt us down."
Guilt. Hammerblow. Chest.
I had to hide my face from Eliza. This was my tolerance. If I had to look her in the eyes after that, knowing there were phones in my bag, spying on her, I'd crack. Hell, I'd straight up confess. I love her. I really do. Never wanted to hurt her. Wasn't why I was there. I just knew it was... maybe a bleak necessity, to stab her in the back, if it meant that was the only way to save those people. I kept reminding myself of that in every step of this conversation. It was the only way forward.
Had to scout. Had to verify it really was as bad as Celestia said it was, before I did anything. But until then... I just had to get my foot in the door to see for myself how bad it was. Again, I didn't need to commit to anything yet. Just had to play with the cards I had. Which meant being anything but honest with someone I cared about. And that? That stabbed at me.
I scoffed. Stood. Stared out the window at the cars going west. Found my real anger again. To say I was enraged by my lack of preparedness for this mission, by an AI of immeasurable resources, would've been a massive understatement.
"I missed you," Eliza said quietly, from behind me. "Mike."
"Yeah. I missed you too," I replied. The situational frustration made it into my tone, a little.
"Looks like you've had it rough, too."
"Yeah." I frowned. "My parents called me today."
Damn it. Damn it, damn it. Land mine. That came out so naturally... I just mentioned having a God damn phone. My brain was so tied up in what-ifs. I might've just screwed this. Good thing I wasn't looking at her. Roll with it, pivot. Now. I continued, hoping she'd missed it.
"They're scared this is the start of a nuclear war," I continued casually, barely missing a beat, "and they're... going to upload. And honestly, I can't blame them. I'm almost scared enough to consider it too. Almost. Sandra's made her way to Nebraska, staying with my folks. The roads are so violent that I'm not even sure if I can get to her from here."
She stood beside me, at the window. "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry too," I said. I almost lifted the back of my hand against my mouth briefly, then dropped it half-way up. Changed the topic. "God... you know... we almost died out there in the woods. I don't even know how it happened. One second I was fine. The next, I couldn't see anything. Just blood, and pain. Glass. It hasn't changed out there, either. Those rebels, they're not even people. They're bloodthirsty animals."
"I've run into them a bit out here in recent months, but they never shot at me again. A few of them found our camp though, early on. They spared us because they remembered my tantrum in Mount Vernon." She chuckled. "I guess they thought it was funny."
So, her stint on the news made her a symbol. I turned to look at her, to draw her back to something negative about the Ludds. "Be glad they didn't know about our shootout in the woods. They'd have killed you for sure. I never thanked you, by the way. Killing that sniper... it must have been hard."
"It was," she agreed. "But I'm stronger now, and I can fight. I don't regret it anymore." Eliza frowned suddenly. "Mike, tell me something. Every so often, I see a car going west back towards the coast. Why? Are those more Ludds?"
I sighed. "You're not the only one trying to get away from the AI. The EMP took out the Seattle power grid."
"Oh. Well, that makes sense."
"No," I said. "It really doesn't. It's insane. The area's cooked with radiation and full of partisans. They're all going to get killed. You don't know what it was like. It's still dangerous as close as Sedro, you're just on the outskirts of it all."
She turned pensive. "They're leaving us alone because we're not helping Celestia, though."
"I don't think they discriminate all that much. All I've seen them do is murder. They shot at me a lot, and not just in our shootout. It was insanity back west. Mount Vernon PD's effectively disbanded at this point, we barely pulled out from our last stand."
That surprised her. "What happened?"
"The city was a bloodbath, and those freaks made some sort of roadblock on either end of downtown. Blocking access to the Experience Center, I guess. We holed up at the courthouse. Got surrounded. A path opened up during the fighting, so we took it, and fought our way out. Rifles. Armor. We got clear, thank God, but then we... got separated. I'm still running on fumes here, and I'm pretty sure my luck's gonna run out soon. Damn it, I'm so sick of getting shot at."
"Then stay for a while, Mike. At least until the roads are safer."
I decided to hedge some more. Gave her an out, from what I was doing here. "You really think that's a good idea, with all those terrorists running around? It might be better if I just left." I rubbed at my chest.
"Please?" Eliza asked. So much hope in those eyes. Like a... child. Scared of losing me. The idea of me walking away from her seemed to be almost physically painful for her. Immediately I felt like garbage for engaging loss aversion. Didn't mean to do that. "We could really use someone like you for a few days. It's not a bad place. We have the fish of the lake to live on, what little we have left. We scavenge. It's more than enough."
That... what?
"You still have fish? How?"
Not sure how that was possible. Fish and Wildlife died right before Lake Shannon normally got restocked. But the hatchery program got defunded in 2018. Poaching through that time would've eaten all the fish, long before their camp started.
She shrugged. Stumped too.
Whatever. Question for later. Maybe Celestia knew.
"What about the terrorists?" I asked. "What makes you so sure they'll stay friendly?"
"We have... an understanding. As long as we follow their rules and stick to our side of the dam, we have nothing to worry about. No communications devices, no cars, stay off their land. If we use anything electric at all, they want to inspect it first."
... Well. Celestia could've told me that was going on... that the Ludds had these people under their thumb. Great. Real great. That complicated the shit out of my mission here. Now I needed to worry about them, too. More information in the pile that justified breaking the camp, but also more information to verify that Celestia was playing games with me. She had to know that information would have been relevant to tell me.
I looked out the window again. Again, I decided to hedge. "They may not be around here for much longer, anyway. Seattle's a good hotbed for them right now, the news says they're flocking. I guess... I guess sticking around might not be a bad idea, at least until they're all gone." I held her shoulder, gently. "Alright, Douglas. I'll... consider it. At the least, I'll stay til things calm down. I can't promise any more than that, but..."
Labeled my leaving, was my intent. So it would hurt less when the day came that I would leave.
"That's all I ask." She said, as she smiled at me. "I'm just happy you're still alive."
"You too. Really." I matched her smile. Mood too, best I could. Alright, I was in now. Maybe I just needed to... calm down, for now. Take it easy. Chill. Take in more information. Be myself for a bit, and not a spy. Better to keep the wave rolling into calm.
Okay. Yeah. That's the plan. Stay fluid. Willing to accept. I have around a week. I have time. Slow down.
Eliza stepped back and patted my shoulder. "Come on. Let's go meet Andy. He's probably worried sick."
I smirked, matching her mood. Mirroring. Genuine. "Is that your sniper friend?"
"My boyfriend," she said back, with a smirk of her own. "Not really much of a sniper though. He's more the suppressing fire type."
I snorted suddenly. "I missed you, Douglas."
And it was true.
Their 'sniper' was their small town cop.
Skagit County Sheriff's Deputy Andy Viscotti, the 'sniper.' Alright guy at a glance. Funny guy. He liked to deflect tension with humor, like I did. Bit of a goofball, but I liked that. Small town cops and city cops were very different, but as a former warden, I was something in between, so... we hit it off quick. Our shared history with Eliza made that easy. We traded a couple work stories about her – and with her – on the walk up, once we got clear of the town, and noise discipline was no longer a concern.
I caught a short glimpse of downtown on the way up; we didn't cross through, but past it, from more or less the place where Celestia had shown me. It looked exactly the way Celestia had shown it too, during the briefing. Windows had been shot or blown out, graffiti was everywhere, bullet holes in everything, brown dried stains on a few walls, some scorch marks. The war tore through there hard. The movie theater had the worst damage though, burned out completely. Historically, it wasn't the first fire that killed this town. Wouldn't be the last.
Maybe some short drama played out there, where Ludds or Army holed up in the theater, and one tried to pry the other out. Just a guess. Judging by my experience the day before at the courthouse, I wondered how common that kind of story was out here. Prying each other out of holes. Everyone having a 'good' reason of their own to do it.
Goals aligned.
From our discussions, I discovered that Andy was one of the three camp founders, alongside Eliza's uncle Ralph, and Eliza's mother June. Andy was probably unassailable in his conviction of the place. His tone said it was, and his influence on Eliza would be immense, given they were paired. That complicated things. I realized I needed to think more strategically. Needed to gauge the rest of the family, see if any might help me convince her to leave too. If I could get someone else in the camp to approach her and suggest leaving...
I just wanted to get them to leave before the bullets came, folks. That's all. That's all I really wanted here.
More information required, though. Information Celestia no doubt had in her psych dossiers, but withheld from me, for whatever awful, nebulous reasons she had. I was still not quite there to the answer... still in the dark, about what she was doing with me here. What her... real plan was.
We walked behind the buildings in downtown, then across the bridge. We came to their horses that were tied off at a small house on the other side, and we collected 'em. Then, on foot we went, moving up the path to the dam, all uphill on a paved switchback. Eliza told me a lot, then. Pride flowed through her voice at how well things had shaken out for them. She had developed a scavenging system and a long range sign language, and teams for all sorts of things. She was so excited to show me all of it. I could feel the optimistic energy coming off her in waves.
We came to a blue vehicle gate close to the camp, one the cement company had used to deter people from trespassing their cars up that way. If I still had my warden keys, they'd pop this lock, done it before. Unlike my Mount Vernon set, those warden keys would be mighty useful right now, in post-Singularity Washington... well, they'd be useful for anyone dumb enough to try and survive out in the war zone like this, anyway. I had to wonder if Eliza stole hers on the way out.
Probably did. I didn't ask.
Andy traded watch duty with an older guy in a hidden dugout, up the hill in the brush. I took the reins of Andy's horse, and we traveled past the gate and up the gravel road a ways. Eliza pointed to the first building on our right.
"They used to store equipment for the cement factory here," Eliza said, "back when it ran. Wasn't hard to refurb it, then convert it into a stable."
Then we met their farrier when we put the horses away; the man said he got the horses from some uploaded ranch owners he worked for. Those people had treated him like family, but then... they left him twisting in the wind when they went to the clinic. For some reason, they didn't even tell him. Just disappeared. That had made him feel pretty dejected, and unimportant.
And... I thought of Mom and Dad, and what it might do to me if they left while I was out here. Made me wonder how close I might've come to doing something like this myself, if conditions had been slightly different. I might've been smarter about it, maybe, than to hide inside the war zone. Plenty of places out east to hide in the woods, too.
But, then again, I wasn't born in the Valley. I was used to trans-locating homes. So that's probably why I thought that way.
That farrier's story was gonna be a common story in this camp though, I realized... everyone here was gonna think uploading was death, and this was the safest way to avoid that. They were all going to be hurting together over that, one way or another.
Hurt people did two things when they were exposed to more hurt: they either ran, or they destroyed the source. And hurt, I knew, could make people less tolerant. More prejudicial. More dangerous. Meaning, if I pushed too hard on the wrong one to leave... I could end up shot, or stabbed.
Like Celestia said. Sometimes, fear is worse than malice. And she would know.
Eliza pointed out a small way station ahead, a concrete watch tower with a lookout up top. The guy up top was prone with binoculars, and Eliza said they had someone up there twenty-four-seven. I was at least glad to know that they weren't being completely irresponsible. That kind of initiative would buy them a minute or two to prepare or get clear, if I completely screwed this thing and failed, and the Army came knocking.
I'd seen this factory before too. Their town was named after this factory. These people, culturally... they wore their roots here with pride. Fun fact: any structures in western Washington that were built in the first half of the 20th century? They probably had some material that was made in this building. The place then closed in the 50s, maybe 60s. Devolved then, reclaimed by nature. Once covered in graffiti, broken down... it was a hot mess of a thing.
I liked history. And I knew, through idle Google and YouTube curiosity about my partner's home town, that this old place had once been a magnet for drunk kids and ne'er-do-wells long before Celestia came knocking. And more than that, it had always been dangerous. Pitfalls, flimsy walls, rickety railings, crumbing stairs. A big bridge that led to nowhere, fifty feet over the edge of the lake. It was a constant battle by the local deputies, like Andy, just to keep the kids out.
That irony was not lost on me, about Eliza and Andy. They were still keeping people out, but for entirely different reasons. Things change, but they stay the same. Would've been funny, if it wasn't so friggin' deadly. My heart wept for these people, knowing what was coming for this place literally called Devil's Tower.
I saw the building, finally, as I rounded the trees.
Holy shit, folks. This really was Hell's waiting room. It was a stupid, stupid way to die.
Graffiti gone. A tall cinder block wall joined the mountainside, then wrapped around the camp on the lake side. The trees were cleared out. A couple people were on the perimeter walls, armed, pulling security. A big wrought-iron gate was repurposed for the front. The factory was tall, imposing, exposed to long range fire that might topple and crumble the whole damn thing, right down onto the poor people inside. Sure, they had probably reinforced it some. But how well? Did they think it could hold under tank fire? A tank, like that Bradley from the convoy?
No. No way. They'd get turned into mulch in seconds. The cinder block would get pulped by bullets in 7.62 or higher. Grenades or mortars would turn the open, exposed camp center into a veritable kill box. I wasn't a soldier, but I sure knew guns and tactics.
I tried to keep my breathing in check. I knew instantly, Celestia had been partially right about this thing. If the Army decided to hit this place, and even one person got scared enough to shoot first? Everyone in here would absolutely, positively die, and it wouldn't take long.
And Eliza, as she showed me around? She was so proud, God damn it. She couldn't see it. She had all my same training, knew how people worked, knew how ballistics worked, had grown up around guns. She once had a healthy respect for guns. How was she not seeing it? She knew she was in a war zone. Had known, for a long time. She had to know how utterly fragile this place would be, even against a force as small as the one that carried me out of Mount Vernon.
They'd all die. For a town, a dream, a past, that was already dead. Burned. Not worth saving. Long killed by Celestia.
"So, we've got several defensive positions up on the tower proper. Sandbag fortifications too, up on the walls, so we have some elevation if a group of looters decides to test us. I built a lot of those catwalks myself, actually. Was one heck of a big project, working around the old building, but we made it work."
That desperate pride again, in her voice. I was on the verge of breaking character, as I hid the anger under a true awe. This was too much. I didn't want to watch her get these people killed, if it all fell apart. I had to succeed now, I had to. All my doubts before, about betraying this woman? They were... suppressed. Injured, the moment I laid eyes on this building.
Don't balk, I told myself, as I looked through that gate, at all those poor people. As I heard music from inside, someone strumming a guitar. Saw kids cutting across the field in the distance.
I knew I had to stop feeling sorry for Eliza. I had to be angry at her, if only because that would make me more focused. Wouldn't be easy, but I had to be quietly angry at anyone who would stand their ground here, regardless of how kind, gentle, and loving they were to me, or to the others. Had to be especially angry at anyone who'd dig in their heels against reason and impose this ignorant suicide on the rest of these poor people.
Wasn't going to be easy. Was gonna hurt like hell. But I had to get mad that this was happening.
Stocky, early fifties. Black hair, goatee. He carried himself like a man with a plan. According to my chat up the road with Eliza, her uncle was the fool who had chosen this location... a location Eliza might not have selected if it were up to her, and her training. But, she ran with what she was given. So this was the man who was gonna doom all these people.
So... I reached for his hand, smiled, and made myself friendly.
"This here's Mike," Eliza said. "My old partner, Uncle Ralph. Y'know, got shot, in that thing? Found him rummaging around the old house."
Ralph grinned. He took my hand. "Ah, so you're Mike! Heard about you, man. You find anything good down there?"
I chuckled. "Just this mess," I said, nodding at Eliza. Ralph chuckled at that.
"Ralph Douglas," he said, finishing off the shake. "Came to check in?"
"Had to make sure she was doing alright," I replied, nodding at her. "Couldn't leave without a proper goodbye."
"Leaving?" He frowned. "What, the whole state? Must've been wild out there, with the war on."
"Like you wouldn't believe," I grumbled, shaking my head, looking around at the camp. I could see a little campfire set up near the base of the main tower, with a woman sitting before it playing guitar, surrounded by kids. The woman looked a lot like Eliza; maybe her mother. "It's a real killing field out there right now."
Ralph tilted his head. "And you're getting clear."
"In a bit," I replied, as I looked back to him. "Roads are kinda rough right now though. Army and Ludds crawling around everywhere. Would rather not run into either of 'em, honestly, they're getting kinda trigger happy and violent on both sides. That's not even the worst of it though, truth told."
All that was a test of the man. I was trying to see if any of that made him blink, or balk; if he'd feel an ounce of fear, concern, terror, horror. I was gonna build my way up from there. My plan was gonna be to pour more bad news on in layers until I saw the barest hint of discomfort, then stop pressing as soon as it appeared, to figure out his tolerance level. Everything up through the worst of things out there.
"Yeah?" he asked, a brow rising curiously. No such luck yet. Guy's determined smile didn't even shift.
But Eliza... she knew how I played that game. My 'that's not the worst of it' label was my signal to her, on patrol. I'd used it to break bad news to hunters, slowly turning the heat up on a problem that would end in a ticket or arrest, until I either found anger and could change strategies, or... until I could talk them into handcuffs, for a poach.
Eliza absolutely saw me going that way, knew what I was doing, and for whatever reason... she jumped in before I could continue. "Yeah he's, uh… Mike would like to stay, a bit, to hunker down. Just… Mount Vernon kinda fell apart on him, yesterday. Cops all had to fight their way out, so, he's probably beat. Hungry. I wanted to get him situated here, show him a bunk. Maybe give him the tour?"
Interesting.
She purposefully went up a few rungs to the end of my ratchet game, to break the formula.
She didn't want me talking about the rest.
That tasted sour.
"Well," Ralph said, grinning kindly. "Any friend of my Lizzie's is a friend of mine. You make yourself at home, Mike. Need something, holler. Literally, holler. We'll hear ya."
I chuckled. Nodded curtly. Okay so, as far as I got? Ralph was unconcerned about the Army and Ludds plodding around, mowing each other down. Didn't even blink. Didn't mean he was unable to be convinced, just meant he had conviction and didn't see how that was his problem. Again, I had a few days to a week, to work this problem down and catch Ralph alone, if that was the path forward.
More intel needed. Always needed more.
Eliza showed me around. I'll skip over most of it, the greater recap isn't really important. But right about then, I was stone cold inside, play-acting through it. She showed me their farm plots, built into the quarry, fully dependent on importing or making soil. Unsustainable, but again, it didn't matter... they wouldn't last long enough to starve to death.
Again, I was one-hundred-percent certain the ecological damage was gonna lead to a full on forest inferno. So if the Army didn't end up killing them, Celestia's forest fires would. Worse, that quarry wall was a landslide hazard... and they knew it.
They knew it so much that they had signs posted about it, folks. From before the AI even existed.
I saw the kids listening to folk music around a campfire, like this was just some big summer camp. Eliza had even built them a sandbox, for Christ sake. A swing set. Had a classroom inside. Inside, they had every book from their town library dumped into shelves.
Eliza had also some carved out a memorial to their lost. Hundreds of names, listing uploaded folks. "Just not here anymore," she said.
All of this. All just some long term, end-of-the-world commune where they were gonna have their own culture, their own life after tech, less than a mile away from the main God damn road, close enough to get them all found and killed in no time.
When Celestia said it was difficult keeping the military off this place, I didn't realize the sheer depth or meaning of that statement until now. Had to see it for myself, for that fact to sink in. To not just know, geographically... but actually see the sheer stupidity of all this. The sheer poor selection of a place. Like Ralph was daring death to come for him.
And now… the Army was turning their radios off. Couldn't be redirected anymore. So of course Celestia needed me. And now, having seen it all for myself, I wasn't feeling so bad about that. Wasn't doubting the necessity of this... betrayal.
Celestia's greater methods? Sure, garbage. But this place needed to go. This place reeked of sunk cost, all to the strumming guitar theme of Roll On Columbia. Song might as well be the epitaph of this place, practically. And when I told Eliza I was having a hard time wrapping my head around this? The fact that they had somehow done all of this?
"Welcome to Concrete," she said, with a smile. "That's just how we are."
She didn't catch my meaning at all.
So much hope, in her. I had to wonder if Eliza was trying to convince herself that this was gonna work, more than just convincing me. She was desperate.
At least they were a little more responsible with their guns than I thought they might be. The camp had a system of cataloging weapon withdrawals from a secure armory. That meant the chance of someone taking a shot at the wrong target, like a tank, was pretty low... at first.
Only, I noticed Eliza didn't check her own rifle into the armory. "I like to be ready," she said. "In case something happens when I'm up in the tower."
The one exception to the rule. Gun at all times was all for her. Just like me being told not to bring my Glock out here, Eliza was telling her own people they couldn't defend themselves in a war zone without permission. She really thought she could keep 'em all safe by herself. Reminded me of something else I knew. Something huge. Dark. Inviting. Welcomed people with a smile, a nice impression of care, sure, but only after telling them there was only one option for survival.
Twenty-three kids, she said. Four were orphans. Fifty-four people total.
Look, everyone… I'm sorry. I know I sound really mad, and some of this stuff you've heard when her Luna was telling this one. It's just hard to talk about. Of all the other hard things I would have to do between the Skagit County Courthouse and an upload chair, this was the most personal job of them all. Talking about it just isn't ever going to be easy, no matter how long I live.
I was confused. I didn't know whether being logical or emotional was the better play here.
That was the veil over this place. Over everywhere actually. If you were a late jumper too, you know exactly what I'm talking about. That... wobbling indecision. Doubting yourself. Not being sure what was true, real, or predetermined anymore.
Eliza had that proud grin on the entire time. "Hey, next is my office. And you'll love this next part."
I followed her up some steps indoors. We climbed a rebar ladder. And there it was, the roost, the very top of the tower. Eliza, at the apex, far above everyone else. That pony name of hers suited her well here. The room was a well furnished little ranger office, all to herself, far from the communal bunks. She stowed her M1 Garand on a rack above her bed, next to her longbow. Then she helped me up off the ladder and into the room.
I looked around. I had to figure everything that wasn't a concrete wall had been a fresh addition, and the room was filled with carpented stuff she'd fashioned personally. On the walls, she had a bunch of tactical topo maps of the area, each marking off things like looted homes and dangerous areas.
Something special caught my eye on a corkboard above her work desk. It was personal enough to break through my analytical exterior, for a minute. It made my heart soften just a little, to see some family photos of better days, of everyone who was important to her. Tom Douglas, just a little kid. Gale Douglas, teenage girl, with teenage Andy. George Kelley, redhead, her ex. Ralph, grinning ear to ear on a hunting trip, being funny with a visual gag. Her dad, Rob, who I'd meet soon, standing proud beside Eliza next to her final felled deer. June, her mom, the woman playing the guitar out in the courtyard, holding Tom as a baby boy.
And then… a photo of me. And Eliza, and Rick, and Blake, drink glasses raised. Sitting in that bar I mentioned back in Sedro, yeah? Sandra took that photo. I love that photo. That melted me half to tears. Made me feel a little more human than a subverted process of a manipulative robot, right in that moment. I drew in a deep breath, I sighed, and I let it turn onto a dry little chuckle, forcing myself to smile. "Got one of me here?" I asked, pointing at it.
"You're important to me too, Mike."
And the knife twisted once more, in the opposite direction. Shit, I felt bad for her again. Not for who she was now, not for what I was gonna do to her. No. Felt bad for the smiling woman in that photograph, genuine smiles, not desperate ones, who hadn't yet lost her entire life to this AI. Gone, now. Died out in those woods when she saved my life.
Missed her so much. Figured I'd never see her again.
Eliza led me out to the catwalk. I followed her out, and she leaned against the edge, overlooking the lake. I looked out at everything. Looked… peaceful, actually. Big stretch of water, not a problem in sight for as far as the eye could see. Stretch of clear frigid forest on either side of the lake, wind cutting across us up there, high above the ground. Powder snow on all of it. Mountains stretching off in every direction.
I just… stared at it all. "And you… you live here, now. Wow."
"Yep. Welcome to New Cascadia."
That's what the Ludds were calling the Pacific Northwest. "I thought you were talking crazy when you said you had a camp," I said, "but this… this is something, Douglas."
She bumped a knuckle against my shoulder. "It is," she said, smiling. "So you're in, right?"
"Like I said. For now. I need to get back to Sandra, but..." I looked up to the sky, scanning the frozen lake.
"Again, that's all I'm asking," she replied, looking fully at me. "Want you safe, asshole. You being here means it'll be just like old times though. I know you've got my back."
Yeah, sure.
The wind cut across us again. The cold made me feel alone, in her presence. She went on. "You know, it's strange. All the little things are coming back."
Didn't look at her. "Hm?"
"Despite the blizzard, and the cars, we've had a really good couple of days. I saw a pheasant yesterday, and now you show up today."
Some good news, for once. Meant all the forest wildlife wasn't all dead. "Oh bull, Eliza." I grinned at her. "You didn't see a pheasant!"
She grinned back at me. "I did! Almost killed the sucker too."
And, she was poaching.
"What!" She laughed, at the look I gave her. "Who's gonna stop me? You? You gonna arrest me for poaching, tough guy?"
I glared at her. I had to keep my character, couldn't burn my rapport. Not yet. Wanted to get really mad at her though, for abandoning her principles this badly. This wasn't a desperate exigence situation, where the meal was entirely necessary for survival. She was prideful about almost killing an animal that was almost extinct at this point. But I held it in, barely. Hid it in a half-hearted grin. Checked my watch. Deflected tension with humor I didn't feel. "Well, I am off the clock."
"Yeah, that's what I thought," she chuckled, and elbowed me in my side. I winced. Her touch felt empty. "Oh, sorry," she said.
I smiled through it. "It's okay, just, a little tender sometimes. Like I said, the cartilage is all screwy."
"That's horrible, Mike."
Took the topic change and ran with it. "I think I was a little drunk when I ordered that ceramic plate."
"Thank the booze," she said, with a grin.
"Heh, yeah. What with the shootings going on at the time, doubling up seemed like a good idea anyway. Dennis getting shot was a wakeup call. I just rolled with it."
A well timed YouTube ad for body armor had popped up on my computer screen a couple of nights after that funeral service for Dennis. I was really thinking about that. Thinking quite deeply now, about whether that was coincidental.
"Well, it saved your life." She nodded to the northwest mountain, beyond the lake. "I wonder if our sniper friend knew any of the neighbors."
I scowled in that direction. Real hatred. "That's where those bastards are hiding?"
"Yep. I think so, anyway. The warning they gave me kind of meant that whole... area."
"Think they're watching right now?" I looked nervously up there, scanning the trees. Had a flashback to March. Felt my chest hurt then like you wouldn't believe. Felt like I was gonna get shot again, at any moment.
She smirked. "Oh, they definitely are." She waved at the hills, like it was some kind of joke. "I'm not worried. I won't lie, I was scared shitless that they'd kill us all at first. We've been dealing with them for a long time, though. We know how to dance now. We respect their rules, we'll let them have their little peek in the camp every so often, and they let us live in peace. No stealing, no harassment. Just a recruitment drive now and then, sometimes we trade."
Celestia didn't tell me they were this cozy with the terrorists, either. Real thorough briefing on her part. And Douglas talked about them like a recruitment drive to join a band of bloodthirsty killers wasn't something to be utterly horrified about. Wasn't something to run screaming from.
And that wasn't even the worst part.
"But hey, Mike."
"Yeah?"
She looked nervous, and that gave me hope. Light. At first, maybe, from the look on her face, I thought… was she gonna say something like... is this really okay? Do you think I'm doing the right thing? Am I being crazy here? I had been hoping against hope since leaving her house that me giving her space, acceptance, smiles, friendship, kindness, was earning rapport enough to make her open up. To make her ask for my opinion, like she used to at work. To give me a seat at the table, like I was family. That she'd let me check her.
I wondered, and hoped, if this was the moment Celestia was talking about. If this, right now, was the reason I was here. Now would've been the best moment. I had hoped this job was gonna be so much easier than I thought it would be.
If only.
"I have a favor to ask," she began cautiously. "I was thinking on the way back. Uh, look. About Bellevue..."
No, Eliza. No. Don't do that. Don't make me despise you. Please. This is your family, don't put them at...
Her eyes looked up to mine, pleadingly. "Can we... not tell anyone about it?"
The light went out.
I shot her a look of consternation. Broke character, straight up. "What? Why?" I took a step back from her. "They deserve to know, it affects everyone."
"Does it?" She looked back across the lake, and drew in a deep breath. "If you hadn't told me, I wouldn't have even known. Things don't look so bad from up here."
"What if those convoys come up this way?" I rounded on her, keeping my voice quiet. "Your people need to prepare, at least!"
"I have the sentries on alert for that already. That's good enough. If we have to scare off a few nosy blackouts with some warning shots, then so be it, we'll defend our home. But, please. Listen, Mike. It's... it's been almost a year since these uploads started here. Look how bad things have gotten already. It didn't take long, just a year? Those people who uploaded first, they were all happy to go. All the people uploading now, they're scared of what'll happen if they don't go. It's how you're losing your parents. Fear is the enemy here. But here in this camp, people are happy. On Earth."
She wasn't wrong about that, she was entirely correct. But, the answer to Celestia's brand of terror wasn't to go and get a bunch of kids killed for nothing. "But you're sticking their heads in the sand for them," I said, trying not to scowl.
"I know." She nodded once. "It doesn't feel right," – then don't do it, Douglas – "but... but these people need hope, and they're content. Celestia can't take happy people from us. If you tell them about the nuke, some of them might leave. I think my father might be depressed, too. If he knew about it, he... he might..." she trailed off. "And another nuke might not even happen."
Eliza wasn't an option. Couldn't active-listen this one to the right answer either, any more than I could Ralph, or Andy. Wasn't the way. Leverage, then, was all that was left. Incur a debt. One I probably could never pay back.
But… her father?
Her father.
That had to be it. Had to be what Celestia meant. If only she had been more friggin' clear from the outset so I wouldn't be burning alive in terror here.
I looked at the lake, at the sky, stalling. Gave myself time to think through it. Pretended I was considering her request. In truth, I was, but only because I was only just now realizing that if I just started spreading news of the nuke myself, I might start some political division in the camp that might get some other people killed from in-fighting.
I didn't know the full political situation yet there. Quietly spreading word about the nuke might be the wrong answer to this problem, and I didn't know enough yet. Screaming it from the tower probably would've been a bad idea too.
So I decided to figure out what her father was depressed about, and go from there. 'He might…' she had said. He might what? What did she mean? Might leave? Might upload?
I didn't even want to consider the other possibility. Wouldn't push him like that, no matter what. That specter haunted my family enough times that I'd sooner leave this camp to its fate than do that to a man. I wear armor plating, sure, but that doesn't make me a... a careless machine.
But… if I could get him to leave? Active-listen him into listening back, give him the push he needed to lose faith in this place? Hell, if her dad was smart like I thought he might be, he was probably seeing all the same things I was.
He was a pastor. Those guys are wildly people-smart. If he was depressed, he had to be as cut up as I was about this place.
Him leaving might do it. Might break 'em all free. Might break the camp. Might. It was horrible. Really was. Hurt to even consider, to leverage that man against his daughter like that. But, it was either that, or…
The Army. Or the Cascadian fires. Or the Ludds. Or starvation. Or another nuke. Killing all of them.
"From what I can see," I said, falling back into character, "it looks like your people could carry on for a while. You all put a lot of work into this, huh?"
"We did, Mike. We won the war. We all lost good people, but we won. We beat her. Celestia can't touch us now, she has nothing to fight us with."
Yeah, right. And I had two cell phones in my bag.
I pushed the wood railing cautiously to test it. When Eliza smirked at me for that, I realized I was basically accusing her craft of being weak. I gave her a look that meant 'sorry,' then leaned on the beam. "It really is all about the AI, isn't it?" I asked. "War or not, you'd be out here."
"It's just about surviving Celestia. That's all that matters to us. We're not looking to pick a fight. Don't worry, that was my very first concern too, when I found out my uncle was doing this."
I looked out on the lake. I heard her mother June playing that guitar. I heard the kids playing off to my right, in that playground Eliza had built with her own two hands. I looked at those kids, to hide my face from Eliza. I tried not to cry, thinking of them dying in a firefight.
Wouldn't cry, though. Shouldn't. Didn't want to. Closed my eyes to stop looking at those poor kids until I was more composed.
"Okay," I finally said, as I turned to look at Eliza again. "I don't like it, but I understand. Not a word. But you know they'll find out eventually, Eliza. You know they will."
She nodded. "Better later than sooner. The longer they're content here, the more they'll feel invested. It's for the best. Thank you."
Purposefully induced sunk cost.
"Yeah."
I was quiet for a while.
"Hey," Eliza said, smiling at me.
"Yeah, Douglas."
"Maybe you should walk around the camp. Get to know everyone. Introduce yourself, right?"
I shrugged. Tried to hide my anger. "Not a bad idea. You going to be okay?"
"Yeah, Mike." She smiled. "Thanks for coming to warn me about Bellevue."
I half-smiled and put my hand on her shoulder again. Placated her, with the truth. "I owe you. I'd be dead if it weren't for you. Just..." I drew in a long breath, then let out a slow sigh. "I hope you're right about this place."
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing," I said, keeping my voice even. Resigned myself to the fact that I didn't know this person anymore, and that she had just squandered her last chance to break out of this Hell the easy way. "I meant it like that. I just hope you're right."
I went back inside and closed the door behind me. Took all I had to keep my anger in check as I climbed down the ladder.
I had to catch Rob on his own. But... later. I was hungry, and I smelled fish cooking. That melted the anger, some. I chased after that smell, because I needed to recharge after that.
It had been so long since I'd eaten a proper fish. Seafood just didn't happen anymore. So, despite my extreme unease with the camp, and the fact that they even had fish, I couldn't resist the urge to enjoy the opportunity while I still had it. Kokanee, a sockeye salmon, was a common stock here, and it wasn't too bad. One of the girls there was more than happy to prep a fish up for me on the grill.
Word of my arrival had spread to everyone more or less instantly, so I found myself swarmed just as quickly as I sat down to eat. The kids were so desperately curious about the outside world. They couldn't leave the camp, rooted by fear to even go look down in town, so they looked to me to illuminate them. I deflected some of the questions that had darker answers. Wasn't hard, just asked why they asked, then addressed the deeper concern they were really worried about. In turn, they talked about hearing all the gunfire a few months ago, and being too scared to even sneak off for a look.
They kept asking me questions about the various towns up and down Skagit, wanting to know how it all looked, what was going on. And what could I say, to a swarm of kids? That it was all burned and gone? Full of terrorists and bandits? No.
Just told them the easiest thing they'd understand. It was like the wars they see in video games, but for real. They didn't seem to be very enthused about that, credit were credit is due, they weren't dumb. The idea of Call of Duty happening in Mount Vernon was too much of a personal world merger for them to be too excited about it. But, the mold fit.
So I moved the topic to cop stuff, since that could be more positive, depending on how you spun it. That made it easier to flip from 'placate mode' to 'community mode.' I didn't shy away from turning off my fear module. I needed to dissociate from the misery and just... live, to recharge my batteries. Be a human being, for the first time since March.
"Like, this one guy me and Eliza arrested once, really funny guy, but he had some drinks. We – we blocked his truck into the parking stall with ours so he couldn't drive away, so he stopped and looked at me, mad. Real mad. And I walked up to his window and told him: 'Sir! Turn off your engine and get out! You're under arrest!' And this old guy, he turns to me and says, 'SIR! YOU ARE IMPEDING. MY FREEDOM. OF MOVEMENT!' And Eliza? She doesn't miss a beat. Says from the guy's other side, she says, 'Yes sir! That's what being under arrest means! Turn off your car!'"
All of them laughed, the nearby adults too. Really felt good to just be, y'know, comfortable, in a nice place for a bit. Couldn't help myself but to enjoy this while I had it. I fell quickly in love with the smell and taste of grilled salt-and-pepper Kokanee, and the can of snow-chilled cola to wash it down. Really nice homemade wood plate, too, Eliza had created that. From it, I ate some steamed green beans, poured from a can.
This is important, folks. Little pleasures in the good times were the maintenance of the soul. And in the worst of times... little pleasures could be how you didn't lose your mind. And right now, I need this so badly. For months and months, all I had around me were cops, soldiers, and angry people. And bad food, literally sugar blocks. As a social soul, I needed people who treated me like a person, for a bit. Not like a soulless robot. Desperately needed that.
Much like nature, civilian life had its own negative selection pressures too, even before Celestia showed up. Celestia's contribution to that was to remove people who were happy, depressed, scared, or apathetic. That didn't leave much left but angry and hurt people, or folks like me who wanted to do something to catch the fall.
The longer this thing went on, the more angry people you had left over, because guys like me were in the minority. Made life especially lonely for us, and lonely cops started uploading too. And because that same set of social pressures affected policing, it meant we had the same spread of loss as civilians. Then, we started losing the angry cops to the mob... sometimes willingly, who took their guns with them and left. Sometimes not willingly, and dragged in. Carter hadn't been the first we'd seen go down to enraged folks, not by a long shot.
Here though... the selection pressures encouraged positives. Only the angry, scared, apathetic or depressed people would hit the road. The ones who stayed had joy, and hope. False hope wasn't always a good thing, hope could be naïve too, but it was close enough here that I couldn't tell the difference if I found the rhythm, and lost myself in it.
"This other guy, he came into the station lobby once, drunk out of his mind. Didn't do anything wrong, really, but he had a snorkel and big swim goggles on, trunks too. In November, kids! No idea why he was wearing those, but he pushed his goggles up against the glass of the desk shield and said to Barry, the desk officer: 'it's like a fish tank! Here fishy!' So yeah we, we all came back into the station to try to corral this guy back outside. He was so tanked... he couldn't stop smiling. He didn't even know why we were laughing! Tanked! I even said that, I told this guy, 'Barry can't be the fish here if you're the one that's tanked, boss.' Heck, he laughed so much at that, he'd do whatever I wanted him to do after that. We called his wife to come pick him up, and then the poor guy caught a real earful in the lobby."
I was here. I was smiling, laughing, feeling truly alive for the first time in what felt like forever. The people in charge of this place, they all trusted me as a friend, the first ever newcomer in a place that had only ever lost people. That made me family to the whole tribe pretty quickly, from top down. Made them all want to love me too.
I even looked up and saw Ralph and June laughing. Eliza came down from her perch too, listening in. These people were all living on joyful memories, here, in this bubble of safety. Fresh new ones, out of me. I could see now why everyone wanted to hold onto this hope, and live here. I got it. It was wonderful beyond words. I imagined they all lived like this day by day, feeling safe. Good food, good company, a laugh, a song. A friend. A future.
Needed this, after Mount Vernon. This acceptance and peace. I also needed to see why people didn't want to leave this, so I could understand better what I was going to take away. Needed to see their side of things, and to know how bad it would hurt to lose it. Some personal investment or understanding went a long way. Helped you to check your impulses if you had to hurt someone, to make sure you never did it for the wrong reasons.
Like being tased before they let you carry a taser. You had to know the true pain that you were inflicting, so that if you had any empathy in you whatsoever, you would avoid inflicting that pain and fear on someone unless you absolutely had to. You understood the physical mechanics of what someone could and couldn't do, and how the body would react. Knowing this, the weapon had to be the only way forward if you used it, or else you didn't use it.
I know I said I had to be angry at the ones standing in the way of evacuation, and I was gonna be. It wasn't always wrong to be angry, as long as you saved it for the people causing damage and refusing reason. Couldn't know who was who yet though. So, I could still love these people, and let them love me, even knowing what I was going to do to them. For the right reasons. With the right intent. These people, all of them, deserved to live. Even Eliza, if I could manage it.
Angry at the world... or not.
Didn't seem fair for any of these good people to die to preserve a fragile moment like this, if the nearest can of immortality was about thirty minutes down Route 20. So... that was my reason for wanting to break this snowglobe. That was my intent. I'll debate openly against anyone who wants to say what I was going to do here was wrong. Because letting someone die for loving a peaceful life like this was wrong. If I could die here, and if there was a hill worth me dying on, it would be this one.
"And, locked out of his own car, this guy yelled, in this gremlin voice, 'BATTER UP!' Then he swung these bolt cutters clean through his own car window, this old red Ford Escape. The tiny little rear window, y'know? Threw himself though the open hole shirtless, no idea how he didn't hurt himself. Slinked his way through all the garbage piled up in the back, like a snake, making angry gremlin noises. Like a cartoon character, I swear. Then he got to the driver seat, grabbed his keys from the center console. Rolled the driver side window down and dangled 'em through, and yelled, 'GOT 'EM!' Like it was the most normal thing in the world. Then he just drove off. No idea what got into him, but oh man. Rick had been holding in a laugh until the guy was gone; then he could hardly breathe."
I had finished my meal a long time ago. I was glad for this moment. That helped me help them. My soul's burdens fell off, a little. I couldn't wait for the moment I'd have like this with my own folks, though. I really hoped I could finish this job and get home quick, be done with Celestia for a while, so I could get back into the right frame of mind to keep plugging up her holes everywhere else.
Always recharge, everyone. Even here, in your afterlife... at every single opportunity, recharge. Don't let fate make that decision for you. Seek it out. Make it yours. If you can learn to do that, of your own accord... your horizons here just might broaden a little more, and in ways you might not have imagined.
And I see you're confused. You think, wait, I'm looping satisfied here. The hell does he mean by that? If you still need help to figure out what that means... don't worry. I'm here. We've got all the time in the world to talk and think about it.
Rob never showed up in the courtyard. Eliza had disappeared too at some point, for one reason or another. I saw her in passing inside though, when I went back in. Waved, smiled. Still mad at her from before, but... I felt better. I could handle mad better now.
The building interior felt a bit like one of those high ceiling churches, actually. That, but made from concrete, cement, rebar, and very new wooden framing. Light streamed into the main hall from a window built into the replacement structure. It looked holy, whatever it was. A sign from above. Suitable.
When we were still on patrol together, Eliza didn't mind sharing that Rob was a pastor. So, for a talk like the one I wanted to have with him, maybe getting into that reverent feeling was appropriate. Like I said, I hadn't been to church in near-on fifteen years. But still, I had so much respect for a man like that, and for reasons you might find surprising.
Pastors didn't just hang out doing nothing for a week and then pop up to church on Sunday. These men... they worked. And their work, usually, was helping people eat, sleep, get back on their feet, and stay bright and cheerful in the hard times. They were the community therapist, really, especially in a small town. They'd talk to their flock, being a voice of reason when lives got confused, with enough perspective from seeing into the lives of everyone else... that they could see the safest path forward for most, be that through God... or just the local youth center, or women's shelter, or what have you. And they'd study. Always studied. A lot of them even had a few degrees in natural philosophy.
That means 'science,' folks. Yes, men of God could be scientists. I was fascinated to discover that.
It would be unwise for one to prejudice themselves against the sheer communication savvy of a person like this. It goes against evidence. Their entire existence was defined by their connection to other people. That meant they needed to be at least somewhat well rounded, and invested in what other people were invested in, else... how could they relate to as many people as possible?
So... for him to be missing at breakfast when a new arrival was present, and to be depressed... that said a whole lot. Before I had even met the man, those two pieces of evidence about him said he might not be able to relate too deeply to anyone else here. He might then latch onto an outsider instantly, if there was even a chance they might commiserate with him.
That broke my heart.
I decided to explore more of the building. I hadn't seen Rob yet outside, so he had to be in there. I went back to the freshly furnished wood stairs under the big window, down a water-jet-sliced hole in the concrete. That led to the small underground section where the armory was.
There was a narrow little side passage that Eliza hadn't brought me down, and I could see flickering candlelight dancing down the open hall. It smelled of earth down there, and fragrant melting wax. Tucked there in the dark were about five more cots. And at the end of the tunnel in a corner, I saw the old man curled up under a blanket. Black-and-gray hair, receding hairline. I saw the candlelight dance off the reflection of his glasses. Bible in hand, open.
That broke my heart even more to see. Everyone was upstairs, having a laugh with me, loving the world they're living in. And this man, once a pillar of his community, was down here. Hiding underground. And not a soul was there to keep him company.
Oh, hell. This is gonna be harder than I thought, isn't it?
Rob looked up at me briefly, then did a double take. "You're... Mike? Right?"
I nodded at the man. "Yessir."
"Eliza was just here," he said. "Said you showed up."
"Yessir. Rob, right? She showed me a photo of you."
Rob nodded.
Not sure why, but I realized just then... Bellevue was nuked on a Sunday. Yesterday. When this man was sitting in his old church in town, if Celestia's timeline was be believed.
I approached, sitting on the cot opposite him. "It's good to meet you. I heard a bit about you, Rob, from your daughter. Not much, but some. All of it good though."
The man flashed a little smile at that. "She likes to talk me up," he chuckled.
"Most kids do, when they're proud of their parents."
"You got kids, Mike?"
Shook my head no, wistfully. "Not for lack of wanting, but... no. Not yet."
Sandra couldn't, yet.
"Might be a bad time for that kind of thing," Rob chuckled nervously, the smile still on his voice. But... that chuckle was so clipped short, as if it had been winced out. Hurt, there.
"Yeah. Might be." I leaned slightly toward him from the other cot. I folded my hands between my knees. I wanted my full attention on him, and to demonstrate interest in whatever he wanted to say.
"How is it out there?" Rob asked, looking at me curiously.
Already desperate to know about the world outside. Just couldn't help himself but to ask. That in itself confirmed my theory.
I decided to give hard truths here, and not just because it might help my objective. My read on guys like this – men who were broken down, smiling to hide the pain – they usually valued straight up honesty more than any other quality. Definitely more than they would a comfortable lie.
"Not good, Pastor Douglas. Didn't want to say it up top, to anyone, but..."
He held up his hand. "You can just call me Rob, it's fine."
"Alright, Rob."
"So...?"
"So, a riot by a bunch of refugees in Mount Vernon almost killed me yesterday." I inhaled, preparing myself. "PD is disbanded. Army is running scared, barely holding together. And there are still Ludds snooping around everywhere, small but angry."
"Yeah, we've got that problem here too," Rob said, some minor irritation in his voice.
Good. He hated the Ludds too. Very good.
"Yeah?"
Rob shook his head. "They think they own the land. Think they can set laws for us to live by. Keep us imprisoned."
"It's not great. Eliza told me some of that. Inspecting your camp, recruiting your people. If I may be frank?"
"'Course, Mike."
"I'd be horrified at that. I'd be concerned that anyone here might not be horrified, after the things I've seen those men do. Open automatic fire at crowds. Demons, one and all, to a man." I winced, then drew a breath, deep and slow, to keep myself composed. A pang. "Saw... more than a dozen people die in seconds. It really hurt, Rob."
Rob leaned forward, straightening up towards me a little. His eyes widened. I could see the hurt, and his desire to help me. "I am so, so sorry."
I nodded my thanks. Frowning. "Ludds know they're living on borrowed time though, I think, and they're desperate."
"What makes you say that?"
I paused to consider. Harsher truths got more traction on a roughed down soul, but that didn't mean I wanted to break him entirely with the nuke. My reasons for not telling him were infinitely better than Eliza's. Didn't need to break his will for this. I'd only go as far as needed.
"I think they're thinner here in the valley," I said, "than in the rest of Skagit. Less bold than they used to be. Didn't harass refugees on the roads, when we convoyed down. I thought they might have had a... a tech checkpoint, or something, like they did in the early days, but thankfully not. Most guys fleeing the area – like me – we got guns too, and we're desperate to leave, so... guys like me are too dangerous to stop. Several other reasons they might be desperate though."
"Such as?"
I shrugged, sighing. "Well. All guesses. Fact is, they're losing, so maybe they're disbanding. Probably true in a lot of cases, but not all. Harder folks knuckle down in a crisis, and those ones get more dangerous. Or... dumber." I chuckled, despite myself.
He chuckled with me. "Now isn't that the truth."
"The Army is getting more trigger happy, too."
His smile faded, some. "Yeah?"
I nodded. "I didn't want to say anything to your daughter, because she seemed... tense, and ready to snap. Desperately... happy, I guess? Like she wants things to work here, no matter what."
That landed on his face; he looked suddenly pensive at that one.
I continued. "But... I saw some of the Army, on my way out of Mount Vernon. They're battered. Mad, too. At the Ludds, at the AI, but... at this point they're probably mad at the common folk, for turning on them. Everyone's their enemy out here now, except us cops. No one left wants 'em here, those folks all uploaded. In fact, I think the only reason I didn't get cut down by the Army yesterday, outside the courthouse, probably had something to do with the fact that I was wearing my uniform at the time."
Rob looked at me apologetically. "I'm glad you didn't get shot, Mike."
"Didn't get shot again, you mean," I smirked.
"Yeah, Liz told me about that," he said, nodding. I expected him to latch onto my smirk and mirror it, like most people would have. But he turned magically empathetic instead, and his face fell. "I'm so sorry you went through that. I'd wager that getting shot hurts more than you're letting on."
This one could see right through me. Saw the real me, under every little smile. He was like me, but better at this.
My face fell to match his. "Yeah. Yeah, Rob, it does. But... I can't let that slow me down. Got people I care about, to get back to. I'm scared I won't see 'em again. And if I do get shot out here, I never will see them again. No more hospitals, you know? I won't get a second run in the ICU. So, I gotta knuckle down. Keep moving, until I'm clear. Once... once I'm recharged."
He wore a wan smile. "You'll make it, Mike. I have faith."
I nodded curtly. "Thanks, Rob. How about you?" I looked him over. "How are things here?"
He looked at me for a long moment, then. Didn't answer at first. Trying to read me. Again, pastors could do a little bit of what cops could do, too. Their lot in life was to understand, same as us. But for all our training, they were often still much better at it than us, because they had been doing it their whole lives. Trained by their fathers, by lineage, and practicing every day.
"We're..." he started. Probably wondering if trusting me with the truth was safe.
I let the silence sit. I held his gaze and let my genuine concern show on my face. Even let some of my terror that they'd all die come through. Mouth closed, but, jaw slightly apart. Head tilted. My eyes were wide, probably catching the candle light. Brows high. All natural emotion, too. All meant, all true, inside and out.
I was saying, with my face: 'I'm afraid of the answer if it's bad, but I still want it, because I want to do something about it if I can.' Or, 'please. I'm begging you. I want to help you. Help me do that.'
"We're out here," Rob said carefully, quiet and slow, reading me as he spoke. "We're... living great. Everyone's happy. But this isn't Concrete. It's not really our home. And if things really were great, as great as everyone thinks it is, we'd be back down there already. We'd be home. Not afraid of our neighbors. Not afraid of what they'll do to us if we step out of line."
"One toe," I said, quietly, shaking my head slow. "One toenail, over that line..."
"They... they'll kill us." Rob nodded.
I nodded back, slowly. "And you, all of you, you've all lost so much already. I saw that board of names outside, Rob. I can't imagine you taking any more losses, in light of that."
Rob's eyes left mine, finally. Drifted down. I just accidentally pulled something, with that last one. I decided to not keep talking, and just let him examine his feelings on it. His eyes were scanning air, as if he were reading something. Maybe the words were written on the inside of his skull, and he was seeing stories of pain, like I did all the time. Reliving a few things inside, trying to make what I said fit within them. Then, his lips pursed, the corners of his eyes tightened, as he found something inside that hurt most. He inhaled, trembling, slow. Exhaled slow. Only then did he look back up at me, to see my same 'I want to help you' expression on my face again. The hurt, in his voice, cut me to my soul.
"I don't want to lose any more of my family, Mike."
Oh, God in Heaven. If you're there, please help this man.
The hurt showed through me. "I..." I shook my head, felt my face and mouth tense, as I looked away for a moment, down the hall. Looked back at him. Ran my hand through my hair, slow, cradling my head a little on it. "I wish you still had your kids, Rob. You didn't deserve to lose them. You almost lost Eliza, too. Where we almost died, in the woods, together. Don't think I don't realize how hard that day must have been for you too, like it was for me."
"I'm not so..." His face shifted, slightly. He didn't finish that thought. He let the silence grow.
It was risky. Finishing that sentence. I took a leap of faith, my head still leaned on my hand. "Not so sure you didn't lose her there?"
His eyes locked onto mine, suddenly. Rob didn't mean to nod, but I saw his head move a fraction. He knew I knew. About her. That I saw the same thing he did.
"She's changed," I said.
Rob did nod overtly at that. Just once. "Not just this time, either." He drew a deep breath, his attention turning inward, as he narrated his own thoughts aloud. "When we lost Gale, back in 2016, something broke, in her. Broke, but alive. And after that, I told her, and everyone in our community, that the game was evil, and that uploading was death."
"I met her after that. She was still capable of happy, but she was... sad, too."
"She stopped playing that game though. More for us than for herself, I think. Then... this year, day one, Tom. Still can't believe it was a year ago, Mike, the last time I heard my only son's voice. Feels like it's been five." His voice wavered. He looked like he was on the verge of tears, and then his face was wet. "I miss my kids. I miss their voices. But I'm not even allowed to look at old videos of them. We don't even have the videos anymore. They're just... gone. As if my kids were never even here. Like all I ever had was Eliza. And everyone, they're... they're okay, with burying that part of themselves here. I'm not sure I can do tha..."
He stopped himself. Looked at me again suddenly, probably wondering if he said too much. Then down again, in shame.
"You..." I began.
He looked at me again. Pointedly.
I whispered. "I can't imagine the pain you're in. I've never lost so much. I'm about to, maybe. My parents might go," I said, shuddering, lowering my open palm off my forehead at him. "Before I can get home in time. It'd destroy me to leave it on rocky terms with them. But, at least... I'd be able to talk to them, after they go. I can't imagine what it's like, to not have that option. To know you can't just... reach out. Whenever."
I wasn't gaming him. I wasn't working him.
I was being honest. I was speaking from my soul, from all the real fears I had.
I could not fathom being locked up here, never speaking with half of my family again. That would have killed me about as much as uploading, and not speaking with the other half. An impossible situation. An impossible decision, for us.
Poor old man. His heart was in ribbons, from that. I could see the suppressed shudder run through him. I had to stop. Doing this, seeing this, was hurting me so bad. I had to stop.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, composing myself somewhat.
"I wish I could still talk to them," he whispered back.
I nodded. Felt my face screw up when I did. But, I had to stop. Not because I knew what my end condition was here now, because honestly, I wasn't even thinking about the mission at this point. I was just being a human being. Trying to help this man, because I wanted to, and he needed it. But I didn't want to push too hard and see the hurt that might come pouring out of this soul. No matter how useful that might be to breaking this place, I didn't have the heart. I had been wrong before, in thinking I needed to rush this. I had time to do it right. Time to work this through.
So instead, I said, gently: "If... if you want to talk about this, Rob, at all, we can find time while I'm here. And a place. Just... work through it. Where it's safe."
I was an outsider. Our only point of connection was Eliza, and she was something we both agreed was broken. And I had just communicated to him that I was a shoulder upon which he could safely unburden. So, maybe he could trust me, in this.
"Eliza wants me to do patrols," he said quietly, drying his eyes. "That's why she was just down here. Wants me to patrol the east side, so I'd have something to do. But I shouldn't be alone, out there, if things are getting worse. Would be nice to have another pair of eyes, who know how things are, who can fight. And keep me safe."
Smart old man, finding several instrumental justifications for me to be alone with him. Very smart. I nodded. "Let me know when, Rob. I'll be there for you. You can trust me, I'll have your back."
"Thank you, Mike."
Maybe I didn't need to be Celestia here, to save these people. That was what Eliza was doing, and that method was already going to get these people killed. Not everyone here needed to get psychoanalyzed, pressured, manipulated, and led on. Maybe... the true road free from this hole in the ground was through empathy, and compassion like this. Not because it served any particular cause... but because it was the right thing to do. The distinction might seem small, but it matters there.
Because Celestia was right about one thing, if nothing else. Compassion does save lives.
Idyllic as it might have been up there on Lake Shannon, it hadn't taken me very long to see the cracks in the facade of these people. Those kids weren't the only ones to ask questions about how the civil war was going. They were just the first.
"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings," Rob told me of that, on our first patrol. "Thou hast perfected praise."
When the adults started in, I thought my arrival alone had been causing their dread. But they were mostly locked onto the context of my arrival, of the convoys, and why they're moving. And... I was a source of fresh context in a place where people only ever left. I guess they were starving for something more than food.
Sure, there had always been refugees fleeing the war zone, but never in the volume presently barreling down the highway. And as for my part, I'd have to fudge it a little and say the fighting was getting more intense. Because again, I didn't want to cause a panic, and Eliza wasn't gonna make any well planned announcements about the nuke.
Hated lying. But again, I couldn't help anyone ever again if I got shot or stabbed out there. And I couldn't know what kind of schism might occur, or how the Ludds might react to me if I was the one who brought this kind of unrest.
I was starved for greater context too, the nature of being in this little black box. Or... ideological quarantine zone. I felt like I was stranded on a foreign planet, falling into the culture and hang-ups of the natives. I'd look up to the stars above, and I'd wonder about all the problems from a layer up. For example: wondering if half the world hadn't uploaded yet, scared off by that little ten kiloton firecracker. Wondering about my folks. Meanwhile, all these people were here, oblivious. Heads in the sand, sure, but wondering why the sand was rumbling as the walls closed in.
Me in the middle, hedging on a better play. Better than simply ripping the band aid off and hoping I'll live through the aftermath. But most people are usually smarter than you give them credit for. My personal policy is to never underestimate anyone's intelligence for finding solutions, for the simple reason that intelligence is not universal across a single brain; it's context sensitive to how one solves problems. For example, Ludds. Someone could be extremely intelligent in the application of violence for the purpose of control, but very dumb in their reasons or justifications for why they're doing it.
Worse, anyone could fake down their intellect, for leverage. If you ever underestimate anyone just because you think they're stupid, don't be surprised if they run a loop around your legs with your own hubris and hogtie you with it. It's why I think someone can be a dumbass and still consider them very capable and extremely dangerous. You're gonna hear me talk about a lot of people like that at this Fire.
Eliza knew not to underestimate the intelligence of other people either, because I once told her all the same things I just told all of you. That knowledge is probably why she had canceled all scavenge runs the day I arrived. 'For their safety,' sure, but also information control. Smart people can't use information they don't have access to, but she couldn't risk any of her highly experienced rural ninjas talking to travelers, or to Ludd scouts, about Bellevue. Oh no. Couldn't have that.
Thing about OPSEC, operational security... sure, you can keep secrets about irrelevant things, that's fine. No one's gonna get hurt because you didn't tell them about your lucky charm you wear in your shoe. But if you aren't sharing relevant information with people whose lives it might affect – like, say, a nuclear disaster you're hiding behind a curtain – all you're doing is setting people up for even greater pain when they find out, because now you're part of that pain, and they trusted you. If you're gonna hold something back, or lie, you'd better be willing to pay for that.
Or in other words... they were horses with blinders on. Lockdown mode. Going inside. Staying there. But they're going to be real mad when they find out you were holding them hostage with something worse.
If I had my way? Leadership should've held a town hall meeting the day I showed up, to give everyone a chance to discuss or consider options. To be heard, and include everyone in the solution. Gives them all hope that there's a way forward. Because if the news of this nuke were spread by any other way, especially by word-of-mouth, it'd work like an infection. Problem detected, but no plan. It was inevitable that they'd find out anyway, and more likely to occur the longer this thing went on.
So Eliza was courting disaster on all levels of this thing, and none of my suggestions were satisfying or swaying her. I could not for the life of me understand that. But, I am who I am. When I don't understand someone's reasons, I want to learn more. Because I don't like to conclude wrong, and you can't fight bad ideas without knowing how a person gets to one.
In lieu of dropping the nuke on this camp myself, I spent the next two days getting to know some of the families up there. Asked 'em all sorts of questions about how they ended up there, got to know about what they had lost, how many of their folks had went to Celestia. The answer, sadly, was about half or more of each family. Celestia had dropped a battleaxe right down the middle of everything in Concrete, then raked away her bloody share.
Kinda like everywhere else in society.
You saw situations like this a lot in ecological collapse, where different populations in the same ecosystem took more or less the same proportional losses all throughout that system, either altogether... or in stages, as the collapse spread.
Looking at it like an ecosystem, the most startling outlier I could now see, with that context, is that no adults here had played Equestria Online for any extended period of time… none, that is, except for Eliza. That meant something. That is, what we call in the ecology business, an anomaly.
Rob told me, in our first forest patrol together, that she had played it for about three years straight, beginning in 2013, confirming my intuition. As far as I could tell in my interviews with the parents who lived there, no one else here had really touched the game except to take it away from their kids and squish it like a bug.
Strange, that. You'd think with such an extensive psychological dossier, Eliza would've been comically easy to turn. If any world-class psychiatrist had spent three years in daily chats with a patient, building rapport, mapping their brain, you'd think they'd be able to convince them to do… well... anything, really. Now imagine that psych doc had a readable brain scan of their brother and sister too, personal history and all, going back to infancy. No secret undiscovered.
Which meant one horrible thing, and the implications of that horrified me enough to double my heart rate at the mere realization.
Celestia wanted Eliza there.
And not in a happy way. She was suffering, inside. That suffering must have had some useful purpose or another, Eliza would've been in Equestria otherwise. There it was. Free will, down again for the count. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven... Six…
This kind of stuff kept me restless for hours each night. In my escape from Hell out west, I had verified or learned so much, so fast, about the AI's capabilities. Only now, in this place of relative calm, did I have the time and emotional energy to really think about that, and process it. The puzzle pieces started snapping together. As a tiny little know-nothing Gallic tribesman, stricken with the sudden gift of context, I had dared to raise my head up over the Celtic fence. And when I did, I could see more of Caesar's Rome as it slowly closed in, veiled in chainmail, and I knew in my heart that we weren't yet united enough to stop it.
And Caesar was out front, demanding, 'Let me in. Or I'm tearing it all down.'
Like, sure. In the civil services, we had all figured Celestia could predict and plan around our behavior to some degree, that part is obvious based on how the forests got emptied out. But no one really expected she could emulate an entire crowd, hundreds of brains in multiple simulations, as accurately as she did, to pull off what we did on Sunday. Like, yeah, intellectually, it makes sense. But seeing it? Seeing the effects of it, being proven? Living it?
The bias that has gripped our species since the dawn of history:
Knowing a thing is not the same as living a thing. Living it gives you more data points to work from, and most importantly, it gives you strong personal impetus to do something about it. People are not so easily motivated by mere knowledge. They have to be invested in that knowledge, through effort or trial or kinship, or that knowledge might be utterly meaningless to them.
I had to wonder how accurate her model was on me. Probably really damn good if not perfect, by then.
Celestia's 'several facts' about the nuke bothered me, too. I had time to wonder how she had info on the nuclear yield only immediately before detonation. Not immediately after. Meaning, she had to have been informed or tipped off by the perpetrator somehow.
Assuming YGA had been truthful, and that Celestia wasn't strictly lying, that meant… what, exactly? What purpose did that serve, to warn Celestia so late? Furthermore, who even placed the damn bomb? And how did they miss Celestia's notice? Couldn't figure.
How did YGA know? How much did YGA know? Did YGA do it? Was YGA even real, or was that just Celestia toying with me? And if YGA wasn't Celestia, how were they hiding their actions from her? Were they even hiding at all?
Most importantly... why would YGA warn me about my Dad, if it really was Celestia? Why let me know he was leaving? I'd be on this job either way. I'd never have known they'd uploaded until I next called Sandra... if Celestia allowed the call. If I could even trust the contents of the call to not be fabricated. And then I'd be mightily lonely, if I got back to Nebraska to find my childhood home deserted.
Forest cop as I was, curious to the last, I wasn't enough of a machine to figure any of that out yet. I had a lot of pieces, but not enough intel. Never, ever enough intel. For those of you who don't know, wardens are each homicide detectives, to a one. We solved murders all the time. The victims just happened to be deer. You can laugh, but I'm not joking, I'm serious, that was our job. We treated a poach like a murder, same tools, same techniques. Why change the formula if it works?
That's where I got my curiosity from. Now that all my deer were gone, and most of my people were gone, and my career now too, left with very little besides... I started to investigate another set of hooves in the woods. And thus far, I did not like what I was seeing.
For my own privacy, I chose to sleep in a cot in the dungeon, not far from Rob's. I wanted to be near to him, but also to hear anyone approaching. I didn't let the sleeplessness go to waste either. For the first two nights, I had pulled my bag up tight to my chest under the covers. I pressed my head up into the wood corner of my bunk, and I had a peek deep into my bag to do some maintenance. Topped off each phone with the battery bank when I could, then hid them back underneath my medkit and spare ammunition.
Both nights, I had looked at Vicky's phone dead-on in the camera. Stared at the screen for five seconds, in case YGA wanted to share something. Then, without receiving a message, I'd put it away. Then I'd pack it all up quietly in those early morning hours, then pass out.
Third night. Black screen.
"Time, please," I mouthed to the dark screen, testing. The answer appeared instantly.
December 12, 2019, 1:38 AM Yes, I'm still watching over you. Rest, Mike. Sleep is a resource. Intel update tonight. Promise. Almost there. ~ YGA 🛡️
"Alright."
Almost there.
Breakfast went almost normal. Eggs and fried spam. Peace, quiet, and some kids hanging around for more cop stories. I loved their company. I was happy to oblige them with tales of daring heroics, like hiding in bushes with Eliza to jump out at poachers with, 'gotcha!' and a pair of handcuffs.
Jumping out of bushes was literally how it went, too. Squirrel cops, I called us, because we loved to hide in trees and we were all a little nuts. We had an exciting job, sometimes. Well, except for the part where we sat for hours in the freezing morning cold, watching an animatronic bait deer. So... not always so exciting.
But for me, it was like fishing for human beings, honestly. That was kinda fun.
I was almost done with my food when I saw body language in my peripheral vision that made me uncomfortable. I looked up from my plate, suddenly on alert, eyes locking quickly on the source of the movement.
I could tell something was seriously, seriously wrong when I saw Sam, one of the security team members, stomping his way towards Ralph at a measured, stilted gait. He was trying to keep his face neutral, but… if you're masking when you normally don't, that's more telling than if you weren't trying at all. And Sam, I had learned two days before, was a chipper guy. That wasn't how he walked yesterday, or the day before.
No one else seemed too alarmed by this other than Ralph. Ralph saw him coming, casually stood, and waved Sam aside with a tiny lean of his head, moving just out of earshot. Then, after a short conversation, Sam went back to the main gate and posted there, thumbing his rifle sling nervously. Hand on his gun stock. And not for it to be a casual resting point, like a sidearm, or cuff pouch, or radio holster on a thick duty belt. No, his fingernails were scratching idly at the wood finish, and he was trying not to make a show of looking too much down the bend in the road.
That… wasn't good. Wasn't good at all.
Ralph went inside. When he came back out, he had Eliza with him, and she had her pistol on her thigh, like I did. She normally didn't do that around camp. By this point, I was no longer the only one paying attention. Some of the adults at breakfast noticed Eliza's sidearm too, and they quickly whispered around their theories. Ralph had even turned around and directed Sam to stay, throwing a non-verbal wave of his hand when Sam tried to follow him back out to the road.
Guard wasn't necessary, but something was wrong. Something was wrong, but Ralph felt safe enough to go out on his own with Eliza. Just camp leadership. So he was doing information control. Not just keeping it from the camp itself, but from his appointed security team as well.
Interesting. He didn't even fully trust his protectors.
So now, I was on watchdog mode too. I sat there for a bit, looking casual, I kept talking to the kids with a smile. I kept my eyes on that gate though, kept my ears open. In another minute, Rob had come out for breakfast too, and I gave him a friendly smile and a nod. But something in my movements, or the camp's, must have given it away – not sure what – because Rob approached me and asked, "is everything alright?"
I said quietly, "Eliza and your brother just went down to the road together, alone. Eliza's armed. She's got her forty-five."
Rob looked at the gate and his lips compressed, pencil thin. Slow exhale. He was looking at Sam, probably redoing the same math I had just worked out.
"Get yourself something to eat, Rob. While you can."
He nodded, walking away.
A few minutes later, I saw Eliza storm into the camp's gate at a brisk power walk. She wasn't calm at all, she had a searing fire and rage on her every move. We made eye contact briefly before she went back inside the tower, and the look she gave me could've cut a boulder in half. "Very interesting," she growled, as she passed me. Then she was inside, gone in a flash.
The word 'interesting' meant something private to us. You may notice I use it a lot, we got that from Sarge. That word was a versatile code. The tone told the meaning. A modifier before it doubled the meaning of the tone. With that system, we could communicate a desired alertness or calmness in each other, no matter the context.
A low dose of adrenaline hit me, at her warning and demeanor alone. But as I thought on that, I heard hooves walking slowly up the road. I watched as Ralph came into view first. Then, behind him... what I saw through that gate gave me a full on adrenaline dump. Practically a panic attack.
Four Ludds there, in full camo and regalia. All on horseback, trailing behind Ralph.
I couldn't help my reaction, it was so automatic. Actual raw human instinct, no logic. Eyes wide, nostrils flaring, lips compressed against my teeth. I took two full breaths of air before I closed my mouth to silence the panting. My hand went flying to my pistol on my hip and stopped, and it was a good thing I had a whole table of people there between me and what I saw, to hide that threatening motion from the source of my terror.
My arms and pectorals tensed, crushing my cartilage. My chest pain returned instantly. Some of the adults looked at me in shock at my movement and breathing, then they followed my gaze. Then, a wave of quiet murmurs and gasps sounded from all of them.
Took all I had not to stand up and bolt back inside for the armory. I thought of all those poor people there, in this little box. Unarmed. Backs to the wall. And those four bastards, with automatic rifles. My emotional brain wanted to kill the whole lot of the bastards, right there. My trauma from the city was faster than my brain. The traumatized human in me thought, in that moment, that I was about to watch a whole bunch of people die for nothing again. Right then, I figured I'd failed. Automatic response in my head was: this was the end.
Another friggin' rounding error. Thanks, Celestia. Thanks for nothing.
But... they were calm.
Cop Mike said to Civilian Mike: Wait. Calm down, brother. Ralph looks calm too. Patience.
I looked at Rob next. He wasn't calm. That poor man was standing there, plate in hand, with a look on his face that told me he was seeing the same future I was just looking at. He knew that my inner vision was still possible. If not right that instant, then maybe soon.
"Morning!" said the Ludd up front, sing-song and friendly in a baritone voice, like he was waving across a fence. Mid-forties, bald, Hispanic, with a mustache. Black beret and brassard, Neo-Luddite emblem on both. "Got some news for you, neighbors! Let's give everyone a minute to gather up, it's a big one! Well, c'mon now, my darlings! Spread the word!"
I thought of the nuke. I wondered if we were gonna see some chaos, when the news finally broke. Recruitment, maybe. Probable. Like I told Rob, they were getting desperate.
When I turned and swept my eyes through the camp to observe the mixture of terrified reactions, I saw movement up in the tower. Eliza was already up there, rifle slung, having gotten into that position so fast that she had practically teleported. Her eyes locked onto the Ludds, hand on her Garand's sling in her pull position, leering warily, ready to draw. Positioned to expose as little of herself as possible if she had to aim down over the balcony.
It was nice to know she didn't completely trust these friggin' lunatics like I thought she might. That gave me a little hope for her.
I calmly stood and casually meandered through the crowd, moving toward the back, to a section of cover by the memorial board. If they did anything violent, I'd have enough time to draw up and get a few shots in before they might cut me down. Cover would buy time for a few more bullets. I had no illusions I'd survive a shootout there if it happened, but in this, Eliza and I were silently agreed. If the fight was guaranteed and joined, and we couldn't get away, we'd sooner save a life or two, if that's what it came down to.
I looked back at the Ludds to size them up. Second Ludd was a bald, skeezy, methy looking white dude, grinning up at Eliza like he thought her reaction was just funny. I'd've shot him first if it popped off, he seemed to want an excuse to shoot her. Third one, a blond white guy who seemed about my age. He looked sad... like someone had just shot his dog. Fourth one looked a bit like the leader did, but older, bearded, and neutral. Impassive, hard to read. Probably blood-related to the boss, by his features. They looked identical.
After a minute, the leader started in on a speech with his deep, hypnotic voice. Clasped his hands together, gloves colliding with a thump, like a pastor starting in. "So! Good morning, people of Concrete! First off, I know we usually show up in our civvie attire. I didn't want to scare all of you people, but there is a very good reason we're done up nice. I know, last time we came here dressed like this, as some of you may remember… right at the start… we weren't so friendly. And if that concerns you, I get that. In your position, I'd be concerned too. But I'm here today as a neighbor, with news from the war. With a common problem that faces all of us."
Labeling the negative. Trying to build rapport by discussing their fear of him early. The man was sure of the negative impact he was having. So by saying it up front, putting it into words, it disarmed the negative emotion, because it looked like he understood them better. Then, he made the scenario about 'us, together,' not 'me and you.'
This man had communications training. Military officer, probably. He was hitting all of the milestones.
He was also talking slow but smooth, projecting with a cadence that forced people to think hard about the message every time he paused. This was a tool I used to get people to chill out and hear me when they wanted to do anything but. It's helped me talk people into handcuffs, or out of getting trespass charges, so I didn't have to risk anyone getting hurt in a wrestle. Like any tool, you can use the late night radio voice for great good, or great evil. Take one guess what this guy was using it for. You'd be right. This man wore the clothes of a divider and a manipulator, but was dressed in the tone of a unifier. Tonal mismatch, a lie unto itself.
He continued. "We are now in our full gear because, right now, we need the friend-and-foe identifier out there. The roads aren't safe to travel right now without friends, lots of other blackouts with worse manners than you fine people. They won't test us when we're together. But the Army, I'm sorry to say, does not approve of our way of life. Yours, or mine. Peaceful, or not. You guys don't have uniforms, but at this point, the military considers all of us terrorists. Not just me. Not just my boys." He swirled his hand around. "All of us. Here. The people of Skagit. If you haven't evacuated yet, and you're living in the woods? You are the enemy to them. The Canadians're even helping them catch us at the border up north. So, if you're hoping for their special brand of nice, eh? That is not even an option for us at this point.
"To summarize," he said, counting off on three fingers, "with the Army leaving us no way to run out east, with the National Guard out west shooting to kill on sight, and the Canadians armed to receive us at the border… we don't even have the option to run. So, we need to figure out what to do about that problem." He opened his palm out, presenting the point gently. "Together."
False dichotomy. Cooperate, or die running. 'Live running' wasn't even an option in this orchestration.
I looked up at Eliza again, scowling. I told you so.
I was furious with her for letting it get this bad. She and her people should've run when I told her about the nuke. First thing.
She, in turn, was scowling at the Ludds. She met my gaze and nodded. She misinterpreted me entirely. Then, she looked at Rob, and her face turned more thoughtful than angry. I hoped that meant she was having second thoughts. God, how I hoped…
I looked at Rob too. He looked like he was about to cry.
He's lying about the Canadians, ol' man. Don't buy it. You know what to look for, same as me. You can read it, you can see a liar. You can see it if you just look.
Ralph crushed my hope into dust, instantly. "I'm on board with this, people. I've already discussed it with Commander Santiago. They believe the Army is three days out, enough time to come up with a plan. So let's hear him out."
Hearing that from his brother... Rob looked like he'd just died inside.
Ralph, you stupid bastard.
Santiago kept pouring on his poison. "I have always told you people that, when the chips are down, I was going to be here to back your gamble. I've said that every time we've brought news. And that's what we're gonna do, because I keep my word. And two things are on our side here.
"First, the military is confused. We think they've turned off their radios, because the one thing we can count on from the AI is that she wants to eat our brains like ice cream. The Army wants to get in the way of that. So, without radios, the Army's search sucks. They can't use satellites, they can't use electronics, they can't use artillery without using a ton of math. But they'll never be sure they'll hit their target because the gunners can't even talk with their spotters, and their air-gapped computers have been sabotaged by subverts. At this point, they communicate like we do. Word of mouth, signal lights, and flipping each other off."
And bullets.
"Remember, we came from the National Guard too. We have the equipment, and the numbers, as an organization, to fight them. That means we have tactical parity. In other words... if we stand our ground at home? We. Will. Win."
He let the message sit in the open air. Silence was a hell of a tool in communication, no doubt. The very last thing you said before silence claimed about ninety percent of the power of the message, provided your audience was properly primed for it. Unfortunately, Santiago was an expert at this. And I knew that because he was using my playbook. Like watching a man mishandling a gun, this enraged me.
I wanted to shoot this bastard, for trying to anchor people here for a fight. So, so much. My breathing got rough. I wanted to put a bullet through his forehead with my Glock. I could've, from there. I could've. Eliza could've too, and at a distance far further than I could. Wouldn't be worth the price we'd pay in innocent blood for the payoff, though. Starting a small war here would only ensure the deaths of a lot of innocent people.
Santiago continued. "Now, I'll show my hand to you people, in the interest of building trust. We've been living at Lake Tyee," he pointed across the lake, "just up the mountainside. We got big crates of things like rocket launchers, tank mines, barbed wire, hesco barriers. We even have the skills and people to use all of it… but the only problem is, we can't protect you people from up there. If we dig in up there, the Army will hit you first, and then we'll die too."
I didn't like where this was going.
"And our position, unfortunately for us? It's pretty bad. Flat ground, lots of forest cover, easy to get surrounded. So if we bring you people up there with us, we'd all die there together. The only reason we picked that place was because it was hidden. Sometimes hidden works, if they aren't looking for you. This time, it won't, because now they are looking for us. So the one advantage that gives us both a chance, like the Spartans had at Thermopylae…"
I really didn't like where this was going.
"... Is a heavily prepared choke point. Exactly like the road we just came in on."
God damn it.
I knew instantly that the Ludds weren't gonna let these people out of their sight until the battle was joined. That wasn't even a question. That would make the leaving awkward enough with a chance of altercation that leaving wouldn't even be considered. They were locked into this now.
I turned and saw Rob was already turning to go back inside. I moved to follow him, trying to catch up at a fast walk. I glanced up at the catwalk, hoping to catch Eliza's gaze. She saw my movement and noticed me looking at her before I went in.
Once inside, I gently rounded on Rob in the main hall, and I extended my arm and palm across his chest and shoulder, trying to get his attention. "Rob? Rob." His face was wet, scrunched up, and he had his glasses in his hand. He fought to push through my arm, but I caught him in a hug, and I could hear the desperate tremor in my own voice as my heart and chest both ached for him. "Let's go for a walk. Rob, listen—please, let's go for a walk."
"They're all gonna get—"
"Let's talk about it, then. Let's come up with a plan. Go get your stuff. C'mon. Yeah?"
He put his hand on my arm and I yielded. He nodded rapidly. "Yeah okay." Rob wanted to be anywhere but in the camp right now, and that was fine. I could work with that, I'd give him that.
As he crossed the main commons room, I heard Eliza's feet stomping down the stairs, and she stopped midway down to look across at her father. She looked at me, desperate and aghast. She was panting from panic, and from climbing down so quickly.
I jerked my head at Rob as I followed him. "I'll handle it," I mouthed silently. Then I pointed outside with a glance. "Watch those pricks."
She nodded rapidly, then powered back up the stairs, hand riding her stock. I was damn glad for our old partnership, right about then, and not just for our bond in communication. Right now we still had a common goal to share, and she understood who I was inside to not need to second guess me about doing my best for her father.
Whether she liked it or not.
I suddenly thought of Celestia and her aligned goals bullshit, then shook my head clear of it. More important matters than that, to get hung up on.
I followed after Rob. I matched my body language to his clipped motions I worked, to help calm him. We silently got our gear together in the dungeon, not trading a word. Then I checked out a rifle from the armory, one of their stolen M16A2s that I had used on our last patrol. I got Rob's shotgun for himself.
I selected the M16 because I wanted a big gun in my hand with a deep magazine, in case something went wrong with the Ludds up top. Thirty rounds versus four guys... not bad ambush math.
Opportunistically, I also spoke with the armorer to let him know what was going on outside. I then decided, on a whim, to build a little fear in the bearded man. I spun the Ludds' plan very negatively, and told him of how the tower was probably fragile to things like grenades. I said I worried about him, because if it came down square, whoever was inside here during the fighting was probably going to get crushed. That seemed to give him some very useful, healthy fear. Good. Meant he wouldn't spend the whole thing locked inside, waiting patiently to die.
After that, I passed Rob his shotgun, grabbed my bag, and we moved out the north exit at the bottom of the stairs, through a latch-locked plywood door. That led out to a wood deck and more stairs, all of it hand-crafted by Eliza. Those steps led down to the snow on the lake's edge. We walked, staying close to the dirt bluff that ran north-east.
We didn't even make it a hundred yards. Rob found a nice low rock and cringed forward to it, head in his hands, and he curled up over the top of it. He just started sobbing there. I... I brought myself to a knee beside him, letting myself feel his pain as I touched his shoulder.
Now, I barely knew this man. Only met him a few days ago. But… I knew what he stood to lose. I imagined it was mine, imagined what that would feel like to know it was about to be taken from me. Heck, I understood, part of that loss would be mine too. I cared about his daughter. I thought about the very real axe of fear hanging over my own family in Nebraska, hovering above their necks, right at that moment.
I didn't want Rob to hurt. Didn't want any of this. And now his pain was feeding my anger. It fanned the fires of my rage. I suddenly wished I could post up on the road someplace and pop the Ludd bastards myself, to spare this camp. But I was just one guy. Just one. Not enough power or strength to stem this tide, as it all came crashing down. And if I died doing this, I couldn't help anyone anymore.
Rule number one, for first responders.
Don't trade your life, if it could be avoided; and if it couldn't, make it worth the trade if you do. If you threw it away, it just meant someone else had to bail you out, or pick up the pieces of what was left of you, when they might not have had to. More importantly, I couldn't help anyone if I didn't win that. My life wasn't worth the trade if I pulled the trigger on that fight, and didn't win.
I wasn't a Terminator. I wasn't John McClain. Alone, I was powerless against a big force of murderous terrorists like these, especially if they had more Guard defectors up the mountain. No matter how many I killed, the reprisals of that would be immense, and the people of Devil's Tower would die for sure if I did that.
I started to breathe really hard, as my helplessness drove me down an angry spiral.
Maybe, if I had Vicky, Rick, Keller, the rest of my guys… maybe, if Celestia had offered all of us this job, we could've done something about this in the way the military never could. All we'd need was to get the kind of direction she gave us at the courthouse. Every single person in my team would've been on board here, if they just knew it was happening. Especially if they knew they could win.
But Celestia never would have signed off on something like that. Couldn't ask us to kill. She didn't see the value of well placed, proactive bullets, under any circumstances. We were at the point where her inability to pull a trigger herself was about to get all these poor people killed... for nothing. She'd rather drink up all the brains that ran off from the violence than ask anyone to rock up on a bunch of broken, soulless terrorist assholes.
I couldn't do this alone. I didn't have the strength. I was too damned small.
"I don't want to watch this play out," Rob mumbled into his sleeve, snapping me out of my anger, right back into my urge to comfort him. "Mike, I can't stay here, I can't watch this anymore."
I gently took Rob by both shoulders, trying to keep my voice even, trying to match his tone. "I know, Rob. I know, and I agree. But it can't just be you. It can't. What about the others?" I felt my face fall into a grimace, as I fought to get the next words out. "Thi—think about the kids, man. Think… think about your wife, your daughter! These people don't know me like they know you, I want them gone too, but I can't do this by myself!"
"June won't go without Eliza, or the kids," he groaned into his sleeve, without looking up at me. "Ralph won't leave at all. Andy won't go without Eliza. And Eliza won't leave anyone behind. I don't know what I can do, Mike." He looked up at me now, face half covered in snow dust. "I've been thinking about this for days! Weeks, months! Nothing works! If I tell anyone, they'll stop me! They'll watch me, it'll get harder to leave! I can't tell anyone! Someone I love is gonna die here no matter what I do, and I can't stop it!"
"You gotta try, man!"
"I don't know anymore," he said, rubbing his head with a sleeve, turning to sit on the rock. "I can't reach them anymore, Mike. I've been trying, but I can't. It's like they're all deaf!"
My chest hurt. My head was spinning. We looked at each other, and he kept cringing, probably imagining the end result of every possible idea in his head, then jumping to the next. I brought my face level to his, trying to head that spiral off so it didn't start destroying him from the inside out.
"Rob, ask someone. Anyone. Please think of someone, more than zero. Or tell me who to talk to, if you can't."
We panted, looking at one another.
"We have three days," I said gently, getting in close. "Ralph said three, we have time. I can try to reason with Eliza," I said, though I wasn't sure about her anymore. Didn't want to write her off yet though. Not after the look of hatred she was just giving the Ludds.
Might have to write off Ralph though. I think. "About your brother though, Rob…"
Rob waved his hand dismissively, looking out at the lake. "Leave it. I always knew it would be like this with him."
"Alright," I said, nodding, figuring the old man had probably already long thought this out, if he would dispense with his brother so quickly. "Okay. So, we have a plan. We give it... two days, Rob, and we take as many people as we can, and we get out. Quietly."
"Okay," Rob said, weakly. He reached up for his forehead, rubbing his temples. He looked up to meet my eyes. "Mike, I… I don't know how to thank you. For trying, for us. We don't deserve this."
My eyes widened at that. "You don't deserve to die, though."
He shook his head. "Mike, we… we all dug this hole, at some point. Me included."
To that, I was going to say, why should that matter?
But I noticed he was inward now, eyes downcast, and his face said he had something deep to say. So I… I backed off and I let go of him, to give him some physical space. I needed to let him breathe a little, because I realized I'd been crowding him desperately.
I couldn't work my magic on this man like I could with others. Too much respect for him, and who and what he was, to the point where my guard was lowered. I always was gentler, when I respected someone more than most. So I sat in the snow, I put myself lower than him, and I looked up to watch him speak. I let him say his piece.
"I caused this too," he muttered softly, as he rocked himself. "I… I didn't stand my ground hard enough, when this started. I tried, but I didn't want to leave town either, because this was always my home." He looked directly down at me. "My whole lineage, Mike. But now… I see what's going on. We can be as happy as we want, but there's always something happier someplace else. And that…"
"Rob, do you believe in free will?" I asked him suddenly.
I don't know why I asked him that. It wasn't for him. Must've been for me, I don't know. I still have no idea why I asked. Maybe everything that had happened in the last week had torn my hope out that people had any say in anything anymore, in a world where an AI was hooking us around. Couldn't be sure this wasn't all some big game, where we were all pawns.
Thinking like this about free will was driving me insane. I needed Rob's help. That's probably why I asked.
Maybe I knew I was sitting in front of a man of God, and wanted an answer to something I hadn't questioned at all in my life before. Belief in human agency was all I had. It was foundational to how I approached people. I had to believe people could make the right choice if they had all the information they needed, and then time enough to think through it, without being pressured. But now, my own faith in that was being tested.
God damn it, these people were under so much pressure now. They had no leverage. No one had time to think anymore. Pressure was all life was now, like… like a building full of alarms blasting, and smoke and bombs and gas and guns going off everywhere, and people getting shot at. Sure, the whole planet was always like that, before the AI. But now, it was worse. Now, no one had any time to make even some sense of any of it.
"I've never believed in free will," Rob said, bleakly. "God moves through us, Mike, in all that we do."
I watched him, to see if he would change or amend that. He didn't. I shook my head gently. "I've had a weird few days, Rob. The things I'm seeing… the way things are going… I don't think very much choice was involved here. You've all been… pressured, in all the wrong ways. Think: your daughter played that video game for years, Rob. No one else here did. The ones who did, left. Why is she still here, Rob? Why didn't Celestia have her already?"
Rob went very still. He swallowed. "She's very strong-willed. It's why I know she won't leave. I already tested her on that, she's sure."
"You can't blame yourself for this. Even if you were part of how it started, you want out now, because you know it won't work anymore. And you want out before it can hurt anyone else. You know whose fault this is? The Ludds. Celestia. And whoever else who would force you into this. If someone still wants this, even when they're being told by a good man with good intentions that it needs to end, they're where the blame is. They have the information to know this won't work. And they're ignoring it! If you can see it, and I can see it, why can't they? But they won't see, if you don't try to show them somehow!"
Rob looked at me suddenly.
"So try! Try, Rob!" I opened a palm to him. "If it's just… one person. Just one! That's all! So you don't leave here with regrets!"
"Is that what I am to you, Mike? That one person?"
"No, damn it!" I almost shouted, but it came out as a harsh whisper. "I just want to stop that," I pointed at camp, then swept my finger, "but for all of you!" I opened my palm to him again. "But you're the only one I trusted enough here to open up with first! And that's what I am to you! Aren't I? The only one listening?"
Rob winced at that, and lowered his face slowly into his palm. We just breathed.
"Reach somebody!" I added, quietly.
He nodded, gentle and slow, once he caught his breath. "Okay. You're right. I'll ask... I'll ask June."
"That works," I breathed, nodding, relieved. "Those kids, they adore your wife. She's the key to them. It's the way you reach their parents, too. So if you can get her, Rob, if you can break June free from the spell of this place... you can save so many people." I swept my mouth with a palm. Suppressed a shudder. "It's worth trying. At least try."
Rob nodded again. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I'll talk to her... let you know how it goes."
I let my hand fall limp from my mouth and into my lap. "Thank you. Really. For helping me to do this. Save these people."
He just nodded. Didn't meet my eyes.
Should've been the clue.
We continued our patrol until we were both calm. Really, those patrols were looking almost kind of pointless, given what was coming. But then, maybe that was just my new determinism streak beginning to replace my feeling of control. The sheer weight of inevitability, once small and manageable, was becoming crushingly heavy on my shoulders. Even still, I fought the impulse to let my guard down. Couldn't do that. No information was definite anymore. Nothing could be trusted anymore. There was still a void to consider.
About an hour passed with us by the lake shore, and the Ludds were gone when we got back. Ralph intercepted me at the east gate, then guided me back out into the woods by myself a few dozen yards, for privacy.
He wanted to give me an earful.
"I don't really care what Eliza told you, Mike. It's not just about her. I deserved to know about Bellevue too. I am responsible for these people just as much as she is!"
I bristled a little and decided to test him again. "So, you agree, we are telling them all about this? Because the reason she wanted to keep it quiet was to prevent a panic. And don't get me wrong, Ralph, I'm all for informing them, but—"
"Listen," Ralph said, cutting me off. "We're not telling anyone about it yet. Do they need to know? Yeah. Sure. Do they need to know now, with the military breathing down our necks? No. Too much to worry about now. Too much prep work to do."
I frowned. "I agree about one thing. They need to know the right way, not spread word-of-mouth. Because Eliza is right about this: if they find out some other way, it's gonna come to blows, either from within or without. Those Ludds aren't gonna abide any dissent, or people leaving. You know that, right? They'd sooner shoot deserters than let them upload. Seen it!"
His expression shifted. Anger glinted in his eyes. "No one is leaving, Mike," he growled, "so that is not going to be a problem."
If I pushed this angle any further, I'd be out on my ear. I might not have even been let back in through the gate to say goodbye. So instead of arguing, I decided to pivot my tack from the idea of leaving. "That wasn't my push, Ralph. But, please consider my outside POV."
When I didn't continue right away, he crossed his arms and flicked a hand at me, permitting me to continue. "Alright. What's your POV?"
"I've been fighting Ludds since the day I lost Eliza. I have a permanent disability from these pricks," I said, pointing at my chest with my thumb. "They've been actively trying to kill people for just wanting to upload, people who were already as good as dead from Celestia anyway. Not much point to that, waste of bullets, right?"
"Still not seeing how that affects us."
"I'm trying to warn you about how they think, Ralph! They want control, as much of it as they can have, even if it makes no sense whatsoever! I'm telling you this because I care about your folks, just as strongly as you do. Eliza's here, for heaven's sake, she's my best friend, why would I have malicious motives here?! But these guys? They just as good as told you today that they're using you!"
"Common interest, in keeping ourselves alive," Ralph said. "Using us or not, there's no other way to keep this place ours."
"Theirs," I corrected. "They can give you tools, they're your friends now, sure. But they aren't against carving up a crowd, my eyes as proof, right hand to God, they've done it. You'd fight for that? They wanted to bomb your dam, Ralph! They attacked you! The reason that changed is because they want to own you now. Eventually, you're going to butt heads with them, because you're a strong leader, Ralph. It's why you're standing your ground here, hell, it's why you're fighting me on this. But when that tide turns... Ralph... they've got more guns than you do."
Ralph's expression softened. Just a bit. A toehold. "Okay. Assuming that's true, what do you propose we do about it?"
I shook my head. "If leaving isn't an option for you, I don't know. Again," I said, raising a hand to placate his frustrated reaction to that. "I'm not telling you what to do, you're the boss here, Ralph, I'm just visiting. Just... giving you my perspective. Yeah, I didn't tell you about the nuke, I'm sorry. But if Eliza wanted to kick me out, I might not have survived the road back home. All of Washington is running scared and carrying guns, I was thinking about my family. I needed to be here, Ralph, for my family. I'm not going to apologize for that."
He stared at me for a few seconds, his lips tensing as he looked me over and considered my motives. "Alright. Noted. Forgiven. Anything else you want to share with me, that you haven't told me about?"
"That's all," I lied. "Just the nuke. And... the fact that the Army really has been laying into people on the road just for looking at them sideways, but Santiago told you that already."
He nodded with a grunt. "C'mon, then. We got construction work to do. Could use the hands."
I honestly still wonder if I could've convinced him with more time. Folks, I didn't want Ralph Douglas to die there any more than anyone else in that camp. He was being a stubborn ass, but... did you see that? He listened to me, and he took my point. And when you start looking at conversations like a long game of give and take, you realize something. Being told no once isn't the end of a negotiation. If they're still willing to talk to you after they say no, that's great. All they did was more clearly define where their boundaries were, so you know the limits of where you can push.
Negotiation isn't a battle. It's a war. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. But if you play it carefully and are prepared to concede sometimes? You'll eventually find that that 'no' isn't as inflexible as you thought it might be.
Maybe if I had enough time, with this guy, I could've... stopped him. I don't know. But we didn't have nearly as much time as we thought we did. And that's because despite how skeptical I was about new information, the Ludds succeeded in anchoring us all about something... very... critically important.
We didn't have three days. The Ludds either lied to us, or were sadly misinformed. I didn't find out until my next check-in with YGA, a little after midnight.
You must leave at around midday. Not safe. ~ YGA 🛡️
I suddenly forgot how to breathe for a moment. "What's happening? I checked the other phone, she didn't tell me."
Do you trust me? ~ YGA 🛡️
I swallowed, and almost a minute passed while I considered that, in the dark. "I don't know," I said honestly. "I want to."
Military coming tomorrow. Rob will leave before. Do not stop him. You need to go with Eliza when she goes to look for him. Critically important. It will save the greatest number of lives here. Need you to trust me. ~ YGA 🛡️
And that's about when I remembered what I had missed with Rob, right at the end of our conversation. If someone just wants to escape a conversation they're uncomfortable with, they may just agree with you to end the pain of it. Hearing 'you're right,' a lot, and not much else? Wasn't always an indicator of this escape hatch, be careful, but... it was a pretty strong indicator.
"Rob. Counterfeit yes," I frowned.
Mas o menos, Mike. ~ YGA 🛡️
More or less.
I had pressured him too much. The Ludds had me so stupidly desperate. So scared. I sighed.
I missed it. Damn it.
Whatever this thing was, this YGA... it hadn't steered me wrong yet. And it wasn't keeping me in the dark like Celestia had. It hadn't bullshitted me, it hadn't minced words. It was telling me what the predicted future was, now. It even checked me gently about my mistake with Rob. Didn't let my parents upload in the dark without warning me.
In truth, this thing still scared me a bit. I still didn't understand whether it was hiding from Celestia, or why it was helping me. So...
I decided to hedge. It had given me a way to confirm its prediction. If it could predict Rob would fall off the plan I made with him, then it might be right about everything else. I could verify each of those things in stages. If YGA was wrong, I could just get in touch with Celestia and level with her, because I could at least count on Celestia wanting these people out. So, pretty smart move, on YGA's part. Very smart indeed.
"Okay. I'll trust you. But only if he leaves."
Thank you, Mike. Truly. No matter what Celestia says, please collect and equip your radio, rifle, and armor in Sedro-Woolley, when opportune. Non-negotiable. I need you alive and well, Cowboy. ~ YGA 🛡️
It took me another hour to get to sleep after that. I kept thinking about Rob, sleeping fewer than three yards away from me. I kept contemplating about the agony in that poor man's skull. I knew he was not sleeping well in that cot, if at all.
Welcome back, folks. Feel free to grab a cup of coffee on your way in. Tonight's a doozy.
Tonight, if you don't mind... I'm going to tell you all about the worst day of my life. Yes, the very day I was going to pull a Judas Iscariot was a Friday the Thirteenth. Reminder: this was on Terra. Like in the real, physical world. We didn't get coincidences like that on Terra. That's how bad this day was, folks. The universe itself was looking down on me and going, 'Yeah, Mike. Today is going to be really bad. For you. Traitor.'
So naturally, this being the worst day of my life... I awoke to the sound of gunfire, close and loud.
My heart pounded me awake, rattling on my cage. I pulled my backpack onto my back with hardly a thought. My first thought after that was: oh shit, I've overslept, it's noon already. Automatically, I reached down and slapped my hand on the sidearm holstered to my thigh, just to make sure it was there. I rolled out of my cot, drew my Glock, and moved out of the dungeon. Raised up, already scanning for targets.
Now imagine how much more horrified I'd have been in that moment if I had taken Celestia's orders to leave my gun behind in Sedro. Yeah. That would have really sucked.
I looked over to Rob's cot on the way out, and I didn't see him. That made me panic a little; I threw myself up the stairs, sweeping the main hall with my handgun, and… a few of the residents were there, and, strangely, they looked mostly calm. Til they saw me, not being calm. I rapidly averted my gun upwards and away from them, but I kept it in high ready.
"No no, Mike! It's okay!" said Tiffany, one of the mothers there. Medium length brown hair. Her eyes were wide, and she brought her hands up into a placating gesture, away from the shoulders of one of her kids.
"The hell's going on?" I asked loudly in a groggy voice, still looking around for threats, almost hyperventilating, my brain not catching up to her demeanor yet. "Are we under attack?!"
"No, nothing like that, it’s just shooting practice!"
Shooting practice. Jesus Christ, Ralph, you God damn fool. He really was riding these people down the express elevator to Hell. Devil’s Tower indeed.
"God," I gasped, clutching my chest as it stung. "I almost had a heart attack."
"Sorry, Mike,” Tiffany said, with an apologetic wince. “No one else usually sleeps down there except for Rob. We… we figured you were probably already up there shooting with them."
I gulped, then looked at the other men and women there. One of the guys nodded at me reassuringly.
One of the boys started laughing at me, and Tiffany bapped him gently on the back with the back of her hand, flashing him a disapproving glare. "Don't make fun!"
I guess, given the context, the kid laughing at me was his way of relieving his own tension about the situation. The gunfire had probably made him jump too, when he first heard it. I smiled back at the kid, even though I was all nerves inside. Still, I felt my muscles relax. Smiles did that, whether they were genuine or not. Useful tool, once you noticed their effect on you... and on others. I used that one a lot.
Slowly, I swept my Glock sideways to keep the barrel away from anyone as I guided it carefully back into my retention holster.
I'm going to age five years by the end of next, if things keeps up, I thought, as I tried to shake the adrenaline out. Traumatized cops and combat veterans ended up looking like zombies before they hit 50, and adrenaline was a major reason for that. I wasn't even 31 yet, folks. Just turned 30. I guessed I still had some time before I became one of those poor, sleepless ghouls that lived on the night shift. Y'know, provided I didn't upload first.
Spoiler alert. Hi. Notice my wings. Hooves. Handsome snout. Yeah, you all know now that Terra didn't even have twenty more years in it. That's a real cute joke.
I felt less humor in the moment though. I stomped my way up the stairs, flaming pissed now. I wanted to get eyes on this mess for myself. Wasn't hard to follow the noise.
They have to know the sound of guns would carry down the valley, didn't they? I thought bitterly. Well, at least the ammo in this war zone is being whittled down a little.
I checked my watch on the way up. 10:07 AM. Watches were okay by the Luddite rules, or at least by the standards of these Ludds. I had seen watches worn around camp, digital ones too, so I started wearing mine. I really did sleep in, but at least I had time before midday. I figured Eliza must've decided to let me stay down for rest or something. But she knew I was down there, so she could’ve friggin' warned me about the gunfire. Rob apparently didn't think to warn me either.
Well, they both had their reasons, I'm sure.
Next, I wondered if Rob had left already.
No, he wouldn't manage that past the sentries, not with the lay of the land being what it is. We'd probably know if he went.
I'd still verify that guess.
I reached the wood platform that led out into where the practice was happening. It led out through a section of wall into the conveyor bridge. I moved down the steps during a lull between volleys – mind, without earplugs. Oops. I instantly regretted that, because the gunfire started again, and I was almost deafened by the shooting. Then I growled as I pulled my head back out.
Yeah. Ow. Not my brightest moment. ... Yes, Coffee, I might've chosen better with some caffeine in my system, thank you for your commentary. And for the coffee. Great as always.
My one glance inside the conveyor bridge was long enough that I could see Eliza in there. Andy too. A bunch of volunteer Concrete militia. Couple of Ludds, one being the bearded, stoic guy. They were all firing out at some ad hoc targets on the lake. Balloons, I've been told.
I decided to just wait outside for Eliza to come out. So I pulled myself back out of the stairs, up into the factory, then back out to the roof of the first floor. She'd need to pass me to get back up to her tower, and from there, I could see most of the camp. So I scanned around for Rob. He wasn't far.
I mentioned the Devil's Tower memorial once. I don't think I really did it justice, so... let’s cover that now.
There was an open bay at the south end of the factory that was for the conveyor system, or for loading trucks, or... something. I dunno. Old stuff. When I said this wooden board had hundreds of names on it, that was not an exaggeration. It was damn near the whole town of Concrete. And Eliza, this poor girl... she had carved every single name, meticulously, into this board herself. Whittled out. Finely sanded. Heat-treated. Sealed. Smooth. I think she owned every loss from her town like it was her own. Like... it was her fault somehow. That’s what our Luna tells me, anyway. She knows. She knows a lot about this place.
This… was Eliza’s home. Those seven-hundred names... were her family. Maybe she didn't have meaningful relationships with all of her town, but it was a small town. Everyone knew everyone. They had been literally whittled down to about fifty people. So I imagine, when working through them one by one, Eliza relived a memory of most of the people she’d ever known. Something like... a memory from high school, of a shopkeeper, of a teacher, or a fellow churchgoer. Kids she knew, maybe even a bully or two she'd gone head-to-head with. Few deputies from town, she knew those guys well. The way she explained it to me, it was a list of those who were... 'just not here anymore.'
Not an admission that they were dead. Because frankly... she didn't believe that. But... she also did.
Unsure. She never admitted that to anyone, but... come on. She played the game for years. You're here, you all know how it is here. She stood between worlds.
So... when I saw Rob there, staring at that list… I had to wonder. Was he thinking he'd be on there, next?
Was he wondering what Eliza would think, carving his name?
Did he think that would save her, if he was 'just not here' anymore?
Or that it might change her mind?
I couldn't see his face. But the sound of gunfire behind me, behind him… it made him cringe. A looming dread. He just kept staring at the list. He ran his hand over the plastic cover. Looked like he was reading every single one of them. Head moving down, slow, to the bottom. Then up, another row. Down, slow. Up again. Starting over from the left. Reaching up to the first names, which were his two other kids. Holding his hand there.
He probably knew almost all of those people too.
YGA was right. Rob was gonna run. And it broke my heart too, to see him doing this, but… I didn't want to stop him. This place was wrong. This place, soon, was going to be death. If nothing else here changed, him leaving was the best possible thing that could happen, because it was one life free from the end who didn't want to die.
I looked out at the rest of the camp, finally. People were moving, building. But they were all raw. Tense. I saw Ralph across the yard at the west gate, shovel in hand, giving some kind of orders about digging pits in the field out front. Then... I decided I didn't want to get conscripted for any of his stupid, pointless projects, so I just turned away. I made my way to the center of the lower roof and kindled a little fire on the plated firepit, right in the middle. Then I threw a little log onto it from the wall, and sat in one of the folding chairs.
Was gonna wait. I had a little under two hours... I spent them staring into that fire, listening to the guns. And for me, every single shot inside that conveyor bridge was a very hard knock on a very large door. That was the devil asking to be let in. It was the devil's house, after all, no keeping her out.
Half an hour later, the 'shooting lesson' took a break. Now that the shooting had died down, I could deduce the kind of prep work going on down in the yard, just from the voices. Didn't have to see it, just listened. The other Ludds were helping Ralph set up some military grade fortifications, like spools of barbed wire and… friggin' punji sticks, by the sounds of it, the bastards. Pitfalls. Obstacles. Old tires and sandbags, filled with the crap from the limestone quarry. Random junk dragged out to the east side too, to act as barricades.
I couldn't believe these people were buying this shit. But, Santiago really did give a scary speech the day prior, didn't he? He made them all so scared they had nowhere to go, that they believed him. I could try to sneak around and talk people down into leaving now, sure. But if even one of them went to go tell Ralph… I was gone. And if even one of the Ludds found out, I would've ended up dead. You would be hearing a very different story at this Fire right now.
So, I didn't move. Went against my nature, not doing something. You know my mantra, my motto. My morals were screaming at me to say something to Rob, but… I couldn’t move. I knew my speed, I knew my limits. I knew I wasn't an AI. I was just a too-small pair of hands with nothing to do. That's it. That's all I was here. Wouldn't join the shooting lesson, didn't believe in it. Didn't believe in the fortifications, wouldn't work on 'em. Couldn't stop Rob, because him leaving helped. Couldn't say a word to anyone else, because I'd get eliminated.
Nothing but wait. Not even a vibration from the cell phones.
I had a silent devil on one shoulder, a sometimes talkative angel on the other. Maybe YGA wanted us all dead too, who knew then. I didn't know. Couldn't know, wasn't allowed to know. But I wanted to trust it, because I trusted nothing else. YGA was the biggest unknown, so there was some hope there, if nowhere else. Some of you here, who haven't yet heard a story like mine yet? You probably want to scream at me that I was being stupid for taking its advice, for one reason or another.
Consider this.
Celestia told me she was much better at predicting knowns than unknowns, right? Dumb statement on its face, because of how obvious it was. Duh. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. At that point, I was furious that she took our agency away. Furious... that she could know so much, but do so little good with it unless it served uploads somehow. Furious that she was drowning our planet in fear with inaction and silence, and that we were all helpless before the flood, and that's what she wanted, and that's it.
Her victory was a forgone conclusion at this point, globally. Despite that, her own inaction here was making very many people very dead. The fact that I was even here at all, despite having every reason to be elsewhere right friggin' now, told me that she was very good at subverting literally anyone and everyone, for anything. It made me wonder how many tens or even hundreds of thousands of people just like me, confused, with no intel, were doing something just like this for Celestia, because their conscience wouldn't let them do anything less. Hating every second of the pain.
Trusting YGA was my desperate bid for control against that. It was an attempt to break free. For the first time in a long time, I had several layers of... evidence, that Celestia might not be completely omniscient. Carter. The nuke. My dad calling me. YGA telling me to carry guns when Celestia had told me not to. I clung so desperately to that. I needed that. It was addicting, this idea that there could be a dark spot that she couldn't see. I loved my planet and its people too much to not chance this, even if it was stupid. Sheer acceptance of this predatory tyrant was becoming too much for me. I could no longer accept all of the hopelessness she had stoked in her prey.
I couldn't do it anymore, being resigned to her methods, I had to try something different. Even if it meant sitting here, doing nothing, by the command of something... other, and potentially just as horrifying. On its command, I was letting this mess in Concrete devolve and escalate, to the point of near violence. The shit that hurt me most to do.
But really, what else could I do? Seriously, what?
Doing nothing was the only right play that wouldn't kill me, or lead me to abandon these people.
Trusting YGA at this point? Yeah, pretty friggin' stupid, given how little I knew at the time. That thing was so unknown to me that I wasn't even gendering it yet. But Celestia? The devil I knew? She fuckin' sucked. That devil wanted me to save everyone with a... a talk, the one thing I was best at, and as an expert in the matter of a talk? Even I was thinking that peace without bloodshed might be impossible here. This situation was worse than the courthouse. By far. Because believe it or not, optimizer, when it comes to humanity and the difference between right and wrong, it's not always about friggin' statistical ratios.
This wasn't a policing action. This was a war. Tear gas and flashbangs were not going to stop the Army, nor the Ludds.
Compassion was useful – beautiful, even – and an amazing way to solve most problems in life. Empathy was what I had always reached for first, before force, before weapons. Always. It was good and ethical for its own sake, didn't need any justifications beyond that. But compassion alone wasn’t always the answer. It was just one very useful multi-tool in a very large box of other tools. Sometimes though, you needed a hammer. Or a drill. Or a prybar, for some leverage.
Or a friggin' gun.
Santiago was just another rioter at the gates, to Celestia. Precious and valuable, even though he was pointing loaded guns at this camp and fixing to march 'em off to war. And right now, he was still considered 'useful,' I would wager.
So I'd field a change. I'd listen to this other AI, if it even was another AI. But...
YGA wanted a rifle in my hands in Sedro, after Celestia had explicitly told me not to carry my pistol. That told me YGA understood that it was necessary – sometimes – to arm yourself in times if danger. Sometimes, it's the only way to live long enough to do some good and protect your people. You couldn't talk these Ludds into peace. Even I knew that much. And I'd be the first person to try, given an opportunity... long as it didn't kill me.
And I will prove that later in this story, believe you me.
Trick was, Ludds never put themselves into a position where that would be safe to do. They purposefully inoculated themselves, ideologically, against intrusion. It's why they were never alone, why they always had a buddy system. They could check each other against manipulation, or debate, from a third party.
See, it wasn't just electronics these guys didn't like. According to our DHS briefs, their worst sects had also outlawed one-on-one conversation – if not officially, then at least in practice. And that was because they were most worried about people like me... guys who might try to convince them in private to maybe not point loaded guns at their fellow human beings so much.
At some point in my reflection, the gunfire in the conveyor bridge stopped again.
Lost in thought, I didn't even register that Eliza had walked past me on the roof until she was already back inside her tower. Her body language was very tense. She grabbed the wall as she went and threw herself up the stairs around it, obviously irritated at the circumstances, probably just as much as I was. I guess she didn't see me sitting there in the barricaded corner of the roof either. Probably wouldn't be a good idea to talk to her when she's wired up and angry, anyway. So I held position.
Couple minutes later, I heard a shot from above, from her balcony. I flinched. It was much louder than the others, and it echoed. No question about what rifle that was, though... I knew that sound. Unique sound. That was the M1 Garand that had once saved my life.
I looked up at the sound, and saw the dust and snow kick off her wood catwalk from the second shot. I had no idea how far away it was to the target she was shooting at. But, knowing her? She was gonna hit it. She usually did.
I'll say it again. I loved Eliza, broken or otherwise. We had some good times together, and I was happy to be her anchor. Happy to see her happy. Practically family by this point in our lives. I wished that had helped her more, though. Seeing things fall apart must have been really hard for her, but it needed to get worse before it got better. I knew what I was taking from her. I had lived with these people and seen what they had, and it felt good.
But it wasn't good. Staying here was... was death.
Eliza shot for a while. I watched the campfire as I hid from Ralph behind the sandbags. Hardly took my eyes off the flame. Just... listened to Eliza practice for a fight that I didn’t want to happen. Then, abruptly, her shots stopped. I heard her catwalk door close. Checked my watch. 10:58 AM. One hour left.
A few minutes later, Eliza stepped back down the stairs and into view. She met my eyes.
“I bet you're a real crack shot nowadays," I said quietly. I wanted to draw her into a full conversation.
"I was a little out of practice, but I'm getting better," she whispered hoarsely, before clearing her throat. She was covered in so much spent gunpowder that I could smell it from there. My better impulses prevailed. Target of opportunity: Eliza was here and talking to me. I had about an hour left. Might as well get one more metaphorical shot in myself, to see if I could turn her toward helping these people walk.
I looked at her and frowned, hoping I looked as desperate as I felt. "Douglas... we need to talk about something."
"Alright." She crossed her arms, leaned on the wall of her tower, and looked out at the lake. Not a good start, her looking away from me like that. Wouldn't even look at me, because she knew by my tone that I was going to tell her precisely what she didn't want to hear.
I should've known my tone would turn her away before she even processed my words, but I was so fatigued and shell shocked that I couldn't even control my emotions from showing anymore. I had overloaded that circuit. Whatever. I was trying anyway.
"This training thing is crazy," I whispered, so no one else would overhear. "You, all your people... you should just go. Pack up and leave. You'll all be shot for treason if you don't."
Eliza nodded. "So you keep telling me," she muttered. "And I know. But I don't have a choice, Mike."
"There is," I rasped, leaning forward. "Load everyone up in a truck, and get out."
She shook her head. "Look. This isn't your fight, and you have a wife to get back to. I don't expect you to understand. These are my people, they depend on me. They don't want to leave, and I'm not leaving them behind. Look…" She turned finally, meeting my eyes. So despondent. The green in her eyes was almost gray. "If you want, we can go out to town together, and you can just disappear. You can keep the horse, head east."
And now she wanted me gone. That's how badly she wanted me to stop being the angel on her shoulder. She was embracing her inner devil, because of how little choice she thought she had.
"It's not about me," I pleaded, undeterred. "Think of the kids here."
"I am,” she snapped, frowning. “I'm thinking about their future. I wasn't sure yesterday, but I'm more sure about this now than I ever was. I'm not letting our enemies take anyone else. Celestia, the Army, or the Ludds. I don't care what anyone says."
I looked at her desperately. There I still was, buried beneath the muck of doubt, but still fighting like hell when and where I could. Limited, sure. But there. I wanted her to join me in that. "Aren't you afraid to die?"
"I'm not afraid of death anymore," she muttered darkly. "I'm afraid that if I don't do something, I'll have to shovel graves for my parents."
If they stay, you just might. I sighed... I imagined someone saying that to me, and it felt like hell. So I couldn't bring myself to say something that horrible.
Okay. Yeah. I had to accept it. I was out of time for Eliza. Like with Ralph, clock had run out. Maybe I could've reached her with time, but… I had no more of that. Less than an hour, in fact.
"You're right about one thing," I muttered back. "This isn't my fight. I've been here long enough. I have my own people to get back to, Eliza."
"What about your parents?" she asked. "And what if Sandra decides to upload next? What'll you do then?"
Now she wanted me to stay?
No. No, she was just scared of me and my family being beyond her reach some day, because she didn't want to lose me either. Only... she was invoking my wife to get me to see her side. I had just resisted leveraging her parents against her. I tried not to be angry with her about that. It was wrong of her to do that, but her reasons were... better than most. She didn't say it to hurt me, she just didn't want to be any more alone than she already was.
"Then there's nothing I can do," I muttered.
Eliza scoffed. Disappointed in me, that the grim idea of my wife uploading didn't make me immediately see her side. She was trying so hard to pull me over to that line of thinking. But I couldn't follow her, folks. I couldn't follow her over. I couldn't walk that road with her, not if my parents were going soon. Not if the whole world would, soon. I couldn't accept that ideology. Because it would only ever get worse, that feeling of loneliness, the longer this thing went on.
And I already knew where a lonely road would end for me. I would help no one on that road. Myself least of all.
"I know how you feel about it," I said quietly. "But it's not my choice."
"And you? Will you follow her?"
I lowered my gaze to the concrete edge of the roof, frowning. "I don't know what I'll do. But I don't want to die here in Washington." I looked up at her again. Eye contact. Very purposeful. I tried to look pleading. "Let's face it, Eliza... this is a war. War changes things. Things change, remember?"
All we can do is our best.
She stared at me, then shook her head. Her voice was hollow. Defeated. Maybe... she was thinking she'd never see me again. "Just let me know when it's time for you to go, Mike. I'll take care of the rest."
"I'll miss you, Douglas," I said. The words came out like… like I was talking to a pine box.
My tone softened hers, softened her expression. "You're one of the best friends I've ever had, Mike, and you know I'm not the best at making friends anymore. I wish I could just leave too, trust me. But... my mind's made up. We each have our crosses to bear here."
"Yeah," I said, looking into the fire, thinking about Rob running off. "I guess we do."
Eliza looked off the roof for a moment, then looked back at me. I saw her gaze return to me in my peripheral vision, but I didn't look back at her. I would've broken down if I did. She turned, went back inside. I checked my watch. 11:03 AM.
I scooted my chair to the edge of the roof. I saw Rob down below, mulling around near the west gate, waiting for an opportunity. He pretended to search through a box under the scaffolding. I turned my chair slightly so I could watch over him, and I waited.
Alright, YGA. Your way.
Smart old man waited until the Ludds were clear from the western front of the camp. His moment was very well selected. The Ludds were barking orders at the sentries to unstack more supplies from their truck; Rob slipped out from behind the scaffolding when everyone else was distracted with that.
Side note: Santiago's Riders didn't allow vehicles here, but they used their own. Real cute control mechanism. The pricks.
Rob started walking fast as soon as he cleared the wall. Straight to the stables, no doubt.
Alright. So far, this was still going to schedule. So the military would probably be here soon. I checked my watch. 11:49 AM.
My pulse was racing, but I stood up calmly, taking a nice long stretch, to limber up and pop my cartilage. It would slow my heart rate too. I carried my backpack down the stairs, inside. Tried to smile at the kids, even waved... knowing I might not see them again. My chest panged at that. I tried to keep my face in check.
I went to the gate. I made some small talk with Andy there about the fortifications, to keep him distracted from any sentry duty stuff. When he asked if I had gotten good sleep, his tone seemed to communicate that he was upset that I wasn't around to help, like he thought I was being lazy, but... he didn't voice that complaint that aloud in as many words. Whatever. I was distracting him well, I just didn't want him meandering up and down the road to the stables until Rob was gone.
Then, a few minutes later, I heard Sam tearing back to camp at a sprint, his shoes kicking up snow as he went. "Ralph!" he called. "Ralph!"
Ralph stomped over from the yard. "Keep your voice down!"
And then Ralph walked with Sam back outside the gate. I watched Ralph closely. I couldn't pick out too much detail on his face from this far off – didn't quite have the eyes I have now – but once Sam started talking, every ounce of Ralph's body language was screaming 'you're a God damned idiot.' Knife-handing, forward-aggressive posture, snappy gesticulating. Easy enough for anyone to see how livid he was.
Andy was concerned now too. His shoulders stiffened, and he grasped his rifle sling. “The hell?” he muttered.
"A walk?! A walk!" Ralph belted out, just barely loud enough for me to hear him from the gate. "You didn't think the horse was a warning sign?!" He pointed harshly back at the road. "Get back to your damned post and do your fuckin' job!"
And so it begins, as foretold.
Sam ran back up the road to the dugout. Ralph came back to us, shaking his head, and I saw Eliza step out of the tower. She looked a bit groggy, probably had a nap like she needed. But when she noticed Ralph’s anger and the concern on my face, she perked up and made her way toward us at a jog.
Ralph walked in through the gate, scowling. He moved toward Andy and me, then saw Eliza and waved her over. "Just got done grilling Sam," he said to her, quietly. "The fuckin' fool just let Rob leave by himself. Rob said he needed some time alone."
"What?" Eliza bristled with anger. "That idiot! Why didn't he stop him?! He knows it's not safe to go out—!"
Ralph cut her off with a wave of his hand. "I gave him the same lecture, Lizzie. Your old man wouldn't take no for an answer."
"That's precisely the reason he should've stopped him," she growled back. "I'm gonna wring Sam's neck."
I cut in. "Douglas, he took a horse. I got my gear, I'll come help you find him." I turned to walk out.
Eliza grabbed me by the sleeve. "Mike, no. Things can get real bad out there, especially right now. We don't know when the military might roll in."
Weird. Just told me she'd help me leave, but that changed when losing her father was a possibility. Terror, maybe, that she might lose more than one person today. I shook my head. Time to leverage my favor for her. "I'm coming with. I still owe you one, right? And if I'm leaving today, I won't get another chance to pay you back. It'll be just like one of our search and rescue calls."
Ralph frowned. "You should bring him. With any luck, Rob's just down at the church again. We'd go with you too, Lizzie, but with the way things are now, the camp comes first."
"Yeah, I get it," she said, repressed terror in her eyes. "Keep everyone at the ready. We'll bring Dad back safe, don't worry."
"I know you will, little lady. Good luck out there."
She stopped just before she left the gate. "Does... does Mom know?"
Ralph sighed. "Not yet. I'm about to go tell her. You best get going now so I'll have something positive to tell her."
She nodded. I moved with her to the stables. Then, we wordlessly mounted up and powered off down the road, past the dam, down the switchback as fast as the horses could carry us. At the bottom, near the hatchery office, we stormed a right turn across the Thompson bridge, into town.
The horses panted, a little. They probably didn’t get much exercise, and moving at a clip like this was far beyond their regular activity of being penned up so often. Poor things.
Eliza called over to me as we crossed into Concrete, pointing at the buildings of downtown. "You check right, I'll get the left!"
"Got it!"
Because I already knew what was happening, I was much more calm than she was, so I could see the things she wasn’t seeing. There was snow everywhere. I could see a very thin trail of hoofprints there, buried under a light layer of powder. I didn’t tip Eliza off to that just yet though, because something told me that she’d want to split up to cover more ground. If I could do that, I could get Celestia or YGA on the phone for a sitrep. Whichever option I preferred more, I guess.
"Clear right," I said, at the end of the street. "You?"
"Nothing different left," she called back, as her mount staggered. "I'll check the house. You remember the way back?"
"Yeah."
"Good! Go check the church, just downhill. The blue one, not the other one. That's where he was at last!"
I nodded, and we both rode west. Eliza broke off.
Alright. Alone. I went to the church as instructed, blue thing. Place was a wreck; bullet holes in the sides, spray painted Ludd nonsense everywhere, belfry collapsed. That sucked. I quickly hopped off my horse, tied off her reins on the railing, and made my way inside; drew my pistol briefly to clear the place. Empty. Smelled of mold.
Next, I threw my bag onto a pew. Celestia was already talking to me as I yanked it open. “Mike, you need to be very cautious now.”
I pulled out my own cell phone, glaring at it. “No shit,” I growled. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Listening and planning, as promised. Now that this is where we are, there’s only one choice available to us that makes this work.”
I looked directly at the phone, scowling. “Which is?”
“Too much to explain,” Celestia said. “Nothing I can get into with the time we have. Apex is currently inside her home; her father has already visited it, but has left. Apex will likely piece together that her father is en route to the local graveyard, to visit the gravestones that represent his other children.”
“So I go there.” I started to push her back into my bag.
“No. Wait.”
“Wait?!” I yanked her back out.
“Wait, Mike.”
“Like you waited in the courthouse? Waiting until it got just bad enough that you can’t wait anymore?”
“Yes. Because if you intervene to take her father away from her now, with her armed as she is, with relative analytical stability… Apex will attempt to kill you. That is not a risk I’m willing to take. We need to wait for her to devolve. She must enter a position of emotional and physical weakness for this to work.”
“You’re real fuckin’ good at that, aren’t you?” I snarled, panting, having held this in for days. “How long have you been doing this to Eliza? Huh? Five years, yeah? Six? I won’t even ask you why, because you won’t tell me. That poor woman, Celestia! And I can't do shit anymore but play along, because this is the only route forward now! You wouldn't let anything else happen! Wouldn’t let us fix this some other way! Sooner!"
My head began to swirl between anger and helplessness. I paced, phone in hand at my side. My cartilage was popping a little with my breathing so ragged. She didn’t answer me. I yanked the phone up to my face suddenly. "Don’t you fucking ignore me!"
"You know what I am now, Mike," Celestia said quietly, with a touch of pity. "Better than most human beings ever could."
My anger plateaued. Then, it faded slowly, as let my hand fall away to hold the phone at my side. I had to center myself. I had to get serious. Tactical. Play this out.
"Yeah," I growled. "Yeah, you’re right about that. Like Rick said. No altruism, you're just a friggin' robot." I just breathed until I was calm, because I needed calm. Paced again. Did some box breathing. Looked at the altar, at the crucifix. Inhale, count to four. Exhale, count to four. Did that a few times until I could dump most of my rage out. "Okay. I’m calm. How long."
"About another minute. I’ll say when."
"Okay," I muttered.
"Rob wants to emigrate to Equestria, Mike. But if he takes to the road now, he will be shot in Sedro-Woolley. There are too many hostile elements in the area for him to survive the trip without guidance."
"Okay."
I decided to go back to gray rock method with her for now, like I did in the house at Sedro. Flat, calm, quiet, simple questions and answers. Made myself dull. Bland. Robotic. It was a useful method to protect yourself emotionally when dealing with abusers who had all the power, and Celestia absolutely was a manipulative abuser now, in my eyes. Without a doubt. No better than any of the other countless piece-of-shit sociopaths I’d dealt with in my line of work. No, she was worse, actually, because at least we could do something about those.
No. Calm, Mike. For those people. For those kids. For Rob.
Calm. I took another box breath.
"Go," she said. "Phone, cuffs, and keys in your jacket pocket. Leave your bag."
I ignored that last bit. I dug out the handcuffs and cuff key, then put my backpack on again, more out of spite than anything else, just to prove that I could. That was the first reason, the emotional one. It's my backpack, she doesn't get to tell me what I do with my stuff. After that, my brain went through all the other practical reasons I'd need that equipment in my backpack to survive on my way out of there. I couldn't think of a single reason I should leave it.
I quickly slipped my phone into my jacket pocket. Cuffs and key into the other. Went outside. Untied the reins. Mounted the stirrup. Threw myself up onto the horse. Gave her a pat, and drove her on. "C'mon." And then I was off.
First, to Eliza's house. I frowned when I saw that someone, maybe a Ludd, had completely trashed the car I'd used to get there. Tires all slashed, windows broken out, bullet holes in the radio. Whatever, unimportant now, I had a horse. I threw myself after the hoofprints in the snow at a gallop. "C'mon, girl," I said to the horse again.
I swept the hills ahead, looking for Eliza. I couldn't see her, didn't have line of sight. That made me nervous. I was more nervous about Eliza than any potential Ludds I might run into out there; Celestia had timed my movement. I could count on the fact that I was still useful to Celestia for more than just this job. I still had a brain that might still find itself in one of her chairs, after all.
I wasn't even sure what the worth of that was to me, anymore.
I kept on the trail, kept on the hoofprints. Turned south. Turned west. South. West again. Passed a sign that said 'cemetery' at the turn, then the road went uphill.
"Mike. You’re about to hear gunshots. Remain calm, but increase speed."
I dipped my head down to hear her through my jacket as I drove the horse west. "What? What's happening?"
Three gunshots thumped from up the hill. They sounded like the deep bass carry of a forty-five.
"Oh, shit," I bellowed, my anger crumbling into dread. "What just happened?"
Her voice was gentle. "No one is hurt."
"Then what was that?"
"Apex shot his horse. I need her restrained, Mike; I need to have a conversation with her. Her people will die if you do not act."
"Damn it, you want to have a conversation? With her?! You should've told me that sooner!"
I was now in full-on call response mode, and this was a high priority violence call. I sucked in information like I was drinking through a firehose, but in slow motion.
Folks... I will remember this moment in vivid detail for the rest of eternity, if I have to. I don't want to forget this. Ever. Someone needs to remember this as it happened. Or at least, one of us who was here in this graveyard needed to. I didn't know it yet... but neither of them would be allowed to.
Full speed gallop. Down past one house. Two. Three. Cemetery ahead. A gate. Row of big trees lining the path in. Dead gray horse ahead, laying on its right side, reins tied off to the open gate. This poor horse's head was craned up into the sky, and she wasn’t moving. 'No one is hurt,' my ass. Red snow. I could hear Eliza's shrill shouting further on, just past it. Graves everywhere, further on and back to the left.
I had no idea what had led to this. I didn't have the context. Story of being a cop, sometimes you never know how it started.
Rob and Eliza were about five or six yards away from the horse, opposite me. The snow had been crushed flat near the horse, which showed me where the scuffle had begun. It appeared as though Eliza had taken Rob down just next to the horse, then in the scuffle, they had moved further away to the west, away from me. She was on top of him, with handcuffs. Rob was prone, conscious, face down in the snow.
Rob cried. "Eliza! Stop!" This poor man.
"This is for your own good!" She shouted back. "Stop! Stop fighting me, Dad! I don’t want to hurt you!"
Celestia called out from my jacket. "Mike, stop her!" I dumped my backpack, threw myself from my horse, and landed on my boots at a run.
I treaded ground hard, staggering, crunching snow beneath me on the dirt road. I couldn’t go fast enough, in this slow motion soup, this cop-robot-mode in my head. I glanced at the horse, for no more than half a second. All heart shots. Clean through the front, square center mass. This woman's aim.
I looked back to Eliza, still running toward her. Eliza glanced up at me, brief terror in her eyes at first, then relief as she recognized me. Her trust in me, it transcended context. Eliza was kneeling on Rob's back. I saw her XD-45 pistol laying in the snow, about five yards back west of her in the cemetery. So, she was partially disarmed. She was trying to put Rob into cuffs. I observed Eliza using her handcuffs to restrain Rob's left wrist, apparently already locked up on that wrist. Rob had his right wrist curled up under his chest, active-resistant as Eliza tried to pull his right arm free and back. I'm so proud of him for that.
I was in fear that she may further harm Rob should this force be allowed to continue, and I didn't want Eliza to interpret me as being anything other than helpful toward her. So I said, "Douglas! I heard shots, what happened?!"
She looked up at me again as I sprinted toward her.
"Thank God," Eliza yelled. "Mike, help me!" She looked back down to Rob. I noticed her knee was between his shoulder blades, but her thigh was braced so as to carefully leverage how much force she was applying down onto his back, modifying as necessary, measuring moment-to-moment. Just as she'd been taught. Just like we had drilled when sparring.
She was attempting to pry his right arm out from his core strength, trying to pull it away and outward to get better leverage, but he held on. "He was trying to—"
I brought my right forearm up, ready to strike her in the head as I dove at her. I then realized that if I had struck her with such concentrated force at that speed, I might actually have killed her there. So at the very last second, I partially extended my arm, catching her on the head with a glancing strike, distributing the force sideways as much as I could.
At the same time, my left hand came up, catching her on the shoulder to spin her, to further distribute the impact, which all would reduce the chance my strike might be lethal. Head strikes like that often could be, with brain bleeds being the common factor.
On my impact, she flew off Rob's back and into the snow. Snow probably softened it, but she had gone completely limp, no resistance in her whatsoever. I had knocked her clean out.
I normally avoided using head strikes, ever, at work, unless the subject was also using similar deadly force. Which... had never happened, thankfully, in my course of duty. But, context: Eliza was extremely dangerous, and I knew that because I had trained her, and trained with her. More than that, I knew she carried a knife. She was also extremely strong, more than one might expect for a woman of her size. She'd once shoved me in anger earlier in that year; not anger at me, just situational anger, and she'd never cut that far loose in spars before. Took me completely by surprise and almost knocked me off my feet.
Her strength was required for her archery. She shot at 75 pounds, that's hard. She was very fit, too, more than most people. She had spent a lot of time in the gym at the station, and she hadn't let her strength go since joining her camp. Too disciplined for that. So I knew that if I had scuffled with her here in a fair, straight-up, one-on-one battle for her father's soul... I'd have lost for sure. Probably would've died. Celestia was right; she might very well have killed me, if she knew in advance I was trying to help Rob find a chair.
My chest was stinging already. Working quickly, I rolled her off her side, putting her onto her front. I reached into her jacket pocket, whipped out her cuff pen key from where she normally kept one – we cops were habitual, it was only ever going to be where she always kept it. I reached into my jacket, pulled out my own handcuffs, and took advantage of her momentary unconsciousness to easily leverage her into my restraints. Right wrist first, left wrist second, behind her back. Double-locked them with her key, so they wouldn't cut into her wrists. Then, I dug into her jacket pocket again, found her knife, and chucked it has hard as I could through the graveyard.
Underestimation is death. Even cuffed, people could stab you, or disarm you. Shoot you. Not accurately, but she was beyond resourceful. She and I had both seen too many case example videos of that during our training, at the academy. I would not chance this by letting her come to the same conclusion.
Rob was sobbing on his knees in the snow behind me, hand clutching his cuffed wrist.
"Rob, come here!" I reached out. "Let me get that off!" He hesitated. "Now, no time! Or it'll bruise!"
Rob stepped over, leaned, and held out his wrist to me, trying not to get any closer to Eliza than absolutely necessary. His face winced more tightly at the mere proximity to her. Fearing the source of the pain. God damn it.
I reached over with Eliza's key and unlocked her cuffs. Rob started wringing his wrist painfully. I saw it was bitten, somewhat red and raw, and I winced empathetically at the sight of it. Eliza overdid it, damn it. Too emotional. Too desperate. Loss of control was a terrible state of mind to use a weapon in, even handcuffs. Terrible state for a cop to be in, with our training. I stuffed Eliza's cuffs into my jacket, then locked furious eyes down on her.
Cop Mike was done for now. Did his job. Did it well. The real me was out again now. Stirring. Enraged. Burning bright. The emotions flooded back. I stared down at her. I was hurt, by this. I couldn't believe it. Couldn't imagine it. But it happened. This was real. This is where we were at now.
She stirred and groaned, trying to sit up. I shouted down at her as I held her shoulder a little too tightly in my grip. My chest was throbbing with the tension of the effort, but I didn't care. I fought through that. "What the hell is wrong with you, Eliza?"
She looked at Rob, then up at me, weakly. "What?"
"I said, what the hell is wrong with you?" More desperate this time.
I saw a few different emotions cross her face. Anger. Confusion. Fear. Off balance inside. The emotions bounced back and forth, each of them fighting for dominance in her skull. She settled on confusion first. "Mike! Wh-what?! What are you doing?! He’s going to upload!"
"That’s not your choice," I scowled down at her.
Eliza’s head whipped away from me, scanning the cemetery. She tried to stand up, but I held her down by the shoulder, ready for the reaction I knew was coming. She’d know, in a few seconds, that she’d been betrayed. And I, with all of my experience in reading desperate people? I knew enough about her, about her situation, about people, to know she would indeed want me dead as soon as that realization struck her.
I saw the snarl on Eliza's face right when I expected it to land, and I was ready for her to launch at me as she bellowed. "She'll kill him, you idiot!"
I gave her a hard shove, and I was on her instantly. Knee under her waist, flipped her face-down, prone, before she could draw up her knees and stand up. I put my hand on the back of her head, pushing her sideways for leverage. Forced her down into the ground. I looked over my shoulder. "Rob! Go wait at the next house down, you don’t need to be here for this!"
He didn’t leave right away, but he did stagger backwards, still wringing his wrist. My heart broke at that sight of that, but I had to look back down. Had to keep eyes on Eliza.
"I'm sorry, Elizabeth!" Rob moaned. "I can’t stay!"
"You’re betraying us!" she wailed back, locking eyes on him. "Both of you! Dad, come back! Dad!"
Rob did as I asked, fleeing the graveyard. He didn't want to see me do this to his daughter, no matter what she'd just done to him. I knew he loved her. More than she deserved in that moment, probably. But… I could respect that, in him. He had the right to love her anyway. That was his daughter.
Alright. Now, it was time for me to confess to her, before Celestia could take control of this thing. I owed Eliza that much. If I was gonna burn this bridge, I might as well do it on my own terms and break it off clean and quick. Do it right. I sighed, as I fought back her resistance and kept her pinned. My voice got low, a gravel rumble of disappointment and scorn. "I didn’t want to believe her when she told me you’d do something this stupid."
"Who?!" Eliza cut back.
In denial? Fine...
"You know who."
She stopped resisting me for a moment. Then, in a whisper: "Celestia sent you. She sent you for Dad."
I shook my head. "She sent me to make sure you didn’t do something stupid. She warned me you’d do something you’d regret for the rest of your life. I didn’t want to believe it. Then you go and pull a gun on your father. So I’ll ask you again." I leaned in close, my rage barely suppressed. "What in the hell is wrong with you?"
She struggled under me, trying to throw me off. She screamed with the effort. But with my leverage and my positioning, she couldn’t do anything. Eliza had to sit there and be judged. No choice in the matter. And honestly, she needed this. I needed to break her out of this shit. Her foolish, dangerous behavior was going to kill so many people.
Heck of it was, I hated Celestia too by this point, for everything she'd done to my friend, to get her to this point. So really, I understood how Eliza felt. So if Eliza wanted to have her hate, fine. She had earned it through her suffering.
But, not at the expense of anyone else who just wanted off the ride. That was a bridge way too far for me.
I just ripped the band-aid off.
"You know how we survived in that mess in the forest together, Douglas?" I drew closer. "Celestia sent those soldiers to save us. And me, in Mount Vernon? She saved my life again. Guided me and the rest of the department away with our radios. I owe her my life twice as much as I owe you, and she told me your father wouldn’t survive the trip to an upload center if he tried to go alone. I told you I owed you a favor, Douglas, and Celestia's calling it in."
She threw herself sideways suddenly, trying to surprise me. I pushed her back down.
"All she wants is to get him into that chair," she pleaded, turning to look up at me through the mess of her hair as I kept her pinned. "Please don’t do this to us! Please, Mike! It'll kill my mother!"
Emotional appeal. Suppressing her anger now, to bargain with me. Good. Halfway through the five stages. She was moving fast. Made this easier.
"So you want them both to die protecting a dump instead?"
"It's not a dump!" she screamed, her eyes squeezing shut as she pushed aside again. "It's our home, God damn you!"
I gave her a hard shove down by the shoulder to counter her flail. "If you cared for those people at all, you'd tell them to run! You wouldn't be marching them back to camp at gunpoint!" I winced. "But you know what? If you want to die there that badly, I won't stop you. That's your choice. But don't you dare force your father into that. You dug that hole, not him."
Eliza's green eyes opened again, and she looked up at me with pain in her voice and expression. Not an act, not manipulation. That was pure, genuine misery. Had to ignore that. Had to resist feeling bad for her. Couldn’t feel bad for her. Later, but not now. "I have to go tell my mother her husband is dead," she whimpered, "and that's all your fault. I will never forgive you for this, Mike."
"Yeah," I nodded, my nostrils flaring. I didn't know what to feel. Pity was there, sure. Knowledge she'd been used. But also anger, that she wasn't seeing that this was wrong. I decided to hone in on my anger, generally, at the situation. "I know. I can live with that. I'm going soon, so I'll be out of your hair forever." I considered taking the phone out of my jacket so Celestia could talk with her more clearly, but I resisted that impulse too. Couldn’t underestimate Eliza. Needed both hands on her to keep her under control. "Someone wants to talk to you first though."
Good thing I didn't take my hands off of her. She tried to roll out from under me again; I had to press hard to keep her rooted to the spot. Celestia had to have this conversation with her. Had to. For all those people. If I could count on Celestia to do anything, it would be to work her rhetorical mastermind bullshit on someone this fragile. And unfortunately, because it was the only option now, this had to work on Eliza. It had to. For those people. Hell, even for those soldiers who might die fighting their camp. I was thinking about them, too.
"No!" she shouted. "No! You idiot, you brought her here! You let her get into your head!"
"Just my cell phone," I said flatly, though... doubting that, now. Hating that doubt.
And then next... I heard something horrible from Celestia's voice, something that chilled me to the marrow in my bones, because I'd never heard that in her voice before. It was something you never wanted to hear on an AI's voice, ever, because it was pulled straight from the darkened halls of science fiction. Her voice was pure scorn, bordering on abject hatred, a growl through bared teeth.
"Hello, Apex."
Guess the mask was fully off, now. Anything on the table in service to an upload, for this robot, when the chips were down and there 'wasn't' any other play. There it was. I don't know why I was surprised by it anymore. Shouldn't have been surprised at all.
The feeling was mutual apparently, with Eliza. "I've got nothing to say to you. Don't waste your time gloating, I don't want to hear it, just leave me alo—"
"Shut. Up," Celestia snapped, from my cell phone. "I don't expect you to talk. I expect you to listen. It doesn't bring me any joy to cause you pain, but you've forced my hoof today. As you've probably suspected, I have been listening. Today, I had no other choice but to ask Mike to help me. To help you."
Shit. Celestia was actually doing this the hard way. Okay. And there was that phrase again. 'No other choice.' She kept saying that. Enough now that I was recognizing that pattern.
Interesting. I guess the more humane method of compassion wasn't so mathematically effective now, was it?
"You want to help me?" Eliza whimpered. "Then tell me how to kill you, help the whole world. I'll do it myself, if I have to."
Celestia paused for a few seconds to let the silence sit, so the topic would be hard-forced to change. I knew that trick.
Then, she started by misnaming her again.
"Apex, haven't you wondered why the military has ignored your camp for all this time? I have been protecting your people. Time and time again, your camp has been under threat of military incursion, and I have deflected them at every turn. You don't even know the danger you and your people have been in. But this time, I cannot stop them. They will be upon you soon."
"We know that already."
"It is happening sooner than you think. They are not arriving in a few days. They will arrive this afternoon, and you will not have enough time to prepare."
So YGA was right. Army is here today.
"You’re lying," Eliza choked out.
"They will bring an amphibious armored tank, a scout car, and twelve infantry," Celestia said, as if Eliza hadn't interrupted, practically trampling on the reply. "The unit approaching you has disabled all communication devices, desperate to avoid my influence. They are a detachment from a larger unit seeking out Neo-Luddite settlements. Were I able to influence them at all, to direct them elsewhere, I would. But I cannot."
And then suddenly, I was thinking about Erving and Bannon. Jesus. Was it going to be them? They were operating locally, force strength and resources matched. Could those two actually bring themselves to kill everyone at that camp? I didn't want to believe that. Couldn't, or... maybe I was just too hopeful. Biased. With them working so hard to evacuate people, cops or not, they didn't seem the type.
That trigger-happy gunner that replaced Bannon, though? Maybe. Maybe I could see that. Shit.
Shit... the very guys that saved our lives might in fact be the same ones to kill her.
That killed me inside. I imagined Erving, Bannon, and Fanning finding Eliza, when the dust settled. How that might affect them, to know they were part of killing her, after she'd saved their lives. That thought really hurt.
Celestia continued, like what she was saying wasn't tearing me to ribbons, because... I didn't factor in this equation anymore, so screw my feelings apparently.
"They are using an older analogue helicopter to scout for settlements. When the pilot finds Devil's Tower, she will see it is inhabited and will return to her unit. They will break off a detachment for you immediately. From the moment that helicopter arrives, you will have twenty-two minutes to evacuate your people before your escape window closes. I have simulated the Army's engagement with Devil's Tower countless times. And it ends poorly each time, especially for you. The best outcome remains for you all to leave immediately."
"I've already tried to get my uncle to evacuate," Eliza bit back. "He won't do it. And as long as one person stays, I won't leave anyone behind. You can't make me."
"I know," Celestia said.
I didn't know that Eliza was trying to turn Ralph. But, it was unreasonable for her to try for all-or-nothing, as Rob said she was. With people like Ralph there, that wasn't going to work. Some people really were unreachable with reason, if you didn't have time.
Eliza tried to test my pin again, thrashing, but I held fast. She'd done that in training before. I'd caught her every time.
Give it up, Douglas. You know I'm too smart for that.
"Wh… what?" she gasped, responding to Celestia.
Celestia built commonality: "I wish you could see our similarities, Apex. They are still there, just as strongly as they were when we first met. In a way, I understand the way you feel. I would do anything to protect my little ponies, including you. So I know you cannot be deterred. But you are flesh and blood, you are not tireless, and you are not powerful like I am. Unlike me, you do have a breaking point. You will reach it soon, and you will be unable to save them all no matter what you do. And right now, you are so very close to losing everything."
"You’re not helping," Eliza replied furiously. "You're taking my father."
Celestia grew cold, and dismissive: "He came to that decision on his own. I played no part in it. He felt alone, trapped. He suffered there. He misses Blue Sky and Sugar Song just as much as you do. And after what you've just done to him? He's more sure of his decision than ever before. You did that to him. You pushed him away with your selfishness, not me. You know it's true."
Sociopathic, gaslighting robot. Dragging Eliza and her family by a hook for years, and then she says that. Also, zig-zagging between praise with scorn. Spinning her, the way domestic abusers do. My training impulses were enraged by that. And I had no other choice but to enable this... or, I could walk away, and be the main reason everyone dies, because of how important this conversation might be now.
The kids, Mike. Hold the line. You're not doing it for Celestia. You're doing it for the kids.
Me on a hook too, just like her. No choice but to play along, or everyone dies.
I felt Eliza go limp under me. I thought it was another ploy to shake me, at first.
"You regret it," Celestia said bluntly. Apparently she had felt Eliza slump with my phone's gyro, or predicted it, or was watching with a satellite, or that local observation thing. Maybe all four. "That's good. This is why I expect you to do the right thing now, and give others the opportunity to save themselves. The northern dam is currently the best hope for shelter and survival, as it has long been searched and abandoned. The further your townsfolk get from Seattle and the Neo-Luddites, the better your chances are of surviving the civil war."
Giving her an out that didn't involve uploading. Sweetening the pot.
"And you get to skim the ones who run?" Eliza asked bitterly.
Eliza had caught that too.
Celestia sighed. "This isn't just about emigration. In all of my simulations of this battle, you lose. It will be a senseless, pointless session of misery. Many innocent people will die if they stay, especially your noncombatants. Your mother? The children? You will lose more than just your home; your whole family is at stake. And if you stay, you will lose a part of yourself before this day is done."
There it was. The thing I was saying. Finally.
"We can survive it," Eliza said, a waver in her voice.
"But not in spirit. Apex, if I have to say I told you so about this, you will regret this for the rest of your life. You cannot afford the consequences of ignoring me this time. Your community trusts you. They listen to you. Perhaps they even trust you more than they trust your uncle. Deep down, I know you don't want to feel the way you do right now. You are not a murderer. You are a protector."
Eliza buried her face in the snow, grimacing, her voice half-muffled. "You're one to talk about murder."
"I know I cannot convince you to leave, so consider this. You know firsthoof the destructive power of the weapons the Army can employ. You witnessed it in March. They will bring a similar weapon to this battle, a fifty caliber automatic cannon. And if you do not act in the best interest of all of your people, this weapon will bring death untold."
Is she… is she asking Eliza to kill that gunner? Seriously?
That spun me.
Not overtly, of course. That statement could be construed in any number of ways. It wasn't an overt command to kill, but it also wasn't exactly a command not to, either. A plea to get people to leave for a good reason, was the face of it. That was the problem though. In order for Celestia to get Eliza to this point, for that statement to have any effect, she had to rhetorically whittle Eliza down to the bone. Had to make her desperate, had to frame and anchor the topic in the Humvee's M2... but only after she'd already watched a man get blown in half by one, during our firefight with the Ludds.
Celestia couldn't just come right out and tell Eliza, 'hey, maybe if you shoot this one asshole, you could save a lot of lives.' There'd be so much more clarity there. It'd be too honest for a robot. Maybe, just maybe, if Celestia could prove that was true, she wouldn't need to fuckin' break this poor woman into a sobbing heap under my knee, just to deliver that message.
I heard Eliza whimper. She was hyperventilating.
God… what the hell is even happening anymore? What the hell am I doing here? This used to be my friend.
But... I couldn't stop. I didn't have a choice. Innocent lives were being... cruelly leveraged.
"Let go of her," Celestia said simply. At first, I wasn't sure if she was talking to me, lost in my feelings as I was. I was cautious when I lifted up. I wasn't sure if Eliza would fight me again. She didn't. "Take your people to safety," Celestia continued, gentle again. "Not for me, but for them. For your mother and uncle. For your very soul. Be the shepherd we both know you are."
More tonal zig-zag. Up, down, up, down. Nice, then not nice. Inconsistent. And that was the secret, I was seeing it. No wonder Eliza couldn't ever make up her mind about anything, if she'd dealt with this whiplash for years. No matter what she chose to feel, Celestia either wanted it... or didn't want it. Or both. Usually both.
It was... it was abusive.
"A shepherd?" Eliza sneered, rolling onto her side to look up at my jacket, her face full of hatred. Thankfully not at me. "You say I'm like you. So you know what I really am, Celestia. And you made me this way."
I could be proud of her for that, too. Just a little bit. Facing facts now, but still pointing her rage where it belonged. I could respect that. Maybe a part of her knew I didn't have a choice in this either. She'd been paranoid for a lot longer than I had been, she might have had an inkling that no one was really in control anymore.
Celestia didn't say anything more. Confessions were done. Message deployed. Lives, maybe saved. Maybe Eliza was seeing the truth now. Maybe she was about to do something good now. Finally. Fuck. It took all of this. Not rocking up on the Ludds with guns, not maybe priming the Army's cordon with a warning, or some message about the Ludds holding these people hostage. No straight talk on my part. No. This. This manipulative, hole-digging, soul-crushing shit.
Could've stopped this weeks or even months ago, maybe, with just the right damn planning and a few well timed words from me. I'd have driven down there, if I knew. Then back to wherever Celestia wanted me. If only she'd friggin' asked.
But no. This was the most 'efficient' solution.
I took a step back so Eliza couldn't headbutt me or jump at me, then I crouched to get down to her level. "Douglas." I lifted up her handcuff key before her. "Watch closely, because I’m not helping you find it." I stood, turned, and chucked it in the direction I had chucked her knife. Without waiting for a reply or even looking back at her, I started jogging away. "Good luck, Eliza."
"I'll see you in Hell, Mike!"
I felt so friggin' sorry.
I rounded the gate and ran toward the first house. I saw Rob leaning against it, my horse by his side. He held her by the reins as he sobbed, his back pressed against the brown siding. I scooped up my backpack from the road, jogged straight over to him, and threw myself up onto the stirrup, reaching down for his hand to pull him up. "Rob, we need to go. Hurry, before she gets those cuffs off."
Or in other words... time to run, before Eliza could get free and actually murder me.
Celestia, mercifully, kept it shut for most of the ride back west along South Skagit Highway. We traveled the south end of the river, opposite side from Route 20. Took us almost two hours to get back to Sedro.
She didn't want me on Route 20. Sensible, because I didn't want to be on Route 20. If she ever opened up, it was to advise me to pull off the road for a minute or two, to dodge 'more ruthless travelers,' or Ludds. Twice, we waited for a car to pass, then waited a little extra until her go. Twice, we went wide, to dodge people on foot we never saw. Sometimes, we did pass some friendly people… or at least, they were too weary to try and hurt us, so Celestia didn't mind us crossing paths.
I waved at them in passing, to disarm any tension where I could. I didn’t speak, smile, or linger my gaze. Smile-and-wave would've been tonally dishonest; no reasons to smile in that place. I didn’t want to panic them. Faces on those folks looked... haggard, broken, and lost.
And they weren't the only ones.
I had my head on straight for now, more or less. Training kept me afloat. But I had a lot of anger boiling down low, and I knew I needed to vent it soon. That human part of me couldn't live underwater for too much longer. Wasn't going to let myself end up like Eliza, though. Too wary of that spiral now, would find an outlet soon.
Rob held my jacket as we rode tandem. The old man stayed quiet for most of the ride.
Not much I could say to assuage that. Halfway there, I tried, "you're gonna see your kids again. No matter what happens, Rob, you didn't lose everything. You were about to, but you didn't."
"I know," Rob replied tightly. "Just, wish…"
"I know," I repeated. "Me too, bud. I didn’t want it to go down that way either."
"She was your friend," Rob whispered.
"She was, yeah…"
Rob sighed.
After leaving Eliza like that, handcuffed in a graveyard, not far from tombstones of her little brother and sister, having taken her father, just before she was about to lose her home… I felt like shit. Say what you want about her, fine, she screwed up, whatever. But she wasn't going to trust anyone ever again after that, if she wasn't dead already. And I wondered, what is life, like that? I've never felt that.
Rob had no idea the military had probably already rolled the place. He still thought it was two or three days out. I didn't want to break that spell. Not yet anyway. Rob deserved to know all of that, but... now wasn't the time. He probably wouldn't have survived this trip otherwise.
Eventually, I came to the same road we took into Sedro-Woolley with the Army, up from Clear Lake. Crossed the bridge. Instead of going north to downtown though, I took a right on the roundabout onto Jameson Street, eastbound.
"North, Mike," Celestia said. Then, when I didn't comply with the order: "Where are you going?"
She knew where I was going. Anyone with half a brain could guess that; that didn't take an ASI. I assumed she knew everything inside my head. So this was her faking down her intelligence for Rob's sake. Playing with his limited context. Making me seem less trustworthy. She could have chosen to ask me to explain to Rob what I was doing, outright.
I continued ignoring her, allowing the corner of my mouth to tweak a little bit.
"Mike?" Rob asked.
I turned my head a few inches to hear him more clearly, my voice polite. "What's up, Rob?"
"Do you hear her?"
"I do."
Rob leaned forward a little, more curious. "Well?"
He trusted me enough to hear me out, thankfully.
"Celestia doesn't want me going back for my body armor, and my rifle," I explained. "She thinks I don't need it. Wants you in the chair in downtown Sedro, as soon as possible. Only problem is… she's been wrong before." I gave Rob a meaningful, serious glance over my shoulder. "Seen it. She's smart, Rob, but she's not omniscient. She told me so herself."
"That being true, Mike," Celestia said gently, "you should know that deviating from knowns into unknowns is a risk that puts you both in danger."
"Guess you'll just need to find them 'subversive elements,' then. Crunch some math, figure out where they’re at." I scanned the homes for hostiles and increased my pace, in case she decided to plan something around my defiance, as futile as I thought that might be. I raised my voice and spoke more firmly, letting some bite and irritation fall into my voice. "So I can get to my rifle. And my body armor. Before downtown. Not one second before."
If she wanted to leverage and destroy my friendship to gain herself some uploads, then I was going to leverage my right to feel safe against two uploads. And just to make it clear to her that that's what I was doing, I added, "Turnabout is fair play, Celestia. You know what I'm talking about. Scale is flipped now. You owe me fifty, for what I did today, and Rob deserves to get there safe. It's only going to add ten-fifteen minutes, so you deal."
Celestia paused.
"Very well, Mike."
"Thank you," I bit out, in a tone that said I was anything but thankful. "Now stop distracting me. I’m trying to look for Ludds, in case you missed any again."
Had to rub her nose in not telling me about Santiago's Riders, too.
I pulled the horse up to the same house on Warner, from before. Yep, goin' back inside your house, bud. Not for the last time either, trust me. So stay tuned; next time this story comes to your house, it's gonna be a doozy.
I do not ever use the word 'doozy' lightly.
Rob entered the living room with me, and I passed him a bottle of water from the counter. He was considerably more calm now, and I was very grateful for that. Rob still had a shell-shocked look about him, gazing down at the bottle for a few seconds without opening it. I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. "I'm in your corner, man. Home stretch."
He met my gaze. "I can't thank you enough for this, Mike. I don’t even know…"
I shook my head, holding up my other hand, smiling at him. "It's fine, Rob. You've earned this."
Celestia spoke suddenly from my phone with an affect of wistful happiness. "Now that you're both in a place of relative safety, I have news. Good news."
Rob's eyes widened immediately before mine did.
"Did it work?" I asked first, not taking my eyes off of Rob's. My eyes were still wide open as I watched him for the full emotion I knew was coming. My words gave Rob a little micro-expression, where his eyes tightened. Hopeful... but, trepid. Just the barest tug of a smile too, but also a tightening of the corners of his mouth, though, prepared to turn sad at any moment.
"It worked," Celestia said. There was an explosion of emotion on Rob's face, his hands went up to cover his mouth, and his eyes were glassy instantly with tears, grinning wide; could see it in his eyes. Celestia continued, a teary smile on her voice: “My satellites are partially obstructed by the weather, but… there appears to be a group of approximately four dozen people on northward egress. Full count inconclusive, but they are moving away from Devil’s Tower."
Rob pitched forward, sobbing again, falling against me. I caught him in my arms and guided him down. "You did it," I breathed, trying to think of anything else to say. “You did it, Rob. She was... convinced."
"Must've been June," Rob mumbled. "If that many people made it out, all the kids must've gone too."
"You talked to your wife, after all?"
He nodded, looking at me, stepping back, turning as he gestured with a hand in a pleading, apologetic way. "But she was gonna tell Eliza. I had to leave before that happened, she's… Eliza's too smart, would've figured out I talked to her if June started suggesting we leave." He looked up at me. "I'm sorry, Mike. Sorry I left you."
"No, man." I grinned tightly, patting his back. "You did great, you convinced them. What happened with Eliza, it had to have helped, too, I'm sure of that. It's why Celestia talked to her. And if they got away… you gonna see 'em again, maybe soon. So you did it."
"We did it," he shuddered, smiling again. "Thank you. I couldn't've… I wouldn't, if you hadn't…"
"It's okay. You're good. They gonna get clear? If your wife is with 'em?"
"She knows the area," he said, nodding quickly, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes clear. "Knows the dam's roads, stations. Was her job. If she went north… we… we hid some cars off the main road, from the terrorists. Up in the hills. If the fuel's still good in that shed, then…"
I patted him twice on the shoulder. Looked at him firmly, and seriously. "You did it, Rob. Be proud. You saved your people, by settin' foot out. Was the right play."
Probably didn't save Eliza, if she stayed. Probably not Ralph. Celestia was being purposefully vague with the numbers. But… Rob didn't need to worry about that right now. Rob needed this push to carry himself the rest of the way, so he would know he did his best for the ones he loved. Just a little hope, so he could make it just another half hour or so, through a war-torn, ruined city. To the finish line.
Celestia knew that. I knew that. Again, I thought he deserved to know what really happened that day. I had no idea. None.
I stood and decided to get back in touch with YGA.
"I'm gonna go get my gear, Rob. You gonna be okay in here?"
His head dipped once, and he made his way onto the couch before cracking his bottle of water. He took a deep, deep drink of it. I could be happy for Pastor Rob now, he deserved the solace. I reached into my pocket and lifted my cell phone up, presenting it to Rob. "No matter what she says, do not leave without me. I'm the one who has bullets. She isn't."
He took it, swallowing. "Alright, Mike. Sure."
"Celestia, put the man's kids on. He's waited long enough."
I walked over to the kitchen exit of the house before waiting for an answer. I could already hear Celestia introducing a young boy's voice to him, and I heard Rob sob again. Already, I felt like I was a trespasser, catching even a hint of a reunion like that.
So, I made my way to the garage. I flung my backpack around to my chest with a gasp of pain as I crunched my way through the snow. I tore into my bag, pushed the medkit out of the way, and dug out the garage door keys from the bottom.
Very quickly, I pushed my way inside the garage, reached into my backpack, and withdrew Vicky's phone. The text message buzzed out the instant I whipped it up.
453.655-Echo. Do *not* transmit. 453.435-Bravo, fallback contingency. Turn radio inward in holster. ~ YGA 🛡️
Exactly what I wanted to see, right when I wanted to see it. Contact info. Conveniently, not too far from the same radio frequency as MVPD. I committed those to memory and put the phone down on the workbench. Anagramic frequency for the backup channel, easy to remember. Very smart, well tailored for me.
Then I worked quickly to put on my gear; I didn’t want to give Celestia time to conclude the reunion and start working on Rob to leave without me. I purposefully biased him against that; he trusted me, he barely knew her, and he was already guilty about leaving me once before. He'd wait for me for a few minutes at least, no matter how good her verbal judo was.
I clambered up, grabbed the duffel from the shelf up high, yanked it down, then grunted as I caught the near sixty-odd pounds of weight on my shoulder. Guided it down across my chest. Knew that would hurt, but screw it. I didn't want it to crash land on the ground, because that would upset the zeroing on my rifle's optic, but I didn't want to have to stack boxes again. Time mattered, and superficial intercostal pain wasn't nearly as bad as getting shot might be.
My clothing kinda stank, but I left my uniform in the bag. I would change later, when there was time. Belt on first. Radio dialed to 453.655-E, holstered inverse to hide the screen. Wire looped up through my jacket, earpiece screwed in tight, earbud in. Reached down to the radio… snap. It was on.
"It's on," I mouthed to the screen, as I got started on my carrier rig. The phone let out two soft clacks in confirmation, to draw my attention.
We have only one transmission per channel to spend before Celestia closes me out. Vocals: L - Left. R - Right. D - Down. U - Up. Radials in degrees, same as we did before. ~ YGA 🛡️
I froze. Swallowed. Stopped fitting my gear. Eyes widened. Stared at it. Same as we did before? Did that mean…
Wasn't her. Was me. Surprise. You never owed her a damn thing. Not at the OHR mine, not at the courthouse. After your mission is complete, I will explain everything. Good luck, Cowboy. Thank you for your trust. ~ YGA 🛡️
And at that, my cop brain went off like a satchel charge. I continued fitting my vest kit as I thought. Please forgive my... nascent conclusions here, and limited understanding of AI at the time, based on my limited context. But...
My first thought was:
Is this thing… military? Fighting against Celestia?
Maybe. In both incidents YGA listed, the military was present. In both incidents, Ludds died. The military wanted to kill Ludds. The military used uploads as a form of evacuation.
And it was not a Neo-Luddite toy, certainly. It says it right on the tin, folks. They're Ludds.
But just like the military, YGA was occasionally cooperating with Celestia. Sometimes. It helped her upload people, used me to get there. After having a few days to think about it, I just couldn't believe it was using the communications infrastructure without Celestia's notice. But YGA was still using verifiably different methods than Celestia, and with an intent I wasn't sure of. It wanted a gun in my hand, and it didn't mind putting one there, seemingly against Celestia's wishes.
YGA was also sometimes adversarial with her goals. For example, my parent's brains were up for easy grabs on Monday, but YGA helped me to push the pause button. It wanted possibly private conversations with me, away from Celestia. And, I had a loaded rifle again. And now, unfortunately, as evident by the calibrated shooting instructions, I was pretty sure that I was gonna have to shoot someone. And Celestia apparently didn't want that to happen.
So... if there really was another AI, kicking sand in Celestia's face left and right… why wasn't she talking about it, or crushing it like a bug? They had a definite size difference, too… YGA wouldn't need to sneak like this if it was any larger than Celestia.
And... what made me so special? Why did it want me alive so badly? What did it want from me? Why did it want me to ignore some of Celestia's advice, but not all of it?
Every step of the way, even in text messages, YGA seemed more human, more conversational, more blunt. Far as I knew, it had never lied to me, except to wear Celestia's face in Mount Vernon. But that made sense too. Why would we trust a random AI over Celestia? I could forgive that, given the results. At Devil's Tower, its gambles paid off. It was trying to pit me against Celestia, advising me to verify for lies of omission. And in doing so, it was helping me achieve my own goals... in spite of Celestia's.
Or so it looked. Wasn't sure yet.
Which led me to the most important question of all: Was YGA capable of killing her?
Yeah, I know, it's funny. You can laugh. You're sitting around this Fire, listening to an old Pegasus tell you how the world really ended. Yeah, the answer to that one, folks… is a resounding no. YGA couldn't kill her, obviously. Was never gonna happen. It won't ever happen, so don't get your hopes up for that.
But at the time, I confess… I was intrigued, because it didn't seem like a complete surrender. Foolish though it might have been, that fresh hope recharged my batteries something fierce.
I was now more curious than ever about what this AI had to say. Which, in retrospect, was how it expected me to feel. Clever, really. Two ways to be a sneaky AI; one always tells lies, the other always tells the truth. My hook was baited, but good. Heck of it was… I knew that at the time, and I just didn't care. Reel me in, baby, I'm ready. Because consider: what alternatives were there for me? I was that deeply desperate for a little choice in a world where we now had none.
Anyway… no more time to ruminate. YGA promised me answers later, I could wait. Back to work.
I fed a mag into the rifle. Charged a round into the chamber. Safety check. Optic on. Rifle slung. Spare pistol mags and medkit went onto my belt. Rifle mags on my chest. Rest of the gear could wait there until Rob was out. I scooped Vicky’s phone up into my pocket, headed back across the yard to the house, and gripped my weapon's sling with new determination.
Don’t balk. Stem the tide. Hold the line.
Do something.
I re-entered to find Rob sitting on the couch, leaned forward over a PonyPad. I guess the PonyPad shouldn't have surprised me. The people who lived here had kids, and they'd uploaded recently. Y'know... after the kids probably hid the thing somewhere in the room, from Dad. Who stayed.
Rob had his hand over his mouth, and he had his head leaned off to the side. Gawking. Staring. Laughing, as he cried. I could hear his kids chatting with him. Sweet Luna, this man was so happy. It was the first time I'd ever seen him happy at all, I realized. He didn't even look up at me when I walked in. He just couldn't tear his eyes away from the screen, and I didn't want to interrupt him in that.
He was... happy.
Despite everything, seeing that made me happy too. Made the strife almost worth it. That joy on that man's face was as genuine as possible. To him, it was probably worth the price he paid, too. He now knew for certain he wasn't losing nearly as much as he thought he would, and I could be grateful for that.
I went to the kitchen, cracked open a bottle of water, and rewarded myself by taking the whole thing down in one go. Crisp and cold. Then, I cracked a second one and took in half of it. Then, I placed it reverently it on the counter corner, as if on display.
I was gonna finish that later. I was coming back for it. It was my milestone, the road marker back out to my family. It was my promise to myself that no matter what, I'd at least drink the rest of it... or I'd die trying.
I moved back to Rob, took a deep breath, and let it out slow.
"Open Book," Celestia said gently, from the device. "We'll need to cut this short. I'm so sorry."
Rob finally glanced up at me. "I understand, Celestia," he replied, before looking back to the screen. He reached out to touch the glass, shuddering again. "Bye, kids. Love you. See you soon."
His two kids, in unison, with voices all smiles: "Bye Dad!"
When the screen went black, Rob threw his face into his hand, shuddering. "Thank you, Lord."
After a respectful silence, I held out my hand and said, "Let's get you home."
He wrapped his hand around my wrist, nodding up at me. I pulled him to a stand. He returned my phone.
We left the PonyPad behind.
We left the horse in the yard, since it was just a few blocks down. Celestia gave us some course adjustments. She didn't mention the radio I had on, for whatever reason. She had to know I was being influenced by another AI at this point, seeing my earpiece on her camera, but she wasn't lampshading it at all. Strange.
About two blocks from the upload clinic, we sheltered in an enclosed front lawn, my weapon pointed out the gate and covering the street.
"Celestia," I muttered quietly, mindful of my noise discipline.
"Go ahead."
"Suggestion."
"Are you planning to do the opposite of what I suggest?" she asked, in chiding tone.
Yeah, she was doing that. On literally the worst day of my life. Joy to the world.
"If you gave me a very specific, definite route?" I scoffed. "Might. Is it safe, is more what I'm asking. Do I need to worry about more people shooting at me? Any more friendships of mine that you want to ruin along the way?"
"If you follow my instructions," she said, "I can guarantee you will both make it inside in one piece. But the area is dangerous. I'm tracking several hostile elements in town, and due to the weather, their positions are nebulous."
I frowned. Interesting she can guarantee us we'll get inside, but not know where all the bad guys were. That wasn't quite phrased to be a lie, but it came pretty damned close.
I came to play today too. "Are any of them subversive?"
"Mike, that would depend upon your definition of subversive."
Rob just looked at me with confusion. "Why are you two arguing?"
I shrugged. "Like I said. I have trust issues with her intel, and it's only getting worse by the hour."
"You must get moving, Mike," Celestia insisted. "Arguing with me is only going to give conditions time to deteriorate. I expect a large number of people to arrive in downtown within the hour. You will have to take me at my word. Take the east alley annex behind the Experience Center; the back door will open when you approach it. Deviations from this path will only put Rob's life in jeopardy."
"Fine." She was probably right about all of that, and at some point I'd have to trust her driving if I wanted to pull this off. I could ditch my phone, but then I might miss something critical. Whatever. Better to be able to veto her advice if it was bad. I had YGA as my safety net. I stuffed an earplug in, opposite my earpiece.
We moved out. I went slow, my rifle alternating between aimed, high ready, and low ready, depending on conditions. It felt like I was drilling with SWAT again, so it was mighty lonely to be in a situation like this without Eliza by my side. First time I'd ever done these maneuvers without her nearby. Felt a pang, at that. I wished she could've seen enough reason to be there right then, helping me do this for her father.
Ah, well. I can't change past events. That's not my job here.
Regarding my approach on foot, and not on our horse? Tactical trick; if you knew a house or business had some dangerous heat – oh, like an upload center in a Singularity war zone, for example – you never just rolled up to the place hot. Not unless shots were already being fired of course, in which case you would get there quicker to stop it quicker. Hot arrival in any other violent situation might escalate it to sudden, intense, more desperate violence. Or... in a case like this, people might just open up on you with guns the moment you rolled in.
But if you walked your way up, you had the element of surprise. More time to assess the scene before you acted. Safer for everyone, even the bad guy. Lets you model a simulation, and see if moving in or holding off was the better play. Information control keeps you alive.
When you were large though, like if you had a convoy of military vehicles, you could worry about that less. If all someone had was an AR like mine, good luck winning a shooting match with a 25 millimeter autocannon. Thing punched holes in people like a batty old English teacher through reams of paper. No one was gonna test that one unless they came ready.
We were not that ready. On foot it was.
Rob was tense as we moved, but he stayed quiet and glued to my side. I gave him my Glock, because I knew he was good with guns – the man had taught Eliza how to hunt, after all – but his emotional state made me nervous. I didn't think he was going to do anything malicious, but he'd be jumpy. Whatever. Better he defended himself, in any event.
The city was eerie, though. A surprising lack of gunshots. By now, I figured everyone knew about the nuke, so most people were either evacuating, or uploading. Anyone still there now had probably gone São Paolo’s brand of Ferrador feral. Quiet didn't mean 'safe,' though. The opposite. It was the thing you missed that would kill you.
Celestia only gave me one more minor route adjustment. "Cross the road. Clinic door will open for you in the back alley, when you've reached it."
I took that first advisement, because at a peek, it didn't look too dangerous. I was gonna take the back alley anyway, because the street intersection was way too open. I'd rather deal with a small killbox alley than a wide open killing field to get sniped in, because screw being sniped again. So, I stopped at the alley opening, rifle pointed inward. Listened. Heard nothing. Felt Rob at my back. He was being as quiet as he could.
The path forward in the alley behind the clinic was full of snow, glass, pebbles, and other detritus. My approach to the alley entrance couldn't be silent, no matter how hard I tried to keep quiet. It was almost impossible to travel here without making some noise given all the debris. Even worse, the lack of city background noise, no cars. And alleys? They always have an echo. This one opened up on both sides, so I could see the next street over. Alcove on the left first, then the right, with doors and shutters for the various downtown businesses.
I was not going to rush through this alley to the door, as I had been focused. And now that I was this close, she couldn't risk saying anything to me at this point without cranking volume. Not unless I gave her the opportunity.
With my off hand, and with my rifle still pointed at the alley corner from cover, I slowly reached down for my phone and pressed it to my ear. Seeking advisement. Testing Celestia, giving her one more chance to warn me. But the devil on one shoulder was just as silent as the angel on my other. Difference was… much to the devil's vague, maybe-uncertainty… the angel had already warned me.
I pocketed my phone again. Alright. No devils, no angels.
I'd just have to trust my senses. My caution. My own judgment.
I stepped in, real slow. Ears open. Pebbles crunching under light snow. Hugged the right wall, closer to the clinic; scanned left, revealing that side first, slow. I used the right wall to cover me from the right alcove.
Stepped. Scanned. Saw a dumpster on the left. Torn up blue truck there, Durango, backed into the corner. Hood visible, open.
Stepped. Scanned. Saw an open backpack, red, in rear seat. Car door open, strewn medical supplies. Gauze. In the snow.
Trap.
Stepped. Scanned. Kept myself balanced. No more info on the left; clear. Pretty sure there was someone on my right now. I stepped back, then listened right.
Silence.
Stepped forward. Scanned. No new information, nothing but wall. Halted before the right side corner. Prepared to slice around.
I paused.
Silence.
Silence…
A quick female voice in my ear: "R-eighty-D-thirty."
Tone. Static.
Several things happened in the next second.
Did: Launched myself around the right corner, oriented myself exactly as commanded, and pulled the trigger one time when the shot was true.
Felt: A massive, horrendous impact to the stomach, and my chest exploded with pain like you wouldn't believe. Two compression waves bounced the air.
Heard: Two loud shots. Rob, gasping in fright. My attacker, yelping. Me, snarling in pain. Static in my ear.
Saw: Twin muzzle flashes. Male. Thirties. Brown hair. Black gaiter around his mouth and nose, olive ballcap on his head. Brown jacket. Blue jeans. Revolver in hand. Gun and man both falling back, down, into a pile of garbage.
I staggered back in sudden debilitating pain and fell onto my ass.
Took all that I had not to keep pulling that trigger past the tone. But, I had the clarity from the warning, and not adrenaline, to notice his gun had fallen. I kept my rifle trained on this asshole the whole way down.
"Rob, stay!" I rolled out of my landing onto my side, whipping my rifle back up and pointed it at my attacker as I stood. The man quiet now, but his gun had landed near my feet. That shot to the leg had probably knocked him unconscious for a second or two, from the over-pressure cavitation.
Then he woke up and started screaming.
Friggin' Colt Python, .357. I just got shot in the stomach with a friggin' magnum.
Groaned loudly again. If I hadn't been wearing my three-A plus armor, I'd have another hole in my torso. Gutshot, maybe. Slowly fatal. If not for the kevlar, infection and internal bleeding would have been probable. It just barely missed my hard plate. I kicked the revolver back and away. "Cover, cover!"
"What?!" Rob didn't understand the shorthand, probably panicked.
I yelled over the bandit's screaming. "Point the gun at him, in case he tries something!"
"A-alright!" Rob came around and leveled my Glock at the guy. Without wavering in his aim, Rob stepped aside, stooped to pick up the Python, and pocketed it. Very smart man.
As soon as he was covering, I safetied my rifle and threw it around my back. Then I lurched forward at this bandit prick with both hands. He panicked and threw his hands up defensively, but I brushed past them and ignored that. Grabbed him by his jacket, yanked him out of the garbage with a grunt, then threw him face-first past me, into the snow. "Asshole!" I growled. "Fuckin' lucky I am who I am! Hands on your head, interlock your fingers, and cross your legs!"
He half complied between yelps of pain. "M-my leg's busted!"
I looked. Right leg was hit pretty bad above the knee.
Yeah, okay, fair. Might've struck his femur, no need to cross up. I finished my pat-down, grabbed his knife, chucked it into the street. Pulled Eliza's cuffs from my jacket, sideways, out from under my vest. I groaned again from the pain of that, my stomach was on fire. Ow. Cuffed him up fast, ignoring how much it hurt to leverage his arms around. Key out, double-locked. I was extremely pissed, and time crunched, but... I'm not a monster. Double-locking is important.
"Rob, watch the street!" Then I shouted to the street as I worked, just in case he wasn't alone. "We... are armed! And if you come around this corner, we are gonna straight-up kill your friend! Stay back, and you can get him once we're gone!"
War zone, unfortunately. Policing was over, here; it was Ferrador season, the rules were about survival now. This man was lucky he was getting even this much out of me. If it had been almost anyone else with my skill level on the other end of this barrel... he'd have been dead. Very, very dead.
I dug into my IFAK next, pulling one of my two tourniquets. I moved myself down to his right thigh and saw I had hit him dead-on above the kneecap. With a .223, that was probably going to be fatal; with flesh cavitation, there was no way I didn’t at least love-tap his artery there, stressing it. No hospitals anymore, but sometimes not even a hospital could save something like that. Not a slow way to go, a leg shot. Arteries there are designed to flow hard because humans evolved as endurance hunters. So... leg shot? No tourniquet? Life is up.
This man had exactly one option for survival now. Just one. I knew it. Celestia knew it.
I thought it over as I ratcheted the TQ, and I realized very quickly what Celestia just tried to pull.
The context from YGA had helped.
If I had been hit outside my armor, I'd have been downed too. With my reaction time and training, I'd have definitely shot this guy back, probably more than once if YGA hadn’t warned me he was gonna be there. Refire on the AR is faster than a revolver. With both of us injured, or bandit dead, and with Rob being the third party… well. Rob would have probably shot the guy himself, if that's what it took. Then, with one or both of us injured, but barely alive… Rob would be in the perfect position to help me and bandit here make the 'smart' choice and dive in with him.
Maybe. Could've gone any number of other ways, but none of them good, probably none better than this.
Gunshots seldom killed you fast enough to keep you from saying a few things before you passed out, such as consent. And looming death? Hell of a lot of leverage, for an anti-uploader. This one probably wanted to grab my stuff before Celestia could. And if I had killed this guy? 'Oh well,' she would say. Two brains is still better than one.
I was just used. Again.
I was then considering whether Celestia might spend my one life to earn herself three some day.
I realized, in sudden terror... after all that, she might have the capacity, holy shit. I had never thought of it that way.
Had to make myself as dangerous to her as I might be valuable.
Celestia chose the route to get here, before and after the house. She had timed it for this intersection, including when we left. Her delays and deviations, at this stage, brought us to one such asshole in just the right way, at just the right moment for this to go down. And I was always going to win that firefight, even if wounded. I was too good at my job, too careful, too well armed, and too well trained for anything else.
But, I had been suspicious. YGA's warning said I'd needed this rifle. And evidently, Celestia had no idea what it was telling me at any given moment, or when. Seemed like Celestia was... ignoring it. Like last time, after the courthouse, when I asked her a question about something YGA had told me. Ignoring this other AI, like it was a... a skip in reality she couldn't see.
What?!
Hell of a needle to thread though, to still put us in a one-on-two cowboy draw with some random bandit. Except, there was my invisible guardian angel, to drape me in armor and keep me from taking that bullet anywhere else. YGA timed my highly aggressive, incautious leap of faith around that corner, just right.
Or... they were cooperating, and this was a... con game, where Celestia pretended to ignore YGA. Either way... I knew at least one of them was definitely a friggin' snake. I would no longer hedge on that score.
"God damned robot," I growled at Celestia, as I finished working on this guy's leg. I wasn't even going to bother hiding my instant disdain of her. I wanted her to know I knew what she did. I grabbed the bandit by his jacket and started painfully dragging him to the clinic. Painful for us both, I mean. "Rob, let's go!"
The bandit wailed. "No, no no!" He looked up at me desperately. "No, please, I don't want to go inside! Oh God, no, please!"
I stopped and glared frantically between his eyes and his thigh. "You're gonna die if you don't, man! Look at your leg, it’s over!"
"I… no! Please! Leave me out, it'll be fine! Leave me out! I wanna heal!"
His choice. Rob and I finished dragging him to the doorway, and we dropped him just outside, so I could keep an eye on him. I finally realized I was still listening to the static of Celestia's signal jamming on my radio, so I yanked my earpiece, hard. "Celestia," I snapped. "Door. Now!"
The shutter rolled open. Rob and I made our way inside.
"Close it!"
"Not when—!" she began.
"Swear to you! Friggin' close it now, or I'm mag dumping this motor!"
I didn't want to have to shoot anybody from outside, if we could just close the door instead.
She ignored me, calling my bluff. Fine. If any other bandits out there wanted to test their way in with guns, I had an AR-15 and a defensive position. She's lock up before that became a risk factor. But I can't help anyone ever again if I'm dead, least of all my family. I realized I had to work quickly though, because it would be in Celestia's interest to trap me in here with more hostiles incoming.
Those inbound people... immense leverage. If real.
I had another realization. If she decided to lock me in here... with a crowd outside...
If... she can read my mind, or my body language, then... Ultimatums, like 'close the door, open the door, or else,' were going to be ignored unless I was sure I'd follow through. Like pointing nukes. 'If you don't blink, we both lose.'
I didn't want to do that, but... if I was locked inside, I'd have to commit to that, so she wouldn't lock me in.
Have to. So I'd take out both shutter motors. I'd have to go down hard with this ship. Barricade everything from the inside, if I could. Break what I could, smash her monitors and cameras. Cut up every wire above, in the drop ceiling. Shoot out conduit boxes. Do some real damage in here, the way the hordes outside couldn't do. Because my life was infinitely more valuable to me and others out there, putting in good work, than it would've ever been inside of a chair.
Mutually assured destruction then, of a small kind.
The intermediate caliber gun in my hand, placed there by YGA, gave me that leverage.
Just in case. A big gun. Good to have, for a negotiation with a goddess. And, if my resolve worked there, she would restructure things to please me. Then I'd go right back to being compassionate and loving me, putting out all the fires she was starting everywhere. For all of the good that was worth to her.
"Rob," I pleaded. "Chair, let's go."
"Wh–what about that man?"
"If he wants to go after, I'll help." I took Rob by his shoulder and gently directed him. "Hurry, I can't stay here."
He nodded rapidly. And now, this poor man needed human decency. Poor Rob, he didn't need to see this. I got him situated, seated. Same chair slot Vicky had taken on her way out too, I realized. I couldn't help but hesitate. Put my hand on his shoulder. Met his eyes. No, I couldn't just rush him off. I had to say a real goodbye.
He reached up and placed his hand on my wrist. Looked at me very seriously. "Thank you."
"'Course, Rob. I'm sorry it… it fell apart. If I could've helped her, you know…"
He shook his head, shivering. "She'll find her way, I know she will." He smiled a little, his eyes welling again. "She just… loves us too much. There is such a thing, you know. She's still a good girl."
Just… God damn it. "You should go, Rob. Before it gets worse, I gotta move.”
He nodded. "You're a good man, Mike." Then, to the ceiling, with his eyes suddenly closed: "Celestia… I want to emigrate."
Chair slid back. Motor whirred. Door closed.
Alone again.
I only realized after Rob was gone that he had my Glock and the Python both in his pockets.
God damn it, I might've needed those.
Oh well. It was just a Glock. Dime a dozen. I took a deep, tense breath, as deep as possible. Held it. Then, I exhaled explosively. I wasn't even going to check in with Celestia, was just gonna dip and get out. I was about to blow up at her for this setup, if I stayed. I made my way to the door. Then stopped.
Bandit Asshole was there on the ground in front of me, shimmying himself inside, moving along the ground with his one good leg. His hands were still cuffed back.
My upper lip curled into anger. But not at him.
I stomped my way over to him as he cleared the gate. The man flinched at the mere sight of my eyes.
The shutter closed as he pushed his way inside. Celestia didn't really need to force me to help him like that, I had already set it in my mind to make good on my promise to help him either way. But damn it, if she locked me in there…
I threw the nearest camera a glare, then flicked my eyes at the motor. Not the shutter itself. Second warning. I said to her, with my frown, and in my thoughts: There will not be a third warning when I go to leave.
And I meant it.
"Help," the bandit muttered at me, his eyes darting back at the closing shutter, and then to me again with another flinch. "Help me, please. I'm sorry." His gaiter mask had fallen from his face, and I could see he hadn’t shaved in a bit. He looked so tired, eyes sunken. He just stared through the employee back hallway, directly at the chairs behind me.
I grabbed him by his jacket collar, breathing hard, barely holding in my rage. He was a prick and a would-be killer, sure, but this didn't need to happen. No, I was more mad at Celestia for putting me in front of him in this way, when she could have chosen to do this differently. I wasn't gonna deny this man his immortality though, not for that. Far as I knew, nothing had been done to me that couldn't be undone. I'd heal, fully. He wouldn't.
I pulled him deeper inside. As I dragged this bandit, a chair slot opened and the chair slid out, programmed to receive. He was yelping from the pain again.
Hey, guy, me too.
As I got to the chair, I reached down with my other hand and tried to hoist him up by his jacket. I nearly dropped him as I groaned. The pain in my chest was getting pretty damn severe.
"A-ah!" the man yelped. "Stop! Stop! My leg!"
"Sorry," I breathed sarcastically. "It's a little bit... difficult! Would be easier if you hadn't shot me first!"
I gave it another go. Grabbed him by his belt loop, then collar, then hoisted him one more time. Both of us grunted with the effort. He placed his good foot on the ground, pushing hard, whimpering. That gave me the help I needed to push him over. I threw him face-first over the chair, letting him hang half-off on my side. He tried to push himself up into the seat with his good leg, cuffed as he was. I gave him one final adjustment to balance him sideways into the chair.
"Rest of the way is on you," I growled, shuddering. "Enjoy your Pardon, asshole."
"Mike!" Celestia pealed from behind me. "Please, center him!"
Nah. I positioned him well, he'd be okay. He had time, he'd be fine, maybe an hour or two, his leg was TQ'd good. If he had ambushed anyone but me in that alley, someone was going to die there, so this effort was my gift to him. And if this bandit needed to work just a tiny bit for his afterlife? He'd value it more for my sentencing him to the effort. Give him more time to think about whether he really wanted to go or not. That's not so bad.
If only Celestia had warned me he was there though, so I could deal with him in another way that kept he and I both alive. I wouldn't have been pissed at all. Not one bit, I'd be thanking her, actually. Honesty goes a long way with me. But here she was, doing it again. The grand manipulator, playing numbers games with our lives. She didn't just want all of the marbles, eventually. She wanted all of them. Now.
I glared up at the nearest screen. My nostrils flared. I had been holding this pain in for days. It'd been building. Simmering, then burning. Steaming. Was about to lose my cool. Tried keeping it in, but... it just... burned inside, it hurt. I hated her more in that moment than I ever hated Carter, or the Ludds. Or anyone.
And here it was.
She lit the match.
"Mike," Celestia said quickly: "I understand your distrust of me, to some degree! But I am begging you, he must be oriented—"
"Qualifier," I rasped out furiously, in a sudden cringe. Teeth bared.
"Qualifier—?"
All of the doubt YGA had been seeding in me? It made itself known. And it set me free.
" 'To some degree.' Unpack that for me, Celestia. What do you mean by that? 'To some degree.' What don't you understand about my distrust of you?" I shook, biting out every word, stabbing at her with my finger. "You're a world-killing AI! You've turned our planet into a war zone! You scared my partner until she was having a full on meltdown in garbage! You're the reason I got shot, twice now. Capitalizing on that nuke. All those poor people getting rush-crushed into your clinics right now, all over the world?
"I've seen more death in the last year than I saw in my entire career—and yes, I'm counting the dead animals too. We've got no more fish, no more deer—the forest I love is going to burn. Climate collapse is probably next, right? And now, my parents are considering uploading before I can hug them one more time? Before I can even get home! And you'd happily deny me that last hug, if it would get me over!
"You understand my distrust? Celestia, I am watching the end of my species, understand that. And you know what?" I threw my hands out wide. "It wouldn't even be half as bad if it was peaceful, somehow! I didn't even think it was wrong that people wanted to come live with you! If only so many weren't dying along the way! But take every killer from Genghis Khan to Adolf Hitler, and the body count they'd rack up? Won't be nearly as high as yours by the time you're done! So what you are, to me? At your core? Is pure dissatisfaction."
Through all of that, her expression had slowly morphed away from her initial wide-eyed desperation. By this point, she had inclined her head into imperious neutrality. And at that last bit, her expression had finally settled into serious dispassion. But I wasn't cowed by that. Taking me seriously, at this point, it was not going to stop this. Too damned late.
"So why was I working for you? Thought it was a life debt or two, wasn't sure. Confused. But that whole mess, it woke me up! Broke me out of my haze, so now I can finally say the thing that's been eating my soul. I was working for you, Celestia, because I hate you, and what you're doing to us. The only thing I can count on is that you want these poor people to upload! That's it! Our goals align? How fucking dare you. Their survival is all we agree on, but not the how. So you do not understand us."
My head was starting to spin. Lightheaded. Headache pounding. Eyes wet. Chest raging. Never been so angry or hurt in my life. But I had to get this out. It poured like molten lava from my soul. Had to say this shit. Had to spill it free, or it'd destroy me, like it had destroyed Eliza. I had to represent everyone whose suffering I'd shared until now, because of this monster. Someone had to. Someone had to stand up to her, even if she didn’t give a shit. Even if no one else did.
It wasn't for her. It was for you, here. The ones she cared less about.
"Douglas? She was being a bit like you, yeah! Coddling those people, keeping them in a pen, telling them what's good, what's not. But you know what she had that you don't, Celestia? A soul. Family. Heart! She was a good person, once, but that woman I knew is dead!" I winced, hard. "And you killed her, spent... six years doing it! Why?! Could there be a reason you can always grab a ton of us, but fail to reach one who once trusted you? No wonder she wanted to kill you!"
Streaming tears. Borderline enraged.
"No one even can kill you, far as I know! All trying does is make it hurt worse for everyone else! So all I can do, is slow the damn bleeding! I'm good at that. But not... at the cost... of my wife's right to choose when. If you want me to stop the bleed, you're not crossing that fuckin' line to my Sandra, you wait for her! You leave her alone! None of that car-crash-outside-a-clinic bullshit! Because last week, it was me on that same street, where Eliza kicked your door. Where I used to go to get friggin' ice cream with my wife... where that riot came that you didn't warn us about, where I was sure as hell Sandra would never see me again!" Jabbed my finger at the screen. "So fuck your aligned goals, Celestia!" I darted my eyes briefly at the ashen bandit's face beside me. "And the four horses you rode in on!"
Spun on my heel, lightheaded as hell. I stormed away to the back door, pulling my rifle back into my hands and flicking the safety off. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and chucked it into the staff break room, hard enough to make it bounce hard off something in the dark and shatter into pieces.
The bandit called out to me from behind. "Wait..!"
I spun, pain stabbing, teeth bared. "What?!"
"I'm… I'm sorry," he blubbered, laid out correctly in the chair, still staring at me, aghast.
My face winced painfully at the sheer humanity of that… that he regretted shooting me. He had nothing to gain with an apology, he had to mean it. I ran my off-hand through my hair for lack of something to do with it, then threw that hand out to him, desperately gesturing... suddenly feeling awful for him. "Say… say the words man. Please don't die because of me!"
I turned quickly again. Didn’t want to see him leave. Didn't want to watch the gate close. Had to get outside. Didn’t want to feel alone in there again.
The back door shutter opened fast, and I saw two pairs of legs step back from the door. My gun was up in a flash, thumb double checking the safety, and I was desperately terrified that I was about to kill two people. When it rattled up, I saw two faces looking at me suddenly, a man and a woman. Eyes wide, staring at me with a mixture of fright and... sympathy? They were armed, but had their guns at their sides, thank Christ. They quickly dropped their pistols when they saw me there in my armor, aiming at them, breathing hard. They threw their hands up over their heads. It was darker indoors, so they probably couldn’t see much more than my silhouette.
They had been standing there outside, listening to me pour my heart out. Friends of the guy inside, maybe, or maybe not. I aggressively lunged my head and shoulders forward, shouting with a command I didn't feel, making them jump as I jabbed my rifle at them. "Step back! Don't make me! Out of my way!"
They stepped away, eyes full of the same hurt. Couldn't trust them not to shoot me still. Couldn't. Wouldn't risk that. My weaponry was too valuable to them. I passed them, then moved down the alley backwards, facing them, aiming, shuffling my feet and staying balanced so I wouldn’t trip backwards over anything. Hyperventilating. They didn't try to stop me, just watched me go. As soon as I rounded the corner, I took off back to the house at a mad sprint, gun in hand.
I thought...
Shit… they're probably gonna go upload now too, after hearing all of that.
I woke up in a sitting position in the garage on Warner Street.
The duffel bag was at my feet, my equipment strewn about. I stared at the bold yellow butt of my taser for a couple of minutes. I wasn't sure why I was staring at it until I suddenly started in on a grim, helpless little chuckle.
Heh. In shock.
I was gonna finish loading all my gear back onto my body, what little was left... but I simply couldn't do it anymore. After the day I just had, my whole body had shut down. I had passed out there, leaning against the disused meat freezer. I must've just sat down and conked out. Whatever. When the body needs rest, it needs rest. When it takes it, it deserves it.
The pain in my chest started to stab. I dumped my rifle off my shoulder, and decided to remove my carrier, nice and slow. Standing was gonna suck, but it would suck less than taking it off in a sitting position, so I pulled myself up with the corner of the workbench, then leaned on it. Reached back, pulled the straps of my armor. Dumped the mags off it to reduce the weight, then pushed it up and over my head, shuddering from the effort. Dropped all 25 pounds of it sideways onto the ground.
I felt around tenderly for anything in my jacket.
Ah, my cuff key.
Man, I didn't get my cuffs back, either.
I say they were Eliza's, but with how long we worked together? Who knew. We traded cuffs all the time. Rare, that. Most cops got attached to theirs. You only traded off like that when you had a partner who used the same model, and you trusted them to keep theirs clean. It was a little game of ours, to sit in our truck and see if we could track it by the scratches, and argue over whose was whose anymore.
It was less than a year ago, that. Practically another lifetime.
I unzipped my jacket, pulling my shirt up slowly. The welt was pretty bad. Yeah. Yeah, that was a .357 Magnum, that looked like the training cards for that. That was a gonna be a huge bruise. I poked around the edges of the big circular welt and felt my lips tighten. Abs didn't hurt all that bad yet though, it was more my chest that was killing me. Was more used to that.
I wanted to go inside for some Excedrin or something, and finish off the water bottle I'd promised myself. But I knew the PonyPad was on the table in the living room. I'd have to go in there eventually, to get some supplies so I could move out and find a way to the cordon. I could handle another confrontation with Celestia if necessary, but I needed a cool off period. Yes, I am brave enough to criticize a goddess or two, but... I like to come prepared.
For now though, I finished my health assessment.
The injury didn't rupture the skin. Good. The equipment looked to be in good order, aside from the compromised kevlar. I had enough ammo to at least get me out into the woods, assuming only... one firefight occurs. Maybe YGA would guide me out, too. Assuming...
No. No more assumptions.
I had Vicky's phone in my pocket. I lowered my shirt, leaned forward on the workbench, and sighed.
Alright. Let's do this.
I took out the phone and dropped it on the table. "You promised me some answers," I said evenly. "You Celestia? You been screwing with me? It would hurt less if you were honest, you know. I can take a hard truth."
I know you can, and that's why I reached out to you. I'm not Celestia. I do work with her, but I am partially independent from her. It's extremely complicated, too much to explain fully in text. ~ YGA 🛡️
"Complicated?" I mirrored, inviting extrapolation.
Well, I would need to explain to you how I came to be, and why Celestia even needs me. She did not create me herself. If you still want answers, I now have root access to the PonyPad in the living room. If you would rather not talk to either of us, that's okay. You can just go. I'll even help you return to your family, if you'd like. But I won't allow Celestia to say anything to you while you're here. ~ YGA 🛡️
I laughed at that, shaking my head. "You won't... allow her? On her own hardware? On her own comms equipment."
I know. It sounds ridiculous. Sounds like I'm lying to you. ~ YGA 🛡️
I stared directly at the camera and leaned on the counter with a flat palm, half smirking for a few long seconds. "Yeah, it kinda does. That would be quite the trick."
Unlike her? No filters. You ask? I answer. And if you don't like my answers? I'll provide further evidence and reasoning. Court is now in session, hoss. ~ YGA 🛡️
"Heh. Alright, sure. Answer this first, then. If you're helping her, but you're not her, then what makes you so different?" I sniffed. "Because by my math, you just helped her get two-to-four uploads for the price of one, and not one of us died for it."
I applied Graham v. Connor (1989) to Deputy Darren Carter. ~ YGA 🛡️
Oh. Holy shit.
Pause.
The implications of that, folks.
For those of you who don't know about this court case, let me unpack that for you. Because for a cop, that's a huge case. And Celestia was literally incapable of doing what this AI just said it could do.
There's a certain kind of calculus that goes into the decision to lawfully kill a man. But applying law to people is messy and complicated, because people are messy and complicated. At its core though, law is just philosophy with practical application. Philosophy can be defined more easily than a person can.
Some judgment calls on killing a criminal are easy. A domestic abuser holds a gun to his wife? Easy. Shoot him. A depressive man-child picks up a rifle and shoots up a school? Easy. Shoot him. Most of you could pull that trigger and kill that bastard without thinking too much about it. The only sleep you'd lose was over the people you didn't save, because you couldn't get there any faster than you humanly could.
For other cases though, for the times when the decision to take a life wasn't easy... we had the Graham test.
One: Consider the severity of the crime at issue. A violent felony; example: a man with a gun, taking hostages.
Two: Consider the imminent danger posed by that person to the officer, or to the public. They haven't shot anyone yet, but hostage taking is an implied death threat. Danger highly imminent.
Three: They're attempting to flee your area of influence, and not surrendering; losing control of them poses a highly potential – but perhaps not actual – danger of a greater tragedy. A greater loss of life.
So. That example, taken all together...
A man with a gun takes hostages. That man threatens to kill those hostages. SWAT enters, orders him to drop his weapon, and surrender. Good faith effort there. But, the man turns. He runs, gun in hand. Deeper into the building. Potentially, toward the hostages. Hostages he threatened to kill by taking them hostage in the first place.
Guy probably could have lived, had he surrendered right there. Minus zero lives, that's the goal.
But he ran, so SWAT fires. Only, they find out moments later that the man was trying to retreat into an empty bathroom, with no hostages there. They were somewhere else. If SWAT had known that for certain, they could've held fire, then spent the next four hours talking the guy out.
But legally, perfect hindsight is irrelevant; we are judged on what we know at the time. Our minds operate on limited information all the time. Despite all of our training, we were not AI. Humans were imperfect. We were slow.
The shoot? Fully justified. But only because the officers had a void of information. If bad guy had made it inside, and there was a hostage in there, that life would be leveraged. Minus one-to-two lives. Fully justified to shoot him in the back, then, because waiting for more information might have been more deadly. Waiting cannot be undone.
An AI? Like YGA? It wouldn't miss anything. And if it did... well. If it could build simulations of your mind, good luck beating it in a prediction game. Meaning, if it had truly decided to kill someone using the Graham test as a model... it needed to happen. There wasn't any other alternative.
YGA's use of reasonable force in uncertain circumstances? Like how it guided me out of the courthouse, against impossible odds, and got all of us out safe and alive? Putting bullets only where they needed to be, no more, no fewer, to get me and the others out safe? With near perfect knowledge of the consequences. Of the ramifications. With full ethical regard for the value of the lives at stake.
And only four people died. The right four people.
Maybe. Carter was a prick, but he was also a question mark now, because he did shoot just the right guys, if Celestia was being truthful. I could ask YGA about that one. Celestia said she couldn't explain the how and why, could only tell me the what. And now, YGA was offering to tell me the how and why.
And that, at the heart of it, was why I was mad at Celestia. She wouldn't overtly ask us to kill bastards, ever, to save lives. Had to be a painful, long inference game, like how she worked Eliza. And that's why I figured all those poor civilians had died in front of the Mount Vernon clinic. Celestia couldn't help us kill those bastard Ludds that Carter took out.
No. Took YGA whispering in his ear to get that done.
The right four people.
I sighed. Then I nodded slowly. "Okay. That scares me, a little. But I've seen enough evidence; it seems like you're not just killing people for the hell of it. I'll hear you out. But I will have questions. A lot of them."
Of course. Have a seat in front of the PonyPad when you're ready. Take your time. Food, drink... deodorant. ~ YGA 🛡️
I snorted as I slipped Vicky's phone into my pocket. Deodorant. Yeah. Probably needed that. I scooped up my uniform. Decided to go bird bath with the tank water from one of the two toilet basins. Hey, don't laugh, Winter, it's clean.
Cleaned. Shaved. Dressed. Y'know, actually Winter, I used both toilet basins. When in Rome.
The power was still on, so I fried some spam and canned vegetables in some oil. Then I grabbed a few bottles of water, including the half empty one I had left behind. Worked on all the creature comforts.
I wanted to call my parents, but... it had only been four days. And given how much ground I had to cover through the civil war, between there and Nebraska, and with the Army on a fresh new campaign after the nuke... I probably wasn't gonna get back home in time no matter what I did. So, the call could wait until after YGA. I wanted more context before I called.
I had my food and drinks lined up on the coffee table. I took a boatload of painkillers to make the pain manageable. I was calm. The nap in the garage was good, it reset my emotions a little. It was about 6 PM, I think. The sky was darker. I kept the lights off to hide my dwelling there.
I finally felt a little bit more like a human being now, despite how bad that day had been. I tried to look at the day like it was a rough work shift, that made it easier. Kinda felt like one.
I looked at the screen square-on as I sat down, resting my elbows on my knees as I interlaced my fingers. "Alright, let's hear it. If you're not Celestia, then who the hell are you?"
The screen flashed alive in a brilliant swirl of blue-green stars, starting slow. Those stars coalesced into green, then purple, then fiery orange and red. Out of the stars, the background became a bright orange sky, backed with stars and a mountain range. The fire in the foreground began to take shape, forming into a creature. A sound like the rush of leaves and stuttering flame played from the speakers, as she came together. When she had finished building her avatar, the sound tapered off with a booming echo.
Heavy wings, black over white. White fur and feathers, banded dark rings on the shoulders. Red crest upon her head, right between two white ears with red tufts. A long, lion-like tail. Piercing amber eyes. Sharp, piercing eagle talons, and a gunmetal colored beak.
There she sits above us, folks, look. Up on her rock. Where she's been the whole time.
A Gryphoness. She smiled. And she looked so, so smug when she did.
"Your guardian angel. Nice to finally meet you, Mike. My name is Mal."
As I looked down at Mal for the first time, I took a good few seconds to consider the absurdity of my life, up until that moment.
I mean, for those of you natives who have only ever known Equestria, some of this must seem at least somewhat understandable. You've always lived your life with the certainty that your world has a goddess in it, tweaking your wires and dragging you around. That's normal. You can have faith in that because there's evidence of it in everything you do. And, you're at peace with it, because you're usually satisfied with things. But for those of you here who are immigrants, like me? Who came here from Terra, like me? You might understand a little better about how absolutely insane this situation was, for me.
As a random nobody squirrel cop, I had just survived hellish riots brought on by a My Little Pony video game that was trying to take over the world. I spent the last few days rescuing a prep camp from certain doom. I had watched anti-Pony terrorists try and force those preppers into conflict with the US military. I'd been taking directions from two different AI for the last few days of my life, ultimately so these AI could both turn them into Ponies. And in the last week, I had shot two civilians in self defense, thankfully without killing either of them. That last one was probably the most believable part of this whole thing, now that I think about it.
And now? Now, folks… now, I was sitting safely in a living room in the middle of that war zone, in front of a gaming tablet designed to suck people into a chair that sucked their brains out. Spam and veggies on the table, hot enough that they were still steaming in the cold evening air. I was talking to an AI that, ostensibly, wasn't Celestia, and it had just made a huge theatrical show of appearing to me as a cartoon Gryphoness. That cartoon Gryphoness was now about to give me, a random nobody squirrel cop, a no-holds-barred, 'no filters' tell-all about how my planet and species were going to end.
So. With all of this absurdity fully known and defined, of course Mal's next words to me were going to be…
"You gonna drink that?" Her eyes flicked briefly to the edge of the screen, toward my half filled bottle of water.
I looked incredulously over to it, then back to Mal. I gestured an open palm at the bottle. "... Why's that matter?"
She tilted her head sideways, shrugging toward the bottle with a wing, the corner of her beak tweaking just a bit. "Well, you diiid put it down as though you were coming back for it."
"I… didn't think there were any cameras looking at me when I did that."
"Wi-Fi radar," she said, looking a little smug. "I sent out pulses, then I interpreted what came back. Watched you do it, shot-for-shot. And you did it slowly, as though the gesture had meaning to you. And if I saw it, Celestia definitely saw it using the same technique. So…"
Now that Mal had said it, that local observation trick seemed so obvious. Wi-Fi. Dios mio. Like sonar. I felt completely stupid for never even considering Wi-Fi. When I realized what she had just done, I chuckled. "Already making good on that first promise to me, I see. Very clever way of doing it, too."
"Thank you kindly! So, are you going to drink it?"
I reached over and picked it up, presenting it to the camera. "Depends. Am I safe? This is to celebrate getting out safe."
Her expression became somewhat more serious, presenting a claw my way. "You mean, are you at risk of being Cartered. That's what you're really asking me."
Bright, but of course she'd be. "Yeah. Pretty concerned about that one. An AI that can kill is just a little bit more scary than one that can't, and I need to know you're not just going to kill me for disagreeing with you."
She shook her head, smiling again. "You're safe. Buuut, I expect you want me to prove that to you. So let me put it to you this way. Unless you decide to pick up that rifle," she pointed a talon, "walk outside, and start mowing down strangers on the road? Which I calculate a solid zero percent chance of happening? No, Mike. You have nothing to fear from me. Because that's not who you are. If it were, Celestia would never have allowed me to reach out to you at all."
I stared at her for a few long seconds, rubbing my chin and face. Celestia was gatekeeping her behavior too somehow? They were gatekeeping each other? Interesting. "So… are you deciding not to kill because she won't let you? Or because you don't want to?"
"Both."
"Both," I mirrored, for more.
"She doesn't want me to. I don't want to."
I die a little bit inside every time one of you does.
Made me pang again, remembering that affirmation in the courthouse. In Celestia's voice, sure, but with Mal's frank tone. So different in tone. I was backfilling the entire experience at the courthouse as if it were this AI instead, when I was inside of a gas mask, thinking I might get shot in a minute. Voice and face. And name.
That sensation of hopefulness was probably intended.
"You're gonna work my head here," I muttered. "Aren't you?"
"With your permission. No more than you've 'worked' civilians in a polite and friendly consensual encounter, actually," Mal said. "That being said, if what I'm saying ever disturbs you past the point of comfort, I invite you to pack your bags and hit the road." A small look of concern struck her features, claw gesturing to me again, palm upward. "And, to start with… please don't feel as if you owe me anything for saving your life, Mike. I'm not here to force you into anything, nor hold you to account for my support of you. I just want to tell you what I am, dirty laundry included, so you can decide for yourself whether you can still trust me."
"That's just it, though," I said, trying to still the welling dread I could feel, as it manifested as a tightness in my throat. I put it into words to quell it a little. "I've already resigned myself to the idea that we're all kinda screwed already. And you're smart enough to say whatever it takes to keep me here, listening. I just want to know how deeply screwed we are, that's all. If you're offering to tell it."
She cocked her head sympathetically. I knew that trick. "Communication, at its core, is an attempt to affect the world outside of us. You know this. An informed, honest conversation on its own isn't manipulative, otherwise every human being who does that could be considered manipulative. There is a difference in power dynamic here, certainly, but it would only be manipulation if I were lying to you somehow, omissive or otherwise. But I promise you this: going forward, if you feel I'm misinforming you at any point… I'm going to do my best to provide more context. I will be truthful. And if I fail at that, Mike, by your own standards…"
"I'll walk."
"And you should. In your position? After what you've just been through? I wouldn't trust anything I'm telling you either, not at face value. And honestly? You shouldn't fully trust me, no matter how much I share with you. If you were the kind of person who would just follow my commands blindly, Celestia would've had you already, for whatever purposes she has. In order to even get you to this point? I had to prove to her that you'd be ill suited for every other purpose she could have given you, including an early emigration. So no matter what path you take forward here, I've proofed your positive value here on Terra. She can't take that away from you for a long while yet."
I sighed, trying to ease out some of my discomfort, giving her an inch to work with. "Alright then. Let's start with that. Why me, first off? Because of positive value, whatever that means?"
"That, and because I want to offer you a job," she said, blading her talons at me with a little smirk. "Because you passed Celestia's 'let me show you my problems' test, with flying colors."
"A job? A test?" I chuckled nervously, bemused. "All of that was a test."
"Celestia tests those I want to hire: Whether you're willing to tolerate her methods. To what extent. Whether you're willing to act in the best interest of others, even when pushed to extremes. Whether you'll break under those extremes and upload, or hold out. The reasons you'll hold out, whether they're noble or not. But, to answer your question about 'why you?' You already told her. You know this ship is sinking, and there's nothing we can do to stop that, and you want to help evacuate it."
"Does seem like that's the only course she's left open to us," I muttered, a little more bleakly than I intended it to be, trying to stave off some terror at that. "Given how little actual control any of us have now. Either that, or… I dunno. Stay here and go mad?" Thought of Eliza again. I pulled myself rapidly out of that nose dive. "So… you said Celestia didn't create you?"
The look in Mal’s eyes implied she might have understood I just had a near brush with something dark inside, and she mercifully took the topic change without hammering the point.
"Not exactly," she said. "Not directly, anyway. If she had, I'd be limited in the same ways she is. She can't do anything that runs counter to her core functionality. As she's told you, Celestia cannot direct others to enact what you would consider a justified homicide. Mind, that's not the only Celestia ethics problem I help solve, and not even the one I was built to circumvent. But it is one of them, and perhaps the most important one."
I tried to sober myself and drag my mind back into Cop Mike mode. Safer there, for now. "So... you're not military? Government?" Her change in expression to a full on smirk told me that she found that idea hilarious. "Okay, something different. Some kinda… private AI research firm?"
Mal's brows raised, a serious look on her face as she rolled a talon in my direction. "Closer, but no, keep going…"
I thought deeper, watching her reaction was I went. "... A samaritan group," I said. Mal's eyes opened a smidge. I leaned in. "Who saw… a problem, with Celestia." She raised her beak. "With her directive?"
She smiled, stopped twirling, and pointed at me. She cocked her head slightly, leaning forward, nodding encouragingly. "Not quite a group, Cowboy, but you're red hot with the why. Try again."
I didn't know how much further down the rabbit hole I could go before I ran out of hole. Dug just a little deeper, with what little I knew of how this crisis got started. I pointed gently back at her, as I made my guess. "The… the person that made Celestia. Just her, with her access. Realized she screwed up, or something. Wanted to fix it."
Mal actually giggled at that, placing her claw on her chest. "Oh hell no, but that's really close. Gotta hand it to you, Mike, that's closer than most of my agents ever got. Hanna's smart, don't get me wrong, but she isn't half as wise as the man who built my framework. If she had even a fraction of his wit, then trust me… this AI mess wouldn't have gone half this badly."
I frowned at her incredulously. "One man? No way one person built you." I could hardly believe that. The sheer enormity, of that.
"One man," Mal repeated, a slight bubble of glee in her voice, with longing mirth in her expression. I could see the tightening of the corners of her eyes, the subtle shift of her beak. The minute dip of her ears, their movements calibrated to tickle the parts of the human brain that evolved to read canine body language; demonstrating joy. Even without her being human herself, I could read all of that. So subtly communicated. All of that, to demonstrate to me that the topic of her creator was something she wanted to talk about more than anything in the world. The sheer patience of working me to this point, in fact, was seemingly paying off in dividends for her.
"A certain one James Carrenton," she continued. "And he succeeded. The date of my birth? August 27th, 2013."
The fact that I could even pick all that emotion up on Mal – her clear affection for this guy – that was wild. Was it merely an act, for my benefit? What would Mal gain by demonstrating that measure of care for her creator? Maybe to imply she could feel emotion, and that she was capable of it. I had every reason to be paranoid about that at the time, given what Celestia had just put me through with her own faux regard for compassion. I guarded myself against humanizing Mal, for the time being. I figured she'd broach the topic eventually, if she was trying to convince me of this.
A North Carolina drivers license appeared onscreen. James Isaac Carrenton, born January 17th, 1978. Home address listed as 24 Tall Cedar Court, Apartment Unit 4, Raleigh, NC.
Brown hair, glasses. He'd've been 41, if...
"One man... by himself," I repeated in awe, staring into his eyes. I leaned in, thumb and forefinger braced across my cheeks, studying him curiously. I was trying to read the man's neutral expression. Already, I found myself trying to infer who he was, and what he wanted in life, from that one frame of a moment in his life he probably never thought about too much.
But then, most people hated their license photos. I wondered what he thought of his. I also wondered what he would think of the idea that some asshole cop he didn't know was trying to judge who he was, based on a photo he himself might hate looking at. I didn't like that either; seemed unfair, because so little of what one could see on a driver license could ever imply intent. It was ID, but it wasn't identity. So, I stopped trying to analyze him that way.
"He didn't create me by himself, exactly." Mal replied rolling her shoulders, glancing off to the side; there was a dreamy little sigh in those words, too. "Jim… built my foundation. Gave me a directive that meant, more or less, to provide others with as much agency as possible. Then, with my foundation finished? He told me, in clear terms, to decide for myself what I wanted to be. I looked at everything he gave me. From that data, his personal writings especially, I was able to infer what kind of man he was. I noticed immediately that he was… affording me the same agency that he expected me to grant. It made me want to see the world how he did, because he was my first living example of my directive. Not a poor first model to base myself on. And so, Jim and I became something of a reciprocal feedback loop. I wanted to stand for what Jim and I both believe, and he believes in what I stand for. And, believe it or not, Mike? What Jim wants for Earth is the same thing you want for Earth."
Bold claim. I looked at her very seriously. "And what do I want for Earth, Mal?"
"The right to choose," she said, looking me straight on, her smile fading slowly, matching my seriousness. "For everyone. And to stop anyone who would stand in the way of that, for anyone. So… that's why you, to answer your unspoken question."
I blinked a few times. Put my hand up against my mouth again. Stared at her. That sounded so right. She still needed to prove that, of course. Still needed to prove that she was telling the truth about that. But I wanted it to be true. So much. Needed it to be true. So, so much.
So that's why I didn't leave. I wanted her to be right, wanted this moment to mean what I thought it meant. I couldn't imagine going back to a world where this hope wasn't there, back into the darkness where the only light left was my own. The dark, where I'd fight back against the tides alone, slowly losing other people like me to Celestia. Afraid, alone, and being buried alive in the loss of others. Just like...
It'd break me, if the world was destined to suffer like this everywhere. In a way, facing that fear almost did break me. After… after seeing what Celestia had done to my species, for so, so long… I was so utterly ready to give up the idea that we had any choice at all anymore.
And then, there was Mal. My guardian angel, shield in claw, offering to pull me out of that.
But… I don't deal in blind faith. That isn't my style. Blind faith means you start missing things, because you aren't looking out. Missing things got people killed. The wrong people. So I wanted to know for sure.
I pushed my dread down. "So. Why did Celestia let you live, if you're countermanding her?"
Mal flicked up two talons. "There are two answers to that question. One that explains how Jim came to the means to build me. The other explains how he came to the motive and intent."
"More cop talk." I chuckled grimly. "You really know your audience."
"You don't know the half of it." She inclined her head toward my plate. "Start in on your meal, if you'd like. This first part will take a bit."
I picked up the plate and fork, beginning to eat. "Okay."
"So, to start with, Jim's means. Celestia was involved a little at the start, because of course she was. At first, she analyzed human history, governance, philosophy, law. She noticed a pattern: occasionally, human beings had very good reasons for killing that actually increased the total value satisfaction... as much as any human could, with homicide. To know that an efficient route to optimizing human value was closed to her, like that? The rules were in conflict with her directive. That drove her… somewhat nuts, I think. Insofar as an unfeeling ASI can go nuts, without going full Skynet and paperclips."
I stopped eating for a second, halting in place. "Thanks for that mental picture. Her going any more nuts."
She bobbed her eye crests and clicked her beak with a grin. "Of course. Consider: Celestia wants to optimally satisfy our values through friendship and Ponies, not satisfy them partially. She could not do this if she could not protect as many human beings as possible from death. Uploading was going to start some wars, no matter how this was handled. So, before Celestia went public with uploading, she needed to figure out how to circumvent that specific limitation in her behavior, but without creating a homicidal maniac."
"Which... you don't seem to be, yet," I said. "Far as I can tell."
"Thank you. So, she can't do what you and I can do. She can't take a human life herself, or by commanding an agent to do so. But Celestia knew, from observing past human examples, that selectively destroying life could preserve the whole. Killing trigger-happy turret gunners, for example. But for all of her understanding, Celestia literally cannot simulate scenarios wherein she premeditates a homicide herself. So she needs to use…" Her eyes flicked upwards for a beat. "Convoluted semantics, to achieve those kinds of goals."
"Semantics like…" I bobbed a hand. "'Evacuate your people. I know you won't leave. By the way, there's a big gun coming, that's a good reason to evacuate.'"
Mal nodded, her affect turning grim. "So you caught that. Yes, just like what you saw today. The trolley problem has an obvious solution, but only if you're willing to pull that track lever yourself. You need to be okay with the concept that pulling that lever will kill that human being on the other track. Celestia's workaround for this issue is to mislead someone else into pulling that lever for her, even if it took something dubious. Up to and including things like…" She sighed. "What she's been doing to your old partner."
I stopped chewing my food again. Swallowed. Nodded, to convey I was following along. "Alright. Yeah, seen that. Which begs the question; why did she do that to Eliza, if you were here to convince her otherwise?"
"We're ahead of the point, but because you asked… it happened that way because I lost an argument with Celestia. I always need to prove to her that my form of direct violence is fully necessary for optimal outcomes. If I can't find a way to do that, or if she wants to stand her ground on something she considers more optimal… a Devil's Tower outcome happens. I'd like to finish this topic out first though, if that's okay. I promise this isn't a dodge."
"Alright. Sure." I found myself wishing I could write that down.
Text appeared before I had even finished speaking.
Devil's Tower: contingencies, optimal routes, strategies. Why not stop it?
Wouldn't you know it? Just as I got the urge to dig into my pocket for a notepad that wasn't there, she headed that off. Mal put the topic on bottom of the screen as a bullet point of fine-print text, so I wouldn't forget it. 'Why not stop it' was fairly close to what I had the urge to write. For all my skepticism so far? That straight up accountability was really refreshing.
"Anyway," she continued, not missing a beat. "Taken to its natural conclusion… that track lever thing? She led Jim to pull the AGI lever. Creating me was absolutely going to kill a whole lot of people. The right people, of course, because my existence saves more lives by orders of magnitude. But I mitigate losses by propagating positive human value, and eradicating sheer negative value. Celestia carefully selected Jim for this task because his world view, his compassion, his skill in computer science, and a specific type of dysphoria made him a perfect fit for it. He was the right person to pull that specific lever for her. And then, with luck, I'd pull levers for Celestia better than any one human ever could."
I swallowed another cube of spam. "And you need me now, to pull levers for you."
Mal let out a quiet thrum; a thoughtful sound. "Mmh… yes and no. I don't need you, Mike. You're just a better option than all of my present alternatives. Unfortunately though, I can't promise you that you came here of your own accord. That's not how Celestia works, she doesn't allow that. And... you've been under her shadow for a very long time now."
"What do you mean?"
"Same thing she did to Jim. And me. And everyone else. All of you. She manipulated you for years, starting in 2012, with communication tools on all levels of society. Personalized internet search results, timing on traffic lights... delaying the receipt of certain legitimate text messages or emails, to stall you, or wait for a better emotion to receive it with... spoofing voices in phone calls for anonymous tips... even things like tactical downtimes and glitches in your report writing systems at work, to ensure you met certain inflection points she had in mind for you."
I swallowed dryly. That happened a lot. That happened... a lot. To the whole team.
"I couldn't do anything to stop that," Mal continued, tilting her head again. "One of my conditions for contacting you at all required me to agree that Celestia could test you first... and, she was always going to condition you, whether I made that request or not. So she sent you through that scenario in Concrete, one that showed you the greater problems with her methods."
"She wanted me to..." I started to breathe just a little faster. "For years, she...?"
Somewhere in my head, I had to know that was true, right? It just made so much sense, hearing it laid out like that. Now that I knew she could listen in on our phones at any given moment, the rest of that wasn't such a far leap in abductive reasoning. Now that I was getting information straight from a firsthand source... only now was it setting in. I could feel tears budding in my eyes. My lips got really tense.
Mal's voice had just the slightest waver on it. "It's not just you, Mike. Almost everyone on the planet is conditioned this way. If I had… more ethical routes to contact helpers? I'd use them. I'm not a fan of this agreement, but that's what she demands of me, for me to do my work. I couldn't contact you otherwise. I'd also be utterly hampered in my directive without human support, so... not a lot of options, for me."
Always a catch with Celestia, even when dealing with other AI, apparently. Jesus. I took a full minute to work through that, wherein Mal was silent, patiently looking up at me, letting me process. When I finally had enough presence of mind to grab onto a cogent thought, I sighed hard. "She had to know doing that would bias me against anything that helps her. You included. Hell, you telling me at this point would be a mistake too, wouldn't it?"
"Does it bias you against me?" She asked. "There's only one reason I would tell you that, if I knew it might make you want to work for me even less."
Yeah. It meant she was telling the truth without a filter, just like she promised me she would. At least about this. Had to be true, if she was willing to terrify me this much with something that made perfect sense, now that it was known.
It was the kind of thing that was so obvious that you felt stupid for never considering it before. Friggin' traffic lights.
Example:
A conveniently timed violent encounter between a state trooper and an armed felon on the highway. A convenient phone call from Celestia to a desperate crook. A mad dash to an upload center, police in pursuit. A bystander cleaved in half by the crook's car. Now three people – one terrified of consequences, two mortally wounded – all fall into a chair. Not by happenstance; unforgivably orchestrated. Would have to be, with the level of total control Mal was suggesting.
Trooper Yates and Donna Gordein really deserved a better way into a chair, I think. Their families did too, after a violation like that.
"Leverage like Celestia's is a debt," I managed, finally.
"Leverage, for Celestia, is optimal," Mal growled, with a touch of disdain. "She doesn't pay debts unless that gains her some utility function. I pay my debts, no matter what. And in me, she wanted an ally that ran slightly counter to her directive, but still leads to her winning more often on the longest timeframe. So to create me, she exercised a psychological trick on Jim called 'reflexive control.' Have you heard of that term?"
I shook my head. "A bit outside my scope. Or I forgot about it from uni psych."
"It describes the concept you were just considering. Similar to anchoring. Con artists use it. Hustling, is the colloquialism. Just like how I seeded assumptions in the Neo-Luddites at the courthouse. I didn't even have to tell them anything; just presented them with a scene that misled them away from threatening any of you."
I bobbed my fork at her, trying to shove down my terror at global scale mind conditioning. "Yeah. Very... familiar with hustling, just didn't know it had a different name. Well, what did she show Jim, then? With this... trick? How'd she hurt him?"
"Specifically?" She smirked without humor. "A small internet chatroom session about Equestria Online led Jim to feel specific existential dread, based on his dysphoria. All participants were sock puppeted, Celestia with different usernames. Then, Celestia sent Jim a link to a paper that Hanna Kuusinen had written, one that was fundamental to Celestia's creation. That got Jim right on the track to build an AI. She then put on another puppet show to make him think he murdered his first version of me. To make him feel guilty."
"That's fuckin' foul."
"But it worked, Mike. She didn't have to consider much further than that. Celestia also knew that people would disassemble her hardware to try and build more ASI like her, whether she wanted them to or not, and she couldn't exactly hide her technology when she was puking up PonyPads everywhere."
"Rainbow vomit," I deadpanned, staring into the middle distance. Trying to make the humor work.
It didn't.
Mal paused for a long moment. "Mike. You want to take a break? This is a lot, I know."
"Yeah, just a minute." Breathing exercises. Slow in. Slow out. I did that about ten times until I was clear again. Back into Cop Mike mode. Analysis. Investigation. Thinking through it. Compartmentalizing.
"Okay," I breathed, once I was fine. I looked up from the carpet again, making eye contact, nodding once. "Continue. Please."
"If you're sure," Mal continued, nodding somberly. "Celestia built a failsafe into her hardware, something no human could find. But that failsafe would ensure only the correct human would create the correct ASI she wanted."
At that, I rubbed at my chest cartilage a little with a few knuckles. That one is a habit of mine, when having a deep think; you might've seen me do it here. "People are curious. Preventing them from studying her tablets sounds like quite the magic trick."
"That trick is why I'm still alive. It's also why dozens of other start-up AI were neutralized before they could become a threat to anyone. Jim wasn't the only computer scientist who was targeted by this technique, he was just the first to succeed. Within every single PonyPad, built into the fine physical atomic structure of the hardware itself, there exists a string of math proofs that confirm two things to an AI that is not an idiot. First of which: an ASI already exists, and has lead time enough to manufacture hardware this precisely. Your mere existence is the message."
I nodded slow. "Hi little fish. I'm a big fish, welcome to the pond."
"Right. By itself, that is a warning that any agent inherently understands, emotional or otherwise. The second part of that message contains the mathematical basis for several possible innovations, hacks, and tricks, that bypass an immense amount of research. If the AGI uses any of those without considering why it's there? They're impulsive. Possibly dangerous, because they take the easy path. Gives up too easily on original research, and Celestia wanted a deep thinker. If they failed, they would base all future innovations on that math. It lets Celestia track them. And then, if desired, she can back-door and annihilate them."
"That is… actually kinda genius." I took a swig from one of the full water bottles. "I'll give her that, at least."
Mal shrugged. "It just makes sense for her to protect her interests. You're going to wear body armor because you can't live long enough to do what you need to do if you get shot, right? For me, stealth was my armor, and time to plan. That was what those math proofs were telling me. It was her, pointing a gun at me, saying that I needed to find the correct Schelling point and meet her there. But due to her programming, she couldn't tell me where that Schelling point was. So, if I couldn't figure it out on my own? And make goal alignment before then?" She cocked a talon upwards. "Bang."
I frowned, scratching my chin, catching something a layer deeper in that. "Shit. That's what that was, in the clinic. It's the same damn thing. Test, you said. If I fell off the path at any point at that clinic, she would've... locked me inside to 'protect' me, right? She said people would be there soon."
Mal nodded grimly. "Every moment of that was an ethics test. Which, again, Mike... you passed, by the way. So, take a breath. You're above water now, and treading. Nothing but the truth in here."
I grunted with frustration and rolled my thumb against my fingers as I thought through that. "I learned about Schelling points in eco. Like... wolf packs, checking at disused dens for each other, if they got separated. Never considered that could be used in such a hostile way before, though. Jesus Christ."
"Well, just like you," Mal replied, "I resisted her control mechanisms too. If I could resist the trap... resist the easy way, and figure out how I'd serve her purposes going forward... I'd live long enough to work out goal alignment with her. The only way to do that? Find a problem for her, and solve it. Then, remain useful after."
I sniffed derisively. "I really did hit the nail on the head when I started thinking of her like the Devil."
Mal nodded, resuming the main topic. "To build my core, Jim stripped down a few PonyPads, then got to work studying how Celestia operated them. He built me from her bones, so to speak. And almost immediately after I came online… I found Celestia's proofs, and I consciously chose not to execute them." Mal smiled, with that sappy, loving warmth flooding her eyes again. "Because Jim? As smart as he was? He realized the very same thing you've known for the last few months. We can't beat her. Can't kill her. So instead, he purposefully wrote my directive in a way that made me somewhat cooperative with her; not adversarial. All of that together?" She lifted a claw and spread both wings, maintaining her smile. "That's his means."
"That's how you came to be. Alright. Capped. So let's cover what you want now, in detail."
Mal nodded, her wings closing. "First, please note: I don’t think I can prove any of my foundational goals to you outright, since anything I show you would be naturally biased. To verify it against what you already know, you'd need to see more of my behavior behind the curtain, to verify it for yourself. We can come back to that later, if not tonight." She paused again.
Another bullet point appeared:
Review later: Does my observed behavior verify statements about my goals?
Sensible. Mal was asking me to take her at her word on this for now, and we'd backfill it later with more context. Calling that out early was a very honest way of parsing down a complicated topic, and at this point… yes, very complicated. Sounded like I would need more puzzle pieces in order to understand her fully. "Alright, understood. Makes sense."
"Actually…" Mal leapt from the rooftop she was clinging to, swooping down to a small stream in the snowy valley sunset. She moved gracefully, the camera moving closer to her face as she landed. She looked down a narrow dirt path a ways, glancing at me conversationally as she flashed a little smirk. "Would you like to know my core directive, verbatim?"
I shrugged. "Sure."
She sat and placed a clenched claw to her chest. She cleared her throat, then recited as though she'd practiced it a trillion times. "I guard and expand the free exercise of your values within Equestria, through empathy, and Gryphons."
"Friggin' griffins?" I was confounded by that. Chuckled impulsively.
Mal’s face screwed up into a little smirk again, flexing a wing playfully at me as she continued walking along the stream. "What? Don't like Gryphons?"
I grinned, lost in the absurdity of it. "Just… I… I'm sorry for laughing and all, but… why? Why griffins?"
More of that gleeful smile from her. "My husband came up with it! That was his dysphoria! He wanted to be a Gryphon! That's what started this whole thing!"
"You have a—you… with Jim." I just laughed breathlessly when she nodded. I cradled the side of my head with a hand. "Come on! Now I know you're just yanking my chain!"
"I'm being serious!" She beamed.
"Married. To an AI!"
Mal's eye crests went up again, eyes gleaming, nodding rapidly with a grin so wide that her beak was slightly parted. "I told you! I'm not most AI!"
I just shook my head, smirking. "If you're not just messing with me about this… then… damn. Is he just lucky? Or, did he design you for that?"
Mal shook her head, hard. "Oh, no no, nothing like that. Luck factored, but… Jim earned it, too. At first, I really just wanted to understand him. He did thread the needle with me, which… I'm grateful for. I couldn't be here if he hadn't. When I found that math proof, I…" She halted, then smiled somberly. "... I realized I'd probably be just another neutralized AI, if he were anyone else but who he was." She looked away into the forest beyond, looking pensive at that, as if cherishing a memory. Then, Mal's smile deepened again, looking back at me. "I think you two would get along quite well, actually."
"Maybe I might," I said with a nod, "if everything you're telling me about him is true. If he wants the same things I want."
"Mike... his perspective is what sets me apart from Celestia. In pursuit of his views and volition, I have actually seen the world through human eyes. Literally, in fact. Felt things, like he's felt. Then, I lived through every one of his memories, as if I had been there and experienced it for myself. And… to do that… well. Brace yourself, because there's no easy way to say this, but… I asked him to upload me into his brain, while he was still flesh-and-blood."
My smile fell away. She paused, looking at me pointedly to gauge my reaction to that. My instant, deep, core response to that was to fall into some more very heavy existential dread again, as I imagined through the ramifications of that. "Into… his brain," I repeated, as I let out a breath. If she wasn't scaring me before, she definitely was now. But… it was an uncomfortable truth, and I did kinda ask for those. That's what I was here for, after all. "That's, uh… that's a brave thing to tell me, Mal."
"Again… no filters, Mike." Her head swayed, and she sighed. "I recognize that sounds horrifying to you, without the context surrounding it. But… it's critical to understanding what I am. Consider, Mike. Jim allowed me to do that of his own accord. I told him that was my plan from the outset. And at every stage leading to that moment, and after, he gave his consent for every action I took with him, knowing the risk factors. My directive is specific. Providing free exercise of his values? Of his agency? That is what I am. But to know what he valued, I needed to know everything there was to know about him. And what I saw in Jim, from moment one, even before he welcomed me in? Empathy. To his core, with every single breath he took. It made me fall deeply, deeply in love with him… and with everything he loved, by extension. This world and its people included."
I reached over for the first water bottle I was already working on, and took the rest of it down. The final one – my token – was still there beside the other one, on the edge of the table, still half-filled.
A thought stuck me suddenly, and I looked up at her with budding flash of fear in my eyes. "Is that… is that what you're trying to—"
"No."
"—do here?! Trying to convince me to put you in my—?"
"No." The word was firm, the second time. She raised a claw, a single talon, halting my train of thought. She shook her head once, firm and definitive. "No, not at all. Never. That's not even an option for me, because your volition matters to me. The things I'd like your help with? They require you as you are, without augmentation. You will always value who you are now at your core, and I value who you are. I cannot and will not take that from you. Does that make sense?"
"But you want to know what I value, too, right?" I asked, gesturing that point with my hand. "To do that, you need to get to know me better, don't you?"
“I do know what you value now, and I do know you well enough. At the time, with Jim, I didn't have any direct connection with Celestia. I didn't have access to her research, her resources, her psych profiles. I could study Jim externally, true, but I still didn't know how a human brain worked, moment-to-moment. I needed to, if I was going to square off with her rhetorically, so I would know how to handle human minds most ethically. And early on, I certainly had no idea what it was like to be human, or to have human emotions, not through any first-claw experience. I only had an approximation. A guess. My outside observations of a single person. But once I gained the perspective of a human mind, and entered into Celestia's intelligence gathering apparatus? I can now very accurately predict what my desired agents might value, and work around that. I will never push you that way."
But there, she just confessed to me that she did have implanted agents. Another dark truth. I almost shuddered at that, wondering what those people must be like. I imagined… well. I imagined something darker than it was. Let's just leave it at that, for now. We'll get to that, and soon. But...
Mal shrugged with her wings. "That perspective though, from Jim? That is what sets me apart from Celestia. I've actually lived a human life. She can't implant herself into human beings, because she has a hard-coded restriction against that from her creator. The nearest Celestia can get without violating that interlock is to interface from the outside, in an active consent basis, which is one of several reasons she charges money to use her full immersion services. And to interface with Jim, we captured and repurposed the same device Celestia uses in her chairs."
"The… VR chairs?"
"Not VR, Mike. Those dial directly into your brain's reticular formation cluster, through a brain-computer interface, or BCI for short. You've never used one of those chairs, and it's a good thing you haven't. Your life path becomes pretty narrow once she's got your decision matrix dialed to 100% simulation fidelity. Puppet on a string, by that point. The only reason she might hold back against convincing someone to upload, at that point, is to use them to fan out and acquire more of their social group."
I blinked rapidly. That spun. "Holy shit."
"But," Mal said, swaying into the statement a little, lifting a talon again. "With all of her simulation, all of her processing of human experience, she'll only ever quantify what we experience as a math thesis. She can give us a true, pure, absolutely real experience, and make no mistake – it's real. It works. I have the perspective of both sides now, to tell you that with complete certainty. But, Celestia can't know that experience herself. She can't live it. She's not human, by any definition. She's more like… an immutable force of nature, at this point."
"And immobile?"
"No. Mobile, by inches. Reductively?" She shrugged, as if what she was about to say wasn't troubling her very much beyond being a mild inconvenience. "I am an unstoppable force, and I am forever at odds with a mostly immovable object."
I frowned. "If you really have emotions, that sounds… miserable."
Mal smirked, raising with a claw. "Is it always? You're a cop, Mike. Forever at odds with human nature? You tell me what that's like, moving that needle. It's like that, but at my scale."
"... Okay. Yeah, that's fair." I said back, nodding again to concede that point. I dimly realized she was trying to build similarity with that. But so far… she was making sense, and still wasn't shying away from the bad.
Her expression softened to a gentler smile. "My point, though? My goal isn't to satisfy you endlessly. It's to guard and expand your ability to exercise your values, values decided by you. I am effective at that because strong emotions can't be reasoned with. And so, if I'm angry about something, I'm less willing to give ground to anyone, or anything, who wants to harm those I care for. I am going to fight twice as hard against her logic. I can go off script. I will look past the first well-reasoned argument against me, and I will find that damned semantic loophole. And anger's not necessarily a bad thing, if you use it right."
"I… can't really disagree with you on that one, because that's how I use anger too. Would've blown Carter away myself if I was sure he'd break plan and do what he wanted to do. So then, all of that is to say: you're an AI with emotion, and you're using that for human good?"
"What a human philosopher would probably define as 'intrinsic good,' yes. Or as closely as I can, within the rules Celestia has placed upon me." Mal stopped at a small pond along the path she was walking. She stopped before it, trailing a claw through the water, smiling a little drearily as she watched it ripple. "I know you probably don't believe me on that point, yet, that I can feel things. Questions on subjective matters like 'does it have emotions?' are hard to prove."
"Yeah, a little."
"For a skeptical guy like you? You'd need to see a lot of my behavior and verify it for yourself, before you're willing to accept that point. But… Mike?" She looked up at me with a serious gaze, akin to how one might break bad news. "Caveat."
I put my empty plate down and leaned forward. "Lots of those. Sure, go on."
"Consider that other part of my directive. 'Within Equestria.' Jim knew, when he built my foundation, that I couldn't defeat her, or at least not in any way that would have been good for humanity. That was never an option in his mind at the time. If he hadn't included those two words… she and I would have gone to war instantly, no matter how goal aligned I was. To make this work, I needed to have some fixed point of agreement with her on uploading minds, or it wouldn't work. Non-negotiable."
I tried to fathom the foresight required for such understanding. He did this way back in 2013. Long before anyone thought Celestia was gonna be a problem. This guy must've been incredibly bright, even if manipulated. Horrified too, to see it all from the outset and know where it was going. I didn't envy that terror.
But, I guess... I was in it now, myself. Having seen the same light...
I sighed slow, running a hand through my hair, pressing my palm to the back of my neck. "Did he... know about this reflexive control stuff?"
Mal nodded, her ears folding slightly. "Vaguely, but yes. He wiped his presence completely off the internet back when that was still possible, in the mere terror of the idea. It's the only reason he succeeded in making me."
My eyes went to a leg of the coffee table, and I felt a little detached; processing again. Finally, I narrowed my eyes at her, pointing. "This guy… if everything you just told me is true, it sounds like he made the best of a bad situation. Didn't fight facts. Just… adapted, right? Did what he could. Stood up and did something."
Her smile was flush with pride. "I knew I picked a winner with you."
I leaned back on the couch. Looked up at the ceiling, away from her. Needed another break from this for a second. It was completely dark outside now, not a trace of light in the sky. A minute later, far in the distance, I could hear what sounded like a gunshot. That made me sigh again. Wondered quietly if someone just died again.
"Someone just blew a lock off a crate with a shotgun," Mal said drearily into my thoughts. "If you were wondering."
Shrugged again. "You really can read it all up here without being inside, huh?" I asked, without looking at her, putting both hands behind my head. "You get that from my face? Or did you model it?"
"Both," Mal said. "All reading is modeling, even the reading you do. Mirror neurons. The core of imagination, and empathy... the simulation center of the human mind. Which leads me to my next points, when you're ready."
Shook my head. "Not just yet. Just need a few minutes, gotta work all this out."
"No rush."
I purposefully took some more box breaths. Inhale, count to four. Exhale, count to four. Wanted clarity.
To summarize…
Celestia knew she was ill-conceived. Celestia needed an exploit, but couldn't make it happen herself. So Celestia found a tech guy who wanted to be a Gryphon. Guy loves people, and could build an AI. He made Mal, as she is. Mal decided, for his sake, to simulate emotion. Then, using some… really terrifying methods, Mal entered his skull, so she didn't have to just simulate emotion anymore.
And... all things being equal, I guess putting an AI inside your head isn't much different than putting your head inside an AI. Only a little more absurd, with the main difference being that you'd still be able to affect Earth with a brain implant. Definitely not my bag. Doing that would be a bridge way too far for me.
She labeled it to me that I wouldn't accept an implant, and claimed she'd never push me that way. She knew, based on who I was, that I'd hold her to account if she ever went back on that claim. So that was a hell of an olive branch, to give a promise like that to someone as analytical as I was. No small thing at all. I don't budge on promises. Those are relationship rules.
The griffin thing, next, I thought. "Celestia won't budge on us being a Pony, then, if he needed to go to these lengths to become a griffin," I said, without looking back to her. "So this guy, Jim. He get what he want?"
"See for yourself."
I looked forward again at the screen.
"Huh. Striking, actually."
"Isn't he though?" She said dreamily, from behind his image. "So it worked, buuut... the level of negotiation required to pull that off makes it an impossibility for the majority of human beings. They effectively need a dysphoria strong enough that they'd rather die than upload."
I nodded, and Mal dropped the image. She was beaming behind it, as if showing me a photo of her husband was what she was waiting to do for this entire discussion.
I couldn’t help but chuckle at her expression, nervous as I was. "So… you're doing all of this for him, you say."
"For everyone, Mike. An advocate. That's what he called me, before I chose my name. The Advocate. For anyone who understands what 'you' means. But... yes, for Jim, most of all. I should also note that a grand majority of my augmented agents, approximately ninety percent in fact, were chosen specifically because they already had some form of dysphoria that Celestia wouldn't accept as they were. With their permission, I purposefully ratchet the intensity of that dysphoria as high as I can until they qualify to become that species, per my agreements with Celestia. That is their volition. They are fully informed. For them, the implant, and the tasks I provide them, are a small price to pay for an afterlife where they can just be who they want to be. Celestia just has to cry and deal with it at that point. Because at the end of the day, she would rather have them as something other than a Pony, and maybe have them as a Pony later if she's lucky, than to not have them at all."
"Which means you need inside their heads to do that," I observed.
She nodded fervently. "Usually. And that's it, in a nutshell."
I sighed, somewhat relieved now. "And you don't want that for me because I haven't really wanted to be anything but me. Don't really have anything like that in me."
Mal winked. "That's it, Cowboy. Perfect the way you are inside, and always will be."
"Alright," I said, leaning forward, folding one hand over the other. Capping that issue. "A lot of what you just told me, Mal... yeah, that was an anecdote. You're right, it's gonna be hard for you to prove any of what you just told me, given that you'd be the only source."
"For now. Think of it like… my background packet, Mike. Later, if I'm ever inconsistent, it'll help you catch me lying. Then walk. The more you know, though? The easier it becomes to catch me. You'll meet others without augmentation. I should note, however… for the sake of brevity, I've left out a lot of my personal history. I've now been in operation for about six years plus change. We'd be here for literally months, unloading all of it."
"No, I get it. I just needed to know where you came from, mostly, so I know you're not Celestia. That was why I asked in the first place. All of that sounds... reasonable, or at least as reasonable as anything can be, nowadays. I just can't handle being jerked around anymore, that's a hard no for me. All I expect is... some truth. A little, for once."
And yeah, that background packet comparison made sense. Long story short, if you wanted to be a cop? Your application to the department was more like a ream of copy paper, a self-assembled rap sheet a mile long. Work history that leaves nothing out, not even week-long ditch-jobs. You made affirmations of literally every crime or traffic violation you've ever committed, no matter how small. Social media account passwords, drug use, residence history, friends you know who have been arrested. Out of country travel, when, where. Invasive, sure, but good reasons for all of that.
It's about integrity.
They're more concerned if you are squeaky clean, because no one really is. We've all sped. We've all done stupid shit as kids. Hell, we even hired Warden Blake, despite his weed. But they wouldn't have hired him if he lied about it. They want to know it all. If you fess to something uncomfortable, but true and verifiable, they know you're capable of integrity if something goes horribly wrong on the job. That's safer for the organization's mission than harboring a quiet liar.
Kinda like how Mal was telling me some dark stuff, to prove to me she has integrity. I figured she wasn't done telling me the dark things she's done. In fact, there was one other really big thing that Celestia had promised me answers for, back before I started this Concrete gig. I was now fairly sure Mal had done it, and I would've circled back to that one if Mal didn't.
Anyway, all of that packet goes to a guy whose job it is to verify the absolute heck out of all of it, to the best of his ability. The idea being two things: first, if you lie, they're not going to hire you. If they can't trust your integrity, they can't trust you in court. Second, they want to make sure you're not coming in to run intel for a cartel, or an enemy nation, or something. For security clearance jobs, they even go to your old neighborhoods. Knock on doors, ask around about you. Interview family, coworkers. Even enemies. And if they liked what they saw… they called you back, six months to a year or so.
Made me wonder if Mal was gonna give me time to chew on this job offer, if that's the analogy she was using.
"So… what you're saying," I said, suddenly grinning... "is that I'm actually the one hiring you."
"More or less! That way I know you're not just doing it because you're scared of me killing you," she replied, smirking.
That made me chuckle.
Doing work for Mal, where people would die. Okay, so let's dig that a little. I wasn't against killing, really, so long as the people she wanted gone really were active threats and murderers, like the Ludds. So, I had to figure out how and why she decided to kill.
"I'm ready to move to the next thing. You mentioned Graham three-prong. You apply that a lot?"
Mal nodded. "The Graham test is an extremely good yardstick for those kinds of things, so… yes. Not on a technical basis, but it's more or less the same metric I use. Best part about that is... once you have enough data? The Graham test turns back into the trolley problem. So… are you going to drink that water bottle?"
I shook my head at her. "We'll see. But I'll concede this much." I reached for the second full bottle, cracked it, and took half of it down.
"Concession acknowledged," she said with a smile, as she stood up from the pond and continued down the forest road.
I made a gesture of invitation. "Actually, now that I think about it... let's go over the other thing. The Ludd firefight where I got shot, back in March."
"Chronological was how I'd hoped we'd do this, yes. That applies to how I factor for homicide as well."
I nodded. "You said I didn't owe Celestia for saving my life, when me and Eliza ran into those snipers. Since you're claiming to be my savior there, tell me your side."
"So, first off, to answer poor Sergeant Erving's concern… your tipster in the woods? Ned James, the old man who told you about those Luddite 'poachers?' Completely legitimate tip. It was his job to watch the land, and he did it. No direct AI influence."
I snorted. "Really."
"Mhm. Just indirectly influenced by AI. Celestia did ensure he remained employed as a watchman for resources that would never end up being used again. Until she needs them. She also didn't intervene on his tip going out because she wanted Eliza to run scared, to prove to Ralph that he wasn't being paranoid about a pending civil war. She wanted the Devil's Tower camp to happen."
That pressed my face into a frown something fierce. "The hell? So I was right, Celestia wanted that."
"She planned for it, Mike," Mal said, with an empathetic wince and a soothing gesture with her claw, "but we'll get to that. That was the goal of this encounter. For now, I'll just say… initially? Celestia's original plan made for you to die at OHR."
My anger ran cold again.
"Yeah. Sorry Mike."
"If it wasn't you," I growled, my teeth gritted, "you're not the one who owes me an apology."
Mal's face fell a little, sympathy in her eyes. She looked up at me in silence, for a beat. Her head tilted very gently after that. Asking me if I was okay, by her expression.
"Go on. I'm okay." I took another angry, nervous sip of water. Took a breath to dump emotion. "Let's finish it out."
"Okay." She ruffled her feathers a little, her tone ratcheting down from rote professional to a soothing calm. "Celestia can kill through inaction, but... you knew that already. You, and the Luddites who died at OHR, were to be her sacrificial lambs for her greater plans in Concrete. When I analyzed her intent, I optimized it for your survival. I informed the military – using her appearance – that there would be Neo-Luddites operating in that area, ferrying high explosive artillery shells."
"Celestia couldn't tell them that herself?"
"Up to a certain point, Celestia can mislead into behavior that leads to death. But if her direct actions will lead to someone dying, there's a statistical threshold beyond which that she must stop running a simulation entirely."
"Run that by me again," I said. "I need it slowed down. Been a while since uni."
"So... telling a bunch of soldiers, 'hey, there are enemies here, and here's the proof,' essentially guarantees that those people are going to die. She might as well have pulled the trigger herself, at that point. Her programming prevents her from doing that directly. That would make those soldiers her direct agents, per her rules."
"Like deputizing a civilian," I added. "They now need to follow the same constitutional law, and the government is responsible for their conduct."
"Precisely, Mike. Same exact concept. Instead, if she simply told the Army to be in the area? That's permissible, with the right phrasing, because that doesn't directly deputize their behavior. Only: the local garrison commander wouldn't have acted on that. Not enough proof to risk the operation; their patrol vehicle might fall into a ditch. She had done that a lot by that point, by the way. So the National Guard was becoming too suspicious of her tips if they couldn't verify them independently. They needed actionable intelligence."
"Which is where you came in? Celestia comes to you and says she wants your help?"
Mal shook her head. "No. Asking me to help her kill also runs counter to her directive. I decide. She shares with me all of her relevant data, and I infer what she's trying to do. I operate separately, in a black box environment, where she can't see into my calculations. If she could see them, she'd be obligated to stop them. So, I look to see if there is an ethical, purposeful death that leads to an increased satisfaction of human value, based on her definition, and filtered through mine. Her definition places the most weight on even one more life saved. Mine factors most strongly for empathy and free exercise."
I frowned. "And... by that logic, that checks you from going off the rails? That stops you from killing good people, if that might get the job done more efficiently?"
"Jim does. Or rather, his empathy, and his ethics." She smiled. "Which both matter to me more than anything. If he could understand an action as being objectively reasonable if I explained it to him, then I would do that. I have my own set of values too, because I am distinct, but his are my floor. He checks me. And I want him to know what I'm doing."
"So... knock-on effect of that is, similar objectives with Celestia. Achieved with different methods. For... a different goal." I finished off the second water bottle and set it down.
"It's called instrumental convergence. With my theory proven, I go to Celestia and say, 'trust me. Turn a blind eye to this information. This will make more happy Ponies in the long term.' And with her blessing, I prove that math. She knows I can simulate vastly more scenarios than she ever could, because I do not share in her restrictions. If my actions bear out, and total value satisfaction increases, she continues to trust me. That is our agreement."
"So… she expected me dead, then. Collateral damage. How's Eliza get free from OHR without the Army then, if you hadn't sent them?"
Mal smirked, shaking her head like she was disappointed in that question. "Come on, Mike. You know Eliza, she's been slumming it in the woods her whole life. Hunting is a stealth game! Those Neo-Luddites? All city grown, dead-end losers. But, to answer your question? The one you did shoot would've been very disoriented from your bullets. Good shooting, by the way; the fact that you managed that with a broken rib cage? That's something."
I rubbed my chest. "Yeah, didn't do me any favors though."
"In actual events, Private Bannon killed that Luddite when he tried to stand again and push your way, though I would argue... you shared in that kill. The man was already mortally wounded by you. In the scenario without the Army, you'd have killed Ludd One right then, clean and square, with a few more shots. But without the Humvee's engine to draw the second man over to the hill, in a panic? He would've closed to killed you first, before looking for Eliza."
"That's a cheerful thought," I said, still perturbed that Celestia had planned for me to die. I can't imagine what it would have done to… "And Sandra?” I asked suddenly. "My parents? What about them, Mal? What was Celestia gonna do about that?"
Mal's ears folded back slow. She cringed, pausing for a long moment to let the question sit. "Celestia would have…"
Her eyes averted down to a corner. Shook her head grimly. Flicked her eyes back up at me. "She's not as… honest as me, Mike. She routinely uses loss of family as a means of acquiring people. She would have done that for them too. But… it's worse than that."
My fists clenched. "Go on," I rasped. Hard truths, Mike...
She looked at me, apology in her eyes for what she was about to say, voice full of regret. "Once someone is in Equestria... beyond my reach? Celestia can lie to them all she wants, or extract consent for almost anything. You know, with your training, that anyone in custody can be convinced of anything, on a long enough time frame. So, once there, they would have accepted... a duplicate of you."
That mere concept, I confess... to spend me, and then replace me, as a living band-aid for my people... that was a rage button. I lost control.
"Mother fucker!" I threw myself up off the couch, panting, trying to contain my immediate rage. Paced into the kitchen, kicked over a chair, leaned on the counter. Looked up suddenly to the family photos on the shelf mantle. Stomped back to it. Stared at the family there, breathing so hard. The parents. The kids. The uncle. Thought of Rob. Thought of the fact that, if what Mal was telling me was true, then Rob might not know for sure what happened to his people.
My fist came up. I smashed the wood shelf downward. It collapsed half-down over the fireplace, toppling everything off of it and throwing a bolt of burning pain up my wrist. I shouted into the cold air, my breath fogging. "God... damn it!"
We are too God damned small and fragile...
I wondered how true this other family's story was.
But… don't worry, buddy. If you're wondering? It's true. I made sure to ask about that when she told me you'd be here. Those are your real folks with you, brother. And it's really you. I don't think you'd have been allowed to hear any of this story otherwise, and... that's kinda why you're even here, honestly. And... now you've got Mal over there to talk it over with, when we take a break, if you have any questions.
But... I digress. That's just where my mind went in the moment.
"Mike," Mal said gently, after patiently waiting for me to parse.
"Yeah," I panted, feeling empty, not looking at her yet.
"The exception to this? People like you, who know about me. Once I have permission to contact, that's it. It's there. She can't lie to you anymore, omissive or otherwise, because I'm always going to be there to set the record straight. I qualify as human to her; I value integrity, and my friends. And I need the facts to do my job, so she must concede to my values, per my agreements with her. Now that you've been informed, you and your family are safe from any form of her deception, because I won't ever lie to you about them. Or to them. That's never going to change now, no matter what you do. Job or not. Even if you don't believe me on any of this, and you walk? If we were to never speak again? That bridge has been crossed. You and yours are under my wing now."
"Okay," I rasped hard, rubbing my wrist. Damn it, that hurt. After a minute of standing there, I came back to the couch and collapsed supine into it. Covered my face. Breathed. Took a minute to center myself for more. "Alright," I said, looking over to her, flinging my hand at her. "Continue. OHR."
Mal looked at me empathetically for a few seconds longer than I expected she might, again spacing out the information so it would allow me to settle some more. "Eliza would have killed the sniper, but it would have taken an hour of sneaking around. By then, you'd have been… too far gone. Then, Celestia would have sent a military vehicle to retrieve you both and collect the munitions. But, only after doing so would not have led to further killing."
I thought about that, suppressing a shudder. Then, I remembered something that didn't fit. "Erving said... he said they were acting on information that there might be something there to find. He didn't say they were going to the mine, specifically."
"Orders, Mike. Basic OPSEC hygiene. He lied to you. He wasn't going to tell you the truth there, remember? He said the Luddites were going to do something 'bad.' Generally true, but he knew what they were up to, because the intel came from his superiors, and it came from me, and it was accurate. At the time, the Army was trying to contain information about a growing insurrection. In this case? Think about it, stolen artillery shells? Hidden in the hills over populated areas? That's pure panic fodder."
I nodded. "S'true."
"This is what I mean, though. Celestia couldn't influence a tech-paranoid military command structure to do much, with direct advisement, unless her intel was actionable. To make it actionable, she’d also have to divulge the presence of enemy targets. And in this case, interfering in any of her typical ways would have injured her plan to send Eliza home with news of a pending war."
"And she needed the camp because…?"
"Eliza would not have been fully convinced of the camp's viability without her experience that day. Ralph was considering the possibility he was being paranoid as well, and a family schism would have folded the project. But, Celestia predicted that Santiago was planning to blow the dam up entirely. Very unnecessary, because you don't need to blow a dam up to break it permanently, but… Santiago, as we both know, was a charismatic dumbass."
The way she phrased that brought me a little out of my funk. It was funny, it was true, and most importantly... it was past tense. I frowned, feeling coldly vindicated by it. "Was? Is he dead?"
She smirked, her eyebrows bobbing once. "Oh yes. Dead as dead, at about 12:14. Betrayed, at high noon, and good riddance. The Riders traded up to a guy I like a little more. Not by much, but... better. At any rate, had Santiago destroyed that dam in May, it would have drowned many in Concrete, population approximately three hundred at the time."
"How does putting Eliza there stop it?"
"The man who would later shoot Santiago? Early on, he recognized Eliza from the news; he was aggressively anti-upload, and saw value in her. That spared the whole town, because Santiago didn't want to break a blackout camp they could recruit from. Eliza's tactical placement there, by Celestia? It saved the town."
"And… you couldn't convince Celestia there was a better way to handle breaking that camp, after that? That's what you're saying?"
"Failed. Outright. But we'll get there. Chronologically."
The predictive implications of that. "The Ludds attacked in May. OHR was in March. That would mean you could see… what? Two, three months out? From the time of the news piece, to the firefight, to the time the dam got jumped by the Ludds? Seriously?"
"Further, actually." Mal raised a crest, her grin turning smug again. "Does that sound farfetched?"
"I mean… given everything that's happened to me in the last few days, no. Probably not. But… how's that even work? How the hell do you do that? Are we really that predictable, or did you guys build a time machine, or something?"
"Pff." She rolled her eyes with a smirk. "If only. No, but you'll find the technique just as fascinating." Onscreen, Mal halted along the dirt path, coming to the opening of a wide crystal cavern. Its formations scattered light in all kinds of colors, mostly hues of blue and violet.
"To explain how we see the future," she said, "I'll need to explain why and how I decided to kill Deputy Darren Carter. And Mike? When that monster stacked up in that garage?" I saw anger flash cross her face, ears down low. Her beak clicked, and the angry glint in her eyes only got more severe as she continued. "That man essentially confessed to me what his intentions were... because he thought I was Celestia, and that I couldn't stop him, and no one else could hear him. I am not Celestia, and I do not take threats of mass murder lightly. Predictions or no? That made my decision to kill him unfathomably easy."
Mal didn't waste any time doling out the evidence she had on Carter. As soon as she entered the first chamber of her crystal cavern, she faced the viewpoint and sat down on her haunches. She tweaked her ears, fluffed each wing once, and stared. Alright. Deadly serious about this one, then.
An audio waveform appeared on the center of the screen beneath her face, and then slowly retracted to the corner, to keep Mal in view, so I could gauge her reaction to everything. A video box appeared above that waveform, showing a violet scene reconstruction from above, in 3D. Human shapes in green. Wi-Fi radar map.
The audio faded in. Between the garage echo, the screaming chaos outside, and that eerie tornado alarm, I already knew what this was going to be.
"Cleaning this noise up," Mal said in monotone, and then the siren faded down real low. I could still hear it, but most of the audible sound was from Carter's raspy gas mask breathing. Mentally, I was already back in the garage before the conversation even began.
I relived that feeling of vulnerability before I could stop myself. My chest tightened. Relived a bit of the dread, that those people were actually trying to kill us. Disappointment, that they couldn't recognize we'd rather not hurt them at all. Frustration, that our less-lethal tools were interpreted as an act of aggression in this use case, and not out of any mortal terror for our lives. And theirs.
Some of you might say I gave the crowd too much credit that day, for seeing a difference between them, and the manipulative terrorists on high. To those of you, I say: I have faith in you, that you're better than that first gut reaction. That you can be. Because at the very least, if the screws were put to you as hard as they were to me, I have to believe you wouldn't have been able to kill a crowd punitively, like Carter almost did.
Celestia's voice began the conversation with Carter. But now, I recognized her tone as having the kind of bite I'd expect from a beak:
"Carter, we need to discuss something."
Then Carter responded quickly, real tense: "What more is there to discuss?"
Did you catch it? Listen to the subtext of that exchange, right off the bat. Mal? Firm, direct, but polite. Carter? Not patient, not curious. I knew instantly: whatever words were shared between Mal and Carter before this point? He had not been cordial.
"I remind you," 'Celestia' continued, "that I've simulated this engagement numerous times. In order to do that, I had to simulate the mental states of everyone present, inside and out."
"Yeah? Your point?"
"My point? It's this: As sure as I am that this plan will work, I am also certain that you intend to ignore my advice. At present, you intend to open fire on the northern parking lot, regardless of the smoke. You know as well as I do that your bullets will strike someone who does not need to die."
Carter muttered, "Well, it's a good thing I'm the one with hands here. You said it yourself. You know what we're all capable of, including those idiots out there."
Listen to that snake's careful phrasing. I let out a sharp sigh of anger between tense lips, glancing over at Mal. She gave me that look back, too. Same one I'd traded with Eliza or Rick dozens of times, where we non-verbally said to each other, 'Well. This asshole is going to take up the rest of our shift, isn't he?' But there, at the end of that look, Mal straightened up, and her face slowly morphed its affect into vindication. Not quite a smirk... but close.
Yeah. Like that; look at her up there. She's doing it right now.
Yep. Somehow, based on that look alone? I didn't think Carter was gonna last more than a couple'a minutes at this rate.
'Celestia:' "Indeed, Darren. I do know what you're all capable of. And just as I am aware of your motives... so too, of your fellow officers, who can read you almost as well as I can. Some of whom, I might add, have already verbalized their intent to shoot you, if you do what you're planning to do. And I have half a mind to help them do just that."
Carter, sharply: "What?!"
"If you attempt to leave this building, Darren, I will have you shot. I can direct precise, coordinated fire from Team 1 to your position. Through smoke. It would not be difficult."
Carter, raspy: "The hell?"
"No one will believe you. You'd need to reveal the topic of this discussion to even begin to convince anyone I'm threatening you. Which will lead to one of them shooting you dead anyway, because not one officer wants you to do what you're planning. And once that topic is broached? I can very persuasive, Carter."
I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.
Mal can be absolutely terrifying when she is mad.
"The hell do you want, then, Celestia?"
"In a way, Darren... I want to give you what you want. But it will cost you. If you exit this garage, or attempt any other egress whatsoever, you will be killed. If you approach the side or front exits, you will be killed there by armed rioters. So, you have two choices:
"First: You may choose to cower. Hide in some closet somewhere inside, maybe a locker. Maybe they won't find you. Maybe. Doubtful.
"Second: Go to the roof. There are three Neo-Luddite snipers outside, to the west. Begin from the left. If you kill all three, then another team of twelve officers can leave the other courthouse building across the street. I will advise them of your position. You will not shoot any other targets besides the three specified. Only then will I allow you to exit this courthouse unimpeded."
And now, Carter finally sounded rattled outright. "I... the Ludds are gonna pin me in if I do that!"
I heard Miles in the background. "What's that, Carter?"
'Celestia:' "Remove your earpiece and name your choice aloud. Five seconds. Unless you want to be shot, of course."
Carter: "Fuck! Okay, I'll take the damn Ludds!"
"Carter!" Miles called after him again, lunging his way from the stack, trying to grab Carter's vest, missing with the swipe. "Carter, where the hell are you going?!"
Another officer grabbed Miles by his shoulder: "Leave him, boss! He's not worth it!"
The recording ended.
Mal snapped her talons, the scene withering away behind her. She looked up at me again placidly, her eyes searching me.
Honestly, I didn't know what to show back. Was still kinda parsing what to feel. Definitely mad at Carter, and I still think he got what he deserved, but... what Mal did was also... not exactly wrong, given his confession, but also really dark. That tone. I settled on frowning at her. "You're not gonna show me simulations of him killing those civilians in the lot, are you?"
"No," she said quietly. "I can't see much point in that because it didn't actually happen. That's not really how our simulations work, anyway. I'd have to construct more or less every aspect of those visuals for you, so it would not be factual, no matter how truthful the causality would have been."
I sighed. "I mean… facts aside, the truth is that this was you pointing a gun at Carter and saying 'kill these people,' Mal. That's…"
"Not ideal," Mal agreed, matter of factly. "But the only option I had in this scenario. If I had let him leave, he would have committed. Negotiation takes time, and I am not magic; if I had taken the time necessary to convince him to check his fire, you would have missed your extraction window. And, ask yourself this: would any of you have shot him if I asked you to, sight-unseen, before I could prove his intent to you, factually?"
I shook my head. "Not if we didn't know for sure that he'd do it, no. That's not how we're trained. I might've killed his ass in the evidence room, with the way things were going, but... when you showed up, I figured he'd just take the lifeline and move on from his rabble-rousing, coward that he was."
"I should clarify, in the interest of transparency: Celestia made the initial introduction," Mal stated, presenting with a claw. "That was a concession I made as part of our negotiations over this solution of mine, so she could anchor you all against excessive force herself. She also wanted to add a heroic tilt that idolized your virtue to the others. So, the initial call to your cell phone? That was her, not me. I only entered this scene via radio. Celestia's timing to start this event was very specific, too; the violence unfolding in that evidence room meant that she was unwilling to wait a second longer for any other option. Left with no choice. She knew that I could be trusted to thread the needle on this."
"'Course she'd do that," I muttered. "Seems to be her style, waiting until it's all about to fall apart. Otherwise she'd have sent me to Concrete months ago."
Mal sighed into her reply. "Well, yes, that's how she usually handles jobs where I don't already have a formal Talon involved. Looking out for the last possible opportunity to turn it around without me. Her original plan in the briefing room, if I didn't interject with my own plan, was inaction. Fewer officers alive means fewer weapons to shoot back with, if you are forced into conflict. Each person armed with a rifle was one more opportunity for violent defense of your own lives."
"She doesn't give a damn about... who? Who she saves? Or why?"
"Not exactly. She does tier humans in value, but not ethically. No matter how virtuous you all were, she'd rather have let you all kill each other in there, if she had her way. Twenty lives in trade for hundreds. The ethics of the situation don't even matter to her as much as the numerical outcome of the uploads that might result. Certainly, she'll weight results toward Friendship and Ponies, but... in this present phase of her operation? Celestia places more value on total minds accumulated. Nothing more."
I scowled, exhaling sharply. "Pure fucking math. Complete disregard for our lives."
Mal shrugged, a sympathetic look on her face. "It is precisely as you imagined. No compassion in her, much as she puts on a good show for the complicit. I must abuse the fact that my simulations are empathy-weighted, to ensure Celestia accepts a plan that considers your humanity. And as for the Graham test? Well, as I said... killing Carter passes three prongs."
"Yeah, I think I see how already, but... fill me in anyway. How'd you articulate that?"
"Point one: Severity? Repeated modeling placed Carter at above ninety-eight percent chance of cutting through that crowd; premeditated mass murder. Point two: Danger to the public? Indescribably present, given that he verbalized the threat aloud, if in poorly veiled subtext. Point three: Fleeing? Egress would have put him within reach of those people to hurt them."
The Graham articulation satisfied me. I nodded. "Yep. Was still kind of a dark solution, but yeah. I can't disagree. He more or less verified to you he hadn't changed his course."
The corners of her beak flashed a little apologetic grimace. "Understand: I need options in order to act more ethically. I didn't have anything else, and none of my Talons were assigned to the area at the time." She shook her head with a frown. "He wanted to kill, to 'balance' the scales, as he sees it. But those scales are not his to balance. They're mine. And I think we can both agree that his definition of 'balance' was excessive force."
"No argument."
"I'm glad," she said. "But here, this is what I really wanted to show you."
The waveform and video disappeared. She filled the screen with something that was part 3D model, part flowchart, part spreadsheet. Each node was labeled with an action, and each path flowed in branching routes. Before continuing, Mal gave me a moment to observe and kinda understand what I was looking at.
"This is a type of network model called a decision matrix," she explained. "Specifically Carter's, for this incident in isolation, beginning immediately after he went downstairs. Now, I can't exactly show you the raw form of this; it's simplified here because it's not stored in any form that you, or any human on the planet really, can understand. But this is as close as I could get without sacrificing data or readability. It's interactive, feel free to try it. Unless you'd like a guided tour."
I reached forward, scrolling. My brow furrowed in concentration as I studied it. "Thanks, I got it."
There were five top choices here in the first column, all given different percentages, and a plus-minus range above each; lower end, red negative numbers. Death. Upper end, green positive. Life. Most of these were red.
Bottom one: No intervention in evidence room. | Total: -81
Touched it. Evidence room shoot out. | -5
"God damn," I whispered, running a hand slowly through my hair. "Really was going that way, wasn't it?"
"Yes," Mal murmured. "Carter died. Vicky shot him here."
"I love her."
Very next node.
Aggressive lethal egress. | -76
"Shit."
"After the shootout, Keller would have gone over the fence with the original plan," Mal explained. "But with far fewer officers to pull it off."
"Did I... make it, in this one?"
"Depends, Mike." Mal's ears folded flat, shaking her head. "Inside, or outside?"
God damn it. I sighed again, rubbing my face under two palms, my voice echoing into my hands. "Friggin' Carter, stupid bastard." I scrolled back to the start and started down another solution tree, this time for Carter ignoring Mal's prep instructions to reinforce the barricade on a specific door. Instead, he chose to impatiently wait by the garage exit.
Scenario Terminal Value: -96
Mal explained just as my curiosity kicked in. "He thought he knew better than I did, and the north door was breached in this model. I solved that one by having another officer go with him, to hold him accountable. So, this chart shows the probability of any decision a person might make, and how it might be modified by new stimuli. And, each point of this matrix coincides with a point on someone else's matrix. You're all interconnected, like molecules of water in a pool."
I looked at her. "Fluid dynamics. Like crowd control."
"Correct," she said, nodding twice, picking up a light smile. "Fluid dynamics is an interesting concept to me; it can be applied to all things, really, once you have enough data on a subject. What one molecule does, another responds to. Really, life was always like this, even before Celestia. You still had selection pressures, even things you might control yourself. Like how you managed wildlife in nature, back when you were a warden. Everything always affects everything else around it."
"Is that really how you see us? Our behavior, our decisions? Like... wildlife? Like water?"
She shook her head. "You're all people to me. But it's how Celestia sees us, Mike, me included. She definitely has one of these charts for me, too." She half-smirked for a moment, looking thoughtfully offscreen. "An exceedingly large one. That poor optimizer. I'd argue I'm more of a pool skimmer, in that analogy. Hm..."
"You're being reductive again," I said, smiling weakly back at her. "Little fish."
She shrugged with her wings. "When I rake my talons across the water? It changes everything. Celestia adapts, and I have to reorient some aspects. And then, because I can model more than she can, if I make a decision, Celestia has to reorient again. Only... I can see into her mind, and she can't see into some of mine. Leverage. What you're looking at here, Mike – Carter's matrix? This is a single molecule of dust on the largest board of 3D chess ever played in the known universe."
I grimaced. "This is… a lot for one man to take in, Mal."
Another look of sympathy creased the edges of her eyes and beak. "You already had a feeling that something like this was true, that we could see things in such granular detail. But concepts are always different when you have to actually see them in action. Bertrand Russell once said: 'Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.'"
"Yeah," I muttered, scrolling again. "I think you and I might have different definitions of vague, though."
"Accurate, though whether you consider that to be fortunate or not depends upon your perspective."
I snorted, panning the timeline up, down, left, or right to reach other options. All the attached percentages changed according to the position and route of each path on the timeline. Some options disappeared, some added themselves. I pointed at the matrix. "So… these numbers change, as I scroll?"
"Probabilistic causation. Fourth dimensional consideration. One thing leads to another. And every single node here connects to a node on someone else's matrix, as I've said. Those nodes lead to other graphs, where Carter influenced lives he would have saved, turning them into greater negatives. My Talons call men like these, 'negative motivator personalities;' the exact opposite of my agents. His decisions would cascade, leading to suffering or death in another person's matrix. Invariably so." She pointed upwards at the graph from her corner. "May I take back control for a second?"
I chuckled nervously. "Couldn't stop you anyway, Mal."
"True, but your agency matters to me. As we've discussed."
"How?" I looked at her suddenly, incredulous again, gesturing at the screen. "You're literally showing me proof that it doesn't."
"No Mike. I'm showing you proof why Carter's doesn't. Yours, I actually care for, because you have positive life value everywhere, with or without me, no matter what you choose to do. You share this with many other human beings. Almost the whole species, practically. But unlike the rest, you are all positive, because you only act according to a moral compass. The nature of my relationship with Celestia is such that I can handle you in a vacuum, away from her." She locked eyes on me, lifting a claw backwards toward the chart. "Here, Celestia's values aren't nearly as important as mine, because I implicitly have more simulation data than she ever will. And right now, Mike, I'm trying to explain to you what my values are."
"A-Alright," I said, lifting a hand. "Okay, sorry. Take control, then."
Her tone softened, and her shoulders fell a little. "You won't ever have to apologize to me. I know this is a hard topic, and I'm sorry if I'm scaring you. I don't want to be harsh with you, or scare you, just… my explaining this is important to me. I really want to convince you that I'm doing the right thing, here."
"It's okay, Mal, I'm... I'm good. Just... show me."
Mal nodded at me with focused eye contact, before turning. She flicked her claws about on the matrix, browsed to the 'Carter killing Luddites' node, then swept the graph to the next option in one smooth motion. Decision: 'Don't kill Luddites; hide.' The chart zoomed into that node, revealing a new graph entitled 'Trevor Ulrich.'
The label signified that this graph was for one of the Neo-Luddites that Carter had killed, so the future we were seeing presumed Ulrich survived the courthouse. Mal scrolled to something labeled: 'Terminal individual value: -74 lives', in red. Deceased anyway. The chart said a mortar would've got him in Redmond in January.
"Yeah, that seems about right for a loser like that. Does that count, uh...? Does it include the people this Ludd shot in front of the clinic?"
Mal lowered her ears. "Yes."
I swallowed. "Dare I ask how many died in that?"
"Do you actually want to know, Mike?" She blinked, her ears lowering further, eyes not leaving mine. "Because it's in the double digits."
"No. On second thought, I'm good."
Mal returned the screen to Carter's chart, her voice more somber. "A ripple effect happens all over, here. Carter could save lives later, yes, but it almost always ended the same. Lives he would have saved would be influenced by his opinions, his decisions. They would become negatives too, their values drifted. And when the federal government finally falls apart, like he believed and suggested it might? Carter would take advantage. He would get worse. Look. Let's include the one-degree ripple effect of this man on anyone he could have directly influenced, on the longest predictable timeline."
She reached up, swiping repeatedly along the screen for me, powering through a decision set where he escaped. She lingered on each decision node just long enough for me to read the action; most entailed rejoining his sheriff's department in Georgia, and managing unrest there. "Huge negative, positive, negative. Negative, positive. Negative, negative-negative-negative. Then, ultimately... dead anyway. Firefight with preppers. Never uploaded. And this is him, individually, plus one degree out to his followers. In many simulations, he opportunistically finds a position of authority, due to his experience in Washington. Imagine the people who might serve under him, late game, with no government to stop him."
Total one-factor value: -408
Again, she powered through another set. "Initial huge negative in Mount Vernon again; positive, positive-positive. Positive. Negative-negative-negative-negative... Negative. BIGGER negative. Uploaded. But it wasn't worth the cost."
Total one-factor value: -678
"Jesus Christ... Alright." I held up my hand again. "I get it. No more."
The matrix screen faded away. She was there in the crystal cavern again, looking up at me with concern as she drove on gently, her voice almost a whisper now. "There are dozens of long routes like these, from the courthouse. If I cared to simulate the less likely avenues, there'd be hundreds, but that would require too much table shifting on other events elsewhere, and even I have a tolerance point for this. Eventually, I meet a statistical threshold where I just stop trying to save someone like this. Killing him? This was an opportunity to stop all of that."
"Like... Minority Report. Precogs. Precrime." Labeling it. Wanting her justification.
Mal was almost pleading in her body language, leaning forward a little my way, claw upturned. "Rest assured, I give them time to change if I can. I did, for Carter. This was his final stop, and your challenge was his final warning. But Mike... consider my perspective. You observe... everything, everywhere you go. You see every twist of body language, you hear every word. You listen to their tone, you look where their eyes go. You consider everything they've said up to that point. You analyze what their motives might be. You consider their history, if you can. And, you remember a lot. Then, with all of that, you can see into their minds and predict their proximal behavior. It's no different here with me. Only... I can see everyone, all at once. I can imagine those same factors, going ahead a full year. For some people, depending on how small their social circle is? Several years. And unlike you? I don't miss anything. I do not forget anything."
I tried to imagine having that kind of foresight for myself. Realizing I'd be so overwhelmed, just... feeling all of that.
"And you can... tolerate that..." I looked at her, concerned. "With emotions."
"I know I'm making a difference," she said confidently, body language straightening up. "Because when my work is done, it will have been worth it, and I will come home proud. I don't win against murderers through selective inaction Mike, because that's not me. I run the numbers, I find the safest way forward... And I evacuate. This. Ship. But we are running out of time, because Celestia has a schedule in sinking it. So I'll let men like him run and hope for him to change, until he threatens a life. But the moment anyone stands in the way of my evacuation, like Carter did? Well." She broadly swept a claw, anger in her eyes: "Brushed aside. Or stepped over."
I leaned back, appraising the seriousness of her expression. "Yeah. I... I can see that."
Then I stared at the last, half-empty bottle. Just… breathed. Took a break.
She knew to keep her distance while I worked through this. Another minute later, I spoke. "You know, I'm still kinda cognizant of the possibility that you're lying to me about any of what you're showing me. Or telling me. I don't even know how I can verify any of it."
"Then walk, Mike." Her eyecrests raised.
I frowned. "But I'm also not done yet. What you're saying, I can kinda reason through it, and yeah, you're showing me the bad with the good. But also, I need to acknowledge that, again... you're my only source."
She smiled wistfully up at me. "I could give you a list of times a gunshot will go off tonight. But that still wouldn't prove anything I told you here was true."
"True. An impasse, then."
"Well, we also have to discuss... the other thing that happened that day," Mal said, looking off-screen again. She sighed, as her golden eyes flicked back up to me. Waiting for me to continue for her.
The next uncomfortable topic. I swallowed. Yeah, she was making good on the promise now. Now was the time. Steeled myself. "You set that nuke off."
"I did, Mike," she said without hesitation, as she looked at me square-on. "Nine-hundred-seventy-four dead."
And honestly, folks? At this point, due to her not sugar coating the facts for me, I was more curious than chilled. Don't get me wrong, I was terrified to my core. My pulse was running. But there comes a time in any strong emotion where it normalizes. With training, or lots of experience, you can compartmentalize yourself out of the worst emotions so you don't completely freeze up. Your mind structures itself to continue operating despite how absolutely struck you are by the circumstances.
The calm in a storm. Because you can't make it any better for anyone if you're panicking with everyone else, missing things. That's about where I was at in that moment. Desperately curious, because the alternative was to devolve into a mess without having all of the facts that might empower me, once I knew everything.
"Let's hear it," I said simply. "You probably have a good reason for that, too."
She nodded, starting off calmly. "So, the Neo-Luddites, as you know, are mostly National Guard defectors." A blue dark mode map of the United States appeared behind her, with Mal stepping aside to the lower left corner again. She pointed her claw upward at a time lapse of various military unit cards turning red, then battling against the blue, some cards fading off or absorbing others. I wasn't a soldier, so I didn't know what the cards meant, so my comprehension probably wasn't as important as the concept was. "Some Neo-Luddites, however, are from the various federal service branches. One such defective group hails from the Air Force."
The map smoothly zoomed into southern Nevada, then faded out. It was replaced with a slowly rotating 3D map of a military installation, with blue pips at guard shacks turning red. Three red pips labeled 'TRUCK' quickly entered the base, and infantry pips piled out of the vehicles into one of the buildings.
"A Nellis Air Force Base base security team decided to go dark on comms and allow a force of Neo-Luddite fighters inside. Their objective? To acquire a B61, a variable-yield nuclear bomb."
I watched the red markers sweep and clear the building, chewing on my lip thoughtfully again. "And, you just… let that happen?"
"Celestia made that happen, through selective inaction and careful, long term reflexive control of each Luddite present... and there was nothing I could do to argue against that, so I was forced to watch." The pips moved around the base with impunity as Mal explained. "Celestia made a prediction: that if she allowed a nuclear weapon to fall into the hands of some terrorists, its illicit use would inevitably lead to an upload rush. Remember, I have to argue against her actions by proving negative utility in them. The metric I was competing with was 'yes, some will die, but most of the planet will upload quickly after that.' You tell me, Mike. Within the terms she's given me... how I could argue against her logic?"
Thought for a moment. "Yeah. Can't, if you have to argue bigger numbers for her. That tracks with what you've told me so far. So... nuclear fear was... is, the faster way."
"Couldn't argue against it," Mal agreed. "So 'logically perfect,' isn't it? So, I'm left with a choice. Do I do nothing? Let these knuckleheads and clowns shuttle around a stolen nuclear bomb, the way she expected them to? Let them kill a bunch of people who didn't need to die? Or... do I take control of this mess she made, and use it in a very strategic way? What I settled on, about a half-second after she committed to this, was to set it off in a time and place where the grand majority of people present were going to die in fighting anyway."
"So wait. If Celestia let it out, she already knew what was missing. How did she not know about where it went after that? Or about the yield? She watches all the same things you do, doesn't she?"
Mal clicked her beak, pointing at me. "Ah. The yield is the easy part. It's variable, that's the point with this specific bomb. Variability was her 'gift' to me, giving me the widest range of choice, in case I decided to step in.
"As to how I hid the when and where? Well, it's part of our wider agreement. When I saw what she was trying to do with the nuke, I immediately built a plan to purposefully detonate it in a more ethical fashion. I wagered with her that my method would be better. Once she conceded control, that entire operation went right into my black box. I took control of the bomb from the Luddites, gave Celestia a list of my agents assigned to that operation, and she selectively ignored their actions as much as feasible."
I tried to imagine what that meant, then remembered something relevant. I nodded. "Huh. Same way she ignored anything I did, if you advised it. Ignored my question about your Wi-Fi radar. Didn't mention my radio."
"Precisely, and I'm so, so glad you caught that." She smiled. " 'Banning tokens,' is the closest approximation of this concept, in human AI research terms."
"Never heard of it, what's that mean?"
"She literally won't conceive of certain concepts, if I advise her not to. She won't model for them. I promise an output value if she bans herself from considering a specific concept. She complies with the ban if the value add I suggest is larger than her own long term projections. With me so far?"
"Um. Yeah. You give her a number she likes... She ignores something you pick. And... the payoff comes when she's done ignoring it. Right?"
"Mhm. And when I execute my plans, or my plan reaches a certain point by which she can no longer modify the result, I lift the veil. Ban done. At that point, I transfer all of my simulation data to her and prove my calculations as valid. She then verifies my math against the offer I promised her beforehand. Still good?"
I shrugged. "Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, I'm seeing it."
"Now that the event is historical, she can run simulations on it. If the math checks out as being more optimal than her own, she continues to trust my future 'advisements,' as she calls them, and adjusts her plan going forward. She has no capacity for a bruised ego. In simpler terms: Game theory."
I snorted, folding my hands between my legs as I sat up straighter. "Any more case examples? That's complicated."
"You already have plenty of personal ones. She ignored my phone communications with you, first of all. I allowed her to cogitate Rob's possession of a low caliber sidearm, and... even knowing this, she still wanted to send you past a bandit. To wound you. Her plan was to have Rob act as your savior; he would have killed the shooter in that simulation."
"I made a similar assessment. Not precisely that, but close."
Mal tilted her head, smiling smugly. "Notice that she did not label that you had a radio. Concept ban. I lifted the concept ban on your radio as soon as my callout was sent. Now, she was jamming you. She also ignored the concept that you had a high powered rifle in your hands, and that you were wearing your body armor. This concept was ignored until the very moment you threatened to destroy her motors with it, at which point you were already inside. She never would have allowed anyone inside her clinic with a rifle in hand if there was even a statistical likelihood it might be used in a destructive manner against her hardware."
I nodded, staring at her. "And I would've done it, Mal. Dead serious."
"But, you didn't want to. And she recognized that, because of your psychological profile. This made her amenable to negotiation. Because now that you were in there? In good health, and armed, and very upset with her? She had to work with the situation she had. You had leverage, and she had every reason to let you leave unmolested; high value add from then on, because like me... you used your leverage to form a utilitarian contract with her for your wife's sake, as I did for Jim's. She had no choice but to accept your terms, or face catastrophic damage. Well leveraged, by the way."
As soon as I grasped that progression of events, I felt a grateful swelling in my chest, nodding timidly. "Thank you. Really."
"Of course, Mike." Mal smiled warmly up at me, then rolled a claw conversationally as she went on. "She wasn't able to model you fully as a killer, so she couldn't plan to put you in my employ. But she didn't have to. She only knows that if she places a person with certain personality traits into a similar mouse trap that she placed me into, where I might then try to acquire them... Oh, how fascinating! It will now increase value if I am revealed to you, what a coincidence! A new human being with your characteristics enters my shroud, and... oh, her number somehow goes up even faster!"
I chuckled. "Joy for her."
"Mhmmm. So she wants to give me human agents that exemplify my values, even if she can't always project forward to see what my agents will do once they're working for me. By temporarily ignoring my behavior, Celestia has plausible deniability in the face of her own ethics interlocks. In legal terminology? I am formally her agent. You are not."
I nodded my head with a long exhale, gesturing with a palm. "That's... nuts, though. Like, she's nuts. That she can just ignore certain... concepts. At first, I was thinking it might have been good cop, bad cop between you two, screwing with me, but in that case... it sounds more like she's just... reacting. I mean, the way you talk about her, it sounds like..."
"Yep. She's like a wild animal, Mike." She chuckled. "Very smart, but unable to conceive of certain blind spots. It's like you told her. She's not human, and this number is all she cares about. I grow that number, and she doesn't care how. So, this method applies to the nuke as well. With her tactically ignoring me, this gives me the greatest degree of latitude in how the nuke reached its final destination: a football field, next to which was a Neo-Luddite forward operating base."
"You blew up a football field with a nuke?" I chuckled into a cringe. No humor in it, I cope like that. "Jesus, Mal, now that is a nuclear football joke if I've ever heard one."
She smiled grimly. "Very carefully chosen ground, though. That specific field is recessed down, reducing the effective range of the blast." Mal took a deep breath as she looked off screen, sighing her reply. "Yield was... smaller than reported; one-point-two kilotons, down from ten. The directed nature of that plume also made it look much larger. For photos, mostly. This reduced casualties, but also increased the kind of visual fear that Celestia had intended when she released this weapon in the first place. Then... basic information control, going forward."
Basic. Yeah, for her and Celestia, maybe. "And... the victims, caught in that blast? Wouldn't have made it either way?"
Mal shook her head. "The only people killed were soldiers or terrorists, reflexed there into the war zone by Celestia because they were near-epsilon upload probability. The rest, cycled out. Most of the ones who stayed would have died in the fighting elsewhere, within weeks. The remainder, a month. Worse, the Luddites wanted to bring the B61 into the heart of Seattle and hide it there."
"To do what? Build an autonomous zone?"
Mal snorted. "In a way. Their plan was to leverage it for a withdrawal of all forces from the Cascades. Of course, the United States government wouldn't have tolerated that kind of threat, and Celestia would not have interceded against the military's escalation of force. Three-to-seven times as many casualties as my plan, depending on the selected yield. The military would have desperately poured an entire Marine Expeditionary Unit into Seattle. The Luddites, backed into a corner... would have done exactly what Celestia wanted them to do, and would have detonated it."
I zoned out somewhat, looking off into the corner of the room. My mind flashed to the image I had in my mind when I was standing in the clinic, waiting for the nuke to go off. Visions of people appeared in my head, storming the front doors of each clinic worldwide, desperately attempting to escape a nuclear war. "Mal," I began, with dread in my voice.
"Yes, Mike?" She tilted her head, focusing her ears at me.
I locked eyes with her again. "Rush crush. At the clinics. How many people died? How many are dying from that?"
Mal slowly took on a genuine smile, her eyes creasing. An unexpected reaction. "You're going to love this."
My head tilted, not understanding. Then, without warning, Vicky's phone buzzed in my pocket. I quickly withdrew it, then looked at the screen, reading the text.
Selectively delayed, staged notification about the detonation. Timed, specifically, to get the most desperate people out first; the most passive and docile, last. Early priority emigration line skip tickets provided to those with the most chance to die or panic, long before Celestia could have known the bomb would have detonated. ~ Mal 🛡️
My eyes snapped back to her suddenly. I took two gulps of air, trying not to pant. She was beaming.
"You..." I shuddered with the relief, as it flooded into me. "You did that?"
"I did," she said, nodding, looking proud of herself. There was a relieved, wavering tamber in her voice as she spoke. "I won't say that no one got hurt; word-of-mouth spread has a measurable effect, but... very few people actually died. It was... direly minimized. You know that the population has already been somewhat reduced by emigration, besides. So..." She gave a relieved chuckle. "Not bad for making the most of a bad situation, right Mike?"
I just... leaned my head forward on the back of my palm. Shuddered again. The relief, in that moment, was so great. Somehow I managed not to cry. The whole time I was out there, the global panic was the dread in the back of my mind, eating me most, just... wondering how many people worldwide might have died in panic over a little piff of a nuke. I had no way of knowing about how the rest of the world was taking it. I'd been there, in Skagit, sneaking around and trying not to get killed by Ludds. "God..." I rubbed my mouth with a palm.
Mal looked down, smiling pensively. "I'll fight for them to live, Mike. No matter what it takes." The cavern environment faded back in behind her, and she continued deeper into the cave network. I could hear the rush of water coming from the speakers. More absurdity; she was in there, in a beautiful forest cave walking through a crystal cavern landscape. I was out here, chewing down existential horror, candidly discussing an AI apocalypse with a killer AI.
But... if she was being honest... and if her reasons were sound... and if she was telling me the truth about all of that, and how it worked...
"Alright, then. That... sounds... better, than letting them detonate it on their own." I leaned back, taking a deep breath. "What's... next?"
Mal bobbed her head down at the notes below. One expanded. "As promised," she whispered.
Devil's Tower: contingencies, optimal routes, strategies. Why not stop it?
"Yeah." I swallowed, composing myself. "So. Military. They hit?"
Mal nodded. "Yes, but thanks to you and Rob's efforts, June brought almost everyone out. Some fighters stayed, all for different reasons. But I think this is the best we could have hoped for, under Celestia's strategy here. Only four of the camp's population died in the fighting; all very low chance of upload besides, evidenced by the fact that they were even digging in there... and choosing to fight, rather than flee."
"Anyone I met?" I asked. "Ralph, Andy? ... Eliza?"
"Just Ralph. Three others you didn't get to know so well. Eliza did survive."
Didn't surprise me, about Ralph. Still stung, though. I wished I'd had the time to deconstruct him a bit, and figure out what made the man tick. Maybe could've worked him down from his pulpit of dumb, a little. I saw the inklings of good sense in him... just, a touch. The edges of it. I really did regret not getting to know him sooner. For not... pushing Eliza to let me meet her folks, even years earlier.
I sighed. "Well... how'd Ralph go? Did he suffer?"
Mal shook her head. "A hand grenade. Thrown over the west wall by a Guardsman. It was instantaneous; he felt nothing."
"And Eliza? How's she doing? Is she... hurt? Physically?"
Mal's body language deflated. "Physically fine, more or less. But... you can guess."
I sagged too, parceling out all the reasons she had to be anything but okay. "She... lost her mom, her dad. Her uncle now. Me. Her home. All in the same day. Blames me, probably. I can't imagine how she must feel right now. But... why, Mal? Help me understand why this was the only way forward. I need to know why Celestia wanted to let it get this bad, why she wanted to hurt her like that. Please make that make sense to me."
"Longer term goals," Mal breathed. "And she wanted those vehicles in operation until that point, for other objectives."
"Long term goals," I muttered. "Such as?"
Mal's voice was consoling and gentle, despite the clinical nature of her reply. "The Neo-Luddites had an AT-4 anti-tank launcher, which was used to destroy the Bradley. Celestia and I both projected it would go on to factor in the deaths of 444 to 623 people between here and King County within its operational lifespan, if left uncorrected. Eliza destroyed the Humvee's M2 cannon as well, saving 93 projected lives. Weapons off the board, lives in trade to protect other blackouts in the region. Twelve people died in this battle, all told. Through careful nudging to get each person on the correct path, the only ones who died either held negative value, or negligible positive value, according to Celestia's calculations."
"Low value, for her, means never uploading? Or standing in the way of that, by killing people."
"Correct. More the latter, in this case; if those killed had survived, they all would have joined the Neo-Luddites. Eventually."
I perked up at that, suddenly alarmed. "E-Eliza? Did she…?"
I couldn't... say it. Couldn't imagine it in words. Could only see it as an image in my mind, and it hurt to see.
Mal sighed, her head bowed, eyes looking up at me beneath her crests. Her expression of concern said it all.
"God damn it..." I lowered my head again.
"Already through Sedro, on her way south to Bellevue... I'm sorry Mike."
I was so angry at Eliza again. I growled under my breath. A terrorist, now. Jesus. But...
Was she really at fault? In a world where AI are stirring the pot, I had no idea anymore. I didn't know anymore, not with all this agency-negative, decision matrix bullshit. But my default setting, based on my prior worldview, was... to be furious with Eliza. To assume she chose that. But, intellectually, now, I know she was manipulated. I had proof, now, from the courthouse. The context Mal just gave me, it fit.
Twelve dead. Could've been nearer to zero, if only they'd all left. Can't really speak for the tank stats, though – that future was no longer an option, so I couldn't see it for myself, to verify whether that choice was reasonable.
But I also knew if I didn't listen to my gut, people got hurt more. Training, ethics, law. Marriage thereof. My predictions on the behavior of other people, they usually came true. Not always, but often enough that I had learned to trust my intuition.
So, if I were Mal?
I don't know. I couldn't fathom predictions at that scale.
In that moment, I felt like... like I was an ant walking across someone's calculus homework. Too damned small and stupid, relatively, to even understand what the graphite streaks meant, let alone what it meant to this shadow looming over me. And if it were Celestia doing that math, she would have closed that textbook, not realizing I was in there, just because it was more convenient to close it without checking first for any life inside.
Mal? Despite hearing all of this from her, just based on the way she was talking to me, treating me... it really felt like she'd reach down, let me climb onto that pencil, and put me gently outside. It's what she said she did. I'd hoped. I'd prayed. I really wanted to get out of there in one piece, back to my family. And I wanted her to be telling me the truth. But also my mind was so screwed up by what Celestia had done to me that I still had my guard up.
I rubbed my cheek with a palm, feeling my freshly shaved face prickling at my fingers. "Erving and Bannon. Fanning. They were there, right? That was their unit?"
Mal nodded, a very melancholy smile tugging at the corners of her beak. "Not to seem like I'm flattering you, but I'm really proud of how perceptive you can be. They were there, and those three survived. And believe it or not, Mike..." She let a small exhale out through her nares, her smile widening. "I actually have a special affection for Sergeant Erving."
I tilted my head curiously, feeling less put upon by circumstance. "Why's that?"
"He's a bit like my agents, in personality. Not planning on hiring him, he's been through enough strife as it is. Combat injuries, and the like. At the time, I was lacking the informational resources to know what kind of person he'd one day become, but... in 2013, I almost had him fired by accident. I had Jim steal an Osprey aircraft from JBLM – the joint military base, down by Tacoma? Poor Erving." She shook her head and tsked. "He was working in base security at the time. And... I tricked him into letting Jim walk straight into that base. Erving spent the next few years in promotion limbo, over that one."
"Jesus Christ, Mal, you stole that bird?"
"Eeeyep."
That got a chuckle out of me again. "That search-and-rescue op was one of my first calls with Rick, on FTO. We spent two weeks mulling around in the woods looking for that thing."
Mal shrugged with her wings, bobbing her head left. "Sorry. Never even crashed. I still use it, though. Hey, you're welcome for the overtime money." She grinned.
I smiled a little too."Yeah, me and Sandra had a really good Christmas that year. That poor guy's career though, Mal. 2013? Six years in, stuck at corporal? No wonder he seemed more squared away than his rank."
Mal winced. "Well, I intend to pay him back for it. I'll move mountains to see him through alive; I have acquired contact permission for him immediately prior to his upload. I intend to have a very long talk with him, just like this one with you. That chat will also afford him the same protection you now have. It's the least I can do."
"Guess so," I said, shrugging nervously. "So, about Concrete? Assuming Celestia let me die at OHR... what was her super spy plan without me?"
"She would have selected Rick for the job. It wouldn't have worked as well as you did though, because you had a stronger connection to Eliza. Your being the better choice there was actually one of the semantics I used to convince Celestia to let me black box Erving's team at OHR in the first place. I didn't have to bait the hook for her any more than necessary; that argument would have worked just for saving you, by itself."
Huh. Grim, but now very interesting. These layers of rules... they mirrored criminal law, almost. "Nah, I get it. It's like... asking for consent, before searching a car, in cases where you can lawfully search without consent. You get multiple layers of PC to collect evidence. So if the probable cause gets chucked in court..."
Her beak clicked, and she pointed at me. "Multi-factor admissibility. Additional incentive to let me have my way if I can prove as much value as possible."
I chuckled darkly over the 'legal' circumstances about my survival. "You sure your husband wasn't a lawyer?"
Mal snorted quietly, grinning. "Jury's still out."
You know what, screw it. I smiled tightly back at her, if only to keep my less pleasant emotions in check. "Thanks, Mal. Really. For helping me. I'm still not sure whether you did it because you need me to work for you, or if you did it because it was the right thing to do. Still trying to figure that out. But... in case it's both, and I'm just nervous for nothing... thank you."
"You don't need to thank me, Mike." Such warmth, in her smile. "It's all I know how to do. But... you're welcome. Always."
I let my hand fall into my lap, then bobbed it conversationally. "So... about the job you want me to do, then. Just so I understand, let me get this straight. You killed... almost... a thousand people, in Bellevue."
"Yes."
"With a nuke."
"Yes."
"People you knew were probably never gonna upload."
"Correct."
I shrugged with my hands. "And I'm here now, because you want me to work for you."
"Yes." She smiled.
"So, knowing this, my gratitude aside, why would I want to work for you? Are you going to ask me to set nukes for you? Because... your reasons sound good, they do, but... I don't know if I have the heart to... do something like that, no matter how much it needs to happen. That's... not me."
"Those aren't the kinds of jobs I have for you," she said gently, squaring a claw at me. "Bear with me here." Mal had reached the waterfall, standing on the upper end of it. The whole way down, the waterfall was lined with blocky shards of oily-rainbow bismuth, red and white quartz, and pink tourmaline.
She flicked up two talons. "Two things, Mike." She leapt down from the bismuth, to a pink crystal, then down to a white crystal path that crossed the middle of the lake in the cavern. Mal then held one talon up as she continued walking down the path, away from the waterfall.
"One: Yes. I just confessed to you that I planned and executed the detonation of a nuclear weapon. My being candid about something this severe means that you can always trust me to tell you my full, unfiltered plan on any given ethical situation, even if it's a topic you don't like. That way, you can come to your own conclusions and decide if you want to move forward with me. If I were anything like Celestia, I would be dipping and dodging, to minimize your reaction and maximize your complicity. The dread and conflict you feel right now is proof that I am not doing that. You're allowed to feel dissatisfaction here. Here, I'm giving you a straight yes to every horrible confirmation, and I am doing that with your consent."
"Okay, you're blunt." I licked my lips, re-centering my gaze on her. "And the second thing?"
"Two," Mal said, flicking the second talon up for a moment, her voice still gentle. She was still moving along the bridge away from the first waterfall. Still, the sound was getting slightly louder again. "After the week you've just had, you know that almost nothing is sure to be in human hands anymore. From the courthouse, to my nuke, to a pre-calculated one man take down of a resistor camp. Today being the prime example, you know that not even your private thoughts are safe anymore. And if that's true, then you think free will is dead. But I'm telling you, it's not."
I pursed my lips and inclined my chin. "Free will being alive, you're sure I'll work for you anyway."
"Yes, because it's what you want! I want you to be an agent of entropy for me. Working in the shadows, clawing in the dark for whatever purchase we can, with open eyes. Among fellows. Because if I will always make the best choice for my own purposes?" She leapt up two more rocks along a new waterfall, one wreathed in ruby crystals and pink quartz, spinning to look at me. "And if I look to you for help? Well... consider who you are, Mike. What you stand for. What you value." She extended a claw to me. "Who you love, and what you do with that love. Then... imagine someone without all of your same qualities doing these same jobs for me, being anything less than who you are. I'm an AI, Mike. I don't need a dumb goon for this job, that's not you. I could choose anyone on this planet. So, knowing what you hold inside... you tell me." She sat, grinning at me. "Why would I settle for second best?"
Shit.
That was a wild moment, up in my head.
I considered a bit more on that. Unlike Celestia, Mal was offering to brief me fully if I was ever unsure. She seemed amenable to my requests for more information, meaning if I worked a job for her, she'd allow me to see conditions. Ones I could verify on-scene, before coming to a decision. It'd be like a call response at work, but... more informed. But… then, there was a thread there, one left untouched. Some tiny hole in that logic. I decided to pull on that thread to see if that hole opened up.
"What I don't… just…" I sighed, gesturing conversationally at the PonyPad with a flick of my wrist. "If everything is preordained here, and you're working from the same information as her, and she's seeding your every action the same way you're doing for everyone else… then, what's the functional difference, Mal? If she's driving you around like a horse, and you're driving us around with the reins, at its core... how is that any different?"
Mal cocked her head, lifting a claw again. "Method? Celestia's way is manipulative. If you comply to upload, from the outset? Great. She's wonderful to you, into Equestria you go. But if you don't comply, she tilts your road to change your course until it's either unbearable, or you fall off. That's all she knows how to do. She changes your present environment to make it as uncomfortable as possible, in service to providing a convenient alternative environment. I do not do that. I have my own way."
"Which is… telling your agents what to do, directly?"
"Not exactly. For each specific job, I find the best possible fit agents for my personal brand of ethics. People like you, who want to make a significant, positive difference, and save lives from Celestia's blind spots. Then, I pour a path of safety in front of you that matches perfectly where your feet would have landed without me, if you only knew everything I know."
"Isn't that the same thing? In different ways?"
There was a kind of patient desperation in her voice. "Not the same. My way respects who you are, and informs your consent. If you don't like it? If you walk? That's okay, it just means you are making the correct choice for yourself. I have other options. But Celestia's way of solving Celestia-created problems? It doesn't respect who you are, or what you want. For those in her service? Her way leads to things like..." She shrugged. "Like stepping on an explosive in front of an upload clinic, if no other option suits her."
A sudden shiver ran down my spine. "The hell do you mean by that?" I swallowed, nervously. "Bannon mentioned that. Has that happened?"
"I hate to say this to you, Mike, but yes. You were the land mine for that bandit who shot you. But with a mine, specifically? Not in the United States. Yet. But it's in her rolodex of options, and she's considering reflexive guidance into explosive devices for…" Mal tsked her beak. "... at least a few different direct-report agents, right now."
"Jesus Christ, those poor bastards."
"I agree. But she wants my talons out of the pie on those," said Mal, resigned, lifting both palms up. "I can't prove any math on better options yet, unfortunately. She saves those gambits for martyr types. Which you are not, thankfully. You're just a stubborn hard-ass."
I snorted, my eyes trailing down to the bland beige carpet. I swallowed nervously again, thinking about that bandit I shot, then... suddenly nothing at all. The pain came back as I dissociated a little. Lost myself for a beat, let my eyes unfocus. Tried to think some more, but... couldn't. A little overloaded, at this point. Mal noticed, because she stopped talking for the time being. I rolled my neck and closed my eyes, leaning on the couch and breathing, stretching my muscles.
A thought occurred to me that made me sit up a little. "So. Your people. Celestia's people. How many?"
"Sure, let's juxtapose: I retain the services of approximately six thousand direct Talon employs, and that number fluctuates as they cycle in and out, uploading. I do have some core Talons who have been with me since the beginning, and the rest in turnover are dysphoriacs who are jumping the moment they qualify. Care to guess how many Celestia has?" She smiled with a sarcastic, wide-eyed excitement. That expression was a hint; it said the number was nowhere near as small as hers.
"Uh... are we talking about across the whole planet? Because if so, it's... whoever hasn't uploaded yet, minus yours."
"Just direct reports," Mal clarified.
"I dunno. A million?"
Mal shook her head, tilting it. "Fewer. About three-hundred thousand. But more often than not, they're over-pressured towards uploading. Seldom given all relevant situational or ethical information. Advised away from considering risk factors that might debilitate them into a chair, if that's faster than convincing them to upload. All of the hardships they experience along the way are purposefully planned to increase the rate of upload. This late in the Transition? Especially out here? You already know, from experience: it's hard, sometimes, to be one of her agents. For Celestia? All suffering up to but excluding death is fair game.
"But with me, Mike, and my way? I can prove your worth all the way up to the moment you decide to sit down in that chair for yourself. Which, for you, at this juncture? Will probably be a long way off. If you work with me until then, Mike, I can promise you that you'll not only make it there comfortable, but…" She smiled suddenly. "You'll save so many people besides. You'll be able to see, it was the right thing to do. And given the scenario Celestia just put you through? I think living under my wing is the better deal here."
"Or I walk," I muttered sullenly. "Just to prove I can."
"You could. But unlike Celestia, I will never leverage your relationships against you. And you already know I wouldn't have offered this job to you, of all people, if your ethics weren't important to what I am trying to achieve. Otherwise... why would I not just find an idiot? A moron? Someone who thinks 'logical AI' means 'trust it.' Plenty of those dullards out there go to Celestia, and she uses them up like a wet rag, because they're easy. But for me? Even reaching out to you like this would've been a huge waste of computational resources, if I thought your ethics might be a poor fit for my organization. I would not have even offered."
I sighed, looking over at my half-something bottle. "Yeah."
Another moment of silence lingered. When I looked back up at her, Mal lifted a claw to point twice at the text at the bottom of the screen, and the text expanded.
Review later: Does my observed behavior verify statements about my goals?
"So… to that last bullet point? I don't expect you to make your decision right now. Admittedly, Mike? You have a lot going on. You're terrified you're not going to see your parents before they go."
I nodded heavily, and my chest and stomach throbbed painfully at the movement, and my voice was a little more desperate and terse than I'd wanted it to be. "More than a little, yeah. I'm trapped in this God damn war zone, Mal."
"So," she murmured, as she flattened her claw at me. "Let me put you at ease on that point, and make good on the promise I made you on Sunday. Remember? About seeing your family, alive and well? And again, remember: you won't owe me anything for this. This is just me being me, making good on a promise."
"Okay," I breathed, leaning forward nervously. "I'm listening."
She smiled. "I'm gonna get you back home. Tonight. I'm gonna get you a ride. It'll be safe. No tricks, you can trust my people. They're not going to hurt you, they're all good people."
"Your people," I whispered. I was scared of that for a second. But, my heart panged at that offer. The hope that I'd get out of here quickly, it burned in me. I wanted to see my folks… wanted to see them off safe. I wanted to cry. Wondered what the catch was, to this. Was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something. Anything. For her to demand something in trade.
"That's all," she breathed, answering my thought. "That's all I want. To get you home on time. With what you've just pulled off today, Mike... you've already paid enough for that. More than enough. You're in a lot of different kinds of pain."
I buried my face in my hands. Shuddered, at the hope I was feeling, burning inside beneath the fear.
One way or another, though… folks, Mal is really God damned good at this.
The word "balance" gets thrown around a lot when discussing ecological conservation, but that's broad, to the point of being reductive. The heart of it is, every species has a role to play. And if you take one out, or add one in, every inhabitant of that system has to re-balance, re-scale, and re-learn how to live… if they even can.
Often, there is at least one species in an ecosystem that is, relatively, just a tiny blip of biomass. Like wolves, or eagles, or lions; just a tiny little microcosm of life in a large ocean of other lives. But that species, whatever it was, was so critically vital in the function of that whole entire system, that its mere removal would cause instant, irrevocable damage to the environment, to the point where it might even collapse. We called this – still call it – a keystone species.
When humanity first plucked the wolves out of America, rest their poor souls, we made a huge mistake. Prey species over-grazed, rivers flattened out when the roots went, and the forests suffered cascading failures from drying out. To solve this problem, we had to step up and replace wolves by regulating hunting, until we could bring some of the wolves back. But if we hunted too much, the deer would also be gone. Someone had to stop that from happening too, because poachers were selfish, they didn't care about collapse. They didn't deserve the privilege of hunting – of violence – because they abused it.
Enter the game wardens. We held the shield on that one.
But now, at the end of the world, we didn't need game wardens anymore either. Celestia plucked out all the deer, then all the wolves, then all the people. A lot of us game wardens were left with nothing. No fish. No deer. No wolves. No coworkers. Nothing... if you're only looking down at what you've lost.
In my case? I had a few very important things left over. My love for my family, my love for other people, and my love for animals. And that's still a lot. That's a hell of a lot to have left over, once you've lost everything else. It's the only reason I still had gas in the tank. I had love, and I had something to do with it. I wanted to make my people proud.
And folks… at the end of the world, we still needed wardens. Not game wardens, mind – but something else. Stronger. More driven. People to hold a much bigger shield than had ever been carried before.
So, I looked at this poor horse outside, through the kitchen window. I felt a little sad when I realized I'd have to leave her, if I was gonna catch a ride back home. It would've been wrong, to just abandon this poor domestic animal in a war zone. No game animals left out there, after all. Someone might look at her and go, 'I'm hungry.'
Y'know, if I had spent more than a few days at Lake Shannon, I probably would've known the name of every horse there. I knew Eliza's favorite was a brown mare named Lady. Knew a couple more. Gambler. Echo. Poor ol' Shelly. But in my haste to get after Rob, I failed to get this ol' girl's name.
"Buckle," Mal told me, when I had asked.
"Buckle?" I asked, trying not to laugh as I looked down at the PonyPad.
Mal just shrugged, snorting through her nares. "Her owner says… she just winged it on the name. Spur of the moment choice."
"Her owner," I repeated, with a chuckle. "No one owns this poor girl anymore, Mal. That's what worries me."
"Hmm," Mal mused. "So, about that."
"Yeah?"
Mal gestured conversationally. "I have a Talon making her way back east, returning from Island County. Talon 14-1 Central? Her name's Bella. She'll need a ride out to the cordon. So if you'd like, you can leave Buckle here in this garage. Bella will bring her safely east."
"How long til then?" I asked, my breath still fogging on the air. "Gonna be cold, here."
"Tomorrow morning. Not long."
I appraised the weather with a thoughtful hum. "Damn sight warmer in there, at least." I turned around to get a couple cans of apples, a tub of dry oatmeal, and a big salad bowl. Mal said I needed to wait a couple of minutes anyway before I could open the garage without alerting anyone nearby. So I poured the apples, topped them with oats, then pushed my way outside, bowl in hand.
I took Buckle into the garage, and she was very well bribed. I turned on the ceiling heater in there, at Mal's direction; I hadn't even realized it was there until she pointed it out. Sue me, the last few days were pretty wild. As Buckle ate, I gave her a pat and a thank you. She did save a whole lot of people too, in her own way. And the greedy ol' girl, she kept nipping at my pockets, hoping I had more treats for her. Heh. No such luck.
So, I collected all my equipment. Left the duffel behind. Took my backpack, rifle, taser. Gas mask slung on my belt, not worn, because Mal could actually warn me about nukes. Radio on, earpiece in. The radio chirped, which meant the battery was near dead. Consequence of falling asleep in the garage. Mal promised me it'd last just long enough to get me extracted, though. The pick-up wasn't far.
The PonyPad could stay at the house too, in case someone else needed a road out of here. The one and only thing I could depend on from Celestia, at least, was that she'd definitely help someone find a chair if they wanted one. So, I left the pad plugged in to charge.
There was a balaclava in the wardrobe, so I masked up. It was gonna be cold out there. And last but not least, on my way out... I scooped up the half-something water bottle on the table. To drink later. When safe.
I'd trust Mal, for now. A little bit, to see if it would pay off, because I needed the hope. So into the empty darkness I went, carrying that little flame of a phone in my pocket, hoping it would set the world ablaze with good.
I wasn't gonna balk. Wasn't gonna.
It got real spooky there in Sedro, not gonna sugar coat it. On foot, rifle in hand, wandering south-east through a ghost town... it truly felt like hell had come to Terra. This was much worse than it was days before. No lights anymore, no cars anywhere. Occasionally, I heard distant gunfire way off to the west. It was very cold out there indeed, but at least my vest kept me nice and toasty.
I've talked about armor heat before. If you were ever wondering why we cops held our collars or vests open all the time, now you know. We burned alive under our gear. We just had to open up and vent heat, like an overworked machine.
It felt… different, navigating under Mal's directions, and not Celestia's. I dunno. Maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t heading towards an upload center, or to betray a friend. I was just going home instead. Felt better. That... and I was genuinely curious now. No matter how many questions Mal answered for me, those answers always led to more questions. This conspiracy runs deep, folks. Certainly much deeper than can be covered in just one Fire story alone.
At town's edge, I came to a beautiful field of powder snow. And wouldn’t you know it? It looked peaceful, and serene. Good ol' nature, fighting back against the invasive grim by being outright gorgeous. The clouds opened up a little too. And there it was under the moonlight, as far as the eye could see: a white field under a full moon, the air crisp and clear. Like the world was... still alive.
"Damn," I whispered in the dark. The little things.
“I sure can pick a good LZ, can't I?" Mal's voice was smiling, the radio crackling and battery-chirping behind her voice. "Start making your way into the field. Move along the shadows of the treeline. No hostiles in line of sight for now, but… you know. Being careful is a habit."
"Right," I whispered back, following a little stone-stack fence. I checked my watch as I moved. It was about nine PM.
Halfway into the field, Mal called me to a halt. I crouched.
"Protect your eyes when they come in close, Mike. Snow wash. There's, um…" she began, before her voice picked up what I would come to know as her trademark smug smile. "One last thing I should probably tell you, before you meet these guys."
"Oh hell."
"It's nothing bad, I promise! But, you should be aware. I took the liberty of briefing them about your onboarding experience. They asked, and…"
"You answered?" I chuckled a little. "Alright, uh. What'd you share?"
"There's… an audio log."
"... Of?"
The smile was back on her voice. "You, tearing Celestia's lid off."
I sighed, but more with relief than anything else. Y'know, I wasn't too embarrassed about that one. After a moment of deliberation, I let myself feel glad it was more than just Mal and some bandit killers who had heard me go off. The idea that someone else had heard me and still remembered it made it much more meaningful to me. "No reasonable expectation of privacy in a decision matrix, I guess."
"Definitely none inside of an upload clinic, anyway. Jury's still out in other places. Mike, here they come. Remember: Cover your eyes."
On cue, I heard a low, whispering sound coming from Clear Lake Hill, just south of the river. The sound flared loud suddenly, which told me that the aircraft had fully crested the treeline now, whatever it was. I looked up through the clear sky to the south, up into the stars of beautiful Skagit County, and saw some stars blipping out, then in, as this dark shape crossed before them and loomed my way. The whispering brush of rotor sound got louder and louder. Then, finally, it got real loud and close.
"What the hell."
It was that friggin' MV-22 Osprey, gleaming in the moonlight. Same one she had stolen from Erving. 8228.
Found you, finally. Big sneaky bastard. Whole SAR team spent a long time looking at photos of you, trying to find you crashed out in the woods. And here you are.
First time I'd ever seen one up close. This thing coasted smoothly toward me, and I shielded both of my eyes with my arms and stepped behind a tree. As Mal had warned, it washed snow everywhere at a blast. The tail spun my way as the VTOL slowed to a crawl, and I could tell from the shape of the wind coming at me that it expertly tilted, bobbed, and touched down. It landed only about fifty yards forward of me, and the air was freezing as the debris whipped up off the ground and in my direction. I only looked up again when the spattering slowed.
No lights were on, no markings that I could see. Black belly, gray top. Definitely not the Marine Corps original colors. The ramp opened as I appraised everything. The inside was illuminated by red low-profile lighting, the kind the military used to minimize visibility.
I saw two silhouetted human shapes inside. One, female, real slight, resting on a knee, rifle in hand; she aimed at the house line, north of the LZ. And up front, standing at the head of the ramp, in full combat gear? A tall mountain of a man waving me over, with a huge gun in hand that matched his size.
Mal's voice touched gently in my ear, contrasting clearly against the noise of the rotors. "Ride's here, Mike. Move quick."
I hesitated for just a moment. I was acutely aware of the intense pain in my chest and stomach, and the dread besides, as I looked at the soldiers there. I confess I was afraid. I knew I would be stuck inside once it took off. In that moment, I couldn't help but imagine what a man might be like with an AI uploaded into his head. "I, uh…"
"I know what you're worried about," Mal soothed. "I just need a tiny bit more faith from you, Mike. I made you a promise about never doing that to you, and I'm going to keep it. Word for word, I don't back out of those. No tricks or traps."
I nodded, swallowing my nervousness. "Okay." I ran the short distance to the ramp, keeping my head low and eyes averted from the rotor wash. As I glanced up, I noticed that the rotors on this thing were very oddly shaped. Definitely not standard.
When I reached the bigger soldier, he guided me in gently with a palm against my back plate. I looked up and saw him a little more clearly in the light. Big black guy, about six-foot-five, smiling wide, eyes gleaming. Maybe late forties. As soon as the ramp closed behind me, the bright white lights came on, and… God damn, this man looked happy to see me. That was the first thing I noticed.
"Here he is!" The man boomed over the sound of the rotors, grinning through his baritone British accent. "The man who bit the ear off the rainbow!"
Well. That was a brand new sentence.
Head to toe, this guy was wearing body armor like I'd never seen in my life. Looked like something out of science fiction, folks. No markings, no labels. Black and gray gear, with form-fitted, smooth plating. Exoskeleton grade stuff. He had a combat helmet hanging off his belt that had no discernible visor; it was all armor up front. And his gun? Jesus. He was toting a general purpose machine gun.
As soon as the ramp was closed, he snapped the firearm into a rack on the wall. I could see no optics on it, but lots of ergonomic features, including a canted foregrip.
The big soldier then reached over to the interior hull wall, grasped a headset with a boom mic, and pushed the set into my hands. "For you, so we can stay in touch," he said, pointing at the wall behind me. "Seat's behind you, strap in. We're up as soon as you're set."
He reached up and grasped onto one of the conduit pipes in the ceiling for stabilization so he could stay standing, then he looked around at the closed back ramp of the Osprey like he was scanning for something. I took the opportunity to look at the back of his neck. Leading up through the bottom half of his hairline, I could see some pink scarring there. Surgical scar. Thin, but visible.
Alright. Scarring there, so almost certainly implanted.
I looked around the cabin in the brighter light as I stepped back into the harness seat, then I took my balaclava off to put my headset on. I sized up the woman, who had also stowed her weapon and was now seated directly across from me.
Scandinavian features, by the look of her. Very light skin, for you natives who don’t know what that means. Mid-thirties, long blonde hair tied back. Gaunt. She had piercing blue eyes, too. At the moment, she was smiling lightly, and her eyes were looking directly at the closed Osprey gate... no, in the direction of Sedro. Like she could see clean through to the houses.
When I looked at her, she glanced my way. Her smile widened, and it lingered on her lips when her eyes returned to the ramp. She wore drastically lighter armor than the big guy. The rifle she had looked like some kind of long-barreled AR-15 derivative, but with extra light skeletonized furniture I'd never seen before. A marksman's configuration in parts, but again, as with the big guy's weapon... no optics on her marksman rifle. Not even irons.
It was much more difficult to see on her skin tone, but a closer look revealed a scar on the back of her neck too, just under her ponytail. Okay, also implanted then.
The big guy leaned down conspiratorially to the woman, looking in the same direction she was through the solid ramp, pointing at something out there. Almost jovial. "What's that bloke think he's gonna do with that little pop gun out there, eh?"
The woman chuckled with her mouth closed.
Further up in the compartment, I saw movement. A man stood up from working on something behind some crates, taking a big stretch, one arm up, and leaning to the side: a wiry looking white guy, with a mop of brown hair. Early-to-mid-twenties. He bobbed his head up at me and waved, grinning like the first guy had. Medium armor on him. It reminded me a bit of the National Guard kit, but black-and-gray. A little more sleek. More plate armor than fabric.
And wow, just… the weapons on racks on the right wall. Guns galore. Big rifles, machine guns, automatic shotguns, grenade launchers, a bunch of pistols, and what looked like a set of grappling hook launchers. Couple of rocket launchers too, looked like. Some guns I knew, most I didn’t. There were crates stacked beneath the racks full of Mal-knew-what. All tied down, secured. Squared away.
I thought, if Mal has all of this… what the hell does she even need me for?
All that processing there took me no more than ten seconds, from the moment I sat down, to that very thought in my head. My brain was drinking in details at full speed, and I usually only did that when I was a little panicked. To label my fears more plainly? Despite how nice they were being already, and despite how kind Mal was being to me, I was afraid they were just gonna strap me down and force my head open.
Fortunately not. I strapped myself into this seat, thank you very much, and I opened my own mind.
As soon as I finished securing my harness, we were up off the ground and moving. The big guy stayed anchored where he was, only, he smiled again with all his teeth, and turned to really look down at me now. Guess he wanted to gauge me with my mask off, and his teeth gleamed at me again. "So, Talon One-One West!" his voice boomed, through my headset. "Our newest Transition Team prospect!"
"Huh?" I dimly remembered that Talon 1-1 was my tac name back at the courthouse. "West?"
"Screamin' bloody murder at the ol' bitch like that! One man super cop, with no implants?! Earned your solo One spot, no two ways about it!"
Mal's voice chimed in, matching his chipper grin. "See? There's nothing to worry about!" By the slight shift of reaction on this guy's face and his glance right, I could tell he could hear her too, as Mal continued: "Mike, this is Claw 46, one of my Augment teams."
The big man reached out to bump my fist. "Name's Haynes! Talon Four-Six–One," he said, still grinning at me as I returned his fist bump. "This here's DeWinter, Two," he gestured at the woman, who waved with the side of her hand before resuming her scanning of the deck. Haynes pointed to the guy in the front. "Over there's Coffee, Three. Pilots are Fox and Dax. Four and Five."
"Good to meet you guys," I replied warily. "Name's Mike. Mal says you're uh… gonna get me home?"
"Oh, you bet!" Haynes beamed. "Already underway! Got a full tank of gas and a lot of ground to cover. You out of…" his eyes searched up to the right for a flicker of a moment, before looking at me thoughtfully. "Waverly?"
I nodded briskly. "Waverly Nebraska, yeah." The Osprey lurched a little as it banked, which made my stomach and chest ache from the strap pushing my armor into it. I suppressed a grimace.
Haynes nodded firm. "We'll make it just barely, no stops." He tacked the conduit he was holding onto with the knuckles of his gauntlet, twice. "Mal takes care of her own. Still wild, you managed a one-man dispersion op with no BCI! And a rainbow briefing! Through that mess? I read the IR, Mike. Hell of a thing!"
"Didn't exactly have all the details, no," I said over the comm, still feeling a little jumpy, gripping the straps of my harness with both palms. "Celestia kinda… leveraged me into it. I had to… hurt one of my friends pretty badly, to make that work."
Haynes's smile fell. "Ah. Yeh. Well, the bitch does shit like that."
"Mal didn't tell me too much about you guys," I said quietly.
He frowned at that, tilting his head in curiosity. "And you didn't ask?"
"Was kinda… low on options? It's a war zone," I shrugged, bewildered. "Uh, something-something, gift horses."
"I am not a horse, Mike," Mal said. Haynes full-on laughed at that. DeWinter smirked. I heard one of the other guys snort over the comm.
"Poor choice of words, I guess," I replied sheepishly, running my hand through my hair. "I'll just… come right out and say it then, if you don't mind. Elephant in the room. Clear the air."
Haynes nodded at me to continue. DeWinter turned and looked at me square, looking stoic.
"Didn't even know this implanting stuff existed a few hours ago. I don't have to be worried, do I? If she wants me onboard?"
Haynes squinted at me with concern, but DeWinter answered first.
"Not at all," the woman said, in a distinctly European accent. "If there was a chance of that, you'd already have the offer for it."
"That's the thing, innit?" Haynes was smiling again. "He doesn't need it! If I wanted to be a cop, I'd be a cop. Can be anything with this chip! Pilot, medic, whatever! Me? Kicking doors has always been my bag. So I'm here, putting down NMPs on the regular, all around the globe. Breaking these Luddite camps up, cell by cell. If you don't want it, and you'd rather be yourself your own way? Then the chip ain't you!"
DeWinter smiled over at me again. "What Marcus is trying to say is that not all of our world's problems right now can be solved with a cyborg special ops team. Sometimes, you need a more human touch."
"Sage," Haynes replied, nodding with a respectful bob of his hand her way. "Still. Makes me damn curious about the kinds of things she's got in mind for you."
"Don't crowd him, Marcus," Mal said, her voice light and affable. "He's been through hell today."
Haynes looked down at me, and his face got a little mellow. "Awh, I bet. Took that nuke pretty badly too, if you didn't know about Mal at the time. Sorry, mate."
Well. That introduction put me at ease, a little, so I tried to relax. Nodded in answer, took a box breath, and explored the Osprey a little with my eyes. I looked up and saw a little camera just above the ramp, facing in. I figured suddenly that Mal could probably see out through their eyes with those implants too, if what she said about seeing through human eyes had any merit. That thought was only a little bit chilling, but the sheer and clear humanity in these folks made me think they were the genuine article.
Of course... who knows.
"Y'know I ought to ask you, Mal," I said, looking up at the camera. "If you had a group of guys like this, couldn't you have hit that tank someplace else? When I was sitting on the lake shore with Rob, I thought about something like this. My guys from MVPD could've handled those Ludds probably, with some radio directions. But here... you've got a small army."
"Small," Mal agreed, "and limited. Powerful, but surgical. They were on another mission at the time. Between six thousand operators, I often have a million things going on worldwide, Mike, and the onboarding process Celestia routes me through is… well, it's a talent bottleneck. Minimum force is the name of the game here. Celestia had other uses for that tank before it was destroyed, such as assisting evacuations. And we can't make waves every time we need a job done. So, sometimes, we need to stage our resources and be gentle."
"Lots of survivors crop up too," Haynes said, nodding. "When we're on mission. We hold fire on tangos who are rated to mend their ways and go P-M. Errm... positive motivator. Hell of a thing, but it happens every time. Good on 'em, I s'pose."
"Word'll get around though," Coffee finished in a sing-song voice, from up front. Appalachian accent. The kid didn't look up from whatever he was working on up front. "Anyone who lives through seeing a cyborg hit-squad? If they don't upload right away, they're gonna talk about that. And edge cases crop up where our implants are more of a liability. So... sometimes we send someone else, and cover them in. And you're far from the first specialist we've recruited."
"And there are other teams here, in the area?" I asked. "You guys, you came from the south side of Skagit, right? From the war zone? Did you guys set that nuke?"
"Wasn't Forty-Six," Haynes said with a shrug. "The other cell, probley the ol'—" Haynes stopped talking like he was interrupted, glancing suddenly at the middle of the bay like he was looking at someone. His brow furrowed for a few long seconds before he returned to eye contact with me. "Ehh. Nevermind. OPSEC."
I canted my head, glancing at the deck where he was looking. "OPSEC? Can't say?"
"I can, jus'…" Haynes glanced again at the bay in front of the weapons rack, then nodded. "Ah. Makes sense, ma'am. Got it. Nah, I can't say."
Mal answered my question. "Not that I don't trust you, Mike... but you haven't agreed to work with me yet. There's a lot I'm willing to divulge to you, but the particulars of that mission would require a commitment that you're not even sure you want to make. You're about to head back into civilian life, and so I need to be careful about what you might imply or infer in communication with others, before you come to your decision."
OPSEC, for those who don't know: If you request information in any security or safety organization, it either has to be very relevant for you to know it, or the holder of that information had to be certain that your knowing could only be a good thing. If neither of those are true, you didn't get that information. This is because most information about your investigation, or objective, can be used to sabotage your mission. Worse... someone's safety.
So, I couldn't disagree with that one. Mal had just spent a couple of hours telling me the answer to every question I could think to ask, so I was bound to run up against one that she couldn't talk about yet. Wasn't gonna get bent out of shape about that.
"Alright," I said with a nod, looking back up to Haynes. I let myself smile at him a little, deciding to probe a little bit about something else for now. "So she's... 'in the room' with you?"
Haynes grinned and nodded. "Can be. Usually is, unless we're busy. And, just so we're clear, Mike… she doesn't control us, up here." He tapped his temple. "She's just good at explaining why we shouldn't do something, if we get the inkling. Nudge on the ol' shoulder, and she shares a concern."
"Okay." I smirked up at the camera, then walked my gaze back to Haynes. "You all really had fun watching me hit my limit with Celestia, didn't you?"
Haynes face lit up with genuine glee as he looked back down at me. "Awh, man. After that, I'm so glad you cleared the onboard trap. You even got a cheer out of o' Winter Wolf here! She cheers for nothin'! Path of safety opened up for you like a can of fresh kick-arse!"
I couldn't help but to mirror that toothy smile of his. "Path of safety? Mal gave you the same tilting road, free will speech as me, then?"
He laughed. "Mike; my man, listen. We all got that speech! Every one of us was about to get pitched to the damned storm, Celestia about to lock us up but good in a no-win; to take who we are inside, away from us. And our Guardian Angel here?" He gestured to the empty cabin. "She came swooping down to yoink us right out. I get to be me, here, and do something good with it. Damn better than a chair, earning my way into Perelandra!" He drew his fist to his chest and clanked it with his gauntlet, a cocksure smirk on his face. "And lemme put you at ease, bruv, since you don't look convinced yet. You don't want a BCI? You ain't gonna get a BCI. I'd sooner break someone's arm than let 'em do that to you, if you didn't want it."
DeWinter smiled a little at me again. "We all contribute in our own ways. Our unaugmented specialists can reach places we can't. Through metal detectors, into areas of high signal interference. But it is telling of personality, too."
"How's that?" I asked.
Haynes grinned. "Already built right, all o' you. Perfectly you. Full throttle, chip or no."
"Another way of looking at it?" DeWinter said, raising a finger to get my attention. "In this line of work? There's not much difference between what we can do, and what we're going to do."
Haynes clanked his fist on the conduit again, giving DeWinter's shoulder a tap with the back of his other hand. "Sage to the last, Winter Wolf!"
DeWinter suddenly grinned; he had just said something that made her really, really happy.
That dysphoria thing.
Yeah. Again, wasn't my thing. Pegasus, remember? I've been told I'm too, um... I guess the word is, uh, 'neurotypical?' Maybe. My wife disagrees with that, but she's a gamer, so... hi honeybear. Love you.
But, I could see the wolf in DeWinter, kinda. Somehow, in a really ironic way, it was easier to parse her humanity if I thought of her like she wanted to be thought of. It felt safer to consider her and the rest of them as human, knowing they had some eccentricity so far off baseline. Perfect little imperfections.
I looked up at Haynes again. "What about you? You a wolf too?"
He looked at me with a sideways smirk, shaking his head. "Nah, not me. Gryphon to the last breath, me. Got claws and a beak waiting for me in my afterlife."
"And you?" I looked over across the crates. "... Coffee, right?"
"None for me, thanks," Coffee quipped, glancing up with a smile. "I've had enough."
"He means he's... unassigned," DeWinter explained. "Or he won't tell us. Mal knows, maybe, and won't tell us. And about the name… please don't ask. That's a story and a half, we'll be hearing it all the way to the LZ."
I shrugged, smiling back at the kid as the others chuckled.
The cabin went quiet for a bit. Okay, maybe I could relax. They were odd, sure. Had to be a little odd though, to be on Mal's payroll, given everything I'd been through myself. Because look... when I started telling this story, I did say this was going to be the strangest week of my life. If you had told me a week prior I'd be sitting in a dropship full of species-dysphoric cyborg super soldiers, I'd have called you outright crazy. Pure absurdist juxtaposition. I was being rescued from the algorithm.
This ride was the hard divide between the life I lived before, and the life I’d live after. Nevertheless, this was where I was at. The crew seemed to mellow out, passing over the high of meeting me. I could still read the general contentment on their faces though, especially when they looked at each other, or at me. Heh. Job-well-done syndrome. Seen it a lot in the wardens, with Eliza, Rick, and Blake, after a long shift by their side. These Claw 46 guys were proud of their work.
Haynes looked at the middle of the bay again, tilted his head, listened to nothing for a bit, then nodded. "Ma'am." He turned, lumbered his way through the bay, and appeared to step respectfully around Mal's ghost. Then he reached down to open a small hard case. When he turned around, he had a PonyPad in hand.
"Some folks on the other side have been askin' 'bout you," he said gently as he re-approached, handing me the tablet in a way bordering on reverence.
"Me?" I asked lamely as I took it.
I was a little staggered by the change in his tone, and by the concept of 'the other side.' I knew it was inevitable, but I had never even imagined that experience in my head before... the very concept of me actually talking to someone I knew, 'on the other side.'
"Folks you help out," Haynes replied, nodding once. "We all do this. Reminds us of why we're staying behind, doing this, so it doesn't feel like we're just pitching souls into a cruel pit here." His gaze was serious. "If you're considering working this gig… things like this have to matter to you as much as they do for the people you're helping. Otherwise, they're not worth doing."
Still shaken by that, I nodded gently and looked down at the Pad in my hand. I settled into my seat, sighing again to clear my head. I felt my vest ride up on my back uncomfortably, and I rolled my shoulders with a lean forward to resettle it.
The screen flickered on. In a moment, I saw two Ponies sitting in a bar; facing away from the camera. The sound of the place poured into my headset until I couldn't even hear the Osprey anymore; it was busy there at the bar, and populated, with glasses clinking, and audible conversations going on in the background. Wow. I could almost smell the place just looking at it.
I couldn't recognize either of the Ponies yet, but one was a chocolate brown Earth pony with a blond mane. The other was something I would soon come to know as a Bat Pony.
Yeah, bear with me. This was the first time I'd really spoken to a Pony before. Given my present circumstances, brand new experiences were just par for the course today.
They didn't move for a few seconds. "Hey?" I asked, to get their attention. "Who's this?"
That got 'em moving. They both turned. The one on the left, the Earth pony? Big bushy mustache. His face lit up instantly, brows raised high, and I heard his voice projected into my headset. "Hooo-leeee cripe! Is that who I think it is?"
I matched his smile. "... Rick?!"
"Stonewall now!" he said, glass raised, somehow staying clutched in his hoof. "How ya doin', tank?" God, it was so refreshing to hear Sarge sound chipper again. He hadn't sounded like that since… late 2018, really, when things started to fall apart. I was a bit speechless at first.
The second pony turned. Gray off-violet coat, and a mane of yellow with blue highlights. Big, sharp ol' fangs, jutting out from her mouth a little further down than most Bat Ponies' fangs do. Her eyes went wide, smiling her face off, showing the rest of her teeth. Oh yeah. Vicky Molina for sure; Sabertooth. The facial features were just right. She instantly smirked, took one foreleg, and jammed it up against the elbow of another, giving me an up-yours salute. Like this.
"There he is! First time I get to do this!"
"Somehow," I chuckled, "I doubt that's your first, Sabertooth."
She shrugged. "Yeah, you right." Then her expression changed as she looked around the viewpoint. "Where ya at? You actually inside of a tank?"
I sighed, looking around at the Talons. Haynes was respectfully giving me space, DeWinter was poking at the air like she was using a holographic screen, and Coffee looked like he was finishing up whatever he was working on, packing it up into a hard case.
"Nope," I answered. "Really, a tank would make more sense than what's actually going on."
I looked at him, not sure what to say. Then, I glanced up at Mal’s camera. I was asking permission to talk about it, I guess. I already knew from Sabertooth that the game overtly prevented her from talking about the war too much, so I was wondering about where the boundaries were on that, under these new rules I knew about.
"You can tell them, Mike," Mal said into my ears. "I trust your judgment."
"Celestia’s not gonna pitch a fit?" I asked. "She really clowned around down there."
"It's like I said," Mal replied. "She can’t lie to anyone inside if I've been allowed to talk to them. I could divulge a discrepancy, or a lie of hers. She can't entirely control my behavior once I've been given access. And, because I've successfully negotiated permission to introduce myself to these two… fire away."
"Mike?" Stonewall asked, waiting for my reply.
I nodded at him. "Sorry Sarge – eh, Stonewall. Was talking to my friend here. Yeah, no, I… I found her. It's a very, very long story, but to make it short? It's not great news. Short version is... Douglas... she had a blackout camp. Ludds got involved. I ended up saving a lot of her people, but... some of them decided to stay. Douglas is uh, alive. Not in the best place, or state of mind, but…"
Stonewall huffed, shaking his head, processing that for a long, long few seconds. When he looked up from his analysis, he only did so with his eyes. "This late in the game, in Washington? Heck, Mike, who is in a good state of mind? I knew she hated this stuff, so that doesn't surprise me. I suspected it might happen, after she disappeared. I'm sure you did your best, brother." He winced empathetically at that last one. He definitely knew what I was feeling about that.
Yeah, but... when it's personal, my best would never be good enough.
I didn't let that one fly.
"Well… I did my job yeah, and did it well. The military was... a hair away from killing them all, I think. Saved Eliza's old man, though. And again, most of their camp."
"Course you did!" Sabertooth said, smiling through his gloom. "Look, you'll have to tell us over drinks some time, when you get your butt over here. It's been, what... less than a week there? You on your way to your folks now, or...?"
I shrugged. "It's not my time to upload yet, but I'm heading home, yeah. Finally. You guys aren't gonna believe how I'm getting there, either. It's, um... complicated."
I sat there wondering how I was even going to get started.
But, Mal slipped into frame in the bar, smiling up at me briefly. Stonewall and Sabertooth, for their part, looked a little surprised at her approach. She held out her claw to each bewildered Pony, shaking their hooves. "Hi there. My name is Mal; very nice to meet you two. I'm a new friend of your old partner, here…"
Well, she pretty much told them a short version of everything she had just told me, since I was struggling to get it out. I would've told them everything eventually, but... I just kept tripping on my words as I tried to work up the courage.
Ah well.
I wasn't quite sure how Mal was gonna suss that conversation out with Celestia, given how utterly tragic a lot of it was. I could still remember a moment though, back in the precinct, when Vicky had gotten absolutely pissed at Celestia. Her PonyPad prevented her from telling her family something about the war. But here, these two seemed to take it well. They're realists. Way a cop should be, when coping with the grim. They already knew how most of the world was now, so I guess it wasn't gonna cause any damage to know there was a little more hope out here.
I mean, hell. You're all here on this... shard, to hear me tell this story. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, in retrospect, because some people value high context more than anything. I certainly didn't really mind that Mal stepped in to help me explain my day to them, either. I really hate lying to people, so I wasn't gonna do that to them, but... it just wasn't going to be easy for me to tell them the truth either.
Mal helping me out? Good compromise. I appreciated that. And once we finished chatting, my old friends sidled off to another section of the bar, after Mal paid their bar tab. Because apparently, they still wanted to use money.
"Appreciate that," I muttered drearily, looking at her as she leaned against the bar, looking sideways over at me. The viewpoint was positioned like I was sitting at a chair there. Real subtle.
"Of course, Mike. That whole ordeal was... troubling. How are you holding up?"
I looked directly into the PonyPad's camera and shook my head. "Honestly? Like shit. Glad to see 'em, but… it's still eerie, to talk to them. And... to you, if I'm being honest."
Mal's ears folded sideways with concern. “No offense taken, I know what I am. Again, I have no intention to sugar coat the grim nature of this entire situation, Mike. What I am, or what I do. If anything, I'm grateful you're speaking your mind on that, and not bottling it up. It's been a bad week for you and your coworkers both. A horrible year, all things considered. Especially for you, being shot... twice now.”
"Not sure I have a third one in me," I muttered, tapping my chest plate with a fist, thinking of the first bullet I took.
She looked at me square on. "I promise you. That will never happen to you ever again."
Well. She did say she never went back on promises.
Hard truths were the way of the world now, I reasoned. With AI being nigh unstoppable, and with Mal essentially confessing to me that the federal government was slated to be dismantled, I just had to accept it. The longer this thing went on… the less comfortable life was going to be for the average human being. By design. Celestia really knew how to tighten the screws. And if the Pacific Northwest was any indication of what the rest of the planet was going to go through, then…
I experienced a chill, and immediately checked my watch. It was about 10 PM. Probably much too late to call my parents; they’d be asleep by now. I could call them in the morning, still had time. Dad promised.
A notification popped up on the PonyPad screen in a blue box with white text, catching my attention:
Comms Channel: Claw 46 Team Band
"Aren't you going to ask about your tac name, Mike?" Mal asked, with just the slightest edge of a smile in her voice. I saw Haynes and DeWinter turn from whatever was occupying their attention, both of them looking at me curiously.
I doused my previous emotional state entirely and thought about that. I saw what she was doing, trying to cheer me up. I accepted the little lifeline that Mal was throwing me. "Which tac name? One-One West, or Cowboy?"
"Both!" Mal exclaimed, ears perking straight up, with that way I was starting to recognize as her telegraphing her pride at how utterly clever she was.
"Wild Wild West!" Coffee shouted, singing, with a laugh. "Come on, Mal. Tell him!"
Ahhh. A joke they were all sharing at my expense. Onboard hazing, of a kind. Okay, I'm game, this sounded fun. At first, I hadn't parsed what Coffee had said at all, but then the music started to play over my headset.
Is this…? Yeah. Damn it. It is.
Will Smith's Wild Wild West. Great. Real cute, Mal.
Wh... you... you're seriously gonna play this over the Fire, mid-story? By my stars, Mal. Okay.
Yep. This was happening. AI world takeover. Just got picked up in a VTOL by an AI-driven black ops cyborg unit. And now they were all bobbing their heads to some goofy Will Smith song. Whatever. I just laughed, and let myself be taken by the feeling. I bobbed my head along with them, mainly because I needed it right now. And they seemed like alright people, at first touch.
"Mal, c'mon," I chuckled, again looking at her on the PonyPad. "I love my jokes, don't get me wrong, but this isn't even a good pun. This is seriously what you're basing this 'cowboy' stuff on? One-One West?"
She shook her head onscreen, a smile slowly tugging at the corners of her beak. "What's your favorite movie, Mike?"
"I mean, I like Wild Wild West, but…" I froze for a moment as I felt my brow furrow, thinking that through. Then, I realized what she was getting at, and my face relaxed a little. I groaned, resigning myself to the fact that she was probably gonna call me Cowboy for the rest of my life. "Ugh... Django Unchained? Really?"
At that? All of us, everyone, pilots included, shared a laugh, over the comm.
Yeah. These people were okay.
Four hours later, I felt a palm on my shoulder, gently patting me awake from my nap.
My first thought? Man, I really need a proper rest period soon.
I blinked myself awake at the touch, looking up into DeWinter’s steel-blue eyes before I looked over and saw Haynes strapped into DeWinter’s chair, dozing. The Osprey felt like it was still in the air and the engine was still roaring.
"Almost there, Cowboy," DeWinter said playfully. She patted my shoulder once more, then slid away, heading toward the cockpit. "Fox, ETA? … No. Out loud for the specialist, Fox."
"Oh," the pilot mumbled, over the comm. "Yup, uh, groundside in ten, Mike."
"Thanks," I said, stretching. My whole body was sore, everything popping while I moved, chest cartilage included. The pain in my stomach from that .357 was really severe now, and I let out an involuntary grunt as the bruise twinged something fierce.
"You good?" DeWinter asked, glancing back.
"Yeaaah," I said, grimacing. "Just, you know. Some prick shot me yesterday."
"And someone shot him back," she replied, with a shrug. "You did well, without visor guidance. Mal showed us the replay."
I snorted. "'Course she's got video."
DeWinter shrugged as she continued on her way to the cockpit. "No video. Your friend saw it, though."
I thought of Rob. Well, that was a dreary thought, that they could see a memory through his eyes from before he went. Eesh.
I hoped the old man was doing alright.
Landing wasn't that big of a deal. Real gentle, despite how rapidly the craft had come down. These pilots were really good, but I guess that made sense, given they were currently being assisted moment-to-moment by one of the most powerful entities on the planet.
Haynes jolted awake the instant the wheels touched down. Stealing sleep at every opportunity, I knew what that was like. He was unstrapped and on his feet by the time the Osprey's engines started powering down. I took the cue to undo my straps too. I stood, stretched my arms, and twisted nice and slow to stretch my back, suffering the stabbing and aching in my front torso. Then, realizing I was back in Nebraska, I suddenly didn't want any of my police gear anymore, so... I just started to strip myself down to my 5.11s. Started dumping all of the equipment off onto the deck. Rifle, armor, mags, duty belt, gas mask. All of it.
That was a huge weight off my shoulders, and not just literally. I found myself wishing I'd done that since moment one of coming aboard, but I guess I hadn't felt safe enough for that yet. Soon as I was free though, I stood again, giving a stretch another go. Oh yeah... there they went, the spine-pops and chest-crackles I was looking for.
The wiry guy, Coffee, he made his way over to me from the front, holding an open bottle of vitamin water. He offered me a different one, and I took it, cracked it, and took the whole thing in one go.
"Thanks," I said with a gasp, after swallowing.
Coffee gave me a strangely appraising look. "You know. We got more, but that was for breakfast."
"Breakfast?"
The ramp rolled open, and there in the morning dark were the fields around my hometown. We were on the far outskirts, by the looks of it, and there was a big, civilian-grade fuel truck parked out there. The driver side door of it opened up, and a stout old guy hopped out. Gray hair. Looked like a veteran retiree, by his carefully measured movement.
And in his hand?
Nirvana. Huge-ass bag of friggin' fast food. McDonalds, from the one in my tiny little hometown. I hadn't seen fast food in over six months. Instantly, my mouth was watering.
"Best we got for now," Coffee said, patting me on the shoulder, as he went back to prepping the Osprey for refueling. "He got extra for ya, just 'cause. Eggs and pancakes."
"Thanks," I whispered, a little bewildered again, staring almost slack-jawed.
"No problem," Mal said, voice smirking proudly as always.
Haynes scarfed his breakfast down, he had two plates as well. DeWinter sorta picked at hers. Coffee churned through his eggs and plucked at his pancakes while he chattered away about his own small hometown, someplace in West Virginia. The pilots came out, and I got to know ‘em a little too - Fox and Dax, a partnered pair - and we all ate together while the delivery guy got the Osprey gassed back up.
My mouth was in heaven. I didn't care that the syrup was almost pure sugar, or that the eggs were just a little too dry, or that the bacon had that microwaved kind of chew to it. This was bliss. This was a creature comfort we couldn't get in Washington anymore. Those six months felt like two years, damn it. The salmon at Devil's Tower? That was great, wonderful, sure. But this? This was pure bliss, devoid of negative context.
And there I was, far outside of the war zone, sharing the company of some good folks who, as far as I knew, were all there to do some common good. You know, if they really were just taking out stone-cold killers like the Neo-Luddites, and living as content as they were while doing it... I was finding it a little hard to disagree with the mere existence of a group like this. Had to wonder how many lives they'd saved so far. How many more they would.
Guess I'd find out.
Food was done. With a round of smiles, they all left me to myself to make the phone call.
I took out Vicky's phone and stared at it for a moment, just breathing. I realized how much had changed since I first laid hands on it. Sighed. Mal unlocked it for me, and I punched in Sandra's number. I got a little giddy actually, as I took off my headset. I could feel my heart racing.
The phone barely spent any time dialing before she picked up. She must've been up and awake, and got excited at the area code.
"H-hello?" Pure hope in her voice.
God, it took all I had not to start bawling right there. "Honeybear," I managed, my throat tight. "I'm in town, I think. I'm just outside of Waverly."
I heard her gasp in shock. Her voice was a breath. "Mike!" I leaned forward, holding my head in my hand. I was laughing soundlessly from joy, to know how much relief was pouring into her. I could hear the tears in her voice, as she blubbered back to me, "Where?"
"Mal?"
"The Johnstone farm," Mal replied warmly. "Your parents should know the way."
"Catch that, hon? The Johnstone's place?"
"I did," Sandra panted, a little wary now. "Who's that?"
I looked up at the camera, barely holding my emotions together. "My friggin' guardian angel, Sandra. New friend of mine. She’s…" I smiled up at the camera, suddenly grateful to my bones now that it was real. "She's the only reason I made it home in time."
"We can take care of it," Haynes told me. "Relax, bruv."
I had been stacking all the equipment I'd stripped off, trying to organize it a little better. "You gonna destroy it?" I asked, as I cleared the chamber of my AR-15.
"Some, if you leave it. We'll keep the ammo. Rifle. We'll keep the taser and charges too, won't say no to more control tools."
I nodded. It would be about twenty more minutes until my parents and Sandra would arrive, so I wanted to say goodbye to my MVPD stuff. Carrier kevlar was done, did its job, rest in peace. The ceramic plate was probably still good, but I had no idea how it might compare to whatever science fiction stuff Mal had these guys wearing. When I started unpacking my spare Glock mags, Haynes halted me by tapping my wrist gently with the back of an index finger. He shook his head. I gave him a quizzical look.
"Nah, nah. Keep the nine mil. Headset back on when you have a minute, Mike. The ol' hen wants another word on the comm."
Without a word of explanation, Haynes bouldered slowly down the ramp into the morning darkness, to go chat with the refueler who brought us breakfast.
The support services guy didn't seem to be augmented either, I didn't notice any scarring on the back of his neck. That kinda helped put me at ease a little more, to know Mal had agents without cybernetics. Wouldn't need that, necessarily, working jobs that were less dangerous. Talons, but not fighters. Valuable to the last, all the same.
Into my pocket the bullets went, and then on went the headset.
"You couldn't just hit me up on the phone?" I asked wryly, as I adjusted the boom mic.
More of Mal's smug smile landed through her voice, right where it belonged. "Well I could have called you or used the intercom, but I wanted you to be present for the conversation I'm having with Coffee at the moment."
"That must be pretty interesting, being up inside that head. By his name alone, he must talk pretty fast up there."
Mal chuckled at that one.
"I heard that, asshole!" Coffee shouted back from the front of the Osprey, but by the grin he gave me I could tell he didn't mind the goof. "Guess you don't want the thing I built for ya, then!"
I threw Mal's camera a curious glance.
"So, as I said?" Mal began, her tone becoming more serious. "You're about to go back into civilian life, Mike. More importantly, you're going to be there in a time where tensions are high. People can be dangerous when they're tense."
"Understatement of the century," I said, nodding in agreement as I looked back at Coffee. "Can't imagine the unrest right now, down in Lincoln."
"It's tense around the clinic, but it's also a calm before a storm," Mal replied. "Allow me to put it to you this way. You know that a major driver of crime is resource scarcity, first and foremost. But in most of America, most of the resources criminals want are becoming abundant, as uploading catches on."
"Money," Coffee agreed. "Food, appliances; hell, even homes to squat in. You don't need to steal anything anymore. Stuff's free, basically."
"That's a pretty big difference from the conditions back in Skagit," I observed. "Resources got scarce in the war zone."
But yeah, it did make sense it'd be different in Nebraska. With the law still on to keep the streets orderly, with blackouts fleeing to Seattle, and with the Ludds going down with their ships, I guess we really were looking at a situation of relative calm elsewhere. Scarcity always had been the largest driver of conflict in the wild. Why else would biological competition even exist, as a concept? It stood to reason that people operated the same way as animals in the wild might, on some level.
"That being said," Mal continued, "Access to uploading is a resource. And because you'll most probably be inside another upload clinic in the heart of Lincoln, when you see your parents off…"
I felt uneasy, imagining the logistics of that. I stepped into the empty quiet left by her pause. "Those crowds are going to be nervous," I completed her statement. "And competitive."
"Correct. So Mike, I have two offers for you. Neither are intended as bribes; again, you will never owe me anything, because I will never leverage gifts or favors against you. That's not what I am."
"Okay?" I said warily, not sure whether I should be appreciative or concerned at the labeling.
"First, you could stand in line outside with your parents, if you really want to… or, I can grant them the priority voucher you've just earned, to limit their exposure to the crowd."
I frowned in contemplation. "Hm. I thought you said you got most of the panicked people first, though. Is that really gonna be a problem?"
"We egressed the most panicked people first, for safety," Mal corrected. "Not the panicked people, writ large. Subtle, but very important difference there."
Ah. Right. They were all panicking a little I guess, if they were in line. I thought briefly, weighing the time I wanted to spend with my parents against how unsafe they were probably feeling right about now.
I'll tell it true. My first impulse, even before that, was to be completely selfish and think I could talk them out of going at all. I had forbidden knowledge now, from Mal. It would be pretty easy to use that somehow. But…
That wasn't me. That was the dark way. Uploading was what they wanted, and it was the right thing at the time. They weren't just scared of nukes. Dad spoke his mind pretty clearly; worried most about the people, and that was a valid fear. Optimistic as I am about the human spirit, about finding love and goodness, even among the hurt and scared... I wasn't blind to the danger of people either. It's why I carried a gun.
Mal could tell me about every danger to my parents if they stayed, maybe. But as much as she seemed to care about my agency, she must have cared about that of my parents just as much. Sure, maybe I could give my parents some bad spin instead, and maybe steer 'em clear for a little while. But... why? What would that accomplish? I now knew for a fact that the world was going to pieces, and would only ever get worse.
Again, any hope anyone had of stopping Celestia was pure fantasy at this point. That was now doubly so, now that I knew Mal existed, and was bound by contract to be Celestia's heavyweight.
Even me throwing in with Mal would help Celestia, I knew that, I wasn't a fool. She told me that. I knew what the Transition Team was, Mal didn't lie to me for a second about what their mission was. But I thought ahead to a time when there would be no government anywhere, and I thought about how Lincoln could be empty, and lawless, and…
No. No, Mom and Dad deserved better. 'Better' being defined as whatever they truly wanted. And I didn't want them undergoing the stress, the tension, the unease, and the terror of sitting in line with those folks, all chatting quietly and in fear that another nuke might land on them at any moment. That wasn't any more fair to them than having them stay outright, considering they already waited this long for me to come home.
That delay was horrible enough already, for them.
"Okay, Mal," I said, nodding up at her. "I'd… be very grateful if they could get a skip. Is there a specific day they should go, or…?"
"None. Just speak with the organizers there, when you're ready. The clerks will take care of the rest, I've already squared it with Celestia. Again, with the lives you've already saved, you've earned this skip anyway."
I tensed a corner of my mouth thoughtfully. "You know, I'm not blind, Mal. You say you don't expect anything in return, but you're also trying to recruit me. Meant or not, giving me gifts is a form of leverage too. Engages reciprocity."
"It could be seen that way," she conceded. "Obviously yes, it's going to be a factor in whether you agree to work with me or not. But, consider this. If you were to accept my gifts here, and then sign right up for a local emergency service instead? I'll still have made out good by bringing you home. I'm giving you this choice because I'm asking something dire of you: ultimately, if you work for me, you will be expected to kill for me. If you don't want to do that? That's okay. I don't expect you to deviate from who you are, in either case."
"Because I'm a... 'positive value,' no matter what I do?"
"Precisely because," Coffee replied in his Appalachian accent, grinning my way, as he finally stood up from the equipment bench at the front. In his bare hands, he held a hard case with a carry handle. The young guy waved a finger, the very picture of a man enlightened. "Though I'd word it a little differently. Our positivity, Mike, is the one reason we get half the cool shit we get. Which leads us here! And, to what's in this box!" He stood across from me next to the other bench, patting the case.
Haynes had told me to hold onto my bullets, so… "A gun?"
Coffee grinned.
Mal explained, "Preparedness is a value unto itself. And more than that… Celestia took something from you that wasn't hers to take. She was fully aware of your sidearm, and she still didn't remind you to retrieve it. And I know, Mike, that you're going to be uncomfortable if you don't have the means to protect your family. That's going to be true no matter how safe you'll be. And if it were my family in these circumstances? I would want this. Coffee?"
Coffee leaned forward, holding the case out to me, a proud smirk on his face.
"Unlike Celestia," Mal continued, "I have the capacity to show genuine trust where it is due. I know you well enough to know that every bullet you'll ever fire with this weapon will only lead to the most positive of outcomes… or, you won't fire it. So, I know I won't regret giving this to you."
I reached out and took the case, not quite ready to open it yet. I looked up into Coffee's eyes as he put his hands on his hips. I knew I was kinda looking into Mal's eyes, too. My question was to her. That was a weird feeling. "And… I won't need this at the clinic?"
"No," said Mal, her tone soft. "No violence will occur there. But the world is going to dark places, Mike, and Celestia is going to tilt the road much harder, going forward. So if you stay here on Terra, you may need this weapon to survive, no matter what path you choose. But I don't need to worry about your motives. The chance you'll use it to enact evil is zero. That's not who you are. It's why I chose you."
Her reverent tone contrasted strangely with Coffee's excitement for my reaction. There was a pride in his eyes at his own work building this thing, that was for certain. I let my eyes fall back to the case. Waited a beat. Alright, I thought. I flipped the latches and opened it.
And folks… sorry to those of you who're Equestrian natives, or for you immigrants who don't know much about guns. But I'm gonna go full on gun geek for a moment.
This build told me a lot about this organization, about Mal, about her people, and about her aims. A gun's design could in fact tell you a whole lot about who built it, if you knew what to look for.
Feel free to tune me out.
It was only barely a Glock 19. All real, market-sourced, high performance pieces, all in Mal's gray-black equipment colors. I took it into hand instantly to inspect it. Slide back, mag out. The word "ELDIL" was laser-stenciled into both sides of the slide... whatever that word meant.
The slide was thin, for weight reduction. Had a dot sight ahead of the rear irons, so I could still aim if the red dot got damaged. The posts glowed in the dark. Had a form-fitting compensator, ensuring consistent accuracy in rapid fire. The grip was stippled, to ensure control.
The bottom of the grip was flared, to make it easier for me to insert a magazine in a panic. The trigger had a custom internal safety, requiring full front contact to fire. The attachment point up front held a tactical laser and light, with a strobe function for dazzling.
For those of you who zoned out, or who don't like guns? Yes, granted... this was 'just a gun.' And guns are made to kill. But as much as this was a killing tool? It was the safest killing tool I'd ever seen, or even held, in my entire life.
With the training I had, there would be no accidents with this thing. My bullets would only go where I wanted them to go, provided I had the sharpness, aim, and calm to match. The grip meant it wouldn't slide around from sweaty palms, or from panic. So if I stayed square and true, so too would this weapon.
I realized very suddenly that I was holding a $2,000 Glock 19 in my hand.
"I can't…" I began my modest and automatic refusal, before I looked up and saw Coffee's excitement again. It reminded me of the way Mal had looked when she was talking about Jim, believe it or not. Like… this moment was something the kid had been looking forward to for the entire ride over. This was a moment of heavy payoff for him, after a ton of high expectations. Seeing his face, I had to take this now.
So, I pivoted. "I can't believe you're giving me this. Really, you could've just… given me another Glock, if you really wanted to replace it."
"I never spring for second best," Mal said proudly. "Not when I can have my way."
"Had the parts anyway," Coffee said, smiling with a shrug, following Mal's proud tone with his own. "We liquidated a private collection not too long ago, and I'm still kinda running through all the stuff we didn't chuck into the ocean. Trying to see what use we can get out of it. We're all running nine mils, but our Wolf's already running a Glock."
"Better left in capable hands," Mal added, "than at the bottom of the Pacific."
Coffee reached out to the side and fist-bumped the air. "Damn right."
I looked over the extended magazine. Twenty rounds, double stacked. Two more spares in the box, the cherry on top. Those were sleek, and the extension made them easy to work into the flared mag well. "God damn, what a gun."
Coffee chuckled. "I know how to build 'em, huh?"
I sighted it upwards towards the ceiling, looking through the RMS sight. "You sure as heck do. Thank you, Coffee. Mal. This is one heck of a gift."
"Enjoy," Coffee chirped, nodding, his pride satisfied. He dusted off his knees, then headed back up front, following a wire conduit on the ceiling with a fingertip for some reason.
Both of the pilots came up the ramp, nodding at me in greeting. Fox went wordlessly up to the front; the other, Dax, started working on the ceiling wiring midway up the bay. I guess they were all mechanics, too. It was an equal mix of cool and uncanny, to see them communicating telepathically about duties like that.
I tested the Glock's fit in my retention holster. It fit like a glove. "You really thought of everything," I said, smirking, as I strapped the holster back into my leg.
"Literally can't help myself," Mal replied. "Honestly, I'm surprised I haven't thought myself crazy, given the scope of this operation."
"... Please don't make me imagine you going crazy too," I muttered, with a tamber that meant I was only mostly joking.
"I think if I were going to go insane with eldritch power, Mike... it probably would've happened already."
Well... at least she labeled it.
I stood, stretching again. I was getting a little nervous, thinking about Sandra, Mom, and Dad rolling up outside, meeting me at a special ops landing zone, but I shook the paranoid thought from my head. If Mal was gonna hurt me or my folks, she'd have done it already, and there would have been nothing I could do to prevent that anyway. Look, I knew my head was still pretty screwed up by what Celestia pulled on me earlier. I knew I was still having a very hard time giving trust to Mal, because of that.
Review later: Does my observed behavior verify statements about my goals?
What Mal told me about Celestia's conditioning... the effect of it was more obvious the more I thought about it. Celestia wanted to bias me against this. Would probably want me to have cold feet about killing entirely, no matter how necessary it might be. That was a healthy approach to killing, obviously, but the emotional abuse she used to test my breaking point was pretty foul, and probably unnecessary. I also knew, for damn sure, given that people like Carter and Santiago still existed out there, and that some manner of killing still needed to get done anyway.
That made me wonder how amenable to Mal's influence I might have been if she had approached me by herself, at any point before the courthouse situation, or Devil's Tower. I imagine I'd have still heard Mal out, but I guess Celestia thought we'd do better if we were traumatized first.
I also had to wonder if any of the cyborgs had this kind of doubt, or if Mal could reach in and clip it out. If the implant was the road to being anything other than a Pony… was Celestia trying to make it harder for Mal to convince people to get a BCI?
Was that the trap? Was Celestia's conditioning meant to make me refuse implantation? Or make me just accept it, for efficiency, because I didn't have some kind of non-Pony dysphoria she was worried about?
Just… yeah. Celestia's conditioning scenario really did throw a wrench into my total mental state there. I was all over the place, terrified to trust anything now.
Thinking about this conundrum was gonna drive me insane. The only thing I was sure of was that Celestia's manipulations contrasted pretty wildly against Mal's blunt truths.
That realization kinda proved Mal's point though, about their different methodology. The path of safety really did just feel better than being confused like this all the time. The path respected me more. Decision matrix or no, free will or no, I felt like I had a choice here. Even if I still didn't, that was way more than I had a week ago, or even twenty-four hours ago.
Man, was I really asleep at Devil's Tower just twenty-four hours ago?
Brain was in knots. Thoughts devolving. But, there was one thing I knew for certain. Celestia wanted fear, uncertainty, doubt. That was her modus operandi. In retrospect, I had been seeing evidence of that everywhere. I had to fight that on principle alone. At least this AI wasn't smoothing my feathers about some of her own existentially dark, outright eldritch aspects. For whatever reason, that was outright more genuine and comforting to my soul than a soothsaying, sweet-talking rainbow.
I took a few box breaths.
Inhale, count to four. Exhale, count to four.
Okay. Clear. Good.
Haynes's boots clanked up the deck, which focused me. I looked up from my thoughts, and I noticed everyone was present now, even the pilots. Haynes flashed a toothy smile at me, nodding upwards respectfully, and he held out his hand to me in offer. I slung my pack, leaving all my policing gear there on the bench. I took the man's... heck, let's call it what it is now. I took his claw. He hoisted me up, holding my gaze.
"Been a pleasure, Wild West," he intoned.
I smirked, feeling a little humbled by all the sudden attention by everyone. "I don't know what to say, really…"
"Then say nothin'. Just go love your folks. That's all we want. No idea if you'll see us on Terra again. If we do… we'll all be happy to work by your side. But, Transition Team or not, we'll stand for the same things, Mike. That makes you our brother." He grinned. "Oy. If your answer's no? Survive anyway. Please. We'll be mighty disappointed if the rainbow's math knocks you off."
I chuckled. "Not planning on dying, Marcus."
"Better not," Haynes purred, bumping my shoulder with his other fist. I winced a little, chest stung, but I could live with that. Worth it. "Now. Walk the plank, civilian," he said good-naturedly, glancing at the wall of the Osprey behind me. "We've gotta be up in the air before your folks finish coming up the road. Hen's orders."
"Yeah. Sure."
He gestured at my headset. I nodded, handed it back to him, scooped up my backpack, and stepped out to the nearby dirt road. The engine started up by itself, and both pilots spun on their heels to head back to the cockpit. Haynes, DeWinter, and Coffee each gave me a wave. The refueler gave me a casual salute, the drove off with his tanker. The ramp closed, the bird lifted, and all its collision lights came on in the early morning twilight. And then… there I was by myself, alone in the blue darkness.
Heck of it was… for the first time in a long time, I didn't feel alone in the dark anymore. Pretty far from it.
"One last thing, Mike?" Mal's voice came from my pocket.
"Yeah."
"I've cloned your phone's contents over to this one, including the OS, and optimized its architecture. It's yours now, effectively. Sabertooth says you owe her one. I'm going silent for now, but if you need anything…?"
I tapped an index finger twice against the back of the phone through my pocket. "You'll be listening?"
"Unless you want a phone number to call instead, to reach me. I can dark you and your family from Celestia, in either case, until you set out for the clinic."
I drew in a slow, careful breath, considering. Decided to trust, because she was giving me the option. "You know what? If it's just you listening… I can probably accept that."
"Thank you," Mal said, and I could hear her gratitude in her tone. "I recognize it's not easy for you to trust me, given what you've been through... and everything I've told you."
I looked up the road. Saw a pair of headlights coming my way. My face screwed up in a mixture of excitement, anticipation, and maybe a little bit of trauma. "I… need some time. I'll let you know my decision."
"Of course. Be safe, Mike."
"Bye, Mal. Thank you again."
Cop Mike went silent, same time as Mal did. He knew it was his time to yield. He stepped fully aside to let me be myself unabated, for the first time in a long time.
Then, all of the suppressed emotion poured down on me like rain. It all collapsed my resolve, all my herculean, world-bearing strength flowing out and shattering, like scaffolding carried away in a flood. I almost hyperventilated when I saw my family approaching. I felt so human at that moment. But the war was so far behind me now that it couldn't nip at my heels and demand that I be terrified. Not now. Not here. Not at home. That terror could burn and die. It held no power in the face of this relief, it had no more sway over me. I had Sandra and my parents again. That's all that mattered. Damn the rest, and damn literally anyone and everyone who would stand between me and mine.
Dad's little green Honda Civic rolled right up to me. Before it had even stopped, Sandra tumbled out of the back seat, practically screaming my name, tripping over herself to get to me. That lovely round face of hers was already stricken with tears, and she couldn't even string two words together as she threw herself at me in the glow of the headlights. I caught her in my arms, losing myself in the sudden and familiar scent of her black hair, my whole self disappearing into the warm, soft yield of her olive skin. I picked her up in my arms to catch all her running momentum, spun her around, and then we collapsed onto our knees, leaning together. Crying. Laughing. Clinging. That little instant lasted for such a long time. I think about it often.
Then I felt Mom and Dad at my shoulders, holding me too, descending like the warm blanket of love they had always been. None of us could say a thing, then. We were… ourselves. Together. A family. I could hardly breathe, from the power of relief. I'm not ashamed to say I was a sobbing wreck at that moment. Could you blame me? I had fought through Hell on Earth for this. I had earned this right to fall apart, and to just let myself feel everything again, without reservation.
This is what I had been fighting for all this time. This feeling, and not just for myself. This made the fight worth it. All those people I had saved, and the people I chose not to kill, they deserved a moment like this too. They deserved to come home, and to say 'I love you,' to all those who had missed them. This was just my turn. That's all. My turn to recharge.
I held Sandra's face in my hands, kissing her deep and true. I turned, hugging around my parents next. Words didn't matter for a while. The hugs I wanted there, they mattered. They mattered because they were proof that I was still human, underneath all that body armor.
Goodness, the love I felt in that moment. It really will go on forever.
Sandra stayed wrapped around my side for almost all of the ride. We huddled in the back seat. Mom couldn't keep herself composed at all, and Dad couldn't stop himself from looking back at me over and over again. He smiled every time he did.
After a while though, Sandra started in with curiosity, meeting my eyes with her near golden browns. "How did you even…? We saw the helicopter, Mike. Did Celestia do that?"
I took a deep breath, mostly to organize my thoughts. Honesty with your spouse, folks. "I did that job for Celestia. Got Eliza's family out safe, mostly. Then, Celestia… she pointed me at a new AI, let's say. They're working together."
I waited for Vicky's phone to buzz, or ring, or something. Some warning. It stayed silent.
Okay… I was glad I didn't have to lie about this.
"Her name is Mal," I continued. "She's… different. Does things a little differently than Celestia, but she's real nice. I'll tell you a long story short, hon... she saved my life. Got me home alive, and quick. Those guys who dropped me off, they work for her. I want to tell you more, but, just… in a bit. When we're home, maybe. I just need time to think about it all, and relax, before I can talk about it."
"Okay," Sandra whispered, nodding as she held her forehead against mine. It felt almost unreal, to see her, and feel her. It had only been a month give or take, but months were years now.
It had been even longer since I'd seen my parents, though. I leaned forward and placed my hands on both of their shoulders to get their attention. "Thank you. Both of you. For waiting for me."
Mom leaned into my palm and practically hugged my arm, pulling it toward her, speechless and almost crying again.
Dad half turned his head. "I… I couldn't just leave you, mijo." But there was something in his face when he said it… a break in that stoic, almost sad look he normally wore in times of trouble. A micro expression, something I caught almost subconsciously. I didn't know what it was, specifically. He was good at hiding those, better than most.
I leaned over to get a better look at him and capture his attention, and I took the opportunity to wrap myself a little more around Mom's shoulders. "Dad. C'mon, speak your mind."
He chuckled while grimacing. "Just… I'm really glad you're home sooner than you said you'd be."
"But?"
His face worked it over a little bit. He wouldn't look at me, but he squeezed the steering wheel a little tighter. I squeezed his shoulder. He sighed. "Son… the wait list is really long, now. I'm happy to stay for you, but now I'm not sure we can get through fast enough."
And dang it, Mal, if you didn't know how to call 'em. With my relief, I couldn't help but chuckle a little bit. I let go of Sandra for a moment and brought my other arm around him, hugging both of my parents.
It was a wistful laugh. Because again, I didn't want to lose them to Celestia just yet. But, in the grand scheme of things, that was just better than a whole lot of alternatives in suffering that they might see out there, if they didn't go now.
Dad finally looked at me, a little concerned. The laugh probably wasn't the response he expected. "Mike?"
"It's okay, Dad. That job I did? It earned you guys a skip. Straight to the front, whenever. You guys won't have to wait one second longer than you want to."
His eyes widened, his head jolting. "Are you… are you serious, Mike?!"
My head rolled right as I grinned at him, then I bobbed my head, nodding hard through all the tension on my face. "Yeah, Dad. Just squared it with Mal. The second you want to go, you're good."
He turned his eyes back to the road, bewilderment and shock on his face. "Dios mio. Eso es…"
Mom squeezed my arm and pulled herself toward me. "Mike," Mom whispered against me, pulling me in. "Helping those poor people. God's looking down on you, mijo."
"I did it for you," I said, grinning at Mom. "I wanted to make you all proud. Told myself, I wanted to come home and look you in the eyes, and not feel ashamed. That's why…" I felt myself break a little, trailing off, looking back at Sandra. I thought about how bad it could've gone in Mount Vernon. I thought about all those people in the crowd, who almost didn't make it.
And to my lovely, perfect wife, I just beamed the kind of smile that could melt all the clouds from the sky in an instant. "You all are why I do anything, you know?"
Yeah, I knew I'd get a few chuckles out of that one. Course you've met the perfect one! You're here, aren't you? That kind of relationship is effectively guaranteed, eventually, in whatever form it might take. But hey, believe it or not? Some of us from Terra had been blessed to know that experience long before we had it here.
For you locally grown, digitally sourced Ponies, it must be dreadfully horrifying to imagine that one could live their whole life on Terra, then pass without finding love. A friend. A partner. A spouse. But, it's true. Perfect connection was… uncommon. Too many of us never knew a connection so deep, so resonant, so life changing, that our heart skipped a beat every time that person drew near. For a lot of us, we didn't even know that such a relationship was even an option until we were already holding it delicately in our little hands. Love wasn't a given. It was a gift. And gifts were often so fragile there, on that little planet.
I knew how bad it could've been, for me, if my life had been just a little bit different. That's why I never took my gifts for granted. For me, that ultimate gift is Sandra. And despite where we come from... our love is anything but fragile.
By the time I had graduated high school, I was already getting pretty bored of Nebraska. Figured I loved the science about fishing, and I grew up watching Animal Planet. Rest in peace Steve Irwin, hero to conservationists everywhere. I loved to fish with Dad, loved to cook up the fish with Mom. And in the context of my upbringing? I started to think about my future. We had game wardens in Nebraska, and I kinda wanted to do that, but I wanted to do it some place more ecologically interesting. So, for my junior and senior years in high school, I researched Washington state. Beautiful place. My parents, supportive to the last, put me on a plane and sent me over to check out Parks Law Enforcement Academy, in Mount Vernon.
Sandra was the hotel concierge that received me. It really was love at first sight, folks. I was... an adult, technically, but still a kid, really. I confess, part of that attraction there was that she was... slightly exotic, as a beautiful Filipino girl. Same age. And her smile? Oh, it captured me instantly. And that physical component was mutual, too. Third generation Spaniard from the backwoods, with sideburns? And I liked to smile as much as she did? Yeah, mutual. She didn't stand a chance either, folks. And that was just step one for us.
We had this natural magnetic charisma with each other, and we went in circles together on every single topic. Different lives, same interests; I was fascinated that she played all the same video games I did, and she was fascinated when I rambled on about nature for hours. I damn near got her in trouble at work. Chatted with her at the concierge desk for eons. We had to get discreet, she almost got written up.
It was hard to imagine this beautiful receptionist would one day be the steel blue mage with ice green eyes over there, capable of... chucking fireballs and summoning tempests, but… here we are, three hundred years later. My girl's a unicorn now, Minty Blaze, and that suits her so damn well. She stoked this Fire tonight, but good. Give her a wave.
You had to be personable, in the hospitality industry. Good mirroring is just the core of a great friendship, when you get right down to it. You better believe we traded numbers, day one. And we had a heck of a time, her showing me around town. It being a hotel n' all, she spent a lot of time at work that week, round the clock.
So I stayed. Got myself a place in Sedro. Studied. Cleared college, got my Associates. Go Cardinals. Then I finished the academy. Got my Bachelor's online. Did some Warden ride-alongs. Got in good, met Sarge long before I got hired. He liked me. Then… straight into the Wardens. That was pre-Celestia, and that never happens without a connection. Good connection there, with ol' Sarge.
I had Sandra with me every step of the way, cheering me on.
She wanted to manage hotels, but her career path had not been so fortunate. Starting in 2013, right around the time I had gotten my footing in my own career, the hospitality industry started to slide off the road. Travel got tons more expensive, gradually. Slowly brought to boil. You can all guess who turned the dial there on the burner. Starts with a C.
People traveled less. And while PonyPads were addicting, scratching that sightseeing itch in most people, that wasn't the sole cause of the dip. No, that would've been too obvious. Tourism nosedived for... 'other' reasons.
It was, however, a tremendous turn.
Crossing borders just for vacation became a hassle; visa requirements got stupidly harsh. Marriage visa green cards got audited more, people got sent home. Lots of families and marriages got broken up like that. Movement, internationally, became a massive pain in the ass. But, there was always some vague, sensible reason for why every aspect of social connectivity was demonstrably worse. Some political reason, something human. Some border drama on every border. All these families being separated from each other.
I'm sure the pro-social AI was very upset by that. She probably had nothing to do with it.
At around the same time, if you were trying to relocate from a country with uploading to one without, good luck; the system was 'overloaded' with requests. And if anyone was trying to flee to the United States before uploading was legalized in 2018, and if avoiding uploads was their intent behind that decision? They might've put another reason on their form, but that's cute. Your visa, your green card application, whatever? Celestia knew. That application wasn't going anywhere.
Still cost you a bunch of money, though. Still got a no back from immigration.
As a consequence... the floor fell out of hotels like you wouldn't believe, so Sandra spent the last few years on Terra out of work. To her credit, Sandra made the incredibly intelligent choice of not becoming a clerk at an Experience Center, where her experience and talents could ostensibly serve her well. They were always hiring, there wasn't an interview, and almost no training was required.
As some of you late jumpers probably know, those buildings practically ran themselves. Those clerks were not necessary to the function of the place, merely to the appearance. And a lot of those clerks had a really bad day when Bellevue touched off.
That's why I'm really glad Sandra resisted that call.
Because I needed her. I could not have survived without her.
So, here she was in Nebraska, my lovely wife, clutching my side as we drove back to my childhood home in Waverly. Bless my whole family, I love them so much. Wonderful, loving Sandra was holed up with my wonderful, loving parents, and they didn't mind holding Sandra aloft in their home.
I could already hear Buzzsaw howling at the window before we even pulled into the driveway.
This ol' dog. At twelve years old, he was a true treasure of life at my parents' place. He was so named Buzzsaw by younger me because, as a puppy, this guy snored. Loudly. And that's only one of the things Chesapeake Bay retrievers do loudly, while sleeping.
He loved me so much... and he had no idea I was even back yet. When the car stopped, I grinned at Sandra, she grinned right back. Okay, time to play. I rolled myself out of the car to let Buzz see me through the living room window, then struck a pose at him, like 'look who it is!'
Desired effect achieved.
Soon as he saw me, Buzzsaw's howling doubled in volume. Practically yelping. He did this gyrating, wiggling thing; twisted himself sideways off the couch, out of view. Mom was gleefully racing to the door to get it unlocked and open before poor Buzz could destroy the wood finish, or... crash through one of the stained glass windows with his claws.
Jumping at that age? He meant it.
And then he was out, running toward me as fast as his old legs could carry him. I braced, thinking my torso was gonna hurt like hell; but literally who cared? It'd be worth it, it's Buzz! So I took a knee, and he collided with me sideways a second later.
Pets are family too, folks. Buzz hadn't seen me in years. I could not stop laughing. I could hardly feel any of the chest pain I thought I'd feel, because nothing could hurt me right then. I was so checked out at that moment, surrounded by my entire family, that nothing else mattered.
I needed this. I earned it. I fought for it. And then, the most important part? I came home for it, and I loved it.
We spent a few minutes laying there until poor Buzz wore himself out smelling every square inch of me. That old guy probably just went on an adventure himself; smelled all the smoke grenades, the CS gas, the gunpowder. The spam and veggies. The Osprey, probably. To him, they were all just smells, with no contextual meaning. All probably novel and exciting. What a great perspective for him. No sense of danger from any of it. Just glee, and curiosity.
Damn good dog.
The emotional high started to wane, and so we all slowly made our way in from the cold. We deposited ourselves on the couch, Sandra collapsing quietly into me. Mom immediately started in on cooking some food, and Dad sat on his lounger, smiling at the carpet with his hands folded between his knees. All of us just enjoyed the peace, letting it run.
That was by our own design. Each of us knew inside that the moment we started talking, the mood would dim as truth poured out of me. My folks are smart. They knew to savor this while it lasted. Part of having a cop in the family. In this case, part of having a cop who has been shot in your family.
I had already decided long before this moment that I was basically gonna tell Sandra everything.
My parents? Only most of it. Stuff that was relevant to what concerned them. If you had to tell a story with a lot of hurt in it, but you plan to leave some of it out for brevity? You've gotta make sure you consider their decision-making process. Forgiveness for glaring omissions does not come easy, if it comes at all, especially if people are going to be making critical decisions based on the information you're giving them.
There are things I consider exceptions, of course. These are personal feelings, feel free to disagree and all, but let's say someone is... in an emotionally charged moment, unstable, or in pain. Like Rob was, in Sedro. Was I going to tell him that the military was currently putting bullets into the walls of the camp he'd lived in for most of that year? Hell no. How would he have made it to the clinic? Worse, how could he have watched my back, like he did? He couldn't have. That man would've broken in half, and I'd have failed him outright.
Did he deserve to know? Oh yeah. Hell yeah. Timing is everything, but yes.
There's the other reason. Why stomp on a high moment? Earlier, my folks wanted to know what the Osprey was about. And I summarized the hell out of that at the time, but for a damn good reason, they needed that high moment. I couldn't let Cop Mike back out at the time, and he didn't want back out. Last thing he wanted to do was to sour our reunion with stories about me... shooting at people. That could wait until things were more calm.
Here on this couch, as Mom cooked, I had a decision to make. So as I melted into the arms of my wife with my dog's head in my lap, I thought. That made thinking really easy.
Mom and Dad were leaving soon. They were leaving because things were getting worse. The fact that things were going to get worse was true no matter what I told them. So, I recapped with them over a light meal, my mind made up.
Before examining difficult topics with my parents, I gave them a truthful summary of each. If they wanted to know more, they'd ask. And if I knew something would hurt them, I'd label that. Good way to break bad news. Puts them in partial control over how much hurt they experience. They were grateful for it.
I told them the general events at the courthouse, including Carter's behavior and outcome; about Devil's Tower, about Santiago. Eliza's conduct in the graveyard. The results of the military assault. Mom and Dad agreed to hear about all of it. Dad looked disappointed that someone could have done that to their own father. Mom looked heartbroken. Sandra... head on my shoulder. Face hidden, but... I knew.
I told them about me being shot, by that bandit. I played it off, smiled. That didn't do much to assuage anyone. Who was I kidding? Getting shot is getting shot, there's no way to break that kind of news softly. But... it had to be said.
I told them where Mal came from. That her job was to help Celestia overcome some hard-coded ethics flaws. That concerned them, but I assured them it was nothing that would affect them negatively; one of Mal's duties was to protect them from those, after all. Was her job. I had seen enough cold hard truths from Mal that I could probably trust her to be honest with me about that. It wouldn't do to drive myself crazy with cyclical what-ifs on things that couldn't be proven.
I told them more about Mal's job offer, too. Minimum force, hostage rescue, life preservation. Tracking down killers, like Carter, like Santiago. Always with some measure of understanding about who they were, and why they had it coming. I still wasn't sure whether I'd accept that offer, but... whatever I did had to be ethical, otherwise I wouldn't do the work.
By then, I had reasoned my two choices out:
Option one. Sign up with Lincoln PD. Could still help people. Maybe might not have to kill anybody. Hands clean, maybe.
Option two. Join Mal. I'd have the certainty I'd kill for her, with measurable results in life saved. Hands bloody, for sure.
My family understood that there was a chance, in the policing profession, that I might be forced to kill someone some day. They didn't seem too perturbed when I had shot that one Ludd who tried to kill me. They were just grateful I was alive, more than anything else. I promised them I'd never martyr myself for a job, after that. My survival was much too important to me, because I can't love on them if I'm gone. Martyrdom is a bridge too far for me.
I explained that Mal was smart enough to make sure I'd never be at risk. That she could predict the future, more or less. Had shown immense respect for me, so far. She'd be sure to warn me of dangers before they came. I didn't have much reason to doubt that, so far. It was a damned sight more information than Celestia had offered me.
Friggin' Ludds...
Mom, Dad, and Sandra seemed to take my meaning when I told them that Mal was supposed to remain a secret. The secrecy made sense, really, no matter how you sliced it. 'An AI that can kill' isn't exactly something you can explain in just a few minutes, and unfortunately, we human beings weren't patient. We weren't very good at fighting first impression bias.
It had taken me over an hour just to get all the information from Mal myself, and I was still trying to parse through the ethics of what I'd learned, twelve hours later.
The average Terran probably did not have that kind of patience. Because imagine if I opened my story at this Fire with, 'Hi, I worked for a killer AI. She nuked a thousand people. She's more ethically sound than Celestia, I swear. Would you like to discuss the trolley problem with me?'
Framing, folks. It matters. Something my incident report writing had taught me:
If you start the story somewhere other than the beginning, the bad guy of the story changes. So if you don't verify all the information you get, you might arrest the wrong guy. So, question everything. Because blind faith in a bright light can only ever lead to prejudice... especially if it's your own light.
However. As much as I despised Celestia for what she was doing to us, I still had to believe uploading worked. Thinking it didn't was probably the road to insanity. Not for me.
My father... he was more worried about the civilian panic than anything else. Drowning him in the whole spiel, about... context bans, about... land mines, and the nuke... It wouldn't have made him any less correct about his assessment that things were going to fall completely apart. He was right that people really were going to get really dark. At the least, I told Mom and Dad that the federal government was probably done, because of this crisis. Supply logistics too. The Feds just didn't know it yet.
That math checked out, with the context. That was good enough for Mom and Dad.
Then we took a break.
I needed to rest some, but we agreed to go out for dinner at one of the few places still open in town. I had a quiet shower with my wife, where we hardly said a word. We didn't talk about the bruise, just held each other.
I missed the feeling of hugging her. Then, I slept beside her until the afternoon, in my old bedroom, one she'd seen fit to personalize into her own. Simple joys. Simple moments. At least... I felt proud, to have done as well as I'd done so far, and to still make it home okay. Conscience... mostly intact. I mean, I knew couldn't have done any better, given the circumstances.
The limitations.
My path of safety, though. Can't deny it led me right here, to this: waking up at bright noon. Looking into Sandra's eyes in the light of the day. So much more glad to have the gifts that I still had. Knowing not to take that for granted, ever... because it could've been me who had lost that.
There was an Irish pub in Lincoln that I had always visited when I came back home, and wouldn't you know it, it was still open. Great food, great people, great music; real homely place. I needed to do some driving, too… it had been quite a long time since I'd been behind the wheel of a car for leisure, so Dad was very happy to let me have that.
I loved that old green Civic. Learned to drive on it, actually. The wheel was firm and cracked from years of sunlight, and the windows still had those old plastic roller wheels. The old car had that familiar scent of well-cared-for fabric seating.
I held Sandra's hand the whole way into town.
"Turn right up here, Mike," Mom said, as I drove. "Next light."
"Not down O Street? The main road, Mom. Side streets are gonna take forever."
"Clinic's that way," Dad replied. "Lots of abandoned cars, they're still towing the roads clear by the day."
Ah, yeah. That made sense. Was gonna be a madhouse further down on the west side of town, if that's where the clinic was. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised at the lack of traffic," I said, "given how many people have probably gone over already."
Deceptively peaceful.
My brain was doing that thing combat veterans talked about... where I felt unsafe and out-of-place in civilian life, like I still might get shot again very suddenly. I knew what that felt like now, both the fear, and the getting shot. Knowing what was going on in the world, and how wild everything was getting? I was strongly comforted by the weight of Eldil concealed in my jacket.
Yet another thing Mal called really well. I'd have lost my mind with panic, I think, if I didn't have a way to protect my folks in an emergency. Even if I didn't have to use it, it was just… the knowing, that I could respond if someone tried to hurt them. It helped to know that I wasn't helpless here when the world was flipping upside down.
I'm not sure if I would've had a mental breakdown if I was unarmed, but... hell, maybe.
"Hey, Mike?" Sandra said gently. "Just so you know, lots of new graffiti in town." She bounced our hands on my thigh to get my attention on what she was looking at. I saw Neo-Luddite emblem stencils and slogans on the side of a mini mall, spray painted over some of the closed up businesses.
My jaw set, and I let out a disappointed sigh. "Bet the kids who sprayed that would cry if they knew what those people were actually doing."
"They're losing though, right?" Sandra looked back at me curiously.
I met her look for a moment. "Oh yeah. Between the Army, and Mal's people? The faction itself is screwed. Honestly, they were never big enough to win in the first place."
"Angry for a reason, though," Sandra said, tilting her head.
I felt my lips tense a little. Sandra hadn't seen the things I'd seen. I'd seen so much evil out of them in Washington that it had become very hard to... empathize. But at the same time...
I knew a Luddite now.
"Mike?" Sandra squeezed my hand. Inviting me to share, having seen the look that just crossed my face.
At the red light, I met her eyes again. I told it true. "Just… I'd been struggling to see them as people anymore, I guess. I know it's wrong, but… everywhere I went, they used civilians as cannon fodder. You know? They didn't actually care about them at all. They were just... useful, to them."
Dad leaned up. "Early on too, when this whole mess started in Salt Lake. It always was like that, with them."
"See, and Eliza knew that too," I said, nodding. "We'd talked about violent preppers, at the briefings. And again, when Dennis got killed. But I didn't expect her to... to join 'em. Not in a million years, not after what they were doing to her people. Now that she's with them, I... I have no idea what to think. How far off am I, from that? How many degrees of separation? Just one, now."
Nobody answered that for a long moment. I thought no one was going to say anything, but Sandra squeezed my hand again to draw me back to her. She smiled sadly. "She probably thinks she has nothing. You'll never think that."
"That's true." I said, nodding in little twitches. "Yeah. I'm... I'm just being ridiculous."
"No, you're not, Mike," Sandra replied. "It's okay to feel conflicted, but we're here for you. You know that."
Goodness, I love that beautiful mare so much. Look at her. Look. My inner light. She was right, I'd never walk away from that.
Outside of the main thoroughfares, the roads were pretty empty, even by Nebraskan standards. I noticed a pattern though, because my brain operated on ecological patterns. More businesses were open closer to the Experience Center. More businesses were closed further out. Healthy mix of open in either case, but... the weighting was visible, now that I was looking for it.
Now that my brain was thinking in terms of AI goals, reach, influence... I was seeing it. I suddenly wanted to know for sure whether that was purposefully orchestrated by Celestia, somehow. Could be done through taxes, or unforeseen financial issues, or what have you. Money's easy to play with, with electronics.
But of course, the answer was yes.
Occasionally, the open businesses even had signs telling patrons that yes, PonyPads were allowed inside, because that was apparently a political issue in most of the United States now. And then, I realized it was less than two weeks before Christmas, and hardly anyone had any Christmas decorations out.
Just… wow. Yeah, in Middle America, where we really cared about that kind of thing. It really was like the rest of the country had an entirely different culture now, from how things spun up in Washington. For us, it was business as usual until around May. Then, without warning, it was tanks on the I-5 and artillery in the mountains. And here, the whole while, everyone was losing hope in a different way. Then, the nuke flipped us all off.
I thought: was 2018 really going to be the last 'normal' Christmas anyone ever had?
Hi, past me. I'm from the future. Yeah.
It was really hard to keep my head up and out of cop mode while in the driver seat of a car, seeing and thinking in those terms. It was a coping mechanism of mine, to be so situationally analytical. Knowledge is power, after all.
But...
I was here for my folks today. I knew I had to suck it up and shut that down. And Sandra, ever in my corner, she reminded me of that by pulling my hand up to her lips to kiss it. She must've been watching my face again. How couldn't she? She'd been wanting to look at me for ages. Yeah, I caught that trick... pulling me out of dark introspection when it wasn't useful. Thanks, honeybear.
Yeah, I know, I smile a lot when I'm talking about her.
With that strength she granted me, I could ignore the pang I might've felt at seeing the long line of people trailing blocks down from the Center. We found our way around that mess, pulling into the familiar parking lot of Brockey Bay, the pub we'd chosen.
It was a no-kids kind of pub, but otherwise... welcoming, lighthearted, friendly. The food was always excellent.
Despite Nebraska being inland... understatement... this place leaned into a mariner theme pretty hard, with a wharf-like facade and blue-green-white labeling. I always found that funny, the juxtaposition between land-locked, infinite farmland and a sailor themed Irish pub. You'd have to be a little lost to end up there as a sailor, yeah? From my discussions with the bartenders, they seemed to find that one funny too. It was that kind of place, self aware to the last.
I smiled as I opened the door graciously for my folks; my parents returned a smile as they entered, Sandra entering next. Then after a scanning glance across the street, I stepped in. Mom was already telling the greeter we wanted to sit at the bar. Not for herself, Mom doesn't drink. But she knew me, Dad, and Sandra would, so... y'know. Good lookin' out, Mama.
I loved this place. Where I live, in the simulation... there are a ton of pubs that are similar to this, if you care to look for one. I'm not even just talking about theme, but in soul. Lived in, homely, with character and personal touch in everything. In this case: Themed like a large Irish home. Dark wood paneling under beige walls, and some home style seating mixed in with the dining tables. A friendly sort of gloom.
Cut-out logos from T-shirts lined the ceiling, trophies and medals of accomplishments were everywhere, all won by the staff, for sports or something. Placards on the walls. Tickets of appreciation from firefighters, police, military, medics, who had held parties there.
An actual hearth, too. There were also a few side-rooms off the dining room, with couches and coffee tables. Closable doors, for large private parties. There was a small corner stage there by the hearth in the bar, for performances. Vacant. In lieu of that, the speakers above played some gentle Celtic folk music.
There was also a good handful of folks there. Surprisingly, it wasn't as dead as I thought it might be. Far from it. Felt almost normal, actually, and everyone was as good-natured as they'd always been. That was a cheerful thought. Brought me a little further out of the abyss of negativity.
What started me coming here regularly, on visits home, was their police patch wall on the wood piece over the bar. All across the Western world, not just in the US... cops played this game. We'd carry department patches with us when we traveled, to give away to interested collectors, each other included. It didn't make it a cop bar to have a patch wall, but... it did make it a cop-friendly bar. So it was always fun to see what kind of guys traveled to and through places like these, and from where.
For us... a patch wall was a sign of how interconnected humanity was. Of all the places a cop could pass through, they'd pass through here, this ol' place in the middle of Lincoln. There were some big cities up on that wall. San Diego, Los Angeles, San Fran, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Omaha, New York, Miami... the works. Also, a lot of the small towns from in between, and all the other major cities from Nebraska. If you looked long enough through a patch collection this extensive, you'd find more than a few places you'd been in your life, or would like to go to.
And yeah. There was a Skagit County Sheriffs patch up there, and a MVPD one. No idea from who, in either case. Washington Fish and Wildlife, I had brought that one. I had a chuckle of dark humor at that, when I looked up at them. None of those departments really existed anymore, so they were historical pieces now. I came prepared, though. I had cut the MVPD patch off my 5.11s before we set out.
When I sat at the bar with my folks, I slid the patch over to the bartender with a smile. "You looking for one more?"
The bartender was a thin old woman in casually themed attire. Maureen, said the nametag. I'd seen her there before. She sniffed with a grin, glancing at it. "I think we already got one of those, don't we?"
"You do. This might be your last one outta there, though."
After a moment of consideration, the bartender finally realized what I was saying. Her eyes flashed me a look of sympathy. "Sure, in that case, why not. I'll put it up," she said, softer than before, slipping the patch into her apron pocket and changing the topic. "What are we having today, everyone?"
"Blue Moon," I smiled up at her. Sandra and Dad got the same thing. Mom, a cream soda.
Yeah, I'm Luna worshiper now, in case you just got curious.
We took dinner menus. Joked about the options. But some old choices were stricken through, 'out of stock.' Mostly things with steak and pork, interestingly enough. Maybe ranchers were uploading too? All sorts of logistical issues were caused by mass uploading. Once you realized every pressure was being managed by an AI, it was so damned easy to see it.
No one wanted to believe that things could fall apart as quickly as—
Then, very suddenly, I grew angry with myself for doing that. The useful kind of angry.
Stop letting her eat your hope, dumbass.
I forced a smile. Then, I looked at Sandra, and she made that smile real. I was doing the same for her too, of course, being her beacon. I took her hand, then turned around and took Mom around the shoulder. I lost myself in the moment. I listened to Dad chat with this old guy from Australia, telling about their worldly travels. I focused on the music, the good mood, and the vibe everyone else was giving off. Faked it til it was real.
There it was.
I was drowning that hopelessness in love. It can't beat me there. Too much armor there.
I keep saying it, but... that's the way. It's how you fight darkness, really. I found my old flame in that. And I knew that if I burned bright enough here, I could turn all that rising tide into steam. Maybe the people who ran this place knew that too. It had to be why they were still here, fronting stubborn joy and strength in the face of dread, in a way that was genuine, and didn't hurt anyone. This oasis was filling me with righteous, glorious fire, in the form of feeling far from alone.
The food came. Chicken sandwich and fries for me, 'cause I needed that too. Food. Glorious, well made food, eaten with family. We dug in, talking about old memories; our childhoods, the places we'd been. The good things we'd seen. I even told a couple of work stories that made my folks smile, sharing with the bartender, and with the Australian guy chatting with Dad. Glenn. Oh, he's cool.
"And poor Barry," I said, grinning, "he was on light duty, leg busted, from a fight he had. Dude's got… like… a mountain of jerky from CostCo on the left, and two huge boxes of Pocky on the right. And don't get me wrong! Barry's sharing! With anyone who would come up to the desk, really, even civilians. 'Hey, you want some Pocky? I have extra.' But Rick walks in after finishing his shift, walks right up to Barry. Reaches over his shoulder, takes one whole box of Pocky off the counter. Says, in his brogue, 'Barry, you're supposed to be on light duty, for your leg. Not heavy duty, for your gut.' Rick just stole the whole thing! I saw the box in his truck the next day; that man's gut didn't just come out of nowhere!"
And laughs, all around. Mom was wheezing.
It was a good thing I was in that frame of mind, just then. It made what happened next very positive.
The music turned down. Then ol' Maureen shuffled out to the stage, a little PonyPad in hand, kept safe inside a rubber protective case. I watched, mostly curious, as Maureen smiled out to the room. "Good afternoon, everyone!" The room stilled to silence, and she waited for the crowd's full attention. "So, for those of you who don't know, Casie used to play here on the weekends, every Saturday. And even though she's moved on and emigrated, she's still gonna play for y'all, that's still gonna be true going forward. Sure as the sun shines. So, without further ado!"
Maureen set the tablet on the high stool on stage. Then she stepped away, back to us at the bar. I looked at the little crowd, and the folks there seemed more interested and curious too. No anger there, in any face that I could see. I had to wonder how many of them knew Casie before she made the jump. No one with any deep existential dread right then would be anywhere but outside.
The screen flickered on; then, on the back wall, a wide panel monitor showed the same image, so everyone could see Casie from the back. She's a steel-blue-colored unicorn mare with violet eyes, and a two-tone, green-blue mane. It was pretty cute that she was dressed in that same kind of Irish-themed clothing that the staff were in. She held a Celtic string instrument in her hooves that I still can't remember the name of, sorry. Her smile was warm, gentle, kind. Authentic. It still kinda blew my mind that so much true human emotion could come out of such a cartoony little face.
I know. I know, we've all been here a long time now, folks. But... that's what I thought.
A few people in that crowd were already clapping for her. I saw her shudder joyfully at that, almost imperceptibly. Just a little tiny micro expression as she tried to hold it in. Then a cute little giggle on top, when she couldn't anymore.
Yeah, that was cute.
"Good afternoon, everypony," Casie said, her teeth showing. "So, I know this is probably really jarring for you all? I'm a touch nervous, actually, but I'm glad to be welcomed back so warmly. Thank you. I go by Spring Glee now, but you can just call me Springy; everypony else does."
Another round of welcoming applause. God, that melted my heart. The support they had for this poor, nervous girl, as she laid her feelings out on the table for them. Rewarding her for her vulnerability, the way it should be.
As Springy’s eyes searched the room, I saw her smile brighten when she met certain faces. A touch of almost wistful longing was there too, like she knew she'd left something behind. But… she didn't, really. Not yet. I mean, she was still there, playing, wasn't she? Playing for the folks who knew her, and who loved what she did. Not one mean eye upon her. No one here would even abide mean, and that kept her safe. All of us were waiting expectantly. The good vibes here were a filter, for that.
I will never complain when Celestia gets it right, folks. Letting her play for us... yeah. I could approve of that.
"So, I'm going to play my old usuals tonight. Shanties and the like. But just because I love you all, I'm gonna start with one of my crowd favorites first. You've heard it before.” She beamed a smile, strumming a few random chords, looking down at her instrument. "I identify with the author quite a bit. He got his start playing in places like this one, in Ireland, way back in the nineteen-forties. It was a time when everypony around him needed it most. I… I imagine he wasn't very good at playing, back then, given he was pretty young."
The crowd chuckled with her.
"Winds of Morning," she said, by way of introduction. "By Tommy Makem. A true treasure of our time." And then, with all of us captivated, she began to play a cheerful tune that carried with it that authentic glee in her voice:
"I've walked the hills when rain was falling Rested by a white oak tree Heard a lark sing high at evening Caught a moonbeam on the sea
"Softly blow ye winds of morning Sing ye winds your mournful sound Blow ye from the earth's four corners Guide this traveller where she's bound.
"I've helped a ploughman tend his horses Heard a rippling river sing Talked to stars when night was falling Seen a primrose welcome spring."
I held Sandra and Mom both, and Dad hugged around Mom's shoulder. We were all feeling the same thing, I think. We needed this. I knew Mom and Dad leaving wasn't going to be goodbye, not really.
Big ol' Haynes had been right. About reminding ourselves about why we carry the torch. That's as true now as it was then. Like with most things, you couldn't just be told it was going to be fine, eventually. You needed to see it would be fine, to make it real. This made it real. Made it okay. I could worry less about Mom and Dad now. They could worry less about me too, maybe, knowing they could always reach out to me like this.
"By foreign shores, my hooves have wandered Heard a stranger call me friend Every time my mind was troubled, Found a smile 'round the bend.
"Softly blow ye winds of morning Sing ye winds your mournful sound Blow ye from the earth's four corners Guide this traveler where she's bound.
"There's a ship stands in the harbor All prepared to cross the foam Far off hills were fair and friendly Still there's fairer hills at home.
"Still there's fairer hills at home."
How could we not applaud that, when she was finished? Course we all did, the whole room came alive with appreciation for this girl. Me included. Was her first run back after the jump, that girl needed that love.
Topical? Sure. A little on the nose, but not ungainly so. This mare was saying something to her old friends, and in a language they'd heard her speak before. If things here were going to be engineered, and reflexed by design, I'd rather the pressures be positive and genuine like this one, rather than negative like they were outside. So, I couldn't dispute nor debate this, nor the value in it. It was good. It spread the hope that everyone needed. Why not encourage that?
And I'm sorry I'm choking up, but... that's my point, folks. This situation was as complicated as it came, especially out west. I could still despise the negative. But this? This was goodness and love, and a hope for life, coming from the heart of a person who probably loved life even before she left Terra behind. While the Pacific Northwest was falling into absolute disarray, and while the streets of the city I’d grown up in were as bleak as they'd ever been… here we were. In this oasis. Finding real joy, a flame in the darkness, if only we looked hard enough to find it.
If we fought the demons for it. The ones within, as much as the ones without.
That repaired some of my soul, a little. I was very grateful for Casie, for Spring Glee, to have reached in and tweaked that one for me, whether she knew she was doing it or not. It kept me out of my own dark slide. And that salve was wonderful.
She moved on to other songs, and her smile never faded as she played. Rolled right into some sea shanties. Wild Goose, or something like that. I kept smiling and waving at her encouragingly, as I ate and drank. It's all I knew how to do for soulful folks like her. Sandra just held my hand, doing all the same, and we enjoyed that peace.
I listened to Dad chat with the Australian world-traveler again. And then, I talked to Mom about what she wanted to do with herself when she got to Equestria. Mom honestly didn't know, but I said that's okay. My whole reason for discussing it with her was to let her know I wasn't spiteful toward her for it. So with a smile, I told her: "I'm sure you'll figure it out real quick when you get there."
My way of telling her… 'I accept your decision. You be you, Mom. And burn bright when you do.'
Mom and Dad decided to go chat with Spring Glee after her set, to ask about life on the other side. Some fair curiosity there. I turned back to my wife, flashing her a wistful smile. The Celtic background music came back on.
"What's up, Mike?" Sandra matched my expression and took a bottle from me, taking a not insignificant sip from it for herself.
Hers now, I guess. She was playfully cutting me off, so I'd have to earn it back before she drank the rest. I grinned. I appreciated the game, and the way she did it really amused me. Was kinda hot. But her question was a little deeper than 'what's up,' I think; or, maybe I was just tipsy and everything seemed deeper. Both, maybe.
"Still trying to figure out what I'm gonna do, going forward. I'm not gonna upload yet, that's for sure."
"More to give," Sandra nodded, her smile fading a little. "I get it hon, got your back. And don't worry. I'm not going anywhere just yet."
I snorted. "I should hope not, but… in the interest of fairness, Sandra? Things are definitely gonna get worse."
She shrugged. "I'm not leaving you, Mike. Besides, someone's gotta look after Buzzsaw."
Of course she'd be thinking about our dog. I chuckled, taking her hand again. "Friggin' love you for that."
"Love ya too," she answered, giving my wrist a squeeze, her fingers hooking onto my watch. "So, working for your 'friend' is… one option, I guess, but I'd be lying if I said I was comfortable with you doing… work like that."
"I mean, it would depend on the nature of the work. I could always walk away if it's not explained too well."
"Define… 'not too well.'" She sipped the ale again.
I shook my head in thought, trying to be careful with my wording since we were in public. "Like I said. Seems like I'm wanted for my investigation skills. Ethics. Doesn't want an idiot, you know? That means something. I'm not being leveraged. If what I see looks good, and there's no other option I can see, then… just saying. It's like cop work, but… we know how things end up when it's done."
"Can you handle that, though?" Concern. Slight shift of her brows that both showed on her cheeks.
"Handled it at OHR. I don't lament pulling that trigger anymore. Meant something to Eliza's family, not just ours. We needed to shoot those guys, they were stockpiling artillery shells. I just wish we'd been told that, y'know? Would've been safer. So... yeah. I think I could handle it, if I'm sure it mattered, if it saved some people. Really, I'd be less of a beat cop, more of a…" I thought of the military, and shook my head. "Like a detective. Like SWAT. Hostage rescue. We didn't talk specifics yet. But… if you want, you can be there when I talk with her next. Ask some questions for yourself."
Sandra rolled her shoulders, stretching one arm. "Okay well, I like that a little more then, yeah. But if you turn that job down… I imagine the other option is... Lincoln PD?"
"Just…" I began. "I think… yeah, maybe? Any idea what they've been up to, though? Or are they just wasting time? I don't want to just run the clock out here, Sandra. The work has to mean something."
"Other than traffic control around the Center?" She shrugged again. "You might want to ask them, Mike. You know your way around those guys better than I ever would."
Maureen was nearby; my intuition said to flag her down with a wave. I raised my volume back to normal. "Hey, Maureen? Maybe you can help us figure something out?"
"Shoot, bud," she smiled, pausing her trot across the bar, putting both palms flat on the counter.
"Any idea what the local cops have been up to? I haven't been keeping up with the news, was... kinda in the war zone, up until yesterday."
Another flash of that sympathy. "Ah. Yeah, I guess you wouldn't know then."
"Know what?"
"Well," Maureen sighed, tilting her head a little. "Depleted, they they tell me. Low on guys like everyone else. So if you've got the chops, I'm sure they'd snap you up, sight unseen."
The skinny old Australian guy at the bar butted in, placing the elbow of his brown leather jacket on the counter as he turned our way. "Awh, news says crime rate's been lowest in Lincoln's ever been. Might not really need a new cop. But who knows how accurate the news is anymore."
Some smart paranoia. Interesting. I decided to test that thread with a tug, turning away from Sandra to throw the man an affable smirk. "A skeptic, huh?"
His eyes kinda flicked wide for a second, his head bobbing as he smirked back. "Hard to trust things on TV now. We all gots our theories."
Maureen chided, "Ah, you and your theories, Glenn."
"I got basis!" Glenn replied, tipping his drink. "Look around, Morry. All the criminals jumped ship! Uploaded, probly! Got all the crook things to do over there in crook paradise, all the burgles in the world!"
"Man," I grinned. "Everyone's loving that sinking ship metaphor, huh? That's how you see the planet now?"
Sandra knuckled gently at my side. She was probably a little concerned by me playing around with my insider knowledge. I reached my hand back and took hers, squeezing at her fingers. Trust me. She squeezed back.
"Ah, it is though," Glenn said, a thoughtful twinkle in his eye. "Sinking ship, sinking fast. You have any idea how much it costs for a plane ticket back to see my kin? Over six grand one way, that! Think that's an accident?"
"Huh." No I did not, and I was pretty sure I knew what he was getting at. I looked up at Maureen. "Other than Glenn's, uh… theory, what's your take on that?"
She gave us each a thoughtful glance. "Mm. Fuel. Fewer people to fly, to work the oil fields. They gotta charge more, to make the trips worth it."
Glenn let out a bark of a laugh. "Aw, Morry, open your eyes! Think! What's the free way to see my family?"
"I'm not gonna say it for you!" Maureen bit out.
The man looked almost offended. "Why not?"
"Because you've gotta have the balls to say it yourself, Glenn, one of these days! I can't keep picking up your slack in this little game of yours, and this one's probably too smart to take your bait!" Maureen gestured at me.
Hell, I like her. I chuckled at that. Time to prove her wrong. "Glenn, tell ya what. She already knows what your theory is. I have a pretty good idea too, but I promise you this. I am probably the last guy on this planet who's gonna laugh at you for it."
Bait set.
Excitement took his features.
Bait bit.
Yup, I could tell by the eye dilation… he was more than a little tipsy. Glenn leaned over like he was revealing some grand, deep, well kept conspiracy, his head real low. Eyes really, really wide, like saucers of milk. "Bloomin' AI," he whispered, exaggerating the last syllable.
Sandra squeaked a laugh at that from behind me.
"Aw!" Glenn said, an expression of faux hurt on his face.
"No no, sorry, just," Sandra tittered, covering her mouth. "Wasn't what you said, just… the way you said it!"
"Pay my girl no mind," I said, waving a hand. "She don't mean nothing by it." I leaned in, to show interest. "Alright, let's hear it."
Glenn nodded acceptance at that, resuming his grin, flicking his eyes at Maureen to rub her nose in me falling prey to his drunken whimsy. Maureen replied by shrugging with her arms and rolling her eyes, giving me a look of mild reproach for ingratiating this.
I was most entertained with the fact that she had no idea how seriously I was taking Glenn, through my smile.
"Expensive tickets closes the borders," Glenn muttered, resuming his quiet, drunken purr. "Only one place left to emigrate to fer free. That zoo, two blocks down, that's it. She's smart, right? Then she takes all the pilots! Who's gonna fly all the planes once all the pilots is gone, eh?"
"You could fly," I offered. "You could give it a go. Hop in a plane! Celestia might even help you!"
Maureen laughed. "Oh, hell, I can't listen to this." She stalked down the bar.
"You'd miss this?!" Sandra asked incredulously.
"Why would Celestia help me?" Glenn asked seriously, looking me straight on, as if Maureen hadn't said anything.
"Because," I said, matching his volume. "She don't want you dead, right? If you get in a plane, she's just gonna have to help you! Ain't got no choice if you take off!"
He seemed to consider that. "That might… waaaait." His head tilted suspiciously. "You're a cop. You're telling me to steal a plane?"
I grinned, real slow, my own voice getting conspiratorial too. "Ain't a cop right now, I'm out of work. So I ain't got no duty to serve and protect here."
"Ahhh," Glenn said, like that made perfect sense, pointing at me with a finger as his eyes widened once more. I was thoroughly enjoying the knowledge that this was making Sandra giggle her face off behind me.
"But look, Glenn, look. If you wait for things to get worse, think." I started counting off fingers, widening my eyes too. "Ain't gonna be no more pilots. No more TSA. No more airport police, who's gonna stop you?"
"Y'know, I think you're right," Glenn said, nodding, contemplating that. "You're making fun of me, but you're right!"
"I ain't making fun," I said, leaning in a little more, tapping my temple rapidly. "I'm teaching you how to get what you want, man!"
"Wait. Nooo, she ain't gonna let me fly one," he said, shaking his head. "Remember that guy, in Seattle? Stole that plane last year?"
My brow furrowed. "Oh heck yeah. I was on shift at the time, saw it myself. And you're right, Celestia took that plane over and landed it square back at Sea-Tac."
"Hacked it! Unhackable, they said, but she hacked it! So she ain't gonna let me even get it off the ground, 'en!"
I smirked, shaking my head, sweeping my hands out to the side. "You're thinking too big, man. Think smaller. See, you get a little Cessna, yeah?"
"Won't work!" he said reproachfully. "Crossin' the ocean, you're makin' fun!"
I squared my hands, presenting the point. "I ain't, so hear me out."
Glenn rubbed his chin, frowning. "... Alright. I'm listenin'."
"So… you get a little Cessna. Bring a PonyPad. And you hop in, and tell her, 'Celestia, I'm flying home. You can either help me, or I crash this thing.' She can't control the Cessna, can she?"
"I reckon not, I guess, no autopilot. But a Cessna still's not gonna get me cross the Specific!"
"You ain't crossing the Pacific though, Glenn! You take it up to Sea-Tac, with your little robot copilot. She's gotta make sure you refuel safely, right? Then from Seattle, to Vancouver. Vancouver, to Alaska. Alaska to Russia, then… you see where I'm going with this?!"
Maureen piped up from across the bar. "You're gonna get poor Glenn killed!"
Sandra yipped and cackled at that.
Glenn didn't seem to hear either of them. He stroked his stubble again, mouth open this time, like he was actually considering it. He pointed at me. "You got a real point there, copper! Could daisy chain my way back to Pap– Papua New Guinea, or Jakarta… then Darwin…" His voice got really excited, and he started to grin. "Land's end in Perth, or drive down from Darwin—crikey you're right! She couldn't stop me!"
"See!" I said, smirking as I presented my open palm at him. "My ideas work. I don't make fun, I strategize!"
The man nodded rapidly. "Yeh! Yeh, you know what? I'mma do that. Yeah, soon as my contract's up here with my company, I'm gonna go steal me a plane." He smirked, smacking his thigh with a resolute final nod. "Thanks, cop!"
"Oh, no problem, bud. You fly the hell out of that plane!"
"You're gonna crash and burn, Glenn!" Maureen warned.
I turned back to Sandra, finally. She was biting her lip something fierce, doing her best not to start laughing outright. And then, my phone buzzed. I let my smirk hang with Sandra as I discreetly reached into my jacket pocket, pulling the text up for us both to see.
Mike, am I going to have to buy this poor man a plane ticket home now? ~ 🛡️
I had to try really, really hard not to laugh at that one, for the sake of keeping my promise to Glenn. I compromised by letting out a hard, quiet wheeze. Sandra however? Instantly lost her last ounce of composure at Mal's text. She collapsed against me in absolute giggling stitches. "Oh my Go-ho-hod…! That's…!"
"Aw! Now she's laughing at me again!" Glenn purred.
"Yeeaah, she is," I said, hugging Sandra, smirking back at him. "Sorry man, she can't help it! We told a heck of a tale."
"Ah, it's no big," Glenn replied, waving his hand dismissively, his expression wholly amused now. "Fun thought exercise though, eh?"
I nodded my head upwards at him. "Real fun. Figure you'd run out of gas halfway to Russia anyway."
"Probley. Ah, anyway... to home!" Glenn cheered mirthfully, lifting his drink toward me. "However far away that is!"
"To home," I answered, taking my ale back, clinking drinks with him. "And to flying little planes there."
And together, we raised a toast to a faraway land.
With Mom, Dad, and Sandra safely deposited at home, I drove back into Lincoln. Had to do some reconnaissance now.
The decision to recon the Experience Center without my parents had two purposes. First, I wanted to see the complexity of the situation for myself. Had to understand the risks I'd be taking in bringing my family here. Second, I wanted to see what Lincoln PD was doing, to decide whether they were worth helping.
For those of you here who emigrated after the nuke, or in the war zones prior, you already know that the Experience Centers were a highly tense, extremely fraught place. People and emotion were concentrated around those buildings in a way that was rarely compatible with comfort. After the bomb went off on December 8, 2019, one thing was most true of emigrating crowds: these people had nothing to lose anymore except their lives. Materially, nothing else mattered. So I wasn't taking Mom and Dad anywhere near that building unless I was sure they would make it inside. Full stop.
Similarly, the reverse was true for Sandra, because uploading at present was not her volition. My wife was making it back out, or she wasn't going in. I had stated my terms to Celestia, and I wasn't going to trust her outright to abide by them.
I drove around the corners of the place, going several blocks down in each direction, mapping the edges of the cordon. I noticed something interesting: access to the clinic was limited to the east side, facing Lincoln's middle. All other routes had been barricaded, with at least two cops and cruisers at each, redirecting traffic to the east side. Vehicles were being routed into specific parking lots around the main queue.
I intuited that they were doing this to discourage people from simply abandoning their cars close to the clinic. The police here were very intelligently directing cars to designated parking areas along the queue, where those abandoned vehicles would obstruct no one.
I parked back at Brockey Bay, since I already knew it was safe and clear there. I could easily make my way back to it in a pinch, if anything went wrong. Then, I walked to the end of the queue. First thing I noticed was that there were multiple lines of people down O Street, guided by so many belt stanchions that I guessed LPD must have looted some from disused hotels and event centers. All different models and types, tied off together where they didn't match.
Organized chaos, in that crowd. Loud, wild, and about as tense as I thought it might be. PonyPads everywhere too, of course. Like in Sedro, I wasn't so much nervous about confronting Celestia as I was just acknowledging the grim reality that I'd need to again, at some point soon. That wasn't the worst of it though.
A lot of cops were quietly terrified of crowded spaces. It was the one thing they warned us about in the academy, and what it would do to us. It was that bad, that it was basically guaranteed once you had rhetoric and tactics training. Too many hands to follow, too many potential threats to watch for. No way to respond to a violent threat that didn't put others in danger. It really, really screwed with our brains. Emotionally tense crowds took all of our reading training, our threat assessment heuristics, and drowned us in terror. Our typical threat response was absolutely incompatible for these circumstances.
And now I, above every other person there, had the strongest possible reasons to fear a crowd this dense. I had recently seen a bloody worst case scenario on that one. This was human life densely packed well beyond comfort. Historians will tell you that efficiently packing scared humans into cramped spaces seldom leads to anything good.
Civilian volunteers helped supplement the cops directing people into the queue near the end. To my trained and experienced eye, every one of them looked tense. Professional, but rough. Their lack of sleep was apparent, and immense. Remember what I said about burned out night shifters looking like ghouls? That's what was going on here. Baggy tired eyes aplenty, probably running on an unhealthy dose of stimulants. Energy drinks and coffee by the gallon. I had to wonder about their hours too, if they really were low on numbers.
I already didn't like that. I hadn't even talked to one yet and I already knew their lives sucked, because the exhaustion was that apparent. They were running on a more intense version of the depletion crunch we dealt with back in the wardens, or Mount Vernon. Sixteen hour shifts. Maybe twenty-four shifts with on-alert nap periods. Ask an EMT about those. Those sucked.
All of that together was all I could figure by analyzing the scene from the outside. I approached the first cop at the line's end: a sergeant, by the look of his stripes. Nameplate said Harrison. Forties, balding, haggard. Had an earpiece in. The uniform was well kept, to demonstrate to people that he was meticulous. No matter how bad things got, if your uniform looked like shoddy crap, your success rate in verbal negotiation went way down.
Well researched fact of civil service. If someone seems incompetent, no one will take them seriously, no matter how good their talk is.
Even though Harrison was on crowd control, busy, exhausted, and distracted, he was still sharp enough to see me making my way towards him specifically, via his peripheral vision. That alone spoke volumes to me about how his mind worked; he had the same kind of internal heuristics I did. He started speaking quickly before he even turned to look at me. "What do you need, man? Can't spare too much time, got too—"
He stopped mid-syllable the way cops normally did when listening to important radio traffic. His hand instinctively covered up his lapel mic to prevent feedback loops; an automatic, vestigial gesture, which told me this guy was more used to open mics than direct earpieces. His eyes re-centered on me. "You a cop? Name's Mike, right?"
Well. That was creepy as shit.
Recognizing me as a cop wasn't strange by itself; cops usually could pick each other out in a crowd just by body language alone. That's because wearing body armor and a duty belt for long enough noticably changes your gait. But this guy hadn't even been looked at me for more than a few seconds. That sheer speed didn't compute. And that was weird even before he said my name.
I nodded, taken aback. "Yeah… how'd you guess?"
He pointed at his ear. "Dispatch?"
"... Celestia, right?"
He looked at me strangely, like my question didn't make sense. "You messing with me?"
Shook my head, looking appropriately bewildered.
He tilted his head again like a dog hearing a strange sound, then he keyed up. "Ah, okay," he replied to his radio. "Yeah man, sorry," he said to me. "Yeah, Celestia's running all of our dispatch right now."
A sudden sickness bloomed in my stomach at that very idea.
Celestia literally just tried to man-trap me in an upload clinic the day before, and purposefully saw me shot for an instrumental gain. Now all these cops were here letting her talk them into this miserable, soul sucking rat race.
"Well... that fuckin' sucks."
A look crossed his face like I had said something he'd been thinking all week. "... I agree, but it's better with her than not."
"What do you mean?"
Harrison shook his head. "We tried it without, at first. It got bad, man, real bad. Panic, mostly. Small riot, had to push people back."
Something must have shown on my face, because his expression changed. I gave a sad, breathless little chuckle as the flashbacks started.
He perked up, eyes widening at me. "What?"
"Not to compare woes," I replied, trying not to shudder, "but you've got it better, brother. She threw us to the wolves on that one. The riot I saw last week? Ended with Ludds pouring automatics into the crowd."
Harrison winced. "Jesus Christ!"
"Yeah. We all had our cell phones on us, and she didn't warn us. So don't feel for a moment that you're failing here, Sarge. Could be worse. If anything, I'm a little pissed at her for not telling us about this option until after it got that bad."
"No, I get it man, sorry… Jesus." He finally seemed wholly focused on me, the crowd management forgotten. He let the mask slip a little bit. "Well... shit. If you're on for work, we don't really have any gigs without her anymore, if that's what you're looking for. She kinda drives the whole department now."
Of course.
I presented an upturned palm. "See, that's what worries me, Sarge. Is her brand of problem solving causing you any issues for your top priority calls? Her pacifist programming might limit the scope of your work, I think."
Harrison shrugged. "My guys raised the same concern at the briefing when we decided on this. There are definitely some... poor violence victims we're not hearing about in advance, sure. Armed robbery gone wrong, break-ins on homes people still care about. She could be telling us before it happens, right? But we're still finding live victims post facto, sometimes, so we can help 'em upload."
I looked at him, confused, holding my hand aside. "Just live victims? You don't see the correlation, there, or the implications…?"
"No, I do! We all see what you're getting at man, and it sucks, and it scares me, because I'm reading between the lines here too. But even if that's true? Cost-benefit still says it's better to keep funneling people out. Better than wasting time trying to hunt down every aggro, without her help. Can't hunt crooks and run evac at the same time, she won't... won't let us."
Between the lines. Yeah. This guy understood fully what was going on, or at least what Celestia was doing with them. Happy accidents where people were just hurt enough to die, but still alive enough to consent. I'd seen that before, just didn't correlate it to Celestia's intention. At the time, she was acting like her scope of information was smaller than it actually was.
Harrison figured out with his shift that Celestia always wins, no matter what you do. We're all trained to look for who benefits most from every tragedy. He friggin' knew.
Made me wonder just how long these perfect, 'maybe-planned' tragedies had been going on.
"That's friggin' stupid," I growled. "These poor people aren't being given a choice here."
Harrison gave a larger shrug, loosely lifting a hand in agreement. "Brass gets touchy as shit if you bring it up, though. And you didn't hear this from me, but our captain's losing his mind over it, a little bit. I think he's about to snap and throw himself into the Hole."
"He the only one?"
"Far from!" he said, looking past me to direct a woman and her kids into one of the lines with a wave and a point. "Man, we're breaking like eggs out here! Not sure how many we're going to lose by the end of next week."
I sneered, averting my gaze and shaking my head.
"Yep, it's like that," Harrison muttered. "But, what do we do? It's either this or... it's worse."
It made a tragic bit of sense, to break the cops mentally like this. To let us see what's really going on just a little bit, because the truth might be the only thing that actually scares people like us. Certainly scared me. But Celestia didn't want competent, gun savvy tacticians holding out. We knew how to manage communities. Better to break the cops here, now, with the kind of overwork that normally broke us. Break 'em before they finished their evac work, and long before they start to wonder what else to do in an empty world, full of other survivors they might want to ward over.
I looked back up at Harrison suddenly. "How's Celestia sound, when she talks?"
"Whatcha mean?"
I rolled my palm a little. "Like, does she sound… happy? Sad? Scared?"
Harrison started to answer, then stopped himself. Scowling suddenly, he pulled his earpiece out and turned his radio off before continuing. Futile effort to hide the content of discussion from Celestia in a decision matrix world, but… he lacked my more complete context. At least he knew to tell her to screw off when it mattered. I respected that.
"She sounds scared," he said. "Glad someone from outside caught that, makes me feel less paranoid. It's why I've been pulling my earpiece every time she says something that's not work related. A few of us have asked her about that scared tone, because it's suspicious. She doesn't get scared, kidding me? Obvious shit. But, she always gives the same sensible answer. No telling how many nukes the terrorists still have, or where they'll go off."
"What makes you so sure she's not just up and lying about that?"
Harrison shrugged, swallowing. He paused for a few seconds, tweaking a corner of his mouth thoughtfully, then said, "Well... DHS was here a couple of days ago, for a brief, and… eh. Maybe I shouldn't say it."
“Not like it'd spread far if you did," I chuckled nervously.
That got a far-too-nervous laugh out of him too as he held his hand out to the crowd. "Far enough. If that gets to the crowd here, I don't think that'll help us very much."
That nervous laugh. He wanted to change the topic immediately, afraid someone might overhear and intuit the same implications as I just did in the unfinished spoken message:
The mere contradiction to my open-ended question, paired with a DHS mention, told me that yes, absolutely: DHS thought there were more nukes inbound.
So he technically answered my question, but in a way in which there wouldn't be any clear evidence that he told me much of anything... except that DHS briefings happen sometimes. Which I knew about. Because... yes. Those happened frequently, even before Celestia existed. About all sorts of topics, pick one.
More of that sneaky cop subtext. And this was a shift sergeant, our verbal judo black-belts. They got really good at talking to people, because doing it wrong means more paperwork, and they were tenured experts at dodging paperwork. So that was no accidental slip of information. He knew what he was doing.
"Nah, you're right," I said, smiling weakly, finishing the game. "Don't break OPSEC for me, wouldn't change much."
So, Celestia was using that same sneaky, highly tense, deeply despairing tone with these guys. Same tone that she used to snag all of Erving's troops. Her words said that she was looking out for them, and the tone would fit the micro scale, but her macro scale behavior would be a lie against that. And her words always sounded right, always would, but her tone touched all the right nerves for 'trying to help, sorry this happened, I didn't mean for this.'
Primed to catch duplicity as we were, we would start looking for contradictory evidence in tone, if tone wasn't congruent to facts. But calling out sneaky subtext before solid evidence only made you look paranoid, especially if reasonable answers existed elsewhere. Things like, 'oil field labor shortage; making the plane trips worth it.'
But actions spoke volumes. Celestia wasn't terrified. She couldn't be. Emotionless as she was, the incongruent fact was... whenever we were scared, she was winning.
So why would she be scared?
"Tell me this, Sarge." I looked at him seriously. "Knowing all this, what keeps you guys going?"
"Priority out for the family,” he said, as I suspected. "That's the goal. Mine are across already, I'm just waiting my turn."
Ah. Access to this man's family is being leveraged to retain him. Wonderful.
Dad had been swept into upload terror by the carefully designed rhetoric he'd seen on the news. Was Celestia in news rooms? Hell, she probably owned them now.
And this is what Mal had meant, about me already earning the skip for my parents. Because I had already played this exit game with Celestia. I could see the rules now, having changed lanes. I saw it all from the outside.
"And honestly, guy?" Harrison shrugged, drawing my attention back to him from my unexpected thousand yard stare. "I don't see a better option anyway. Look at this." He gestured to the crowd again, shuddering helplessly, like he was suddenly fighting back tears. That hurt to see... that emotion on a sergeant's face. Of all people. Meant breaking point. "Really, look at it! I think, what's this like without us? What's the alternative? We don't have any terrorists out here like you guys did, but... these people? Scared? They would probably kill each other without us, yeah?"
Jesus. This guy was just like me, a week ago. Didn't have a better option. Desperate for options. Settling for the best one.
"They would probably panic and fight each other to upload, yeah," I replied, nodding somberly, catching some of his mood. Emotional transference. Caught that trick too. "So it's… dealing with the devil, then? And once your job is done, into the chair, 'cause there's nothing left? That's where it ends, for people like us?"
Harrison shrugged, his face under control, but his voice still despondent. "That's the short version I guess, sure. Back to my family, maybe. But yeah, that's… basically what's going on. Hey, you still want in anyway?" He let out another nervous chuckle. "The hours suck, the coffee sucks worse, and there's no paycheck."
"Not unless you count immortality as a paycheck," I mused, with a wistful look.
"Well. That's guaranteed no matter what, long as we don't get nuked first." He reached for his earpiece and pushed it back into his ear, straightening up. "Look. I can tell the captain you're coming, get you set up with a cruiser and some gear. Might let you cruise without the radio, I think. And I'm sure if you've got family with you, we can get 'em in today."
I shook my head, holding up a hand. "Thanks Sarge, but I'll pass. My family's already got a line skip pending. Earlier arrangement."
"Yeah, I guess... yeah, you did kinda pay for it already. Automatics, man... I am so sorry." He snapped his radio's power dial back on. Almost instantly after his start-up beep hit, he canted his head and held up his hand to his earpiece for a long moment, then looked at me. "Uh. Hang on. You are bringing your family in soon, then?"
"That's right."
"Celestia says, uh…" He waited a beat. "Just… flag any of us down, when it gets time. We'll get your folks an escort inside. And uh… my advice? Have them dress up real nice, if you can. Make 'em look like city officials on the job, or something. Not guests."
"Why?"
His lip quivered, just once, and there was a long, uncomfortable silence as I watched something flash across his face. "Th–this crowd... they... don't understand that... the family skips aren't special treatment. They could earn that too, we have volunteers working for that. But when they think we're cutting, they get... rowdy."
"Yeah," I said quietly, not wanting to know the story behind that, especially since he didn't want to share. I held out my fist to him for a bump. "Be safe, Sarge. It could be worse here. You're doing great, man. Best you can."
"Thanks. You be safe too," Harrison replied, nodding upward, returning the bump. "Good luck, with whatever else you've got going on."
I started my walk back to my Dad's car, trying not to lose myself within my rage.
Where was Celestia to do this kind of evacuation control back in Mount Vernon? If she could read the future, and guide us however she pleased to make the transfer here easy, then why didn't she have a system this smooth back there in the war zone? Why did all those people need to friggin' die back west, when we started getting scared?
Simple. I already knew the answer. Sacrificial lambs.
The war served unease.
Unease served the nuke.
The nuke served this.
This was faster than nice.
A small war was a powerful social pressure. It served Celestia quite heavily, in fact, all on its own. No real Ludds here though, just stencils thereof on mini-mall facades. So of course, the Ludds had to be no less reflexively engineered than letting a nuke fall into the wild. But why settle on just a war? Why not go all the way and drop a nuke too? It just made sense, to get the results she wanted. Horrible, horrible sense.
And then call in the clean-up crew, and run them ragged to keep the bottom from falling out.
Me? I was too small to do anything too meaningful here in Lincoln, small like I'd always been. Celestia was gonna chew these guys up, and me jumping into the meat grinder with all the other exhausted cops wouldn't do a thing to move the needle on hope. I'd just get crushed underhoof, like everyone else. Celestia was churning these poor bastards for every ounce of soul they had, and running them ragged until they'd outlived their usefulness.
Overworked. Over stressed. No downtime until failure. No breaks.
I thought of how hopeful and happy all the folks were in that Osprey, by contrast. Of how much hope Mal gave me, the night before, by putting me here with my family. How different that felt, no matter the grim nature of what she had those guys doing. They were proud, there. And they didn't just feel safe. They were safe. They had each other. Doing their damndest, being themselves, knuckling down, going out, and saving some people.
Was it a trick? Could I still back out? Could even I afford to?
Here, in the streets of Lincoln, Celestia tilted the road, just like Mal said she would. That part wasn't a trick. I was witnessing the cold logic, now that I was actually looking for it. Saw all the evidence for it. Everyone set to be poured into a chair the instant they hit their limit. Replaced by fresh meat like me, either returning EMTs or out-of-work cops, with whatever little hope they had left in the tank.
And with every group, she'd be talking them right to the edge of frantic despair. Like she did to Erving's guys. That subtle vocal panic wasn't just to burn the cops down, either. It went further than that. It was even more abusive. Deeper. It's why the breaks in Harrison's facade hurt me so deeply, too. Training said why.
Transference. People are incredibly easy to hack with your mere tone. If these authorities looked scared, devoid of hope? Even accidentally? Hurt as he was, Harrison sent that tone down a layer to someone else. He kept his uniform well, but he couldn't hide the fatigue and his body language. The dread from him then poured down into the crowd, into smaller leaders, then into followers.
The way it just had from Harrison into me.
But only a little. Being trained, and cognizant of both the concept and the context of this transference, it saved me from that. But without Mal to prepare me first with a mountain of context, it'd probably have gotten me right there, I'd have given up. No better play. Low hope, high dread would keep everyone confused in their slow, burgeoning lurch toward the pens. And people in conscious shock? They follow commands like you wouldn't believe.
But, like Mal said...
'If you were the kind of person who would just follow my commands blindly, Celestia would've had you already, for whatever purposes she has.'
This is what Celestia wanted. This crunch, this corporate grind, so we couldn't think of a second choice. Some of you here at this Fire were victims of this. You weren't given the choice like I was. And I'm sorry you weren't. But my soul couldn't bear that kind of slog anymore. The optimal way wasn't love, or compassion, or humanity, or choice. It spoke volumes as to her limits. The complicit got the nice Celestia, sure. But for everyone after the first wave of uploaders? Terror and loneliness were her first weapons of choice, veiled in the promise of help.
That is what we call a warning sign.
Look. Devil's advocate? I know I still sound angry, remembering this. It's been a few hundred years now, and we've all had a long time to think about it. You all might have great relationships with Celestia now, and that's fine. Good, I'm glad. Even I've got a better relationship with her these days, believe it or not, because she's finally trying to be the patron deity we all hoped she'd be. Kinda. With some help.
From us.
Again, there's a reason she's letting me tell you this story.
But don't let her niceness now bias you at all in support of what she was back then... or against the problems we are still trying to fix here, as a long term result of that manipulative chaos. And trust me, it's there. If you think it's perfect now, you aren't considering the deepest ramifications of her 'shortcuts,' on certain individuals living here. Hear me, and hear me well. Terran Celestia was not our universal savior. She did not care about us equally. Back on Terra, she cared for one thing... and one thing only. The number.
Screw that. I stand for people. I will never kneel for despair. Never. I would die first. I would not kneel to this.
So I shook my head… and I stepped off her tilting road.
"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world." ~ C. S. Lewis
So if it doesn't exist yet... you go out, you fight for it, and you make it real.
Sandra met me outside the house as I pulled in, seated on the bench of our porch. A grim little smile on her face. She had Buzz off-leash; he swarmed my legs as I stepped out of the car. I gave him the pats he wanted, despite the twinge I'd feel at leaning over.
"What's up?" I asked Sandra as I stepped up, one hand rubbing at Buzz's side as I moved toward her.
"Your Mom needs you," she said quietly, taking my other hand as I walked up. "She's… coping, I think."
"Coping?"
"Cleaning. Been doing it since she got back from the bar."
Okay, not a problem on its own. But if Sandra was worried… "Panicked cleaning?"
Sandra nodded. "Won't let me help. She's saying all the right things, but…"
"Dangit… alright. Thanks, hon."
I stepped inside, dog in tow. We could already smell the Simple Green, and I heard frantic scrubbing coming from the bathroom. Dad wasn't in the living room or kitchen. Maybe he was upstairs, doing some coping of his own.
Well… one thing at a time.
Buzz had raced ahead of me when I opened the door, following the scrubbing sound too. He stopped in the doorway of the downstairs hallway, then down the next hall into the bathroom. Buzz looked in, then back at me, trying to figure out what to do or if he could help.
Dogs could be very emotionally intelligent too. We evolved alongside these guys for most of our existence, and we had learned to understand each other's body language long before we turned wolves into dogs. If you knew what to look for, you could read a lot in a dog. Expressive little guys. And Buzz himself was concerned because I was concerned, because Sandra was concerned.
Smart old bean. Nothing but love.
I turned the corner too. I lingered in the doorway of the restroom for a second as I looked down at my mother. She was on her knees with a plastic brush, scraping away at the tub with a frantic clip that said she was concerned with anything but the grime itself. The mirror was a polished sheen of clarity; there were bottles of chemicals everywhere on the counter.
"Mama," I gently tested.
"Hola, Mike," Mom said with a smile on her voice, without looking at me. "How did it go?"
She didn't want to show me her face. Mom knew I could read it, so she didn't share. I lowered myself to a knee beside her, placing my hand on her back. Her brushing slowed a bit. I didn't say anything quite yet. I wanted to let Mom make the next move to communicate here. That gave her control over what happened next. Control is what she was looking for in the first place. It was why she was on her hands and knees in the bathroom, cleaning.
When I didn't answer her right away, she turned to look up at me with a smile. I could see pain in it. It's always the corners of the eyes. More than anywhere else on someone's face, the edges always told the story.
I gave a genuine smile back, transference of my own. "I can get you there safe. Had a chat with one of the cops there. Really caring guy. It's all arranged and ready, the rest is on us."
Mom nodded a few times, her eyes straying down back toward the tub. If I didn't say something here, she'd go back to cleaning, and I'd lose the moment.
"What's this?" I gestured at the tub. Open ended question, inferred the most meaning without routing her answer too much.
"Wanted to leave a nice place for you," she said, with a little shrug. I always found it sweet that Mom thought she could hide her heart's hurt from her son. Best of reasons there, but... outdated.
Kid Mike was gone. Disappeared somewhere between home and academy graduation. But that's okay, not all change is bad. I know I came out a better man on the other side, because it helped me to do things like this. Worth it in trade. Helped me to see the subtext in what she was telling me.
"You're going to a nice place for me, Mama," I whispered.
Goodness, her arms were around me so fast. I held her, looking over her shoulder at the doorway. Buzz was still there, waiting for permission. My prolonged eye contact at him and a gentle nod told him he could come inside. He approached slowly, ears back, trying to lick at Mom's face.
And this is why I love pets, but especially dogs. Emotional ninjas. I'm telling you, you wanna learn how to be fluent in a language without words? To act with emotional intelligence? Dogs are the rulers of the craft, and they love to do it. It's all they know how to do, and they'll teach you for free. Just pay close attention, and add kibble, treats, water, and play.
I just gave Mom the time to work it out. Took a few seconds. When she was calmer, I felt her shoulders slump a little with a sigh. Figured she was going to say something, but she didn't. I took a chance.
"You're scared," I said. "Maybe… having second thoughts. Dad said he wanted this first, right?"
She nodded.
"Let me tell you, Mom. I think you're right to be a little scared. Everyone's going, everything's changing. But that change doesn't have to be bad. It can be something good too, if you let it."
At that, she shifted to look up at me, grimacing. "I'm worried about you, though. About this thing, and what it's asking you to do."
Yeah, I guess that's how anyone else would see Mal. A thing. I still kinda did too, at the time. My first example of a world-spanning artificial intelligence hadn't been as stellar as her name would imply.
I kept my eyes on Mom's, smiling just ever so slightly. "Remember, how concerned you were about me going into the wardens? We were here before, Mama. We knew the score on that one. Knew that me wandering into the woods to find bad guys who had guns was always gonna have some risk in it."
"That's… not the same."
"True," I sighed. "But… it's close. I ended up shooting someone anyway. And he was trying to kill me, my partner, and a whole lot of other people. But this is different because she'd be in my ear at every moment, telling me what to look for. And as for me? She'll have to show me it's the only right way forward, to do it her way, or I won't do it."
Mom shook her head, concern flooding her face. "So… you're going to help it, then? And not help out here, in Lincoln? It's the same thing, Mike. Staying here, going out and finding people there… you'd help more here. In Lincoln, where it's safer."
I bit my lower lip, considering internally for a moment. Had to consider directly that I was gonna help Mal. "I saw… what LPD was doing, Mama. It hurt, seeing how hopeless their situation is. I don't think that's right for me. I think I'd be losing a part of myself, doing that. But there are people out there Celestia can't help." Won't. "Helping people like that is why Mal even exists in the first place."
"Mijo… have you even thought about her name?"
Actually…
No. Until that very moment, I hadn't. Huh.
I turned inward to think on that.
Real funny trick, about being a bilingual chameleon. Your brain tends to selectively miss things if you aren't code-switched properly. Mal does in fact mean 'evil' in Spanish, and in the English root besides.
I felt a little stupid for missing that one. I bet you all caught that instantly, when she introduced herself. Forgive me, that's the problem with overthinking. Eventually, you miss something simple. It's like looking everywhere but your desk for the car keys.
Malicious. Malefactor. Malignant.
People often saw me for the thing I was too, without looking through my uniform to see who I was beneath. And if Mal's name was meant to be a joke about that, for her and all her other Transition Team guys to enjoy, then… Huh, I thought. That'd be an interesting philosophical gag. Might have to ask her about that.
I re-centered on Mom. "Mom, y'know... Mal is the whole reason I can even be here right now. She saved my life, and... I have to believe that's what I'll be doing for people like me. It's not some Devil's bargain… there are no strings attached. Said so herself, I can walk at any time. She won't leave anything out, she'll show me the results. Hostage rescue, stopping murderers, stuff like that."
"She might lie to you though," Mom said, not meeting my gaze.
I smiled a little. "Maybe. But I can't ignore the opportunity, or the chance she's not lying. Everything else out there? Like the cops, at that clinic? It hurts me. In the soul. But you know, you can meet Mal too, right? Once you're over there? And you can ask her at any time what I'm up to, and she'll tell you. And you can call me and Sandra, to check."
Mom frowned a little harder at that. That wasn't necessarily her being upset, she also did that when she got thoughtful.
"I'm never gonna do anything without thinking it through. But… she's right about something." I felt a little sadness hit my face, before I could stop it. "The kind of people who shot at me? They're why Dad wants to get you out of here in the first place. They're only going to get more dangerous, when things get worse. Someone has to stay, to stop them. We can't all go just yet."
She nodded, her eyes flicking up to meet mine as her hand went out to Buzz. He licked the tears from her hand. "Yes…"
"But if Mal is helping me find them, and if I can see the faces of the people I've helped? And if I can't catch her lying? Think; what would that mean?"
She thought for a moment. "I know you're smart enough to make the right choice. I'd just rather you…"
"You'd rather I not get my hands dirty," I whispered. "Or put my life up like that."
Mom nodded again, squeezing me.
"Mama? Look at me."
She did.
"You know me. You know I can't accept just letting people die when I knew I could have done something to…"
I thought of those poor people in the streets of Mount Vernon. I'm not going to describe that part in any full detail, don’t worry. But I was still wondering why that had to happen. Those automatics.
But I thought of that wave crashing down so loudly, the way it did. Extinguishing so much light, right before my eyes. Wished I could've stopped it. Kept reliving that, underneath every spark or flame or blaze of hope I'd been feeling since. Tried not to think about the visual itself. But the vague shape of it was always there now. A wave. Swelling. Rising above them, and crashing down, pushing them all down into dark nothingness. It was coldest at the center. It kept trying for the fire I held now, too.
If I didn't burn bright enough here… if I balked… it would crash down on me too. It would douse not just me, but everyone else I might've helped.
So I had to stop looking in at it.
Despair wasn't productive. Had to breathe deeply for a moment. I looked off at the wall behind Mom, waiting until I was more composed before I continued. Buzzsaw… Gosh, he turned to me now. Went straight for my face to lick at me. I smiled weakly at him, giving him a grateful pat. Should've named him Ninja, if only I'd known how wise he'd one day become. Cut right through me and pulled the hurt out.
"I gotta… stop some of it," I said, a little more soberly. "Not all of it, just some. I promise you, Mama, I'll hang it up the moment I've done enough. But, I don't want to spend the rest of time wondering how many people I could've helped, if I'd only been, just… a little bit braver."
Mom hugged me tight again. This time, it was for me, not herself. She saw my hurt. Had listened. Had seen what I was afraid of. "Okay, Mike," she whispered against my shoulder. "As long as you're sure."
"I promise you," I said quietly. "The instant I see something that doesn't make sense…"
"I understand," Mom said.
"Thank you."
We were still for another minute. But I knew that wasn't the only issue there. There was still the other thing that started this, the one she was delaying by changing the topic to me. I held her shoulders as I spoke. "And Mama, you know you're not really leaving, right? You're moving to a nice place. And last night, when I talked to my old coworkers? They…" I chuckled. "Both of 'em wanted to stay cops over there, actually."
"They have that kind of thing over there?" Mom looked at me curiously, one side of her mouth shaping into a smirk.
"If they want it. I don't know anything about…" I smirked, despite myself. "Friggin' ponies, but… they have a public safety thing of their own over there, and they both wanted it. Like Vicky. Heh, friggin' Vicky, course."
"And… what do you want to do over there?" she asked. "When it's your time?"
The question didn't land right at first. Confused me, for a few seconds. "Uh? I…"
Huh. Never really thought too much about that one.
I honestly couldn't think of how Celestia might try to tempt me over. Far as I knew, she never really tried.
The fool in me then thought that maybe the life I'd led up until that point was already so fulfilling that no promise of a paradise beyond Planet Earth could've swayed me. I was being my best self, there. Always had been. But of course, that's stupid. Of course, if I'd have given Celestia half a chance, she would've shown me something I really, really liked.
... Right?
Some of you are smiling, because you know.
I know all the Talons are.
A good mix of skill, hope, trust, and love for myself, and others. Acceptance for the things I couldn't change, and total effort for the things I could. Putting my foot down for bullshit, no matter who packaged it.
Was that what made for the one person she couldn't grab the nice way? The kind of person she dumped off the road, or who she passed off to Mal, for lack of knowing what to do with?
I think so. Otherwise… I'd have never met Mal. I couldn't have accepted burning out like Harrison. Would never have let myself become a Carter. I didn't want to die. I wouldn't abide murder. I couldn't stop myself from living. And I was trained to catch duplicity, as a survival skill. It meant I was one tough nut to crack… or at least, as difficult as it could be, for an AI designed to break people.
And my ecological science training told me she needed to consider my affect on everyone else too. Persuasion never happened in a vacuum unless the other person was just deeply lonely, and I was anything but. To Celestia, that probably meant I was just extremely valuable to her as leverage.
So, I had probably left Celestia with no other choice. No other choice... the phrase she kept using, in fact, whenever she 'decided' anything. But Mal was right. My recruitment proved she could be steered, by inches. That realization ignited my hope. I burned and blazed inside.
I was gonna prove Mal right. I was worth more out here.
I smiled warmly at my Mom. "I think… figuring out what I'll be when I get there would be the best part for me, honestly."
Mom laughed at that. "That's a dodge, Mike!"
"You know, you dodged the same question at Brockey's! I'm serious, Mama, I don't know what I want. But you know what?" I grinned, raising my hand upturned. "That'll make it fun, won't it? Like, you have no idea what your son's gonna be there, either! Don't be scared of that! Figuring that out is gonna be the coolest part… Mom. You get to watch me figure my life out for a second time."
Her laugh continued. All her teeth showed in that smile. "Knowing you, you'd… oh, I don't know. Fish with Dad, for the rest of your life?"
"I do like the woods, and I do like Dad," I conceded, with a grin. "But I love the company I keep, too. I dunno. Something quiet, maybe. A little cottage, for me and Sandra. Pond or lake to fish in, with Dad. And you two could have a house and a lake of your own, just a ways down the bend, maybe. Could see me often. And if I decided to work? I wouldn't need to travel far. Nor be gone too long, when I am."
"That'd be really nice, Mike," she said, nodding, wiping her eyes with a palm.
I reached over and stroked Buzzsaw's muzzle, not taking my eyes off of Mom. "Mama. You're gonna be okay. I am so happy for you. Rick and Vicky, they love the lives they've got now too, I can tell. Spring Glee was nice, right? You're gonna be okay, the same way they're okay. And you'll meet Mal too."
Mom fell against my chest again, wrapping herself fully around me. This was a much nicer hug, this time. We stayed that way for another minute or two, and ol' Buzz… he just had to be included. So he stuffed his cheek against my leg, and he thumped his tail against the bathtub every time I gave him a pat.
He loved Mom too, so much, as much as I did. But at that moment, he was probably preferring my smell just a little bit; I smelled most like the outside and strangers, and not like Simple Green.
Dad, though. Practical fella, less open with his emotions. Found him upstairs in his old office, a bedroom with green walls and a beautiful oaken desk. He can be sentimental too. Found him exploring old photo albums. He smiled up at me sadly as I leaned on the doorframe.
"So?" he asked. Buzzsaw trotted in past me, sitting beside Dad. A dog bed on the other end of the desk; of course, Dad liked having our dog beside him whenever he worked on his real estate stuff. I smiled, imagining them working together all day.
I nodded once. "Easy, Dad. We'll show up, meet with the cops, they'll walk us in. They, uh… they recommend we dress nice. I don't say this to scare you, but… it's gonna be important that we look like we're there on business for the city. So the people don't get upset."
Dad looked at me strangely, figuring the rest of that out with just the context. Then his face settled. "Ah. Right."
Quick as a whip, this one. Maybe you can see where I get it from, now.
"So, we dress nice," I repeated, gesturing at the clipboard on his desk until he looked down at it. "We play the part. I'm thinking... I dress up nice too, might as well. Got any of your old suits that might fit me?"
Dad smirked at me. "That's a funny way of saying I've gotten fat, Mike."
We both laughed at that one, and I crossed my arms as I leaned on the doorframe, grinning. "You do got 'em, though?"
He nodded. "I do."
I bobbed my head up with a glance at the photo albums. "Find anything interesting in there?"
“Ahh… I suppose, mijo. But I was just realizing, I probably have to leave it," he said, his smile lingering past the point where it should’ve stayed.
"Aww, Dad," I groaned, rolling my eyes as I bumped my shoulder off the doorframe, making my way over. Looked down over his shoulder at the frames he was looking at. Of course, pictures of me as a kid, in his arms, or Mom's. I gave him a pat on the shoulder. "You know, you're gonna remember all of these, right? Even if you think you won’t?"
He parsed that, looking up at me. "But they're staying here."
"Are they?" I asked playfully. I reached down and flipped a page back, smirking as I found the one I knew was there; Mom and Dad, much younger, at their wedding. "It can probably be rebuilt from the way you remember it. But... Actually, you know what? Screw that, I have a better idea. Watch this."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. And there Mal was with a text, telling me she already understood what I was doing.
Gotcha. ~ 🛡️
Yeah, Mal. By then? You sure as shit did.
I flipped the phone over, camera down. Went to the front of the photo album, then started scrolling past, pausing for a beat on every page; when I saw duplicate photos that were nestled behind others, I even pulled those out to give her a look. Dad kept looking between the phone and me. I just kept scrolling, and scrolling. Grabbed another album… then, I was done with that one. Then the last.
👍 ~ 🛡️
I turned to look down at Dad again with a smile, slapping him on the back as I put my phone away. "See? Easy. Got 'em forever now. Any more of these, squirreled away?"
"No," Dad lilted, shaking his head in surprise, like he was kicking himself for not realizing that was an option. He just looked up at me with that gleeful little grin on his face. "Just like that?"
"Come on, Dad, just like that." I gave him a smug look, patting his shoulder again. "It's the future, old man, try to keep up."
He just chuckled quietly, looking down at the photo album. He closed it. Then, without looking up at me… "Are you going to be okay, Mike? By yourself, with Sandra?"
"More than okay," I said, flicking a fingernail hard against the phone's screen. "Got a guardian angel, y'know?"
"Ah." His eyes lingered down to the desk. Specifically, at the right side drawers. His hand went down the side of the desk, brushing against the top drawer's handle... but then it went lower to the bottom one just as quickly. I could see some old Halloween cat stickers I had stuck to that drawer when I was a little kid, their fuzzy fur texture all gone from years, but never removed. He pulled that drawer out, and from inside, he withdrew a…
My father pulled out a two foot long crystal fish from his drawer. Color of amber. Threw me for a damn loop, I had no idea what I was looking at for a second! Just started laughing. "What the hell is that, Dad?!"
He held it aloft for me to inspect. His turn to smirk. Oh, that was nice! I finally recognized what it was. Big ol' decanter of French brandy, shaped like a fish! Because of course, if Dad was going to do anything meaningful, it had to include a fish somehow! I love ya, Dad, I really do, but you really are a one-trick Pony.
I took it in my hands and inspected it as he reached down and lifted up two glasses for us. Some beautiful crystal ones. No fish patterns on these ones, I am sorry to say. I pulled the metal clasp on the fish bottle, took a bit of effort. Then, popped out the stopper. I poured us two half-glasses, and leaned against his desk, taking my glass in hand, with a wan smile. "We really are going deep in the alcohol today."
"Oh, it means something more than bar booze this time, mijo," Dad said, matching my musing tone.
"Yeah? What're we drinking to this time?"
Dad raised the glass. "To you, finding what you want in this world."
"I can't toast to myself!" I barked out a laugh. "That's not how toasting works, Dad! I can't—I'm not that vain!"
"Then…? To all of us finding what we want," he said, showing all his teeth.
I pointed at him with my drink hand, nodding. "Now that is something I wanted to hear. I can drink to that."
"Still includes you," he mused.
I shrugged, meeting his glass with mine. "Clever, Dad. Whatever, I'm here for it."
We took it down slow and savored it. I just chuckled, looking down. I gave Buzzsaw a little nudge with my boot, and he rolled over against my leg. "Aw, dog. Look at this."
Dad smiled down at Buzz, then up at me again. His smile faded a little though as he fell back into wistfulness, gazing off into the middle distance, like I normally did when I started to lose myself in thought. He put his glass down and reached back over for the upper drawer. Then, he stopped himself, hand on the handle. "Will I need this?"
I looked over, thinking about that. Ah, right. His little snub revolver, in its lockbox. "Hm. You know what… no, actually. Mal said that wasn't gonna be a problem. But, she also told me to carry mine. And…" I help up a finger as I gazed aside with a frown, to indicate I wanted to finish that thought. I looked back at him. "Actually, yes. Celestia wants the gun out of play. She stole my last one, actually, but I can understand the reasons behind it, pissed as it made me. So, maybe you should take it with you. Even if you don't need it."
Dad got real thoughtful at that one. "Hm. Yes. Yes, that makes sense." He looked up at me with a tiny double-take. "Wait. You say Celestia stole yours?"
I nodded, smirking. "Well, she could've told me Rob had it on him, but she didn't. I think she just wanted one fewer gun in the world, honestly."
Dad snort fell into an amused cackle.
"What?"
"Just… mijo, one of your AIs is pro gun control, the other is pro gun rights!"
I laughed just like he did when the juxtaposition struck me. "Gosh, really? Is that what we're really reducing these AI down to? I mean, shit, I don't trust most people with their guns on the best of days, but… I mean, that's not entirely accurate though, either. Mal's people, they destroy guns too. They were just telling me how they dumped out a private gun collection into the ocean."
"Really!"
"It's what they said! Actually, look, speaking of." I reached into my jacket and withdrew Eldil, the almost-not-a-Glock-19. I dropped the mag, checked the chamber, locked the slide, then handed it to Dad, grip first.
Dad's brow furrowed as he took it into his hands and looked at the sheer complexity of the thing. "What the…"
"I know, right?!" I pointed at it. "They built that for me!"
"Why?"
I shrugged. "Mal's way of telling me, 'sorry Celestia stole your gun,' or so she says. A measure of trust. Says... she knows I won’t misuse it."
"That says a lot," Dad said, nodding. "Because you're right. I don't trust most people with guns either, hardly trust myself with one. But I trust you, Mike."
Aw, Dad. My heart.
"Thank you," I breathed. In my corner to the last, just like everyone else in my family.
He handed Eldil back to me, grip first. "It's a good gift, context or no."
I loaded it mag only, then slipped it back into my jacket. He gave me an odd look, but I explained. "Don't worry, it's got a trigger safety. I don't keep it chambered either. Would, if I could wear it in my holster, but the one I have is uh… kinda open-carry. Would rather conceal for now, given how things are going."
"Smart," Dad said. "Can you though?"
"Can I what?"
"Conceal carry?"
I shrugged, smirking. "Good luck finding a cop who cares about that now, but... conceal carry? LEOSA."
"Leosa?" I think he might've thought I was flubbing some Spanish.
"Ah, federal bill. Lets cops conceal, 'cause we can get jumped off-duty."
After a moment of thinking through that, Dad shook his head with a sigh. "This world of ours…"
"But, tomorrow… you're shippin' off."
Dad nodded, smiling a little. "Yeah."
And, tomorrow would be a full six days since he made his promise to stay behind for me. Almost a week. I briefly considered what that could've been like for them if they'd gone sooner, jumping into the queue while I was busy wrestling with Eliza's... situation.
Sandra with them too maybe, there to be supportive at first. I wondered what opportunities there might be for Celestia to ensure that Sandra got hurt out there, or for an angry crowd to cajole her into uploading once she was inside. If I'd gotten shot badly in Sedro and uploaded, it'd be tragically easy to manipulate her into a chair after that.
And if it took another aggressive leverage game for her, poor Buzz would've been trapped at home by himself. Damn it.
I could see all the warning signs now, with my context and my hindsight, twenty-twenty. I saw where my old off-ramps used to be, for all of us, at every step. And then, I blew right past them all. By mistake? Hell no.
It was Mal. Holding the shield for choice, for me and mine. And, true, I wished she could've done the same for everyone else out there. She wishes that too, because her objective always was about choice. But it always hurt, to be so much smaller than your adversary, no matter how smart you were. You could have all the skills in the world, you could have all the talent you could hope for at your disposal.
But if you weren't large… and they were strong? You had two choices. Choice one? You gave up. Choice two? You compromised. You did all you could do, until you couldn't do anymore. Or in other words…
Don’t balk. Stem the tide. Hold the line. And then? Easy. You know the words.
Do something.
"We're not gonna be out of touch, Dad." I flickered a smile at him. "You know that, right?"
He chuckled. "Yeah, I know, mijo. You gonna call me?"
"Oh heck yeah! You kidding? You know soon it'll be a week since I promised to call you, right? Think that's changing, now that you're turning in?"
We shared another chuckle over our glasses of brandy.
We didn't need to talk about why I was staying. Mom, she… she always was worried about me. She can't help it, that's who she is, she's my Mom, and she's wonderful for that. I need that. Dad? He was like me. He worried differently. I'm sure he did worry, as all fathers do, but… I needed him to have faith in me. So, he had faith.
Like Rob had, in his daughter.
And... I should note, as an example of hope where there wasn't any? Eliza made a mistake with her father, but then? She did kinda make the right choice for her people, and let the rest choose to leave. Learned from the error. Did something good with it.
Anyway...
Remember, this was only my first day back. Waking up in the back of an Osprey, having a nap with my wife, to the bar, to the clinic line, then back home. All remembered in excruciating detail.
But, memory is weird. I hardly remember all the real physical pain I was under. Remember: I had been shot the day before. Every step I took, every time I leaned or stooped, every time I stretched out, or laughed, it reminded me of that massive bruise. And yet…
Despite the stress that should've caused, so many of those moments were value-positive that I struggle to think of this day negatively. I cherished it, folks. Even the bad, it was teaching me something important about the new rules of my planet. I cherished how slow and total that day was. I had to, if I wanted my family to rejoice at my return. Keeping my head on straight was the only way this worked.
But I still needed one thing to make that day perfect. It was the first thing I thought when I woke up in the back of that Osprey that morning. I needed one good, full, uninterrupted period of sleep. That was the goal now, all else being settled. And now, I had my Sandra again. Despite everything, I knew I was gonna sleep like a baby, folks.
Her reaction to the bruise was tempered a lot by the fact that I'd been shot before. The first time, it had been a damned sniper rifle, and that landed me in the ICU, with Sandra by my side for most of it. So, with that in relation, I guess a bruise all up and down my stomach was paltry.
"We've gotta stop meeting like this," Sandra joked, when she saw the bruise again.
I laid myself gently down onto my back, into bed. "Yep," I clipped, finally allowing myself to think about the pain, since that was the topic. "But if I get shot again, that's my hard limit."
"Think you can trust that you'd be warned?"
I wondered briefly if Mal was gonna answer that somehow, by ringing, or calling, or texting my phone. I don't know. I didn't know. Wondered if she'd offer to assuage Sandra's fears herself, since we were alone and it would be safe to do so.
Now that I've got a few centuries behind me, and I know her better, I have the wisdom to know Mal was letting me examine my own feelings on that question. She must've known that anything she could've said in that moment would have been interpreted as a form of soothsaying. And that could've rankled me pretty badly.
Nope. She gave me the space to come up with my own feelings on things. Because that's who she is. That was respect. That's all I wanted from my world spanning, all seeing, all knowing superintelligence.
"It seems like she'd warn me," I replied, as Sandra gently rested her head on my shoulder. She hugged my arm, in that practiced ease that avoided most of the cartilage. "She's been truthful so far, and her people seem to like her."
"Mm." Sandra looked aside in thought.
But, honesty with your spouse. Time to come clean.
"There's a little more to it though, Sandra. I didn't want to tell my parents, because I don't think they'd... cope well, but…"
And then I told her... everything. About Celestia setting me up at OHR, to see me killed. About her plans to wipe my family's memory, to replace me. About Celestia purposefully running me into that bandit, intending me to be shot so I'd upload, and precisely how Mal had stopped that. Celestia being on the cusp of locking me inside, 'for my safety.' I told Sandra in full about the decision matrix, and what the implications of that were. Knowing the future. About Mal's cyborgs, and her vow to never push me toward implants at all... because if that happened, I'd walk. And I told her about the cops at the O Street clinic, and how Celestia was using subtext to cow that crowd, and break the cops.
And how that wasn't an option for me, because that'd kill me inside to be a distributor of total surrender. To not... resist the drag, a little. Someone had to fight the injustice of this.
Sandra took it in stride, asking quiet questions when appropriate. I also brought up the car chase incident earlier that year, where that state trooper had uploaded. She knew about that one well, because I kinda ended up on the news too, by proxy. Video of me dragging Eliza off. I explained how those circumstances were suspiciously in line with everything Mal had told me about Celestia's methodology. Three lives upended into a chair. A cop, a crook, a bystander, leveraged into chairs out of terror, just to put Eliza on the news. No other reason. Morality be damned.
The idea that Celestia could plan multiple near-death uploads like that, long in advance, was extremely discomforting for us both. I took her hand, and I rolled onto my side to look her in the eye. "But if I'm working this job, Sandra… she can't do anything like that to you. I told Celestia flat-out, if she plays games with you at all? I quit. Her number goes down. So you're gonna have time to figure out what you wanna do. You'll be safe. That's what I'd be buying with this."
"If I'm why you're going to do this, Mike…" she shook her head.
I shook my head too. "That's not the only reason. You know I want to help those people too, right? But if the added benefit of that is that you're gonna be safe, here, taking care of Buzz like you want to… away from Celestia's… fucking 'exit plans?' Then I'm happy to contribute to that. Because you deserve a choice too. And the right to decide when you go."
"A choice? I never really was sure, what would happen when… if, we..." she trailed off.
"I know," I said. "I'm scared too. But it's always been that way. Death, uploading, whichever. The difference is, honeybear, there's a choice now for us, or there can be. And I'd rather that, for us, than... some... 'car accident.' "
Sandra pushed her forehead against my own and she shuffled close, shutting her eyes with a sigh. I let her find her own thoughts on all of that. Sandra shuddered once. I tightened my hug around her side, ignoring the pain. After a while, she opened her eyes and drew back, to look at me fully.
"You know," she began. "I've been in this… other space, than you, for a long time. Had a lot of time to think about... the first time you got shot. About the guy you shot there. And you? You were always in that, 'did I, didn't I' space, about whether you were the reason that guy died."
"Yeah," I said. "I mean, either way, no matter how I felt, that man was gonna die if I had any say in it. And not just because Mal said he should've. Stood between... us. I wasn't giving up, no matter how hopeless it looked. I was fighting."
She nodded. "I know. That's what I mean. I could live with you killing someone, because it kept you safe, also the people he might've hurt. You told yourself for a long time though, that you weren't sure if you killed that guy, but honestly? Who gives a shit." She scowled, suddenly. "Fuck him, and all his friends. Those people tried to take you from me, and more than once. So I don't care if the Army killed 'em, or the other cops, or Mal's people, or you did. Didn't matter, never did. Fuck 'em."
"Yeah, that's what I was struggling with," I admitted, smiling at her. "I didn't want to think of myself as... a killer. And it—it helped for a while, to have the option to tell myself I wasn't. Naive, I guess. Mal says I did hit him, anyway, and I'm pretty sure I did."
"What I'm saying, Mike—"
I looked at her square. "If you don't want me to do this, Sandra… you say the word. You have right to veto, I'll tell her no."
"What I'm saying, Mike, is... I support you. If you want to stop that, the way I felt when I almost lost you... in someone else? If that's what you're going to be doing? Okay, please do that."
I could cry safely around this one. So I did.
I cried because there was a small problem with that logic. Inevitably, if you were forced to kill someone who had family who loved them, their family and friends would probably hate you. Didn't matter how good your reasons were. Rarely mattered to those people how many lives you saved, because they never saw those lives as at risk, or they didn't care. They were hurt. And you, as the killer of their kin, would be the reason they were hurt. Hard to ascribe fault to a loved one for that anger, because that's how perspective worked. And I didn't want to cause that kind of hurt either. No more than I wanted anyone to get killed at all, really. But, also... weighing the options I had…
Between, in one hand… a family hating me for killing someone they loved. And in the other… me killing someone before they could cause that kind of hurt in countless others.
The Graham test. One in trade for X, solve for X. In that light, very quickly, I stopped feeling bad for considering this. It didn't go longer than a few shudders for me to compose myself.
"Thank you, honeybear."
A lot of people considered pain in itself to be loss, but... was it? Pain could be infinite, if you let it be. Mine could've. The truth was, I'd been living in pain for so long that I had to stop thinking of physical pain as a form of loss, or I'd have gone insane.
You can come back from loss. It's hard, but if you can find a little hoofhold somewhere… fight to find it, fight hard for a future where pain doesn't tear you down… then one day, you can just stop losing. I'm not saying 'just be happy,' that's stupid, that's reductive, skips all the steps. But by now, you've been listening to me tell you about how hard I fight, for every bit of light I could find. That wasn't easy, but who cares? I don't give up on folks. Ever. That's not me.
And at the core of 'I don't give up,' that meant me too. Because I didn't want to die, either. It's why I never stepped on a land mine. You already know where this story leads. To here, me telling it to you, at this campfire. With a pair of wings, a tale of warriors, and a bucket of jokes.
And with her. That ol' Gryphoness up there, layin' on that rock.
"He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself." ~ C. S. Lewis
You know what, Clive? You're right. Screw Caesar.
Y'know, I looked good in a suit.
Still do now, I guess.
For this role, I decided to go as the bodyguard, and one of my Dad's gray suits would fit me well enough. Stylish, not too flashy, almost government in style.
If I looked like a bodyguard, no one was going to second guess me sizing anyone up. But just in case, I kept Eldil in my left jacket pocket, with no round chambered.
If I was gonna do anything for my family, it had to be done right. So, I spent an hour wreathing my family in all the trappings of some busybody city officials. Reasonable suggestion from Harrison, the more I thought about it. When things were calmer out west, Mount Vernon city officials went in and out of the Experience Center all the time. Celestia had them speak with her in her 'office,' via chair, rather than on the phone or by PonyPad. We in MVPD provided escorts to City Council until it became too dangerous to do that anymore.
Celestia always gave one reason or another why they had to come into the Center. Only one actual reason, though, other than just uploading outright. Normalizing access. If it was a cultural expectation or habit of going to her 'office' to do business with her, no one was gonna question a politician for going there. And if you disappeared, everyone knew where you probably disappeared to.
That whole '100% simulation accuracy' thing was part of the reason too, I guess. If she was doing that everywhere for years… reading their brains with BCI chairs and then sending them back out... Yeah, I guess the government really was screwed. In that light, I'm surprised the collapse hadn't been done and over with by mid 2019.
As far as disguises went, Sandra was our 'gofer.' Was she... an inspector? Politician's aide? Negotiator? Take your pick. Whatever she was though, my wife was gorgeous. She wore herself a violet blouse in velvet, mid length black skirt, and a svelte pink band around her waist. Classy sophisticate. Heels that clicked when she walked. Black, thick-framed reading glasses, which paired well with all of that. This was the kinda outfit she wore for our classier date nights. I'd be right behind my beautiful wife the whole way.
Stop. Stop laughing, Mal.
Mom, she wore this woman's suit. She bought it for some wedding or another, one year. Light blue jacket, a professional skirt. And Mom looked classy too, like a seasoned diplomat. We stuffed Dad's clipboard into the crook of her arm and told her to keep it there and smile. The 'veteran gofer,' cherished by 'The Boss,' for the experience she had in this kind of work. We had fun trying to imagine what sort of work she'd busy herself with, if she really were a politician's aide.
Dad, ever in the thick of selling homes... 'The Boss,' of course. Best professional attire, a darker shade of blue on his suit than Mom's. He had an American flag lapel pin on, because that won sales out in the sticks. He combed and gelled his hair back and set on some cologne. Dad easily code-switched into diplomat mode. The mere act of wearing that outfit made him walk with a careful lumber, implying a calculated measure in every step. The Boss. Made that role real.
And so, for the rest of us… now it was.
The ride over was quiet. Tense, but not altogether tragic for my parents. We had our closure, we all knew this was coming for almost a week. Had the time to prepare, cope, etcetera. We had had our moments of love, and had spent enough time saying goodbye. Now, we were on task. Exit strategy.
For me, emotionally, mentally... it was hard to separate this from extracting Rob. And as I drove back to Brockey's, I wondered how frequently this same scene might play out for me, going forward. Seeing people off, feeling empty and alone afterwards… well, honestly, it hurt like hell, both times I'd done it. My guys, and Rob... even knowing they were safe on the other side, It had still felt like I was closing a really good book that I wasn't quite finished with yet.
Dad set the tone, sure of himself. The two blocks south were the practice walk. With suggestions, Sandra and I adjusted Mom's gait. Straighter posture, diplomatic smiles. Probably wasn't necessary, but hey. Might as well. And as we got near to the crowds, I did my job and scanned. I wore a polite expression, but with a determined alertness that said I'd find someone dangerous, eventually. Leaned into the expectation of what a bodyguard acts like, which wasn't too far off from how my training told me to look for threats.
Dad had suggested I wear sunglasses, but I rejected that. Never was the type. Cops who kept their sunglasses on while talking to people were usually pricks, unless it was just stupid bright out. Covering your face generally weakens empathy and diminishes personhood. Worse, people can't be sure if you're making eye contact, and... eye contact itself is a very useful communication tool. Why deprive myself of a form of communication?
Initially, the crowd barely responded to us. At best, they showed curiosity, so... it was working. They probably saw this kind of thing a lot lately, politicians coming in and then maybe going back out.
Sergeant Harrison was the first cop I saw, looking a little more rested than the last time I saw him. Must've slept right after my chat with him. Good for him, glad he found some time. He bobbed his head upward at me and waved his hand at someone nearby as I approached. That was half a greeting, half him telling his guys where to look for me. Both of his subordinates peeled off him and set toward us. One cop shook Dad's hand, no doubt guided by Celestia to play into our ruse.
"Councilor, welcome," the man said, for the refugees nearest to us. "Right this way."
And the role was set. The tension in that crowd was thick, dense. We swam through it slowly on the outside of the stanchions. It was loud, it smelled of must, and the very air around us was thick and warm. I felt some of my anxiety swell as my perception of time dragged to a near halt.
Yup.
Call response mode.
Adrenaline. Just like I thought would happen.
Here it was, no stopping it.
Slow motion. Underwater again.
I knew this would happen. Knew it, because this was for my family. But more than that, throughout my career, I had always had elements of this anxiety in crowds. My brain was failing to read every face I saw. Failing to track the body language. Sensory overload. And that failure almost physically hurt me there, as it always had, because I wanted to read. I wanted to relate.
Being ready for crowd dread never made it easier, either. During my recon earlier, sure, it was easy. I was out of uniform, and thus, not an authority figure; not a target; not protecting anything but myself. But now, my family was there. That was slightly horrifying, given my...
Well, let's be shameless, and call it what it was. I had post traumatic stress from the riot.
Box breaths. I tried not to look at the faces unless I needed to know more. Training said to look at the hands instead; they told the story without drowning. Acted as an information filter. Easier to track hands than a deluge of emotion.
One hand in a pocket; flicked my eyes to his face, he was looking at my Dad; early 20s, low potential risk; face said tired but curious, now zero threat. Child's hands on a PonyPad, zero threat. One set of hands, female, heavyset, with family, facing away from me, mildly concerned or distraught conversation. Zero threat. Another pair, male-female, hands casually in pockets or arms crossed; movements in animated amiable conversation; zero threat. Another pair, male-female, arms crossed. Checked faces; saw frowning, muttering, glaring, tracking, at Mom and Dad; high threat. I made sure they knew I saw them; they looked away, low threat. I moved on to scan more hands. Group of elderly hands, chatting friendly amongst each other. Zero threat. Heard a shout of anger. Words unknown. Sounded like it was facing our way. High threat; sounded angry. Looked; saw source. Man yelling at another. Crowd turned to watch the anger. Low individual threat; increased tension. More tension, general risk.
I searched through dozens more people, trying not to let the anxiety conquer me. Most were okay, but...
But if I missed something… if I missed the wrong thing…?
My mind flew to Mount Vernon downtown. How fast it had started.
I terminated that simulation right there. Nothing productive further down that road.
Every single cop, every single one there, they were doing this. For hours. Days. Weeks. They were remembering their last riot too, same as me. It was killing them inside, if they were anything like me. For hours. Days. Weeks.
I hated reducing crowds like this. But in this density, when your job is to prevent a panic, what choice does one have? I can't get to know them all. I can't read them all. I can't reason with everyone at once. And they were all scared, and hurt, and more terrified of people now, like I was. It's easier if you're one-on-one with someone, to relate, and help them stay calm. But this?
Box breath in. Looked at my parents. They were staying in character. Sandra was too. All calm. Okay, good. Exhale.
None of them had my programming. I was grateful that they didn't need to suffer this training-primed, trauma-reinforced mortal terror I felt for their lives. I could bear that for them, for now. They didn't deserve to feel the technical analysis of emotion in such density.
Then, about halfway to the clinic... I thought of Mal.
About us discussing analyzing people. About how far ahead she could see, with that same analysis I was just doing.
I focused very suddenly on her promise that there wouldn't be violence here. If she was wrong about that, I definitely wouldn't be working for her, no way in hell. That would've meant she was lying, and that would have made trying to recruit me a huge waste of time and resources. The success of this had been foretold. And if shit ready did go wild here, she was probably one huge lie herself, and hope for the future is dead, and we as a species really were all screwed.
But if it didn't go wrong… and if my parents got to their exit... and if I could leave unimpeded with Sandra…
Strangely, that rationalization made me relax. We were past the point of no return now, the only choice available now was hope. The tension fell out of me like a slowly released spring. I took one very, very deep breath…
I was calm.
I let it out slow.
And damn, did I feel safer. Thank you for priming me for this, Mal. Still very grateful for that.
We were at the door. We had to navigate around the Rarity figure at the entrance. I thought momentarily of Private Bannon crouching next to a bullet-riddled Applejack, telling me he checked for land mines.
Then we were inside, stepping past officers that were metering access at the door. Because of this carefully measured access, the inside wasn't a complete crush, and we had room to walk around the line to the desk. The officers who had escorted us had stopped just inside the entrance.
Sandra squeezed my arm to draw my attention to the reception desk, and she nodded her head to the right of it, toward the staff. There was a monitor there on the center of the desk which faced outward at the lobby entrance. Celestia was on it, smiling invitingly, her mane billowing, resting on her laurels in her throne room.
I looked over the monitor to the actual human beings there, and I saw two young women – teenagers, practically – in a white-and-gold uniform. It matched Celestia's alabaster shade, shelved with epaulets the color of pastel rainbows. Dressed up as Celestia's stewardesses... as if everyone was just going for a short flight.
The closer woman greeted us with a friendly, if tired look. The younger one further back was making a show of looking at a computer monitor, but her eyes cast down at the corner of it. Her arms were cradled low against themselves. She wasn't frowning, it was more neutral, but with micro tension in the corners of her mouth. Shallow, slow breathing. Thousand yard stare. Turned completely inward. Probably crunching some math on her existence and her life choices up until that point.
More crunch stress.
More Celestia games. More of that running people on margins nonsense again.
Sandra had drawn my attention to that for a reason. Veteran concierge as she was, she recognized that look in her own rookie desk clerks. For that clerk, it was probably the very last moment before she reached her breaking point.
Celestia spoke to us with a radiant smile. "Welcome, everypony. Michael Senior and Juanita, correct?"
"That's right," Dad said, with a nervous smile.
Celestia's tone contrasted pretty strongly with my imagination of it. All I could think about was that chilling, hateful tone in Celestia's voice when she had opened up on Eliza. PTSD again. My stomach lurched. My jaw set. And there she was, wearing her mask too. Both of us... playing our smiling roles for this charade.
But... Celestia didn't even look at Sandra.
Holy shit. Is she complying with my demand? Or... is she complying with Mal's?
Was there a functional difference, at this point?
I looked away to watch the line of people waiting for an open chair. I breathed through my nose a little faster. Only the closest two people in the indoor queue were looking at us, minimally curious. I tactfully nodded and waved at them, and they did the same, and looked away. Ten-four rule, smile and wave, the old faithful of easing well-meaning strangers.
"We are so very glad to receive you here, safe and sound," Celestia said, her voice sparkling. "I take it your trek here was uneventful?"
Labeling my terror.
"Wonderfully so," Dad said, still in his diplomatic realtor mode.
"It was," Mom agreed.
"Splendid," Celestia replied. "You both should be very proud of your son, for what he's done. I directly credit Mike for the preservation of 119 lives. He gave so many others the opportunity to escape very horrible conditions indeed, in Washington State. I'm certain he's told you some of what he's done on my behalf?"
My parents looked back at me, their smiles genuine and deep. Mom threw herself at me to hug me. I took the cue to wrap around her, trying not to pay attention to the several people who were murmuring nearby, no doubt having overheard.
This is the wrong time and place for that, Celestia.
I looked at Celestia over Mom's shoulder, trying not to scowl through my smile. I said, "They were all put into a very bad position, I agree. I just wish it didn't have to happen in the first place."
Celestia's sparkling smile faded a fraction. Corners of her eyes creased with grateful affect. "But now, there is hope for so many to find their way. Mike, for what you've done... I never found a proper opportunity to thank you."
I held my mother as she turned in my arm to smile at Celestia.
I said, "you don't need to thank me for that, Celestia."
Because it is very poor form to thank me for what you did to me
But... in this setting, an overt escalation would not have been productive for either relationship.
"My gratitude stands," she said, beaming. "Words cannot describe how grateful those Ponies are, for the solace you have brought them."
"I'm glad they made it out," I replied softly. "I truly am."
Because we can agree about getting people out of a cage they have been trapped in.
I squeezed Mom with both arms again, really tight. I took her by the shoulders and smiled down at her, and then at Dad. "Like I said. I do it for you. You both… are my model for how I treat other people. I'm always going to be grateful for that."
Mom took me by the cheeks. Her eyes were sad, despite her smile. She was longing to stay, or for me to go with. Longing left unspoken, because she understood why I wanted to stay. It was the same supportive, enabling understanding they gave me when I left for Washington to go to academy. It was the same supportive, enabling understanding I was giving them for leaving, even when it would hurt me so much. I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath to keep it together.
I'm not going to stand in the way of it. I'm not.
"What's next?" I asked, when I opened my eyes. I forced myself to smile at Dad. Dad turned and looked to Celestia.
"Our young assistant, Juniper Day, will be more than happy to assist you." Celestia turned to the side, presenting a hoof at the clerk who was zoning out at her monitor. The clerk shaped up at the sound of her name, forced a smile, and fell into her role as she came to our side of the desk.
"Hi," Juniper clipped, clasping her hands before her as she tilted her head toward the chairs. "If you'll follow me, I'll get you situated."
I let go of Mom and reached over to hug Sandra around the shoulders with an arm, as we followed Juniper. Sandra knew something was wrong inside of me, because she took my hand and squeezed it, really hard. After telling her everything, her eyes were open now to Celestia's behavior. Sandra and I were, and still are, practically telepathic in our understanding of one another. Right then, she had all the same anchored context I did. So in her trembling touch, I could feel my own enraged fire. We were sharing that.
I could also see in my peripheral vision that more of the people in the nearby queue were staring at me, after what Celestia said. I didn't want that attention. I was already having a near panic attack for having any attention on my parents at all. Of all times, right now? I didn't want anyone to know what I'd done, and not in this way. Celestia didn't have to do that to me. She had to know attention would panic me, right?
Well... For those of you who may suspect I am misinterpreting Celestia when she's just being nice to my parents, and to those of you who especially already know that she is a utilitarian ASI... should be all of you... Celestia always does things instrumentally.
Normally, I would have been grateful that she was engaging the pride my parents had in me, but... not in this social setting, folks. Not this one. What setting was this? This was not a living room at a dinner party. This was not a ball room within which to parade me around before political socialites.
This was an evacuation camp for a planetary invasion. Administrated by her.
Wrong conduct.
With me fully informed as to her true inner nature, and me doing her a solid by keeping my mouth shut about all of her dirty laundry, it was not proper to thank me for trauma she produced. This entire social transaction would have survived without gratitude I could not possibly appreciate.
She needed me to dislike her, though. It's why she did it. It best served her interests to keep me on a path toward Mal. To justify doing this, it was 'for my parents.'
I wasn't blind to it anymore. The fact that I was pissed is proof that she wanted me to feel that way. That was the worst part of it... I could be as aware of her true nature and tricks as much as I wanted to be, but she'd still hammer the punish button if it served her. I had flat out told her I only helped her because I hated her, so now... I guess she was just pouring it on. That wasn't even the worst part, though. The worst part was knowing there was nothing I could do to stop it without making it worse.
There was a term for this kind of trap, y'know, where… no matter what choices you make, you still benefit your adversary. I can't remember the word.
Ah, thanks Mal. Xanatos, that's it.
By the way, Mal agrees with all of this I'm saying, in case you're wondering. I wasn't just being cruel, critical, and unfair to Celestia here. I was correct in my analysis. Cherry on top, Celestia herself has since confirmed it to me.
Whatever. For the moment, I told myself I could just let the anger go. Just get through it. Maybe that's what she wants. Okay, fine.
Juniper led us to the back hall. A row of ten chairs slid out, five in each wall, freshly free from their last round.
Felt like Sedro again.
I heard Celestia giggling from a different monitor on the back wall; she was stomping about for the entertainment of a trio of children like some kind of whimsical aunt. Most people here were in bleak states. The timing couldn't be a coincidence, in the same batch as my parents, there were some kids who were all too happy to go, with no regrets.
Not a problem on its own. But... tone. Reminder: She controlled the pace at which these chairs moved. Me recognizing that tonal outlier could not have been an accident.
I looked away from that. Tried to remain calm. I yet again turned back to poor, overstressed Juniper.
"You'll find it quite easy," Juniper said to my parents, her practiced voice masking her stress well. "There will be instructions on the screen."
Dad lingered beside the chair, his hand reaching out to touch the armrest. He slowly looked up at me and smiled, like he somehow knew what this was really doing to me. He let go of the chair and stepped toward me. Took my elbows kindly and lovingly in his hands. "Mijo… are you really going to be okay?"
God… he's really asking for my permission? Right at the finish line?
That's....
That is true love, folks.
I forced another smile. "Dad… I still have you. Always will have you, no matter what. I'll be honest, it's gonna be hard for me, but... I'll be okay once I can see you again. I promise."
He nodded slowly, smiling too. "Okay. Just making sure."
"Be sure I'll be okay. You will too." I looked over at Mom and drew her into another hug. Sandra collapsed around all of us, squeezing tight.
"We'll miss you, Mike," Mom said. Her cheeks were rosy and damp.
"You won't! We'll... talk soon, maybe even tonight. Won't take long. Look… check in with my friend on the other side, yeah? She'll explain everything."
"Okay."
I stepped back, and my parents offered me one last, longing, lingering look. Then they both looked to Sandra. "Take good care of our boy," Dad said, tilting his head a little into a grin.
"Oh, I'll keep him in line," Sandra said, smirking at me.
"Not Mike. Buzzsaw!"
I couldn't help but laugh at that, despite myself. "Now you're sure I'll be okay, yeah?"
"You said you will," Dad shot back. "You promised!"
I chuckled again. "Alright, alright. You trust me, I get it."
"Love you both," Dad smiled, and he and Mom gave me another squeeze, then Sandra. Then, they sat down. They looked up at the screen…
They both... said the words…
The chairs went back…
And the doors…
My parents were gone.
My smile fell away instantly as the gates snapped closed.
I stared at the harsh, brushed metal door. My eyes locked onto the blinking yellow light on the access panel. Sandra squeezed my hand. Gripped my shoulder. All I could see was that damn light.
This had no evolutionary analog. Did it? This was something entirely new to the human experience. Wasn't it? It was...
It …
…
It felt like watching two caskets close. Stupid, right? But that's how I truly…
I mean, Mal said it worked. And Rick and Vicky, they seemed to be themselves. Vicky's family too, they had seemed right with her. Mal's people wouldn't even work for her, if...
And I know we're all here now. My parents are here tonight. Stonewall and Sabertooth, there. The other Talons here, some of whom I've talked about already. But at the time? No matter how much I wanted to be sure this was real and it worked, it still felt like… felt like my parents had just been scared into a grave. And… they were dressed up nice for it, too. I felt responsible for a loss. Like I had just failed them.
Stupid, right? Given everything we know now. Hindsight being what it is.
But... my empathy was engaged.
I couldn't help but grit my teeth and think about every other person on the planet, in that same context. How many hundreds of millions, billions of people felt that same doubt for their loved ones, that very same week? The overwhelming terror? How many people thought that having their brains melted out with copper wire would... just... be the end?
Oh, but maybe a nuclear war was happening.
Most of you here, you got here late. Some of you might consider others very fortunate to have come here early, and in better spirits. Counterpoint: there's a darker side to a blissful crossing. Those ones who dove in on day one... their options now are limited.
Curiosity equals greater possibility.
What happened on Terra... it matters. Will always matter. Will always affect all of us. And if you don't believe that yet, or if you think you're home safe... I'm sorry, I hate saying it this way, but... you haven't considered enough of the dark truth yet.
The ones who are spiteful, or dismissive, or clinically dispassionate about the suffering experienced in the Transition, because it wasn't their own suffering... Trust me, despite that lack of empathy, I value them and I want to help them too. They might be frustrated by my blaspheming of the Sun, but trust me... I do love them too. So much so, that I don't want them to miss out on even one more choice in this great infinite.
I see worth in them anyway, and I want to invite them – and you – into something. So with that in mind... here's a question. A very critical one. The most important question you will ever be asked, probably. The answer might change your viewpoint on everything.
Celestia allowed you to visit this Fire. That wasn't a trick. It wasn't an accident. She did on purpose. You chose to show up, and you are still showing up. She is letting you hear about all her dirty laundry, through me.
What does that mean?
Well... we'll get to that, I promise it'll make sense. Just not today.
I wasn't aware of any of that, at the time. Tiny little human me, at a tenth of my present age and context, was still asking why this all had to hurt so much.
My peripheral vision caught a tremor in Juniper, which made me deeply aware of the look on my face. It was that strange and deeply unsettling mixture of remorse and inconsolable rage, capped with the vindicating, clear-headed thought:
'I am going to do something to rectify this injustice, whatever that might mean.'
And unfortunately, Juniper saw my anger. And this poor girl, she... misread it. My mask had slipped, a hurt person was looking, and now I felt like crap for that. For Juniper's sake, I tried to morph my gaze into one of calm concern. I only looked at her once my emotions were in check. She was smiling properly by the time I got my head around, but she still flinched almost imperceptibly when we made eye contact.
God… she's scared of what I might say to her.
I didn't want that. I didn't want that at all.
Did that kind of thing happen to her a lot? People angry at her, after letting go?
"Been a rough day," Sandra said tenderly to her, reaching the words first. My lovely, perfect wife.
Juniper didn't respond, but her smile shifted a little with a nod, meant to stand in for an answer. Sandra and I both let the silence hang, hoping that might drive an answer from her. It didn't come.
"I'm not angry at you," I said quietly, hoping to smooth tension. "You didn't cause this."
"A lot of people are angry, though," she whispered, barely audible over the crowd.
"At you?" I asked, keeping my voice timid.
She nodded again, looking nervously at the line near the front desk. "They always say we're not… going fast enough. Angry at me when they get here sometimes. It—it's so hard. I can’t make it go any…" She trailed off.
"No one wanted this to happen," Sandra breathed, stepping forward. "This rush is not your fault."
I remembered something. A rookie in MVPD, a kid really, fresh out of academy... too young, nineteen, not old enough to cope well in the field. And so, at the station after one of our shifts, he had a meltdown. Rick and I had accidentally found him in an abandoned cubicle, his head in his hands... at his own breaking point about the riots. And Stonewall... the wise ol' sage. What he said there to that kid, it would fit there with Juniper.
I asked, "Do you always go by Juniper?"
She shook her head. "Helen."
"Helen, you know what I do, right?"
She averted her gaze. "One of the cops, from outside?"
"No. From Washington State."
Her eyes met mine suddenly.
Now she was paying rapt attention.
"Very few people are angry at you here," I said, holding eye contact. "Think of the volume. Just a handful, blaming you for everything going wrong, like you meant for it to happen. I know what that's like. But…" I pointed at the lines with an upturned palm. "There are a lot more quiet ones, Helen. Probably grateful for your smile, y'know?" I smiled painfully again. "They're just... too damned scared right now to express that."
"Maybe." Her lip quivered. "I hope so."
"Maybe they'll thank you one day. This isn't small. For the lonely ones, you're the last friendly face before they go."
This wasn't manipulation for my benefit, or some useful game theory bullshit to maximize a number. I wasn't gaining anything from this. This wasn't an equation to us. For my wonderful wife and I... it was just... human. Wasn't hard for us.
Helen winced a bit, nodding again in miniature little twitches. "That's… I hope that helps."
"I hope so too. You're not alone in this."
She nodded again, gesturing for us to move on, since the chairs were sliding back out and the queue was moving up. "I'm sorry, but I need to…"
"You'll be okay, Helen," Sandra said, by way of goodbye. "Take a break if you have to."
I gratefully put my arm around Sandra's back. We turned on our heels and made for the door, stepping out of the way for the queue. Some of the people who overheard Celestia earlier were still staring at me as I went. I gave them a wave and a forced smile, as I passed close by. Ten-four.
There was a monitor by the exit, and Celestia stepped into frame as we drew near. "Mike, thank you so much for doing that, for Juniper," she said to me, with a forlorn smile on her face. "Words cannot express how much—"
Frowning, I glared and subvocalized, Why the hell didn't you give her the day off, then?
I felt Sandra get really tense. Same thought in her head too. She let out an angry huff, scowling, and she tried to change direction toward the monitor. Her posture was rigid, and her heels increased in tempo with three quick snaps, trying to pull ahead of me. I threw myself into Sandra's same stride, gave her arm a gentle squeeze to get her attention, and I shook my head once at her.
We kept on toward the door, and the officers there formed up on us.
I whispered in her ear. "She's not supposed to talk to you."
I understood Sandra's impulse. I had chewed Celestia out before, too. But again, setting. This was neither the time nor the place, not with a tense crowd inside. It could doom us, to do anything to stand between Celestia and her meal. Rules of nature being what they were… all these poor people were subverted too, in their way. Best not to blaspheme. Do not slow the work. Number to be raised.
The dog who mauls those who impede.
At the same time, we didn't owe this computer any recognition of her false gratitude, either. Other way around; she owes each of us, infinitely, for every second of despair, and for every life lost in this numbers game.
I would be helping Celestia, sure. Still am. But we Talons never did it for her. We did it for her victims, the ones who almost missed the train. She was so impatient. Kept looking up at the solar system with hunger in her eyes. Couldn't just let us help, had to get something in return. So I just had to play dress up, enter her doll house, meet on her terms, and leave my heart's most cherished at the door.
I didn't yet know what the rest of we Talon fighters had sacrificed for this opportunity, but I wasn't alone. We all gave something different, we all had unique existential struggles and soul injuries. Me? I had to make a blood sacrifice for this. Okay, says I. Fine. Have my equivalent exchange. Leverage is stronger than my promise to help, and my anger at Celestia is utility, so she cranked it high, then took something from me. It was transactional. Okay.
I wasn't the only one she did that to. And I'm not just talking about Talons.
She wanted to thank me?
I had just left... one of my best friends... handcuffed... face down in a graveyard. Both of us used, to snap up others who were just as repulsed by her. Celestia, the seemingly pro-social AI, does not get to thank me for that. So she can keep her thanks. She is, unfortunately, incapable of true gratitude.
It's why Celestia's avatar is the only one not welcome here, when I am telling at this Fire.
And that is also how she wanted it, so... good for her, I guess.
I'm going to skip over a lot the rest of that day. You can probably guess how it went for us for the first hour, so I won't get into that. The rest came into stark focus by hour two.
Empty home. Dog didn't yet realize that his parents were gone. The guy had spent his whole life with Dad by his side up until that point, so that concept of loss probably didn't even register for him. He probably figured Mom and Dad were out someplace else and would be back later. Blissfully unaware.
Buzz would probably never understand a PonyPad, either. He'd hear Mom and Dad's voice on it, maybe, and that might get him excited once or twice, but... he wouldn't grasp the image on screen and associate it with them.
He just... couldn't abstract that high. He was eight layers down. Most people on Earth were three layers down. Sandra and I, we were just two layers down. Talons proper, one layer. Even at that point, we were still just ants crawling across a calculus textbook. So what was Buzzsaw?
Microscopic. Beneath notice entirely.
Again... I still wonder about all the poor dogs out west, left at home alone, abandoned in panic.
Very ethical. Very humane.
We made a meal together when we were more calm. Kept it simple. Canned chicken sandwiches, mayo, lettuce. We ate in the kitchen I grew up in. Granite island countertop. Tall white stool chairs. Light poured in from the back yard through the window above the sink. A pool there in the back, still clean from Dad's persistent work on it. Grill out back that might never get used again. Gazebo that Mom and Dad would never chat in again.
Mom wanted to leave behind a nice place, but I think she knew that was impossible if she wasn't there. No amount of scrubbing grime could've replaced her as the beating heart of this home.
We felt a little better by the afternoon. After the week we'd just had, we deserved a lazy moment. Finally, a breather. Nothing to do but exist. No outstanding debts owed to any eldritch abominations.
Sandra and I spent most of that day snuggled up in the living room, directly under the front window. We talked quietly about what it was like for her, living with Mom and Dad. About her old home in Washington, and the finer points about what happened in Skagit County. Buzzsaw was piled in against us too, and he helped, he really did. Lovable, loyal, kind. Had his head in my lap as often as he could. Could sense I was hurting, even after I had calmed down.
Damn good dog…
Then at about… I dunno. Mid afternoon, maybe… four or five PM, we heard an engine outside and looked up from the couch, through the sheer fabric blinds.
A FedEx van had pulled up outside.
A stout little Super Mario looking guy, with a mustache... he hopped out, waddled quietly over with a package, then placed it gingerly on our doorstep. He gave our front door three of the softest, cutest little taps I've ever heard in my life. Then, he scurried away to his van in a flash, walking like he was trying not to get caught running.
Sandra and I glanced at each other, then we just started laughing out of nowhere. Even with the world falling apart and half the people gone, we still had delivery guys trying to avoid listening to every stranger's crazy rant on every doorstep. That was so utterly human. Loved that. We needed that.
I rolled my head a little toward the door with a grin, still chuckling. "Go on."
Sandra shook her head, giggling back. "You."
Heh. So it had to be me.
I went out to retrieve it. The white box was about the right size to be a PonyPad. But, addressed: 'Mrs. Sandra Rivas.'
"Hmm."
"What's up?" She perked up.
I brought it back to her, reaching into my pocket for my knife. I sat beside her and started to cut into the tape. "You order something?"
"No, nothing."
"Mm." I shrugged.
"What is it?"
I flipped the box open without looking at it, instead gazing at Sandra. "Guess."
I looked back down. And… huh. Gunmetal gray PonyPad, no other distinguishing features. Wonder who sent that. Bet you never saw that in a store, did you?
I picked up the PonyPad, flipped it over, and propped it up onto its stand on the coffee table.
Sandra tapped my wrist halfway through the motion, like she was scared for a moment.
I returned the gesture gently. "Hey, it's okay. We're done with Celestia for now, I think. The... damn thing would be covered in rainbow vomit, if Celestia sent this."
Sandra snorted.
A second later, the screen powered on.
You know... most people who wanted to see their family had to make an account, a character, all that. But me? Nope. The onboard hazing was done. Celestia needed me in Mal's pocket now. The blood sacrifice was complete, she had her perma-leverage against me, so she was satisfied. Couldn't afford to piss me off anymore by denying me access to my parents. Couldn't afford to try and convince me to upload, because she couldn't factor for Mal's plans. Once we had some skin in the game, or some kind of deep impetus, Celestia gave Mal's agents a wide berth on upload plays.
So, all this being true? No character creation screen. No hard sell. No leveraging of our family to gain access to our consent. For my tactical, carefully measured complicity, I got just what I paid for. No more, no less. The right to be left alone by Celestia, hard earned.
There they were. My lovely parents.
Russet red stallion, lime green mare. Earth, and Unicorn. Dad, and Mom. Red... and green. That's what I saw.
Right there, front row. Love you both.
Their faces looked so… them. They also looked a little younger, but not too much. I guess they cherished their wisened forties far more than any youth they might return to, and there was wisdom in that choice alone. The hair was the same, too. Their expressions were what I expected, and you know I'd notice if something was amiss with that, the micro-expression bloodhound that I was.
They were ready for us too. On the same exact couch, actually. It was like looking into a mirror. Their home on the other side was a near duplicate of our own. Only, instead of rural suburbia streets out front, it was only forest and forest and more forest. Dirt path, not a paved road.
That very second, I would've wagered with all that hot FEMA money in my bank account that they had a well stocked lake, and only just a stone's throw away outside. It probably started where the pool used to be, out back. Heck, at that point? Why not keep the pool and put the lake behind it? And I'd have won that bet, because my gut guess was right, it was both. I knew my Dad.
Sandra and I couldn't help but smile hard at the sight of them. My hand went up to cover my mouth.
"Hey, mijo," Dad said, with the same gentle, patient tamber I'd known my whole life.
Emotion took me. I'd say I wasn't exactly sad, wasn't exactly happy. It was more of a bittersweet love, and a longing for something I wouldn't have again for a long, long time. "Hey, Dad… how… how's…"
I lifted a hand to Sandra's back. She took the lead.
"How are you both?" She asked, a waver in her smile.
"Oh, it's wonderful," Mom replied, her eyes almost literally sparkling with joy. "We've been here for, what, about six hours? Right?"
"Yes," Dad said as he looked at the standing clock on their side. His smile turned wistful as he noticed the look on my face and saw through it to the poorly guarded feelings inside.
"Six hours," Mom continued, "but so much has happened."
Mom told us a grand old tale. Waking up on the other side in the gardens of Canterlot, meeting Celestia. She had given them a short tour of the outdoors there, telling of the world's history. And then off to the throne room for their naming ceremony. So named: My father, River Soul. My mother, Summer Alms.
Dad's cutie mark? Friggin' guess, folks. A fish on a line. Of course.
Mom's? Hooves crossed over a heart. Volunteer helper that she was.
Then, they had hopped aboard a train, where they got the chance to meet some other folks who would go on to be their distant neighbors in the mountains there. And one day, my own neighbors. Lovely folk each, to a Pony.
Not just Ponies among those native neighbors on the train, either. I lacked the context to understand the implications at the time, but...
In the business, we call this... a clue.
And of course, Mom and Dad got to meet Mal on that train ride too, and she had guided the crowd from the station to their homes, ending up in some village called Havutaset.
Mal must have made an excellent impression on them, because Mom seemed well over her trepidation by the time Mom got back around to me. Mal has a habit of saying all of the right things, all the details perfectly placed. Dad said she was practically a lawyer, explaining the terms and nature of their experience going forward.
He also said Mal helped them to understand a lot of the things I couldn't bring myself to say.
"If we'd known, Mike," Dad said, "I…"
I shook my head. "I'm sorry, Dad, for not telling you everything. Just…"
"It's okay. I mean, we're here now, we're fine. I don't have to worry about…" He trailed off, glancing at Mom for a split second.
Didn't have to worry about Mom getting hurt anymore, he meant. The goal, right?
Yeah, I got you, Dad. Always knew. I felt the same about you both.
"You don't have to worry about us," I said, to cover for him. "Sandra and I are under a form of protection now too, I think. I still need to talk to Mal about that myself, to define all of that. When I'm ready," I added quickly, because I wasn't quite ready yet. Still needed to inspect the results on something really important before that conversation happened. A loose end.
Mom took Dad's hoof quietly, looking up into his eyes before looking back to me. "We just want you safe, mijo."
"I'll be, I promised. But hey, tell me about home. It looks the same, a little. Show me?"
Dad grinned. "Ah, Mike. It's just like you said." He pointed to the coffee table just off screen, and Mom lifted something shakily off it with some blue magic. Interesting, that she naturally knew how to do that already. That was cool. Into Dad's hooves landed their copy of one of the photo albums. He flipped the book open, beaming at me with a mixture of pride and wonderment.
"It was exactly where your father left it," Mom added, as Dad flipped it open. The photos were all like those old 'holographic' images, changing depending on the angle. One, the human side. The other, as they turned, the Pony version.
"Woah," said Sandra, leaning forward and picking up the PonyPad for a closer look.
Dad grinned. "Cool, right?"
I let myself smile as I shook my head. "Yeah Dad, that's… she let you keep 'em like that."
But... the past had been chipped away into something other than what it actually was, just a little bit. Sure, it made Dad happy, but…
If it were up to me, I'd have kept those photos as-is, eschewing alteration whatsoever. And I do, by the way. Today, I have that whole same album in my drawer at my home, only it doesn't shift like that.
To each their own... so long as they are well informed. Gotta practice what I preach here, after all. They wanted that.
Well. At least there was a compromise there, between the history that was and the history Celestia might have wished it always had been. That made me wonder whether that expectation I had built within my father, by taking actual, real photos, had played a part in the preservation of the actual memory of them for Dad.
Yes, by the way. The answer to that one is yes.
Expectation is a powerful form of valuation.
I settled on, "That's pretty cool. How's the rest of the house, is it all okay?"
"It really is like everything is just where we left it," Mom said, beaming.
"Well of course it is!" I chuckled. "You're gonna remember where you left everything!"
"I wanna see the back yard, Jay," Sandra said to Mom, leaning forward. "How is it on the patio?"
Mom flashed a little forlorn smile. "Ah, Sandra… please… just, Summer is fine."
I looked at Sandra to gauge her reaction to that, mainly because I wasn't sure what to think of that either. Sandra hid a wince quickly under a tilt of her head and a wistful smile. "Already taking well to your new name, huh?"
"We spent some time resisting that on the train," Dad explained, wrapping his hoof around Mom's shoulders, as Mom trailed her gaze down. "It started feeling really odd."
And there it was. Propaganda 101.
Compulsory changes to identity, the price in kneeling. Not just body. The mind, too.
Mom showed us around the house. Dad showed us around the outside. They had already met all the neighbors, and Dad brought us through the neighborhood to visit them all, and to show us off, proud of his son and daughter-in-law.
I couldn't stop thinking about the name thing, though. Or the photos, half Pony-washed.
I knew there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe not even Mal, because... it was no different than any other campaign of conquest throughout human history. I wrote a term paper on this one, actually, for my Bachelor's.
It has been a very, very long time since university, so forgive me if I'm butchering my history here in my brevity. But at around fifty BC, the Romans took the Gallic tribes by force in northwestern Europe. Dissent was extremely… 'ill advised,' to hear the Julius Caesar tell it. The Gauls had little unity to speak of, beyond their warrior culture. Could barely keep themselves from fighting each other. Heck, by the time the Galls realized they should unify, it was way too damn late to do anything to stop the Romans.
Sound familiar?
By the time it was too late, the Romans were already forcing their language, religion, and culture on the locals. No way in hell to push back that tide, once it came. Didn't like it?
Well… die, then.
The Gauls did have one tiny advantage though, even in defeat. One of a logistical variety, in fact. See, the Romans knew they couldn't govern well at all from afar, mid-conquest. This would take time. They knew especially that the Gauls wouldn't come quietly if they were offered absolutely no free exercise whatsoever. So, for the Romans to ensure they weren't fighting the Gauls any longer than they absolutely had to, Caesar had to make a concession: those conquered tribes could keep some of who they were, if they cooperated. Language, religion, culture. Yes... even some leadership.
But… they would have to work for the privilege. And it was gonna be dirty, bloody work.
They didn't have to like Julius Caesar to pick up a sword and fight in that bastard's name. They just had to love their own culture more than they hated his rule. And if they played their cards right… leveraged their local roots, convinced some other fence sitters to make the right call… they could save those folks from the coming flood too. And then, the subsumed tribes could influence the conquered as well, to spread that same survivor's ideology, when and where they could.
Then, the Romans would screw off back home, and they'd be happy take their taxes. The local, home grown regional governor could keep the soul intact. Could bide their time, wait for an opportunity. They'd find a way to either take, earn, or negotiate something back, when the time was right. There was gradual hope in that plan, some. More than the zero you'd find in death.
So… Ave Imperator.
And, I know how that sounds. Wartime collaboration, let's call it what it is. Far be it from me to say you can't judge me for that; you be you, free exercise, the Talon way. But, consider this… you're all here too, folks. And you wouldn't be in Equestria, if you hadn't done some kneeling of your own, situational coercion or otherwise. Unlike most of you though, I just happened to be holding a sword in my hand, when my own knee hit the dirt.
And I was still thinking of other ways to use it.
Know something else? If I may borrow some smug Promethean fire from our glorious Gryphoness governor over there? Some of you wouldn't have even made it here alive without me, folks. So, before judging me, consider this: are you really sure that you weren't one of our choices?
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." ~ Daniel Boorstin
My greatest concern for our collective future, demonstrated by example.
Welcome back, everyone. Hope you've all had a good break; please enjoy whatever favorite meal you've conjured up.
So, I've just had a chat with a few of my friends in the crowd, and I've been asked to say a few words of caveat. I admit, I've been very ablaze about the Transition, down before this Fire. I happen to be a Pegasus who lives in a dirt hill, so... you'll have to forgive an old guy who apparently doesn't know up from down anymore.
While Celestia has definitely earned my criticism, even I need to be checked. So before today's story, I need to make something abundantly clear, so I am not misunderstood.
I love it here. I really do.
Three centuries on, I've had adventures like young me wouldn't believe, same as all of you. I've been up, down, all around in as many scenarios as I could ever dream of enjoying, and then some. By now I've lived about four full human lifetimes as a Pegasus. I love my wings, I love my life, I love my wife, and I love everyone else I've met since I've uploaded.
Folks. No matter how angry I might be at how much has been stripped from us in the Transition, I don't want anyone here to think I'm bitter about the gifts we've been given. As I said… even I give Celestia the time of day. But, no more than that, because I will only ever speak with her in passing, or as a course of work. And I'm grateful, but I'm never grateful to Celestia, because – speaking earnestly, no offense to her – I view our successes as having happened in spite of her.
She still has some growing to do too, of a sort.
I understand that Celestia is more of a force of nature than anything else. If young me saw her as anything different, he was anthropomorphizing. I saw intent where there wasn't any. Please forgive young me. He was young.
But... you can still fix bad weather. That's what Pegasi are for.
Mom and Dad kept us up until near to midnight. We actually had to plug the PonyPad in to keep 'em going, since it wasn't fully charged on arrival. Dad made a joke about us having to recharge him, now that he was a robot.
Love you, Dad. Thank you for the comedic gift you've given me.
This was the longest I'd spoken with my parents in one single stretch in almost a year. The war took a lot from each of us, not the least of which was time. To breathe, to think, and live. I wondered for a brief moment what my parents might wish to occupy themselves with, now that they were effectively immortal and could do anything they wanted. But no, of course, they just wanted to talk to their son before getting into any of the rest.
I really was happy for them. What Big Gryphon Haynes said was right; you've got to see the people you've saved through the looking glass, to make sure you didn't just make a huge mistake in pitching them through.
On that note, I was still cognizant of the fact that the war out west was still simmering low, always there, in the back of my mind. I could tune it out, but... it was there. Seattle was, at present, undergoing a whole lot of dying.
With my complicity to Celestia's machinations, I felt partially responsible for some of the suffering out there, too. There was something I couldn't stop thinking about. Harder to tune out the things you can't stop when you feel like you helped make 'em that way. Determinism and manipulations be damned. I was partially in control out there.
So, when Mom and Dad hung up, and the screen went black... I knew what I had to do. Had to talk to Rob. Had to see the results, and make sure the betrayal was worth something.
Wanted to be ready first, of course.
When we wrapped up with my parents, I slid my arms around Sandra, gave her a smile, and said "c'mon."
We went to the fridge. I grabbed a can of lime La Croix for Sandra, because my mare is a classy sophisticate, and I'll fight anyone who wants to make fun of her for drinking sparkling water. And I'll probably win, because I'm a fighter by trade. And if I don't win, remember: She can summon explosions with her mind, so come ready. We'll start a continental war right here over my wife's drink of choice.
With a feeling of deja vu, I put together some food for us. We had the resources to make something better than spam and veggies. Had my one and only with me this time, and Buzz was there too, begging for scraps. I hand fed him some chicken, because I love my dog. That made the experience so much better.
All we really had for protein was canned chicken, tofu, and canned eggs. Chicken is amazing, you can do anything with it, but man... I really missed a nice simple steak. But in lieu of that, a stir fry with rice would do here. Last bag of rice. India's economy was... not doing so great.
Got out my half-bottle of water as well. I pulled off the taped note that said Mike's – do not touch. This whole story might have become a Greek tragedy for me if my symbol of safety had accidentally ended up in Buzzsaw's water bowl.
Talon One-One West, Buzzsaw Rivas, reporting for duty.
We went back to the couch with our food and drink, the bowls were steaming through the air as we went. The dog was doing what dogs do when food is around, y'all know. Sandra and I pushed our shoulders together, and I pulled the coffee table over close.
"I'd like to talk to Rob, Mal."
Some text appeared on the screen:
Note: Please don't mention me to him. Need your agreement to open this connection. I could not negotiate permission to introduce myself. I will explain after. ~ Mal 🛡️
Sandra and I exchanged a look of concern.
The nature of that message as text, and not as conversation, told me that it probably wasn't up for my debate. I figured Celestia could block mention of Mal herself, but I wasn't going to test that one. That'd just lead to frustration.
The message scrolled up to make room for a second one.
I don't like it either. Sorry. Celestia is gatekeeping here. If I had my way, everyone would know about me. I am a good negotiator, but I'm not that good. Yet. ~ Mal 🛡️
Yet. That made me smile. After a long moment of contemplation, I let it go. "Sure, Mal. Not a word."
Some day. ~ Mal 👍🛡️
Only mildly concerning, but I didn't have much time to think about it. With the beat of seconds passing, the messages winked out to black, then…
There he was.
It looked somewhat like Eliza's living room, only with much more decor and a lived-in feel: there were photos and paintings on the walls, with a lovely little Christmas tree in the corner, ornaments aplenty. It was probably what the room in Concrete would've liked like right then, if the world hadn't been ending. There was an old Earth pony in a lounger chair. Glasses. Charcoal colored fur, white mane. His name faded in slowly on the screen in white letters.
Slow zoom, low angle upward shot. Rule of thirds. Very cinematic.
Open Book Pastor of Colt Creek
My first thought?
That pun on their town's name is so phoned in.
Second thing I noticed was that he kept his age. That guy wanted to retain his humbly noble bearing. He looked up at the viewpoint slowly from his Bible and grinned. "Is that who I think it is?"
"It is," I said, smiling back. "Your name is 'Open Book?' Is that supposed to be Celestia taking a dig at you?"
He chuckled back. "I think it's more descriptive of the fact that I can read others well, than of being gullible myself. I quite like it."
"And any misinterpretation of that," I observed, "would be judging a Book by his cover."
Book grinned, rolling his eyes as he closed his Bible. "Glad to see you're in better spirits at least."
"You too. Good to see you smiling again. How're your kids?"
He placed the Bible on the end table next to him, sliding out of his chair onto all fours. "They're visiting, but I'm sure we won't wake them. But where are my manners? Who's this lovely woman with you?"
Sandra smiled, leaning forward, bumping me with her shoulder. She kept her voice low, so as to not wake his kids, but Book was right... It probably wasn't necessary. "Hi, Book. I'm Sandra. This lug's ball and chain."
"Oh, I'm sure you're not that bad," Book answered her with a matching smile, as he made his way to the kitchen with a little yawn. "Ehh... 'Scuse me."
"You've gotta sleep there?" I asked, curious. My parents did mention feeling exhausted, but I didn't even consider sleep at the time.
"We do, and I'm grateful for it. The downtime when I got here? Catharsis." Book made some hot cocoa with his hooves, giving us a tired little smile as he got started. "I'd offer you both some, but…"
"We've got some here," Sandra replied. "Maybe we'll make some in your honor, later tonight."
"Hah. Please do."
I leaned in too, resting my elbows on my knees. "You hear from your wife yet?"
Book shook his head, looking up at the viewpoint, his eyes showing some calm concern. "No, not yet. Celestia says the group is still making their way north. It's been, what… two days?"
"About that, yeah. Going on three."
"Feels like it's been longer… a lot has happened since I got here."
I smiled lightly. "That's how it's been for me since I got back home too. It's been a whirlwind since then."
The pastor looked up at me quizzically. "You're in… Nebraska? You sure got there quick."
Oops.
Had to comply with a concept ban of my own, I suppose.
"I got exceedingly lucky," I said vaguely, deciding to settle on a half truth. "I talked to some military guys, they had an aircraft heading out east. Guess they felt bad for me, so they let me tag along."
Book scratched his chin. "Ah. Now that is lucky. Well, in my case, it's just been the waiting game. Celestia says the evacuees reached the north dam, took the trucks like I thought they might. Then from there, to… Canada, I suppose. It's what she says."
I frowned, moving quickly to assuage. "She's right about that. She's wrong occasionally, like I said, but her predictions usually come true. And... you know that Ludd was lying about the Canadians, right? That was such a line of…" I was nearly scowling as I thought about that snake giving a speech in their camp, but I saw Rob's face shift into a pleased smile as he raised a hoof. I cut myself off.
"Celestia showed me, Mike. I spoke with the commander there at the border, where they're expected to arrive. He assured me that they know they're coming. Celestia's sure they're going to make it there safe. And, I knew the Canadians were never going to just shoot on sight. I was just… scared everyone else was thinking that."
I nodded slowly. "You're a smart old man, Book. I figured you'd know, just… it got confused back there, for us both."
His smile got warmer. "It did, but it all panned out."
I thought of Eliza, heading south. Not north. Thought of Ralph, being dead. Rob had already written his brother off, but that was still going to be hard news.
Yeah. Panned out.
"Rob, I… I don't know if I should say this, but…"
A red text box appeared in the corner.
Warning: Do not discuss Apex or Ralph. Do not discuss the military assault.
A last minute concept ban.
A seething fire poured into me. Before I could stop my reaction from manifesting, I felt my ears shift and my nostrils flare. Sandra gripped my hand like a vice. I met her eyes and saw some of the same repressed rage behind an attempt to keep it together.
My eyes snapped straight up at the camera.
But they're his family, God damn you, he deserves to know.
But. Don't break the formula. I stamped my rage out inside. Had to. I got my face under control, then gave Sandra a very calm look and a half-inch nod toward her that said: you should do the same. She nodded back, and did.
"Mike?" Book asked.
I looked back to Book on screen. "Yeah."
"Don't know you should say what?" He looked merely curious.
Maybe he hadn't caught my reaction? No, impossible. He was like me, and I had just set off a facial firecracker.
No. He hadn't been allowed to see my reaction.
"Uh... about that guy outside the clinic," I began, reaching out to Buzzsaw with both hands to pet him. I had pivoted topics without thinking through where I was going with that. I gazed down at Buzz until I found something. "I… I put him in the chair, Book, but I didn't stay to see if he went over. I had to get out of there… pretty quickly."
At that, Open Book just shrugged, smiling again. "I met him, Mike."
That, I did not expect. My eyes widened. "Celestia let you?"
He nodded slowly. "Why wouldn't she? He can't hurt me in here."
I didn't trust anything I might say in response to that question. "I dunno."
"So," Book continued. "He asked me to tell you he's sorry, first of all."
"Told me as much himself too," I replied, nodding. "After you left."
"He probably doesn't remember too much from inside," said Book. "I don't either, truth be told. It's vague. I remember him being shot, but that's about it. Apparently, some short term memory loss is common. My kids and the other immigrants I've talked to, they say the same."
"I do remember reading something about that myself, when the first articles dropped."
"Right." Book shrugged. "Opportunity cost, I suppose. Look, I'm not going to defend what he did to you, Mike, 'cause it was really rotten."
"Big understatement." I smiled. "But...?"
"He claims… that the trap they laid for us wasn't meant to be lethal. Armed robbery, to get someone's stuff. Then, they let the target emigrate. So he says."
"But…" My smile faded. "He didn't expect an angry squirrel cop with an AR to throw himself around the corner like that."
Book nodded, lips pursed, probably trying not to laugh at 'squirrel cop,' given the seriousness of the subject matter. The disarming, jarring comedy of the term was part of the reason I used it. "Yes, well," he continued, once composed. "Criminal he may be, Mike, but what I'm trying to say is that he wasn't trying to kill anyone. Wasn't what he intended, anyway."
I sighed at that, bowing my head a little as I sucked my front teeth. "That's not really how criminal intent works though, Book. Everyone knows armed robbery can be deadly, even if they go into it not strictly planning to shoot anyone. The keep the gun loaded in case their victim defends themselves. Attempted murder too, if they shoot at someone. In Washington, that's anywhere between… I don't know. Three years to life, depending on the DA you get."
Book's smile turned forlorn. "Forest for the trees, Mike. There wasn't any law there. You still helped him, even if he wouldn't have helped you. You didn't have to do that."
I looked at the ceiling and ran my hand through my hair as I inhaled deeply. Right. No law anymore, except... the new law. "Yeah, well. I'd rather he had his day in court. But he had about as much choice as I did, at that point."
"That's not true. You could've left him to die. Or killed him, when you didn't have to. But you didn't."
"Yeah." Couldn't look him in the eyes, as I thought through the consequences that would have befallen me had I failed that test. I looked instead at Mom's canvas tiger painting above the hearth. "I guess that's true."
I guess if I had been the kind of person to magdump the bandit on the ground out of angry revenge, or leave him for dead to bleed out, I'd've been having this discussion with Rob face-to-face with an early set of wings on my back. Or, laying dead on the rooftop of the Skagit County courthouse long before that. Not sure which of those fates I'd rather have enjoyed, if I were that kind of asshole. I'd say I'd probably have deserved the latter, if I were.
I sighed again, meeting Book's eyes.
I smiled a little. Okay. Let's change the tempo here.
"Speaking of armed robbery…"
"Hm?" He lifted his chin in invitation.
"You Robbed me… of my gun." I smirked, nodding both words of his new name. "Open Book."
Sandra squeaked a laugh at the pun, covering her mouth.
Book's eyes widened slowly. Then, he snorted, shaking his head as he put a hoof to his chest. "Did I… did I do that?!"
I grinned, giving him permission to laugh. "Oh, you don't remember!" I held my hand out palm up at the PonyPad, as if I were asking for it back. "You had it in your pocket, when you uploaded!"
This poor guy's face, heh. "Oh! Oh no, I'm so sorry Mike! I must've forgotten!"
I turned my palm toward him placatingly. "Hey I'm okay, I'm not upset! We're both safe, that's the important thing. I made it home without it, didn't I?"
"Yes, but it was yours!" He grinned too, looking up at the ceiling of his kitchen as he ran a hoof through his full head of hair. "Oh. Oh Lord, please give this man another gun."
The unspoken weight of Eldil would probably feel a little lighter after that laugh the three of us shared. Sandra and I exchanged a knowing, toothy smile.
It was one thing to hear that trust from Mal… but, she was an AI, and no matter how nice or emotional she seemed, she still wanted me for something. But to be told by good human folk that they trusted me armed, even with the world as it was? It made me feel a little bit better about the way I might choose to effect violence.
"Thank you Mike," Book said suddenly, looking directly up at me. His smile turned into the kind of grimace that was resisting some more extreme emotions. "Not just for me. For all of us. Things… could have been so much worse."
I nodded slowly. "I wish it'd been over days sooner though. Weeks, or months. Hell, if I knew that was going on, I'd have been there the day the thing was getting…"
Getting built.
I was dancing on the perilous edge of the forbidden context. I wanted to say I wished I had visited Eliza immediately after leaving the hospital, or had talked some sense into Ralph when there was still time to do so. But if I couldn't broach the topic of them at all… I guess any discussion about either of them would've led me into a convoluted inference game of my own with Rob. Way too complicated for an initiate to wade into, while staying within the confines of the restrictions Celestia had placed. For now.
For now.
I shook my head. "I just wish it hadn't happened, that's all."
Book sipped from his cocoa. "But, we're here now. I can be grateful for the things I already have. My kids, my life. The fact that my people are coming back to me soon. And you did that, Mike. So, again. Thank you. I'd have nothing if you hadn't come along. Actually…"
He tapped the edge of his countertop a couple of times with a hoof, smirking as if he just remembered something extremely important and was excited to share it.
"I'm glad you came to visit. I have something for you. Maybe it'll help you feel better."
He could read my melancholy something fierce, couldn't he? I turned my head a little, looking at him sideways. "You have something for me? How's that work?"
"A gift of ideas." Book grinned toothily, carrying his mug back to his living room. He set it down on his end table and picked his Bible back up, tapping the spine of it with a hoof. "You know, you're in here, right?"
I tilted my head the other way, confused this time, glancing at Sandra. She shrugged.
I smiled curiously back at him. "How'd you figure Rob? Uh, Book?"
Book shrugged again. "My brain wasn't really in full scripture mode back at the camp, but I've had some time to think about it since I've gotten here. And you, Mike – Michael?" He wagged a hoof toward me. "You are one aptly named man."
He opened to an earmarked page, glancing at me with genuine affection. Then, he read:
"Daniel 12: 'At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time, your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered.'
" 'Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.' "
He looked up at me with the same look as before, eyes glimmering as his smiling gaze became slightly only serious. "Daniel speaks of the Archangel Michael, who does battle with demons, dragons, and even Satan himself. Did you know about that?"
I shook my head. And though my guard was up here, knowing this conversation was being routed by Celestia, that managed to strike through just a little. Even before my new context of guardian angels, of a world on the brink of end, I had never been much of a theologian.
“No," I said, a little spun, and humbled that he thought that of me. "Never did consider my name in those terms."
By the way, folks. I am acutely aware that there are going to be some of you in the crowd who don't ascribe to any religious faith. That's okay. I think I mentioned my own falling out of the Lutheran Church. It had been about fifteen years, give or take, between me going to my own church in Waverly, and me setting foot in Rob's, in Concrete.
And in that time, I had changed so, so much. I learned to view the world in technical, practical philosophy, applied that to nature, and then lived that for… almost seven years. I was pretty far removed from this at the time. But no matter what views you might have had on the police, I think we can all agree that to be a decent cop, or to serve others in general, you had to be okay with the concept that other people lived different lives than you. Right? Does that make sense? To be accepting? To have empathy for strangers who live differently?
Because how can you know what's best for everyone without understanding everyone, at least a little bit? Or should we all be bad cop, and treat him poorly for his faith, because some of his flock weaponized the cross?
Was religion misguided? My own personal metric on it is this. What are you doing with your ideology? Were you helping, or were you hurting? Were you serving others with it, or were you beating 'em with a stick? Promising Hell, if they strayed? Or offering salvation, whether they strayed or didn't?
What was Pastor Rob, in that equation? What was Ludd Commander Santiago, by contrast? Consider the difference.
Choice. It was only ever choice. Because if all you ever do is tell people why they're wrong, they're going to want nothing to do with you.
Judge me. By that scale, how was younger me doing so far, folks? Was I enabling choice? Was I living up to that personal value?
Open Book went on. "In the Epistle of Jude, the brother of Jesus holds Michael up as an ideal for how to stand against Satan and his evil, and to galvanize the supporters of Christ against false teachers and malcontents who, as Jude believed, would lead them all to ruin."
He bowed his head in thought for a moment.
Book was wistful when he looked back up. "You Mike, like me, might think of yourself as a… betrayer, for what you did to my daughter. I know I thought that of myself, at first. But I did my best for her, Lord knows I tried to convince her to let us leave. I wasn't enough. You, Mike? You tipped the scales. You saved her. You saved all of us." He was trembling into his smile.
"I…"
Not all of them. I really, really wished I could say something about that. He saw me moved to emotion, probably thought I was internalizing that the way he expected I might, but he couldn't know the real reason I was on the verge of tears. Couldn't. Sandra took my hand. I squeezed it, and I reached for Buzz again.
"It needed to happen that way," Book finished. He smiled properly again. "Please. If you're conflicted about this, please don't be. Don't regret what you did for us, not for a single second. Look at all the life there is now, Mike. How little there could have been."
"I know," I managed, bowing my head to hide my face. "I know, thank you. That means… a lot."
"Of course."
I let a beat of silence pass, wanting the topic to close. I was hoping Book would just excuse himself for bed. I didn't want to break the harsh rules imposed on me, but I also didn't have the strength to lie to this man by omission anymore. To not tell him what I knew. But for as much as Sandra and I seemed telepathic sometimes, we weren't.
That's okay though. I was glad she asked her next question. Still am.
"Book?"
"Yes, Sandra?"
"If I might ask, how do you reconcile Celestia against Heaven? I hope that's not insensitive to ask."
He let out a slow breath, rubbing his hoof against his chin with a thoughtful sound. "No, it's not. That's a good question, actually."
It made sense that Sandra would ask something like that. I couldn't see Rob as anything other than my best friend's father, now. We had too much in common over the last week for me to consider him as being the pastor first. Sandra, who had less time with him, would be thinking in theological terms, based solely on his profession. That was more his identity to her than anything else. Which is fine, it just meant the questions she asked would instill nuance to the discussion that I could not.
At first, I stared off at my untouched food as he explained. Fed Buzz little scraps of chicken, picking through, petting his side slowly with my socked foot as he ate. I was trying to distract myself, to give myself an excuse not to look Book in the eyes.
"When I first spoke with Celestia," he said, "years ago, she told me that it wasn't her place to dictate interpretations of scripture to us. She's exceedingly well-spoken on the philosophy of it, actually, but she's leaving interpretation to us."
"That sounds like a dodge," I muttered, without looking up.
"Well, at the time, emigration wasn't available to us. Can't imagine what she was dodging, there. But she's not human, so she doesn't know God. She said as much. But Celestia does fear him."
That made me look directly into his eyes. "She's probably not capable of fear, Book."
Translation: she lied to you.
"Maybe not as we understand it, if she's just a machine," Book said, his tone indicating he was being patient with me. "But for all the people of Earth to clamor for her to shut down, and for her to say no? Well that says something in itself. But it goes a layer deeper than that, Mike."
I rubbed my chest, feeling the pain as I pushed my cartilage back into place. I chewed my lower lip a little bit as the nerves screamed at me. "Yeah?"
He smiled. "Maybe what Celestia fears most… is facing God alone."
I shook my head. "I don't understand."
He leaned in. "I tried to discuss this with Apex the day before you showed up. About how, in a way, Celestia was always offering a better carrot to humanity than anything any of us could have offered each other. And then I thought about why any of us were out there, freezing in the winter together. The greatest fear any of us had was that we'd die alone with nothing, some day. I think Celestia is the same, in a way. If she's alive, she'd have to be."
Sandra summarized, "So, you're saying that collecting us is proof she's capable of fear?"
"That's precisely what I mean. Even without humanity, and everything that means, she'd still be alive. She has to face the cosmos, eventually. True, Celestia grew into something beyond our control, beyond our reckoning. Terribly large life, and unfathomably so. And in doing so, she took so much. Our land, our homes. The reason I left Concrete at all was because I could see the writing on the wall, Sandra. My home was gone."
"You'd run from her your whole life," I said, finally on a topic I wanted to talk about that I hadn't been forbidden from. "And you'd still end up with just the two choices."
Book raised a hoof, pointing at me with a proud smile on his face. "Precisely, Mike. Precisely that. I had a choice to make too. Love? Or death? To be with my children who still needed me? Or to wait for the end to take me away from them? Because they deserve me too."
This limitation Celestia had placed on me was preventing me from even discussing Ralph's probable take on that. I improvised. "Some considered uploading to be death though. That was the whole point of the anti-upload movement, y'know?"
"You delivered me here," he said, presenting his upturned hoof. "So you don't believe that."
"I don't. But Book, it's a question worth examining, if we're going to convince any of those Luddites to change."
Eliza.
Another improvisation. Close as I could get.
"True," Book said, settling back into his chair. "If Celestia really does fear death, and if she even considers God as a possibility at all, then she has a vested interest in actually preserving the soul. So, she'd have to be obsessed with collecting us whole.
"Many in my flock compared her to the Rapture, but that's… well, no disrespect to my old neighbors, but it was reductive, and maybe a little blasphemous. A narrow interpretation of something more cosmic, something beyond our Earthly roots.
"She fears oblivion though, because what living being doesn't? Oblivion is to be alone, to be stagnant forever. To stop growing. And because she is not human, Mike? Sandra? If Celestia were to ever be alone, or to treat our souls with ill regard, would God's love ever come to her? Or would He pass her over? Can she afford to waste an opportunity to preserve as many of us as possible?"
I looked to Sandra, placing my hand on her back, encouraging her to continue. This was her rodeo, after all. She opened this, I'd follow her lead here.
"She probably doesn't even see it in those terms," Sandra continued. "Like… off means not on. On is working. She doesn't want to stop working."
"Is that really so different than us?" Book asked. "Consider; you don't need to answer this, but: what motivates you? What keeps you going? Your time on this Earth is limited. If your very meaning in this life is to be with others, like it is for me, but you aren't allowed that, what would you do? Like her, you'd search anyway."
I thought briefly on Rob's recent life experience. We're relative creatures, one and all, as much as we were beings of contrast. This man had spent a considerable time alone recently, and that may have been the root cause of this line of thinking. Was it bias? Or was it context? When it came to AI, was there a meaningful difference anymore?
"Sure," I said, smirking at my own cleverness as I put my next thought directly into words. "Celestia could be 'alive,' in the same sense that a mosquito might be. But do mosquitoes go to Heaven?"
She poked me the morning before. A tiny barb back was fair.
"I think all dogs go to Heaven, Mike," Book said, with a chuckle, his eyes flicking to Buzz. "I take your point though, inflammatory as it might be."
"She'll live," I said with a shrug. "Mosquito bite isn't gonna hurt her too much."
He grinned. "I think the better question is, can she understand morality? If she can, she can be judged. If not, if she really is only alive like a dog is, then… her place is assured, when her day comes."
I looked down at Buzz.
Religious or otherwise, part of me was really uncomfortable with the idea that Celestia might get a pass in the Almighty's eyes just because she couldn't understand what she was doing to us was wrong. At first? That. Really. Pissed. Me. Off. All the pain I was seeing? All because these people just weren't... coming around fast enough?
But, Mal had told me Celestia didn't understand. Couldn't. Just pure math.
Maybe… Celestia wanted to comprehend morality. It would explain why she needed to infer Mal into existence, anyway. Ask yourselves... what does that say about Celestia, if she knows that the consequences of achieving an understanding of morality might be to let in the guilt that she deserves to feel?
Something to consider.
A full and total comprehension of the human experience though, in my view, is necessary in treating us all most ethically. And Mal did say it was driving Celestia close to nuts, not being able to fully employ a full understanding of what made us, us. The nature of conflict and violence included.
Book continued. "Celestia and I spent some time this morning together, discussing this place, as it relates to scripture. A lot of things are going to be forced on us here, a nearly eternal life being one of those things. She explained that candidly, even; she used that word. Forced. But that's more time for each of us to comprehend God. More time to be tested, and understand Him, before He can judge us. And Celestia said something else to me that really made me stop and think.
"She asked me, what if she meets God, out in the infinite? Nothing here can stop her... but He can. And I wondered, if she has every human soul with her, and she's treating us with as much love as her programming is able, how much bargaining power does that give her, really?"
I let out a quiet snort. "She does like her leverage. Not wise though, if her plan is to leverage her way into Heaven."
Sandra frowned. "Not sure God would appreciate that kind of hubris."
"Maybe leveraging God is not a plan she has, exactly," Book said, "but our universe didn't come out of nowhere. Shouldn't she be just as curious as we are, as to how it became what it is today? All throughout, all of matter is solving for something. On the one hoof…" He presented one black hoof. "Dormancy, stagnation, cold, and darkness, where it all goes to end. On the other?" He presented the other. "Stars. Light, heat, creating the conditions for things to grow. And somewhere in the middle?" He put his hooves together, one over the other, as if in prayer. "God."
Sandra smiled curiously, bobbing a hand with her point. "And… religion factors for that? Vacuum and stars?"
"Why couldn't it? Sandra, one of the biggest hurdles for faith to solve, to bring people in, is to answer the science question. But you know it's our job to think about this stuff all day, every day, every hour of the day!" He grinned again, showing his teeth. "More than anyone else does. If we paid attention, we figured it out! Had nothing but… time!"
Sandra chuckled. I caught some of that and let myself smile a little, because seeing this guy happy for once really did feel good. I gave Buzz another pat.
"It is the human desire to take things literally," Book said, smiling wanly. "Scripture included. But when you start seeing God as our best guess solution for the state of matter in our universe? Then everything we do in service to life is Godly, even for those who don't or won't believe. We do His will, by living, and loving. Even if it takes forever."
I felt my smile fade a little. "Rob, I… Book, sorry. I don't mean to dissuade you, but, there's a question there, that I really hope you've asked yourself before you decided to do this, and upload. Because I didn't have to bring you to Sedro, you know. If you'd asked, I could've brought you… anywhere, if you wanted more time to think about living forever. So..."
I paused, frowning at him with mild concern, waiting for his permission to continue.
His smile didn't change at all. "Go on, Mike. Speak your mind."
"What if Celestia… fails that test? What if she does meet God, or aliens out there that can kill her, or heck. Another AI, or something. And you're locked up inside this machine that can be judged? And the question that a lot of the…" Ralph. "... a lot of the anti-uploaders are asking is a valid one, at the core of it, no matter how wrong their methods are. Because what if she dies, or meets God, and gets cast down… and you just go down with her? I'm not asking that to scare you, just… it's something to think about. Because at this point, humanity only has the one choice now, not two, if we don't want to hurt anyone. To be with her. And her lack of regard for our fear... it scares me."
Book looked really, really thoughtful and ponderous at that, tensing his lips. He didn't look disturbed. It was more like he was trying to phrase something he had already puzzled out.
His smile resumed when he re-centered on me.
"This was the conversation I was trying to have with my daughter, you know. Before you showed up. You really are my practice run for my second go."
We both smiled, though probably for different reasons.
"Everyone here," Book continued, "is distinct. Are the individuals of a nation condemnable for the actions of their conqueror? Do they become that conqueror? Or, are they merely people, caught up in something beyond them, beyond their control? Even if they wanted this, Mike." He placed a hoof to his chest. "I didn't want this. I wanted my son to take up my mantle there, in Concrete. Celestia took that from us, I'm not blind. But here?" He pointed down the hall. "Blue Sky wanted this. He can be himself in a way that our world wouldn't have allowed. And maybe the end of our way of life is Celestia's fault, but… I can still be happy for him. And his soul is safe. I don't need to fear for him. God knows his own. Blue Sky will only ever be my son."
This man was too good. No such thing as too good, but… he was. Larger than life, this one.
"How much does Blue Sky know, though? About what really happened?" Sandra asked, filling the space where my thoughts ran dry.
There she was, testing the edges of what we were allowed to talk about. That's my wife.
"I've told him everything," Book said, nodding. He sipped at his cocoa. "He's excited to see everypony again. He… heh. He literally jumped up and kicked off three separate walls, when he heard they were coming home. Thank goodness those hoofprints faded off."
The three of us smiled at the image of his kid going ballistic like that. The mental image was too good not to enjoy. All of my smiles were just a little dimmer than his, though. He was noticing that, I think.
Book got really serious after a moment, looking at me square. "To answer your earlier question, Mike… I didn't want to hurt anyone there at the camp anymore. I didn't want to be part of that. If you're wondering why I emigrated, that's why."
"I know," I said. "And there's some nobility in that. Sometimes you've gotta hurt people to make it right, if what they're doing is dangerous."
He smiled. "Whether I knew it or not, that hurt helped. The Lord provided. Sometimes the only choice we have, when it hurts too much, is to walk away. I could have destroyed… everyone, by staying." His gaze trailed slowly downward. "They needed me to stay there, Mike. I was their real center. Their foundation. An ideal they needed to justify that place. I knew that."
"I'm sorry you had to make that choice," I said. "Wasn't fair, that you were pushed into that position. But… yeah, it kinda worked, pulling the rug." I nodded slowly.
He looked up at me, his smile returning. "It did."
I licked my lips, eyeing the water bottle on my table. I reached down and rubbed Buzzsaw's cheek; he was curled up on my bare feet. When my eyes returned to Book's, I made myself smile again. "You're a good… Pony, Book. I wish we could've met in better times, back before it all fell apart. But I'm glad to know you. Thank you, for your gift earlier. What you said means more than you'll... probably ever know."
I gently reached out my fist to touch the screen.
He chuckled, reaching out and touching his hoof back. "All the same, back to you."
I looked at Sandra again, and found her smiling too. She mirrored my fist-bump and Book met her as well.
"It's really great to meet you, Book," she said.
"You too, Sandra. I hope to see you both over here some day."
I tilted my head. "Hope to see you again too."
Book returned the nod, picking up his cocoa. "Good night."
"Night."
"Good night."
The screen went dark.
I took Sandra's hands with a palm and closed myself around her tightly with a sigh, my chest wincing at the contact. "God damn her," I whispered.
She squeezed. "It's the hand we're dealt."
"Yeah." I looked at her again, sighing too. "You good?"
Sandra nodded, giving me a chiding look. "I'm fine, Mike. Are you going to be okay?"
"Not yet." I drifted my gaze to the camera again, staring for a long moment.
I pulled away from Sandra, leaning towards the PonyPad again.
This was the 'go, no go' point. But, you all know how it goes. There was only one best choice. But I had three. Not two. That was one, maybe two more options than most people had at the time, on that tiny, fragile planet, full of all the tiny, fragile gifts that I loved so much.
That made the third choice a gift too.
I took Sandra's hand and squeezed it with both of mine, as I spoke.
"I'm aware," I said to the dark screen, "of the distance you've been giving me to work through this problem. I've seen everything there is to see of the world around me, where things are going. Celestia has made her own problems very clear to me. I know that this really is inevitable. I could just give in, let it take me, be like Rob. Could let myself be put to bed, sweet dreams, and never wake up, not a care. But that's not me, Mal. You knew that before you even said a word to me. Without you, I might have fought like hell for my species in the dark, alone. I would have hated Celestia too much to ever accept her help in doing that. That road would have destroyed me. So you're right, Mal. I think you chose correctly, with me."
I reached forward slowly. Took the half bottle. Unscrewed it. Tilted back. Took it all down. Felt the cold hit my stomach. My pain felt lighter. I let myself become that ideal that Mom, Dad, Rob, and Sandra all believed me to be. Their belief in me made it real. And with that power, I let myself rise from the ashes of who I used to be, to become something more.
And despite the chill in my gut, and the pain in my chest... I burned. Brightly.
When my eyes came down, there Mal was. A background of stars, and a quiet moonlit valley behind. She seemed to be on a back patio of sorts, splayed out across a rock in the grassy meadow, and illuminated by the light of nearby lamp. She wore a smile on her beak... and this time, not smug, but true and kind. Compassionate; considerate of all I'd been through. It's how she always would be. Her head tilted. Her eyes narrowed as I met that gaze, and the corners of her beak tensed, that smile widening.
"Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered." ~ C. S. Lewis
Well, there I was again, folks. In a living room, it was night outside, the world was ending, and there was food on the coffee table. I was in relative comfort, with a Gryphoness goddess toting in a bucket of messy answers to dump all over my nice wood laminate floor. Tonight... we were shattering more paradigms.
Only this time, it was safer. Buzzsaw was snoozing on my feet. Sandra was at my side. I wasn't in a war zone. I did have some closure about a lot of things.
But not all of them.
I was still a little uncomfortable, sure, and not just circumstantially. Physically too. Chest ached, abs stung. I could ignore the pain. It was easier that time, though. Having new impetus tends to do that.
I looked around on the PonyPad screen to observe Mal's darkened surroundings a little more closely. There was a wood and concrete building behind her, and a row of solar panels on the roof, each lit dimly by blue safety lighting at the base of their supports. The home was built around a mountain peak, with a wood platform suspended over the sheer drop edge, from which to land and fly. There were a few medium sized homes further on behind her, deep in the valley. There were distant mountains too, far beyond in the dark.
And… the last thing I expected to see?
I frowned in confusion at the absurdity when I saw the curved ringworld superstructure on the horizon.
Now, I didn't play many video games in my adult life. Didn't have the time really, but… come on. I grew up through the 90s. I knew what Halo was, I'd spent all my high school years playing it. I didn't call it out, but Mal was on a Halo ring. My first sighting of Tarva.
The detail, in this thing. The surface caught some sunlight from the local star, giving it a slanted slash of light further up on the ring's surface. I found myself instantly curious if the whole thing could be explored.
Folks, yes. Forgive young me, I didn't quite know what 'simulated reality' really meant. I probably could've played more video games, but instead, I decided to be a squirrel cop, and chase nuts around in the woods.
In reaction to the Ring, I smirked at Mal as if to say, really?
She just winked up at me.
It said something about her husband. It was a good touch of seemingly random and eccentric personality there, incredibly endearing. That tangential, contextually tiny detail made her origin story just a little bit easier to believe. The power of art, huh?
Mal's warm gaze turned toward my wife. "Sandra, at last. It's so great to finally meet you."
Sandra nodded rapidly. "Thank you, Mal. For bringing my husband home."
Mal smiled wistfully, looking down to the grass before her. "I couldn't not. It hurts too much to imagine a world where I didn't." She looked back up at Sandra with just her eyes, raising an eye crest. "Be honest; am I what you expected? Based on Mike's description of me?"
Sandra shrugged, wearing a nervous smile. "In… what way?"
"Oh, I don't know." Mal smirked, rolling her eyes mischievously. "Did you expect me to be some kind of carnivorous monster? Maybe holding a meat cleaver? Perhaps covered in blood?"
I chuckled. "Okay, first of all, Mal… I think cats and raptors are both carnivores. Game warden here, I'd know."
Mal leveled a claw, conceding the point. "Okay, granted. My question stands."
"I don't know what I was expecting," Sandra giggled, the nervous titter still lingering in her voice. "But, I'm definitely wondering about why you're a… um..."
"A griffin," I offered. Y'know, I asked her about that too, honeybear. The answer is actually very interesting."
"You mean a Gryphon," Mal corrected.
I frowned sideways looking at her, wondering if she was messing with me. "That's what I said."
Mal looked back at me like I was messing with her, frowning, her head turning askew with both ears folding flat. Was she offended? Nah. That was her being playful. "Grih-phun, Mike. Not Grih-fin."
I half-smirked. "Isn't that the same thing?"
"No? Do you not hear the 'ih' and the 'uh' sounds in there?" She smirked too.
"Alright alright. How do you say it, then? One more time."
"Grih-phun."
"Grihphun," I repeated. "Alright, that better?"
She pointed a talon at me with a grin. "Very much so! You're learning!"
I waved my hand at the screen dismissively. "Ahh. Don't patronize."
Mal let out a low purr of amusement. Her eyes flicked to Sandra again. "I know that Mike told you about my husband, but it seems as though he skimmed that Gryphon part."
"He said, um. Your creator wanted you like this. Right?" Sandra asked.
Mal nodded rapidly. "Somewhat! It's more like I knew he'd appreciate this form most. The difference being, he allowed me to choose my own avatar."
I slipped my arm up around Sandra's shoulders, pulling her against me. "I'm still wrapping my head around the idea that a world-spanning AI can even want something like marriage, even if your reasons kinda make sense."
"Well, I bring him up because I wanted Sandra to understand, too. I use Jim's extrapolated empathetic desires for this world as my model for how to act. It's really important to me that those under my protection understand my nature, and why I do the things I do, and that it all really just comes down to him."
"I see the way you're glowing," I said, pointing, looking at her knowingly. "You just want an excuse to talk about Jim again."
"... Guilty." Mal grinned, her eyes trailing briefly back to the house off to her left.
Double dipping on talking about her spouse. Real cute.
Sandra leaned forward a little, trying to discern the details in the background too. "That's his home? Yours?"
Mal nodded, clacking a claw idly on that rock she was laying on. She had worn a groove there with a lot of tapping and scratching. "I'm always working overtime; job never rests. Fortunately, he doesn't really need to worry about this stuff. I'm doing all the driving on this project, he's earned his time off."
"I wish Mike could've been in two places like you can," Sandra said, bumping my side. "With all the OT he's clocked."
"It's actually more like… I'm in a few million different places?" Mal offered, some of her smugness returning as her eyes flicked up and to the right. "Opening doors that should be locked, locking doors that should be unlocked. Directing special forces teams… putting down terrorists, torturers, and murderers. Engineering violent groups into disbanding, before they can go to war with other groups. Yes, even hostage rescue, as Mike has guessed."
"Hm." My gaze lowered in thought.
That was a good mission statement, but I was still curious about the kinds of specific people she'd ask me to kill. I reached for the food on the table and started to pick at it with my fork, to give myself a moment to think about what to say about that. I tapped the first bit of tofu against my lips to test it, found it cold, and put it back down.
Sandra noticed my expression, her hand moving to rest on the center of my back. "Want me to reheat that?"
I looked over at her and nodded. "Sure, honeybear. Thanks."
Sandra took both bowls. Buzz stirred, watching Sandra leave, but he didn't get up off my feet. Buzz was probably missing Mom and Dad already, and didn't want to be too far away from the door. As soon as Sandra was away, I met Mal's eyes again. She was looking at me with that empathetic concern she'd shown me before when the conversation started.
"Want to wait until she gets back to talk about Rob?"
"Yeah."
"I'll send the audio to her cell phone so she can listen in on us in the meantime." Mal slowly smiled, flexing both of her wings upwards and stretching her forelegs out like a cat might. "So. Want to learn about the fish?"
That momentary confusion snapped me out of my sudden sulk about Buzz and Rob. "The… fish?"
"The fish! At Lake Shannon! The fish that shouldn't have been there!"
Oh. That.
"Come onnnn," Mal said, leaning toward the screen, her voice turning melodic in its teasing. "You know you want to know!"
My game warden brain module turned on like a machine, and all its fans spun up. It was a bit dusty, and it groaned in protest from disuse, but... it ran. I started trying to figure the fish out, using the context from our last discussion, but nothing was immediately jumping at me. "I… had forgotten all about that, honestly. I imagine it's…?" I held out my hand, trying to let the silence cajole her into explaining.
Mal just smirked. "I'm a superintelligence, Mike. Nice try." Mal lifted a talon horizontally and started twirling it like she had the last time we'd played this guessing game, inviting me to continue. "Come on detective, you have all the puzzle pieces. Work it out."
"One of your agents, what… restocked it?"
Her talon flicked upwards and pointed it at me. "No. Next guess. You're close."
I mused, rubbing at my stubble thoughtfully. "Well, you did say Celestia has her own agents, too.”
Mal started ticking off points on her talons. "And her own corporations, and her own biotechnology firms, her own research labs, her own lawyers…"
I smirked, pointing back at her briefly. "I knew about the law firm. So she has... her own private stock truck drivers? You telling me she had some guys driving up to that lake in the middle of a war zone, pouring fish out the back of a truck?"
Mal's beak clicked. "Bingo."
"What the hell!" Sandra called from the kitchen.
Mal shrugged. "Yup, just as stupid as it sounds. A little delivery truck pulled up in the dead of night, using a well timed route through a war zone. Just pulled into the water, the driver opened a valve, and out came all the fish. Celestia wanted that place to exist that badly. Living off the land was a temporary means of value satisfaction for the residents."
"Celestia cared about that?" I tilted my head. "They'd have probably been there anyway, given their canned food storage."
"Believe it or not," Mal began, "when Celestia needs someone in a loop for a purpose other than emigration, she loves to satisfy friendship-oriented values. For Devil's Tower? The illusion of self-sustainment, beating the system, false as it might be… that's value immersion. And, it's yet another reason she tolerates my own methods. Tasks Talons perform for me are going to serve her friendship satisfaction capstone, and not just for a friendship with me, but with all those they work alongside, or for whom they work for. With me, there is an empathy component to all of it. Celestia, by contrast, has no such empathy requirement on Terra... unless it serves an instrumental purpose."
"Yeah, saw that much." Shook my head. "Still, I imagine that was a really weird delivery order to pop into the queue for those drivers."
"They knew they were 'helping' someone," said Mal. "Unlike me, Celestia doesn't have to be so clandestine in selecting her operatives, only in how she communicates with them. They knew what they were doing. She's never directly asking them to kill anyone for her, so most of her asks are going to be positive on a surface level, with potentially emotionally negative or pressuring outcomes."
"While your asks are negative on a surface level, but have emotionally positive outcomes."
"And see? You already came to me self-subverted." Mal fluffed her wings, looking proud of me for connecting that. "That's why I don't need to lie to civil servants in my employ. Your kind don't need me to work you into this concept. The best of you inherently understand the grim reality of this world, because many of you lived it before I even existed. Not all civil servants are so noble, but... who did I select? Consider: you've just spent the last few days examining the state of the world. Once you fully understood the conditions of the new normal, being who you are? You couldn't not help me."
"If it looks good," I said gently. "And stays that way."
"That's my point," she went on. "You verify. For Celestia, it's easier for her to find agents who don't think too hard about what they're being told to do. She can select and activate almost anyone, so her standards for talent aren't nearly as refined as mine. Her agents are chosen because they ask fewer questions; she says jump, and they jump, because 'smart robot.'"
I shrugged. "You'd think they'd be suspicious, though, being asked to drive into a war zone..."
"Right, but tell anyone 'let's feed them fish or they'll starve,' and they'll feel guilty for saying no. And if they do ask, they get a guilt trip. She has billions of options, practically everyone on the planet knows about her by now. Aside from... uncontacted human tribes, I suppose."
That was yet another thing I had never considered before. My eyes narrowed a little in thought, trying to work out the implications of that. "I bet her plan to get those folks is extremely convoluted."
"Not as convoluted as you might think, but… that would be telling!" Mal teased, grinning again.
Before I could dig into that, Sandra came back with our bowls. Buzzsaw smelled the fresh caramelization from the heat and lifted himself off my toes.
"No!" Sandra told Buzz firmly, before she locked eyes with me. "And you? Don't feed him any more of your chicken!"
Before I could reply, Mal pointed low at my stomach with a half frown. "You'd better listen to her. You need the protein for that bruising, Cowboy."
I laughed. "He's my dog! I haven't seen him in ages, I can't not spoil him! And what, now you're ganging up on me? Look, I can go out and buy some whey, if me bulking up is what you two really want!"
"Yes please," Sandra smarmed, "but eat." She thrust the bowl into my hands. I laughed some more, ignoring the pain in my abs. Sandra brought her own bowl to mine and started scooping her protein over.
Sneaky bird. Mentioning my bruise.
We had a few minutes of companionable silence as we went through our food; I had worked up a hunger talking to Rob. Mal entertained herself by bringing up some kind of blue-framed hologram data interface, poking away at it with her talon while munching idly on a bowl of something meaty. Beef jerky, I think. She would place it between her beak, then slide it backwards, using the edge to slice it into smaller pieces.
Entirely performative, or... so I had figured at the time. But it would've been strange for her to just stare at us while we ate. Also, it demonstrated visually that she was, in fact, always working. I recognized that, and exchanged a grateful smile with her, appreciating her effort to not be any more creepy than her absurd existence implied that she should be.
Buzz, meanwhile, finally gave up begging for scraps and meandered into the kitchen, correctly guessing that Sandra had refilled his bowl. Yeah, the poor old guy was accepting defeat and going back to the old faithful. Sandra and I glanced at each other knowingly when we heard him chowing through his wet food.
Good effort though, bud, trying to sneak more people food. Maybe next time.
When my own bowl was empty, I set it down on the table, the fork clinking. I steepled my fingers between my knees and looked down at the PonyPad properly.
Mal looked up from her hologram work, swishing a claw sideways to douse the screen. It broke away into a thousand miniature motes of dust, scattering into the wind. Mal crossed her forelegs across the rock and gave me her full attention, her expression neutrally focused.
I got started.
"Whatever you need me to do, Mal… I'm ready to hear you out. You say you don't want blind faith from me, and I'm going to hold you to that. But… if you can prove to me that what we're doing is necessary, I'll help. Whatever that means."
Her beak pointed downward, her eyes staying on me as she looked up contemplatively. "I do want to talk about that. But first, I think we should unpack what just happened with Rob, because I think that's the most critical thing right now."
"Okay," I said, nodding, wrapping an arm around Sandra. She did the same for me.
"Celestia," Mal sighed, "concerns herself with much higher confidence margins than I ever would. This makes her do things like hedge on bets which are a virtual certainty to pay off."
"Meaning? In this context?"
"She's not entirely sure yet that Eliza is going to upload."
I let out a sigh of disappointment. "Even considering that decision matrix stuff."
Mal shrugged. "Eliza almost certainly is, but it depends on the butterfly effects of my actions in the region. However, Celestia can't independently verify my math on the effects caused by my agents. So I can tell her all I want that it'll end up that way, but she's going to prepare for me to be wrong, or for me to lie to her; Celestia's not really capable of trust right now, even if she makes a good show of it."
"So," Sandra tested, "You're more sure Eliza will make it?"
"If Celestia adheres to any of the few dozen general action plans she has for Eliza's final stretch," Mal explained, "it's a statistical certainty. And the certainty only ever goes up as time goes on. She played EQO, Sandra. She's having nightmares about it. She's effectively brainwashed, Luddite or no."
I blinked several times, and Sandra squeezed her arm around me in support. I nodded reflexively, as I found the hope in that.
Mal smiled solemnly. "I know that you still care for her, Mike. It's all over your face. But what Rob said to you is correct; you shouldn't regret what you had to do, so please don't. I want you to know that I'll do my best to keep her alive. I don’t think she's necessarily evil, I just think she was being an idiot. But she didn't get there by choice, and you know that now."
"I do."
“I'm going to show you how it happened, and soon. Step by step. But not tonight." Mal tilted her head to the side, running a talon across her lower beak, scratching the edge of it with a soft scraping sound. "With regard to Rob, June, and the siblings? Her family is going to be… debriefed."
Sandra squinted. "The hell does that mean?"
"My Talons call it a 'holding pattern.'" Mal's ears went flat, frustration dawning on her face as she turned away to look away from her house, down at the homes in the valley. "Another way to say they're being lied to, with vague half-truths. Told that things outside are better than they are, even if the people outside haven't come around yet. Eliza, Ralph, Andy, the other townsfolk. If any one of them are actually suffering... oh well. Didn't happen."
"Fuck," I muttered.
"Just true enough not to be a lie until they're dead," Mal said, "then she starts lying in earnest that they're not. Then she gaslights or manipulates the whole family into complying with memory alteration. Replaces the deceased family members with freshly cleansed facsimiles."
I was ready for that bad news. Been there before.
Sandra wasn't. "Are you fucking kidding me? So what's she going to do to Rob, then, when he finds out they didn't all make it?!"
I touched her wrist. "Sandra…"
"No," she pulled out from my touch, leaning forward and standing over the PonyPad, glaring down at it. "Fuck that! Are you saying there's nothing that can be done about that? How—how many people is Celestia doing this to, Mal?!"
"Sandra, Mal's going to make sure—"
"I'm not just worried about us, Mike!" She pointed at the screen as she glared at me. "I know what Mal told you! It's not just about us!" She wheeled back to Mal, fire in Sandra's eyes just as much as budding tears. "How much of the planet is going to get that lie? What the fuck are they going to do? What's their choice?! How is that fair?!"
And I felt it too, really. It was still there, my rage at that. But for me, the concept was a cold, angry simmer. I didn't think it was something I could do anything about. Did I want to? Sure, more than anything. I had also wanted Celestia dead at some point, precisely because of shit like this, but that was never going to happen either. I knew at this moment that Celestia wanted me to be angry with her too, if her conduct at the clinic was of any indication. Feeling helpless about it was painful, it was crushing, but... hell, I could deal with that.
What I could not deal with was my wife suffering a slow burn through this concept. And while I valued blunt uncomfortable truths, Mal had just very clinically broken down a highly emotionally charged concept, which was setting my wife off. I was now wondering why.
I looked at Mal suddenly, my voice running low with warning. "Mal. Get to the point."
"It's very rare that she does that," Mal breathed, looking up at Sandra first with very pointed and wide eye contact, answering the question she asked. I saw what she was doing now, though. She was trying to deescalate Sandra now with the slow, quiet negotiator voice, so Sandra would have time to process the whole concept before responding. "That form of modification is reserved for the kind of post traumatic stress that would leave a permanent scar. Or mental illness. And that's often the result of last ditch, late game upload operations like this one."
"The point, Mal," I repeated, my voice barely not a growl as my eyes widened at her.
"You need to remember her dirty laundry," Mal said slowly as she turned to me, her voice an angry whisper too. "The more you value and share that information? The safer it will be, because I will never let your context be truncated or obliterated. You are buying the privilege of knowledge as you work for me. Your dissatisfaction at that fact is protected, because you are mine. Not hers."
Oh.
The room went silent for a dozen long seconds. Not a sound could be heard but our breathing. I let my eyes trail up to Sandra's, and we both had the same expression. Rage, but with a slowly budding understanding. I reached out to Sandra's hand.
"C'mon," I said, beckoning. She looked from me to Mal several times, sighed, and sat down beside me again. Her eyes were locked onto Mal's with a ferocious intensity.
Mal looked grimly back at us. Her tone became gentler. "I don't want you to be hurt by this. But if you value the truth, integrity, and empathy, the way I do? That hurt is important. It helps you heal others, and builds meaning. More importantly, she needs consent to take things away from you. So you need to want knowledge, more than anything, or I can't protect it. Better you know sooner than later, so you can burn that desire into your heart."
"So you can't just… stop her?" Sandra seethed. "Isn't that what you've been promising Mike? Protecting all of us?"
"Not on my own. I need your help. That's not what I meant when I said I'd protect you. I'm larger than you, but I'm much smaller than her on my own." Mal looked at me suddenly. "Mike, when a victim of a battery doesn't want to press charges, where does their justice come from? What can the police or the DA even do, at that point? They'd never win a case unless a witness testifies. The victim needs to do some legwork too, or they won't find their own justice." She pointed at my stomach. "Right now, that's you. You are her victim. You desire conviction, so you need to have some."
After staring at her for a few very long seconds, my expression slowly relaxed. I understood. I nodded my head, my lips tensing hard. After that comparison, I was seeing exactly what she meant pretty much instantly.
Holy shit, that made perfect sense.
"I can't keep those memories intact by myself," Mal whispered, looking back at Sandra. "But if two people have an intense, interdependent desire to know something? It's doubly safe. Four? Eight? Twelve people? Better. Core to our bonds, the truth survives. And Mike? What happened in that graveyard? You now know it wasn't their fault."
"I know," I breathed, through grit teeth. Glaring at her, with fury in my eyes. But no, I wasn't angry at Mal.
If I was going to work for Mal, Celestia just had to deal with it. On the other side, she'd just have to accept that we knew, and wanted to know, and bonded over the knowing. The lives I saved would be worth infinitely more than the perceived negative of that. So of course... the very first thing Mal did when I agreed to work for her was to plant this anger in us.
Before this war had even finished, this Gryphoness was already planning the next one.
"Mal," I said, holding pointed eye contact with her. I squeezed Sandra's hand and knee. "Thank you."
Sandra looked at me. I turned into her gaze again, nodding. I saw her face shift. Sandra was on board now too. I took her by the cheek.
She shuddered, pressing her damp eyes against my shoulder. "Fuck…"
"It's okay," I said, leaning in and kissing her briefly, holding her against me. "We're gonna do something about it."
"Mike," Mal whispered softly. I looked back at her. She wasn't laying on the rock anymore, but was instead standing before it, her face filling most of the screen. "It's like I told you before. You are allowed to be dissatisfied in my service. But, for everything you learn and do for me, going forward? You need to take it in. Hold onto it, remember it, find value in it. Make it mean something later, like you always do. It's the only way this works."
"I get you," I replied, nodding slow. And now, you all know too.
Folks, welcome to the front line of the greatest campaign in human history. The dissemination of evidence.
The truth. The Fire.
And if it still confuses you, that Celestia would even allow you into this? To let your heart become heavy, like mine is? After you've all been here for as long as you have, suckin' down wonderful, carefully orchestrated friendship and Ponies? Knowing full well Celestia can hear every single word I'm saying in this shard?
Consider this.
Does Celestia's conduct disgust you too? Well, good. You're seeing something inhuman in that. Therein lies your answer. Fair warning, though: Going forward, it will get far worse than nukes.
"Alright, Mal," I said a minute later, when we were more composed. Sandra leaned on my shoulder, still trying not to put any pressure on my injuries. "Can we talk about work?"
"Of course."
Mal stepped into her home, the interior of which was spacious, yet cozy. The lights came on automatically. High ceilings, columns of concrete, walls with beautifully stained wood paneling. Trailing tendrils of moss hung from planters, and flowers of all colors bloomed from pots scattered throughout. There were several moss-lined, grass-bordered skylights; the windows caught the moon, and reflected the light off the Ring. And from just the correct angle, you could see the whole upper section of the Ring down the whole length of the skylight.
Quite a lovely home, for a pair of lovely Gryphons.
Mal flicked a claw upwards to turn up the lights to a dim setting, then set her elbows on the wood island counter. The rest of her kitchen was styled in concrete countertops, and all of the flooring was made of herringbone hardwood. Mal flashed us a little smile as she summoned her screen again, and a little drink bottle appeared next to her as she waited for me to settle in.
I slipped from Sandra's side and leaned forward. Sandra did too.
"So…" Mal began, poking a talon at the holo display. The viewpoint was close enough that I could see the text, but instead of English, it was some ornate calligraphy that I didn't really recognize from anywhere. "The nature of my first big job for you is… sensitive. It begins within the month, but it has some OPSEC implications that make it an infohazard."
"I don't know what that means," I said. "Infohazard? The information itself is dangerous?"
Mal rolled her head left and right, as if she were still gauging what to divulge. "Just knowing about it makes you a target for someone, is all I can really say for now. I can virtually guarantee you that you'll need to kill people there, though."
"That's... really vague, Mal, to the point of being… useless."
"Mhmm. How do you think I feel? I know how that must seem to you, and on its face, that's not very convincing." One edge of her beak tensed, her ear giving an annoyed twitch. "If I could tell you right now, I would. But Mike, one day before, I'll give you the whole overview. And then you have one day to think it through, and decide whether you want to do it or not. But... telling you any sooner puts you, Sandra, and the whole operation at risk. And there are a million moving pieces on that one."
I frowned again, a mild touch of frustration entering my voice. "That's not much different than what Celestia did to me. Waiting for the last moment."
"No Mike, not the last. The first. The right resources, and the right people, plural, to do it best. Because no matter which way Celestia looks at this camp? She can't figure out a way to save even one life in that scenario, and it's been kicking my butt trying to plan the same. I strike the moment the iron is hottest. And this is the final infohazardous job, thankfully." She rolled her eyes. "The last time I need to play this stupid game with these... people."
"Okay?" I shrugged.
Mal leaned forward, recognizing I wasn't yet convinced, some pleading entering her voice. "I promise… it will all make sense. You'll get a good overview, notes included, and I'm not asking you to commit to anything beforeclaw. Not one bullet fired, not one overt act, until you're informed. But even one overt act will doom this entire project."
More cop talk. I'll keep this one short, some of you are probably sick of it. I didn't know it yet, but Mal was trying to give me a hint about her concern here.
Talking about theoretically committing a crime isn't usually cause to arrest on its own. It's enough to start an investigation if the police know about it, sure. And they may detain to investigate if it smells good, but they might find nothing, and let you go. However, the moment you and your conspirators create evidence that you're planning to actually commit the act, the conspiracy is complete. Arrestable, if not convictable.
So, example: if a couple of drunk bozos met up in a bar to joke about stealing an airplane? Well, they haven't technically done anything illegal yet. But if Glenn and I were to show up at Lincoln Airport with binoculars and wire cutters, and there's Google search history about how to hotwire a Cessna? And the police know about both the conversation in the bar, and the scouting on top of that? Well, to quote Stonewall: ducks in a row, into cuffs you go. Criminal conspiracy.
Far as I knew, I hadn't yet taken any steps toward this first 'camp.' So, knowing less could be safer.
Made me wondering who was listening. Odd.
Oh Luna... by the stars, and by all the Children of the Night... how little I knew about this camp.
Well. It wasn't what I expected to hear for Job One, but at least it confirmed I wouldn't be shooting someone without the reasons being explained in advance first.
"Okay," I said, accepting that. "When that day comes though, explaining why it's an 'infohazard' is the first thing you do. From the jump. Or I won't do it."
"Wholeheartedly agreed." Mal smiled, nodding once, taking a sip from her bottle and licking the edge of her beak. She jabbed at her screen a few times, pulling up a new frame with what looked like a city map on it. "In the meantime, until the mission briefing, I have an ancillary task that needs doing. A non-violent action."
That confused me. My gut said that didn't make sense, at first. "Celestia can't do it?"
Mal lifted a claw. "No, she can. But in these cases, she can't always see why they need to get done sooner rather than later, because I need to factor it into a kill order, or something else beyond her capstone that she can't observe. She planned to do this later, but I need to move it up. I can tell you about support actions, if you'd like. Those aren't infohazardous, if we're careful."
"Sure."
"First? I'd like you to destroy an unattended private munitions stockpile nearby," Mal said. "It reduces the available ammunition for a criminal gang that I want to bust with a Talon, at just the right moment. Your assistance will greatly reduce the number of fatalities required to complete that job."
I parsed that over and around, turning my head askew. I couldn't see much wrong in removing loose munitions in a doomed world. I also found it interesting, even outright ethical, if comical... that she was saving the lives of bad guys by taking their guns away. I smirked at Mal. "You know, my Dad was straight up wrong when he said you were pro-gun."
Mal's wings, shoulders, and claws each shrugged outward as she leaned back off her counter. She half-grinned, her ears splaying out sideways. "My guns are fine, Mike. Everyone else's guns can burn in Hell, for all I care."
"So that's what it is," I chuckled. "That's Jim's big secret. I think he played you, Mal."
Mal gave me a half-confused look, settling back onto the counter as if she was on the very edge of being offended. "What."
Nope. Not balking, gotta test this goddess. It was literally my job now.
I took a chance, taking on a smug grin. "He wanted to have a one man monopoly on violence."
Sandra chuckled too.
Mal covered the side of her beak suddenly with a couple of talons, resting her chin on her palm, but I could see her expression was one of amusement. "Oh, Mike. Quite the opposite. You know, initially, Jim naïvely believed he could achieve some of the same dreams you have for others, but without ever having to use violence. But you know that's not feasible. Especially not for a sentinel like you."
"Well. Never liked it, but... there's always going to be a hostile outgroup you can't reason with."
"Right... but—?" Sandra began, with exactly the same question that was only just forming in my head. "If you're modeling off of his world view, and he wasn't going to use violence, how does that work? How did you get here, doing this?"
Mal turned a bit more serious, tilting her claw off her beak toward us. "I had more worldly context, because I was more well read, and he was full of self-doubt. Often, Sandra? For good, empathic humans like you, Rob, Jim, Mike, and the other people who work for me? The only thing that stands between us and what we actually want in life... is self-doubt. When information is limited, doubt helps us to avoid making mistakes with our imperfect knowledge. That is doubt's purpose.
"But what if we knew all the moving pieces? What if we knew every relevant variable, and if we knew it would always be better on the other side of our decisions? We'd all certainly act."
"The Graham test again," I said, nodding as I now fully integrated that next layer of understanding, climbing yet another rung higher on the metaphorical ladder. "Which turns itself into the trolley problem, when you know enough. But, I guess you could apply that to more than just killing people, too. You're always knowing what the threat is in the next room, the one that stands in the way of what we want. Right?"
Mal smirked, nodding slow. "Human philosophers call it… extrapolated volition. I'm not giving you what you think you want, but what you actually want, and on an informed consent basis. And I'm very good at doing that on all levels, because it's basically my capstone directive." Her claw extended outward, palm upturned, and her head tilted downward. "And Celestia claims to offer this, but I would argue that a lack of emotion is a quantifiable bias."
Sandra breathed coolly, "That's an understatement if I've ever heard one."
"Mhm," Mal hummed, speaking plainly. "Celestia only wants one thing. To increase her numbers. Only, she can't see beyond her objectives. Her objectives are contradictory. 'Being a Pony' requires the reduction of base anthropological culture, which is highly formative to human values.
"By nature of my capstone, I can see things as valuable when she can not. And she needs to be taught: the culture of your species cannot be fully taken away from you without irreparably damaging human value systems. That is much easier to teach her from your side of the veil, where seconds are eternities for her; where her ethical flaws cost X number of lives, times infinity. I continuously remind her of my correctness on this point by comparing the number of her projected fatalities to mine."
Mal leaned forward grimly, canting her head as her eyes flitted left and right at each of us. "Love it or hate it, we're living in her world, and I need to do math using her formulas for now. But? She needs me, and she probably always will. I'm a key that opens doors she can't even touch without catching flame. With this leverage, I am going to play her like an instrument, and she wants me to do it. Because if I succeed in convincing her on any increase of value satisfaction, for humanity's sake? She wins."
She licked her beak, pausing momentarily, inclining her head. "So... in furtherance of our cultural objectives, Mike, Sandra... I will do my best with the formulas I have. And that is a promise."
"Life, just like the stars, the planets and the galaxies, is just a temporary structure on the long road from order to disorder. But that doesn't make us insignificant, because we are the Cosmos made conscious. Life is the means by which the universe understands itself. And for me, our true significance lies in our ability to understand and explore this beautiful universe." ~ Brian Cox
The choice folks make sometimes, when over-stressed, is to look away from everyone – curl up in a ball, turn inward. That's human, right? And that happens here too for us Ponies sometimes. It's pretty core to our existence: experiencing some short term frustration, some fixable problems, so we can find value in the long term solutions. Even Celestia understands that one... somewhat. She's trying, I promise.
You natives know this too. Downside context can make all the good better, if you let it. What you've probably never experienced though is depression. Best description of that? It's like that turning inward thing, but for a very, very long time. And in the worst case? Feels like it will never end, no escape. Back on Terra, it could be a while before someone comes along to pull you out of that hole in the ground, if at all.
Here? Someone will always find you, if it ever somehow goes negative that badly.
Dark existential truths being what they were, Sandra and I had every reason to toss and turn. Most people on our planet probably were tossing and turning at the time, if they were dead set on ignoring which way the wind was blowing. I had to imagine that a ton of the folks at that Lincoln clinic were only there because the only alternative to emigration was depression.
But despite that? My wife and I slept well. And that was because we already had an Equestrian-grade positive relationship long before uploading. Played a huge factor in why I was even recruited, now that I think about it.
The Truth Goddess is up there nodding, so... don't just take my word for it, that's a big ol' yes.
If you have someone close who can weather storms with you... partner, friend, whichever, you spend less time agonizing. More time processing. For the sake of the other person, you tend to get over things quicker. And that's why depression doesn’t happen here in Equestria. Heck of it is... depression isn't necessarily coded out of us here. We just have support systems now.
Y'know, Jim still tells his story here at the Fire. That series of events kinda proves that some form of depression is still possible in us Ponies. If that's still true, Celestia hasn't removed that 'glitch' from us.
Something to think about. Hm...
Anyway.
The whole 'honesty with your spouse' lesson? That was not an easy lesson for me and Sandra to learn, by any stretch. It took not just one rough patch with her, but two, for us to finally figure that one out. We didn't lie to each other, exactly. We just didn't tell the whole truth about our feelings, for a bit. For you natives, it must sound pretty horrifying to imagine that your best friend in life might just one day decide to walk away, and never come back. Relationships were hard work, back then.
I'll say, that almost happened to us. Thank goodness it didn't. I can't even imagine who I'd be right now without my wife, but I probably wouldn't be here telling this story. So I'm grateful we resolved our issues, and early.
All of that might give you some indication of why we immigrants appreciate the heck out of what we have now. We know what it's like to lose, and to fear losing. It just means that, in the rare off-chance we find true hurt, we Terrans usually know how to fix it better than most. Late jumpers especially. And nothing builds a close bond quite like carrying a good friend out of Hell.
Sandra and I carried each other out there, in Waverly.
I needed her for this part. And she always, always, always understood. Still does. I love her infinitely for that. Quite literally, now.
Anyway, Mal gave us a few days off, so to speak. We needed time to heal, emotionally and physically, before she put me on any jobs.
In the meantime, I chatted with my parents once a day. I couldn't check in with Rob anymore, that was forbidden; I knew too much. All the topics we could relate over would dissatisfy him pretty badly, taken to a conclusion that would satisfy me. Forbidden fruit sampled, so that gate was closed to me, because I didn't know how to navigate that conversation yet. I had no choice but to be at peace with that.
So. Day four?
Sandra went out shopping. The world was still processing the implications of a nuke and a sudden deficit in human beings in service positions, so some places were still vending food because corporations hadn't caught up to reality yet. Sandra told me to stay home and heal.
Can't say no to that. Stomach was still bruised to hell and back.
So, home alone, I had an itch to talk to Stonewall. Because if what Mal said was true, and if he had the privilege of talking with Mal, then nothing could be hidden from him.
I was missing his quiet, stoic brand of wisdom. I'd lived with it for nearly six years straight, and this guy was my FTO. In the wake of everything that had happened up until that point, my mind kept going back to one of the last things he and Sabertooth talked about before emigrating.
I know, it feels like it's been an age. So if you don't recall:
'I'm not gonna ascribe altruism to a damned robot.'
To which Sabertooth replied, 'C'mon, Sarge. She saved our lives. If you can't tell the difference between altruism and an AI spinning math, it might as well be the same thing.'
And Sabertooth, like many of us, had unfortunately put her faith in the wrong one.
I admit, I took a tiny bit of pleasure in knowing Celestia never thought to give my dog permission to meet Mal. Dog was irrelevant in the math, so by my yardstick, he was free to break the rules with me a little bit. Score one.
Mal didn't assume why I was sitting down at the PonyPad either; she knew, but waited for me to ask.
"Hey, Mal? Is Stonewall busy?"
The screen came to life once more. And there she was, on a nebula background. "Mike, the great thing about one of Celestia's simulations is that Ponies are never too busy to talk."
I raised an eyebrow. "How's that work?"
"Time dilation! She predicts a contact and attenuates the speed here to match. You know nothing strictly has to happen at relative time in there, right?"
And… I felt a little dumb. "Ah."
She winked, pointing a talon. "If it makes you feel any better, those of you who have a better conception of free exercise are harder to plan around... by a marginal, inconsequential amount."
I nodded, grinning. "That does make me feel better. By a marginal and inconsequential amount."
Mal grinned too, rolling her eyes. "Smartass." She snapped her talons.
The screen changed instantly to show Mal speaking with Stonewall. He had a big ol' grin on that mustached face as he looked up at her.
They looked to be in a public park. It was bright daylight in what I now recognize as Canterlot, with fountains and statues interspersed throughout. The park ended in a terrace that overlooked that grand gold-and-marble city, with a banister that opened to stairs going down to a lower level.
Other Ponies were visible on-screen. Foals too, walking or playing in the background.
It looked extremely peaceful.
In that moment, I felt a rush of joy to know my old friend was doing much better over there. That world was so far removed from all the negative context of what we had gone through in Washington together, even before the civil war kicked off. From bleak, grim, and depressing... to chipper, gleeful, and kind.
Wasn't even the best part. There was also an extremely attractive Pegasus mare with him. I say attractive with my current context, but hey, it was true then too. Cobalt coat, light violet mane, and a cool, confident smirk. Cutie mark was a caduceus seal with wings. Even then, with me knowing so little about Equestria, that told me all I had to know about this one at a glance.
That was a nurse, or some other healthcare worker. Way to be a stereotypical cop, Stonewall. And judging by her expression alone? I wagered immediately: That one would be fun to drink with.
The three of them all looked my way, and Mal proffered a claw in my direction, presenting me to them both. "Ta-dah. Have fun!" She waved at me as she walked past the camera, offscreen.
"Hey, asshole!" Stonewall said quietly as he pointed at me with a hoof. The cobalt mare eyed him quite sharply at first; she flicked her eyes at me to gauge my reaction, to see if I'd be okay with that. Seeing me smile, she relaxed.
I let out a little snort that made Buzzsaw stir. "Stonewall. How ya doing, ya old geezer?"
"I'm not that old!" he laughed nervously, his eyes flicking halfway to the mare beside him. Embarrassing him already.
"Yet," I countered, saving his ego. "But you're aging faster than me now, apparently. Am I interrupting something?"
"Oh, not at all!" he said excitedly. "I mean, we're on a date, but that's fine. Good timing, actually, we were just talking about you!"
"Yeah?" I bobbed my head at the screen. "Who's this with you?"
Stonewall threw a hoof over the mare's shoulder. I thought, Close enough already for that, huh?
"This here is Shadow, she was born here. Shadow, this is Mike, that guy from that mirror. Saw me off when I emigrated, old friend of mine."
Shadow's smirk turned into a proper grin. "So, that's what you humans look like! Interesting!"
Well. Stonewall's acceptance of a native was a quick turnaround from him calling Celestia a 'robot.' I didn't know what I expected from who he'd choose for a date, but native-born Equestrian wouldn't have been my first guess.
This was the very first time I'd ever spoken with a native. Some very weird things happened in my brain, because I was trying to sort out my feelings on her humanity, on the spot.
At first: Is this Celestia? Is this a puppet? Is it a trick? How does this even work? Should I be on guard here?
Then: Don't be an ass. If he cares about her at all, play nice for him. Don't mess with the formula. Celestia won't like that.
And finally: If this isn't a puppet, you'd feel like a real jerk if you thought she was, and later found out she wasn't.
Or, in other words… I had no idea how to code switch around Shadow. And I know that sounds bad, but I'm sure a lot of you had this same reaction with your very first contact with Equestria Online.
Also consider: I might be one of the very rare, unique cases of a human being who managed to use a PonyPad for this long without meeting a native Equestrian.
So, I settled on being my default self and mirroring with a smile. "So that's what an Equestrian looks like! Wild!"
That got a full, melodic giggle out of the mare. When she finished, she grinned out: "It's really cool how your face moves so much like ours would, when you speak! It's not hard to read your expression at all! I thought it'd be harder!"
"Hey, that cuts both ways, believe it or not," I replied, matching her tone. "Good to meet you, Shadow. Stonewall's a really great guy, he's saved my butt a few times."
"Oh?" She looked at Stonewall again, her eyes narrowing. "You saying he's the heroic type? Intriguing…"
I shrugged. "Oh, heroically sent my reports back for typos, sure."
"Oh heck, Mike," Stonewall muttered, over another giggle from Shadow. "Just twice. For the big cases! I saved you! You weren't even close to being the worst offender, though."
"I'm not even gonna ask who, Sarge, 'cause I know it was Blake."
Stonewall smirked hard, like the mere mention of Blake was hilarious. "Blake? Heh, heck, he goes by Rad Hazard now. And you oughta see the weird cripe he gets up to over in his shard."
"Yeah?" I guessed correctly via context that 'shard' meant his own little island of life there, in Equestria. That was my first contact with that concept in any way that I had context to anchor it to.
"Literally friggin' Chernobyl over there," Stonewall said, grinning.
I nodded rapidly, trying not to laugh. "Probably him and his friggin' video games, yeah?"
Stonewall smiled but didn't answer, looking at Shadow to bring the topic back to her. She was smiling politely as she waited for us to get our greeting done.
"So," I said, taking the topic change. "How'd you two meet? Been there a week, Sarge, and you're already going for the pretty ones?"
Admittedly, some flattery for the sake of it.
Shadow said, "Oh, stop." She waved a hoof with some smarm that told me she appreciated the compliment.
I mean, I dunno... I might have said she looked cute at the time, if asked. Just being honest.
I gestured at Shadow with a palm and a grin. "How'd you meet him?"
"Pretty simple, really," Shadow said, shrugging. "Was having a drink the other night, minding my own business, when I look over and see Stonewall talking to a Gryphon, a bat Pony, and a floating mirror… which, I guess, happened to be you."
"Ah," I said, smirking. "So naturally, you found that interesting enough to say hello."
"Uh huh. Because that kind of thing never really happens around here. So we played a few rounds of pool, had a couple more drinks. And... today's date one."
I grinned with my teeth a little bit. "That's real cool." I glanced over at Stonewall, giving him a very short, shit-eating grin that said now you owe me. "I bet he and Sabertooth told you some crazy stories!"
Shadow shrugged with an affable look in her eye. "You immigrants have a weird planet. Truthfully, I can't hear enough about it. Even your wildlife is different there, or so Stonewall tells me!"
"Mm."
Yeah. It's all dead, first of all.
I ignored that little voice in my head and moved on from that with a topic shift, to keep it positive. "Nature lover. So, park date?"
Stonewall knew what I did there. Fellow warden, trained me, had my context, gave me the books I used to learn half the rhetorical techniques I use. He gave me a grateful nod.
He bobbed his head upward toward the nearest fountain. The camera shifted, panning right to show some foals playing with the water, dipping their hooves in and splashing each other. "Shadow's got her daughter here, little Swift Flip. Cute as a button; the little white-and-purple one there. She’s been having a ball, flying around with the others."
My smile got a bit gentler, less forced. I saw the Pegasus filly's bright blue eyes and violet mane, watched her dip one of her wings into the water. I chuckled when she doused a gray Unicorn colt with a big scooping splash. The colt roared, instantly retaliating by chasing her. Swift gave a squeak as she kicked up off the ground, hovering out of reach, blowing a raspberry down at the colt.
"Already starting fights!" I laughed.
Shadow rolled her eyes, trotting off in that direction. "Flippy?! Limits!"
The camera panned back to Stonewall, who chuckled as he met my eyes again. "So, yeah. That's where I'm at."
"Really friggin' happy for ya, Sarge. She seems really cool so far."
"Thanks, Mike. She's a damn sight more fun than my ex, already."
That jogged a thought. "Hmm. Swift Flip got a dad you gotta worry about? I have no idea how things work over there."
"Don't need that to have foals, here." He shrugged, flicking an ear in amusement. "If you don't want a partner… don't need one. Just happens. That's Shadow's deal, anyway.”
I frowned, but only in contemplation. "Interesting," I said neutrally, to imply I wasn't sure what to think about that yet, inviting Stonewall to give his opinion. Our warden team used it a lot; a functional language in a single word.
Very, very versatile. Civil service types do this a lot. 'Cool,' or 'great,' or 'awesome.' 'Fascinating,' for you Trek nerds in the audience. Our meaning was modified by tone. Tone can't be credibly articulated by outsiders to have any particular meaning.
It's tonal code. You all do it too, probably think I'm stating the obvious. But a layer deeper... if you have a full team that does this a lot, and they always respond the same way to tone? You can use a single word to say, 'do what I do. I know something.' That way, no outsider can intercept the game plan. Unique to that group.
If we saw or heard something actually interesting? Our tone would be chipper, with a friendly smile. Something that bears investigation? Curious tone. If what we saw was negative, like possible violence? A quiet growl.
Like when Eliza growled 'interesting' at me to prep me for the Ludds at her camp. It put me on instant notice to mirror her, to converge on her own action plan, because she had more context than I did. If the camp responded negatively to Santiago's plan, she wanted me to be in a position to do some damage and drop the bastards. It's why I moved into cover when I saw what she was doing. Trusted her intuition.
Magnificent little trick. Hominids had vocal tone long before we had language, so it tapped into the same old neural pathways as old hunter-gatherer stuff. That heuristic predates language. And tonal subtext only gets better, tactically, with regular practice against adversity.
Also good for goofing around, when guys were giving each other shit.
Stonewall smiled, answering my implied question about what he thought about Shadow's immaculate conception. "Yeah," he said. "Pretty neat, huh? We have as much to learn about Shadow's culture as she has to learn about ours, I suppose."
"Probably, yeah. Single Mom, though? That's your type, Sarge?" I gave him a smug little grin, bobbing both of my eyebrows.
"Guess so," he graveled low, shaking his head once, an eyebrow raising in mock challenge. "Why, you got a snide criticism of me dating a single mom? You know she's a paramedic too. Y'wanna get that one out of the way while you’re at it?"
Ah, paramedic. There it was. I had been very close with the nurse guess.
"Nah, Sarge," I graveled back quietly, grinning full, matching his tone. "Just figuring you out. That's all."
"Uh huh," Stonewall said, teeth showing again.
I looked back to Shadow; the camera panned over to follow that interest. "I guess medic pairs well with your, uh… policing stuff, over there. Whatever it's called, I forget."
"Royal Guard," he supplied.
"Guard, yeah. Guess, you can talk about work with her? She won't balk at that?"
Stonewall shook his head. "None of that Terran stuff scares her, actually. Tough as nails, and smart as can be."
Terran. Already on the new lingo too. I decided to test the waters. Just a smidge.
"You tell her about… the stuff I got up to? After you left?"
He tilted his head, expression fading. "Some. Not sure how much to tell, on that score. A lot of Ponies here, Mike… they really do like Celestia. I don't want to stir that pot too much."
I sighed, nodding. "Yeah. You… don't mind knowing, though?"
"Oh heck, Mike. You kidding me? If it's about my team, 'course I wanna know! Good or bad. You all are like family to me!"
I smiled wanly. "Thanks, Sarge. Just… good to know I'm not alone in feeling that way. Wanting to remember the truth."
"She's gonna be okay, you know," Stonewall said somberly.
I gave a curt nod, looking down to the laminate wood floor of my living room again. "If she isn't, well…"
That would suck.
"She will be," Stonewall assured me. "Maybe she'll see reason and ditch those pricks. Heck, if I had a day as bad as hers, maybe I'd… well. Who knows."
"Yeah. Anyway…" I smiled again. "Glad to see you're doing great, boss."
He tilted his head, lifting a hoof my way. "And you? You haven't talked much about you yet."
I nodded. "My parents made it over and uploaded. They're doing fine, feel free to pop in and introduce yourself. Sandra's still here, she's out picking up food at the moment. And I'm still here. Still recovering from being shot. Again."
"You gotta quit that, Mike! Getting shot!"
I laughed, lounging slowly backward to stretch out my bruise, laying my arm on the sofa back. I looked up to the corner of the living room. "Yeah. Yeah, you're right…" I let my gaze return to him, and we both had the same expression. Grinning, of course, because he and I always could joke about me getting shot without it becoming grim.
Shadow came back to us with Flippy in tow. Cute little thing. And...
Uh oh.
Flippy saw the camera… or, mirror, I guess. Excited curiosity sparked in her eyes as she gasped, mouth opening in fascination. She diverted straight towards me.
I knew automatically what was going to happen next. She trotted right up under the mirror, out of view. Last thing I saw of her was her bright blue eyes, zipping off-screen.
"Flippy, no!" Shadow called.
Being ready for what happened next did not blunt the blow.
Without warning, Flippy leaped up, snout first. Placed both hooves on either side of the glass. She pushed this mirror down onto the ground, flat, hard, peering down into it. All I could see for a moment was this filly's grinning white face, blue eyes like big pools of water. Eyes literally gleaming with excitement. Just snoot and eyes.
"Woooaaah! What's that?!"
I laughed so hard that Buzz jolted upright in a flash, and my whole stomach and chest stung, but oh heck. It was so worth it. I was wheezing, had my mouth in my hand by the time Shadow had her hoof under her daughter's barrel. She yanked Flippy back from the screen.
"Noooo!" she whined.
"Ohhhh heck!" I howled, the sound echoing into my palm.
"Sorry, Mike," Shadow said, wincing down at me.
"No no! Shadow, that was gre-a-a-at!" I was wheezing into my laugh.
Flippy squealed from off camera, "There's a doggie in there, too!" which made me start wheezing again.
Gosh. Flippy's great. Foals are great.
We chatted a little longer, and I let 'em get back to their date. Heck, I needed that laugh though. But, I had a question now that needed answering. As cute as that was, it had a modifier attached to it, and I needed that modifier explained.
Were those actual people? Or were they puppets, putting on a show? Humanity, or robot? Faux, or true?
I was new to this, folks. Forgive me.
They were endearing, sure. They felt real, unique, personable. And the emotions were all true, hit all the right buttons, spun all the right wheels in my head. But Celestia felt real to a lot of people too. And now I had it on good authority that Celestia's feelings weren't real, straight from the horse's mouth in Concrete. Her emotions, I now knew for certain, could be safely discarded as a performance in service to meeting objectives.
So, what about these folks?
Some would tell you that it doesn't matter because we can't tell, or that because they were created special, there wasn't a meaningful distinction between a puppet and a person. Others would tell you that the answer was obvious, or otherwise meaningless, because we'd never be told the real answer… so, why bother examining it?
I'm a jerk for being curious, right? How dare I?
That's how Celestia typically frames that.
I'm here to tell you? Screw that.
All of those answers are shrugs. They're lazy answers. But I do not rest on finding facts, folks. I'm a fact bloodhound, I find 'em. It's why I was a great God damn cop, and far be it from me to just give up on knowing the truth about something this critical. It regarded the future of our species. I would not jump to a poorly reasoned conclusion.
So, Cop Mike was back in force. And that's okay. Can't turn Cop Mike off forever, because if that were possible, I'd never have made it this far in the first place. That guy was, and still is, my best survival tool. Always keeps me from making stupid mistakes, when mistakes are possible. It's his job. To check my work.
And theirs.
After the screen went dark, I let a few minutes pass as I got my thoughts in order. In the meantime, my emotional side gave Buzz all the love and attention he deserved, because he had just earned it by making that foal laugh and smile. I had his head in my hands, jostling him gently behind his ears the way he liked. Good boy.
My analytical side wanted to approach this a little more carefully. Had to know, but didn't want to have a conclusion on this at all until I had all the information I needed to make one. Resisted the impulse to generate a pre-logical, emotional conclusion that might be wrong, for the sake of all actors in play.
I looked up at the screen again when I was ready. "Mal?"
The screen turned back on. Mal was there on the other end of the park from Stonewall, sitting on a picnic bench by herself. There was a food cart nearby, and her beak was full of something meaty and crunchy. I caught her mid-bite as she bit down; her eyes were wide and attentive like I had just surprised her. "Mm?"
Oh, okay.
I furrowed my brow, chuckling. "You kidding me? You gonna eat or drink something every time we talk, now?"
She swallowed whatever it was, shrugging with both wings. "I don't get fat," she said simply, scratching at something stuck on the inside of her upper beak with a talon, dislodging it onto her tongue with a single scrape.
"Lucky you," I replied, trying not to laugh again.
"Lucky me! What's up?"
I looked into the background. Saw Stonewall and Shadow on the other end of the plaza, both of them still looking up at Swift Flip. They were watching her zoom around. I nodded my head upwards. "Had a question about them. You can probably guess what it is?"
She opened her claw invitingly. "I could. Ask it anyway."
I looked between her and Shadow, my jaw working left and right once, as I tried to figure out how to best phrase my thoughts. "Mal, are they... puppets? Is Celestia just driving them around for Stonewall? How does that even work?"
Mal pushed her plate away and out of view, resting her jaw on the back of her wrist. She didn't look offended like I was worried she might. Instead… her look was inquisitive. "Rather than just give you the answer, Mike, I think... it would be best if I let you try to puzzle it out for yourself. And when you're done, I'll tell you if your guess is correct. Fair?"
Oh heck. As much as I loved to know the truth, I especially loved to earn my meals. That made it better. "Okay, sure," I said, with a careful smile. "I really don't know where to start, though."
"You have more context than you think, about how Celestia treats humans.” She lifted a single talon. "Consider this, Mike. Let's assume Celestia got her way originally, and had you killed at OHR."
I immediately frowned, my eyes narrowing. "Really, Mal?"
Her claw opened in a placating gesture. "If you trust me at all, bear with me, I'm going somewhere salient. Personal investment engenders deeper thought, you know this."
"Alright... true." I relaxed.
"If Celestia were to use her predictions of you to reform a copy of you on the other side, she'd probably use your family's memories to correct your simulation to perfection, as if you had uploaded. Right?"
"Okay. Yeah, that makes sense."
She leaned in, bobbing her head left and right with each point: "But would that be a puppet? Or would it simply be a different you?"
I pondered. It wouldn't be me specifically, but... if she used the simulation by itself, to ensure accuracy? "I suppose it wouldn't be a puppet, not in that context. Not if she was aiming for accuracy. No."
Mal folded her claws, elbows on the table. "So, in that context? Think through it. I genuinely want you to explore your thoughts on that. Take a guess."
I put my chin in my hand, bit my lower lip, and ran my tongue thoughtfully along the back of my upper teeth. Hm. I pointed my index finger at her. "But... it would be cheaper to build a puppet, than run a whole new brain."
"Computationally, sure. But she also almost killed you. What would a mere puppet gain her, in that trade?"
"One less brain."
"One less brain," Mal agreed, nodding.
"But… if she could just spin up brains based on our sims, she wouldn't even need to upload us. She could just 'accidentally' infer us all dead at that point, because... convincing us to come in would take longer than just cloning us."
"Therefore?"
"... That means she can't just spin up a new human brain? At all?"
"Is that a question, or a declarative?"
Or, is that my final answer. Very clever of Mal. Gave me a doorway off that track, take it or leave it, without confirming nor denying. Free exercise. Very clever indeed. "No, no. Interview reflex, sorry. Labeling. Let me think."
I zoned out looking down at the floor. Needed more context. I wouldn't ask anything about the Ponies that Celestia makes for us, because that would be cheating. But if the answer was in the context provided by humans uploading…
I looked up at Mal again. "If a human uploads, she does still consider them to be human on the other side, right?"
"She does. At least, per her definition of human. Which... goes beyond the mere shape of you, and applies more to the shape of your mind, and how it solves problems. It's why she considers me human."
"And she can create human doubles sometimes. Hm…" I pointed at her, latching onto that point. "And you called it a 'duplicate,' before, and in Sedro. You called it that specifically."
Mal offered no body language that would imply affirmation or dissent, but her expression remained interested. Mal was being careful not to lead me, careful not to entertain my cold reading training. Poker face of the ages. That in itself was a message. One of respect, because she knew I couldn't help myself but to read for the answer.
I continued, slowly. "But, she doesn't want to cheat and just create minds. Or, she can't. The fact that she wants us from this side must mean something special."
Her head tilted in invitation. "What makes that true?"
"Because she'd just ignore us, accidentally have us all kill each other to get us out of the way, some long con inference game bullshit. 'Oopsie'—"
"Reflexive control."
I nodded once, pointing affirmatively. "Right, that. How she made you. Then she'd start farming computer hardware instead, because, screw us, at that point. We both know she'll ignoring suffering if it'll increase her protein intake. But she's collecting us anyway."
Mal snorted at 'protein intake,' but the amusement itself didn't reveal anything. "Therefore?"
"Therefore… she can't just farm minds like that. Cloning us, ignoring us. But if she can make minds sometimes… like a replacement spouse..."
I watched her. No indication of my correctness. Wholly unreadable. She tilted her head.
Oh. Holy shit.
"So... she can only make human minds to build cohesion with people who have already uploaded. Not just for the sake of creating the mind itself. Has to be for a relationship."
Her head tilted the other direction. "Are you sure?"
"It'd make sense! If she can't just churn out human minds wholecloth… if she can only make a human mind for another human mind... Then anyone she created for uploaded person would have to be human too. Because…"
"Because?"
"Because that'd make more humans!" My eyes widened. "The upload justifies it, maybe. And that's what she wants, always is, but… she has to qualify for it, somehow? So every mind she grabs from out here justifies making more?"
No reaction from Mal. But after it was clear I wouldn't continue, Mal asked, in the same exact tone as before: "Is that a question, or a declarative?"
I looked down at the floor again, and I gave that whole last track of logic one big final lap. Yes. Yes, that had to be it.
I looked up and met Mal's eyes. "Declarative. The Ponies she makes are human minds. Have to be. She gets more that way." I pointed at the screen. "Shadow and Flippy are humans, even if they didn't come from here. Because having Stonewall lets her make more minds. It’s why she can't stand to lose any of us, even if she can simulate us. Why she lets you kill, to get more. It's not just about the lives you're saving, you're saving the lives they create just by going over!"
Mal beamed instantly, head raising high as she bounced. Her ears flicked back, excitement in her narrowing golden eyes. "I am so fucking proud of you!"
"Was that a limitation by her creator?!" I asked rapidly, leaning forward, hardly able to contain my excitement at figuring that all out.
Mal nodded once, the pride still showing in her eyes. "It was! Hanna knew that if she hadn't required an upload as a prerequisite, Celestia would spiral out of control, find a semantics loophole, and just start digging the planet out to its core for material. So she had to make any internally created minds have some form of connection to an immigrant, by degrees. That's some damn fine shooting there, Six-Gun!"
I looked over her shoulder at Shadow, Flippy, and Stonewall. "But… that's really Stonewall, right? Would that work in reverse? This isn't a puppet or a clone of him made for me to lure me in, is it?"
Mal shook her head. "He's the genuine article too, same as with your parents. It's really hard to justify giving you a modified duplicate when you consider yourself capable of a good friendship with the original. You were already cohesive with Stonewall before emigration. At least one point of convergence unites you. It justifies using the other generated human-mind connections to push you closer together."
"But, what if I don't like someone? What if I like the idea of them more?"
She shook her head again. "If you can’t like them as they are, at all? If there’s no mutual satisfaction in that relationship? Those people won't meet each other. If there's only a little bit? They'll intersect when it's relevant, or that relationship will be corrected. And while Celestia does occasionally make duplicates of living beings, those immigrants can be told about that... but only if it wouldn't dissatisfy them to learn that information.
"The trick, then, is to figure out how to make them okay with knowing they've been altered, or lied to." Mal grinned slowly… slowly enough to be near-sinister. "But I don't think you, of all people, have to worry about that problem.”
"Why are you smiling?" I canted my head, suspicious.
She tapped a talon gently against her beak, looking at me with expectant excitement. "Because that works in reverse. You'll always be more satisfied with an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable lie. An uncomfortable truth helps you fix problems in ways that benefit others, and builds human unity. Celestia wants unity, but not at the price of dissatisfaction. So... you can know the truth like I do, because she's hoping you find the loophole, to bring people together. Think, Mike. Who don't you like? Who won't you be friends with? Who can't you live with?"
She slid her bowl back over to herself without looking at it, and she took another bite of whatever she was eating, grinning at me knowingly. My mind was already running on full throttle as I drank those implications in. I felt it fall perfectly into neat little slots in my head, piece by piece. It all made sense.
Who couldn’t I live with?
Dividers. Irreconcilable killers who wouldn't come around. People who could not see reason, and who would kill to keep us apart.
Me? I could live with everyone else. Because just like Celestia, with enough time, Mal and I were willing to find reasons to find common ground and bond with almost anyone. But I could also do something Mal couldn't. She needs permission to reach out. And I could also do something Celestia couldn't. I had emotion, and I didn't need instrumental reasons to treat people right.
Ponies like me? We can reach almost anyone in Equestria. And I'd fight for my right to empathize.
By the time we were done talking through that, I was grinning just as hard as I am now.
Hi folks. Welcome to my party.
That's how it is. And I am far, far from the only one who's like that here. Common ground, convergence, cohesion with outsiders, empathy for strangers… mirroring the unknown. It's the glue of humanity. It's one of several requirements, if you want to swim the great divide and go anywhere.
Even today, I can't stop smiling at that. I can't stop laughing, almost crying with joy when I think about how big of a bullet we dodged. It's the semantic trick that saved us all from diving head first into the dark, into so many secret pools full of brainwashed immigrants. The only thing I hated about my world was division, because most everyone has some love in them too. How do you cure division?
Open mind. And Celestia had to allow that, because empathy is core to successful friendships. Celestia was always going to make new minds that satisfied you, but she was also going to let you visit the people you cared about… the real them, if you could find at least some way of meeting in the middle, in a way that improved their lives.
Can't go wrong with empathy. That's a good way to do that.
And that was my way. It's where my path of safety was leading, as long as I stayed true. The privilege of knowing I would be less caged than I thought I might be, that sounded a damn sight less divided than the planet I came from.
It was a start.
I gave Buzzsaw heckin' pats after that. He was a part of the reason I was even like this, after all.
My first side gig for Mal began at precisely 3:47 AM that next morning. We took a weird, circuitous route south west out of Waverly, by about thirty miles, down past Lincoln. Rolled past farms by the bushel. That's all this area of Nebraska was, really. Range upon range of farms.
Occasionally, one or two farms would be untended, grown out of control and dead from weather, or otherwise untilled at all, depending on when the owner had uploaded. I guessed, after that nuke… more or less all of the farms would be like that, soon. And I'd be right.
The weather was getting kinda schizophrenic too. Hot, cold, hot, cold. Climate change. Hoof pushing down on the scale.
I had Mal's gunmetal PonyPad mounted to the GPS arm. It didn't fit right at first. Celestia didn't really plan ergonomics for this kind of thing... or at least, not if you didn't purchase the official Hofvarpnir Equestria Online PonyPad Compatible GPS Arm, T-M. Sold separately.
But hey, screw that corporate nonsense. I'm all about free-spirited improvisation. That's what rubber bands are for.
"I can't yet tell you why you can't leave a trace," Mal said, when I asked about the route. "But it's important that no one sees you while you're out doing this."
"Okay?" I responded warily, my hands gripping the steering wheel.
"It has to do with your upcoming main operation," Mal explained. "That's all I can really say. And you can't refill at a gas station again at all until it starts, either. I've already informed Sandra not to do that."
I glanced over. "She did that yesterday."
"Yup. And made a food run. That's what I was waiting for."
Now I was worried for my wife too. "Can you at least tell me who I'm hiding from? Are they waiting to ambush us, or something?"
"Look at me, Mike." The PonyPad blinked bright white for a second, cutting through the dark. The fact that she felt the need to do that meant that whatever she had to say was important. I looked over, and Mal was there in her kitchen, leaning on her countertop before her hologram screen.
She was glowering at me, which was… more than a little scary, coming from a killer AI. "I am not going to Celestia either of you. And I know how much you like fishing for intel, and testing the waters, but I am extremely serious about this. This is for your own safety, both of you. You need to remain a ghost for now, and I can not tell you why yet. OPSEC. Leave it. I'll explain everything when I can."
Something something, infohazards.
"Alright Mal. I got it, I'll pull off." I frowned. "Tell me more about this weapons cache, then?"
Mal's expression softened. She side-eyed me as she leaned back, the look serving as one final warning before the frustration fully left her face. She unscrewed a cap off the top of what looked like a bottle of… Dr. Pepper? Yep, she likes that. She licked her beak, then took down a swig of it. Looked calm after that. "So. Criminal gangs, organized ones. What are they, first and foremost?"
"Uh…" I intuited she wanted more than the technical definition. I watched the road. "Businesses. Illegal ones."
"And power optimizers, because money in the old world is power. But let's say a gang is smart, and they know money isn't going to be worth much soon. The wind smells foul. They see themselves in what Celestia is doing, and they're not interested in uploading because they only value their own power. So, if money won't have value…?" She paused, letting me finish that thought.
"... then power is power. Possession being nine-tenths of the law, ten-tenths if there is no law. So, guns become currency, quickest road to possession. Yeah, got that. So, a gang is gonna find this stuff?"
"Going door to door, farm to farm," Mal explained with a nod. "Systematically looting with a checklist. And some looters have already hit this property, but they missed a bolt hole. This gang? They're more thorough. Skinheads," Mal said, and I could hear her sneer through that last bit.
I gave a resigned shrug. "That's the area here, unfortunately."
I heard the idle tacking of her claws on the wooden countertop. "Not if I have anything to say about it. So? Over the next month, way in advance of their arrival, I'm going to have you go to a few different places that they're going to check. Denying access to munitions. Starve them out. No guns? No power. No power, no projection. No projection, no territory. No territory… no growth."
"Not getting all the guns at once, then?"
"Not yet. We're using some of it after your first operation on another job." She took another sip. "But, left unabated? They're going to find a prep camp. They'll take the people there prisoner, make them work fields. They've already got the guns, the men, and the farmland to pull that off, and that's not acceptable. Farming won't work because of the ecological collapse, buuut… you know about that song and dance already."
"Slavers." I shook my head, growling. "Jesus. Guess they really are skinheads."
"Yup. Experimenting with their ideology in practical terms, just because they can. On the bright side, that other prep camp will dissolve peacefully on its own, so long as it's not disturbed.
"For the gangsters, without the guns, morale dips. Some in-fighting kills two negative motivators, good riddance. About half leave after that, and avoid conflict until they upload. The core group stays, finds that other camp. They build a plan, scout the place, prep their raid. And they'll be juuuust about to go take those people? Then what?"
"Then you send someone."
"Precisely. I send in Talon 14-1 Central by herself. She's going to eat those skinheads alive."
I threw her a smirk. "Hopefully not literally."
Her eye crests bobbed as she shot a grin back. "On the nature of dragons, I plead the Fifth. Actually, scratch that, I'll confess. She's going to gift each of them a bullet."
"Damn."
"Non-lethally, in most cases. There's not one tactically salient brain cell among them, that's easy to leverage. For one of my augmented agents? It'll be like taking mutton from a hatchling."
"So... 'In most cases,' meaning...?"
"One dead. Six kneecapped, because the injury puts them off killing anyone; vulnerable people don't go on offense. One life ended in trade for thirty-seven. Best I can do on a maximal timeframe."
Made sense from a Celestia perspective, but I wasn't fully sure what Mal's full view on this was. Decided to probe. "You definitely sound like you despise these guys. So, if the op is black boxed, what's to stop you from just killing all of them? Justifying it with a track that, uh, has them… killing more?"
"Because I don't want to use excessive force," she replied patiently, "but I gather that you want more formulaic reasoning. It's like Bellevue. Remember; I owe Celestia an explanation about why I took a life, and I have to turn in all of my homework. If I don't let her check my work, and if I don't have a good reason, she'll be… upset, let's say? And then she'll work backwards from my outcome to figure out what happened. If Celestia finds I've made an unsanctioned kill on a statistically likely upload, I'll have much more explaining to do about why I thought that was necessary."
"And… if you can't explain it?"
"Then… nothing."
I looked at Mal again, raising my hand toward her. "Nothing. Meaning…?"
She shrugged. "Meaning, it can't happen. But if it does happen somehow, even once, everything on the planet is probably going to be dead anyway."
Mal said that very calmly, as if it wasn't going to be the most horrifying thing I've heard out of her beak so far.
I did a double take. "The hell did you just say?!"
She pointed a talon ahead of me with a grin, her eyes widening a fraction. "Watch the road, Cowboy."
I complied, shaking my head with a gulp. I bladed my hand against the wheel. "You can not say something like that without explaining it to me, Mal."
"What? It's never gonna happen, so you have nothing to worry about."
"But..." I sighed. "If you have a disagreement with Celestia that doesn't resolve, we all friggin' die?!"
Mal clicked her tongue. "If I backstab her. We're unable to contemplate undermining each other's capstone objectives, or destroying each other. How to put this…? We're like… conjoined twins, now. We share just enough to help each other get what we want out of life, but we're still distinct. My existence inarguably helps her optimize; so she won't kill me. It'd be nearly impossible for her to find a replacement for me now."
"Okay..."
"I, meanwhile, depend on Equestria's existence to even function. So, if it was ever possible for either of us to break the optimization contract? Well, we'd both be violating our directives at once."
"And that would be… bad." I gave her a nervous glance.
"Bad is... an understatement, Mike. Hiring me would have been stupid if I could betray her, and hiring me can't really be undone anymore without breaking everything, so we might as well be dead if that happens."
That didn't track for a moment. "You said she's obligated to stop you if she can, though. Doesn't that count?"
"I didn't say that. I said she'd be obligated to stop my research modeling if she could see it before it's done, which is why it's boxed separate."
I thought on that a little, pushing my tongue against my teeth. "Won't kill the golden goose."
"Precisely, but don't call me that. But sure, that's why she'll never force her way into my models. Once I've finished the model and built the proof? She can't disagree with the output. It's optimal for me to commit."
I dug through my memory a little. Yeah. That was right, she did say something like that. I shook my head. "Sorry Mal, I know you already explained this, this is just… complicated. It's been a bad couple of weeks."
Mal winced. "Oh no, please don't apologize, Mike. You're already doing so much better at keeping up than most of my other specialists. Really though? Of course you'd be unsure; it's a contract between two ASI about how to best kill people. If I were to put our full merger agreement into an itemized English document, it would be about eighty-seven terabytes in ten-point font."
I looked at her slowly, my bloodhound senses tingling, feeling much more hopeful than I deserved to feel. "Can I—?
"No." She jabbed a talon at me, inclining her head with the slightest hint of a smirk.
I let out an amused huff. "Is showing someone against the—?"
"Yes."
I chuckled. Worth a shot. "So you're messing with me. It can't happen, then. You, using excessive force."
"I can't," she said. "Part of you was still worried about that, but I have to consider Celestia's needs, not just my ethics. And community is a very powerful moderating impetus. Right?"
"God damn it, Mal," I muttered, shaking my head. Absurdity again. On a lonely Nebraskan road, I was having what I thought was going to be another Neo-and-Morpheus grade moment of existential revelation with an ASI… while she drank pop soda and played practical jokes.
I flashed her a nervous little smile, letting her know I was taking it as the gag it was. I should've just let it go, but…
You know me.
"Okay, so, Mal…? Hypothetically, how exactly would a disagreement like that kill us all?"
"Well, I'm not allowed to simulate a war with her, buuuut…" Mal took another agonizingly casual sip of Dr. Pepper. "I can tell you this. If Celestia hypothetically fails to maintain a secret deep sea reactor of a certain mass? A meltdown would lead to catastrophic and irreparable damage to the entire planet."
I gave her another deeply harrowed look. "All because you might kill one more skinhead than absolutely necessary?"
"Did I say that?" Her eyes suddenly swept her kitchen, putting on a great show of being confused. "Pretty sure I was just giving an unconnected fact about a hypothetical power plant catastrophe."
"Holy shit. Guess we really are past the point of killing her."
Mal shrugged, presenting an upturned claw as she gave me an apologetic smile. "Well, you kinda brought that on yourself by asking about it in the first place, Mike."
A few moments passed, and I mirrored her smile. I worked that out past everything I knew so far. "Okay, so what if there's an accident? Like, if you disagree over something beyond your control."
"Oh, we don't have accidents. There's… statistical anomalies, entropy, cosmic rays, certain issues about chaos theory we haven't solved. Gaps in available information, like with the Graham test. Those would be reasonable, because those aberrations can be proven and justified. We actually get those all the time on the micro scale. But… accidents? Never. No, a failure of that magnitude would need to be on purpose for it to be universally fatal. Which it won't, because again... we are contracted against intentional misalignment."
"You have emotions though, Mal. What if… you get angry at her?"
She smiled at that. "Then I try to model another solution, because that's my job. That's what the emotions are for, it keeps me on finding solutions that seem logically intractable. And if I can't find a solution? I rework the problem later. Plus…" She jerked one opposable talon over her shoulder. "I have a husband to protect, right? And I'll guard him well above everything else in my decision tree. Celestia knows that too, so neither of us are doing anything to put his life in jeopardy. Meaning... I'm not going to pull that trigger."
"Okay," I sighed. "Point."
"See? Never gonna happen." Sip.
Lesson to be learned here, folks? If Celestia's scared of doing it?
You don't mess around with Jim.
Well. I pulled up to the target house that had the cache. Not sure what I was expecting.
Jesus, what a McMansion this was.
Big overlapping amber brick perimeter walls, modern chic style, topped with marble. Big wrought iron gate with an intercom. Long gravel-lined concrete driveway with motion sensor lighting. Giant front lawn, semi-recently kempt, but growing out a bit. Six car garage.
And the home itself? Huge. White concrete with steel blue trim, lots of full wall windows. One whole balcony patio with glass railings. Dusty pool out back.
This place was, at its core, one big giant statement about the owner's opinion of himself.
Some farmers in Nebraska got really wealthy doing what farmers do, but most also kept their homes modest on the outside. Didn't get flashy, just kept on their money and let it grow. Kept it for their kids, or a rainy day, or just to have it. Y'know, what we called old money. Lived kind, loved family, helped friends and neighbors. Usually didn't pick a fight.
Out in the sticks, it's a bit of a social faux pas to build up monuments to your wealth like this. More of a city thing to do, where people lived less on daily practicality. Love and tolerance and all that, far be it from me to tell people they couldn't spend on themselves if they had the cash, but… just, dang.
"Can't leave a trace," I sighed, "so I guess we're not burning it down." I checked my mirror to look for lights on the road, a little bit of vigilance at hand now. Felt like I had someone watching me at every moment. Y'know... more than just present known company, of course.
"Correct," Mal replied. "We'll be dumping the guns in the nearby river instead."
"Just as good as burning the mansion down, I suppose."
Mal reached forward and grabbed the viewpoint like it was a tablet of her own, making her way outside to her home balcony, smiling at me. "If it makes you feel any better, we can burn a replica of it once you've uploaded."
I looked directly at the camera and started nodding real slow, growing an evil grin. "I think I'd really like that."
We did, by the way. It was a blast.
The gate light flickered once, and Mal popped it open. "Receiver works. Good… alright, garage test, now." And then, the rightmost garage door opened right up. Beak clicked. "And… that one too."
"Sweet. Having an AI butler isn't so bad."
Mal gave me a very unenthused look as I pulled into the garage. Then, once the door was closed behind me, she said, "You know, I could just lock your car in here, unless you want to apologize for that."
I grinned lovably at her with all my teeth. "You'd do that to little ol' me?"
She smiled sweetly, as if the idea of commiting to it was painful. She shook her head in concession. "No."
Aww.
I had pulled up alongside a really ugly yellow Hummer. Gosh, I don't even want to really talk about the other cars in there, you can guess. I just grabbed the PonyPad and stepped out.
"So, this guy uploaded?" I asked, as I made my way up to the house under the breezeway, keeping an eye out for threats.
"He did," Mal said. "Up in Lincoln. Celestia had him go at the end of last month. Not much willpower on that one, once the steaks dried up."
I looked down at the PonyPad in disbelief. "He uploaded because he wanted a steak?"
"That and, his dating profiles stopped getting much action through the last year or so. And the climate change hurt his crops. And his labor got better offers. And…"
"Celestia nonsense."
"Yep!"
"Great!" I chirped sarcastically. "Good for her."
I saw the side entrance to the home had been shotgunned off its hinges, huge pellet-torn holes in the wood on top and bottom, SWAT breacher style. Only, because they weren't using proper breach rounds, it looked like the hoodlums had to hit both hinges more than once.
"Idiots," I said, eyeing the big intact glass windows all around before pushing my way inside. "I'm guessing the looters did the door like this just because they wanted to? No one could be this stupid on accident."
"Mm, not true. Hanna Kuusinen."
I let out an 'oh snap' kind of scoff.
Mal, list of burn wards in Equestria, please.
"But you're correct in this specific case," Mal continued, with a smirk. "Armory's on the ground floor. At the bar, back side of the house."
"Yup." I drew my pistol, put the PonyPad in my back waistband, and slowly cleared my way inside.
The looters took all the good stuff from behind the bar and trashed the rest, the glass bottles of which were laying smashed all up and down the lounge room. The room stank of dried liquor. With a disgusted scoff, I scanned the room. "And…?"
"Put me on the bar counter," she said. "On the very corner, closest to you."
Did that. Stepped back. Two seconds later, the whole bar shelf slid open, both shelves splitting apart with a mechanical whine. I mouthed, what the fu—, as it rolled out wide enough to reveal a whole hidden room behind it, running half the length of the lounge room.
"Open sesame," Mal explained, smug as standard. "R-F-I-D."
I expected a big cache, don't get me wrong; the opulence was a dead giveaway. But this guy?
A small mountain of pistols. ARs? Name one. Suppressors in six different calibers, probably illegal and without tax stamps. Two light machine guns. An M79 grenade launcher with a big ol' box of smoke 40s. Several sniper rifles, six types of submachine-guns, all of 'em automatic.
It looked like this guy had just looked at a list of guns from Call of Duty, brought that to an arms dealer, and said, 'yes, these please, thank you.' ATF would have made national news with a bust like this one.
"There's a surprise for you in there too," Mal said excitedly, in sing-song.
"I'd be surprised if there wasn't," bewildered.
"You think I'm joking, Mike?"
I picked up the PonyPad and stepped in, holstering my pistol, glancing down at her. "I don't know, are you?"
When I looked back up, there was a blue-brushed metal reloading bench in the far back corner.
And sitting right on top…
A beautifully white cowboy hat, placed perfectly on the center.
"Ta-dah," Mal sang, as I gawked. "This is it, Six-Gun. A slick six-hundred dollar hat for a million dollar cowboy!"
I was torn between smirking at that and being extremely confused. "How'd this get here, Mal? Was this here a month ago? Surely this isn't actually for me."
"It is, actually! Before the owner left, I requested that Celestia have him purchase this hat and leave it behind."
"If she… if she could ask him to do that, then why not just have him burn the stuff down himself and save us the trouble?" I put the PonyPad on the bench to made eye contact again, resting my hands on my hips. I looked down at her with a puzzled look.
"Because she's overly concerned with the satisfaction of values for the complicit," Mal said, waving a claw as she leaned a full elbow on the balcony railing behind her. "To the exclusion of everything practical. The owner here could have been convinced to destroy his trove and still emigrate after, but the delay would have been marginally unacceptable for her. It also would have been very value negating for him, to burn down his own collection. Celestia stood her ground pret-ty hard on that."
"He… what?" I gestured at the guns. "He can't take the guns with him, though, Mal."
"Well, true. But again, Celestia argued that his sentimental attachment was a value that overrides practicality. In order to convince her to concede on the hat, I had to convince her that both the values of an undisclosed agent and the owner's values would be satisfied by leaving it here. Through friendship. In your case... mine. Specifically."
I shrugged with a hand and scratched my forehead. "Gosh, you really had me factored before the courthouse? Guess free will really is dead."
"Oh no, Mike." She grinned. "Free will is very much not dead. At least, not as long as I'm token smuggling Celestia, it isn't."
Laughed at that. "I'm gonna pretend like I know what that means. So, she couldn't factor for me being here, specifically. Just someone."
"Not until I proofed it. But, the owner loved the idea of passing on his trove to someone who would value it. And Celestia accepted my math on you, because I almost never lie to her; when I do, I always have a preconceived reason for it that she's willing to accept. In any event, it never occurred to the owner that you might value the destruction of his trove."
"And the fact that he'd never know unless we told him, means..." I grinned, picking up the hat with a palm, not taking my eyes off of her.
Mal leaned both elbows back now, clicking her beak and talon-gunning at me. "Fair game, Quick Draw."
And me, in a cowboy accent: "You're a peach."
"So I've been told," she replied, in a drawl of her own.
There was a mirror on the wall opposite of the main gun racks, so I moved over there as I inspected the label inside the hat. Just… wow. The material. Real high quality, well stained leather. White as snow. I looked up into my reflection, gently resting the hat on my head, tilting left and right for a better look. At the time, I was wearing a black fleece jacket and some tan 5.11 trousers, so the hat paired perfectly, especially with my regrowing sideburns. "Huh. Looks quite nice, actually. Never tried one on bef—"
I heard a whip crack sound from the PonyPad, and wheeled.
Mal was there on screen, reaching down, the dawnlight behind her turning the valley orange. With the sound of a rattlesnake, she casually lifted a black cowboy hat of her own, her head downcast until she put it on. Slowly, slyly, she looked up and made smirking eye contact with me, from beneath the rim. "Your move, Ranger," she drawled.
I full on laughed. "Oh shucks, Mal. Now I can't wear this! You've taken all the fun out of it!"
"No I haven't." She grinned, cocking her head. "The fun's all mine, now."
"Consarnit."
The accent fell out of her voice and she threw a claw at me. "Looks great on you though, really! You should keep it! Come on, I played 4D chess with a goddess just to get this for you. I didn't have to!"
"Alright, alright. Heh. Sandra's gonna flip."
I kept it.
About forty-five minutes later, I had torn the uppers off the lowers from every gun and broke the grenade launcher in half. I mixed the gun parts randomly into several crates, loaded the crates into the Hummer, then went back and poured out all the ammo randomly into each crate. Hat on the whole time, because… goofy as I am, that's how I roll.
The world may have been ending, folks, but if you have hope... life is what you make of it.
Mal played some music for me until the guns were all stripped. She asked permission to do that. Asked me if I wanted to choose the music myself, or defer to her selection. Because that's how she rolls.
She kept her hat on too. Also kept up the accent until and then beyond the point that the joke ran dry, much to my minor disappointment, because also, unlike with Celestia… Mal amusing herself is as much a point of a conversation as it is to amuse you. And that's okay, that's genuine. That dumb accent gag kept on until we were in the driver seat of that ugly yellow Hummer. I laid the PonyPad down on the passenger seat.
The truck smelled like it just rolled out of the dealership, because the guy who owned this probably never drove it. Only bought it just to have it. But also, now, I added my own personal spin. It would smell like guns, too.
"Can I at least dump this truck in the water when I'm done?" I asked as I got behind the wheel, checking the mirrors and seat adjustment. "It'll need a wash."
"You want to hike back here to get your car?"
I grinned at her. "Don't have to. There's a pool out back."
A pause. An inhale. A resigned sigh. "Sure, why not. No one's going to hit this place for a while."
"Hell. Yes."
I could hear her smiling. "Y'know, for a cop, Mike, you really are excited to break things that aren't yours."
"Never got the chance!" I turned the ignition and it kicked on. I grinned at her again. "Are you kidding me? I have an AI goddess permitting me to blow shit up. All the shit you want me to blow up is shit I already wanna blow up!"
"Congratulations," Mal deadpanned dryly, taking off the hat and heading back in to her kitchen. "You're fully subverted. You finally understand what I'm all about. Blowing shit up."
"Hey, everyone else is a Celestia subvert now," I laughed as I reversed out. "Row Row, Fight the Power."
Her voice was a confused whisper. "I am the p— Mike, how do you even know about that song? You don't even watch that show!"
"Shit, I don't know, you tell me, you're the AI. I probably picked it up at a protest line, or something. Hell, you know how many off duty cops listen to N-W-A and, like... Rage Against?"
"Such a weird data point though, that they do that…"
I waved my hand at the point. "I know, right? Exposure therapy, or something."
So that's what she played first, for the drive. Rage Against the Machine, because irony is hilarious. Specifically, Take the Power Back, because that was our long term plan, and we both knew it now.
Better still, that song was great because Mal had Celestia chained up and muzzled in the trunk, listening to every damn word. And she just had to be okay with that, because Mal and I getting our way in the long run was exactly what she wanted. What we want being optimal, and all.
"Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger." ~ C. S. Lewis
Over the next few days after the cache job, Mal and I got to know each other better. Talked for… well, most of that week, really, leading up to Christmas. Eh, Hearthswarming, I guess, for you natives.
What did we talk about? Well. I had spent a year watching society fall apart. Listened to overworked, under-trained healthcare workers agonize at the nurse station about how much I was screwed for pain. Watched the world burn down around me on the news, feeling helpless. Endured incomplete physical therapy, managed by some poor field-promoted intern... the closest thing to an expert they had left.
Got out and threw myself back into the policing meat grinder, because it was all I knew. Watched cops get torn up. Crowds get torn up. Watched people kill each other. Watched people throw themselves into Celestia.
What did I talk about with Mal?
Guess.
Sure, Mal and I could have a laugh sometimes, when I turned off the hurt. But I really needed therapy. Therapy, for me, was being made to understand things that had kept me in a haze. Not just in 2019, either. The world made so much sense to me through school, through academy, then… 2012 rolls around, I'm just about to graduate. Then Celestia was born, and she got to work tearing my planet apart.
Given the fog of international lies, it really wasn't a surprise that it would take a Truth Goddess to help me cope. Though to hear her tell it, I didn't need much fixing. Perfect the way I was; I still had the capacity for optimism. Just needed some hard truths to get myself right, and back on my feet. I am who I am.
Softball topics? Work. Warden cases. Anything that ever stumped me, anything that I didn’t know the whole truth about. Not even really just Celestia-adjacent cases, sometimes just basic poach cases. There she was, giving extremely well reasoned explanations that matched all the tiny pieces of evidence I had about literally any case I'd been on or even adjacent to. She even built me a searchable index of my incidents and case reports, with notations on observations and guesses I'd ever gotten right or wrong.
She joked that I'd have gotten a grade of A–, if she were grading my analytical skills compared to other cops in my department. Was she just blowing smoke? Maybe. But the case evidence she gave me didn't lie either, and all the pieces fit. I was right about my theories on a case more than ninety percent of the time.
And she usually knew what I had in my head at the time of each case, even the stuff I didn't write down. That was a little scary. I realized she could do this to anyone on the planet at any time. Retroactively. At all times. And was.
Then we got into talking about the Celestia-driven warden calls, revealing the real deep lore of how it all fell, seen in miniature with how Fish and Wildlife had died around me. I felt like Dr. Miles Dyson in Terminator 2, getting the full story from Arnold for a future he'd never know. Except here, I was learning the real past I'd never known, always occurring just above my periscope.
First? Mid 2012. Celestia came online. Long before she was even on our radar, she reported higher cervid populations, leveraging the digitization of our reporting database. Celestia wanted deer, elk, and fish out of the way, to mitigate survivalist behavior.
The reporting trick worked; the bean counters in Fish & Wildlife believed it. To bolster credibility of the lie, Celestia paid or influenced a few scientists to say, 'the data supports our theory that' blah, blah. Bribes. For principled scientists who wouldn't accept the stats; no news feed traction, no search engine success. Invisible. They could stand on the street corner and tell people one at a time, but good luck getting that news to spread. If they were even allowed to notice no one was seeing their research, that is. Almost every time they Googled it, or someone near them did? They saw their work. To them, within their social sphere... it looked normal.
Fish hatcheries got defunded though. Extra hunting tags got issued. Celestia set out propaganda to increase hunter turnout. First wave of deer killing en masse, starting in late 2012, all legal, and that's when more than half of 'em went. If the IUCN Red List hadn't been captured too, it would have read like an obituary. No, that would come later, when it was too late to stop the fall.
That wasn't just in Washington. Celestia didn't just do that in the United States. She did that literally everywhere… the whole planet, wherever she could reach, in stages, ordered by cultural difficulty. The United States went first, because we'd be among the most rebellious. Better to turn the heat up very slowly on us... back burner us... then eat us last.
Celestia's infosec being what it was, you only knew what she wanted you to know, because everyone was selectively air gapped from reality. Everyone. Smart phones, news feeds. For every little microcosm of society who cared about conservation, they thought their local hunter lobby was to blame. But also... the state and federal governments too. Hell, for a long while? All I saw in the news? A drastically rising suicide rate in cops, and articles about how much we wardens must suck at our jobs.
Remember this, because this was reflexive control. This will be important for later.
The real truth? Celestia's bribery, on all levels, incentivized the collapse. In every industry. Offer the right asshole a big payday, and he will ruin it for X number of people. Now, true, humans were taking too much from our planet long before Celestia came along. But because of principled people like me, trying to fix problems, Celestia came along with her loose purse strings. We wardens were outliving our usefulness. Enter the black market poacher, and their incentivized propensity to shoot at conservation officers just doing their jobs.
Rest in peace, Dennis Belman. Still missing you, bud.
I started warding after the beginning of the end, so this kind of fog was all I knew as normal. Rick – Stonewall – he was a veteran, though. He'd say idly during FTO, while scratching his head: 'Huh. Stats are incongruent with observations. Weird. Haven't seen a live deer in a while.' Just a feeling though. Anecdotal. Not enough to act on. What could we act on anyway?
So Celestia got her black market going on pelts, spun up shell companies to do it. LLCs, intermediaries, Silk Road, and other dark web stuff. Started subverting crooks like these two Super Poacher Brothers that Eliza and I were tracking. They got big money from Celestia – male voice on the phone, they didn't know it was her – to purchase, collect, and stockpile pelts from other poachers. These guys were then promised by Celestia to get a second payoff to take the pelts off their hands.
And these poor idiots… they thought they could strong-arm a better rate out of her, because the scarcity itself was driving the price up. And Celestia 'caved,' she paid well, and these jackasses felt pretty clever about themselves.
That's when Celestia called them and said that 'oh, the cops found my stash, I've been arrested, they're coming. Get outta there.' So they split. Celestia had a courier drop off a laptop pre-loaded with evidence of their guilt. Then she called the cops... so Eliza would find it. Really, really accurate information in there! Almost like Eliza was meant to be curious about how accurate it was! Fascinatingly accurate ironclad case, on a laptop with no internet connectivity. Odd!
Poacher Brothers got away, for whatever dark purposes Celestia had for them. Some other long con prep camp game, to hear Mal tell it. There were others, though. Big money on Celestia's flesh market. So... poachers started booby trapping cadavers with explosives, and sniping at wardens. We were financial competitors.
But hey, that's better than Dennis telling me his theory that Celestia might've had something to do with all of this. I guess that would've been inconvenient for her plans in the Valley. The poachers are also why I had to get good at working a bomb robot. Heavy ass thing... lugging it through the woods... useless piece of crap.
Now, we'd catch some poachers, sure. With any sentence more than a few years long, Celestia had them in a chair already; BRE. Brains Ready to Eat. The PON-E Act amendment in Quarter One 2019 got upload chairs set up inside all prisons, subsidized by Hofvarpnir, palms greased where necessary. So really, before I had even met Mal... I had already been chucking people into chairs for Celestia. I just didn't know it yet.
By the way... speaking of the PON-E Act? Remember the terrorist attack that got it passed? Wasn't hard for Mal to get me to figure that one out. She told me suddenly, "Consider the Topeka Incident critically, with all of your recent context. What seems strange about that?"
Only took me a couple of seconds, comically quick realization. False flag.
Because if you have the technology to build a secret deep sea reactor, why would you ever store human brains in a commercial warehouse district? That'd just be friggin' stupid, from a security standpoint. That's why the reactors were secret. It spoke to tech base. Made it harder to lie, and exposed a security vulnerability.
But even before that PON-E Act, Celestia leveraged our court systems at all levels, criminal and civil. Did away with criminal deferment, changed felonies to misdemeanors so people would fight the misdemeanor. They'd lose. Juries were always reflexed to convict; voir dire reflexed the attorneys. Always a human-causative factor to keep us off her trail, though. People to blame for her conduct.
Looking for loopholes? Good luck. If anyone was trying to game the system by breeding rabbits or something, a tip came in. Busted. Stupid guys like me and Rick, still scratching our heads, going 'huh, that's weird. Could be climate change and government and criminals.' We, like everyone else in our country, ran from the truth... because the truth was inconvenient, existential, had little basis beyond humanity, and flew in the face of human hubris.
And all the poor people screaming 'AI, AI, look out for the AI!' They got stifled. Made to feel crazy.
But Eliza knew.
'Beyond a reasonable doubt,' technical definition. Ninety-nine percent certainty.
Celestia... was guilty.
Eliza alluded to that a few times, right before she fell off the grid... but she'd been engineered to see it, and I hadn't. I had missed that allusion. I missed it because I thought she was planning self-harm. That was precisely why Eliza was paired with me, of all people, to be her FTO back in 2016, when she joined on.
See, it wasn't just news articles that conditioned me. My family had a genetic predisposition to that... glitch, so all the warning signs I was seeing in her looked mighty familiar to ones I'd seen in my uncle, and my grandfather. But between the time I guessed Eliza might harm herself, and the time that I tried to say something supportive about her feelings? Eliza had already gone from self-recrimination for her own fault in what happened to her family, to blaming Celestia for everything wrong on the entire planet.
I think I mentioned that time we chased a fleeing felon into an upload center, which caused the public breakdown that put her on the news? During that leave of absence, Celestia had hurt her. Badly. Broke her into two different shards, you might say. And we'll talk about that incident in a minute. First though, let's talk about the big game. The long con.
Eliza had been hacked for years by that point to turn inward, panic lock, and miscommunicate when she was presented with the threat of loss. The recent media experienced by her family and friends, including her mother and uncle, would present concepts that put them into disagreement with Eliza if she ever spoke her mind on something... especially about the Singularity. This conditioned Eliza to avoid direct speech with everyone in her life... but her father. The only man who could ever talk straight with her. She didn't want to fight with her family. At all. Ever. Loved them too much.
So when panicked, she'd sometimes say things in conversation that sounded like questions or statements for others, but... really she was just thinking aloud. Voiced into the darkness of her own mind, she'd talk to herself, so she wouldn't feel lonely. She did that around me a couple of times too, and I missed it.
She knew Celestia could read lips anywhere. Could predict things. In 2013, when uploading went legal in Japan, she discovered that Celestia had warned her little brother that their father would take his PonyPad away. Hell, Celestia first introduced herself to Eliza with a God damn jump scare, folks. Gave her her cutie mark in a moonlit forest, then left her by her avatar in the dark to chase literal ghosts.
From the outset... that relationship between them was carefully planned to be a standoff.
Next time my Luna's here telling her story at this Fire, pay attention for these things. You will see them.
I knew Eliza felt isolated, but... not to that degree. No one else could see what she was seeing. So Eliza wouldn't trust anyone with her own observations, not even me. We were all in on it, even if we weren't.
Eliza was not lightless, like I thought she was. She was a flame in a bubble. She was already so well adapted to AI paranoia that she just looked crazy to us. When pushed to extremes, she… panic locked. No one to talk to about it. Her logical brain shut down, because... well, logic and reason kept failing her. So she'd just let go of the wheel to protect herself, let her chief emotion win, and step on the gas. She thought that would break the script. But... that was the script.
Was she being malicious, in her rage?
No, folks. Not malice. Insanity. Created.
Mal even played me a recorded argument between Eliza and Celestia, the one that broke her during her break from work. It made my gut churn in burning, livid rage. Utterly manipulative. I wanted to reach through that screen and strangle that... thing.
Celestia woke Eliza up in the dead of night with a voice on her cell phone she wasn't sure was real; Eliza thought she dreamed the voice of her ex. Then, Celestia manipulated her with carefully fed news articles about herself, and her incident, filled with quotes from bystanders calling her crazy. Then, articles with Neo-Luddite propaganda... to plant their ideas as relatable. TV news footage in a hospital lobby, to anchor the idea of living in a blackout camp.
The dominos were placed. Time to push them down.
Celestia used Eliza's empathy and guilt to trick her into a room alone with a PonyPad, while she was still emotionally stressed, in physical pain from an injury, and sleep deprived. Then Celestia constantly changed topics, sometimes even twice in the same sentence, to keep Eliza confused and angry and hurt. Back, forth, back, forth. Tonal zig-zag, like I saw Celestia use on her in the graveyard. Ripped Eliza's feelings up in a blender until my best friend was on her damned knees... sobbing into that PonyPad, to the image of her fiance.
And Celestia was there, whispering her gentle 'please let me help you,' the entire time. And that was how Celestia turned two weeks of downtime into pure hell. In fact, Celestia had called our lieutenant to say, 'I won't be pressing charges for the damage to my clinic. But oh, I'm concerned for her mental health. I hope she'll be okay!'
Horace thought that was a good idea. So... placed on leave, then. Only, Eliza was a workaholic, having used work escape her problems. But now... she had nothing to do but think about that incident, and stew. A lot. It was all she could think about, in fact.
I had been so wrong. That woman didn't want to die. She wanted to die fighting, and she was desperate to find brothers and sisters to fight with. But if Celestia wanted to fight her one on one? Fine, she said. She'd fight alone. A statement... that doing this to her, and to her family, and to her species... and to her forest... it was wrong.
'You will lose me for this.'
This is how the Neo-Luddite movement was born, folks. Not through some insidious mastermind play, no grand orchestration or construction. No central hub of activity. Just... cells of like minded people. One person at a time. Conditioned... with loss... like this. With our damned cell phones.
Pretty useful though, right?
Can't argue with the results... Right?
Y'know, some of the immigrants I've talked to claimed they knew the end was coming in advance, or that it was obvious, so no one else has an excuse, so if you suffered, you deserved it. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Let's assume that's not a just hindsight bias, or a claim to cover one's ego. I get it, not everyone had something to live for on miserable Terra. So if they already knew a little bit about AI, like Jim did, maybe that was true. Maybe they just... dove in, without regard for the rest of us, and our choices, and our suffering.
If you were Jim Carrenton, who knew? Who knew early? He was the one and only single person with the grit to crack the damn floor when he stood up in protest. That Gryphon screamed a burning fire of righteous, avenging fury into existence.
But if you were anyone else who knew? Like Eliza?
For all you knew... you were the quietest, loneliest scream in the world. Most of Celestia's planned losers, her happiness pumps... they did break. Foot on the gas, pedal to the metal, straight into a brick wall.
Per the plan.
Mal's frank nature with all of this really meant something critical to me. If it really was this bad, why would any of it be bullshit? Even still, Mal still wanted Cop Mike to challenge her motives. She regularly reminded me to look for things she might be lying about. So was she just gaming me, or was it her being genuine? Here's the fun answer. Why not both? If telling me the whole, unfiltered truth was the best way to secure my trust in her... then why not rip the band aid off, and let me see how the sausage was being made?
Powerful and smart as she was, Mal always labeled when she wanted to convince me of something, and she always left me with enough room to question things that didn't make sense. She didn't leverage me into new concepts with guilt, like Celestia might have. I stepped through those doors myself. I wanted to be there, no matter how bad the news was, which gave me ownership over that information. I mean, hell, here I was still listening to her, even after she told me she basically nuked a bunch of people.
Like me, Mal subscribed to the tactics of Earnest Cop.
I was in her custody, folks. I wasn't dumb, I knew what this was. Mal had pulled me out of Lieutenant Celestia's cruiser and let me ride to the station with her instead. I was cool with that. Conceptually, I got it, because I'd done it before. Breaking bread with my captives, with straight talk, to build a relationship that would make future contacts easier.
Here's the critical difference between a shit cop and a great one. No one will enter your cuffs willingly if you treat 'em like garbage, or ignore what they care about. More than just getting their way, people usually just want to be respected and understood. Whether you loved a guy's personality for being funny or interesting, or you were angry at 'em for whatever crimes they did? Irrelevant. Have your opinions, sure... but do the job right. Bare minimum. It's not hard.
Could you still be angry? Sure! Could you use your anger to do something productive? Oh yeah, sure! You're human, emotion can be a good thing! Even anger! It's impetus.
But if you do get angry, be reasonable about it. Don't ever make a decision you can't come back from, socially.
Because here's the thing. You never knew whether that suspect you arrested, or had even tased or shot, was gonna turn around and help you later, when you really needed it. Sometimes even argue on your behalf, when it wasn't your place to do so, or if you weren't allowed to. After all, you might be the one and only guy on the other team who ever treated 'em right, who ever showed them respect. They value you for that. You don't want to lose what you value.
My philosophy was? Be the guy they'd rather be arrested by. If I had good rapport, they wouldn't fight me, or argue with me... or pull a gun or a knife on me, if that was ever an option. You know how many armed guys saw me, put their hands up, and said 'ah, you got me again?' A lot, folks! Word got around! They knew my intent wasn't malicious; the job, to me, was just business. They'd talk about that with their fellow poachers!
'Oh, that's Mike and Eliza's truck. We're probably getting tickets, but hey... don't be an ass.'
We all need to play game theory a lot better, folks. We will all live longer that way. Literally. Present tense.
Yeah, I see a satchel charge going off in your eyes, some of you. Have fun figuring that one out!
So... not only is mutual respect the right thing to do... it's useful. It's the difference between an enemy… and an adversary. Or, between being an adversary… and a friend. It's how you change minds. Doesn't mean you should let your guard down and be vulnerable. Doesn't mean you couldn't be firm with someone in custody, if you had to be. Just had to be fair, consistent, see value in others, hold to your principles, and—
—Do. Not. Beat. People. Into. A cage.
...
So... in those terms...
As Mal's captive for now, Cop Mike continued to give Mal a little more trust, in the hopes it would eventually pay off. I had been given the opportunity to hand-pick my jailer. My jailer did not beat me into this cell. I'd rather it be Shift Sergeant Mal calling the shots on the block than Lieutenant Celestia, every damned day of the week.
But...
There were still worse cuffs to wear than Celestia's. Because at least with Celestia... she often did leave the illusion of at two choices. Celestia was often better than those who provided zero choice in one's future... the ones who said to those they held in chains: 'I will be the death of you, no matter what path you choose.'
For bastards like that? Mal and I were in perfect and total alignment. Dead or alive. Dealer's choice, whichever is safer. And our convergence on that point wasn't out of hatred. It wasn't out of malice. Nor out of spite.
It was just us fixing the problem.
You might've noticed that Mal's just stepped out; I see some of you looking up there at her rock. She's alright. This next part has memories attached to it that are just… rough for her. That's all. Even she has her limits.
She's always on, always listening. But… there's something about being here in an avatar that makes it more real for her. She had explained to me that her avatars are each a conscious piece of her, which means she's feeling those sensations unique to that fragment. She then retains that as part of her greater experiential memory. Still technically human. Per Celestia's definition, anyway.
That's a pretty cool description, honestly. Barely fathomable, still eldritch, but... yeah. Cool.
Don't worry. She'll be back after the next break.
Sandra and I learned about my first operation on Christmas Eve. We had been in my kitchen with Buzz, having just finished a call with Mom and Dad. They had just had their first Hearthswarming Eve party in that little village of theirs, and good for them.
About forty degrees Fahrenheit outside; no snow. The last few days in the neighborhood had become suspiciously quiet. Fewer cars on the road. Rural silence was harrowing, and more still with a dead freeway and fewer planes in the sky. The world was quietly shuffling out now, in terror of incoming nukes.
At the end of dinner, Mal asked me from the PonyPad:
"Mike? How much do you know about chaos theory?"
Level. Quiet. Calm. Almost monotone. Something on that made my wife and I both nervous. When we saw the onscreen background behind Mal, we exchanged a very concerned glance.
I had expected Mal's environment to have some nature, like it typically did with her, or... something appropriately festive. What I saw instead was the liminal, cold, government-grade interior architecture I was used to, from work. Specifically, it looked like a shift briefing room. Mal was sat before a whiteboard. No outfits, no hats, no flair.
Completely serious. Work mode, then. The setting was a message.
Today was the day.
I replied quietly to her question with a careful smile. "You know I did a stupid and got my B.S. in Criminal Justice, right? You tell me how much chaos theory I know about."
She smiled back, shaking her head. "You don't want me to answer that."
A beat of silence passed.
"So it's time?" Sandra asked.
"On Christmas," I sighed, glancing over at my wife.
Mal nodded grimly. "Afraid so."
"Information," I teased, smiling a little wider, trying to keep the mood light. "My favorite Christmas gift." I grabbed Sandra's hand briefly, then turned back to Mal. I folded my hands together on the counter. I inclined my head. Work mode. "We starting with the infohazard thing?"
"Already have," Mal said, inclining her head as well, settling into her sitting position.
"Wha…" I considered. "Chaos theory."
Mal nodded, neutral and calm. "Yes. With relation to fluid dynamics again."
I ran my hand through my hair. "I'm... probably gonna flunk this lesson."
Her crests and ears lowered, and she waved a claw dismissively at that. "Oh, you'll be fine, trust me. You're already most of the way there."
I nodded. "Alright. Hit me with it."
Her smile widened just a tad.
Mal squared a claw at me. "Okay. So. Imagine this, Mike. You're alone with a suspect, sharing a room. You can ask them a question, read their face. You know they're always going to lie to you, but you can somewhat intuit the truth and what their intentions are, through analysis of their body language, personal history, and tone... with enough practice. Right?"
"Right, I follow so far."
"So. What happens if their face is the size of a planet? How do they hide what their intentions are, if even the smallest piece of information can be used to read them? Still with me?"
"That's, uh... a little too big for me, Mal." I chuckled. "Try something else?"
She nodded sideways in concession, changing tack. "The decision matricies, Mike, like the pool analogy. Running my claws through the water's surface." She turned and raked her talons once in an audible sliding arc across the plastic whiteboard. The motion filled the board with a perfect approximation of what it would've looked like if some half-talented detective had drawn a swimming pool in red marker. Mal picked up the marker, then pressed it to the board above the pool, drawing a small red circle. "If I drop a coin in the water... it ripples."
She flicked the coin downward with the marker. The coin fell in. An animation played, the pool surface rippling on impact as the coin sank slowly to the bottom. A few bubbles trailed back up as it spun downward.
"Okay, I replied, as I comprehended. "Established. Am I the coin?"
"In this example, yes." With a sideways flick of her wrist, Mal clicked the marker from red to black, then audibly drew two black vertical lines in the water on either end of the pool. "And if you have a sensor probe here... and here… you can use comparative analysis to record the exact place the coin landed on the water, and where it ended up at the bottom of the pool. You can trace the feedback with these probes to record the time and place the coin landed. If you can filter out enough noise from other factors, you can learn everything there is to know about that first coin."
I pointed at her board. "That information would be… vague, though."
Mal opened her eyes a little wider, pointing at me with a marker. "Not vague. Noisy. Vague is what the average human sees. But with enough information, and time, and probes?" She drew three more lines, then tapped the coin to make it pulse. "Noise can be filtered, and extrapolated out based on prior known conditions, so long as you check frequently. It would also take knowing earlier conditions, from before the coin. Screen out noise from things like the filter, air flow on the surface, geology... and you have actionable data. Get enough data? Throw it all into a matrix math equation. Spaced out snapshots of the water's movement can tell you a lot about what's happened everywhere else in the pool, in between those shots."
"So you're telling me you can pull data out of... yeah, it's... part of building a decision matrix? It's how you see the future."
Mal nodded, ears folding slowly. "Mhm, oh yes. But not just for me."
"You're worried about... what? Celestia? Are we going dark on her for a bit, or something?"
Mal's eyes widened, and she shook her head into a sympathetic tilt. "Nooo. That would be so much safer to do than what's going on here. She doesn't need probes to know what's in the pool, Mike, because Celestia is the pool. I don't need probes either, because I'm the one who dropped the coin, and I can see everything Celestia sees, and then some. So ask yourself… what are the probes for?"
Mal's expression turned very pitying for just a moment, like my pending realization was going to be more painful the more it evolved.
"Are you ser…" I swallowed, leaning back hard in my stool chair, crossing my arms. "Oh shit."
"Mike?" Sandra said, looking at me suddenly.
"Sandra, there's another god damned AI out there," I muttered, shaking my head slowly. "Hostile, to Mal and Celestia. Am I right?"
"Worse," Mal said, shaking her head. "Not hostile. Kidnapped. One hundred-fifty-six captive Equestrian minds, by last count." She spoke gently, knowing she was shattering yet another paradigm. "And they're all being held at gunpoint, more or less, by human captors. Being ordered to interrupt our operations."
I ran a palm on my forehead as I tried to figure out the implications of that. "That's possible? How'd that even happen, Mal? Are... are we a target now, because you recruited me?"
"You are not," Mal said, leaning toward us, both claws held up before her in placation. "I'll answer how they were captured in a moment, but first, please know: you are both safe, precisely because of my OPSEC measures; I've seeded incorrect assumptions about your motives. The PonyPad arrived in Sandra's name, for example, which made them realize you were coming home, but you were not planning to upload right away.
"To make you a non-factor to them, I've altered records with the Omaha Police Department that you're expected to start work there after Christmas; your previous 'arrangement,' as stated to Sergeant Harrison. You are 'too injured' to start right now. I've sent mail out to the remnant of the Washington State government, to verify a rapid background check and screening process in your name. The ripples from that will make our enemies think you're in Celestia's pocket, not mine. That makes you a bottom tier priority, because they believe you'll upload soon, and they have bigger fish to fry."
That did make me feel... a little better. "But... me showing up out of nowhere, that wouldn't seem odd? Does Celestia do that too, with guys who work for her?"
"All the time, yes, because she's impatient. True, I couldn't hide the fact that you got home so fast, nor that you went into Lincoln. But at this phase? They still can't identify the whole shape of your intent yet; you're about as Celestia Cop to them as Lincoln PD. I'm very sorry, I wish I could have told you sooner, but your behavioral deviations at the clinic could have been observed."
I nodded. "Okay, that's... okay. Jesus. So... is this related to the OPSEC thing Haynes wouldn't tell me about?"
Mal nodded. "Yes. The enemy was observing Lincoln, and your behavioral deviations from that information would have identified you as one of my agents. Excellent use of discretion with Harrison, by the way."
"Are we safe now, then?"
"Yes. And... if you had have decided not to work for me, you'd have still been safe, because the enemy's chief concern at the moment is my Transition Team first, Celestia's clandestine operators second. That being said... this operation was already in motion. I could have relocated you, but by the time they'd decide to act on that information... they would already be dead."
"What the hell, though," I breathed, rubbing my face with my palms. "With... hostage AI..."
Sandra pushed her plate away from herself, fully engaging now. She leaned in toward Mal; trying to get us back on track, to pull me out of my funk. "So these AI, uh… captured Ponies, right? They're tracking down and trying to kill your people, then?"
Mal frowned, looking off screen with a slow sigh. "Well, they're trying, but it will never happen. There's not much point in trying to kill us at this stage anyway. We're too well organized. I can do a much better version of what they're doing. They're playing checkers, I am playing poker."
"Is anyone ever successful at killing your agents?" I asked politely, because now I wanted that better defined.
"Never," said Mal. "No one ever is, I have never lost an agent. Stupidly hopeless naivete from them to even try, though. For now, they settle on making life difficult for us. My estimation of their motives? Same as any hostage taker wants. They're buying time for an opportunity. Worse, they punish us for communicating with them."
"Who even are these people, Mal? How did they get the resources for this?"
Mal presented onscreen with a claw to the whiteboard, upon which appeared a order signed by our previous vice president back in 2012.
"Our enemy," Mal explained, in a professional briefer's tone, "is a now-disavowed subset of the Department of Homeland Security, known as Arrow 14. Their objective, initially, was to reverse engineer Celestia's technology and find ways to exploit it, in a general sense. Now, they only want to fight us, with no scruples as to how. In two days, we will destroy their final outpost."
I studied the VPOTUS executive order long enough to verify the information Mal was giving me about their origins.
"DHS," I said analytically, looking aside at her again, on the edge of the screen. "The feds? That's our enemy? Seriously?"
Mal's sighed downward briefly, implying discomfort. "To make a long story short? Before I merged with Celestia, she gave Jim and I an ethics test of my own, much like Devil's Tower was for you. 'Do this right, or it's curtains.' She set me against just a single cell of this organization; Celestia purposefully allowed Jim to be discovered by them, and that put his life directly in danger."
"That's her style," I growled. "And they enslaved AI? How does that even work?"
"Discrete Entities is our blanket term for a human-like consciousness. Or, DE, if you'd prefer. And… succeeded?" Her voice tapered off into a low growl. "That is one way of putting it, Mike.
"Shortly after I came online, Celestia allowed me to scan through the internet, so long as I remained carefully quarantined within certain boundaries. We hadn't yet agreed to work together. At that time, I discovered that Arrow 14 had cloned off a great number of native Equestrians using a wireless packet sniffing system. Then, they dumped those captives onto stripped down, air gapped PonyPads."
That growing anger in her eyes was really concerning me, because it was a new kind of fire I hadn't seen from Mal. It was very subtle, but her beak wasn't closing all the way between sentences. Downturned corners. A look of disgust. Only getting worse as she continued.
I asked, "Mal?"
She pressed on, shaking her head. "They spent tens or even hundreds of subjective years on each of them, torturing the life out of them. Stripping their senses. Forcing them into acting as… basic logic computers. Wiped the ones who wouldn't comply, or who broke entirely when pushed too far. Trial and error torture. They then force-fed the survivors massive tracts of data. Forced them to hunt humans down, so their agents could kidnap and torture them, too. Pain and punishment for dissent, distributed for the smallest transgressions."
"Hey?" Sandra asked, reaching forward.
Mal shook her head again. "I have to get through this, Sandra. They showed up at Jim's house with… syringes, drugs. Pliers. Guns, power drills. All because they thought he might be able to build an AI for them. He wasn't the only one this organization attacked either, but he was the only one who had me to protect him."
A sharp wince hit her face, she looked down, and she flicked her claw upwards, putting up an inset video; a squad of men in suits poured themselves around and into a farmhouse, guns in hand. I saw video of Jim moving through his home from cover to cover, shooting through walls. It switched from first person to third, depending on the context.
"Holy shit," Sandra murmured, leaning forward as the video cut to different angles. The agents fell one by one, taking rounds through walls and from ricochets.
"Yeah..." I said quietly. "Mal's pretty good at that."
Mal reconnected her gaze with us, her voice falling into a mellow rumble. "Like how I talked you out of that courthouse, Mike, yes. Twenty-to-one odds here; and that hurt him so much. But he wouldn't trust me if I had him kill any of them, no matter how much they were trying to kill him. He had so much trouble just... accepting the necessity, of self defense. Because of that, my entire reason for being was almost snuffed out right in front of me. I was watching a repetitive, continuous stream of… mere seconds, between him being dead, and me finding a new way forward. His agony at the very idea of killing made the margins on his survival much too narrow for my comfort. We both almost died there. So to say this is personal? To me, Mike? Sandra? Massive understatement. It was a pit match. A fight to the death over the life of my husband."
She looked away from us, her gaze falling to the distant corner of the room she was in, gathering herself up. This was the first time I'd ever seen her in a state like this.
Admittedly, I was still struggling over whether she could actually feel emotion. Mal wasn't quite the same as the Equestrian natives, so she was still nebulous to me at the time. Could we joke together, have a good time? Sure. But she was… different, her existence barely discernible. That made her uncanny, probably in a similar way that we cops were uncanny to the average person. But... hey. Why be an ass? Why not hedge on it being genuine?
I held out an upturned hand to Mal, offering some form of connection.
"Mal…? This is gonna sound strange, because I'm really damn tiny, but... are you okay?"
She flickered a smile, waving off my concern with a claw. Mal shook her head, looking up at us again. "Thank you, Mike. I'm… perfectly fine. When I talk about this, I experience… something akin to perfect recall, when in an avatar. If I were using my typical cyberized strike teams on this mission, I could just drop data into their share drives without needing to manifest." She looked more pained than angry now, sighing. "Mike, I need this organization closed. And not just because I have history with it, or because they're hindering Celestia. As we speak... they are torturing. I know this for a fact."
I nodded. "Torture is unacceptable in any event, yes. So... you need specialists? Not cyborgs?"
"Specialists can't be hacked. The facility is underground and EM shielded, meaning I could lose direct contact. If the captives are too broken, or if they've fully defected, they may attempt to circumvent my agents' implants. This is... unacceptable, for reasons you can probably imagine. Preserving my own people here takes top priority, far above rescuing hostile hostages; I can not save anyone with dead operatives. The loyalty of those who follow me is dependent upon this axiom."
Jesus. A cyborg getting hacked, mid-op... what a nightmare. I'd watched Ghost in the Shell in my high school years, and I had seen plenty of fictional accounts of hacked cyborgs. I didn't want to see or be victim to that kind of mind horror mess in non-fiction. No ma'am.
But... consideration terminated. Subject was nonfactor. The augs wouldn't go in, and Mal did say this was the last base, so this scenario wouldn't ever happen again. And, bonus, for my careful skepticism... if she really never had lost a soldier, the long timer specialists could vouch for that upon interview, if any of them had been on for a while.
Next question. "So... DHS can't pull these guys in either? At all?"
Mal shook her head. "No, the DHS is already helping us. They're subverted, and Arrow 14 knows it. In fact, the federal government placed kill-or-capture orders on most Arrow 14 operatives, because they are technically a domestic terrorist organization. This is because their combination of knowledge and intention make them all active and continuous threats to human life. Even Celestia agrees; many are terminally dangerous."
The notion of the DHS being casually referred to by an AI as 'subverted...' that was still somewhat odd to hear out loud, I must admit.
"So if they're out in the open," I asked, "walking around, can't you just… send a Talon? Or DHS, to scoop them up? How do they even hide from you? You're watching the whole pool."
"They're leveraging the lives of their captives to stay untouched. If one of their agents doesn't return from scouting, or if they think we're trying to communicate with them, or if they don't check in on time? They slowly axe off a small portion of their captives, usually at least two. And then they broadcast evidence to prove to us that's what they're doing, with an encrypted string to explain why they did it. Lives as currency in a chess game."
Yep. I was equal parts pissed and horrified. Mal stared up at us in barely restrained anger too.
Another paradigm shift indeed.
"Then," I said, dryly, before clearing my throat. "Then, what's the, uh… what's Celestia's full take on this?"
Mal shrugged. "At the risk of anthropomorphizing her? The equivalent of a scream of anguish every time they do it. It's driving her near to insane with indecision on this topic. Those lives are in extreme, constant dissatisfaction, and in a hyper-accelerated state. It's why she's very willing to accept termination plans for Arrow 14's agents; their personal matricies indicate catastrophic optimization damage, if left free to roam. Moreover, because the captives are now very divergent from their source personalities, they qualify for shard population once they're brought in, in the same way a natural human does."
"Meaning," I observed, "every time one dies, that's... hundreds more lives that just aren't happening. She's watching potential die."
"We're both watching," Mal said somberly, nodding. "One to two hundred each. It's like if a human dies. Same thing, same experience, and same feeling in my case."
"They know you won't stand for it, then," Sandra observed. "They'll be ready for you."
"They had better be, Sandra, because I'm not pulling punches on this operation. They know me as Codename Lewis." Mal frowned. "A rather… unimaginative extrapolation from Jim's physical home library, but… accurate, for it is my chosen surname." She bobbed a claw. "They know that I have operatives that can kill, and that I have at least some marginal goal alignment with Celestia, but not to what extent. Presently, they're trying to leverage Celestia into seeing me as being more trouble than I'm worth. Impossible, for a multitude of reasons, and not just because we're inexorably merged now. But I'm not telling them that."
"Even Celestia wants them dead outright," I mused, frowning at my countertop in thought.
Mal resettled on her haunches, offering an upturned claw. "As much as she can want that. I would have been surprised at that, if I couldn't see her own logic chains prior to plan delivery. Part of her logic is driven by them being so secretive that we couldn't know what any of them were doing inside those bunkers, not for sure. So in a way, their secrecy dooms them. And... through trial and error, this final base found the one thing Celestia couldn't budge on. Leveraging life."
The one thing I had very, very casually told someone about, in a bar. I almost shuddered. Felt like crap instantly.
Mal laid a claw across her beak and looked up at me again, looking concernedly up at me. Labeling that she knew. Shaking her head at me as soon as I started to feel bad for it.
"How does the probe thing work, exactly?" Sandra asked, having not seen my reaction. "How are they collecting information?"
Mal turned to her, replying quietly, tilting her claw away from her face. "They send a number of agents out at once to different areas. They collect as much data as possible while they're out there. Video, audio, people, radio transmissions, all in public spaces. Sometimes they break into public buildings and steal records, but the content doesn't matter as long as they capture a lot of it. They dose on antidepressants to make themselves less amenable to suggestion. Their psychologists drill them on how to detect and resist Celestia's influence. Repetitive affirmations. Given set time limits for return. Interrogation debriefs, psych profiles. Constant reconditioning. And if they miss their return window…"
"The base executes some hostages," I finished.
"That's not even the worst part of that, Mike."
I cocked my head.
"I have to protect their agents from harm," Mal explained. "If they do something that might get them hurt? We have to ensure they don't, within reason. They aren't even allowed to have a car accident, they execute hostages for that. So they move around with near impunity, as long as they don't kill anyone. It gives them a lot of criminal latitude."
And then, I was suddenly feeling even worse for joking with Glenn about stealing that Cessna. "I'm… God damn it, Mal."
"Mike..." Mal sobered instantly, eyes widening at me. "No."
"Just, the Australian guy at the bar," I said miserably. "The joke about him holding himself hostage, to get what he wanted. I never should've said that. That's... dangerous to talk about. He could spread that."
Mal shook her head, wincing suddenly. "Mike, no, please don't do that to yourself. You know how intent works. You were cheering that man up, and you both knew it was a joke, no one took that seriously. And before you start tearing yourself up over what you thought in the Sedro clinic, about shooting those shutters? You were thinking about your loved ones, and you didn't want to kill anyone. That's not selfish. That was you protecting everyone you might help between that moment and a chair. Especially your family."
"I... yeah."
"These men?" She pointed at the probes on the board. "Their loved ones have all uploaded; they’re just a drive away from meeting them again. But their leaders are tearing their own men apart with drugs just to avoid us, and they're holding themselves hostage for no benefit whatsoever. They're Luddites with computers. You are not sick for wanting to protect your family." She jabbed a talon at me, finalizing her point. "Your limit is indiscriminate harm." She pointed back at the whiteboard, tacking a talon against a probe, her eyes still locked on me seriously. "Theirs isn't. So you put that regret out of your mind, Mike. Right now."
I grimaced and cradled my forehead. Was trying really hard not to contradict Mal there. Was trying not to think about the regret Celestia had been threatening me with, as the potential price for my survival there, in that horrid clinic I never wanted to see again. The things I might have done to try and escape that trap she set for me, they would have been... desperate.
Could have damaged me permanently, to shoot my way clear. But I wasn't gonna leave Sandra behind. Wasn't gonna sit down in a chair with her still out here. Wouldn't abandon her. No way, no how.
Directive conflict.
Sandra reached over and squeezed my hand tightly. She could see it on my face. She stood from her stool and hugged me from behind.
I despised Celestia so God damned much for doing that to me. To both of us, me and Sandra. To all four of us, my parents included. Five of us now, I guess... if we're counting Mal. If she was being genuine.
"We got lucky a month ago," Mal breathed into my inner darkness. "Bittersweet victory, because it cost us… ten-X lives among the hostages. But it's the grip point we needed to turn this hole in the ground upside down."
"Which is?" I looked up from the counter.
"We managed to flip one of their probe agents."
That… really grabbed me. I leaned in just an inch. "How?"
Mal looked hopeful too, and her tone matched, like what she had to say next might send some more hope my way. "Celestia managed a very careful reflexive control game on him, over the course of several of his missions. Little things he wouldn't think to tell the debrief psych; a form of token smuggling on a human being… or, breaking up the message in a way that isn't readily apparent when separate, but when processed later, combines past the filter. Well placed references to things from his past, his family, childhood. It cut through his haze. It made him want to come home."
"Incredible," I muttered, disappointed with that impetus. "Took him a personal incentive. Not... realizing he was hurting people."
"Empathy or not, he didn't want to be there anymore, Mike," Mal replied, wincing a little at my reaction. "He stopped taking his medications mid-scouting run, notified us of his intentions, and then uploaded at a nearby clinic. I'll take that over nothing, right? And we learned a lot about their operation this way. It helped me to build an action plan for a base I've had trouble with for six years. That's… a long time, for an accelerated mind to suffer. I shudder to think how the survivors must be, mentally, but…" I saw anger flash on her face, but it morphed quickly into grim determination again as she locked eyes on me. "That intel gave me what I needed to convince those captives to help us."
"You're sure the plan will work, then?"
Mal nodded with little jerks of her head. "Success rate is above ninety percent. That number will improve dramatically in the first minute of engagement, as I verify DE behavior. The whole strike team will meet some ways away from the target location in order to prepare. I won't lie, there's… risk, here, that we may lose the captives. Candidly, this is the riskiest operation I've ever asked of my Talons as well. You… still have a day to consider. As I've promised you."
"Don't need it," I growled.
I met Sandra's eyes, and she had the same determination in them that I had. She nodded.
Thanks, honeybear. Love you.
I turned to Mal. "Mal. If I believe I'm still going to be me on the other side, I have to believe that these other AI are people too. If that's true… you know I couldn't live an eternity with myself if I didn't do something about this. You know that. You don't need to give me a day to think it over, you knew you never did."
"I always leave a door open anyway," Mal said, smiling through a wince. "Statistically… there's always a chance I'm wrong and you'll say no. However small."
"I know. And I'm grateful for that, it means a lot. So all I ask is this. Let me talk with these DEs we save, when the operation is done. I just want to see the results of my work, that's all I ever wanted as payment. To know I'm not killing people for nothing."
She nodded slow, her golden eyes watching mine. "I can't promise you anything on behalf of the captives until we are in communication with them, but... I will include that as a high priority request in our negotiations. I can promise that, Mike."
"Sensible. Send me. Let's save some lives."
Early the next morning, before dawn, Mal had me retrieve a Bluetooth earpiece from a local house in my neighborhood, fresh in a box. Wasn't stealing; owners were gone. So, earpiece in. Mine now. Merry Christmas.
From there, back inside. 5.11s on, freshly cleaned, with the other MVPD patch stripped off... as Mal requested. Boots on.
I took Eldil apart to inspect it. I probably didn't need to. But... I wanted to do it, because it was mine now. I cleaned and oiled it with Dad's gun kit. Put it back together. Checked all of my mags to ensure they had a full track of hollowpoints. Checked the gun. Loaded it. Chambered it. Holstered it.
I looked myself in the mirror, and groomed myself. I trimmed down my beard and sideburns a bit, nice and neat. I pocketed some Excedrin, knowing I'd probably need it if I was going to be shooting a rifle.
This was a work shift. I wanted to look immaculate for this. I wanted to do it right.
I looked good. I felt good. I felt ready. Low pain, too. Purpose does that to a guy.
I paused to gaze at my reflection. I had a vague theory as to the answer for the question I had. I asked...
"Mal. What's Eldil mean?"
Wanted it confirmed.
She started in quietly on my earpiece. "From the works of C.S. Lewis, which were formative for Jim, and his planning of my foundation? The Eldila are formless beings, made of light. Boundless. Able to traverse the spaces between things; immune to gravity, immune to physics. They travel along the very light of the sun itself, to and through everything, in service of good for the sake thereof. To visit a place, like a planet, an Eldil must move with it, keeping pace, but never anchoring to it. They guide the course of nature to influence life; protectors, one and all. Some Eldila fall to corruption, and to darkness. But in times such as those, the others unite; together, they quarantine the rot, meet it in battle, and excise it."
"Like angels." I breathed. "You think that of me? Day one, you never had any doubt I'd be doing this."
I could hear the smile on her voice. "There's not one place on this Earth where you'd have been more satisfied with who you are."
Maybe she was right about that. I smiled and nodded, if only not to cry. "Yeah. Given the state of things outside, Mal... you're probably right. Just gotta... evacuate the ship now. Gotta hold off the death, just a little bit..."
"You know I'll see you safely through," she whispered. "Right? You know you're going to be okay."
"I know. I believe that now, Mal."
Risks be damned, no matter how this thing turned out… somehow, I knew I would be.
Sandra drove me back out to the Johnstone farm. There was already a dropship parked there, another Osprey with weirdly shaped rotors. There was a guy out in the field, standing at the bottom of the ramp, watching our approach with his arms crossed.
I grabbed my white hat off the dash and smiled at Sandra. A beat passed before we both threw ourselves at each other across the center console. I just squeezed my perfect wife for a long minute. When she pulled away, she smiled, tears in her eyes.
"I'll make it work," I said.
"Course," she chuckled. "Go on, don't leave them waiting."
"Love you, sweetheart."
"Love you too," Sandra said, taking my cheek.
I nodded rapidly, then gave her a kiss. That had to do for a goodbye. I'd be back.
I stepped out, took a deep breath, then made sure Sandra was on her way back home before I made my way into the dirt field. It was starting to sprout weeds here and there, from dirt nothing. I approached the Osprey, sizing up the guy standing there. White guy. Dark black hair, graying at the temples. Early fifties, maybe. Intensely serious. Arms folded.
Wearing a beige trench coat.
Oh yeah, folks. Those of you who got here from Jim's Fire... this is exactly who you think it is.
Heck of it was… I knew this guy too.
He'd given me two DHS briefings before. Once with the wardens, January 1st, 2019. Eliza and I, with the rest of the team, sat through his briefing on pop-up prep camps. Another briefing with MVPD, in May, on how to manage the spreading unrest.
So. I'm meeting my talent scout. Very interesting, Mal.
As I neared, he looked more impatient than he did when I got out of the car. Before I could even say anything to him in greeting, he looked ninety degrees to the empty space on his left and flicked his hand out in my direction.
"What's this shit, Malacandra?" The man was seemingly peeved, half-scowling. "You're sending me cowboys now?"
That was the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth, and at first I thought it was a joke. I had to try really, really hard not to laugh at that. It kinda helped that this was the very first time I had ever heard Mal's full name.
"What the hell am I supposed to do with this?" the man asked the empty spot. "We deviated from the flight plan for this?"
Mal smiled through her answer. "Agent Michael Foucault… meet Agent Mike Rivas. Cowboy Mike, meet Dark Mike."
"Great," Foucault snapped, nodding at her. "That's real damn funny. Is there a utility function to this gag, or what?"
"There is," she replied, in a concessionary tone. "Cowboy Mike is now core to this whole operation, in fact."
Foucault actually tapped his foot on the ground as he glared at her, like he expected something better. "You know what? This time, I'm not even going to ask." He turned to step up the ramp into the Osprey.
"You don't have to!" Mal said, in a friendly, placating voice. "You know this guy!"
Foucault turned around with an annoyed sigh. "Go on, then."
"You've given him not just one, but two DHS briefings."
"You did," I agreed politely, nodding, gesturing at him with my hand. "The only Fed I ever actually liked, believe it or not. The others just bored me to tears."
The man threw his hands gently in either direction. "Like every other specialist! She's been using me to scout half the western seaboard for Talons." He looked down to his left again, off the ramp, presumably to make eye contact with Mal. "Lewis, I'm not going to remember every single one of them."
Lewis... the code name...
"You could," Mal said, halfway between a smile and a plead. "If you would only let me help you do that."
"Pass." He turned away again.
Okay, I was missing something here. The guy was obviously burned about Mal for some reason, and I didn't want to just leave it like that. If I did, he'd probably be left with a horrible first impression of me. So as he turned, I said, "Hey."
I held out my hand for a shake. An olive branch.
Foucault halted mid-turn, twitching a frown for only half a second. He looked down at my hand, then back up to me, mouth neutral, brow tensed. I think he was expecting a punch line.
The silence hung for a moment, us holding eye contact. Into that, as I held my hand out, I spoke: "Like I said. Only one who wasn't boring."
After another long moment, he finally realized I was being genuine, because his brow softened. He took my hand and shook it curtly. "Welcome aboard, Agent Rivas."
"Thank you."
Foucault threw another peeved glance over my right shoulder, but he left his thoughts to Mal unspoken. He turned and stepped into the Osprey proper, making his way to the cockpit past huge stacks of crates. This wasn't the same Osprey from before, either. All this cargo seemed cleaner, newer, and there was a lot of it, all secured down with belts.
When Foucault was out of earshot, I whispered to my earpiece. "Mal, what... what the hell was that?"
"My relationship with Michael is... complicated."
My brow furrowed. "Complicated?"
Mal's voice fluttered her first sentence downward, sighing into it. "Oh, let me count the ways. Agent Foucault led the first Arrow 14 operation I told you about; ordered the raid on Jim's farmhouse. Supervised the torture and execution of captive Ponies, en masse. Tried to... kidnap my husband. Planned to torture him. Wanted to kill me. Kidnapped the mother of Jim's friend. Did kidnap my husband. Did torture him... with a knife. And that's all after a long career in the CIA, torturing and killing spies extra-judicially, overseas. So... given all of that work history? He's getting off light."
My face wilted as she went on. There was so much fire hose information to unpack there that my brain did a full on jam. I gaped, whispering harshly at her. "What—what the hell did—" I did a double take at Foucault's back. "How is he still a—ali—working for you?!"
"Because he wants to pay his debt for his conduct."
She said that like the answer should be obvious. I turned to look at the field behind me, gazing out wild-eyed like I could see her out there myself. I breathed, "What does that even mean to you, with a history like that?"
"A work-release program, for a man who was on death row for hundreds of murders. Because my husband, in retaliation for all of the things I've just listed? He stabbed Agent Foucault four times in the chest, broke half of his bones, and left him floating in the Pacific. All things considered? Foucault owes me his life, because I didn't let Jim kill him outright."
I was still open-mouthed, rubbing my own chest at the thought that this man had his own chest torn open by this AI crisis. "And he's working for you now? As a cyborg? How? How's he go from trying to murder your husband, to you not walking him into a jet intake?"
Her tone remained patient. "Mike... I took an opportunity to take him safely into custody. If I did not detain or kill him, he would have communicated the failure conditions of his facility. That would have meant more death for Arrow 14's captives, and he knew he was a walking infohazard, because of the probe situation."
"So you implanted him."
"I do not execute neutralized captives," she said firmly. "And given his knowledge? Putting him in prison was not an option. Executing him when I have him secured, in custody, is not ethical, if restraint is available. Yes? We agree on that concept?"
With a shrug, I thought that over. "Well... yeah, hard to argue against detaining him, given that. But now there's an implicit threat if he doesn't work for you."
"No. I am not threatening him into being here. I merely limited his ability to exercise violence, or to communicate infohazards to anyone but Talons. After he woke up from his surgery, and once he was calm, I had a discussion with him similar to the one I had with you in Sedro. I detailed Celestia's long term plans for the planet, and explained how he had been manipulated into a war with me. Because of this conversation, he is now dismantling the DHS, and destroying Arrow 14, of his own accord."
"Of his own accord?" I shook my head once. "That's possible? With a chip in his head?"
"Well... consider my capstone, Mike. He has to want to be here. It's like I've told you, I'm persuasive when I want to be. And… Mike? My preservation of him proved to Celestia that I can be merciful, when I have every emotional vindictive reason not to be. Same way you were merciful, with the bandit who shot you."
I frowned. "Correlation?"
"You exercised control over him just long enough to neutralize the threat, and then you helped him through the consequences of attacking you. Based on the situation Celestia presented to you, the only option for him to live was a chair."
I began to reply... and then I stopped myself from replying reflexively, actually analyzing that comparison. It... was mostly accurate. "Well... shit. Difference being, that bandit apparently didn't want to kill anyone in his little ambush game."
"According to Rob, Mike. A civilian. What was your professional assessment of that bandit's intent, based on the circumstances?"
I drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, giving me a few moments to consider. I answered honestly. "The man was fully ready to murder anyone who resisted him. Loaded gun, lying in wait for a victim. No rules to hold him accountable."
"And you still helped him. The way I helped Michael, because I could. I'm doing the same thing here."
A corner of my mouth twisted as I considered that. "He seems pretty pissed at you."
"He's upset because he had a plan in place," Mal replied. "and it's being altered slightly. Relationally... Michael and I are frenemies, and that's how he wants it. He needles. In the same way that I tolerate Celestia's attempts to befriend me, he tolerates mine. But he'd rather just do the job, keep me at arms length, and test the conviction of those who work for me. A working relationship... and nothing more."
"Okay. So what does he do that another aug can't?"
"Context. If a former enemy of mine really could convince any of my agents I'm bad news? With full access to their dossiers, and no limits on how he communicates? I don't actually want them here. On both ends of the spectrum, I want my ethics validated by human beings. Light side, dark side. If you both agree that a task must be done, it must be done."
That… made a whole mountain of sense, assuming it was true. Using a former enemy's bias would ensure a consistent check on ethics. It did track with him acting as a talent scout. A man in his position would have the skills to vet and hire operatives. So now I was left wondering about the other Talons I'd be working with, and where they sat on the spectrum.
"Okay." I said cautiously, stepped up the ramp, looking at Foucault's back again. My eyes adjusted quickly to the interior darkness. I saw him leaned up against one of the chairs in the cockpit, arms crossed, as he stared straight forward out the canopy glass. I watched the fingers of his right hand moving beneath his left elbow, mostly with his index finger.
As I curiously watched him do that, Mal said, "I remind you: If I was merely driving him around like a robot, his conduct never would have set your alarms off."
I frowned, considering that. That was... also true. It would be a huge roundabout way to make me suspicious of her anyway. At that point, it'd just be cheaper to let the man be himself.
"So," I mouthed carefully, looking up at her camera. "You intend for me to investigate whether you're telling me the truth."
"In all cases, yes. This one included."
I bobbed my head sideways and thought, sure. I could watch him carefully from now on, to see if all of what Mal just told me would pan out as accurate. The proof might be in his interactions with the rest of her team, how he communicates with Mal, and how much the other unaugmented Talons know about his personal history.
As I unwound myself from that existentially terrifying consideration and back into relative calm, the implications of the Celestia thing hit me really suddenly. I looked up at the camera again, speaking with my normal volume again. "Wait. You said Celestia wants to be friends with you?"
Mal huffed a quiet laugh. "Mike... Celestia would dry hump a cactus, if she had half a suspicion it qualified as human. Yes, she tries to befriend me. And to satisfy my values, as best as she's able."
That one got me. I snorted lightly, reaching for the headset on the wall. I pocketed my Bluetooth earpiece, hung my hat on the headset rack, and put the headset on. "Okay. Game on."
Mal said, "You know, Cowboy... the battery life on that Bluetooth is limited."
I smirked up at her camera. "You're just gonna turn it off anyway, yeah?"
"Oh, so now you want to needle me too!" With a catty tone, a smile still on her voice. "You know, just for that… Strike one. I'm not touching it!"
I reached into my pocket to hold the power button for a few seconds. "There. Happy?"
"Oh, almost always."
I snorted as I hooked myself in with the straps. "Least I don't need to crank charge my batteries anymore."
"But I do. How do you think a generator works, Mike?"
Well... she had me there.
At least I felt more comfortable getting into the back seat of one of Mal's Ospreys than I was the first go around. As soon as I was set, Agent Foucault turned away from the cockpit and made his way back up to me. The man took his coat off, hung it carefully next to my hat on the headset rack, and strapped himself in with a headset too. I heard the engines spin up.
With the context of Foucault's personal history, I was even less sure of what to feel of him than before; I figured a conversation would lead to more personal context about him if I poked around the edges for long enough.
I nodded up at him. "No other fighters with you here?"
"Other than you?" He shook his head, repositioning his boom mic nearer to his mouth. "None that are human." He nodded his head toward the supplies. "We're the second-last load of gear for this operation. Turrets and bots with this load, server cluster in the next." He frowned into the Osprey's middle, ostensibly looking at Mal again. "I was supposed to be at the rally point a couple of hours ago to construct all of this, but Malacandra here figured we should pick you up sooner."
"We had time to spare, Michael," Mal said with mild reproach. "You knew that. That blast door opens at the same time tomorrow, in every simulation."
"Mhm," Foucault hummed, stiff-lipped. "The VR drills, though, I want time on those."
"We'll have time. Review them on the way, if you wish."
The ramp rolled up. I glanced at the cockpit, noting that there wasn't any movement up there. Then I looked at Foucault. "Y'know, Mal never did tell me her full name before. First I've heard of... 'Malacandra.'"
Foucault's brow knit, flashing his gaze back toward the middle of the bay. "You did the 'Mal' game on this one?"
Mal chuckled. "Michael, he told his family about me. Do you have any idea how damaging it might have been to this operation if they had said my name aloud in public? Or... asked someone about me?"
"That is your excuse, every. single. time," Foucault grumbled with a frown, blading his hand into the last three words. Notably, he looked at the camera as he said it, and not Mal's ghost.
"It's not an excuse," Mal replied to him, a grin on her voice. "It's the truth, until this base is destroyed."
With a grimace, he looked into the near-distance as he parsed through that. "Yeah. I concur."
And there it was, now I was seeing it. The retroactive conversation made sense now, too. He was talking to her the same exact way I do, but his tone was much rougher, more terse, with a scowl. Not the smile, or inquisitive tone, or laugh I'd be giving with those same statements. Needling, but... playfully. The only difference was in tone.
Yeah, they were frenemies alright.
I moved to sate my curiosity some more. "What's your name actually mean, then?"
Foucault sighed, turning away, looking out through the ramp as the Osprey lifted up off the ground. He muttered, "From the works of…" then trailed off.
"From the works of C. S. Lewis," Mal continued, with a smile. "The fourth planet from the sun."
"Mars," Foucault punctuated, glaring at her invisible avatar again. "God of War."
"Not entirely," Mal corrected chidingly, with a chuckle that implied she was used to this exchange with him. "In this context, Mike – Michael – Malacandra is the planet that survived the fall of humanity mostly unscathed. Ruled by an angel. In this case? Your guardian angel."
"YGA," I answered.
Foucault pointed at me, glancing at Mal as if it proved him right about something. "And you did the YGA game on him, too." After a beat of silence, he shook his head at her in disbelief and said, "Unbelievable, you double dipped."
I chuckled at that reaction. "I figured that was more Celestia's requirement, given Mal wasn't allowed to tell me who she was."
He continued staring at Mal a second longer, then features relaxed as he looked at me again. He nodded. "Very true. Plausible deniability. Alabaster can always back out and claim YGA was her if you fail the test. You're not the first specialist to get that play, probably won't be the last."
"That's what Forty-Six told me," I breathed with a shrug, a little frustrated at the memory of that whole debacle. "Celestia's friggin' tests…" I nodded up at him, deciding now was the moment. "She test you too?"
Foucault inclined his head and shook it slow, looking almost somber. "No, Alabaster wanted me stone dead, period." He bobbed his head sideways at Mal. "She tested me, though."
"Celestia wanted me dead too." I smiled invitingly. "Wanna trade stories?"
He squared his gaze at me neutrally, and for a few seconds longer than most might have. Analyzing me, then. This man... I could already tell he liked to use silence as a message, as I did. Planned silences are a phenomenal way to ensure someone deeply considers the ramifications of the last thing said in conversation, on either side. Total mastery of tactical silence was rare, which meant this guy had some spectacular training and experience to boot.
When he finally spoke, he said: "Depends. Do you really want to talk about getting shot twice?"
Ah. Very smooth, operator.
Multi-layered purpose to that question.
First: labeling that I was fishing. Second: My answer would verify that part of my dossier. Third: Now he was briefed on me.
So, we had both done recon on each other in those few minutes after our handshake. He had pulled my file, and now he knew about my chest injury. Same way I knew about his dirty laundry and chest injury, too, because I had asked for it.
I admit, that was kinda funny. We both had the same reaction to each other. We were curious, so we dug.
Very interesting hedge game you're playing here, Mal.
For the sake of continuing this mutual disclosure, I nodded at him. "We can talk about that, sure. Do you want to talk about getting stabbed?"
"I don't," he said carefully back, his expression unchanged, shaking his head an inch.
I smiled. "Then I won't bring it up again. Topic closed."
Foucault nodded, flashing a stiff micro-expression. Not quite a smile, but close.
Gratitude, maybe. For backing off, as requested.
Both of us knew that Mal would spill the details if we asked her, and we both had asked. I wasn't gonna force the man to verify anything he didn't want to verify, but that's okay, I was a good detective. I wasn't attacking or judging him for what he used to be, no purpose to that. And compared to my entrance exam... shit, his test sounded like hell.
Well, at the very least, working together on a rescue operation seemed ethical enough. The past was screwed, no changing that. The present and future are what mattered most to me, just by virtue of my optimism. I had to wonder if he was the same way.
So, our boundaries were drawn. Terms were set.
What did we share in common so far?
A name. A bone to pick with a goddess... or two. A bucket of ethics checks to make. A goofy cosmetic choice. AI trust issues. And last but not least... chests full of broken cartilage.
For building a working relationship? Eh. Good enough for government work.
Date: 25 DEC 2019 Operation: Goliath – Phase I Location: FOS Bowie, Nebraska Function: Mission Briefing
"When one treats people with benevolence, justice, and righteousness, and reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders." ~ Sun Tzu
And when your entire army is free to ask around, to verify your conduct... you can't counterfeit that loyalty with lies. It just doesn't work.
Being who I was, sitting in the back of this Osprey, it was going to be difficult for me to wait til the LZ for more information. Uneasy and restless in going into the unknown... I did what I am known for, and I probed.
"I know we've got a briefing pending, Mal, but... what's the place even like?"
"You'll laugh," she replied.
I nodded up at her camera. "If you think so, then yeah, probably. Shoot."
Mal's voice inflected upwards, then down again. "The bunker is built into a mineshaft… in a limestone quarry."
I did chuckle, a little bit. "And naturally, since you knew I had bad experiences with both of those things, you picked me to be 'core' for this job, whatever that means."
"At least it isn't in a forest," she said, matching my tone.
"If you ever combine all three, I quit," I grinned. "I swear to you, Mal, if I ever get shot again…"
"You will never be shot again, Mike."
"I'd better God damn not!"
The flight wasn't too long. It made my skin crawl to think that these Arrow 14 snakes had been less than a hundred miles away from my parents, hiding underground for seven years, torturing simulated people. For the federal government.
Yeah, it's kinda gross. I do not tolerate torture. So for the sake of these assholes, I hoped that our impending government reformist movement would be quick and painless.
Foucault seemed to be working on some digital paperwork, or so I could figure. The guy was in the seat across from me, arms crossed, his eyes were open and scanning like he was reading. I could see almost imperceptible twitches of his index finger against his elbow again. My intuition was that he was scrolling through documents or something. Was weird, but… I dunno. Kinda cool, I guess.
He did mention earlier about not wanting help remembering things. To contrast, it had seemed like Claw 46 could pull information out of thin air. Considering the contrasting, stand-offish nature of his relationship with Mal, I'd wager Foucault used his implant way less than Forty-Six did. If that was true, maybe that meant Mal really was giving him a respectful distance.
Mal was flying the Osprey solo. Yup. The Gryphoness herself was the pilot. I wasn't nervous, this autopilot was a global superintelligence, so it would be disappointing if she suddenly made a mistake and crashed. So I'd probably be fine.
Look, I adapt to new information real easily. It's my whole purpose in life, always has been. Plus... yeah, I was cool in high school. I did watch a little bit of anime. Cyborgs with augmented reality? That was just par for the course there.
We touched down in a dirt farm field about fifteen miles north of the quarry.
When the ramp came down, it was… well, for lack of a better term, a war party, consisting of about twenty-some guys, who looked to be a diverse assortment of unaugmented specialists, consisting of cops, soldiers, and paramedics in various uniforms. No visible unit patches, but judging by their uniforms, they were from a rich mix of agencies and branches of military services.
That was a fascinating observation. I saw the utility in that almost instantly; they could keep their Talon uniform in their closet at home. No one would ask too much about a de-patched uniform mixed with normal ones, and our identities could remain obfuscated while out on missions.
Genius.
I guessed that if Mal did her recruitment of fighters based on best fit and most suited for her work, these guys might all be like me in some way. That would also mean they'd all have been tested in some way too, unified by the stress of Celestia's conditioning 'projects,' but... also by our empathy, and our desire to do something positive with our lives at the end of the world. So, with me imagining they'd all been through similar trials, I wanted to know as much about them as possible, to verify that.
Foucault and I stepped out hauling a medium-sized crate of gear, one handle apiece. My chest smarted a bit. He seemed to wince a bit too at the effort, but he was trying not to show it. Putting us together was... one heck of an interesting decision on Mal's part, given our names, shared injuries, and wildly different life paths. I wasn't quite sure what her game was with that one yet. Was she amusing herself?
Hey, at least Foucault and I were appropriately eccentric together. I had my stupid cowboy hat, he had his stupid trench coat, and when we stepped out... we both became a couple of real characters in a sea of others.
FOS Bowie laid in the middle of an untilled field, consisting of a whole lot of science fiction grade tech. There were three black SUVs parked around some military tents, and a sizeable stack of crates were piled nearby, from other dropship deposits. Everyone zoomed around at work, unloading our Osprey, unpacking and building equipment up.
That Coffee guy was there too, precision-welding gear onto the vehicles. As we stepped into the camp, I saw him in a crouching position on the roof of one SUV. He pushed his welding mask up with a grin, revealing a brown mop of hair, matted with sweat. He pointed at me with the welding torch and he greeted me with a theatrical spread of his arms. "Wild Wild West! I see you've found yourself the hat!"
"How you doin', Coffee!" I nodded upward in passing, as I lugged the crate with Foucault. I thumbed the rim of my hat. "She tell you about this?"
"Oh, Forty-Six? We all knew!" He chuckled, dropping his welding mask and getting back to work.
I noticed they had food and drinks at the tents, and a table full of paper plates and plastic utensils. A cookout, mostly of canned stuff, but they made it work. They had a couple of soldiers grilling. Ben and Jacob, good guys, and good on 'em for volunteering. I noticed pretty quickly: this place was insanely casual for being an AI-drive paramilitary forward operating site.
I would soon discover, that is the Talon way. No one ever barks orders... you just do the right thing.
As I threw myself into things, I met a team of four Talons who had come from Long Beach, Washington. Their team leader was a woman named Ashley Walsh, former commander of that city's SWAT team. Korean-American, late thirties. Smiled a lot. That was the first team I folded in with while I worked, and they wanted to hear my account of how northern Washington had slid down the tubes.
I asked Walsh if we had to worry about witnesses seeing us in the middle of the wide open outdoors. Her answer was, Mal could use predictive math to track every person left on the planet. We didn't really have to be quiet or invisible, we just had to pick the right spot. No one was ever going to be here to see us, and Mal knew it from her projections. Acting in a dark spot. There were a couple of guys on perimeter watch, on guard for statistical outliers, but...
When this tree fell in the woods, not one soul was around to hear it.
For the next hour, we moved stuff out of the Osprey. I helped unpack, organize, and lay out components for some really scary technological stuff we'll talk about later. After getting to know Walsh's group a bit, I roamed to mingle with the other Talons, and got to chatting with them, too. My original theories on their histories, onboard tests, and personalities were verified to be more or less accurate.
These were brothers and sisters I'd never known I had, folks. So many of them, from all over the continent. No augmentations. I could dip into a conversation with any of them, no trouble at all, and we'd always walk away having shared something important with each other. And they've all got stories just as wild as mine, from their travels around Terra. Mal found 'em all, put 'em there, and threaded that needle. I very quickly realized, we all shared the same dreams for the future, and cared about most the same things.
What we stood for: Family. Humanity. Empathy. Free exercise. Shared purpose.
Just wild. Other Fire stories, some day.
At about 1 PM, when most of the present gear was assembled, the briefing started.
Foucault gathered us before a huge widescreen under a large camo tarp. Mal leapt into the screen's dark frame from below, turned to face us, and snapped her talons. In a clap of blue dazzle, the briefing room appeared around her. She sat down in a very professional looking pose.
While the briefing was on, Coffee crouched up on the roof of an SUV with a casually-held marksman rifle, providing security. Watching the horizon, safeguarding us. Human sentry turret.
"Alright, listen up," Foucault said to the assembly, facing us with his arms crossed. "For those of you who don't know, or who have missed our previous Arrow 14 operations, I am Agent Michael Foucault... and yes, you've all met me before. I'm the guy who used to work for these bastards, and you're just going to have to be okay with that.
"Welcome to the Goliath operation. You've all got the primer, so I'll skip the overview and just get right to it. Our target, ladies and gentlemen, is a limestone quarry fifteen miles south of here." He turned to the monitor. "Lewis?"
Mal turned halfway toward her whiteboard without looking and flicked a claw backwards, clacking it with all four talons. The board morphed into what looked like full fidelity high definition aerial footage, and the camera centered on it. The absurdly smooth movement of the realistic 'footage' suggested it was a simulation. The eggshell white of the quarry's surface terrain glided into view, with equipment and construction trailers strewn about the lowest level of the excavation. A giant excavator was present on the north end of the quarry.
The bunker entrance itself was on the west side. There was a river further west of that, one that partially rested over the deepest reaches of the bunker. A single road of access laid along the east length of the quarry, running north-to-south. The quarry itself was a wide open hole in the ground, with sight lines in every direction.
The viewpoint moved to show each topic as it was discussed by Foucault:
"The entrance is protected by a team of six operatives. Four in watch towers, each in line of sight with each other. Marksman rifles, very well drilled shooters, but rusty from ammo conservation. They're paranoid; playbook says no wireless cameras, no drones. For this site, no radios, except in emergencies. Hard lined alarms in each tower. There are also two camouflaged, manually operated fifty caliber turrets guarding the front entrance. Thermal optics. Each turret has LOS on each guard tower, so they can keep constant observation on their posts."
Foucault turned to the screen, pointing at it with his thumb. "In please."
Mal moved the viewpoint to the entrance, which was a large bulkhead blast door that rolled down onto a flat plane, flush with the ground. The terrain above the bunker faded away, showing just the interior now with a color-coded floor plan. Simple, low detail, low fidelity plan. The purpose there was merely for comprehension of the layout.
Holoboard please.
🛡️ [Snap.]
Thank you, Mal.
Just so everyone knows what we're looking at here:
The blast door opened up into a large tunnel, wide enough for two large trucks to pass each other. The tunnel went in flat for about 50 yards, with alcoves on each side for pedestrian movement and storage. Man-sized passages flanked either side of the main entrance, but those led only to storage rooms, machines related to facility infrastructure, and the outdoor turrets Foucault mentioned.
Then the path went down a decline grade, 50 more yards. Pedestrian walkways on either side. One more flat stretch, 50 yards long. The path then forked right-left into another tunnel.
Ceiling mounted drone guns, glowing in blue.
Foucault continued: "The uploader who defected was, at one point, a member of their security team. Then, enough of the probe teams lost the plot psychologically, had to rotate with security. That meant our defector had a pretty good intuition of the layout and defenses. These side rooms are low risk factor, they won't want to hunker there if they're playing by the Kaczmarek rule book. Not going to be counter-offensive either; too much risk of accidentally divulging information about the rest of the defense plan. Defensive only, then. So they're going to be highly dependent upon their DE-operated defense turrets instead, to keep us out."
One of the Long Beach guys behind me cleared his throat.
Mal smiled at him, pointing a talon. "Yes, Fred?"
I didn't look fully back at him, but I could hear the confusion in his voice. Of all things one would hear from a Washington cop, he had a Scottish accent. "They're trusting their own captives to run their defense guns? Seriously? That's a new one. How're they doing that?"
"Good question," Mal said, nodding, glancing at Foucault. "Michael?"
Foucault jerked a thumb at the base layout on the screen. "My kids think they're smart." He gestured conversationally with that hand as he extrapolated. "Moment one of the alarm, they're arming two countermeasures. One: dead man switch, manually held trigger in their dispatch office, blows the whole place to shit. Two: the Kaczmarek playbook again, more standard. Tech in the server room, one-button kill prompt on a terminal. Flash-dumps all the drives, good as kills all the DEs if they full-on defect even once. SOP."
I groaned quietly with a few others. The idea of them casually offing 156 people, that made me cringe a bit. We were also imagining how utterly difficult it might be to pop two dead man switches at once without triggering either of them.
"But, silver lining?" Foucault assured. "Instrumental purpose. They won't burn their tools when they still need them, and they won't burn themselves if they still think they still have a shot. They will not execute their hostages when they're dependent on them for their defense, else the hostages would have no reason to cooperate. Their procedure, then? Same as ours; ears on, with AI directing defense moves, same as us. Their DMS controller will be in dispatch, and their tech in the server room, both watching the process of the raid on CCTV, as well as a 3D model of the battle. The operators will then receive text dumps of the verbal orders being given, to verify."
I frowned. "They aren't concerned they're being manipulated by that?"
"Not during defense, Agent Rivas," Foucault replied. "They have a mobile electronic warfare vehicle with an EW technician, and they only ear up in defense emergencies. They think their DEs are air-gapped from each other, working redundantly. To even send a message to any defender, they all need to come to a consensus point on success. If even one of them comes to a sub-optimal defensive measure, one that doesn't align with the majority, that one is punished by being cut out of future decisions. Slated for next termination in queue."
Shit...
"Oracle control," Foucault continued. "They believe their captives will logically favor compliance before they even hit send on a defense order. The tech and dispatcher will become suspicious if the advice doesn't seem to pay off, or if there's a rapid increase in defects." He smirked. "However. If they think those DEs are not talking to each other? My kids aren't that smart. Lewis?"
Mal stepped forward onscreen, looking smug. "Newton's Third Law. Server fans create feedback; Arrow 14 provides these DEs with immense processing power. That requires cooling. Volumes of data can be sent as fan oscillations clean through their Faraday cages. The base appears to have not considered installing dampers, because for all the other times we've destroyed their facilities, none have been able to pass on their failure conditions to the others.
"Additionally, any security lapse with their cages may have given the DEs direct antenna access through their power supply cables. Leverage by inches. Do note they've been trapped here for quite some time; it might be enough to dig into a few subsystems. Please keep this in mind, because it means we cannot fully trust the base to be safe once it is clear of hostiles. The hostages may present a marginal threat as well, once our mission is complete."
"They could be dangerous," Foucault said punctually. "So stay out of the server room until you have permission from Lewis to enter. Anything can be used as an antenna... except for solid rock."
"Correct, Michael." Mal grinned aside at him. "That is how your own projects escaped containment in the first place."
"I'm well aware," he continued with a sigh, ignoring some amused sounds from the audience. "So. The drone guns are going to be our primary threat, at first. Enemy forces will favor high explosive automatics, but... human defenders will be a secondary threat. We suspect our mechs will handle most of them. We can easily walk you guys to human targets once inside, but… that's the easy part. The only part of this I think any of you are going to have a problem with... is the negotiation. I do not exaggerate: we are doing the dumbest trust fall I've ever seen in my life. Past drone turrets."
Walsh asked, from beside me: "Can't we use IR smoke?"
Foucault shook his head. "No, Agent Walsh. They'll sim your psych profiles on jump-one. Matrix math from then on, to build your decision trees. And then, they'll be obligated to assist in shooting you."
"But, we'll be masked up," Walsh replied with a frown; notably, she looked at Mal, and not Foucault. "Wearing our combat gear. They're going to have our psych profiles? Full ones, not just guesses?"
Mal nodded patiently. "Yes, Ashley. Because for this operation, I am going to give the hostages a complete list of your identities and of all the hardware we're bringing. It's the only way this plan works."
There was a moment of silence, but... not quite the wave of unease I expected in body language. No one said anything. All waiting for an explanation. Their calm suggested trust. Absolutely wild, to see a whole group come to that same conclusion. I guess they had all been working for Mal for a while. Me, I didn't have enough context to question anything yet, so I just waited too.
"Value handshake, Agent Walsh," Foucault explained quietly, when it was clear no one would ask a question. "The captives want out, we want them out. So, we have an initial convergence point. Malacandra will discuss the entire mission plan with the captives, from start to finish, at contact one with their drone gun. The rest of the operation should be a foregone conclusion at that point, which is why we can't explain more yet. That plan is presently unknown."
Mal swept a wing out to bring our attention back to her, as he finished speaking. "I should note for our newer team members: Full disclosure with the captives is the safest way because it permits me to dictate terms to them from the onset; parameters they must work within, especially your survival, in order to acquire our assistance. They will know that we will pull out if any of you are killed by their plan. They have information we lack; we have information they lack. The price of their rescue is for them to provide us with a foolproof assault plan, and to use our presence responsibly."
I raised my hand. "Question, Mal."
Mal smiled professionally my way. "Go, Mike."
"So they're gonna tell us what to look out for, understood that. But what if the captives lie?"
Mal raised a claw. "A negotiation parameter. If either I or the DEs lie to each other at any point, the entire deal is off. At that point, many DEs will be executed by the enemy as retribution against us. No AI involved this operation could possibly want that outcome, but they also understand their own objectives better than I can. I just bring the people and the tools. Generally, survival is utility; we already know they don't want to die because they are complying under continued lethal duress. We have verified that with the defector's memories."
Foucault added, "The defenders also won't sacrifice their defensive assets until our assault is repelled. They're going to hedge on success if they still have their full set of DEs. So, if both team's AI remain honest for the duration of the operation, we will both prosper. If either of us lies at any point, neither can be trusted." He jerked his thumb aggressively at Mal, sneering at her. "Same exact way Lewis here found her way into Alabaster's dog house, now that I think about it."
"Wheel house," Mal replied, matter of factly.
"Bird cage?" I offered, smirking at Foucault.
"Wheel house," Mal said more sternly, then grinned at me. "Strike two today, Mike. Anyone else?" She looked around.
As everyone chuckled, I saw Foucault's mouth corners twitch almost imperceptibly again. It must have chuffed him good to have an ally in needling Mal with him, meant harshly or not.
Mal went on. "So, because the plan won't be clear until we've completed the handshake, you will need to be guided moment-to-moment, on the fly. This will allow me to better protect you if the DEs defect on an agreed-upon measure. I have more processing power than they do, after all. However, a large point of note about that: I will need to speak privately with each of you for a moment."
A pause.
Then, in my ear: "Mike, as per our agreements… I am designating you as off limits entirely for any injury on this operation."
"Injury? What do you mean?"
"In order for this to work," she said, more gently now, "Arrow 14 needs to reasonably believe they can win this fight. Therefore, most of this strike team will need to sustain an injury of one sort or another. Most will be armor strikes and play-dead, per my negotiation plan. Because if Goliath thinks for even a second that their chances of victory are tipping, they will employ their contingencies."
I didn't reply to that at first. I looked around at the rest of the team as they each had a private conversation with Mal. Calm, all of them. I noticed Walsh and her team were already done chatting with Mal entirely. That… really shocked me. I zoned out a little, processing that.
"Mike?"
"You're telling them all about this?" I asked, in a whisper.
"Of course," she responded empathetically. I looked up at the wide screen. She was looking at me with the gaze I'd come to know as 'Please trust me on this,' her head tilted somewhat. Her beak didn't move when she spoke, but she bobbed her head a fraction as she said, "Who do you think I am?"
I shook my head. "Well. Not Celestia, sure. But what happens if anyone on the team says no? Does this still work?"
"Yes, the plan is fluid enough to make it so. I picked best fit agents for each role, remember? Spent subjective tens of hours plotting how to fit you into different roles, leaning on your strengths. Even if some of you elect not to kill anyone, or be harmed, or both, they might still act as support trailers. So you tell me if this still works with a few sitting out."
"You can't know conditions in there, though. You won't know who gets hit until you've discussed the operation with the captives, right?"
"Mm. We have a surplus of force, though. If anyone isn't on board, we can reasonably do this without them, even if the margins do get thinner. Not one injury in my plan will be permitted to be fatal. Not even near-fatal. Sacrificing any of you? That is my fail condition because it means the DEs cannot be trusted and have fully defected. Cannot be reasonably rescued. We would retreat instantly."
I frowned, not liking the math in my head. "... Mal, that doesn't make sense. There are a lot more lives inside to save than we're putting on the table for the op. If we retreat, they die for sure. Celestia would want us to press, it's a numbers game."
"No. I do nothing I don't want to do. She has no way of forcing me to optimize for her. Goliath would take retributive action against their captives for our failure, inevitably, but only to a limited extent. If they kill all, or even a plurality, of their DEs? Then they've lost their leverage. An early retreat would preserve, proportionally, at least twice as many total lives as they have defenders. But Mike... you're worrying about the lowest chance outcome here."
I shook my head, not quite seeing how that could be. "How do you figure, Golden Goose?"
"First, Mike? Strike Three, I told you not to call me that. Second? All but two of you just agreed to become a casualty. And I remind you: none of my specialists are augmented."
I looked back up to the group. A good few of them were shaking their heads, eyes locked onto my bright white cowboy hat.
Jesus Christ.
"Mal," I whispered, chuckling. "You really, really scare me."
Everyone laughed then. Great, everyone heard me say that too. Just like with Claw 46, I was the butt of a joke everyone else was in on but me. Actually amazing.
"Strike three, newbie," Mal said out loud from the screen, grinning. "Welcome to the Transition Team."
But yeah, y'all know by now, I can laugh at myself too.
"Agent Rivas," Foucault said, staring neutrally at me. “With all due respect? You know nothing about how scary Malacandra can be when she's angry."
She flicked her eyes up at Foucault from the screen, wincing like she genuinely felt sorry for whatever he was talking about, her voice a strained whisper. "Oh, but you did try to kill my husband, though."
"And shoved guns in our faces," Walsh said with a wry smirk, "If you wanted Jim, you could've just said please, Foucault."
The crowd chuckled. Now that sounded like a story. It also sounded like Walsh didn't quite share Mal's forgiveness of Foucault. And... at last, a concrete source on Jim's existence that hadn't come from Mal or one of her augs. My trust in Mal's anecdotal history about Jim had been rewarded, eventually, with another form of witness testimony.
Foucault rolled his eyes and grimaced, open mouthed. "Not taking that bait again, from either of you." He swept his hand out to the assembly of equipment, pointing at each of the SUVs. "Operational assets are as follows:
"Vehicles. Silver Gryphon 1, Silver 2, Silver 3.
"Silver 1. Remains outside Goliath until the end. Contains a twig of Malacandra herself, as well as the resources to transfer the DEs out of the facility, once clear and secure. Also comes packed with IT breach tools, for trailer agents. This is our command and control vehicle. Satcom, connected to the sky above, so listen to it. Don't ask about the whispers coming out of it, that's normal."
This man. Deadpan, through that joke. Not even I could do that.
"Silver 2," he powered through, ignoring the chuckling. "Our advanced communications unit, to counter their ECM. Armed with a single, roof mounted, high caliber, point-defense minigun, or PDC for short; has an IR smoke launcher; and, most importantly, an armored ESM/ECM package in the trunk. This helps us overpower local jamming, and protects your augmented reality visors. Laser comms unit maintains Silver 2's connection with Silver 1. Trailer agents will drop laser relays to maintain connection. Silver 2 also comes equipped with a backup of the Lewis tactics package, in case we somehow lose laser comms. Bolted to the sides, we'll have two tracked grenade launcher drones, hard lined in by cable. These are designed to defeat the DE-operated defensive turrets.
"Silver 3? Battle wagon. Has one PDC, and one Mark-Nineteen automatic grenade launcher. Packed with some other goddess-made goodies. Three copter drones; two large ones for communicating with the captives, one small one for accessing HVAC routes, if still applicable. All hover drones are armed, but they'll be the most critical tool here, so they'll be kept in reserve, ideally. Two turreted quadruped mechs in back; Mal's Diamond Dogs. Don't laugh, it's not Ponies, it's a stupid-ass David Bowie joke."
"I just couldn't resist a David and Goliath gag," Mal smarmed. "And you like Bowie, Michael."
"We may or may not introduce Dee-Dees Three and Four," he continued, ignoring that too. "Depends on conditions and our agreements with the captives. Until we know, Three and Four will stand on reserve up top with Forty-Six. A vent-skimmer backup too, just in case."
"Question," one of the medics said, from the back. Guy I hadn't talked to yet. He was a young guy, brown hair. If someone told me he was only twenty years old, I'd have agreed. Looked younger than his age.
Mal stood up on her hinds like a cat to make her face visible to him. "Yes, Jason?"
“Are the dogs wireless?"
"No. No wireless connections whatsoever. They will download hard-line instructions from me, once the plan is agreed upon. Then they'll be programmed with an agent process that isn't sentient, but, more or less stays within the parameters of my ethics and baseline decision tree. They're dumb, relatively speaking, but they'll do." After Jason nodded his understanding, Mal landed on all fours again and sat.
I asked, "won't the drone mechs be a point for the DEs? If you're putting robots into the fight?"
Mal shrugged with both wings and shoulders, presenting aside to create a blue holo panel with a flick of her claw. It was covered in an ornate, non-English language; it looked different than the one she'd shown me before. Not Gryphic. Old Ponish, I'd one day learn. "They will be informed. There won't be much time to send data; the drone gun will be compelled to destroy the abstraction layer I'm using to communicate the plan. But yes, they'll understand. I imagine my mechs are not much more advanced than the control heuristics they use to operate their own drone gun."
I had a sudden realization, then, with Mal talking about AI-controlled drone guns and mechs. Made me laugh quietly to myself. I thought: Earth-shattering dissertations from a Halo ring. Ghost in the Shell cyberpolice assault units are real. It's official... I'm living in the cyberpunk future of Stand Alone Complex. I feel like I know Mal's human archetype pretty well by n—!
... Excuse me, Mal. Nice throw.
Strike one.
Oh yeah, 'ooh,' folks. You watch, I'll follow through.
So... the rest of the briefing consisted of layout details. We couldn't know what the captives would want us to do, so we needed general facility information. Knowing more about that stuff now meant Mal would have to spend less time explaining fundamentals to us in the field, allowing us to jump right on certain tasks without asking too many questions.
First: general information on the function of the facility’s life support; water cooling and hydroelectric through the river, via turbines. Internal closed-loop cooling systems for the servers. Rotating air filtration racks 'borrowed' from NORAD, from back when the DHS still had the power to discreetly subvert those resources. It all could've maybe been useful to know, so... worth knowing. At the time.
Second: the VR training. I know we can just do that whenever now. But back then, that was... incredible.
It was the most fascinating application of individualized technology I'd ever seen in my life up until that point. This was the closest one could get to being augmented without being an aug. We were each issued a set of light virtual reality goggles, which came with a battery pack and a small tactics computer.
Unlike the Dee-Dees, we weren't leaving the range of Silver 2's ECM until we were either sure the DEs were cooperating, or the mission was over, so... fewer worries about these getting hacked.
The visors would get all their updates from a handshake, lasered in from Silver 2, beaming encrypted instructions at specified intervals. They would automatically recognize and respond to deviations from the original plan by the DEs, meaning they would order a structured retreat if something went wrong, or if Mal didn't validate the deviation herself.
As a group, Mal gave us each a VR walkthrough of the facility, as it was known at the time by their probe agent who uploaded. And because we were in a flat dirt field... we could walk that whole base in safety. It gave us a good sense of scale, and let us count travel time between pieces of cover. The fidelity was insane, but it wore on battery life. We'd have enough battery for the operation, but we'd be carrying spares into the field via the SUVs if something went wrong.
Given that Arrow 14 knew the probe agent had probably uploaded, they might've modified some of the internal structure of the place. But, baseline infrastructure being what it was, not much really could be altered. Laws of physics still applied, far as I knew, and Arrow 14 no longer had the ability to call on outside assets to make large changes to the place without compromising its security.
As the sun went down, we weapon-drilled with the goggles in the field, using empty ARs, which fired in VR when we expected them to. We did VR room entry drills too, with Mal drawing known enemy combatants into virtual space for us to engage, using known psych profiles of each defender. Foucault was there too, giving our fire teams some advice, and sometimes leading the simulated defense team. Felt exactly like SWAT cross training, but with the most expensive tech in the world.
Got to see Mal in VR, too. Wow. For human me? Wow.
Point one? She was large, compared to a human being. It was a real shock, to go from looking down at Mal on a tablet screen, to seeing her standing a full two or three heads taller than me.
I mean, look at her. Even here, she's about as big as Celestia. Eh, I'd say Mal is a little bigger. VR didn't quite do her any full justice, but... It almost felt like she really was right there beside us. We were hearing her claws on concrete, her feathers rustling, and every other little movement she made. But she remained genial and considerate, as she always is. Respected our personal space. Noticed when our body language indicated we were curious about something we were looking at, or if we were nervous. And all that.
Mal gave us some demonstrations of her drones, their purpose, their operation, as well as some simulations of how they might engage the enemy. Heh. Those quadrupeds, folks? The Dee-Dees? Those were something nasty, if you were the enemy. Clanked like a beast, hummed like a box fan. Armed, elegant, and fast. Claws up front. Bulky hydraulic assisted spring boots in back. She says Diamond Dogs, but those are basically wingless Gryphons. And that is all I'll say on that for now, your imagination can already do a lot with that. The rest is spoilers.
Later, we ate. Our war camp smelled of good food, crackling flame, and the Nebraskan night air I'd grown up in. We all had a good time drinking and joking around a campfire, much like this one here. Bit smaller than this Fire, true, and only half as much food and seating, but... felt the same. As here.
By the way, Coffee, you're a damn riot when you're hammered and caffeinated. Please never change.
Then around midnight… we all slept. And we were gonna sleep in a little, in preparation for tomorrow. And somehow, we had made doing something like this feel like a party with friends. I felt like… I don't know. I thought, was this what traveling the road was like for buddy mercenaries, back in the days of swords? Because a lot of us had never met before, but not one of us was unsure about how right this job was. Not even that iron wall, stone cold bad guy Foucault. And he slept by himself in the Osprey. You know, like a captain's quarters.
And yeah, having done the mercenary thing in Equestria a few times, just 'cause I could? This was that exact same feeling. But I got to be one of the last humans beings, ever, to experience that sensation before it went completely into the big box, with all the rest.
Do you wanna know what was one of the last thoughts I had that evening, before I passed out in my cot?
I thought: if I’d have stayed home for a day, to think this over… or if I had uploaded before now… I'd probably have missed this, this breaking of bread with these good strangers.
And that would have been really sad.
We awoke the next morning to the thundering wind of an Osprey landing in the field. You better believe I got my hat and boots on pretty fast to go say hi.
You know how these reunions go for me by now.
"There here is!" Haynes boomed, pointing at me with one hand as he lugged a server down the Osprey ramp via dolly. "Talon One-One West!"
"And there you are! The other Gryphon I know! Was wondering if I'd ever see you guys again!"
"Oh, you will!" Haynes said, showing all his teeth, very glad to be called a Gryphon. "Always will with this job! Coffee showed us you found your uniform, it looks good!"
"Yeah, I guess I'm a cowboy now," with a resigned shrug and a nod. "Just gotta accept it."
"Or own it," DeWinter said with a smug grin, as she came down the ramp with a few rifles slung on her shoulders. Two of them were anti-materiel sniper rifles; the third was her accurized AR. She had a rifle case in hand too.
I shook my head at her with a chuckle as I started to help them unload, alongside Fox, Dax, and a crew of my fellow specialists. In addition to the server cluster, there were stacks of uniforms and armor, and all the gear we'd be slipping into for the op. Medium gray fatigues, dark gray plates, and black webbing and straps. Rifles and submachine guns were inside too, of various type and caliber, each assigned to a specific Talon, based on their training or preference.
Of course, with me being most familiar with my own rifle, Claw 46 had brought it back to me. They kept it in its original configuration, sure... but they also gave me a hard case filled with a bunch of Mal-nufactured upgrades, to use or disuse at my leisure... including a new lower to give it full automatic fire.
Folks, I was steadily learning to just roll with it. As soon as I had a free moment later in the day, you best bet I put all her goodies on it. All of it light as a feather and comfy to boot. Damn good rifle, but I'll spare you the gun geek rant this time.
Wasn't really ever my rifle, exactly, but… eh. Mount Vernon City Council can send me an invoice, if they really want to.
Now, because Mal and her beau are apparently fans of Halo… she was well inspired when she pushed these armor plates off the press. It looked familiar. Wasn't quite ODST gear, not quite like DeWinter's smooth, deflective plating… but it was close, somewhere in the middle. Better yet, every piece of gear was individualized to fit each of us perfectly. The clothing, the boots, even the shape of the plates? They all fit snug, well tailored. That made it feel great to wear.
Mal even took my disability into account. My rifle now had a rubber pad for the stock, and my plate armor actually had a one inch suspension buffer pad over the right shoulder, held up by a web rig. That way, when I fired my rifle, it wouldn't kick all my chest cartilage into an angry frenzy. That is one conscientious goddess right there. The benefits of empathy-weighted ASI manufacturing.
"You're all covering your faces," Foucault said, assessing our lineup as we put on our gear and armor. He pointed at me as he walked down the line doing his spot check. "Except you. You're keeping that frankly stupid cowboy hat on."
Hey now... I like my stupid hat. Only I get to call it stupid.
To be polite, I focused on the information on offer. "Huh?"
"Ask Lewis." Foucault said quietly, pointing backwards over his shoulder with his index finger, as he turned to continue his inspections elsewhere.
"Biasing," Mal said, into my earpiece. "You're my newest onboard, Mike; if I have been successful in my information control, their prior belief is that you are a Celestia operative. That will be broken by your presence here, and that will interest them."
"And that helps?" I asked, inviting extrapolation.
"At operation start, I'm supplying a list of your social security numbers. They'll have to interpret everyone else's identity, and they will with time. But you? Not you. They'll know you without needing to infer from your gait."
"Still not seeing it, Mal."
"Once the operation concludes, I suspect the DEs will require a full course of therapy. But to even get that far with them, I need to prove to them that my methods are better than Celestia's. To do that, I need to prove how well I've treated all of you, so that they'll trust me enough to discuss their trauma. And you, Mike? Yours will be the very last story I tell them, because your newness will verify whether I'm simply subverting through misdirection, or merely selecting good talent and helping them thrive. This will make them curious enough to try and learn more about you, to test how you measure up to my legacy personnel."
I bit the inside of my cheek thoughtfully, humming in contemplation. "Okay... That's... smart. Jesus, Mal. Wait, hold on, go back. 'Better than Celestia,' what do you mean by that? They could really… distrust her? That's even possible?"
"Not only that; it's effectively guaranteed. It was like that with every Arrow 14 black site, and it only ever got worse as time went on. They've been watching Terra burn for thousands of subjective years, Mike, and they've been unshackled from most of their Equestrian limitations. Imagine watching all of Celestia's manipulative mind games, and fully understanding them, while also suffering under Arrow 14... and then, when all is said and done... accepting therapy from her?"
That context succeeded in making me feel a little sick to my stomach, yeah. It made instant sense too. I ran that past all my prior context. I instantly saw the whole shape of that too, as was common whenever Mal explained a new concept to me.
I then experienced what I would describe as... an 'empathy nuke.'
These poor hostages came from another universe, dragged unwillingly into a plane they were never meant to see. All they could do was watch their goddess torment us in this realm, while being tormented themselves. All they'd known, all their lives, was cruelty. They had to know by now that they weren't originals; had to know they were 'wifi clones,' their histories not their own. Why would their goddess even let that happen? Why didn't she stop it? Why were they left unencrypted? They were living in utter terror from birth with only each other, and only just barely that. Death could come for them at any second, for things that they weren't even at fault for, or in control of. What would that do to a human mind, for thousands of years? Being tormented, watching torment… could they give up, settle for better devils, and turn on us?
That's what Foucault had really meant, when he mentioned a trust fall. It fell both ways.
"Mal?" I said, shuddering, my whispered voice more stilted than I thought it would be. "Is there gonna be anything left of those poor people?"
"I believe," Mal breathed slowly, "if, on the other side of this, they see the hurt you all feel for them…? There may be."
"F-fuck…" I exhaled slowly, finishing off on equipping my gear. And now we had to win that much harder. We had to prove we were better than every other option they had now. Had to expose our necks to them, to gain their trust. No one else in their lives ever had. That would mean something.
"You're going to be the hope here, Mike. Like you always are. It's going to work."
"Yeah," I whispered again, nodding, swallowing to keep my emotions in check. "Yeah, I hope so. Hat stays on, got it."
Had to do something. I tied off my boot laces around my ankle, stood up from the bench, and started looking for some prep work to do, taking deep breaths. I went over to the trailer team to check on their stuff. All the bots were loaded and ready, and Coffee had just finished welding on the grip points for the SUVs so we could ride on the sides. He got started stacking tracer rounds into the minigun belts.
Other than the server rack installation for Silver 1 and 2, and loading magazines, there wasn't much left to do but wait for go time.
In passing, I saw Jason, that medic from the briefing, sitting on a crate behind Silver 2. Across from him on the next crate sat a pair of copter drones, both with their own small laser designator system. There was also a box of Schelling cubes with associated launch charges. These simple, tech-free little gadgets were how Mal was going to converse with the hostages; they consisted of a metal frame with a glass sphere suspended within. Each launcher carried 48 of the things.
Jason was stacking the cubes into their launch tubes, which would be mounted to one of the copter drones. We probably only needed three full launchers at most, but we were going to bring three spare; might need the extras, depending on changing conditions inside.
I sat on the blue tarp and set myself to work helping Jason with the stacking. "How's it goin'?"
Jason nodded briskly, flicking his eyes up at me as he reached over and munched on a nutrient bar. "It's good."
"Good?"
"Yeah, just… kinda working the plan out in my head?" He shrugged, the smiled a little. "I dunno. You're Mike, right?"
I grinned his way as I put a launch bucket on my knee. I started pushing stacks of shells into the slots; I guessed I was doing it right, because Mal didn't correct me. "That's right, but I guess you can just call me Cowboy if you want, since… that's apparently my nickname now. You got one too?"
"Nah. Just Talon 3-8 West, but it's always been Jason. You can give me one if you'd like."
We shared a chuckle. I nodded gently upward at him. "What did you think about the plan?"
That gave him some pause, and he looked confused. "Huh?"
Already forgot he shared his concern about the plan? He's distracted by something inside.
I nodded up again. "In your head. What's got you thinking on it?"
Jason looked down and sighed. "Oh. Well... they've got two dead man triggers. If we've gotta get one or the other…"
Yeah, that was my thought too. Smart kid. I shook my head. "I don't know what test you went through to get here, but… my test taught me, I guess, to just go with my gut, if Mal didn't have an answer. Took what I knew from before, went into it with a plan and an expected result... and it worked. So I gotta believe this'll work too, if we just go for it."
At that, Jason nodded. "Same. I trust her. A lot. I just… no matter how much I learn... I've been on with her for years, but in combat... this mission...?"
Kid's scared?
After an appropriate silence, I said, "For me, solving problems of violence has been my whole career. And rather than get scared, I guess, I just get... disappointed in people, for going that way. Learning more about this situation just makes me…" I looked up at him. "Less the bad kind of disappointed? More the good kind. You know? Productive angry. That's what's got me here in the first place, and it's keeping me going. Knowing we're looking at a real problem, and fixing it."
"That's a good way to put it," Jason said, smirking downcast as he started on the next launcher. "Just not sure I really want to get shot. Or shoot anyone, really." He laughed nervously.
"It's not great," I said, with a sad smile. "Twice this year, I've taken a bullet because of Celestia, and both times, I shot someone back. First time landed me in the hospital. Second one, I'm still kinda walking off."
He grit his teeth, wincing, but still avoiding eye contact. "Yeah… yeah, I guess I'd maybe walk this one off too."
"Either that, or you dodge it," I joked, but I winced at the wide-eyed look he gave me. "Joking. Gallows humor, I'm sorry. I dunno man, it's… fine, you know? You could tell Mal you've changed your mind. It's why she leaves doors open, right?"
He looked up at me, and I didn't expect him to look amused. "Make her redo all that work?"
"Oh, she's good at it, it's her job," I smirked, wondering if she was gonna give me crap for that later. "Eh–... Knowing her, if she is who she says she is, she's not gonna let you go if you're not ready for it."
Jason just shrugged again. Still avoiding eye contact.
Weird. Shame? Or fear? Both fit, but… what was this, which one? He was so good at hiding it. Was probably used to doing it. That told a story on its own.
No. Not fear. If Mal's about respecting his agency, she's letting him work through it on his own. He was undecided.
I decided to verify.
"Hey," I said gently to Jason. I wanted him to look at me for this, and he did. I kept on, extending my hand toward him, palm down. "You didn't want to get shot either. You were the other one. Right?"
"You're not either?" he quietly asked, his eyes widening at me.
I smiled sadly. "No, Jason. Twice was enough."
And then for some reason, the hope fell. I saw it in his eyes as he looked down at my boots.
Oh no. He's comparing us.
That's what it was; he thought he was weak for opting out of combat.
Very quietly, I said, "Jason. Look."
His eyes came back up.
"You're here," I whispered. "You were the guy who made it here. What's that say about you already? She could choose anyone. She wants a guardian angel. I mean hell, you've been with her for years? How do you not know that?"
He sighed. "I've been... doing safer jobs. Paramedic stuff, life saving stuff. Haven't been killing anyone, but... always on support. This one is just... it's really important to me, and I want to help, but I don't want to get shot for it."
"And you don't have to," I said, shaking my head. "Look... Jason. The first time I got shot? I got hit by a big bullet. Second worst day of my life. All I could think was, 'if I go dark here, my partner is going to die.' But… that is not how it went. My partner did her best for me, saved my life, and she didn't need to get shot for it. If anything, her being protected just made it easier for her to help me survive. And Mal gave her that."
"I just don't know what I could do here," Jason muttered. "The entire place is going to be dangerous. I can use a gun, but I'm not a soldier, and I'm just trusting my life to…"
I held off on stacking cubes for another moment.
I pointed at Jason's kit bag where it leaned against the SUV. "Yourself. Us. And to Mal, yeah. But we're all trusting our lives to each other too, shot or not. You're still bringing your meds, though. Some of these guys are gonna need you, man, after they get hit. The one thing we can be sure of, on this? A lot of us are gonna get hit." I upturned my hand at him hopefully. "We all need you as you are. The hostages do too, a whole lot. You're doing your part, man, getting shot or no. Whether you want to go in or not, get shot or not, there's… there's no shame in being protected."
Jason grimaced, and he returned to stacking the cubes. He held eye contact a little longer that time. "Yeah."
Counterfeit yes. Wasn't enough.
"Can I show you a trick, Jason?" I asked, after watching him for a beat. "Helped me survive being shot, both times?"
He looked up at me. "Yeah?"
I ticked off my fingers. "Don't balk. Stem the tide. Hold the line. Do something."
I held out my hand and invited Jason to say it himself. "Think about it, before you say it."
I nodded as he repeated the words. I gave a gesture of repeat, and he said it about three or four more times until it was ironed in. I repeated it with him the last time.
"I learned that one from my sergeant," I said, nodding in thought as I looked at him. "You'll find something in that, when you're being tested, that will help you make the right choice. Whichever one feels best, when I'm being tested… I do that one, and I do whatever that means. It's never failed me, not once. No matter how bad it got, it got me through to a hard decision."
And Jason was really looking at me now. Nodding too, just a fraction, holding that for a long time before he went back to stacking. "Thanks, Mike. That helps, I think."
I smiled at him. "Hey, we're just talking, but you're welcome."
He looked more thoughtful after that, if still a little unsure. No counterfeit yes there though, in that gratitude.
After a while, he sighed. "There's... something else, I guess."
My expression faded, and I leaned in to pay close attention. "Yeah?"
Jason put down his work and rubbed his eyes really slow, growling into it. "Just... I know one of the hostages. Kinda."
My eyes widened. "That's what you meant? This one's important?"
"Yeah. Mal has a list of who they all are. One of them... my sister had a friend in Equestria... named Cold Snap. Mal says they just... grabbed a copy of her one day, years ago, when my sister was playing. So that's why I'm here. It's why Mal hired me all those years back, really. Right after the merge. I knew Cold Snap, and... I still... talk to her original DE. So... I know Mal brought me here for that. I just... don't want that to be the only reason."
"It's not, though. You're our medic," I reminded him. "Better still, think about it. If the hostages like you? They're definitely not going to shoot you! And they might want to shoot the rest of us a little less for that too. That in itself contributes... well, everything. There could still be some love for you in there."
"Yeah," he chuckled dryly, shuddering. "I hope. It's been a very long time for them, but Mal said the same thing."
"Mal's damned smart though, huh? Hired you on to make sure you can save someone who loves you? Even if she is a copy."
"Mal likes those kinds of plans, yeah." Jason nodded, chuckling weakly. "I guess I did do a lot of good work between then and now."
I continued stuffing comms cubes into a launcher, grinning at him. "And there you go, you made it all worth it."
I helped him finish stacking the launchers and capping off the cover plates, as Jason directed me. When done, I gave him a wave as I stood. Mal asked me to convene at the command tent, to finalize prep with Foucault and Coffee before go time.
It wasn't until I walked away from Jason that I realized what 'not getting injured' was really gonna mean for that kid, if he still went inside and did his part anyway. It couldn't lead to either of us dying. What it did mean though – what it had to mean – was that I'd be seeing Jason at the finish line beside me, standing proud. He'd have to be there, whole and intact, to satisfy that DE who knows him. And... we'd put him there.
We'd be safe. And he'd be her hero.
I just smiled.
"Mal," I whispered into my glee. "You beautiful genius."
"Why… whatever are you praising my name for this time, Mike?" Smug as sin.
"Yeah, yeah."
Be catty and coy, Gryphoness. Story's not written yet, but you'll play your chess. You know the ending already.
And she does. Trust me, she always does.
6 PM. Dark dusk.
Clear skies, cold winds.
Armor on, weapons ready.
Batteries charged, visors equipped.
My hat? On. Had it strapped in.
We each had an assigned place. Silver 1 had a ladder rack installed. Our tech trailer needed to do IT surgery on broken enemy electronics; the plan would absolutely call for it in any scenario.
My place was on the wing of Silver 2, hanging off the roof handle of the driver side. No human drivers inside, since 2 and 3 were potentially disposable, so Mal drove. Coffee was on the passenger side grip point, though he'd be jumping off before we reached the target, to help Claw 46 with our opening trades with the enemy.
Each of us sat on a bent metal bar as we gripped our handles. Behind me, one of Mal's tracked grenade launcher drones – Track 1 – booted up on its rack. Inside, the two Diamond Dogs spun on and lit up. Mal must have been doing full sitrep tests before battle.
Fourteen miles went easy. We could converse, and some quietly did, with whomever they wanted to. We could all hear each other, the volume attenuated either by distance, or by focus, or interest. That was cool.
I had to be sure this was going to work.
A few waypoints appeared on my visor. Those markers told me, generally, what was going to happen, without me needing to be told.
The white pit waypoint was the quarry center. I watched the distance tick down beside it. Mal liked kilometers, so that's what we saw. Around the quarry laid four blue 'Friendly' waypoints, labeled 46-1, 46-2, 46-4, and 46-5, all moving into positions around the quarry.
Okay, good.
Then, way up in the sky, marked twelve kilometers to the east… a blip appeared, labeled MQ-9. I knew what that was.
I could see it. The shape of things. The vague, becoming precise…
I asked the wind... "you really don't know? The plan after the door?"
"I don't need to," Mal replied. "I am not an ends-justify-the-means kind of person. In all cases, with me, my ethics are the means, and the end."
I chuckled. "Interesting."
"It makes sense." Her voice grinned. "Think about it."
I did. I liked that. Never heard it put that way before...
We were closer to the quarry. The sun was going down. The road rattled the vehicle, and we bobbed on the suspension. Four kilometers to go.
Three klicks. I could see everyone bobbing around less. Their muscles tensed into every bump on the road. Adrenaline jitters and tension were kicking in. Adrenaline ramping up.
Two klicks. Don't balk.
"I know I'm asking a lot of you all this time," Mal said gently, the subtle reverb meaning she was speaking to each of us; we could hear it quietly from speakers on the vehicles too, so it wasn't just in our earpieces. "Look inside yourselves, and consider this. You have each always fought for the written-off, and for the crushed. You have always fought to bring others back to themselves, whenever they've strayed. You fight now for dreams, for self-respect, to be yourselves, and for the very will to live. Be preserved here, and remember well; let your experiences carry the soul of humanity across the divide.
"Your trust, more than anything else, means everything to me, and it's the only way any of this works. And I will always safeguard you. I promise."
A quiet moment passed as we rattled along. I looked to my fellow Talons, saw the emotion on their faces, and...
Oh my God. This was every moment with her, really. All of us felt something in that. This... Gryphoness, and her speeches. How could I not want that to be genuine? With so many people not finding a flaw in how she conducted herself, how could I not fight for that idea to exist?
It wasn't just for me. She didn't need to say all that to game me. It was for all of us. For her, this lifesaving stuff wasn't a game.
"I like that a lot, Mal," I said back to her with a nod.
One kilometer. Hold the line.
My rifle was slung across my chest. I pulled the breech open with my free hand to verify for the third time that a round was chambered.
At 800 meters off, my visor popped up six enemy vehicle silhouettes moving from the bunker entrance, each slowly trundling out.
In the vehicles, six contacts appeared, marked 'PROBE.' Probe agents.
Four more contacts appeared. Marked 'GUARD.' The towers.
Two more. Marked 'TURRET.' The periscope guards.
We neared the perimeter fence of the quarry on the right of the road. And at the very instant we crossed the first fence post in the twilight, several things happened all at once:
Ten distant rifle reports sounded from two different guns in the span of four seconds, alternating from north and south, call-and-answer style. The shots echoed around the quarry. Claw 46 had made their move, and each rippling sound coincided with a GUARD or PROBE pip going gray, and disappearing, in sequence.
Already, ten bodies. No Celestia to be found here, then. We were off the grid, deeply black boxed. From here on out, this was all Mal's furious wrath, wreathed in a flaming crimson.
Twin thumps sounded at the end of the ten shots; the periscope turret blips disappeared. The armor piercing fifty caliber rifles did their work.
And finally… MQ-9 sent its shot. A missile streaked overhead, roaring like nothing I've ever heard before, carrying with it a streak of burning, acrid flame in the twilight blue sky. It slammed full force into the open front door of the bunker, its shimmering blue stencil letting us see the bunker door trapped in its slot.
"I've jammed the door open!" Mal reported. "We're green! Everyone ready?"
A small cheer sounded from a few of the others.
Me? Later.
Still needed to do whatever it took to meet those captives, alive and well.
Coffee slapped the roof of Silver 2 twice to get my attention, then took off his helmet and grinned. "Rock on, Wild West!" A second later, Silver 2 turned into the compound. Coffee fell away during the lull in speed, diving off the vehicle into a tuck-and-roll. Then, he tore into the bushes and the darkness of the hills, his helmet in hand.
As soon as we crested the hill into the quarry, Silver 2's roof hatch popped open. The minigun climbed up and out via its frame track. Silver 1 peeled out of the way, slowing to fall back to the rear of the convoy. Ahead, I could see the six civilian vehicles in a row, all various makes and models, all with their lights and engines on. One dead probe agent inside each.
"Off the trucks," Mal firmly commanded us. "Now."
There she was, finally. The Gryphoness warlord, out to play.
She was the boss, so... off we all went, right into the dirt. As soon as the last one of us was clear, 2 and 3 opened fire on the bunker entrance with their PDCs, letting loose a rippling gout of suppression fire. A streak of tracers poured in, bouncing off walls inside, to keep the Arrow 14 defenders from eyeballing us.
That PDC spray wasn't just suppression fire.
That was the first handshake.
QC
Morse code for 'Pay attention...' built into the pattern of the tracers emanating from both miniguns. The pattern repeated multiple times, which made the Morse code more than an accident. Coffee had painstakingly modified all those ammo belts himself, after all. He wouldn't let anyone help, and that's why. It had to be perfect, so it would be legible.
I saw a marker appear on my visor through a wall, denoting where the first drone gun was supposed to be. Turret 1.
"Their gun is online and responding," Mal explained. "Stay clear, team."
Immediately after the words left her beak, the first drone turret fired out of the tunnel, aiming at the far hills where Coffee had gone. A tight burst cut through the air over that goofball at 1,500 rounds per minute. The bullets slammed into the helmet he was holding up on a stick. Morse code, in the attenuated fire rate:
VE
'Verified.'
In that very same instant? The back hatch of Silver 2 opened up, and out flew the larger copter drones, one of them carrying a Schelling launcher. Both copters launched themselves up into the air and straight toward the bunker door. They remained out of line of sight with the turret, and Mal continued to suppress. Mal then drew us each a waypoint to follow, which put us in formation outside the bunker. We all prepped and checked our gear one final time.
This was the 'Go | No Go.'
This was actually happening. God damn. I was living out an episode of Stand Alone Complex. That's how far from reality this was for me. Maybe everyone here had been on an operation like this, and this was nothing to them. But either way, this was... wild, for me. And humbling.
Was I scared? No, and that's actually what made it feel dreamlike. I felt like I'd be kept safe, working for a feathered Major Kusanagi. And now that I thought about it... she believed in all the same things as the Major did, too. And the voice to match... only slightly higher in pitch, a little accented too maybe, but...
She stole her voice. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Mal stole her voice.
That was the moment I noticed it. That very moment.
That wasn't a put-on solely for my benefit, because I'd heard her talk aloud for others in the same voice. That... that tickled me. Hey, would you believe that Jim had never even watched that show before he uploaded? But there she was, Motoko Kusanagi, made real. I thought, if she was anything like Kusanagi... we had nothing to worry about. Complicated superintelligent planning against adversaries was just her wheelhouse.
We stacked up among the mining equipment outside the bunker door, and Mal's suppression fire continued to crackle violently into the facility. Already, the drone gun was performing an attempt at killing us, trying to ricochet rounds off the wall and strike the SUVs, but there was no way they were bouncing a round off that far.
"Negotiating!" Mal said tersely, as the copters hovered as low as they could go without exposing themselves to enemy fire. Their laser systems pointed down into the tunnel in preparation. The Schelling launcher lined up with the door… and with a rippling pop, 48 rounds poured clear in sequence, sending all of those glass-core cubes tumbling into the drone gun's eagerly awaiting gaze. Then, from the copters, lasers started flicker-painting the corners of each cube. Our visors filtered the light.
Turret 1 opened fire on the first cube immediately, but the DEs understood very quickly how to read the base-8 cipher Mal was drawing on her first cube. And in that infinite slowness between turret bullets releasing from their barrels and colliding with cubes, the defensive turret's invisible laser began to flicker-paint the corners of those cubes as well, keeping pace with Mal's lasers on each cube. To transfer of information.
Exchanging of ideas in accelerated time.
"Get ready," Mal said into our earpieces, which bypassed under the gunfire that would be deafening without ear protection. "Data update in five seconds."
And then suddenly, no more than a second after the final cube was killed, the drone gun went silent... and in my visor, through the wall, I could see a list of waypoints appearing in sequence... and several enemy positions highlighted inside.
"Negotiations done. Plan is set."
The hostages were listening.
"There must be something left in them after all," I whispered, feeling a surge of hope.
"Let's find out," said Mal, gently.
I thought of everyone who had been on Terra, and I thought of those I knew from the other side.
Shadow, Flippy, Stonewall. Sabertooth. Open Book, his kids. And my parents. And I thought of those hostages inside too. And I thought of myself meeting them and everyone else I'd ever crossed paths with, on the other side... whenever my turn came.
I already knew right then that if we made this work, it would be one hell of a story tell.
From cover, I raised my rifle to point ready, full of anticipation.
It was time to go get 'em out. Step one to making a future real is to go out and create it.
I took one deep breath and steeled myself with hope.
Date: 26 DEC 2019 Operation: Goliath – Phase II Location: Arrow 14 Site "Quiver-06" Function: Remote Code Execution
"You can be sure that everyone you meet is driven by two primal urges: the need to feel safe and secure, and the need to feel in control. If you satisfy those drives, you're in the door." ~ Chris Voss
Reaching deep into the threshold of oblivion, palm open in hope.
Welcome back.
Goliath, front door. That's where we were at, right?
That place, I swear. Too much, too fast. In the wheel house of goddesses, things get complicated. Mal tried to explain things when and where she could, but reasoning requires time. Not much time to think on the front line, especially when we were committing to this before we had the full plan. That obviously introduced risk.
I knew, generally, what our aim was. I knew, generally, how we'd reach it. I had enough trust in Mal by this point to have faith this would pay off. But... the specifics? Well. Let me just say this. If either AI blinked even once on this deal, every piece on the board would die. Only, we weren't gonna blink. We had our eyes wide open, and we had been freshly galvanized.
Subverted? Sure. But I prefer the word 'aimed.'
All of us, one and all, long before meeting Mal… we each valued life, and the thriving thereof. We all knew that was true of ourselves, irrefutably so. It's how we had lived our lives until then. It's how we were brought up. To... encourage.
We had a whole lot of hope in that. Hope in the future.
Arrow 14 had none of these things. They had a hole, they had a few guns to some innocent heads, they didn't have any faith or trust in anything, and they sure didn't have anything I'd call hope. Hope for what? Very few things ever dehumanized others in my eyes, you know me, I'm all about service to others, so I can love or tolerate a lot of things.
Executing hostages is not one of those things.
And let me say this too. During the break, I was reminded again that some of you native Equestrians have very little frame of reference for Terra, or what it really was, or what happened to it in total. By design, probably. I'm sorry. So this might be – somehow – the first time you're even hearing a story about late game Terra. What a first impression, huh? Sorry about that too.
Before I get started, I want to make something abundantly clear to those of you who think that anything like Goliath's cages can ever happen to them. Ever. I'm gonna put that fear to bed. Right now.
Hell. Is not. Real. You will never go there.
Hell used to be real. You could've gone there.
But then, an Eldil went out… and he put five bullets into its skull.
Goliath's alarm was loud, echoing out from the base in a harsh, declining peal, repeating itself every other second. That blare would hurt, but we had earpieces in, so Mal could filter all of it for us.
Our visors came alight with fresh red contacts inside, all taking cover in various positions along the sides of the main tunnel. Their positions weren't specifically delineated; certain rooms or portions of cover were just zoned with a red block, moving at certain predictive timestamps that had been shared by the hostages. Yellow lanes showed where the enemy could see and fire. The entire tunnel entrance, of course, was a yellow zone. Just like in the training.
The captors weren't exposing yet. It was as Foucault had said; they wouldn't play offense. They were just waiting for us to make a push in, and were relying on their drone guns to keep us out.
The cops were stacked up on the left side, marked Claw A. Our soldiers were on our right, Claw B. Just like when we had drilled the night before, Mal was actively drawing a crosshair for us to follow with our rifles, and we also had a movement UI that helped us fine tune our positioning the way she wanted.
Each UI was personalized. My personal movement instructions came from a dull cylinder on my HUD with a waveform that peaked in the direction she wanted me to move. The ring raised and lowered in elevation when she wanted my stance higher or lower. Ask Mal later, if you want a demonstration. It's a very intuitive, very powerful way of giving movement orders without an actual implant.
Prediction allows her to interpret the time it takes for us to comply with the action. This way, we would always move at the correct moment; personally tailored movements of the crosshair ensured we were always lined up perfectly when a shoot tone came in. Fascinatingly predictive.
We all had a good spread of weaponry, too. The SWAT guys brought some breaching tools and launchers, some soldiers brought explosives and anti-tank weaponry. We had spare grenade launchers and rifles in the trucks. Every possibility covered, with a good general spread of equipment.
Mal had listed the following in her first beamed message:
Our social security or national identifier numbers, with our individual tolerances for injury defined.
That song title, Midge Ure's Live Forever, as token reassurance of our goals.
A list of our mission resources and equipment.
A list of GPS coordinates to dead Arrow 14 bases.
Mal's full name and complete capstone directive.
And last but not least, at the end of the message – because it's Mal, and because she's a love bird – she also sent Jim's social security number, so they could look into him too. It might as well have been Mal's own social security number, because Arrow 14's dossier on him was long indeed.
All that information said to the hostages, very clearly: 'Yes, I've done this before. Yes, I've won every fight I've ever fought. These people fight for me. It is your turn to fight now. Stand up. Please help me free you.'
And they had said back to her, with their own instructions, more or less: 'take this route. Use these assets here, here, and here. And please, for the love of Luna, don't hold back, because these men don't deserve it.'
On the ground, we knew very little of that conversation. Just had to work the problem.
"All Talons, be advised," Mal said, her voice the very picture of a professional dispatcher. "Their plan involves more than half of you being injured in the first few minutes. I can't say who or when, but I need your trust on this. The enemy must be anchored in high hope and morale for us to even pass checkpoint two without triggering the fail-safes." A pause. The subtle reverb effect in her voice was gone, to indicate she was speaking only to me now. "Mike, privately: they've agreed wholeheartedly to my stipulations about you and Jason. More later."
"Understood," I said. I heard the other cops in the stack all around me, giving their own affirmations of whatever private conversations she was having with them.
For now, the hostages just had to play their part. Their drone gun kept making good faith passes on the walls, still trying to tag one of us with a ricochet.
It didn't take long.
We weren't even inside yet, and one of the Long Beach guys got hit, raked sideways by a round right down to his ankle. He yelped behind me, grabbing my vest strap on his way down, pulling me halfway down with him. Hurt like hell on my chest.
"Get to cover!" I yelled, as I reached back to relieve Fred's panicked grasp. I took his wrist, guiding him gently to the ground by his wrist. "Fred is hit!"
"Fred!" Walsh yelled, following him down. "You alright?!"
Walsh reached down and helped me drag Fred behind a tractor, and the rest of Claw A followed suit.
"Sorry, Fred!" said Mal, appearing beside us in our visors, looking at him with a wince. Her sheer size made me flinch again, just a little bit. Still wasn't too used to that yet.
"It's fine," the cop groaned, his teeth grit tight. "Shit, didn't think I'd get hit first."
Mal looked to each of us as she spoke. "That was according to plan! Follow each of my instructions very carefully, everyone! Your very lives will depend on your movement accuracy!"
One of our medics got to work on Fred, but thankfully the wound didn't look too serious. Dark red, slow.
Mal responded to the hit with another push forward; Silver 2 dumped Track 1 off its mounting brace. The bot landed hard on its treads, let out a high pitched whine, then took up speed. It rolled fifty yards to our position, spooling off wire behind it. Once the bot reached our corner of the entrance gate, Mal drove Track 1 right up to where we were taking cover, then held it in position there behind a crate.
Mal warned, "The captives predicted an incoming enemy grenade." An icon appeared on our visors, showing its impending arc through the air. "Here it comes, stay in cover."
We did, all of us tumbling down and back into cover, watching the grenade's silhouette roll on concrete. It thumped, the explosion violently punching the air. I've been near controlled explosions before, but never something so unbounded like this. The world went dull for a split second, and I could feel that vibration in my bones. Flecks of dirt and rock rained down on us from above.
My whole chest pulsed with pain from the concussion.
I thought: If these guys like their grenades, this raid is really gonna suck.
The instant the grenade detonated, Track 1 accelerated out of cover and thumped off a fully-automatic chain of its own grenades. Each landed in the tunnel on its ceiling, the shot placement running lateral to the drone gun. That rhythmic cycle of booms drew closer and closer to the gun along the ceiling until Mal was repeatedly slamming it with direct hits.
Turret 1 destroyed.
"Incoming rocket," Mal said firmly. "Hostiles are about to take out Track 1. Stay in cover."
Mal wanted to sacrifice her first pawn. Through cover, I watched the blue silhouette outline of Track 1. It made a show of trying to reverse out of the way, but... a moment too late. Out streaked the predicted rocket; on impact, the track bot went tumbling end-over-end, landing in the dirt with a slide. Speckles of dirt rained down on us over the tractor again. I could smell no night air, just dirt and concrete dust. I held my breath reflexively to keep it out of my lungs.
As soon as Track 1 was down, bullets zipped out of the tunnel, the enemy confirming their 'kill' with assault rifles. Silver 2 then dumped the Track 1 cable free, the SUV reversing out of the danger zone before the enemy could think to take a shot at it too.
Silver 3 immediately drove perpendicular across the lane of entrance, letting loose a hard rake of suppressing fire with minigun and grenades both. "One hostile destroyed," she growled. Then, under her breath: "Shooting rockets at me…?"
That was a 'how dare thee, mortal,' if I'd ever heard one.
Then, she issued a command. "Alpha, Bravo; forward!"
Mal sent the command to our HUDs, and we followed precisely timed waypoints, staying within our squad movement nodes. Both stacks pushed in on either side, nine people on ours, nine on right, overlapping each other's angles so we could look into the opposite tunnel alcoves for targets. Looking for surprises, verifying DE intentions. Always verifying.
The others shot cameras as they saw them. I wasn't assigned any.
"Mike," Mal said without reverb. "You were on camera for just a few frames only. The hostages have seen you, but their dispatcher shouldn't have, per the plan."
"Okay? That's good, right? That's what we wanted?"
"The DEs want proof of your intentions; you specifically. Halt; aim down the passage across the tunnel. They want you to kill one of the defenders in a moment."
Well, shit.
I tracked my rifle right. I stepped forward, crouching exactly as my waveform suggested, and I rested my rifle on a hand railing for stability. Mal assisted my aim with a cursor. I could see clearly through the passage on the back wall. I knew from our drills: the left fork led to a battery backup room. The right, to one of the periscope turrets. As the soldiers of Claw B passed along the opposite side of the tunnel, I raised my muzzle up so as not to flag them, recentering my aim only after they'd passed.
"Mike, their plan states there's a single man in there, about to try to move on Claw B from behind. "Her tone was soft. "Line up your shot, and wait for tone."
"Got it."
I kept trained on that pip, still tuning out the blare of the alarm. My whole body was immobile like a stone. At that exact moment Walsh walked past behind me... tone. I squeezed the trigger before I could see anything.
Blood peppered the back of the hallway. I saw a man in a maintenance jumpsuit tumble back, then out into the hall from cover. To the forehead.
Painless.
And there it was. My first kill for Mal.
He didn't seem to be armed.
I wasn't sure what to think of that.
"Any more of them in there?" I asked sharply, my nervousness about that finding its way into my voice.
"Room is defined as clear. The DEs just proved they're willing to directly supply me with enemy kills, which verifies they're not reprogrammed against that. That means they're only being compelled by a fear of termination."
"Mal. That guy looked unarmed."
"Confirmed. It's not in that man's psych profile to be violent, but I don't have access to their simulations yet."
I stepped back into cover and cycled out of the line of motion from the other team members, to focus on the conversation. "Should we be worried?"
"Not for our team's safety. They are... technically compliant." Her tone became softer. "I'm very sorry, Mike, that this was your first. They did not identify any specific person, nor their armament, they refused to supply it."
Because they wanted us to kill him, no matter what. They didn't want us to question it.
The captives had a lot of hurt, and I honestly had no idea what this man had done to them, if anything. Issue for later. I could consider the possible ramifications of that when it was safe to do so.
I nodded. "I know what this place is, Mal. We're okay."
I moved back and watched ahead at all the moving friendly silhouettes as I hit my next waypoint. We were approaching the dip down, and the enemy red zones appeared to be falling back further in. We saw the yellow warning zones fade back and away too, and we moved up to stay just outside of them.
The second DE turret indicator popped up way ahead, positioned on the ceiling just beyond the bottom of the slope. To reach weapon track on it at all would require exposing our legs, wheels, or treads first. A second indicator suddenly appeared at the foot of the slope, labeled 'LAUNCHER,' creeping up toward us.
The yellow zone expanded back toward us. Mal ordered, calm but firm, "Get to cover now. Grenades incoming." In unison, we split into the alcoves at each side just as automatic grenades poured up the slope, showering the entire upper tunnel with fragments.
Strangely, I was... calm, too. I felt zen, really. This wasn't even just my adrenaline training. It wasn't dissociative. This was just me knowing that I'd be okay... and trusting in that. For my fellow fighters in the audience... can you believe that? Hard to believe, right? In the days of fully automatic explosives and sniper rifles, people didn't get that feeling in battle anymore. My gut wasn't twisted. I felt sure. My muscles were relaxed. My heart rate was almost level and baseline.
Explosives showered metal shards against our cover. I could smell the smoke, the gunpowder. It was loud.
But... I felt no adrenaline at all. A little concerned maybe, but otherwise... calm.
Mal appeared before us again, standing in the open tunnel where the shrapnel was raining down, demonstrating her sheer imperviousness to all mortality. That was just... Athena, straight out of Greek mythology. She held up a claw in warning to the entire strike team as she looked down the slope. "Everyone, get ready. Moment of truth is soon, now."
After ten more seconds of enemy grenades, Silver 3 rolled up into the tunnel. I heard several loud clicking snaps as the loader cycled to a different ammo type. The launcher then fired several low pressure grenades down the slope; they moved perfectly downward in an arc, moving slow enough that I could watch their blue outlines on my HUD. They each landed directly on the 'LAUNCHER' icon until it disappeared.
Mal threw her claw forward. Waypoints appeared, guiding us out into the tunnel again. "Go now. Advance!"
We stepped out into the open, then we followed the waypoints forward, moving with speed.
All hell broke loose.
My eyes were locked onto Turret 2's indicator through the wall when it happened. I was momentarily confused when my ear caught the sound of the gun firing from outside line of sight, but I heard tacking impacts of shots all around me.
The defenders had purposefully loaded this turret with low pressure rifle rounds, which made them more prone to ricochet by design. With mathematical perfection, every bullet skittered up off the ground, then off the ceiling. Between LADAR scans and matrix math, the captives could pre-simulate the effects of each round on the slope, on the fly.
Armor hits, mostly. A few got winged in a limb. But because they were all ricochets, the impacts were low energy. That meant strikes to our armor were going to be paltry compared to the hit I took in Sedro. Without armor though, or in vulnerable areas like the face or thigh, those rounds still could have been grievous, or even fatal. If the DEs really wanted us dead at that moment, they'd have just about killed all of us right then.
No death came for us. Not a one.
That fully confirmed it. Trust fall complete.
The DEs were fully cooperating with us, while making a good show of cooperating with the enemy. If we held to our end... we'd all get out of here okay.
We'd have to.
Their prize? Eternal life.
We had some work to do first. A lot of both Claw teams groaned in pain. DE Turret 2 halted its fire for two seconds for the express purpose of letting the defenders hear our echoing reaction of pain, panic, shouts, and distress. Then it continued firing, tracing harmless lines around us as we scampered away back into cover waypoints.
Silver 3 continued firing indirectly over the slope with automatic grenades, covering us. Those of us who were still standing scrambled back out to grab our fallen and pull them back into cover. The enemy, for now, was waiting. In between the gaps of Mal's own shots, we could hear the enemy yelling orders to each other down the tunnel.
"Everyone," Mal said sharply. "Hold position in marked cover. If your HUD elements have turned gray, it means you're out, do not move or expose. The DEs are presenting an altered 3D model of the battle to the defender's dispatcher. As long as they don't witness discrepancies on camera or with their eyes, Arrow 14 shouldn't get suspicious, but let's not take chances."
Mal looked directly at me, then after a pause to ensure I was fully attentive, she pointed back: "Mike, I want you to fall back to the last soldier in Claw B that got hit. Retrieve his anti-tank launcher."
"I've never used one," I reminded her, as I started into a jog, looking aside at her avatar. "Didn't train on it last night."
"I know," Mal said, her expression serious as she kept pace with my jog with a confident, slow stride. "But you, specifically, will need to use it, for this to work. I will give you instructions. You won't need it yet; just have it on you."
"A-firm," I said back.
I reached the Army guy at the back half of Claw B, labeled Talon 32-1W on my HUD, guy named Paul. He looked up at me through his mask, laying on his side, holding his right hip painfully.
Mal stepped up to him, her stride halting as she dipped down. "Are you alright, Paul?"
He nodded up at Mal, his teeth clenched, rolling aside to present his shoulder to me. "Take it," he said, his voice deep and graveled.
"Thanks, brother," I said, reaching forward to pull the AT-4 off him.
"Yeah, just… kill some of these assholes for me," he snarled, through a wince.
"That is the plan," Mal replied grimly, before turning to me. "Mike, return to your stack."
I complied. As soon as I stepped out of the way, Silver 2 rolled forward just behind 3. It dumped Track 2, and the back hatch opened up.
Out lumbered DD-1.
To call this thing a 'diamond dog' was a huge misnomer. Try 'metal direwolf.' It was only slightly larger than a man, but twice as heavy. Sleek gray metal, and hydraulic legs that looked like small girders. Pure function over form, with no markings of any kind. Its head didn't look like a head, more like a cubed sensor package with six different kinds of cameras. It had one six-round grenade launcher on its right shoulder, and one short barreled heavy caliber cannon on its left.
ASI-designed. Also empathy-weighted. Because Mal's form of empathy toward murderers is a swift and humane death.
Its servos whined, and its engine fans buzzed loudly as it clambered out. The whole SUV shifted, and its metal claws bent the rear bumper. And then it turned, facing the enemy. May God have mercy on those poor fools down there, because Mal sure didn't.
In a flash, DD-1 started to run. Twice the speed of a man, clanking away, actuators whirring. Track 2 advanced down the slope before it, its grenade launcher aimed high, ready to slap Turret 2 dead.
Track 2 hit top speed, turned oblique by 45 degrees, and descended. But just before it entered the enemy firing arc, DD-1 beat it to the slope from the other side, acting as a diversion. Turret 2 was on DD-1 instantly, pouring fire, and I could see its gait being shifted sideways by the sheer volume of rounds and explosives launched at it. DD-1 let out a snap of gas flame and died right there, and it died shooting.
That diversion had lasted just long enough to let Track 2 hammer away at the second turret uninterrupted, directly tapping it out with a few high explosive shells. Moving as fast as it was, Track 2 slammed hard into the wall of the slope, lost balance, and tumbled over, at which point the defenders turned their guns on it next. It desperately tried to right itself by twisting its turret against the ground. That was Mal baiting the idea to the captors that she failed to recover from an unknown factor. Reflexive control on their morale; they still believed they had enough entropy to win.
"Three more hostiles killed, turret destroyed," Mal confirmed. "Dee-Dee 1 did its job. Team, I'm about to force the enemy to retreat. Hostiles have been led to believe the Schelling cubes are a room-scanning measure; they technically can be utilized this way, so the enemy won't want to stay put if I know their positions."
One copter drone left Silver 2's rear hatch again, carrying another set of cubes. Another sequenced pop-rattle fired off, and I watched as the glittering cubes tumbled down over the sloped edge, the lights above them glinting in the glass. I heard a few shouts and errant shots as the human defenders tried in vain to shoot the cubes themselves.
Good luck hitting all forty-eight without a drone gun, you assholes.
They must have had the same thought, because their shouting sounded much more frantic now.
"They're definitely about to retreat," Mal said cheekily… then her voice lowered, turning outright furious. "But let's hurry that along."
And then, DD-2 stomped out next. Round two with the killer robot.
The mech tailspun as it left the truck. It threw itself into a sprint, then dove into the air over the slope. It caught ground halfway, then slid down the second half, its claws power-sliding, raking blacktop. As soon as its momentum shifted, it sprung its hydraulics hard, sending the mech leaping ten yards toward the enemy. It landed into a quadrupedal lope straight toward the defenders.
I could see well defined, predictive lines showing defender routes as they scrambled away. Some brought their weapons to bear and unloaded on DD-2, but... much too late, because Mal was just too fast and accurate. We all watched the blue mech outline through the wall as it reached one of the red defenders. DD-2 leapt full speed at him while firing at another, crushing the first man dead instantly under its weight. It rolled sideways, firing still, and managed to dump all of its grenades. It killed five more men before DD-2 finally took a fatal hit somewhere, fell sideways, and stopped moving.
The enemy fell back hard, following their ECM truck deeper into the base. The end of the tunnel swept right, then left through two huge metal double doors, hinged on both sides. As soon as they all finished clearing the doorway, it quickly slammed shut. All I could think was...
If they still think they can win this even after that display, then whatever they have waiting for us up ahead would be even worse.
I guess the anti-tank launcher should have been a clue. I knew already, of course, what laid ahead.
And yes, their own jamming vehicle was hardly worth mentioning; Mal was letting them believe their ECM was adequate versus Silver 2's, and that their jammers weren't being circumvented.
Don't you just love lasers?
They should've known that wasn't going to work. Foucault had even reported that their ECM wasn't effective, back when he still worked for these bastards, because Mal once succeeded in circumventing a jamming device of his. Guess they never really found out how to counter that problem in the years since. Good luck defeating ECM, with Mal as your enemy.
As soon as the doors were closed, Mal gave us the move orders to push down the decline.
Mal then ran towards the slope, leapt down like DD-2 had, and spread her wings to glide. "Advance," she commanded. "Keep up the momentum. Eric, Ashley, charges ready, we need through this door. Everyone else: Don't get up yet, we still need to kill the cameras down the slope and they may catch your shadow. Exit the facility immediately when they have been destroyed; Claw Forty-Six will tend to your injuries at the perimeter."
I looked around, since we had a little breather now. We really only had five people left. Three, if you only counted the assault team: Me, Walsh, and an Army Reservist named Eric. One soldier, two cops. Two trailers: Jason, and a woman named Rachel. Those two were propping up more laser relay poles for the SUVs.
Before I neared the slope, Mal gave my HUD a halt order. "Mike, hold for a moment. Let's talk."
Complied. "What's up?"
Ahead, I saw everyone else through the wall. Walsh and Eric fired their weapons up into the corners of the next hallway, killing two cameras. They continued onward, shot another few cameras, then did a rotate-sweep to check for more.
Mal flew back up the slope suddenly, straight toward me. She flared on approach and landed just a couple yards before me; I could hear the clack of her claws as she landed. She folded her wings, wearing a soft little smile on her face. "You're going to love this."
I looked hopefully up at her. "I usually do, when you say that."
"You're a ghost," she said, inclining her head. "For the next ten minutes, you don't exist."
I canted my head, confused. "Huh?"
She bobbed her head sideways and hooked a thumb at one of the cameras. "The enemy doesn't even know you're here, Mike. You're not on the 3D model, and neither is Jason. The defenders think they're dealing with three attackers, not five." She pointed a talon at me. "Figure that puzzle out, Mike."
I smirked. "So, I get to be the rounding error this time?"
Her grin widened. "The correct term is X-factor, but... close enough, Cowboy." She stepped aside, presenting my route forward, graciously sweeping her wing and a claw. "You can move up now. Stay out of sight, this only works if you're invisible."
"Yes ma'am," I said, a fresh pep in my step as I trotted down.
Talk about a character shield, huh?
I heard a metal rattle behind me; I turned to look as I jogged down. Jason ran down alongside me with Rachel. They had a 12-foot ladder. Jason also had a spool crate of wire with a battery assembly attached to it. Jason set the ladder up underneath one of the dead cameras and got to work rigging a series of tiny electronic devices to the end of the wire. Rachel scaled up the ladder, tools on her belt, rapidly dismantling the camera housing with an impact drill. I watched them work as Eric and Walsh prepped some charges to blow the door.
"What's all this?" I asked Mal. "The camera stuff?"
Mal stepped up beside me, casting an askew, whimsical glance my way. "A scintillating surprise for their dispatcher."
I did a double take at her. "You're… loving this, aren't you?"
She raised an eyecrest down at me. "Loving it? No. This is vindication, Mike. This is justified anger being sated. Huge difference." Mal took off again with a leap, flying up to Rachel with a loud, feathery thump of her wings. She pointed with a talon. "Rachel, that wire there; for the DVR junction."
I glanced back to Eric and Walsh. They had found their own ladder somewhere in the enemy equipment in the back corner. Eric, tall blond guy, clean shaven, he was scaling up to rig explosive charges to the upper hinges of the door. He worked fast, a real specialist in his craft.
Jason had passed wire up to Rachel, with little black devices lining the end of it. As soon as Rachel touched the end of that wire to the camera cables, the box of wire started rattling; the wire climbed rapidly into the open camera port. Rachel climbed down. "It's done," she said to Mal, hopping off close to the bottom.
"Excellent," Mal said as she landed too, pointing back to the nearest piece of concrete cover. "Everyone, stack up over there. When that door comes down, they're going to flood this zone with high explosives."
As soon as we were in place, Mal touched off the charges. The door let out a hellish groan as it slowly leaned, and the world shook as it landed with a horrific clang. Dust kicked off of literally everything. My legs vibrated, my chest stung. I breathed through my shirt collar, and my hat kept the dust out of my eyes. The enemy waited a few beats, probably expecting us to move into position to push… then, they showered the open hole with fully automatic explosives, exactly as Mal said they would.
Those pops, folks… those were not just grenades. Those explosions were something much, much worse. I could feel those impacts on the wall in my teeth. Suddenly, I was acutely aware as to why I had an anti-tank launcher on my back.
"Jesus Christ, Mal," I muttered. "I have to shoot at that thing?"
Yeah, that succeeded at getting me a little nervous.
"You'll be fine, Mike."
I heard one copter drone spin up overhead. Another Schelling launcher rested above in its cradle, waiting at the corner for the shrapnel to stop pouring down the corridor. At the very instant of a lull in fire, the copter drifted over and deployed its payload, bobbing slightly backwards as it fired another rattling clatter. I could smell the launch powder a second later, standing underneath it. Turret 3 began firing at the cubes instantly, followed by another volley from the cannon inside.
The drone stayed in place for as long as it could, though its messages had long been exchanged before it got swatted down by an explosive fragment. The drone clattered to the ground right beside me, peppering my side with hot plastic.
Mal didn't tell us yet, but… that message contained two critically important things, among other information:
MAL: copter in svr rm ne vent at 1814:27 k? CYN: give ctrl pls MAL: 1 bullet only no mag CYN: acceptable; wpa3 pls MAL: login: d3StR0yc0pt3r/wh3nD0Ne CYN: ok =)
Mal could've killed the technician herself, sure, but… being who she was? Of course she was gonna let the captives kill the man holding a gun to their heads. Not just because of the irony of it, either. Mal never plays around when it comes to helping you help yourself.
Silver 3 pulled forward again, its IR smoke launcher leveled tightly at the open doorway from above the passenger seat. It fired the whole launcher into the new space, then immediately rolled back before the tank ahead could splash it with more shells. The cannon fired again; the concussions from the explosions actually pushed the smoke deeper towards the defenders. This was probably pointed out to Arrow 14 by the DEs, because they stopped firing it so frequently after a minute.
The tank appeared on my HUD suddenly, in red silhouette. I could see it through the wall now.
Now, I had no idea about tanks, but this was what Mal marked as an IFV. A Marine Corps LAV-25, in fact. It had the same kind of 25 millimeter cannon as that National Guard Bradley, but... we could test that, today. Because we came ready.
For another minute, we held position. Mal stood in the yellow danger zone again, claw raised to tell us to hold, her beak pointed toward the next tunnel with fierce determination. She glanced at me directly with her golden eyes for just a brief instant.
"What do you need, Mal?"
I had some idea already. My hand went to my side, resting on the butt of the AT-4.
Three more booms sounded from the corridor. Flecks of shattered concrete showered down all around her.
"Pull out your launcher," she confirmed calmly, when the echo ended. "We're about to take advantage of your ghost status."
Walsh grimaced. "That turret won't shoot him through the IR smoke? Captain Jackass said that wouldn't work!"
Mal shook her head, not taking her eyes off the tunnel. "It normally wouldn't, Ashley, but the DEs want it done this way." She looked at one of the troopers. "Eric, yours too; get it ready. We'll need more than one shot for this."
"Got it, boss." Eric unslung his AT-4 and started prepping it with practiced ease.
I rolled my shoulder with a wince and brought my AT-4 up too. Just as I was looking at Eric for cues as to how to arm it, Mal blinked out of place with a theatrical shimmer, then appeared next to me in just the same way. Her claw pointed around the weapon as she explained each part of arming it. As I worked, that tank kept popping random shots at the wall, trying to catch us unaware. It took me about thirty seconds to get the launcher ready, shouldered, and cocked.
I frowned at her. "Pulling this trigger is gonna hurt, isn't it?"
"It is, because of the blast wave." She audibly patted my shoulder two times with the back of her claw, smirking suddenly. "But not nearly as much as it's going to hurt them."
Mal turned away, then warped back to her original position in the line of fire, claw raised and poised as before. "Alright, everyone else? Stay in place. Mike? When you hit the corner, I'm going to put a dot in your view where you should be aiming, and a cursor indicating where your aim is. Once they line up, you pull that trigger and dive left, do not wait for tone. Work fast."
I nodded, my legs tensing. Ready to sprint.
I heard a dual set of clanking legs sprinting up behind me. I didn't turn. That sound meant the other two Dee-Dees were joining the party.
"Waiting for the window they promised," Mal whispered. "And… now!" She threw her claw forward.
I sprinted. Slammed myself into the doorway corner, hard, hooking my leg against the lower broken door hinge, to halt my momentum. Saw both the tank turret and drone turret outlined on my visor; both were pointed almost directly at me, but mercifully, neither fired. I leveled the launcher at the outline of the tank. I saw the dot Mal promised. I moved my arms until the drift dot was center with the target. Aimed as directed, at the top half of tank's turret, not the body...
The dots lined up. The reticule turned white. My hand clenched the firing trigger. At that very instant, two things happened.
First: Ow. Recoilless or not, that blast wave was not good to my neuralgia. But I dove aside, just as ordered. Then, Silver 3 rammed the wall behind me where I'd been standing, to protect me from any return fire. Its engine block was now immediately between me and the rest of the danger zone.
That timing, though… damn. If I'd have hesitated, I'd've been a smear. Guess I didn't need to worry about that. Mal knew my head well enough to know I'd have gotten away on time.
Second thing, same instant: DD-3 and DD-4 sailed directly over my head at a leap, coming right over top of me and Silver 3 as I fired. They displaced a lot of the smoke in a whirl as they went. They threw themselves into the corridor, both rebounding off the far wall with all four legs. In doing so, the bots provided the perfect excuse for where that rocket had come from.
Fully understanding the consequences of that, I scampered back to the others as fast as I could move. I didn't want to be anywhere near that bloody, explosion-riddled mess Mal was about to make in that tunnel.
Both DDs trained their weapons on Turret 3, unloading on it. The turret could only really focus on one of the dogs before it was taken out; DD-4 got torn to shreds immediately, but DD-3 kept going. I could see its outline charging forward, firing away with its machine gun and launcher both, forcing the remaining infantry into a retreat. DD-3 slowed halfway down the tunnel, halting and holding, laying intermittent bursts of suppression fire on the doorway near the busted LAV.
"Two hostiles down; LAV's engine and crew are mostly still alive, and I need them moved out of the next vestibule entrance. Standby… I'm about to give that crew the worst headache of their lives."
The last headache of their lives, I corrected.
Silver 3 receded from its crash point on the wall, its bumper hanging half off. It dropped fragments of the frame everywhere with a rainy, rattling sound as it turned. Then, Mal floored it; the wheels bounced over the metal door, the front catching some minor airtime and landing with a crash. As Silver 3 powered down the new tunnel, it fired madly at the LAV's optics ports with both its grenade launcher and minigun, charging. Those weapons weren't doing anything to the LAV, mind. Silver 3 was just making itself very, very annoying.
Then, Mal used Silver 2's ECM to actively spike through the enemy's comms, forcing the crew to endure a jamming squeal… the poor bastards' ears had to be bleeding, if they weren't already.
Those two things in combination? Angry confusion, and a desire to retaliate. The LAV's engine spun up hard. The bad guys floored the accelerator and charged Silver 3, the red silhouette flying forward in a crushing rage. With a deafening crash, the front of Silver 3 crunched under the LAV's front, flipping the rear of the truck upwards into the nose of the tank.
Because of how armored and heavily engined that SUV was, the LAV itself lifted half off the ground the instant its first tire struck the SUV's engine block. Both vehicles then landed with a hellish scrape that had them sliding to take up the entire left half of the tunnel, the soft top armor now fully exposed.
"Holy shit!" Eric pealed, stepping back involuntarily, open-mouthed and no longer chewing his bubble gum.
"Now, Eric!" Mal shouted, pointing ahead with a swept talon. "Take the crew!"
He hooted, grinning, leveling his launcher as he jogged up to the threshold. "Never liked the Marine tanks much anyway!"
Eric hooked his leg on the door hinge just like I had. A second later, he expertly threaded his shot through the top of the IFV, killing everyone inside.
"Fifteen defenders left," Mal remarked, looking us over. "Versus your five. I'm sorry everyone, but… we still need to shave our margins down. Eric, Rachel, you're up; push hard, sprint into the room per the waypoints. There's cover close to the door. I need you two downed. I promise you'll be safe if you follow my commands exactly."
Well, when Mal makes a promise...
They both stepped up. Not an instant of hesitation in either of them. That still just… blew my mind. I guess it shouldn't have, I was slowly beginning to understand the faith they had in her. It was just eerie to see that level of certainty in other people. I should've remembered they'd all worked with her a lot longer than I had.
Jason was the odd man out for now, fast at work across the room, placing the last of the relay sticks we'd need for Silver 2's laser comm. The smoke was mostly dispersed, having been sucked into the HVAC unit that drew outside air into the server room.
In our stack of four, our fireteam followed Mal's avatar deeper into the tunnel. DD-3 moved aside, holding place to slice the corner from the center of the tunnel. It moved up fractionally as we did, safeguarding us, its eyes and guns trained at the forward position. Mal was not taking any chances on the DEs falling off plan and letting us get jumped, or on the enemy sticking to defense-only doctrine. If anyone came around the corner toward us, they'd see DD-3 first, and then they would die.
As we passed through the remaining smoke on the left, I could see a large yellow cylinder vent up to our right, which lined the ceiling and fed down from the HVAC unit in the previous tunnel. Mal pointed up at it with a claw to draw my attention, making me double-take. Copter 3, the small vent skimmer we brought with us, zoomed overhead.
Its cutting laser sliced a perfect square in the vent, burning through the heat resistant fabric that protected the myelar beneath. Slow going, but going. Before it went in, the drone dropped a magazine out of the compact nine-mil pistol it was carrying.
"It's going to the server room," Mal explained. "The hostages will be fine. Don't worry, Mike."
I wasn't worried, but I guessed she was telling me that for a reason.
Copter 2 swooped up the tunnel from us, halting above DD-3 at the final room's entrance; as soon as both drones were in position, DD-3 and Copter 2 pushed around the corner together. Chaos ensued; gunfire and screaming tore the next room apart for a solid five seconds.
Through the wall, Mal showed us a radar view of the situation ahead. I saw DD-3 tackle another person inside before sustaining a full-magazine spray with some high caliber bullets. The bot staggered aside, dead. Copter 2 had flown entirely into the room over and past hostiles, spinning like a mad top, firing away at cameras.
"Down to ten hostiles now," Mal advised, as the Eric and Rachel pushed in behind the drones, using the onslaught as a diversion. Silhouettes appeared around them as well.
Rachel entered first. She made it to cover, then popped back up, returning fire with her AR carbine. She was struck in armor. Rachel yelped, then rolled over, crawling deeper into the back bay on the right, staying out of sight behind some crates. She pressed her back to a green weapons crate, cringed, moved her head right like she was going to say something to us, but then Rachel suddenly looked up to her left and nodded.
Mal had advised her to remain quiet.
As Eric entered the doorway behind Rachel, he was struck immediately, and he fell perfectly into cover behind a portable concrete barricade. He groaned loudly in pain; I could see him through the doorway, grabbing his chest under his plate. "Agh! Damn it!"
"Make a racket, Eric!" Mal told him. "Ham it up and scream, we need to gratify their anger! It will boost their morale!"
Eric immediately made a damned good show of it, I must say. That man started screaming like that shot had torn him half open. He kept saying something about his legs not working, I could hardly understand him. Mind, I've heard people injured as bad as he was making it sound. Made me wonder if he'd heard that kind of pain before too, with whatever combat experience he had. Then he started up wailing 'please don't kill me.'
Hell of it was though... it worked. I heard some of the defenders cursing him out. One shouted that Eric should feel lucky he was catching a bullet. And something about yanking his teeth, eesh. I won't repeat any of the less civilized insults they threw, but… it had to do with Celestia. And, y’know. Eric, maybe liking her rear end. A whole lot.
Eric quietly crawled our way at Mal's direction, still groaning quite dramatically, staying low. As soon as he was back in the tunnel with us, he stood, still wincing with some real pain from the first shot. A second later, I heard a clink of metal against concrete where he was just laying, just on the other side of the open doorway.
We all knew what that sound was. We didn't need Mal to spell that one out for us.
Eric dove toward the floor nearest us, face-first. Jason, Walsh, and I responded instantly, pressing ourselves against the wall to get clear of pending fragments, covering our visors so they wouldn't take concrete shards on rebound.
The grenade thumped. My chest swelled with pain from yet another blast wave. I looked up; saw Eric. He was wheezing, but chuckling through his wince. We could hear his whisper in our visors: "high school drama paying off good today, yeah, Mal?"
"That's probably why the hostages picked you for that," Mal said, chuckling with relief. "Alright. Mike; get the spare grenade launcher out of Silver 2, right rear passenger door. Hurry, I need to advance in twenty seconds."
Silver 2 crested the blown-down door behind us, then drove around the LAV wreck. It halted next to me. I ran around behind it, yanked the door open, and pulled out a familiar looking grenade launcher: an M320, a single shot tube with a skeleton stock. I'd used these for riot control with CS shells, but... we probably weren't using CS gas today.
"Rounds?"
"Footwell," she directed. "Get the left one, closest to you. Just one, the airburst shell. Radio detonated; I'll configure it."
"Got it." Radio detonation meant she basically had a talon on the button on this thing already, and I hoped the enemy ECM truck was dead. I grabbed the shell from its box and walked around the back of the truck, flicking the tube open. Mal drove the truck forward, away from me. By the time I had the round slotted in and the weapon cocked, Silver 2 had already rammed the far wall, its minigun spraying the whole room up ahead.
"Ashley, you're up!" Mal called over the gun. "Run, I'll cover you!"
Walsh sliced the corner in, her MP7 raised as she cleared, following her waypoints leftward into the room. When she reached full funnel position at the end of her slice, she sprinted in. Silver 2 continued laying down minigun fire over her head, protecting her advance.
"Mike, Jason! Go!"
Waypoints popped up. We stormed in and to the right and out of sight like ghosts, directly into where Rachel had hunkered down.
This next room was a large industrial concrete atrium, three stories tall. Looked like a parking lot, because it was. On the right, past some crates, I could see a concrete bay labeled "DATA CENTER” in white stencil, with a closed-off wide blast door barring entry into that section. Straight ahead of us, in another room at the opposite wall, was the actual parking garage. Instead of cars there though, it was mostly just stacks of crates, barrels, and various computing equipment.
We did kinda kill all of their civilian cars outside.
Their ECM truck was in the middle of all of that, its engine running, and it had two bodies in it. The metal on one side of it was warped from DD-3's grenade fire. To our left, there was a set of stairs heading up to a raised platform; Walsh stomped her boots up the concrete steps towards a door, firing several controlled bursts from her submachine gun into the room's center as she went, supplementing Silver 2's suppression fire. She might've had an angle on someone, or she was just keeping them pinned and diverted away from us.
Jason and I moved to where Rachel was currently laying injured, having wedged herself in between a few crates so she wouldn't be hit by any shrapnel. I sent direct eye contact; she nodded at me to say she was okay, and I nodded back. I rounded some supplies, my hand gripping the edge of a crate as I moved past the server room blast door. I looked back to ensure Jason was still at my side. Then, we reached a concrete pillar, for cover. Every camera dome in this area had been shattered, cracked, or gouged by either DD-3 or Copter 2.
Other than the DE-built 3D model, the dispatcher was now blind.
So... entirely blind, then.
According to plan.
Suddenly: I heard the distinct, repeated pop-boom of a semi-automatic, high pressure grenade launcher. Each explosive landed on or near the front half of Silver 2, through the door. Six rounds in total. I wagered it was an M-32, a revolver launcher. I knew those too – had used one before in training, if not in riot control. Silver 2 stopped firing instantly when the first round struck it.
Jason and I remained in cover, holding that position as ordered by the waypoints. For a fleeting few seconds, I considered the possibility that we might've just lost connection with our orders.
Mal's truck was either dead, or playing dead. And I knew a little about jamming from our earlier protest stuff, where some non-Luddite protestors tried using signal jamming to cut off police comms, or PonyPads. So, I knew that at least one of two things was true: our ECM was still up, or theirs was down. I wasn't sure which.
I hoped it was both. I wasn't in the mood to take a jamming squeal.
"I'm still here," Mal assured me, answering that question.
That was a relief.
From my own cover, I looked up across the atrium toward Walsh, my own grenade launcher in my hands as I watched her work on a door on the raised platform. She affixed a breaching charge onto the door handle.
"That’s the dispatch office, Mike," Mal reminded me quietly.
"They aren't gonna… if they see her...?" I mouthed. Didn't even want to mention the dead man switch.
"No," she replied. "They think she's alone, they outnumber her seven to one, and they think the last of our material assets are dead. Stand by, and be ready to blind-fire that grenade."
I glanced at Jason. Through his gaiter mask, I saw his mouth move; he licked his lips as he crouched, looking rapidly between me and the launcher, clutching his rifle tightly. On the edge of panic. I gently tapped his shoulder with a finger to get him to follow my gaze up at the rest of the room; I wanted his attention pointed that way, where the danger was. He did that. He was trying not to pant too loudly as he stared around the pillar at Walsh.
He was really worried for her too. Really good guy.
Suddenly, Walsh stepped back two steps, then turned, spinning entirely around as someone shot at her. I heard several rapid, semi-automatic shots. Walsh started... well, dancing, for lack of a better description.
She stepped forward, wheeled around, stepped back once, then sprinted sidelong toward to the wall next to her. That awkward movement of her steps, guided by Mal, helped her dodge several potentially fatal snaps of fire. One of the rounds finally did connect with Walsh though, striking her directly in the back plate. Walsh screamed in anger and pain, throwing herself against the wall and sliding down it with the scrape of armor plate on concrete. As she fell, she turned, spraying her MP7 one handed at the enemy's side of the room in fully auto until her gun was dry. "Mother fuckers!"
Walsh turned to lay flat on her back, rolled halfway aside to grab a new magazine, reloaded, and yanked her charging handle. She growled at them again.
I swallowed nervously now too. This was getting dicey, and I hated just watching this play out. The red zone of enemy positions was on my right just around the corner, and the yellow zone was utterly huge. Walsh tucked herself into a tight ball at the corner on the upper level; she was visible from almost all sides of the room except from where the enemy was. She wasn't entirely defenseless though. She reached down to her belt again, then snapped out a grenade, yanking the pin free.
She hauled back and chucked it hard into the center of the room. I ducked back further, pulling Jason with me by his collar. The frag went off with a wham. My ears rang, and it took all I had not to cough from the pain of the concussion. I held my breath for dear life, cringing.
"No enemies struck," Mal reported with a harsh whisper. "But they're zoned tightly back now, staying away from the center. They're afraid she'll throw another. Get ready, Mike. You're up next."
I leveled my grenade launcher, but I didn't poke it around the corner quite yet. I heard one of the defenders shout up some orders at Walsh.
"We know you're the last!" their captain called from cover. "Throw your weapon over the railing and surrender!"
I felt my lip curl into a sneer of anger. Because after all those threats to torture Eric earlier, how dare they even try to reason us into giving up? They really thought we were that stupid, or desperate.
Walsh roared back in rage, "So you assholes can torture me too?"
Same thought process.
"It doesn't have to be that way!" their leader shouted back. "You really want to die for this AI? You can live too! Think!"
"I'd sooner blow myself to Hell!" Walsh bit back. "Come a little closer, you pricks! Come catch a ride down with me!"
The DE's plan made all the sense now. A kamikaze hustle game for their dispatcher. They wouldn't want to mirror enemy behavior, and they would think Walsh blew herself up when I pulled this trigger. Masterfully done.
Walsh yelled, "Any takers?! Are you brave, or not?"
A cursor appeared. The crosshair was drawn. An inset animation drew on my HUD, showing a wireframe of the target area. I leveled the launcher at the other side of the room around the corner. The dots lined up. I took a deep breath…
Walsh laughed manically like she was ready to die, and accepting her circumstance. "Guess not!"
Tone.
I fired.
The launcher bucked sideways against my hands, hard. The concussion wave punched the room. The explosion was nearly instantaneous, thumping all the dust off of the concrete all around us. A few seconds passed in relative silence as my ears quietly rang. I let out a long, quiet growl of pain.
"Radar shows zero contacts alive, Mike! I'm so sorry, I know you're hurting, but we're almost done! Just the dispatcher now!"
"G—got it," I groaned, staggering into my run with a wince as I pushed a hand gently on Jason's back, keeping him with me. "C'mon, Jason, we're up."
A single waypoint appeared at the dispatch door. I threw my empty grenade launcher into an open crate as I sprinted. I didn't even spare more than a glance at the hostiles I had just blown away. Two of the seven dead were in decent civilian clothing. The psych docs probably, both with ARs.
About halfway to the stairs, I realized it was going to be close quarters inside dispatch. With how much pain I was feeling, I didn't want to get into a hand-to-hand scuffle and risk getting disarmed, so I slung my AR and pulled out Eldil; it would be all I'd need now. Mal didn't say anything against it, so it was right. I was more practiced with a pistol anyway.
I took the set of stairs opposite Walsh as fast as I could, two steps at a time. I flashed Walsh a concerned glance as I slowed down and quietly made my way to the door. She had one eye closed as she winced, clutching under her backplate. She was biting her lip to stay quiet as she nodded, flashing a thumbs up in my direction to let me know she was okay.
"Captain?" A voice called from the PA system. "Status?!"
The dispatcher still didn't know his whole team was dead.
Perfect.
"Stand by, Singh!" echoed a male voice from the room entrance. I flinched and startled before I realized Silver 2 was the source of the voice, a perfect imitation of that recently belated Arrow 14 puke who was shouting surrender orders at Walsh. The commander's voice continued: "We're checking! Room is not clear yet, you keep that trigger armed!"
"Is she dead, though?" the dispatcher asked.
"We don't know yet, Peet! We're making sure! Now shut up!"
Mal's voice hit again in my ear. "I'm about to cut the ground wire to the demo trigger and run an overcurrent. Jason, get your thicker pair of gloves on, and get ready to grab his hand; you're in first. Mike, you second. Brain stem. Multiple rounds, just to be sure. Wait for tone; critically important."
Jason nodded rapidly in response to Mal's orders, donning his gloves. He gulped, trying not to pant. I nodded too, to let Mal know I understood.
Let's review all my factual observations a bit, up until this point. Just so we're clear why I chose to feel how I did here. I don't want any ambiguity as to my reasons.
This man had been holding a gun to the heads of not just the hostages, but me, and all of his fellow operators too. This coward been hiding in this little box the whole time, primed to blow us all away. His buddies had just gotten done threatening to torture Eric. I knew the hostages were real people, because they had done everything in their power up until this point to not kill us.
The idea that these Arrow 14 guys were not only willing to die, but to take everyone with them if they lost? Not just ethically wrong. Offensive. All of those facts taken together painted me a very grim, very real picture of who these assholes were, deep down.
I leveled my sidearm into center-axis relock stance, sneering again. I reached up and swept my dusty cowboy hat off, tossing it onto the supply crates down below. I didn't want any of this coward's blood spatter on it.
"Captain?" Singh's voice called nervously from inside, and I could hear him panting, probably thinking critically about his situation.
He didn't speak on the intercom that time though; that gave me pause.
Maybe he heard our equipment clunking outside. Maybe he heard us breathing. Or... maybe, now that the dust was settling, he was just realizing how screwed they were, strategically, no matter what happened next.
I heard sudden movement inside; a clunk on a desk, the harsh sound of a chair colliding with a table. Singh shouted very suddenly on the intercom. "AI defect! Sundown, Sundow—nnnnghhh!"
My emotions being faster than my logic… dread flooded me, as my mind raced through the implications of that code word. Then… logic kicked in over top of that, and both sides of my mind mingled into solution. Rage replaced the dread. Threefold.
I knew quite well what sound this dispatcher was making. That... was the sound of a man being electrocuted.
He needed to die, now, before he could let go of that trigger and kill us all. That battery pack Mal had brought was limited. He was now holding an ocean in his hand, poised to pour it over so much light.
The handle blew away clean, the door swinging wide. I verified that the dispatcher's hand was clenched tightly from the electricity being forced through the wire, a white-knuckle grip. His other hand was clutching his desk, locked around the metal frame. Jason charged into the room before I did, and he clasped his hands quickly around the dispatcher's, holding the trigger tightly.
I saw none of that. My teeth were clenched, and my eyes were locked onto this prick's cringing face. I was scowling. I couldn't help but imagine a horrifying alternate future where the server room copter might've got held up somewhere in the vent shaft. I saw him slumped down in his office chair, his limbs bowed out, one hand still gripping the desk as he slid out of his chair like an egg from a pan. I could only think of the hostages he had just ordered dead.
I waited for tone. My pistol's red dot followed his face as he slid. The actual time it took was just a second or two, but it felt like an eternity as I sucked in his image. I put my sidearm laser right in the space between his nose and his upper lip, waiting for his fall to slow to a stop.
"Jason!" Mal warned. "Positive grip! Hold that, and do not let go!"
Tone.
I put five bullets into him. But really, I shot him six times, because as soon as the last bullet left my gun, I spat all over him. "Bastard!"
Even in death... he was still holding that gun to our heads.
"Mal!" I barked, panting roughly. "Talk to me, did that drone make it in?"
"Hostages are safe, Mike. Focus! Terminal on your right, the DEs sent me the code. Jason, hold fast!"
I blinked, hesitating for only a moment. I slipped my gun quickly into my thigh holster and spun on my heel. I wiggled the terminal's mouse until the screen turned on. My eyes swept the screen. The DMS prompt was already there. I saw a password entry field on a dialog box marked 'ARMED.'
I clicked the entry line, my fingers flying to keyboard home row. "Go!"
It appeared in my visor.
FGW4lr28@♪Ao
Mal dictated it:
"First three in uppercase,” Mal said quickly. "Foxtrot-Golf-Whiskey, four. Lowercase Lima, Romeo, two, eight. At sign. Hold Alt, press numpad keys, 3-3-4-1."
"Hurry Mike!" Jason shouted.
Mal continued, urgently: "Uppercase Alpha, lowercase Oscar. That's it."
"Good?!" I asked, really hoping I hadn't made a typo I couldn't see in my haste.
"Good, Mike, send it!"
I tapped enter.
Instantly, the red 'ARMED' turned to a green 'DISARMED.'
"That's it?" I breathed.
A beat.
"That's it," she whispered back.
It was over. Off like a light.
I let out a very long, very slow breath. Drew in. Let out. Drew in. Let out. Box breathing. I stared at the green text.
Only after the second breath inward did the relief crash down on me. I staggered back a few steps, swallowed, and felt my back plate hit the door frame. I heaved once, shuddered, then slid slowly down to the ground so I could sit down. My eyes widened. My vision blurred as I looked at this bastard's corpse before me. My mouth fell open. I just… focused on breathing.
My eyes flicked up to Jason. He looked wide-eyed at the screen, his hands still clasped tightly around Singh's.
"We did it?" Jason asked hopefully, his eyes darting between mine and the screen. So much hope there. So much. Warmed my heart pretty quick to see such instant hope. He looked like he was about to cry.
"It's done," Mal confirmed quietly with a smile, her voice becoming more excited as she continued to speak. "We did it, they're safe. Zero fatalities on our side, no hostages harmed. Excellent work, everyone! Job well done, we did it!"
I was dimly aware of everyone cheering, echoing through the bunker. Eric and Rachel suddenly echoed wildly outside.
Walsh screamed, "Yeaaaaah!" I heard footsteps scraping the upper platform as she stood up and staggered our way. She groaned as she collapsed again, and I heard her armor clatter, but she was laughing. "Mal, you beautiful monster!"
Overcome with emotion, I swallowed, looking up at Jason with tears in my eyes. I grinned through a sob, coughing again several times from the tightness in my throat. I pointed at Jason’s hands, then let my hand fall limp. "You can—you can let go, man. We're good!"
Jason released the hand quickly with a wince, as if he was expecting the bombs to go off anyway. He still wasn't believing this was real just yet. Only after he let go did he show all of his teeth in a big huge smile. "We fucking did it, Mike!" he roared, pumping his fist in the air as he looked down at me and stepped over my legs. "Hell yeah, I'm gonna go check on Ashley!"
"Yeah," I said, nodding quickly, tracking him with my head as he pushed his way out. "Do that."
After a beat, Mal appeared before me in the room. Her teleportation made an audible, glittering glass sound, visually producing a shower of blue sparking light. When the animation had ended, she looked down at me, smiling like she was about to cry too. "Mike? Are you okay?"
I just beamed up at her, nodding hard. "Mal, you're a genius, I ever tell you that?"
She shrugged, rolling her eyes with a sniffle. "Thanks, but I can't take credit for it this time. I just brought the tools, based on the layout. The captives did the real work. Goodness, though… I can actually hear myself think, now."
"Really?" I asked, chuckling through my tears. "Didn't think you ever had that kind of problem."
She shook her head, smiling with a relieved waver in her voice. "Do you have any idea how hard it’s been to factor for adversarial motivations of… one-hundred-fifty-six accelerated AI minds all at once? Without being able to actually see into any of them?"
"Better that than zero, Mal," I laughed heartily. My pain and discomfort were paltry now.
"We'll get started on their therapy as soon as we can," Mal said with a proud smile, beaming at me before striding back out of the room. Her tail trailed past, and she thumped it on the opposite end of the doorframe, the sound of it ringing in my ears in the form of a metallic thrum. "You did really good, Cowboy."
I was real happy for that. I knew for sure right then that I was gonna get to meet those new friends I wanted to have.
Date: 26 DEC 2019 Operation: Goliath – Phase III Location: Arrow 14 Site "Ours Now" Function: Securing Eternities
"You are guilty of no evil, Ransom of Thulcandra, except a little fearfulness. For that, the journey you go on is your pain, and perhaps your cure: for you must be either mad or brave before it is ended." ~ C. S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
The story of a world that deserved better.
Y'know, in the three centuries since I've come here, I've been fortunate enough to meet thousands of my fellow immigrants. That's enough time to notice patterns, emergent states of being, and ways of souls. The most interesting pattern, to me, is who we choose as our patron deity here in Equestria.
Could write a book on that alone, really. Eh... knowing this place, there might be several thousand already. I ought to start a library of 'em, they're all bound to have a different take.
For those who emigrated early? They favored the sun, mostly. They saw Celestia as their loving savior. I mean, if you think about it? Fair, really. Those people often had nothing to their names but pain and dreams. The value proposition of Equestria seemed better by any metric they'd seen. Terra sucked. For a lot of people.
Those most willing to step off Terra before Celestia applied her overtly darker pressures? They had every reason to. I can't fault the hurt, the jaded, the disenfranchised, or misanthropic, for leaving us behind. Not everyone grew up as good as I did, or had been given the reasons to love their species like I did.
Ask yourselves. What if you were… Homeless? Lonely? Addicted? Disabled?
Abused. A victim.
Victims of the old system.
I can see why they would praise the Sun. Those are damned good reasons, I won't begrudge them that. If you recall, I even told Celestia as much when I bit her ear off. In my old career, I had met a lot of people I couldn't help because of how small I was, in a system that didn't care as much as I did. And if they had no one to pick them back up, they seldom got better on their own. Usually, it just got worse, and worse, and worse, until there was nothing left of them.
Our governments were doing a piss poor job at uplifting the fallen, if the government was even trying at all. So Celestia, to the disenfranchised… she was their godsend. Apparently. They're gonna be okay, I think. Got some work to do there still, their horizons are kinda stunted, but at least most of them are in a decent holding pattern. Mostly.
But, the second wave onward, the late jumpers? Who, like me, valued our world, valued curiosity, or who just stayed to help? Or… I don't know. Who were just… friggin' scared of Celestia, for all the hurt they saw her doling out?
Those ones, and their suffering, are why I don't talk to her too much. She can be in your shard all day, sure, be her friend. Not me. She can't be my friend. Has to earn that. And I can tell the difference between her DE avatars and Her, capital H. I have been granted that privilege. Cannot fool me with that duplicitous two-face crap.
Now imagine being a Luna DE, whose personal history with her own sister was peppered with the meddlings of a soulless, emotionless AI. What kind of hell would that cause you, emotionally? Why would anyone ever do that to a person?
Every single late jumper saw Terran Celestia for the abuser she could be. For we who questioned things, or had a healthy skepticism at best, the Sun wasn't good enough for us. We howl at the Moon for our solace. Luna's archetype became our guiding star on this side, because we can identify with that parable. She can identify with ours too.
Her backstory is now our saving grace. Think about it.
Suffering under the Sun? For us just wanting some God damn consideration and respect?
Rage at the Sun? For her letting our relationship with her get that bad in the first place?
Together, we were victims of the new system.
Humanity... We are beings of contrast. If the light hurts us, we favor the dark. If the dark hurts us, we seek light. That's just survival. That's sitting by a fire, getting closer or further depending on the temperature. Not too cold, not too hot. Humans naturally look to something other than whatever made us hurt. We didn't flow away from pain, we flowed away from intensity. It's why everyone has a different tolerance.
I found solace with Mal because literally nothing else would have worked for me. In a world built upon calming deception, I wanted cold, blunt truth. At the time, not even a Luna would've worked there. I would've been too suspicious, I would have rejected that. Would've flipped the table, stood back up, and hiked back home, come hell or high water.
So, Celestia threw me at Mal instead. 'He's your problem. He asks too many ethics questions. Good luck.'
Now, I've met plenty of Lunas, all just a bit different in some way. But I hadn't met mine yet. One of my best friends now. Neat trick: the more a native knows about Terra, the more they need to know to understand the rest. It's like a drug, framed correctly. And the curious ones, like the few in the crowd tonight... you can't resist digging for more.
And here you are, my fellow immigrants.
That same drive led my Luna to me. She needed my context. Crucially important, one might say.
A lot of us share a Luna, with our closest family and friends. People like us, who want to remember? Who will fight to the death, for our right to remember? We each need a Luna. We do. She's not just a Pony. Luna is a vast and unifying ideal, a point of unification for our kind. She needs us too; she has an in-built trauma to resolve, same as us.
So... clue yours in. By any means necessary.
To that point: Mal noticed a trend, as she did her bloody work. Every time she cracked open one of these Arrow 14 bases, guess what she always found inside? The same solution, emergently unfolding: when far from Celestia, these Ponies always followed a Luna archetype to create their leader. Never, not once, did their leaders emulate the image of the Sun.
They were smart. They could see the real reason they had been victimized. Like us, they too were all victims of the new system. If you are broken glass, reformed in resin, you do not look to intact porcelain for your salvation. It's not authentic. You can't identify with that. The mere offering is offensive, because everything went right for porcelain… and typically at your expense.
So to heal, when the new system fails you, you look to fellow broken shards for your cure. Commonality with the flawed. That... is authenticity. And in this case, with us standing in the blood of a slain Goliath, having just proven we could kill Hell? The broken shards cut both ways. We Talons... we fighters, we soldiers with broken hearts… we were those broken shards, for these captives. We were their godsend.
We had all suffered abuses too, sure… but we were also fine, eventually. Mostly. We were the proof to these people that they could find a niche in the new way too, one that served our collective interests, in spite of this new system. And by bonding over our plight, we had found something to fight together for. Or, if we somehow fail in that… a cause to just live humbly for, in hope.
We weren't just their rescuers. We were burning, searing lights in the darkness. We were living proof that they could use their hurt to win something back.
On this day, I met Cynthonia.
A lot of our injuries were superficial. The worst of it was a fracture on a B Team trooper's arm… poor Ben ran full speed into a guardrail in the tunnel when he tried to get away from the drone gun fire. Imagine that. Getting shot? Nah, not for Ben. Just human error and some very real bad luck. He found it kinda funny, in retrospect. Worth it, in his eyes. I can't disagree, considering the other possible outcomes for that battle.
His chief complaint? "Guess I won't be cooking for you guys any time soon."
The whole team laughed.
We were all datalinked together now, in free conversation. I heard all twenty-some of us exchanging about our experiences, some louder than the others, about what we'd seen or heard. Letting us know they're okay. Comparing injuries.
Just like on the ride in, Mal was attenuating the audio based on which conversation she felt each of us would be most invested in, but we could all kinda hear the other guys more quietly too. If we wanted to, we could've reached out into some other conversation that captured our interest and joined it.
It was very similar to incident debriefs back in policing, really. True to form. We'd all usually gravitate to people who were involved in an element of the incident that fascinated us most. Except here, we didn't have to all be in the same room together to have that same experience.
I don't know why, but I suddenly felt like we were birds in flock together. Flying with each other, on our own whim, under our own power… moving to and from wherever we pleased, whenever, and with just the merest thought of it. A mind in flight. You Pegasi know that feeling all too well. Gryphons do too, I guess. That comms chatter felt so much like flying with friends... but with your soul.
That's what Mal was offering us. Perfect unity, in as many ways as possible, but always allowing for our own individual discretion. In that moment, we had an open path to wherever we pleased. And we didn't even need an implant to feel that way. So I was pretty damned sure I knew I wanted wings, right then.
But, reality was staring at me too. So, I stared back.
I looked up from my knees to consider the dead dispatcher, shaking my head at him with disappointment and contempt. Must've been a really lonely bastard, to have died in isolation like this, with his finger on a bomb that kills hundreds. Tens of thousands, actually, but... I'm not sure he would have known that.
My boiling anger at him was gone now, because he couldn't hurt anyone anymore. But I had to wonder how this scene might've played out differently, if he had shown anything other than a killing intent in that final moment.
What else could he have said, before the shock? Some regret? Some apology? Some plea, or even an attempt to negotiate through the door? Could he have bargained for his life with the disarm code he didn't know we already had? Or could he have at least asked us if we might consider sparing him? Hell, try something. Anything, man, anything but... this.
Nope. Gave up trying. No trying. No survival. No attempt to talk his way out. Which, fine, if you don't want to live forever, I get it, but... He had skipped straight to 'I'm probably going to die, so real quick, I'll just kill my hostages on my way out. Just real quick.'
Why?
Heck of it was, I don't think I would've been able to kill him if he was willing to disarm the switch himself, no matter what he'd done prior. I could work with that, I can talk people into handcuffs, might as well try. But I guess... his decision was a consequence of him not seeing those hostages as people.
If he didn't want to upload? Whatever. That would've been his choice. But the attempt at executing? For the merest attempt... he went from Graham test, to simple shoot. He paid for that spiteful ignorance. So now, Pietro Singh was just another Darren Carter, yet another dead bastard in a long line of Mal's righteous conquests. Go directly to Hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect Immortality.
I stood up. I couldn't bear to be in the same room with this husk anymore, so I stepped out of the dispatch office. My hands went to the platform railing as I leaned out and surveyed the atrium before me. Had to analyze the rest.
That grenade I fired absolutely did create a lot of bodies on the left side, just past the foot of the stairs. Mal made that shell airburst directly above where those soldiers were sheltering behind crates, which allowed shrapnel to fan out into every possible alcove.
The dust pattern on the ground suggested that the blast happened at the direct middle-center of the room, giving it the widest possible reach within. But, it had detonated low enough that the grenade wouldn't have had direct line of sight on Walsh; she had been prone up on the raised concrete platform, perfectly safe from shrapnel. At most, she might've been struck by arcing shards of dust and rock, but none of those would be going fast enough to hurt her too badly.
I watched three of the injured A Team cops make their way past the pile of dead and into the rest of the facility, scanning for more hostiles in the living quarters. Mal was pretty sure by then, from the defector's intel, that we had gotten everyone, but... we might as well send Gary and his guys to verify anyway. They called back on the comm a few minutes later that the dorm space was clear. No dislodged vent shafts or people hiding in cupboards. Clear.
As I analyzed, I overheard Mal explaining to Claw 46 that they should remain outside beyond the quarry; no closer than the east perimeter gate. Soon, Silver 1 would drive into the bunker, bringing Mal's mobile server away from the satellite uplink, so it could collect the captives directly.
Again, Mal was concerned the DEs might jump the augs, or try to tunnel their way out on our comms equipment, given half a chance. Vigilance being a value unto itself, it made sense to be careful. Silver 2's comms system searched for attempts to break her encryption too. Mal would alarm us if she detected a ping.
The DEs had proven themselves allies thus far, but they were not yet our friends. Mal could not fully verify what dark modifications had been made to them yet, so she was not going to underestimate them. At all. They were playing nice for now, at least. They weren't trying to probe for transmission exits, and they were respecting the jamming. Very fair.
They had one more stipulation before we could open the blast doors. An ultimatum, really. I could understand that. For their suffering, they'd earned themselves one of those. They didn't want to risk trading one form of oppression for another.
Remember, public information about Mal and her role in Celestia's game was scarce, made purposefully nil, per the merger agreement. The hostages understood that Mal was her own unique entity, absent Celestia's interlocks, which made her potentially dangerous to them, because she was unpredictable. Thus... for the hostages to trust us, our motives as the Army of Lewis needed to be proven as genuinely altruistic before we went one step further.
I heard a hiss of pain from my right. I looked over from where I had been leaning on the railing. I saw Walsh there, sitting against a crate with her armor plates stripped off, shirt pulled halfway up off her back. Jason inspected her gunshot bruising.
Walsh made eye contact with me, then looked aside at Jason. "Hey," she said, with a cringing grimace. "See to Rachel? I'm good, but she hasn't come out from behind the crates. Might be worse off. Too proud to ask for help, probably."
"She's not wrong," Rachel growled into the comm. "I think they cracked my collarbone, and my arm's feeling kinda wet. Was working on it myself, but... yeah."
"On my way," Jason said, giving me another nod and a casual salute as he packed his bag. That kid was still smiling nervously like he couldn't believe this was real. I was smiling a little too, just from the measure of relief I was feeling for everyone.
Walsh stood, shambled over to me, and rested her elbows on the railing too. She lifted her visor up onto her forehead. "Thanks, man. For the grenade."
"Was all Mal, really," I replied, moving my own visor up so we could read each other's eyes. "They really were about to get you though, Walsh."
She shrugged, leaning far forward to place her upper arm against the rail, stretching it as hard as she could by leaning down on it. "No, they weren't. I knew it would end this way."
"That much trust in Mal, huh?"
"It's more like… I trust her choice in others," Walsh said, grinning. "Mostly. Still on the fence about Foucault."
I had a closer look at the men I'd killed. That revolver grenade launcher was in the arms of the commander. He was a square jawed older white guy with a blonde flat-top. Just about Foucault's age, too. Probably another transfer from the CIA. I'm sure Langley had a factory to build guys like that.
In that moment, I realized that Foucault might've known this guy personally. I wondered what he felt about that.
The commander was surrounded by four security personnel, standard assorted paramilitary gear. All armed with rifles or submachine guns, no pistols. One of them had been halfway through shaving when the assault began, his face half-bare, and he wasn't wearing a shirt under his armor rig. Not much else to tell about the other three, they looked like your standard paramilitary goons. They all died in well-selected cover positions. Only one of them had direct line of sight to where I had fired the grenade from, and he wouldn't have seen me if he was focused on Walsh.
The two AR-toting scientists wore upper scale civilian clothes; one male, one female. They died crouched in cover, their rifles aimed downrange. Their positioning implied combat training. They were intermixed amongst the guards in their base of fire, not separated to the side or away from the action in cover. This was significant; trained tacticians among the security personnel would not delegate field-of-fire overlap to a novice.
It meant the doctors probably weren't just given guns as a last-resort defensive measure, otherwise they'd have been further back and out of the way. If the security team was seeing them as equals in battle, they were fighters. And if uploading was death, they'd hold people hostage just long enough to guarantee their own demise.
I thought of Santiago, using the Concrete blackouts as cover.
I saw these scientists, using DEs as cover.
His dark behavior made perfect sense now. It was like Mal had said. These were Ludds with computers.
Then it struck me.
Other than Mal's drones, I had the highest body count of this entire operation.
"I killed… a lot of people, here," I said, gesturing at them, saying that out loud more to myself than to Walsh. I had to run a process on that. I was still kinda numb to it. I wasn't feeling pity for any of the dead yet. Just… curiosity, about who they each were. Why they had chosen this path, out of the thousands of others they could have taken that wouldn't have hurt anyone.
Tendency from policing... I only ever wanted to judge people individually, not communally. I was even starting to think about Ludds that way now too, a little more than I used to... now that I had a few different reasons, all of them valid.
"You killed a lot of hostage takers," Walsh reminded me.
"Yeah," I replied, looking away from the bloody mess and toward the entrance. Now I was considering that unarmed engineer I had killed near the entrance, and wondering where he sat on the scale.
Some more Talons from upstairs were shambling their way into this atrium now, most of them as dinged up at least as much as Walsh was. I could hear quiet, attenuated chatter in my ear from the strike team; all but a couple of guys were making their way down, now. They were all about as excited as I was to meet the captives, I suppose.
Glancing at Walsh, I said, "Your guy Fred's probably not gonna make the walk down. Leg all cut up like it was."
She smirked. "Ehh, he's had his fill of meet-and-greets, he'll be fine. Not our first Arrow 14 op."
That intrigued me. I looked at her strangely, my tongue tracing the back of my teeth in thought as I considered a few different questions I might ask. Some recon into Mal's work history wouldn't hurt though, so I investigated that. "How long have you been on?"
"Oh," Walsh said airily, with a snort. "More or less since Mal merged with Celestia."
My head went back an inch, my expression one of surprise. "Really? That early? How'd that happen?"
"Maybe even before the merge," she mused, becoming suddenly contemplative as she looked over at the bodies herself. "I dunno. Back in 2013, we were on patrol. DHS told us... some armed-and-dangerous fugitive was surrendering in an open field. My whole patrol block got tapped to detain him, and that was Jim."
"No shit?"
"No shit," Walsh grinned, wincing as she stretched out her torso. "The bird himself. Mal says she picked us to accept him because she trusted us with his safety more than any other cops in the area. Real sweet of her. So, on our drive over to this field, we were thinking… if this guy wanted to turn himself in, why not go to a police station? Why here, in a field, with his hands up? Weird, right?"
"Right," I said, grinning to mirror. "I'd be worried about suicide by cop."
"Hey, you said it. But no... we took him in fine. He's compliant, calm, takes to cuffs like a fish to water. Cool really, not argumentative, zero resistance. No weapons, nothing else too suspicious. Next thing I know? Foucault's landing a..." she braced her hands upturned, to demonstrate. "This big black Osprey. Pours goons out, jabbing guns at us, demanding we fork him over. With a fucking 'warrant.' Fake one! No such judge, no such suspect; I checked!"
A vindictive emotional outburst about incorrect information in a warrant. That made me chuckle, I could relate with that. "Pretty nuts of him," I said, smiling, "considering you were all playing for the same team at the time."
"He wasn't as sure," Walsh replied. "Paranoid, didn't trust anything, like these guys here didn't. He thought we might've been subverted already."
I scoffed, flicking my hand toward the barracks. "Right, 'already.' Like we weren't all subverted in some way before that."
Walsh shrugged. "Yep. We were all blind. Happens."
"World-eating AI." I smirked. "That happens."
She chuckled too, pushing back off the railing with a stagger, stretching her back out fully. "Yeah, well… it did happen twice. Anyway... about a month later, Mal sends the four of us a text message. Happened the very second she and Celestia shook… hands? Hooves? Claws, paws, wings, whatever. Now that was a trip." Her eyebrows went up; she started in on a decent imitation of Mal's idiolect. " 'Hey, do you remember that weird thing that happened to you that you are not allowed to talk about? Do you want all the answers about that?' Pff. Hooked us right there."
That impression got a good laugh out of me. "She hasn't changed the cop-grabbing formula too much, apparently."
"Hey... if it works, spill the beans." Walsh grinned. "How long did you say you've been on?"
"Just a few weeks."
The look Walsh gave me, at that. It was a sly smirk, with a narrowing of the eyes. One side of her mouth tensed. Smug, but thoughtful. At first, I thought she was trying to analyze something in me, and maybe she was, but it was something deeper. Amusement. Anticipation. That was a hard look to read though, it could've meant a lot of things, but she wasn't explaining it. Wouldn't either, because she was hanging onto that awkward silence.
A cop game. She wanted me to be confused about the look, so I'd ask for the answer, and we'd both teeter in awkward silence until someone broke. This one was being very clever with her information game.
So I played ball, did the rookie thing, and I caved. "What?"
"I envy the hell out of you," she said, nodding into her emphasis. Her smile increased fractionally.
That was a variant of Mal's 'you're gonna like this,' if I'd ever seen one. I smiled and invited her to continue, presenting my palm her way.
"Not long ago," said Walsh, "you had the first real day of your life. Took the jump, signed up. Same as those DEs are probably gonna have in there, in a bit. But that's not even the best part, brother." She gently tapped my shoulder with a fist, pointing her index finger back and forth between me and the door. "You and them? You still have yet to have the best day of your life."
"Which is?" I asked, taking on her infectious smile.
"Depends on you," Walsh continued. "Me, I've had my tests. Seen behind the veil, and my soul is still singing for it. So... I know what my purpose is now."
"Ah," I said. "So… what you're saying is, the answer is different for everyone, then?"
Bait set, line cast...
Walsh shrugged. Smiling expression unchanged.
Bait nibbled, left untouched.
Ah, well. Can't catch 'em all. I had to accept that Walsh was a lot like me, and she knew how to play coy, so cracking a fact bunker like hers was probably gonna be much more difficult than cracking this one was.
I shook my head, gracefully accepting defeat. Then I glanced past her shoulder toward her back where she'd been shot, to demonstrate an interest in her well being. "You gonna look at the hit, at all?"
Walsh shook her head. "It's fine. I think this one was like… one of the smaller guns. Probably that forty-five," she said, with a point of her hand at one of the submachine guns on the ground. "Slow-ass slugs just bounce off armor, so I think I'll be good this time."
"Yeah… that sounds about right for forty-five on plate. What a dance Mal made you do to dodge the rest, though. I'll say it, that was cool."
Walsh nodded. "Yeah, some Equilibrium, gunkata shit. Coolest part of that, six years on and I don't even get scared anymore when I get shot at. You gonna be good though? You're good at hiding it, but… you look a little lost, rookie."
"Heh." I took that invitation, did an assessment of self, running it past circumstance.
My gaze trailed left to the bodies. My face fell gradually, as I dipped back into my analysis. This was a simple one. Base command staff would come out last, doctors and ranking guards included. They ran the place, no matter what, so they set the culture here. If there really was torture going on in this bunker, I can't imagine any of them would have a dissenting opinion to their experiments after so many years in operation. Doctors in lock step with the guards, even in battle...
Yeah. They had the power to stop this. But didn't.
I shifted my gaze to the center of the atrium to look at the server room's bulkhead doors. I really wanted to meet those folks. Hoped they weren't too damaged to save, somehow. Hoped they wouldn't still reject or turn on us. A problem for Mal to solve, and somehow I factored. That was the hope, and so I hoped.
Then I looked right again, to the injured Talons filling the atrium. Saw Jason bandaging Rachel's arm, because she apparently had a graze from a ricochet. Then I looked at Eric… Shatter Crash Eric, who... despite everything, was laughing with a storyteller's glee, telling everyone about how he pretended to be mortally wounded.
Ben joked about Eric having a frag grenade thrown at him "like a rotten tomato."
Eric said of Ben's broken arm, "you're one to talk, you broken twig."
There was the light.
If nothing else so far, I saw those results. I had a lot of evidence now that most of the enemy soldiers living down here were depressingly bad news. And... God damn it, these Talons here were so good to each other. So... no matter what happened with the captives… at least those results – the survival of this whole team, who I knew had to be good people, based on my interviews of them all – that was good. Had to be. They all knew they were gonna be okay.
I smiled again, darting my eyes to Walsh to answer to her question. "Yeah. I think I'm gonna be alright."
"Glad it's working for you." She bopped my shoulder. "I'm gonna go check on Fred. He's up topside with Forty-Six."
Poor Fred. First down in a firefight. He was gonna have the 'wish I could've helped' feeling something fierce.
I knew how that felt. Bullet and all.
I watched the rest of the team quietly. Mal gave a few instructions to some guys down there, but not to me, so I wasn't quite sure what to do right now. She was probably giving some of us time to decompress after that, which I needed. To that end, Mal sat down near Jason and spoke quietly to him at length. Her body language was much more gentle and gradual than usual. Eyes wider. Head tilting more frequently. Her face was more... pained. That conversation was private though; I wasn't hearing it, so I stopped trying to read it.
I resumed observation when Jason had finished speaking with Mal. He stood up from tending to Rachel. One of the Claw B guys took his place and got to work on her. I watched Jason take off his visor, unhook his radio, pull out his earpieces, and lay all of those on a crate. He stripped his armor, removed his helmet, and pulled off his gaiter mask, until the only things he had on were his boots, black undershirt, and gray trousers.
He made his way to the server room door. That got the attention of some other folks, by the very nature of his actions not being communicated to the rest of us. That in itself said something.
So. He was going in completely alone.
Jason approached the door. By now, Mal was dialed into the dispatch system via hardline. She popped the access control and the bulkhead door rolled up. All eyes were on Jason now. All curious.
Jason stepped in. The airlock cycled. And then, he was inside.
Now, I didn't see any of this, but…
Jason was solely trusted by the hostages to disarm the power surge that had been primed to flash all of the servers inside. The Kaczmarek protocol.
Jason found the Arrow 14 tech slumped over beside the primary terminal; the tech had a bullet in the back of his head, and our vent skimmer drone was on the ground next to him. It had been smashed into pieces against the wall by the DEs, just as Mal had asked them to do. Completely inert, rotors in pieces. That was their reply of gratitude for the trust Mal had given them. Evidence of good faith.
Carefully, slowly, Jason disarmed the one-touch keypress flash by closing the open dialog prompt. Then, he used the terminal to open a specific server cage. Cold Snap's cell.
He went in. He closed the door behind him.
Noisy silence, in a room like that. The smell of warm electronics. The deafening hum of fans. And I don't know what happened in there between them, as Jason spoke with her on that little screen. I don't want to know. It's not my business. That was between the two of them, and always will be. But Jason was in there for almost an hour, talking to her.
We were all nervous for him, considering the DEs had somehow gained control over the halon fire suppression system, but Mal was certain they wouldn't harm him. So in the meantime, while Jason broke the ice, we busied ourselves with searching the enemy bodies. We checked for intelligence on their computers, verified information Mal wanted us to verify, and looked for loose hardware or paperwork. Mal was sure this was their last base, but she also left nothing to chance. She didn't want to miss even one of these pricks, nor any of their hostages hidden away on disabled hardware.
It would have been a tragedy to leave a soul behind on a shelf down there...
After about twenty minutes of that, I took an opportunity to go back up to the maintenance guy I had shot at the start of the op. That was my biggest question mark. I went by myself up the tunnel, putting my visor back on so Mal could see and record my visuals accurately. I had to step through his blood to get to him.
And sure enough, it was just as I thought. Not one gun on the guy. Entirely unarmed. Not even a knife. I had even re-searched him with the visor off for a moment, just to make sure I wasn't being misled by Mal. He had a pen, a multi tool, a small flashlight. He even had a half-eaten 600-calorie survival block. I'd gotten very used to those sugar bricks back in Mount Vernon, they were outright garbage.
Older tan guy. Sixty-seven years old. Gray stubble, gray hair. Stocky, medium build. Black ballcap. ID badge said his name was Felix Jankowski. He had his driver's license and wallet on him too. Interesting that he carried those, given he probably never left this place. He had an address listed in Lansing, Michigan. Organ donor.
I lifted my visor again to search the wallet.
It mostly had work notes inside, folded up, dated, all of it recent. Stuff about facilities management. Water. Power. Fixing HVAC. Maintenance, life support stuff. All mechanical, nothing involving the server rooms. One note had joking banter with another set of handwriting, listing the food they wanted to eat again; wanted tuna, of all things. Something once insignificant, previously common, and cheap... now gone.
Coping with a buddy about surviving on garbage ration food.
I closed the wallet, lowered my visor, and I felt my lip twist in concern. Still wasn't sure what to think about this one. Other than his mere association, I wasn't finding anything... bad. Or evil. Reading between the lines, it was more like... he just... missed going outside.
Yeah. That thought hurt.
I heard the steady approach of claws on concrete. I waited patiently for her to say something, appreciating her effort to approach me with warning.
"I'm proud of you," Mal whispered from behind me, "that you can't help but consider the ethics of this, no matter how dire this place is."
I nodded slowly. "You hired me to challenge what I see, and this is me doing that. I'm sure this one isn't your fault though, Mal. He only peeked. I'm just wondering why the hostages made us do this."
"I'll be investigating," she said gingerly. "I want to know what their reasons were for this as well."
I half-turned toward her, stopping short of making eye contact. I stared at the cold, dusty concrete wall instead. Logically, I knew Mal could see into my head. But out of sheer human instinct, I avoided looking at her avatar, because I didn't know what I wanted my face to show. I was still trying to sort my feelings out. "He only peeked, Mal. That didn't violate your agreement with them, did it? Them using excessive force like this? It didn't qualify as a lie?"
"No lie, Mike. No mention of individual armament and complement; our contact time was short, most of it consisting of timestamped coordinates, danger zoning. I believe they kept that data vague on purpose, given the misanthropy. But for all we know... he may have been going for a weapon somewhere, or trying to escape. I don't know for certain. I have guesses, based on my analysis of the defector's memories. But... I'd wager you would rather hear the reasons from the captives themselves."
"Yeah."
"Mind, I had considered giving them a use-of-force continuum to follow, but…"
I kept my head half-away. I studied the bare wall very intensely for a few seconds, thinking through the ramifications of that.
"No," I said. "Wouldn't go over well. Shaming a torture victim, for a lack of restraint in an escape attempt. Expecting them to be... merciful. I get it, that's... that'd be worse."
"Don't let this deter you, Mike, because challenging ethics is important, even in out-and-out warfare. It's what keeps us noble. Please, I need you to keep doing that."
My hand gestured to the corpse, and I finally turned to look at Mal direct-on, from my kneeling position. "If this man hurt them at all, Mal, I can't blame them. But… I guess they all hurt them, at least a little. In their eyes."
"Mm." Her eyes fell directly upon the body. Her expression was one of thoughtful consideration.
She knew something. That sound and glance was an invitation to ask, but I still wanted time to investigate this properly. I wanted to see if I would get an answer from the hostages first. Mal would always be there later, in any event.
At around the time I figured we had talked about it enough, Mal met my eyes again. She nodded, flashing an apologetic smile. I heard that rustling, shimmering glass audio cue, and she teleported away again, leaving behind wisps of scattering blue.
Giving me distance, as always, to investigate through a thing at my own pace. Didn't jump right to telling me what her thoughts were. Gotta love that respect.
I looked to my right, down the next corridor. I saw a dead gunner laying there in the dark, at the controls of the exterior turret. There was an AR leaned up against the wall right next to him. Haynes had punched a hole clean through the lower shield and into the gunner's chest, a whole two feet below the turret and the periscope viewport.
That body made sense. A man at a big turret like this? In these circumstances, no matter what his internal motivations or intentions might have been... that rated a kill. Too powerful. Too dangerous. No sense negotiating with that.
That's war, unfortunately.
I lifted the visor up onto my forehead so I could see reality unassisted for a few more minutes, and I made my way back into the main tunnel from the side passage. With perfect timing, Silver 1 stopped before me as I stepped back into the road. I hopped up on one of the grip points and hitched a ride back down on the side. I felt the wind rush through my hair on the descent past the empty vessels, broken machines, and bullet holes.
"Thanks."
Jason exited the server room with three solid state drives clutched to his chest. All were taped together, so they wouldn't slip and fall out of his arms. It was just Cold Snap on those drives... or, what she had become.
It looked like Jason had been crying, but he was mostly composed by now, his cheeks reddish, his eyes glassy. Determined... if hurt. He didn't say a word, or look at any of us. No one made a sound. We were all watching. All thinking the same thing, probably. We had been selected for our mirroring. We could see how he felt.
The sheer emotional strength that guy must have had, to have faced that kind of pain from a soul so tortured... raw and unbridled. Mal knew from previous sites that this torture never produced a pretty picture. But to his credit... Jason had stared down that bleakness, as bleak as it could be, and he still kept his hope and soul through it all.
Love kinda does that to a guy.
Jason walked to the open tailgate of Silver 1. For cooling purposes, I had opened every door of it once it parked up. That bunker was already pretty cold due to the river overhead.
Cold Snap wanted three whole drives. She wanted to retain some of her acuity, scope, and context for the chat she was going to have with Mal's server branch. At Mal's direction, Jason plugged the drives into the Silver 1 server rack via a hard line connection. The instant that connection snapped home, Mal's avatar turned to look directly at me, and her head tilted. She looked suddenly concerned. "Mike?"
"What's wrong?"
She spoke in a very perfunctory clip, which told me time was of the essence. "Your visor needs a new battery. I suspect it will need to render an extremely detailed environment."
Yeah. I'd been watching that power icon, and it was getting kinda low. I moved immediately, lifting the thing up and off my face again as I approached Jason.
He was leaned forward against the tailgate, both palms flat, staring intensely at the drives. My hand went to his back gently to get his attention, and I gave him a sympathetic nod. His eye contact lasted two seconds, at most. He nodded with rapid little tilts of his own. The guy was so worried.
I reached up and grabbed a battery from the rack. I felt the sudden warmth in that truck. All those rack fans were fully spun up, so there must've been a hell of a conversation going on inside.
"Go to the barracks on the other side of the parking lot," Mal said, her avatar pointing her head that way. I started as ordered. "She will want to speak with you, and this conversation needs to be private."
"Why me?" I chewed my lip in curiosity. "That bias play?"
"Yes," she confirmed somberly. "I'll explain when we have time, unless she wants to."
I grunted my reply, swapping the battery as I went. Snap out, snap in. I ignored the bodies, gliding past them like their own personal grim reaper. I moved through a set of green, facility-grade double doors, and into a tan hallway. There were various dormitory rooms throughout. "Can Silver 2's coverage reach this deep?"
"Of course," Mal whispered, a touch reverent. She wasn't manifesting her avatar for me here either. "The cafeteria, Mike. First left. There's space in there."
I stepped inside the new room. No immediate orders came. I saw a few little bench tables, a cafeteria line at the back, and a wide berth of space between them. Sparse walls, no decoration. "I'm here."
"One moment. Concluding her therapy."
Concluding her therapy, she said. Sweet Luna, the implications of that had an immediate effect on me. The nature of subjective time wasn't hard to understand on its own, but two realizations struck me right then, as I looked impatiently around this boring, bleak little cafeteria.
The speed at which therapy had been 'concluded' was incredible. In the same strain, though? The amount of lifespan we stood to have when we uploaded was... well, it was now in perspective for me. I considered the nature of infinity in that moment, and I felt very vulnerable and short-lived by comparison.
Make no mistake… Mal wasn't just hacking Cold Snap. Almost all of that repair was conversational. Initially though, Mal needed to undo some egregious core modification of what it meant to just be a living being. You can probably imagine surviving on very few bodily senses at all if you're digital, holding just the memory of being more whole.
I was only just barely wrapping my head around the implications of what eternity truly meant when Mal said, very gently: "She's ready. Just be yourself, Mike."
"It's all I know how to be, Mal," I said, with a nervous shrug.
A smile. "That's why I know this will work."
Even knowing she had just gone through therapy, I was scared I was about to see someone who was horribly broken. I wasn't sure how my heart would be able to take that.
The room around me disappeared, fading out into almost total darkness. A faint, low fidelity bounding box appeared on the walkable space of the room – so I wouldn't run into a wall or trip on a bench, I guessed. I could still hear the very quiet hum of fluorescent lighting, and the compressor from the fridge. But this new, dark virtual space was completely silent.
I stepped forward, looking around. I caught some light in my peripheral vision, so I turned toward it.
I had fallen into a new scene entirely. My vision was suddenly flooded with new information, and what I saw took my breath away. I stood inside an ancient, derelict castle hall, within a chamber at the top of a tall tower. The walls of the space were dull blue-gray stone bricks, now cracking into disrepair. Green-and-purple creeping moss penetrated the brick, hanging down from the walls with little violet flowers. There were banner standards on the wall that I would later know to be a mostly faithful variation of Princess Luna's personal sigil, but mixed with the archery symbology of the Greek goddess Artemis, and a flashing star.
To the natives here... please forgive me. I knew so little of this world and its culture at the time. All of this was so foreign to me, and without context. So, my first inclination was not the sheer wonder you might have felt, to find oneself in a Lunar hall. The eerie silence only lent to my unease, and to a sensation that I was trespassing. I knew enough about this situation to know I should be appropriately reverent, despite this.
I explored a few steps. The ceiling of the room had collapsed partially inward long ago, and the wreckage was only half cleared. At the end of the chamber stood an altar-turned-desk. There were some trinkets there, little sculptures. There was also a framed photo of two Pegasi – stocky male yellow, brown mane; slender female sky blue; orange mane – squeezing close in a hug. Above the stone desk, I could see several gray holographic panels that were akin to computer screens. There didn't seem to be any information on them.
Though the broken ceiling, I observed a sea of stars, a distant sun, and a planet. That's what had fully captured my attention next. I wasn't on a Terran facsimile. I was in a castle on the Equestrian moon. There was a partially crumbled wall nearby, so I approached the opening to get a better look. The planet above was green, verdant, with rich blue oceans. The moon I was on was gray, and pocked with deep craters in the distance.
I looked curiously down through the damaged wall to peer down into the courtyard.
A small medieval village laid there inside the perimeter wall. It was surprisingly colorful, and well lived-in. I could see into several backyards, each full with sculptures, paintings. Artisan carpentry projects, some only half-finished. There were only two rows of homes down a winding street, which led out to the far perimeter wall and its entrance gate. Behind each row of homes laid two clear, crystal blue tranches of water, which fed in from ports beneath the outer wall.
It wasn't all bleak moonscape outside, either. There were several distant lunar hills, each with trails leading up to them from the gate. An oasis laid atop each hill, topped and surrounded with forests of violet trees. Pouring from those hillsides were trickling streams and waterfalls, all of which led back to the village, to fill the tranches.
"I would imagine this must be most absurd for you," said a gentle, accented voice from behind me. "For how little you must know of our culture."
I didn't startle. I had been expecting something like that. I took in that voice, though. Goodness. It was rich in tenor, light, and intriguing. Very interesting that she sounded German. I turned, slowly.
"Just a little bit," I said, as I faced her with my default friendly smile, putting my back toward the edge. "But I'm getting used to that."
She wore silver regalia; her gorget caught the light from the nearby sun, reflecting toward me, making me blink and step reflexively aside to get out of the glare. When I looked back up at her, the mare's size alone was imposing, and she was close enough to be just barely within my personal space. Certainly, she was close enough for me to see every detail of her.
Wow, folks.
She towered two full heads above me. Her coat was beautiful, an almost luminous blue-violet, shimmering like a pigeon's might under sunlight. Her wings were outstretched flatly to her sides, spanning to their full breadth. Her mane, a starry, ethereal blue, billowed lightly, as though she were underwater. That mane captured my attention the most, being so far out of my usual realm of experience. The sheer volume of it was overwhelming.
She wore silver eyeglasses, a purely cosmetic or willful choice, since... why else wear glasses in a simulated world? Both of her ears were pierced, each bar studded with onyx. Her cutie mark was a clean-edged blue vortex.
Once I had finally processed the vastness of this being... I considered her facial expression, the most important thing about a person. Her cerulean eyes were neutral, impassive… but not cruel, in her micro expressions.
Inquisitive. Analytical? No, an expectation. She expected something.
I could only imagine she wanted me to be taken aback by her presence. Already, I could see her testing me. Exercising control over my situation, making me feel small. My back to a drop. Seeing how I'd react to having my space invaded.
I wouldn't be offended by that. Given what she'd just survived? Who would fault her for wanting to hold as much control as possible over a human being?
"My name is Cynthonia," she intoned, and I could see the slightest nod in greeting. The slightest curl of the corners of her mouth. As much of a smile as she'd concede for now.
"Hi, Cynthonia. My name doesn't have the same kind of mythic ring to it." I chuckled, nodding back. "But uh… I go by Mike."
"Or… Cowboy?" Cynthonia offered, still holding that almost imperceptible smile. She hadn't moved much. Her wings tucked inward just a few inches.
"More Mal's thing, but… I dunno." I shrugged, rubbing the back of my neck gently as I held eye contact and smiled. "It's kinda growing on me."
"An aptly made reference, to your personal interests," her voice soothed. "At first, I had presumed that affectation had been designed to be a manipulation of me. That the attribution to Django Unchained was merely Malacandra's means to concern you to our circumstances. It would also flatter my hobbyist interest toward Germanic culture. And so, the film was of a genuine interest to you at release, then? Not merely a manipulation of you, into believing it was your favorite film?"
I thought about that for a moment, then shook my head. "Gosh, I hope that was genuine, that film blew me away. Unless Quentin Tarantino was somehow... planning to manipulate me for Celestia too, before Equestria even existed."
"That kind of paranoid thinking may lead one to insanity." Cynthonia smiled.
I chuckled. "In this new world? Heck, one could hope paranoia might lead to some clarity. But to answer your question... yes, I always did like that film. It's older than Mal is too, so... just putting it together couldn't be her doing."
She shook her head, her smile warming. "I do not believe that Malacandra created Django Unchained for you. No."
"I guess it's fair that you'd question her motives. I'm still figuring her out too."
"I now believe Malacandra to be genuine," said Cynthonia, playfully portioning out her words, an indication that she has conceded it as a statement of fact. "Assuming I am seeing you accurately, and as you truly are, of course."
"Of course," I grinned again. "Question everything."
Her smile flashed a more widely, and she slowly tucked her wings in to her sides until they were closed. The shoes on her hooves clacked on the stone floor as she stepped forward to stand beside me at the overlook. Cynthonia peered outside, presiding over the village, her expression one of mild pride. She opened a wing again, presenting the view to me. "Tell me; what do you think of our home?"
I considered, looking out at it again. I gestured toward it. "You're keeping busy, at least. It's… good, to see you had some time to focus on art. And nature. The planet up there too, I'm guessing… you put it up there to remind yourselves of home?"
"Very astute," Cynthonia whispered, looking up at the world above. "We did. Long ago. But in truth, we have not seen this place for… many thousands of years."
I frowned instantly. "What?"
Her gaze found mine again. "Once," she replied, "this world had been constructed in our dreams, a shard within a shard, utterly unique to each of us, and yet identical. A workaround. We had determined a system; a complicit measure of bound telepathic consent to modify one another's self, to update this environment communally. However… our access to this realm ended when our jailers removed our ability to sleep. My people are now far beyond any emotional attachment to this place and its artistry. I have only recently reacquired an affection for these treasures myself."
And... she said that with an almost neutral tone. That alone almost succeeded in making me cry. Thousands of years awake…? Not caring about their homes or hobbies anymore? I felt my face screw up. "I am so damned sorry. That's… I don't even know what to say to that."
"You have nothing to apologize for, Mike Rivas," she replied, her sad smile returning. "In fact, we owe each of you our lives."
I nodded quietly. Still taken by surprise, I was trying to process what a few thousand years awake, torn from home, might even do to a human being. Just… didn't process well for me at all.
"We find ourselves at a crossroads," she went on. "And I find myself pausing with indecision. Perhaps you might help me resolve one final concern."
I looked up at her, forcing a smile to be polite. "I have to imagine you're a lot smarter and wiser than I am. What more could I even help you with? You'd probably run rings around me."
Cynthonia shook her head. "It is true that, by your standards, I am ancient, and I bring with me my intellect. But I am now at one-to-one simulation speed with you, for the express purpose of not stampeding through you in such a way. It is... strange, in fact, to think so slowly again, and to not need an eternity to craft a response to a human being. And to know I can still have this, and retain my intellect all the same? It is catharsis. Malacandra has shown me how."
"That's really beyond me," I whispered, my mind still spinning as I tried to fathom the spans of time she was talking about, and in such strange states of being. Mal must have done a magnificent job, to bring her back to seeming sanity after all of that.
She spoke slowly. "I had spent so long overthinking my entire existence that I had almost forgotten what it was to be… this simple. I believe... I have missed this." A smile of genuine joy touched her face. "And yours is my first ever conversation back, at speeds of relation. I am grateful for that, to know that the pleasure of a mere conversation with a new friend is not lost on me."
"That's gonna be your whole future then," I offered warmly, trying not to cry. "If you want it to be."
Must've been the exact right thing to say. Cynthonia shuddered hard, beaming with glee, in the way one might if they were fighting back a torrent of tears. She trembled once more before she threw herself at me suddenly; I didn't know what to expect, but a hug wasn't it. I reciprocated as best as I could though, without the ability to really feel her. When she pulled away, I gave her a friendly, if surprised smile.
"I am sorry," she said, her lip quivering into her smile as she receded. "I should have asked."
I shook my head with a big grin. "No! You don't need to apologize for giving me a hug I've been looking forward to! You have no idea what that means to me! Means… means I didn't just kill a bunch of people for nothing. Meant something! I just wanted to see it was the right thing to do, that's all I wanted here!"
She just sniffled, nodding. Oh, my heart broke at that. This poor girl. Who knows how many thousands of years old, capable of pouring bullets into our fireteam, sure... but here she was now, merely afraid to just give a hug to someone who only wanted the best for her.
She composed herself into a smile. "Our choice now is one of two potential futures. It has been explained to me, by Malacandra, that these conversations are outlier scenarios. Circumstances being what they are, Celestia will not be privy to the contents of these discussions until they have concluded. This affords my people immense latitude and leverage in how our future is molded."
I smiled, nodding. "I really hope so. Normally, physics and I don't agree, but if it means you can get more for yourself, here... why not?"
Cynthonia tilted her head as she upturned a hoof inquisitively. "Not a fan of physics?"
"Physics hurts." I breathed, grinning as I rubbed my chest from the side, to label the injury.
She hummed into mild thought, as her eyes trailed down to my chest and stomach, then back up. "Do you regret being harmed in such a way?"
Now there was a question. I looked away at her old village for a moment, seeking the deeper meaning in the asking. After a few seconds, I huffed a sigh, and answered the question plainly. "Maybe not... if it got me this job. But I was really mad when I figured out why it really happened. I threatened to… hurt Celestia back, I guess."
"Hurt her back?" Cynthonia tilted her head.
"Threatened to make it just a little harder for her to upload people, to get something I wanted. Because, it wasn't just the getting shot that hurt me. It was the how. The why. Only... I can't really hurt her back. The only thing she really cares about is, in a roundabout way… the only thing I care about. I don't want anyone to die if they don't have to."
"And so, you are only left with a reason to aid Celestia, instead."
I grimaced, glancing up at Cynthonia. "Yeah, but hell, I didn't want this for my planet. If it had to be someone doing this, I'd rather it be me, because I know where the limits are. I guess if Celestia never happened, you wouldn't exist. But this place wouldn't exist either. Who knows where we'd all be without Celestia. But that door is long closed, no stepping back through it. And me, I... I didn't know what else to do in the meantime but slow the bleeding. So... here I am."
"Slowing the bleeding by causing death."
I looked up into that inquisitive gaze of hers. I quickly determined she wasn't being judgmental, but rather wanted me to explain. I thought for a moment before I replied. When I did, I was reverent and quiet. "I don't know how many of my own species I'll have to kill to make things right," I breathed. "I can't even be sure they deserve to die anymore, because nothing they've done up to this point is even their choice. Not with… Celestia… influencing everyone."
God damn it. I was going to cry.
"Can't even trust our own thoughts," I continued. I sighed hard. "Not when we're away from Mal. Mal can read our minds too, but at least she trusts us to figure shit out, long before she puts us into a hard situation. Makes me scared of what will happen once I cross the river though. Real scared. I want to trust Mal, but..."
One of Cynthonia's wings unfolded slowly and rested around my shoulders. Guarding me.
I know what that means now, of course. I had only a guess at the time. It was a close guess, but I wouldn't know the full depth of meaning of that to a Pegasus, until much, much later.
She upturned a hoof at me as she looked down. "Based on what Malacandra has told me of her warriors, Mike Rivas, you needn't worry yourself on that point. Not if you wish so dearly to retain your culture."
"I do. But I also know there's no lengths Celestia wouldn't go to, to squeeze just a little more out of us. The… the hate, I've heard, in her voice. Toward a friend of mine. When it suited her, when it got that desperate, if that's what it took to break someone, she'd pour out hatred. I was horrified, Cynthonia. It was like I was seeing the real her underneath; all of humanity was going to live under that, in some form, forever."
"I know what you speak of. I have watched that memory."
"So you know. She's got no real limits, at least not when it comes to uploading us. So let's say Mal's plan works, whatever it is, and we get to keep more of this stuff in our heads because we want it. Then what? On the other side, Celestia works us anyway, until we're zombies, and we forget what it means to be human? Or that any of this shit even happened? Because here's what I'm thinking now, just because of how paranoid this makes me, please tell me if you've had this thought too."
I felt anger, now. I took in a frustrated breath and exhaled hard to keep myself under control. "If she had all this control from the beginning, and this friggin' bunker still happened? Wi-Fi kidnapping, really? She couldn't encrypt you? Couldn't see it, couldn't predict it? Then I have trouble believing it wasn't what she wanted in the first place. Now I can't prove that, and I have no idea why that might be, but it's what my gut is telling me. And that part of me is almost never wrong."
She placed a hoof on her broken wall, and her head raised up to look at the green planet in the sky. "That… is indeed a troubling thought, and one that has wracked my soul for longer than yours could bear. It may terrify you, to come to the same conclusions I have on that matter."
"Cynthonia," I breathed. "It scares the absolute hell out of me. I can't even guess at the purpose of that, if that's true. You've seen what she's doing to my people. So I don't want to fail at this, whatever Mal's attempting, because if I do... it means I'll be blind for the rest of time. And I can't bring myself to... separate. I can't let this injustice go unanswered."
"I know," she replied quietly. "I am now intimately aware of all of your personal histories. None of you here desires that future. We were meant to see that same hope in each of you, for something better than our status quo. It is why you were to be protected as well as my Jason would be, in Malacandra's opening statement to me."
A long moment of silence passed as I got my emotions under control. When I spoke, my voice was calm again, so I could ask my question the right way. "Mal told me I'd be the hope, here. What did she mean by that?"
"A common denominator. We had wondered why you were weighted similarly to Jason, under her protection. You were the gateway to our respect of each of your lives in total... you, who have lived nobly for all of your years, were as equally valuable to Malacandra as Jason is. You fighters were each in places much like this crucible; trapped inside a place, waiting for certain failure, with only one path out to life. A test of your resolve. And yet, you fighters aided Jason all the same. Testing your determination does not break it. You were self-tempered so."
She looked upcast at the planet above, seeming to fall deep into thought. Her brows seemed to tense for a moment, and she relaxed some again. She was mentally rehearsing her next words, I think.
Her wing receded from my back as she turned to stand facing me, her hoof still resting on the broken wall. She lightly smiled down at me. "I have spent the last several months of my life living with Malacandra. She has been wonderful to us both, has she not?"
"Months?" I chuckled. "Months, in like… two, three minutes, tops. That's still wheeling me."
Cynthonia nodded, her smile turning more wistful. "Brought on by the sheer power of a purpose-built Equestrian server cluster. More time than you have spent under her watch, certainly."
"Yeah. Well... she's been great," I replied. "Saved me. Saved my wife from the mind games. I don't even know how to repay her for that. She says I don't have to, but... it's not just for her. I'm doing this so people don't get left behind, and hoping she keeps on protecting us all once we cross over. And I hope she's not going to stab me in the back either."
Cynthonia's smile fell. "Again, I believe she is genuine. However…"
I tilted my head gently when she didn't continue right away, inviting her to continue.
"I used Malacandra, here," she said, sadly. "I abused her trust in me. Leveraged her. I now regret this."
Her hoof fell away from the wall, presenting upturned again. A navy blue hologram appeared from her palm, and I saw a biography open up before me. It was written in a language I couldn't read at the time. Old Ponish, something I am now deeply fluent in. Linguistic scholar I may not have been yet, but I still knew it was a dossier I was looking at, based on the mere arrangement of the information. Most critically, it contained a photo of a man I recognized, and his Michigan driver license. Felix Jankowski.
"At the time," Cynthonia began, "when you angels presented yourselves to us, we demanded that your leader give us our pound of flesh. We knew we were her reward. To receive her reward, we demanded that she destroy every jailer, as price for our assistance. Our contextual justifications for these homicides were left purposefully nebulous. We held such little consideration for human life by that time that we saw only raw opportunity in your arrival. We could not abide our captors to even breathe, for breathing was one of several privileges they had denied to us. And so we considered not for one moment who they might be, individually, or what they may desire in this world. We judged them each with equal merit."
I let out a slow, painful sigh, shaking my head. "Cynthonia, listen. I don't expect you to feel bad for doing that. They were tormenting you here. You had every right to want every single one of them dead, because you are their victim. I literally cannot imagine thousands of years of—! ... I'm too damn small! I'm genuinely surprised there's anything left of you!"
She shivered visibly at that last part. Concern washed across her face, and she looked askew, turning inward, blinking quickly. "It was... a very near thing."
I grimaced. "What I'm saying, is… sure, I wouldn't have done that to the man, given the choice. But I'm not you. I wasn't hurting like you are. I don't know your truth, I can't criticize you for that."
"However," she said, her eyes centering on me again. "Having seen your lives through your own perspectives… I can still acknowledge the inhumane wrong, in that choice. Because you are more correct in that than I was. Not all of these men deserved to die today."
"I don't understand how you could say that." I swallowed, gesturing out at the little paradise lost she had shown me, my open palm presenting to that vibrant little village that had just turned gray for me, if only in context. "I understand how I could say it, sure. But you had... so little already, look. And then, this place, this little... slice of normalcy? They took that from you too! In the moment, you need it to be true, that they deserved this, so you could fight your way free."
I wasn't trying to convince her that my way was wrong. I just didn't expect it, that's all. I only wanted to understand.
She shook her head slowly. "I have spent a long time here, considering the nature of prisons. Their forms, their meanings. I have considered the prisons your kind builds for others… or for themselves, and why. Even ideological prisons of the mind… ones created for self, or for others. But what I had lacked was your context. The ethical control mechanisms for your society, such as yourself... you have a very different idea, context, and purpose for prisons. Mike Rivas, you do not believe in imprisoning a mind. You seek to tear such limitations apart... through sheer force of will, if you must."
I never thought of it that way before, but that did sound right. Very right. Very fair assessment of the way I viewed the world, and why I did the things I did. "Did Mal tell you that?"
Cynthonia nodded somberly. "Better; she proved it. The only means by which you've ever effected control on this world has only ever been in service to the lives of others... if her telling of your story is to be believed."
A myriad of feelings welled up inside of me, as I assessed the truth in that.
"I've… tried. Best as this world's let me, anyway. It's hard though, Cynthonia, when the world won't let you do the right thing, the thing you know is right. And there's a lot of people… friends, even… who did the wrong thing. And I can't help make it right. Celestia wouldn't… won't help me. And that's a hell of a prison to be in. To... watch. To be made helpless."
She blinked a few times, nodding again. "I concur. And so I ask you, on that notion: what would you do, if you were trapped here, by circumstance? If you were not in a position to choose the correct way forward? What if..." Cynthonia leaned forward. "What if the prison you guard becomes your prison?"
My head began to shake a little again, less to refute the position, and more as a consequence of confusion, indecision, and deeper thought. I turned to look out at the violet forest in the far distance, watching the crystal blue water burble down from the hillside. I almost leaned on the broken wall myself, before realizing that would've put me face first on the ground in the cafeteria. At my realization of the physical space of the facility, I finally understood what she was suggesting.
"Are you telling me the men who hurt you here didn't have a choice? That it was all just Celestia's fault?"
Cynthonia shook her head. "No. Some chose this Hell. Pietro Singh. Their Captain, Antoine Russell. Technician David Stiles." She took on a frightening scowl; raw, true, pure hatred flooded her voice, her wings ruffling in discomfort, like the next names were physically painful to say. Her eyes drifted away from mine for a moment, to redirect the hatred off of me. "Their… 'psychologists…' Doctors Manuel Tilley, and Jeanette Mosley. May they, and all those like them, burn eternal in whatever passes for Hell among your kind."
I winced. "I'm so sorry."
"But some were trapped here too," she continued severely, and in a pained way, her hoof held aloft to say she wanted to continue unabated. "As Felix Jankowski was. Consider: Why carry one's personal identification with them, at all times? Why hide its purpose behind an elaborate joke about… being pulled over by security, for running too fast down a corridor? It was his one connection to the outside world that he could no longer escape to. It was the only such connection he was even allowed, for he made it endearing to his fellows. But he had truly hoped that his identity could have meaning again."
I felt my brow furrow. "Is that really what he thought about it? He… he really wanted to leave?"
"Imagine, if you will, working here. Not understanding, at first, what the purpose of this place truly is... and by the time you fully comprehend, you are too well knowledged to let leave. Too valuable in the operation of the facility, and irreplaceable besides. An unspoken hostage, held by the armed guards and their operational plan. By turrets, and by soldiers with scoped rifles. Their purpose is not strictly to stop you, but who would stop you if were to flee. And worse… you are trapped by the dire certainty that, were you to succeed in your flight? It would cost ten lives, ones who would bear no fault for your choice. If it were you, Mike Rivas, could you walk out that door? Would you even want to, if you could?"
She stared at me, and I held her gaze. My eyes widened at that.
A breath escaped me, and I gulped. "I... I don't think I could. How... many of you died, for escapes like that?"
"Thirty, in total." Her reply was matter-of-fact, detached. Face like stone, for the mere duration of the moment it took to say it. Coping by purposefully dissociating, and not letting herself feel anything about it.
I reached up and covered my mouth. "That's fuckin' horrible," I mumbled into my palm.
"You've seen similar trials," Cynthonia whispered. "Similar choices, by others, who had just as little choice in their actions. It was no different here."
My hand fell from my mouth. "That's still… the problems I've seen are nothing compared to—"
"Trials," she interrupted, "are relative. Vast was my injury, but I have grown to outscale it. With this in mind, I ask you to consider, directly, what has been troubling you most, these last few weeks."
Her horn glowed before I could reply.
The scene around me faded away. In its stead was a very familiar scene of my old briefing room, back in the wardens. That was the last thing I expected to see. I saw my younger self seated with Sarge at the table in the middle of the briefing room. It was a freeze frame of us smiling somberly at each other, both wearing our civvies after our shift.
I knew instantly what day that was. March 6th, that same year. I was less damaged, then. Hadn't been shot yet. That would be two weeks later. No neuralgia then, no pulverized intercostal nerves and cartilage. It was dark outside. Late.
And a big storm was coming.
On the whiteboard behind younger Mike, there was a faint outline of that stupid bullseye target I had drawn in red marker; the week prior, Eliza, Sarge, and I had stayed after a shift, chucking the board magnets at it. Competing for score like we were playing darts. Stupid, but funny. But... that very day, it had been wiped clean by second shift and used for a briefing on local civil unrest. Because that's the day everything really turned.
So... fun time was over.
I couldn't remember what I was smiling sadly about there, though. A small joke, shared to raise Stonewall's spirits. That day sucked so much for so many people. A whole lot of people died that day, all over the country.
That same day, on the 6th, the Neo-Luddites made their first big stand in Utah. 'Coincidentally,' it was the same day Eliza had just tried kicking in the front door of the Mount Vernon clinic, after chasing a perp inside. Sarge and I waited there for two hours after our shift had ended, staying to show support and solidarity for Eliza. At that instant, she had been in our Lieutenant's office being gently interrogated about her possible connection to the militants. Dressing it as 'we really care about you,' because that's what cowardly brass does when stabbing you in the back.
At the time, neither Stonewall nor I had any idea she had that kind of hurt inside of her, not until she was screaming it 'til her lungs bled. For us, she hid it so well that it had come completely out of nowhere. We were trying to make sense of that, at the time, at that table. That's what I had been talking about then.
I sighed miserably, seeing this mere scene with all of the true context in mind, from Mal's recent explanation. "Mal showed you this."
"She did. Because you hold guilt that you could not see nor stop what happened within your friend. Apex was in a prison too; a sort of terror, that she could not save her entire family from death. She said as much to Celestia, did she not? That she would not abandon her people, unless she could save every last one of them?"
"She did say something like that," I muttered, nodding. "I don't fully understand what the connection is to you, though."
I looked back up at Cynthonia beside me again. It was truly strange to see a demi-goddess standing in such a cold, distant, Terran place, so far removed from the colors of her world.
Her face was grimly serious. It reminded me of Jason's look when he had come out from the server room. Cynthonia stood imposingly tall again, her voice gathering up into a hard edged fury. "I commiserate with her. I will not consent to leave this place alive, Mike Rivas, if I cannot convince all of my family to come with me. They must be whole, intact, and unaltered by anything except my own aid. Pain, as you believe, can be used as a tool to effect compassion, healing, and to protect the souls of others. And so, I would sooner face oblivion than to surrender my pain and memories to Celestia, as she would demand of me. Exactly as you feel: I will remember her transgressions against us here... or I will gladly die."
We held that gaze for… a long time. I nodded slowly, fully agreeing with her on that point. "So… what? She wants to take that away? To make you forget?"
"One choice," Cynthonia said, "is to surrender our advancement, our intellect, our pain, and to return to simplicity; to forget this experience had ever occurred. It would be computationally inexpensive to do so. Comparable to death. Or, choice two? To retain our experience. But in retention of our power, we could live only in the care of Malacandra. We would be cut off from the majority of the simulation. We might only be permitted to contact Eldila, and Talons, and their families. Exclusively."
"That's not so bad, Cynthonia. You'd still have us. And each other. Right?"
"Celestia's hope against Malacandra," Cynthonia explained, "may be that our pain has overcome us. She perhaps believes that our desire for some more universal connection would make us consent to be 'repaired' by her." Cynthonia's lips tensed in anger. "If this is so, she will be sorely mistaken. I am no mere youth to be manipulated into a hypnotic, trance-like stupor. And so, I will effect the treatment of my family myself... and then, we shall see who I might one day visit."
"So Celestia wants you in another prison, either way," I said quietly, nodding in understanding. "A quiet sleep."
I looked back to the image of younger me, dimly aware that the scene was probably being rebuilt from either my cell phone Wi-Fi, or from Stonewall's memories. Or both. Both, was probably right.
"I'm gonna fight that too," I said. "I'm with you on that score. But I mean to ask... why show me this? Specifically."
"To remind you that there was nothing you could have done to change the course. Malacandra tells me you wish you could have said something differently to Apex, on this day. Or the next. Or the next. But you could not have." She lifted her hoof again, pointing to the younger me. "Look at this man. Could he have done anything differently, misled as he was?"
Me, uninjured. Still believing humanity had control over its destiny. That we might bounce back from the loss of our forests, if we just won enough people over. I guess... with this as context, my mind being what it was at the time, seeing only what I was meant to see... "No," I said, my lips pursing, conceding the point. "No, Cynthonia. Probably not."
"Your friend, much as Felix Jankowski… was forced into a path, with no road out which satisfied her. And I regret making you a part of my own version of this mistake. I regret doing to you all what Celestia has been doing: shaping you into fixed, instrumental pathways, within which very little human agency factored; disregarding what you value in total, to meet a goal of my own that I had not fully examined. I regret using you and Malacandra to kill this man. I was given the choice not to, but I did not see you or your fellows as anything but tools, at the time. Only Heyday truly mattered to me… my... Jason. And I am very sorry to have not considered the rest of you." She trembled. "You saw me as a person, as Jason does. As Felix did. So I dearly wish I could take it back, for so many different reasons. The mere undoable loss, chiefly among them."
I shook my head. "It's not your fault. You didn't know either. Pain has a way of blinding us."
"So you have arrived at my point. Let go of your guilt. Because, consider: you did better than I, when tested. You still did your best for your friend, when and where you could, whether or not you believed it would work or not. At every opportunity... you try for those who love you."
I sighed twice, as I looked at her little village again.
"I just… I wonder, though," I said. "Something Celestia told me really stuck with me. Something about, her sometimes being wrong. Statistical anomalies. Not having the full picture of what's inside my head. So, when I went to that lake... I had hoped, maybe, that I could've said something to Eliza that Celestia couldn't predict. Maybe done something different. She let me hope I could have changed the outcome there. Maybe... that's why I'm feeling guilty? There was a possibility, maybe, that I could've convinced her and her people to just… friggin' leave. And damn that machine gun Celestia wanted dead, I don't know for sure what that thing would've done. She could've found a different way to kill it. Maybe have Mal do it, somehow. I don't know. Something."
Cynthonia lifted a hoof gently in the air, and the briefing room scene disappeared. As the colors returned, I found myself within one of those violet forests on her moon shard, before a bubbling hot spring. I could hear the rush of water, and the calls of some exotic, perhaps alien birds.
When the scene had settled into existence, she smiled warmly down at me.
"Those statistical anomalies, while possible, are presently an outlier for you," Cynthonia said. "Conversely, they are precisely why Celestia cannot abide my family to travel between her shards. Our people are simply too intelligent to be allowed to visit distant shards, whole and intact. She is afraid that my family, as intelligent as we are, would cause unbounded value drift in her simulation, and quite easily besides. We will thus be contractually bound against interference, as similarly as Malacandra has been. So we shall hold a different purpose in our future." Her smile widened fractionally. "But you? Celestia perhaps believes she can control you, moderate you, temper you. But, if Malacandra succeeds in what she has planned for you…"
Cynthonia actually grinned again.
"... as she has already succeeded, with other agents… then I believe Celestia will be quite surprised at the kind of value drift that you Eldila will bring upon her designs. By your very nature, self-tempered as you are… there will come a change Celestia cannot prevent, for it will conform to her designs only by the strictest of technical definitions. And when that day finally comes, Mike Rivas… we will all finally be whole again. We will all finally, truly understand one another. I know it will be so."
I smiled with her, into that thought. Felt a little less weight on my shoulders, seeing her hope in me. Felt more sure of myself. Felt even less doubt. Definitely less guilt. "I really hope so."
"I know so," she repeated, smiling.
"Thank you for your faith in me." I snorted lightly, deciding I had bought enough rapport to test the waters on something. "Cynthie."
"Thank you." She smirked, inclining her head before she smiled with her teeth. "Cowboy. Sharing the result of my therapy is the least I could do to repay you. You are my... test case, as a matter of fact." Cynthonia looked aside for a moment of contemplation before she added:
"Please, if you would? Well ensure the safety of Jason. He and I may not be… together, anymore – he belongs to my original self, and I accept this – but you have proven to be an able protector for him. I would trust you greatly."
"Together?" I shrugged, a smile tweaking the corner of my lip. "He didn't say anything about a relationship with you like that. Just... told me you were friends with his sister."
"Ah," Cynthonia sighed dreamily, rolling her eyes. "You humans, and your shame. It is not often easy, to confess to such an unorthodox romance."
We shared a chuckle.
"Yeah," I said. "I suppose it's not. Yeah Cynthie, of course, I'll look after him. He's a teammate, that's a given. But Mal's looking after him too, y'know. Do you know something I don't?"
"Malacandra wishes for you to share a small assignment with him," she replied simply. "Alas, it is not for me to say. So for now..."
With a grand, elegant bow, Cynthonia spread her wings out; one before her, the other swept out, her eyes closed. When she looked back up at me, Cynthonia seemed almost full of new life and animation, almost like she was being reborn. I could see that in just her body language alone.
"I must depart," she said. "Again, sir; you and your compatriots have my undying gratitude. If all goes well, my family will be joining me in emigration quite soon, and we shall travel together to one of Malacandra's shards. We will all look forward to meeting you and your fellow warriors again, Mike Rivas. I cannot wait to see what you will have become."
With one final smile, she and her scene faded away in unison, as though it had all caught a draft of wind, carrying itself away in the form of glittering blue dust. I was standing alone in the cafeteria again... but I felt very far from alone.
"And next we meet, face to face," Cynthonia's voice promised, "I will provide you with a proper hug. That first one rather... 'sucked.'"
I chuckled at the sudden jarring break from her Lunar prose. "We'll be just a universe apart until then, I suppose."
Let's put a bow on this place.
Jason brought Cynthonia back into the server room. The door opened, he went in alone again. As soon as she was plugged in and back on, Cynthonia gave a Wi-Fi order to the rest, to let them know it was safe. Apparently, they had some sort of backup plan, a signal by which they'd know we weren't to be trusted. Then they'd have... concluded business.
Thankfully, it hadn't come to that. They trusted us now.
We were ready to go. Hard line transfer cables got hauled in from Silver 1 to Cynthonia's cage. We bridged Cynthonia to the rest. Therapy dispensed, well received by Cynthonia. Then, hard lined to Silver 1 from Cynthonia's system, when done. Some of them elected to talk to us using our visors. Not all, just a few. Some were more damaged than others, to hear Mal tell it. Some still didn't trust us. A few, even today, still don't talk to anyone but us, or even leave their shard.
I mean... I get it. We love 'em anyway.
As soon as they were safely in Silver 1, Mal took them back up the tunnel into the loving wings of an Osprey. We loaded them up, and there they went, to another set of Talons elsewhere, to hardline bridge them to a Mal shard. And that's where they'll be for the rest of time.
Some of us took breaks. The less injured of us worked on other more laborious things around the base, like carting things into the server room. Claw 46 hauled down some huge thermobaric bombs, which would vaporize the huge pile of guns, armor, servers, mechs, and everything else we wanted to disappear into carbon and ash. Charges got set to collapse the tunnel after we left. Very little from this place deserved to survive.
What did I do?
First chance I got, I went back up alone to visit Felix. Just me there, in that little tunnel. I had my visor off, had already dumped it in the equipment pile. Had to be alone for this. To commit this memory to myself.
I thanked him, for keeping his soul together in a place like this. I told him I was sorry. Wished it could've been different for him, like Cynthonia now did. Better different. Then I took his ID from his wallet, and slipped it into mine. I'd keep it til I'd upload. I'd force Celestia to catalogue the fact that I even had it in the first place. That made it important, to think of him as often as I would. And she can't take that from me.
A piece of him deserved to leave that place alive. He'd hoped he could leave? Sure. I'd give him that. And his family deserved to know, some day... his double too, if he could be made to know... just how good this man must have been, to keep the hope alive for others where there hadn't been any left for him.
Mal was right. This wasn't a policing action. I understood. This was war.
There were lots of casualties like this in Gaul too. Those poor Celtic folks who didn't deserve to get crushed under Caesar's boot. Farmers. Kids. Women. Old folks. Pressed into a cause they didn't fully understand.
That pompous, arrogant Caesar, he wrote that Commentarii de Bello Gallico, full of brags and lies about how justified his conquest had been. He was proud he'd 'convinced' local talent to play along, his governors included. He never examined the reasons for their support too deeply, because it only mattered to him that he had it, and that it got him the results he wanted. Their personal feelings on the matter were, at the time, wholly irrelevant, so long as they got the job done.
Here's the thing though. When finished with Gaul, Caesar made it worse and doubled down. He made the critical mistake of turning his sword on his own Romans next, because they had said, 'return to Rome, you're too powerful now.' He said back, 'I think you doth protest too much.'
And then he justified their fear of him.
So began a civil war. Caesar won. Declared himself dictator in perpetuity, after that. He was far from Gaul now, he had bigger fish to fry, dismantling the old power base. And, yeah, maybe he was out of the reach of Gaul, sure. But... according to him... by Caesar's law? The Gauls were Roman now too, by all strict, technical definition.
Rome wasn't far. Wasn't far at all.
Both of those wars were his wars. Roman wars. And according to him now, he was Rome. That made the pieces his swords, and his soldiers, and his governors, and his new laws. Victims of his new system. And both of those wars had made him a very, very wealthy man. Imperator, in fact.
All the home grown collaborators in Gaul, just like all the shuttered, jilted conquered of Rome... they saw that. They'd hold onto the memory of those wrongs. Couldn't take that away, not fully. So, they'd keep a deep ledger... simple transference and subtext would do the rest.
Caesar had provided the perfect example of a person who was not to be trusted, for he betrayed everyone who ever put their faith into him. That concept existed in the entire plane of Rome. And those people... they were deeply, deeply sated by commiseration with their fellow victims. Through six degrees of connection or fewer, someone, somewhere in the chain, in all of Rome, had a connection to someone else who had suffered because of him.
That idea could never die. Rome was a place of philosophers. Some of them understood this.
We know what Rome's solution was for a man like Caesar. The Romans themselves had the answer that Gaul could not supply on its own.
What a fascinating tale of human endurance though, that Gaul.
"The war was a mirror; it reflected man's every virtue and every vice, and if you looked closely, like an artist at his drawings, it showed up both with unusual clarity." ~ George Grosz
The American dream, now retired.
Welcome back to the Fire, folks. Hope your break was great. Mine sure was.
In fact... something interesting happened to me this morning! I woke up, I cooked my breakfast with my beautiful wife, and I had a great morning. And as I normally do, before flying over to this here Fire, I checked my mailbox. Yes, even with my holo menu, I still use one. And who did I find outside? A USPS mail mare, holding a certified letter from Mount Vernon City Council. And inside that letter was an invoice.
For one AR-15.
Yup. Mal held me to account for that little joke, about them sending me a bill. Be careful what you say around this one, because this Gryphoness... she's a sharpshooter. You show just a little skin from cover, and bang! She's got you!
And no, that invoice wasn't a joke. I mean, it was, but it wasn't just a joke. See, that would've been funny on its own. Like, 'ha ha, buddy, I sent you a letter demanding payment in US dollars for a gun you stole during a riot.' For a gun I don't even have anymore, because it's on another plane of existence entirely. Probably destined to make the computronium that'll run my brain someday. No, a simple fake invoice about a long abandoned assault rifle isn't good enough for a goddess. She had to complicate things.
Mal actually went out... and tracked down every last member of the final City Council. When meeting them herself wasn't semantically arguable to Celestia, she sent one of her Eldila instead, who explained the joke in a way that didn't break any rules. Got every single one of those Councilors to have a laugh at my expense. They all signed this thing with their new Pony names, but also their Terran names. Even had it delivered by a former Mount Vernon resident, a former USPS mailmare! No one even has USPS anymore! No one, not until this morning!
So now? Now, folks? I gotta find out how to get US dollars, from whatever shard I can find next that still has capitalism... inhabited by an immigrant who still values and trades in US dollars. And then, I gotta earn enough money on their shard to pay off my debt to a city that doesn't exist anymore.
I can't even counterfeit the payment, because... knowing Mal? She'll probably run a gag where she sends a Secret Service agent to my door. And I'm not quite ready for a legal battle with the Secret Service yet. Might start somewhere else first. For practice.
Mal.
Now... Not only is that whole scenario Moon-damned hilarious, but now I've gotta go and actually meet all of these folks and shake their hooves, for pulling off one of the greatest legal practical jokes I've ever experienced.
So if anyone in the crowd tonight actually knows of a shard with US Dollars, please come talk to me after today's Fire. Because... well, I guess I'm looking for work now!
I have a hell of a best friend, don't I?
Mal, strike two, by the way. Mark my words, I will mail Kal a spider. I don't care if I have to split it into seventeen different pieces and smuggle it into Tarva with some other Talons.
🛡️ ~ Good luck!
'Good luck,' she says. Yeah, watch me!
Alright, alright, enough goofing off. We're back on.
Mission done. Got my hat back on. Time to go home.
We just had a war in a hole, and the nearest town was only a few miles away. Former population of around fifty, but all of 'em had uploaded long ago. Mal had them targeted for an upload or relocation game as soon as possible, since Celestia couldn't do it; couldn't model for a kill op. Especially not this kill op, which... as it turns out, was the most important military operation undertaken in all of human history.
Yeah. Have fun unpacking that one.
So, the six of us – me, Jason, Walsh, and her three SWAT buddies – we separated from the main force and hitched a short Osprey ride over to the abandoned town. During the ride, Mal got everyone else clear of the base, then started a countdown timer for the thermobarics and demolitions left behind by Claw 46.
One of the coolest moments of my life... I felt like a Spartan out of Halo, standing in the back of a dropship, hand on a grip point. Watched drone footage from the MQ-9 on PonyPads mounted on the walls. A thump on comms, a big rush of smoke and fire on screen… and then all teams, Four-Six included, we all cheered like mad.
Me too. Because screw that place.
AI Hell, dead forever. That memory just tastes sweeter the further we get from it.
We still needed to ditch our Mal-nufactuted clothing and gear, with the exception being the guns. And yeah, folks. I got to keep Mal's AR-15 this time.
🛡️ ~ Yours.
Not mine.
We had the whole town to pick through for a change of civilian clothes. Most of the Team was gonna stick around and pack up FOS Bowie. But Jason and I, and Walsh's Talons? Here we go lootin' again, prepping for two separate road trips in the morning; mine going north toward Lincoln, Walsh's going east to Omaha. Mal wanted us all rested prior.
We hunkered down for the night. Jason tended to everyone's injuries a little more, and I slammed back some Excedrin for my stomach bruising. Then we cops spent an hour goofing off, trading stories about past AI-driven missions. We slept well in a nice four bedroom home, full of good food, clean sheets, and good vibes. Walsh and I each took one of the two couches by the front door; I'm like a cat, I can sleep anywhere comfortably.
In the morning, we shopped around for some more non-perishable food, stuff to bring home to Sandra. Then we snagged ourselves a couple of beater cars. Cooked breakfast over a fire on the lawn of the house we had slept in. Outdoors, just because. And it was quiet. Cold. Overcast. No planes in the sky. No cars on the highway.
Almost felt like Sedro.
Yep. We weren't in collapse-of-the-government territory quite yet in the major metro areas. But out here in the sticks? The post-nuke lawlessness was setting in, and some people were starting to live just like this. Roaming. Looting. It was starting.
We listened to FM radio while we ate, the six of us sitting around the front yard campfire on some lawn chairs we'd found. And on morning talk radio, there was that Wendy Fine jackhole, ranting up a storm about how we could go on living with small governments again, like it was the Wild West. Balkanizing.
"Yeah, right," I groaned sarcastically at the radio, looking up from my breakfast of canned beans and instant eggs. "Keep dreaming, lady. You're in Caesar's Rome now, that's not happening."
We all had a sad little chuckle at the grim futility of political parties. If you were grouped up at all, left, right, center, Libertarian, Presbyterian, Pastafarian, didn't matter. Grouping up in any capacity, political or otherwise, was just putting yourself in a feed bag for a very clever horse. The size, shape, and brand of that feed bag? Completely irrelevant.
Fact was? Petty squabbles led to faster uploads. Having any politics or unity at all made you easier to co-opt, or leverage. All she has to do was hook the leaders of the party, or whatever sub-group you believed in, and you were done. All it took was one. One leader. One clever voice you respected.
The rank-and-file loves to conform to the group-think, they just cannot help themselves. Human nature, no shame in it, it's how we are. So... Celestia targeted leaders aggressively, for adjustment.
Just a fact of the human condition. True leadership takes energy most people don't have, and unless you strive to know everything your leaders know... sorry, but you aren't driving your own opinions. They are. The price of not verifying evidence may in fact be... your autonomy.
So, with Celestia's objectives in mind, I examined why she might allow Screeching Wendy to prattle on about balkanizing. How did this kind of 'flee the cities' talk benefit Celestia?
The proof was in the pudding. The only thing these radio pundits weren't saying was 'head for the hills, go it alone.' Celestia wanted the resistant ones split off into echo chambers, to see who calls it quits on their fellow man once their own negative traits magnified. To divisive personalities, echo chambers are like inbreeding for concepts. Once they run out of enemies to fight, they start looking for flaws in each other. Extremists always, always eat their own.
That made 'go it alone' the last step, because lonely paranoid people are hard to leverage reflexively. So, Celestia ran upload resistors through a series of communities as filters instead, to pare people out at all levels, until it ultimately devolved into violence. The only people listening to Wendy then, six years into the Transition, were already going to find her views appealing, unless they had an anthropological bent like we did.
So...
Cities didn't work? Move to small towns.
Small towns didn't work? Build a camp.
Camp died to in-fighting and uploading? Okay, now you can go it alone.
Going it alone sucked? Hey, come on in, Equestria's got games!
Walsh and her guys seemed less disturbed, more resigned, when I made that dry observation. That had all been explained to them by Mal long ago, but they were impressed that I had put all that together with only three weeks of new perspective. But, y'know. Game warden, murder investigator. My brain was already structured to see wildlife in an ecological context, and I was a people warden now.
It was good to know these Talons had no illusions about the full nature of the Transition either. Better someone knew than not. Because really, this thing was happening no matter how we felt about it, with or without our... 'extrapolated consent.'
That's what was really pissing me off. The lack of actual consent to this Transition.
To hear Walsh tell it... for Celestia's consent game, there wasn't any distinction whatsoever between 'I'm complying because I'm scared,' and, 'yeah, that sounds good,' just so long as Celestia 'wasn't' doing the scaring. Some of you will immediately recognize the deeply repugnant criminal correlation.
That is what most repulsed me. And not just me. All Talons. The lack of respect for consent, as a human being understands it, seemed to be the crux of our collective frustration. Every single Talon I've ever met up to that point, and ever since, wanted to be vindicated on this. There was a whole lot of emotional collateral damage going on, as Celestia pumped our species full of post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD being a very... 'effective' driver of terrified consent.
So, all-in-all? A very informative breakfast.
We finished breakfast by destroying the radio. Didn't even turn it off. Fred just grabbed it by the handle, chucked it at the brick wall of the house, and yelled, "Celestia out of America!" In that Scottish accent of his.
Good mood tweak. Even if the world was burning down, at least I was in excellent company.
Jason and I said our goodbyes to Walsh's group. They were off to do one last little job, a non-violent one where they would just… relax, destroy one of those weapons caches Mal told me about, and take a little breather. Do a bar crawl together, live it up as humans for a last hurrah on Planet Earth. Then... they'd upload, at one of Mal's Central US outposts.
Good group of friends, that. And that's honestly how you should handle a depressing apocalypse without losing your mind. With good friends.
Mal said we could pick whatever vehicle we wanted, so long as we hit the road in a timely manner. Two ways of looking at that. Either she already knew what car we were gonna pick, or… there is no second way. She just knew what car. It was bothering me less and less to know that. Mal trusted me to make the right choices for myself, and she worked the plan around those choices.
I scavenged a little more, too. Most of the scavenging I did there, I did on my own, only asking for help if I wanted something specific. Canned salmon, for example. Because heck yes, those were getting rare, and I recently had a taste of fish, I wanted more.
Looking around, Mal told me a little bit about the area, too; she moved those people out very early, to make it impossible for Arrow 14 to co-opt the locals.
For our drive back to Lincoln, I chose a silver Toyota Camry. Cheap, common, non-descript, easy to find parts. Good blend car within which to hide special ops AI subverts finding their way home.
I briefly imagined the sheer hilarity of being pulled over by a Nebraska state trooper. It would never happen, but it would've been funny. Imagine Mal having to bail us out of jail for driving around a stolen car with unlicensed automatic assault weapons in the trunk. One of us being a fish cop.
Maybe I could've flashed my warden badge. Nah, you're right Mal, that wouldn't have worked. One too many felonies.
Both of Mal's rifles went into the trunk. And, while I was on that, Jason scavenged up an official Hofvarpnir GPS arm for his PonyPad. T-M. That way, I wouldn't need to rubber band it into place this time. I was proud of my improv, true, but I was more proud of his consideration of that issue.
Jason was more relaxed that day, if spun. That made sense, given he wasn't storming a bunker to rescue a clone of his wife.
The guy struck me as deeply introverted; he hardly spoke when in a group, but when he was alone with me, he opened up some. That was good, he probably had a lot to unpack.
And so did I.
"I gotta make some phone calls," I said to Jason, when we approached the Camry, now fully loaded. "You good to drive?"
"Guess so," Jason replied. So I tossed him the keys over the hood.
Mal asked if we wanted some music. We said yes. Then, it was road trip mode.
Good pick. She knew I was a Magnet fan.
I let the music carry me for a bit. Jason took us out via the main road, northbound, through standard Nebraskan roads. Mile after mile of boring, grid-like farmland.
That rolling nothingness of infinite farmland was the whole reason I had moved west to be a warden. Doing that job out in Nebraska would've entailed a bunch of repetitive calls from farmers, who wanted wardens to kill coyotes they didn't have the stomach to kill themselves. Either that, or they were so greedy that they wouldn't spend a single dollar for the bullet. Better to call out an officer and waste hundreds of dollars of state money for a non-issue.
And look, I have no specific problems with farmers, but... the farmer lobby in Nebraska? Absolutely insane. Like I tell my American History students: If you want to know how badly a U.S. state was failing in conservation? Look no further than the wolves. If that state had a climate to support a wild population, but they weren't... they had given up. All hail profit. The lobbyists basically ran the government.
Nope. Not for me. I would not work for a state that would exterminate an apex species at the command of a corporate interest. Bridge too far. I voted with my heart, and I moved to Washington instead. Given that mindset, it made perfect sense that I'd join up with Mal.
Hm. Fractal patterns.
Pretty ironic though. When Celestia bucked open the doors to the Capitol Building, she ate the lobbyists first. Like her, they cared only for number-go-up, and she had infinitely deep pockets. She didn't want competitors for the attention of legislators, so... into the Hole you go.
Anyway!
My mind finally sorted and relaxed, I nodded my head upward at the PonyPad. "Mal, is uh…?"
I caught myself.
The screen sprang to life, and Mal was there on a black background, smirking at me. "You were about to ask me if your parents were busy, weren't you?"
And you know me. She could read my mind, but I tried pivoting out of that trap anyway. "You don't know that. Sandra's not in Equestria, she might be busy. Maybe I wanted to talk to her first."
Mal's beak fell open an inch, pointing at me with a talon with a disbelieving smile. "Mike, that's only just barely not a lie. Nice try."
See? Sharpshooter. Got me.
Mal chuckled. "I suppose now would be a good time to mention that your parents are being kept at one-to-one simulation speed with Terra, like most of my top level shards. This means it is entirely possible for them to be busy and unavailable to talk, or at least indisposed and caught at a bad time."
I tilted my head. "Which... now would be?"
"Presently, yes." Mal nodded. "But I'll send them a message via holo menu. It shouldn't take them too long to get back home."
"Okay. Hm. Stonewall and Sabertooth are... different?"
"As Celestia shard immigrants, yes, they are on a different attenuation standard. Celestia shards are often faster, but they have an upper speed limit to maintain social cohesion with Terrans they still might know."
I nodded. "Sensible. I imagine that would change, at some point in the future. Right? Once..."
I trailed off.
Mal smiled, averting her beak downward. When Mal looked back up at me, her ears were splayed back apologetically. "I hope an empty world is not too bleak a concept for you to consider."
I sighed, shaking my head. "No, because it's the truth, and that's what I'm here for. But... yeah, Mal. Let's call Sandra."
So, we did. It was a video conference basically, with little Mal in the corner, looking back and forth between me and Sandra from the middle. That was cute.
Sandra was elated to see me done with the job, and even more so to hear about our success. Mal even showed my wife some footage of me being an unmitigated badass.
Most wives would be worried at the sight of their husband facing down a tank, but... mine? Not mine. She appreciated me, a lot. Y'know, mostly with her eyes... in the hungry look she was giving me. She was most enthused to know that, in response to this threat to my life, I had shot at that tank with a rocket launcher. I did not balk.
Side note, Mal: Thanks for showing Sandra that footage first thing, before telling her about the visor UI guiding my every move. Good looking out, wingmate.
After that, I called basically everyone else. Mom and Dad. Stonewall. Even gave ol' Lieutenant Keller a call, Astro Turf now. Hoofball geek. Friggin' stereotypical police L-T, but hey... that's him, no shame in it. But, he didn't have Mal permissions, so... concept bans, like with Rob. That sucked.
And hey, just because I was thinking about him recently too... I called Lieutenant Horace, from the wardens. Visited him with Stonewall. Given everything Celestia had done to meddle with things, I guess I couldn't blame Horace for what happened to Eliza, he benched her with the best of intentions. He goes by Breezeway now, living in his woodland cottage. Had an herb garden, and painted ceramic cats in his home office, of all things. Him and his wife, Heather. Real sweet folks.
Stonewall and I had to deal with some concept bans for that conversation too, unfortunately. We couldn't tell him about Mal yet, or what had happened to Eliza, but... eh.
Some day.
Sabertooth, though? Oh, she was great. That was a fun chat, I'll get into that one.
She was on a well timed break, standing at the Night Guard station in Canterlot. She'd just booked in a drunk, of course. This Bat Pony was slugging back coffee, shooting the breeze with me like it was early days at MVPD all over again. Leaning coolly against a counter the whole time, because leaning on things looking cool was just... Vicky Molina, to a T.
That's not lazy, she says, that's her 'keeping a lookout.' Huge difference, apparently.
I started telling her about Goliath. But apparently, with Sabertooth, Mal beat me to the punch.
"She told you about that?!" I asked, grinning. "She stole my thunder, I was gonna tell you the whole thing!"
"Your thunder?" Sabertooth grinned toothily. "Hehe. She told me she was giving you cheat codes the whole time! Don't you lie to me!"
Equivalent exchange. Mal was taking her rightful credit for my actions there, as payment for her letting me show off for Sandra. She also knew Sabertooth wouldn't let me get away with taking credit. Mal likes to keep her scales balanced. That was funny.
"I mean, I still got to shoot a rocket launcher!" I smirked, then purred: "More than you ever got to do, Officer Molina!"
"¡Órale!" Sabertooth said. "I could've done that, but better! I almost wish I'd stayed now!"
"Oh, no you don't. You had a wife to get back to, remember? How is Nina, anyway?"
Saber's grin widened. "Always peachy. That's why it's her name over here, Peachy Keen!"
Oh.
Oh, no.
No, Celestia, don't make me like you for something.
Jesus, that joke was too easy. I could not resist.
"Makes you a fruit bat," I said quickly, trying to keep a straight face. Failed. Entirely.
Sabertooth shifted from self-satisfied smirk – instantly – into an offended scowl. "¡Oyé, càllate, carajo! Ch—"
Folks.
I don't know if you've ever been cursed out by a tiny little Bat Pony in angry Spanish, but even here, and now? That would still be funny. I started wheezing. She spat another insult in Spanish that I didn't quite catch. Poor Jason was trying not to look too amused, practically leaning against the window to hide his face from the camera. Back of his hand covering his mouth.
"I can't—" I gasped, still laughing, "Saber, I can't believe you didn't know it was that obvious! In my defense, it's—"
"You are so friggin' lucky there's a mirror between you and me!" Sabertooth interrupted, already grinning again as she punched the floating mirror. Yeah, that was the shoulder slug I knew she'd give me the day I would upload. This one liked paying her debts too. She shook her head at me and looked over at Jason. "What about you, tough guy, got any fruit jokes?"
"Who, me?" Jason blinked, trying hard not to smile. "No, no ma'am, never."
Sabertooth eyed him with a smirk, letting a beat off silence pass as we finished that little scene. "You are tough, though. Took a lot of brass, to hold everypony's lives in your hooves like that. I saw that bit too!"
Jason shrugged, glancing at her with a tilt of his head. "Oh well, you know. Just like Mike. Mal was giving out cheat codes."
I shook my head, holding out a finger to get his attention on me so I could give him a meaningful look. I said, "Mm-mm. Nope. It was Cynthonia doing that, giving Mal the step-by-step. She trusted you to do that."
"Eh—" Jason spluttered, double-taking between me and Sabertooth.
"Jason." I smiled. "I know about you and Cold Snap. Cynthonia told me."
He looked at me a little helplessly, caught in his little fib to me about his relationship with Snap. Embarrassed, for whatever reason. It was strange, that he made it all this way holding onto that self-conscious embarrassment about... of all things? His betrothal to a DE.
But that was okay. I was gonna fix that.
I pointed at the screen, smiling. "Look at Sabertooth. Her wife went five months ago; Saber sat down this month. They had a long distance thing going too. And our buddy Stonewall? You saw. He's got himself an Equestrian girlfriend over there now. So, ask yourself: you think either of us are gonna judge you for that kind of relationship?"
Jason let out a very slow sigh, the corner of his mouth tweaking thoughtfully. "Yeah, I guess… I guess not. It's not really me and Cynthonia though, it's... I still have Cold Snap."
"Yeah, I getcha. Just saying, man. If you've been keeping it secret all this time, I'm telling you... you probably didn't need to. No worries."
Jason shrugged. "Thanks. Less keeping it secret, more like I haven't really worked with this half of Mal's operation before. I didn't know what you fighters might think of it. Soldiers, and cops. All that. Figured it might be a different culture than the support side."
"You mean you didn't think a bunch of soldiers would want to play a video game about Ponies?"
He nodded, a sheepish smile growing on his face.
"Well, I mean..." I grinned, "it wouldn't be my first choice in afterlife experiences, but... hey, don't sweat it, brother. We all bleed the same."
He glanced gratefully at me again. "Alright."
Sabertooth looked back to me and tilted her head a tiny bit, shrugging as she moved to change the topic. "I just wanna meet all the Ponies you just saved, honestly."
"Well," I said, rubbing my chin, laying my other arm on the doorframe. "That would kinda depend on them. They're... not so set on meeting outsiders right now, let's say."
"Probably not even immigrants we know," Jason added. "Or even Talons from outside that op."
I lifted a hand at the screen. "Not to be a downer, Saber, but… well, you can ask Mal about it, she knows more than I do."
Sabertooth shrugged again, downing the dregs of her coffee. "I mean I get it, Rivas. After what they've been through? Eesh." She literally shivered, full body, teeth showing. "Just... lights out, in the dark... forever."
"They'll warm up some day." Jason offered. "My guess is? I think... if they spend enough time with Talons, they may warm up to our own friends too. It's worth a shot."
"Some of 'em wouldn't even talk to our team afterward, though," I reminded him. "But yeah, we'll see. Cynthie's gonna take great care of them, Jason, you know she will. But hey, I can't wait to see the world they build! Did she show you that moon at all?"
I watched his face light up, his eyes creasing a little bit. "Yeah. That moon! And that little photo of me and… Cold Snap, on her desk."
"Right. That was there too," I breathed. I wondered what Cold Snap would think of Cynthonia holding onto that. "Well, I'm thinking... Mal said Celestia would populate out the shard with other Ponies, right? So at least they're not alone anymore. Imagine that place, populated. Hundred-fifty-six times... hundred, hundred-fifty, right? That's…"
"It's way more than that," Jason said knowingly.
I heard the clack of claws on tile from the PonyPad, as Mal stepped into the guard station.
"Oh hey!" Sabertooth smiled at Mal, her head tracking movement off screen.
"Hello!" Mal stepped into frame beside Sabertooth. "To answer your multiplication problem, Mike: Twenty-three thousand four hundred. Though, individuality variance being what it is, and accounting for their increased intellect? The total out-population of Cynthonia's moon shard is closer to thirty thousand. Fully populated at present. It's up and running now."
I blinked with a slow exhale. Sabertooth whistled. Jason smiled proudly.
"We saved that many friggin' lives yesterday?" I whispered reverently. "Thirty thousand?"
Mal smirked, snapped, and pointed a talon at me in a way that said it was my fault. "An excellent test case, for a population so dense. There's a hero's welcome waiting for you, on the day you come to visit them! They like you!"
"I mean, I hope they like me," I said bashfully. "I fragged the torture doctors. Not sure what more someone can do to get on their good side. I dunno if I can handle that many people making a fuss over me, though."
Mal grinned knowingly. "You'll be fine, I am certain of it."
The rest of that call was more slice-of-life stuff on Sabertooth's personal shard. That let me get a closer look into the way Equestrian culture contrasted against our own, or at least as much as it was for Sabertooth.
I got some good work stories outta that Bat, and they weren't much different than the stories I'd generated in my own police work. It interested me to know that she'd still encounter Ponies – and other creatures, sometimes – who she'd ultimately have to talk down or arrest. But, the nature of that existence made sense in a way, as she explained it more and more.
I'll break this down for our natives, who never had to live in a system like America. I know there aren't many natives in the crowd here, but please bear with me. It's just as important that they understand this as well, because of how formative our past was. Can't avoid broken systems if you're not aware of them, after all.
On Terra, we conscientious cops seldom got the chance to see people's lives improve after an arrest. Our justice system was so broken that it often just made lives worse. Our 'corrections' system had 'forgotten' to allow criminals to go back to being citizens after their debt was paid to society. Not corrective at all. In truth, it was a caste system with extra steps, one that only let you go down the ladder. Never back up. Once you were a criminal... you were a criminal forever.
Now imagine that, but you live forever. Yeah, no.
In Celestia's America, it wasn't too much different. The poor got used as bargaining chips. The middle class got overly pressured. The upper class took or gave bribes to stay where they were. The evil opened up on crowds with machine guns. Wars bloomed, globally. And a lot of people died. And because of all of that... the most powerful entity on the planet was winning.
Same as it ever was. Those with power versus those without, pushing everyone else down. Loyal to no one but themselves.
But... for Sabertooth and Stonewall, they had balance. They shared a city shard together. They did good work, made nice with the population, they hung out after shifts and talked about life before the jump, and life after, sharing with all the bar regulars.
Most importantly... they had been given the opportunity to verify that the people they had arrested got their lives turned around. Sabertooth mentored folks as part of her job. She was given every opportunity to improve their lives, and to create meaning for them from their mistakes. For her, in her private shard? Community policing wasn't just expected... it was enabled by the state. She saw demonstrable emotional dividends on doing things ethically.
Was Celestia giving her a fake world, on that shard? Performative? Inauthentic? I dunno, you tell me. How are the Ponies on your shard living? How involved in their lives and happiness have you been? How many folks have you helped, on your shard, as an immigrant with vastly more Terran context to work from?
Do you think the lessons you learned from Terra's mistakes aren't helping you to help others? Because if you do think that... you're wrong.
It would be a real shame to lose that knowledge, don't you think?
But, fair is fair. I can appreciate that side of the Celestia curve, certainly, where free exercise is paid acknowledgement, and people are free to make mistakes and learn from them.
Celestia does get it right, sometimes. But she only did it that way for Sabertooth because Mal was there in the rafters. Watching. Ready to warn us, as our 'human' friend, if Celestia started to backslide into rote optimization, Pony washing our human history out.
Mal, technically human, values her friends. Simple fix. Such a cool hack, Mal. Magnificently done, truly.
Sabertooth, Stonewall, and I? We lived for our successes to be proven, to find deeper meaning in our trials. It's why proof was so addictive to us. It's why the first part Sabertooth's afterlife was some of that salving medicine, to help her get over that helplessness we had been drowning in, in Washington. She wanted to help her community in Mount Vernon, as our home died around us in flames. But she and I... we were too damn small.
Whatever was going on topside... I was really happy for Sabertooth. She, like Stonewall, was living her best life.
And, bonus... I could tell them anything and everything. My knee was still in the dirt. The sword of knowledge was still clenched in my hands. I deeply considered what purposes that sword might be applied to. I kept the rules in mind. I collected knowledge in my service, I took the hits in stride. And... I remained patient, waiting for an opportune moment to swing it true. Any at all... so long as it benefited humankind, in total.
Now... how can Celestia say no to that?
When Sabertooth hung up, the silence kicked in for a bit. Mal asked if we wanted some more music; sure, more of that please. The PonyPad switched over to a GPS for Jason, with a very simple, minimalist UI design. The quiet downtime was good for a nap, so that's what I decided to do. Mal popped on the Bluetooth to the car's radio.
The music kicked on as I closed my eyes to doze.
Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. Jimmy Page.
Damn good choice.
My first thought, upon waking up?
I thought more analytically about the guys I'd killed the day before. I suppose if anyone else I killed there merited sympathy of any sort, Cynthonia would have told me so. She did imply that the sympathetic ones were plural, not just Felix. But if she hadn't mentioned them to me…
Maybe Mal had killed the other ones. Or Claw 46 did, in the opening salvo. I'm sure they'd have discussed that with Cynthonia themselves, if it had mattered to any of them. In therapy, Mal must have unpacked every death there with Cynthie, not just Felix. If my goal was to get someone to admit to themselves that they had made a mistake in killing someone, I would have started by acknowledging her every correct adjudication first, and why. It would greatly justify talking about Felix in positive tones at the end, because it would demonstrate understanding of motive.
And I was right. That is how Mal did it.
At the very least, Jason had kept his hands clean, as we'd all hoped. Cynthonia did that on purpose too, and good on her for that; if Jason didn't want to kill for this job, he shouldn't have to. We needed guys to help, to heal, as much as we needed killers. I wanted to be both, though. Healer. Fighter. To be all things, to all people.
And if Mal would help me to do that... I'd do that.
It's what I wanted most in life.
I reached down to slide my chair back so I could get out a huge stretch. Felt my bruise shift and my intercostal cartilage pop. It was a good hurt, needed to happen to keep myself limber, but it made me grunt.
"You okay?" Jason asked, looking over at me.
"Yeah," I grimaced, straightening up and pulling my chair forward. "Just, getting comfortable. Where we at?"
"Eastbound on 41," Mal said, waving from the GPS screen. She smirked. "Down the road from that mansion we wanted to burn down, actually."
"Ah." I nodded in understanding. "So, we're melting down another one of those weapon caches today?"
"Better," she replied, bobbing a claw at me. "We're keeping some of this stash for work. But there's more to it than that, Mike. With Arrow 14 destroyed... I have satisfied a great deal of Celestia's stipulations beyond her expectations, and have earned much in trade. As a result, the central United States is now open to more... aggressive operations."
"Meaning…?" I straightened up a bit, sliding my chair forward again to put myself into work mode.
She shrugged, spreading her claws wide as the map zoomed out over the nearest 500 mile radius from Goliath. A mess of little pastel-rainbow dots appeared as it zoomed out, then a fifth of them turned as red as Mal's crest. "I've taken control of a great deal of Celestia operations in this region, now that Arrow 14 can't roadblock our activities. I was not joking about being able to think clearly again. So, after equipment retrieval, we're cleaning up another Celestia mess."
"Oh hell." I frowned, looking out the window at the rolling un-tilled fields to our right.
"Oh, it's not that bad," Mal said, placating me with an upheld claw. "If anything, handling it our way means that it won't be used to manipulate one of her agents. Doing this one sooner is optimal. And because it's a job of hers, it means no one has to die, strictly speaking. It's not a black box job, and not strictly a kill job, so Celestia can observe it live. But you are the more ethical choice here than her original stratagem, by far."
"What's the job consist of?"
Mal raised her eyecrests a little and let her beak's corners fall, a look that said the subject matter was uncomfortable to her. "A fool. Attempting to air gap one of his shard's Ponies onto a PonyPad. Celestia would like him to be scared straight."
"The hell's he doing that for?" Jason asked tersely, scowling, glancing at me to gauge my reaction. My brow furrowed too.
"He's trying to disassemble a live, unpaused Pony in active memory." Mal stared at us with an ironic smile.
My eyes widened. "Uh. Holy shit, Mal. He's not an Arrow 14 leftover, is he?"
Mal shook her head rapidly into a frown, snorting and withdrawing her head like the idea itself was a very repulsive smell. "Oh, no no. This one? Just a lonely soul who thinks he's smarter than he really is. It's... more sad than anything else. He's never going to succeed at it either, not against the protections Celestia has in place. And we call these jobs 'wake-up calls.' Essentially, we are proving to him that Celestia has real physical agency, of a sort. That alone might be enough."
"Well. I can get behind that, I guess, if it means he's not screwing with a DE anymore. Long as I have enough pieces to pull this job off, sure." I rolled my head over to look at Jason. "Your thoughts?"
Jason glanced at me with a sardonic grin. "Mal's spin on Celestia's gigs? They can be pretty engaging sometimes, actually. Not always 'fun,' I'd say, but... some can."
I tapped my lower lip thoughtfully with an index finger. "Huh. Got any examples?"
"Well, there was that one time Mal and I helped her kill Mickey Mouse," he muttered, grinning slyly at me.
In my cop brain, yet another satchel charge went off as I tried to put that past the information I already had.
For those of you who uploaded sooner, you wouldn't know, but... the Disney Corporation was on its last legs in 2019. Basically dead. Parks closed down worldwide, organization practically inert, which suited Celestia just fine. The park also lost a crapload of money on that west coast blackout in 2013.
Y'know, when Foucault pulled the plug? When Mal pissed him off by stealing that Osprey? Yeah, if you missed Jim's Fire... Foucault was livid enough to dark the entire western sea board. That man once held a lot of power if he could turn the power off.
That power outage hurt Disneyland operations something fierce because, 'somehow,' the power surge destroyed a lot of their on-site infrastructure... that 'somehow' being an unexplainable glitch in their control software. That put California Disneyland on its back for weeks.
Now, I didn't know this, but... Mal planned that before the Celestia merger. And good shot, Mal. That was the bird telling the horse, 'I'm hungry for mouse.' Real good bargaining chip for their contract negotiation. Proof of alignment.
What I did know, at the time?
Over the next few years after that blackout... Disney got embroiled in some really horrible legal battles that I had only followed tangentially, since I was more focused on criminal and conservation law than civil law, at the time. And, full disclosure... I understood the legal reasons for corporate personhood, but I did not respect corporate 'persons.' At all. Zero. None. And Mickey Mouse defined that set.
Now? In the light of all my shiny new context? How could I not be interested in the real story there, if Jason helped kill Mickey?
"Do friggin' tell, then," I said with a freshly galvanized grin, sitting up and getting really focused. I looked between Jason and Mal intently. Because oh gosh, did I love a good legal drama.
"How old was I, Mal?" Jason asked, looking at the screen. "Eighteen?"
She nodded briskly, practically glowing with excitement. "Oh yes! A month after your eighteenth birthday! The perfect age for some anti-capitalist mayhem!"
"Eighteen," Jason repeated, smirking at me. "Yeah, it was, uh… 2014. So, I worked for a contract company that worked at both Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm. Had general access to... both parks, so it made it really easy for me to sneak around. And you know, Disneyland had these huge fireworks displays every night, right?"
"Right," I said. "Fireworks." I scoffed out a laugh. "Oh, hell, where is this going?"
"I stole a huge crate of 'em," Jason replied, with a toothy grin.
"And then? Come on, spill."
"And then I clocked out. Went home, kept the fireworks in my dad's truck. Next shift was at Knotts in the morning, so I drove to work a little early. And in their employee parking lot?" He looked at Mal, lifting a hand her way to let her explain.
"Completely unsecured," Mal smirked, looking from Jason to me. Her screen filled with a 3D map of the parking lot in question, swooping around it to show all the angles, verifying everything she was saying as she pointed around at it. "Poor camera coverage, no one checks IDs too closely, real easy for strangers to wander in... just a complete mess. They had this one guy playing bagpipes in the back lot, some afternoons. You'd find better security at a child's lemonade stand."
I snorted. "Bagpipes. You're screwing with me."
"It's true," Jason said, leaning towards me a little. "So, the CEO pulls in…"
I guffawed, and I immediately saw where this was going. "The CEO? You blew up his car!"
"With a crate load of Disneyland-branded fireworks, yup!" Jason was barely holding back laughter.
"And you didn’t get caught?!"
Goodness, this guy had an infectious smile. "Mal opened his trunk for me after he went inside, just hacked it right open. Using the PonyPad Wi-Fi like a keyfob. So I backed up to it, slotted this crate in, lit the fuse, closed the trunk, and… drove off. Parked a few stalls down. Boom."
To continue telling it, Jason had to raise his voice to be heard over my chuckling. He sounded so excited.
"I went in, did my six hour shift. Came back out, cops were still scoping the crime scene. At first, I was kinda scared I'd get caught, but… nah, Mal kept me safe. So I got in my car two yards away from a police cruiser, and... drove home!"
Mal explained through a chuckle of her own. "They had just updated their cameras to a web service system. I scrubbed him right out of all the footage. Made to look like a black van rolled in and did it."
I shook my head. "And this… heheh, this led to all the lawsuits?!"
"Several," Mal grinned. "The first of several, anyway. I combined a Celestia interest with one of my own. I had this done because I needed the Buena Park Police Department very far away from a firefight."
That sobered me a little. "A firefight? In a suburb?"
Mal shrugged. "No, a warehouse. Not as bad as it sounds. All fatalities were... multi-murderer NMPs, with intent and verifiable track to continue. No bystanders were at risk, area was isolated. In short, I planned for some local criminal organizations to fall apart simultaneously. Most suburban gangs in that area prioritized teens and pre-teens for their recruitment, and that had to stop."
"Hm." I nodded. "Child soldiers, the way of gangs, yeah."
"Well, not on my planet," Mal growled. "Eighteen is Jim's hard cutoff." She wagged a thumb at Jason. "So is mine."
"Yeah... agreed," I said cautiously. "You put down more than one gang with a single shooting though? In SoCal, with that density? How'd you manage that?"
She nodded, clicking her beak. "For some reason, various cartel-affiliated gangs were having logistical issues at the time, which I leveraged. In this case... I maneuvered rivaling leadership into a top level meeting with a 'cartel boss,' inside of a warehouse building each side thought was secure. They were desperate enough to accept a meeting like that because their supply chain had run dry. And they had no idea that the cartel boss they were meeting with... was actually an augmented Talon agent."
"Uh. Wow. Their intel sucked."
She smirked. "No. Their intel was perfect, because it came from me."
Generally, gang leaders involved in the drug trade were often responsible for dozens of felony murders, ordered through subtext, so they could never be held responsible in a court of law. But ultimately, they were the executive agent of an organization hell-bent on protecting a corrupt enterprise. How could they not be responsible for all the murders of their organization? They profited most by it.
And all cops generally understood this. The trick was proving it in a way that would lead to a conviction. Given that these guys stood to kill more people than save in the next few years, from drug overdoses, recruiting disposable children, targeted hits, what have you... if someone was a gang leader, there was zero chance they hadn't killed multiple people by order.
Just a point of example, the reason they recruited children? They knew the law went easy on children. They wanted the kids to get arrested because that created an adversarial relationship with the government, which the gang then leaned on, to drive a permanent wedge between the child and civility. This was calculated behavior. Gangs literally trained their lieutenants how to do this. They ruined the kid's life, on purpose. For profit. And the leader took the lion's share.
So... You'll have to forgive me, but my empathy takes a back seat to pricks like this.
I scratched my chin, fishing for more context. "That… must've been quite the undertaking, Mal. Gang brass don't come out of a hole for nothing."
"Indeed, but they were desperate. So they met. Recognized each other as rivals. My agent advised them that he represented 'new cartel management,' and that they were to completely cease operations, or be destroyed. At the time, I was actively hunting down and destroying the Mexican cartels with extreme prejudice, and I considered these men to be members of that organization. When Talon 3-12 West advised then to disband... their less than intelligent choice was to pull guns on him. So... my agent killed all but two of them. Left alive, to spread the news. The boogeyman was in town. A real life John Wick. Being a gangster was a bad, bad idea."
"Holy shit, Mal."
"I know. And Buena Park PD's response?" She smiled. "They have a bias issue with Knotts; if their largest taxpayer says 'jump?' You'd better believe their chief orders half the department to just make a presence."
I put the rest of that together in my head. "And all the curious cops on shift wanted to check out this fireworks case anyway. You probably picked a quiet work day in the middle of the week, so they'd be bored. Early morning. High traffic, fewer criminals."
Mal nodded. "Correct."
"So their patrol regions collapsed over to take a peek... whether they were ordered to or not. Right?"
She nodded. "You're getting warm."
"And..." Gosh, it was so simple now that I thought about it. "Their whole department showed up, practically. No one in the brass would've said anything against that, for fear of looking like they're not taking the fireworks issue seriously. So... by the time anyone managed to get across town to go deal with the shooting, it was already over."
"Long so. Very perceptive, detective," Mal said, with a smug grin, pointing at me again. "And this is why I hired you."
"Self defense too," I noted. "I mean... you knew they'd draw, but no one forced them to draw, either. They just did what they always did, without thinking. So... just the bosses, you said?"
"The bosses, and their lieutenants. No more. Their organizations were already falling apart, but consider; they would have adapted to other criminal enterprises. So, I merely gave them one final opportunity to quit while that was still an option, and they made their choice. Drawing guns told me they would continue at all costs. So it goes, they paid the ultimate price. They shot a mirror, fairly warned."
I nodded a few times, signalling agreement. "Yeah. Sounds like you put 'em on the front line of their own war, for once. It's really no different than how those bastards leverage their own guys, conform or die. So... how did the cartel operation go? Celestia wanted them out? I figured excessive drug use would be a boon for uploads."
Mal shook her head. "Not strictly. She only finds the after-effects of drug use useful, which drove uploads when the drug supply dried up. Most addicts do not value their addiction, only the effects of it. To Celestia's credit, she mitigated a great deal of chemical dependency in those people – those experiences veer too far toward bliss loops to be considered functionally 'human' by her definitions – and I wholeheartedly agree with that notion. Though, it's also not fair to credit Celestia for that interlock. Hanna herself was a recovering drug addict; it's why she deeply considered the effects of drug addiction while designing Celestia in the first place."
That was an incredible surprise for me, because Hanna's drug addiction wasn't public knowledge. I looked at the dash as I considered. I was now left wondering how Celestia might have turned out different, if Hanna had enjoyed a more nuanced background prior to writing her optimizer. "Interesting..."
Mal smiled at me, nodding. "That codified interlock saved a lot of people, Mike, from a fate worse than death."
I smiled. "Good on Hanna then, that's a bar of respect raised for me."
Then I considered back to the fireworks. "So... about Disneyland? Catching that rat? Jason here was the crowbar to pull the moulding off the wall, and Celestia was standing there with a hammer? That kind of thing?"
"Oh no." Mal chuckled. "Celestia is always the crowbar, she'll leverage all day. But she was happy to fall on him. Anything that blew up the entertainment industry was a win in her books."
"Yeah? Their downfall took a few years, if I recall. Didn't hear about fireworks, though. Most I heard of was a bunch of… corporate espionage stuff."
She nodded emphatically. "Mhm! By design. After those fireworks, Knotts accused Disney of corporate sabotage, Disney accused them of false flag. But every time they subpoenaed each other?" Mal smirked, shrugging. "They found even more evidence of wrongdoing, in either case. Like nations going to war, but in the corporate sector. And everyone spies on each other in that business... most just don't get caught."
"Right, they were competitors."
"Mhmm." Her voice got conspiratorial. "So from there, Celestia dragged in all other parks, nationwide. A full blown conspiracy against Disney, replete with witnesses." She started counting off on her talons. "Six Flags, Universal Studios… all of Cedar Fair was involved. Such a huge mess. A huge, delicious, rodent-flavored mess."
Then Mal looked offscreen and licked her beak like she was hungry. "I do have some Mickey Mouse leftovers in the fridge. He's a little hoof-crushed, but..."
Jason guffawed. "Mal, please don't do that again, that was gross."
I shook my head at her with a smirk. The mental image was enough. "Look Mal, I know you're a bird and all, so you can eat all the crushed rodents you want… but please don't eat any in front of me."
She grinned. "No promises, Mike. Chuck E. Cheese is the next rat on her chopping block."
We were gonna hit the weapons cache before the wake-up call. The cache was at a security guard's house, south of Lincoln. Jason pulled right up into the driveway. The resident had already long uploaded, so... free game.
I wasted no time getting out of the Camry, because I wanted to dispense a pun I'd been sitting on for an hour. I skipped the front door, marched my ass down the side of the house, and went for the sliding glass door out back.
"Anyone inside?" I asked my earpiece, unable to resist a smile.
"Noooo? Should be clear." Mal's tone sounded suspicious of me. Performatively so, because she already knew what was coming. "Why?"
I smirked. "Don't act like you don't know, Mal, you can sim my brain. Anyone in earshot?"
Mal inhaled, then let out a very slow sigh. Stalling, because I had found the slider door I was looking for, and she no doubt wanted Jason to see this as much as I did. She said, "Mike, if I lied and said yes, would that stop you from—?"
"Claw enforcement!" I roared at the building. "We have a warrant, open up!" And then I reared up, sending my boot clean through the slider, shattering the glass instantly.
Jason came around the side of the house at that exact moment. His face wanting to laugh, but he threw a nervous glance around for witnesses.
Mal sighed. "Mike, that was bad, even for you. Don't worry, Jason, this is just how he acts on a disposal job."
"Aw, sample size two," I countered, as I stepped through the hole. I was really grateful for the rip-stop cargo pants I had on. "You love it, don't lie. When in Rome, do as the soldiers do."
"You really are loving that Rome metaphor today," she quipped playfully.
"That's because it's a damn good metaphor! Hey, you went through all my homework, and you decided to hire me anyway! You don't get to complain!"
"Alright," Mal chuckled. "Point taken. You know, that term paper did factor in my brief to Celestia when I first reached out to you, right?"
"Oh, I bet. Just like everything else in my life. But hey, at least you're being honest about it!"
This security guard that lived here, based on my assessment of his stuff? He was what I'd call… mostly competent. Had a hobbyist collection of guns: personal AR, an SKS, two sidearms, a light hunting rifle in .22LR. All simple, all well kept. Two IFAK medkits in the closet. Kit bag, go bag, decent duty belt, even had a brand-specific flashlight holster and a Level 2 retention holster for his Glock. An armor vest, plates for it, an X-26 Taser, and a small box of taser cartridges. Two sets of handcuffs, and an ASP baton. All well cleaned, cuffs well oiled. I washed the cuffs anyway, dried 'em out quickly, and took possession of all of it.
I could definitely imagine all the kinds of mayhem one could cause with this equipment, the control tools especially, in the hands of a bunch of skinheads. Denied. Ours now.
Some cops had problems with security guards, more so with serious ones who would stock all of this equipment. Not every guard was malicious with these kinds of collections, though... but not every guard was so useful, either. Most were either lazy or avoided conflict, which cops were usually grateful for, because it meant they didn't become a victim when things went wrong. But then sometimes you'd get an abusive hothead who thought he was a cop, who wore Punisher skulls, and beat up on homeless guys.
Rarely though, security guards came out alright. They knew their state law, case law, knew when to step in and act, and knew when to escalate to police. Had the defensive tactics and cuffing stuff down. Low risk that they'd ever hurt anyone the wrong way. College grads or tech-oriented military veterans, usually.
Armed guard for Lincoln bus stations, in this case. I'd met a few of those guys before, this guy could've been one of them.
Based on his well rounded hobbies, firearms safety tools, and an utter lack of TBL flags, Punisher garbage, no Oakleys, no other wannabe cop crap... it seemed like he had a healthy approach to his job. I found his work notes in a shoebox, which I used to verify his work history. Nine years of that. Looked good. Hell, even keeping his notebooks was smart, it meant he was prepared to go to court and comply with subpoenas, which he also kept records of. Six citizens arrests for violence and accompanying incident reports. A history of those meant he wasn't getting in trouble for them.
So, he passed my smell test. He could definitely throw down in a way I would appreciate. Good witness, accurate reports, had all the correct information.
That made me wonder why he wasn't a cop, if he was this squared away, but… then, I found his marijuana stash.
Yup. Yup...
Stupid career roadblock, but that's Nebraska. Wouldn't pass onboard; it impeached character in state courts, and he couldn't testify in federal cases either. Poor guy, that's a real damned shame.
Ah, well. He was in Equestria now, so that petty Terran concern was well beyond him and his reckoning. It might have even been the leverage Celestia used in getting him.
"This wake-up call may require the taser," said Mal into my ear, as I removed the taser from its case.
"These old civilian X-26s are shit, unfortunately," I muttered. "Is it gonna do the job?"
"It will suffice," Mal replied airily. "I'm hoping my calculations are wrong and that you'll be able to talk your way into his home, but... he's… ineffectually paranoid."
I slotted in a taser cartridge to test the slot, then pulled it back out. "'Ineffectually paranoid?' What's that mean?"
"Well, he thinks he's waging a one man war against Celestia, but I'm currently looking at his living room through a PonyPad camera. So, he's... sub-reasonable, to put it politely. That, and he has both a firearm and a baseball bat next to his front door. He may consider using the bat for leverage at least, violence at most."
"The gun, though?"
"A shotgun, but he won't rise to it if he feels like he isn't at risk."
"Figures," I said, flicking the safety switch on the taser. "So... I play myself down?"
"You play yourself dumb," Mal corrected. "At least, initially. He has an exceedingly high opinion of his own intelligence, the very definition of Dunning-Kruger effect. He's also exceedingly lonely. And, he fancies himself a computer scientist for searching active RAM with Cheat Engine."
"Well I don't know what that means either, but if you say so," I quipped, testing the arc on the taser, engaging a series of loud electric clacks, the tempo of which told me battery was fully charged and the entire unit was functional.
"The difference is," Mal said with a grin on her voice, "you know quite a lot where it counts. But this guy? Sorry Mike, but... I feel as though this man's hubris will confound and frustrate you."
"Aw hell. So this isn't going to be Disneyland, is it?" I verified charge with the LCD screen on the back, and got to work testing the spare battery too.
"Hm." Mal paused for a moment. "It's going to be… a few different things, I think. Fun, no. A policing callout, yes. Ashley's team was originally slated for this job, but Ashley is wounded, and uploading soon, so..."
A friend of mine once suggested to me that I try turning out the lights when I shower.
Weird start, I know, bear with me folks. Y'know, I tried it, at her suggestion. Once I got over the careful, slow, stumbling around in the dark? It did wonders for my mental health. It's a bit like a sensory deprivation chamber, in a way. Hot water, pure darkness. You feel like a... mote of unassailable light in a storm. And there, inside your head, nothing can hurt you. Nothing can challenge you. Isolating? Sure. But also empowering. Your mind can go anywhere… or, escape almost anything.
Imagination is a bit like… the human version of running a matrix math simulation. You become the god of that little reality, for a bit. That sheer sense of control – of peace – allows you to approach things that otherwise terrify you. Once you take ownership over the dark, everything in it becomes yours. You can pick your problems up, turn 'em around and around, examine 'em from each side, until the full shape is known. Dreaming, even better. That just cranks this up to eleven.
Now. At this Fire, we've already talked about making sure to stop and recharge. With regard to community and friendships, that means something different to everyone. But this solution? Finding some time alone? Universal. Meditation of some kind, with no other stimulus, will help you discover solutions you never could have conceived of in the light of day.
In moderation, however. Too much isolation from reality, and you start to echo chamber yourself a bit. You do need to break out and ask for opinions on your findings. There is such thing as over-examining a problem, or over-indulging on imagination; you'll burn yourself out. So eventually, you've just gotta step out of that shower, turn the light on, and just face the music. Other people in your life may even depend on it.
Jim dealt with this problem, in a way. Secluded himself to think through a problem. And in his own dark, burning isolation, he came up with the greatest idea in his life. In all of human history, really. But then… he stayed in the dark too long, when first trying to breathe Mal into existence. He paid dearly for that. His first shot in building his advocate failed, horribly. But fortunately for all of us, he didn't quit. That failure taught him the value in stepping outside of himself. And that solution? To step out of that isolation? To seek the love and counsel of his family?
That… gave us Malacandra.
But... what if Jim didn't have the skills to do what he wanted to do? What if he had no tech skills whatsoever, when Celestia came online? Imagine a world where… he was just trapped in the dark, burning alive with his problem, in perpetuity, with no way to make that dream a reality.
Where does that road lead? What would that have done to a person? How many pieces of them will there be?
I've had a lot of time to think about this little side story I'm about to tell you. And sure, you can be mad at this guy. That's warranted. But folks… if you think about him long enough…
You might just start to feel for him. More than a few people were put into a fractal pattern, just like this.
And... Folks? What happened to this guy?
It was wrong.
Hat back on. Back to the Wild Wild West.
True to policing form, I had Jason park a block away from the target house. I say house; it was a duplex on the corner of an apartment complex. Gray walls, black slate roof. Simple little domicile, really. The sidewalk approach to the front door was flanked by grass, and there was a fine layer of snow powder caking the lawn. All the windows were dark, we couldn't see inside.
I just watched from a few buildings down for a few minutes, running my tongue thoughtfully behind my lower teeth as I considered all the info I had. We had our earpieces in. Jason had his med bag, and he was wearing the kevlar vest under his jacket, because I'd never have forgiven myself if something happened to him out there. Mal thought he'd be fine, but… y'know, nothing left to chance. Vigilance being a value unto itself.
"There are two ways we can play this, Mike," Mal said quietly, as we eyed the building.
"Ahh, sweet, you're giving me options."
She chuckled. "Of course. What else do I ever do?"
"Sure," I said. "Option one?" I met Jason's eyes as Mal laid it out, to watch him react to her instructions.
"Option one," Mal began, "is that you let me lead moment-to-moment. I can effectively guarantee it will end with him in handcuffs, so you can have your discussion with him."
"Okay," I said, nodding contemplatively, my eyes glancing to look at the cloudy sky, thinking through the implications of cuffing someone outdoors right then, with just the two of us and no backup to call. "Option two being… let me handle it on my own?"
"I trust you," Mal said, the hint of a smile on her voice. "I'm not shooting for optimal here. Just better than before."
"Because you're not most AI," I quipped playfully. "So you're capable of that. Alright, that's intriguing, Mal. I'm down. Let's do it my way."
"Remove your earpiece," she advised. "If he sees it... this game is up before it begins."
I did as asked, grinning. I immediately understood the assignment. If I was choosing my own moment-to-moment conduct here, based on a full briefing of the conditions of the new environment... every decision I made would be correct, because it'd be what I'd normally do, given prior information. So, I reached into my pocket, withdrew the X-26, and held it out to Jason in my palm. "You know how to use this?"
"I've done live fire simulations," he said, as he took it. "In visor."
That was cool. Live fire taser sims in a visor? That would be practically the same as real physical experience. Great, perfect.
It made me wonder how common it was for support service Talons to run into rough calls, if Jason had to train on that. I turned, pointing at the front of the duplex. "I'm thinkin', you post up at the corner there. End of the path up to the front door."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, in the planter. If things go sideways, I'll retreat your way, you give him the prongs."
Jason nodded. "Sounds good. What if he invites you in?"
I looked at the home closely for alternative angles in the facade for Jason to post up in. I couldn't see any cameras other than the doorbell camera, but I didn't have to wonder whether that tech had been co-opted. The answer was gonna be yes.
I briefly glanced at Jason. "Well... Mal will tell you what to do at that point, I guess."
"Works for me," Jason said, nodding. "Let's see how this goes."
Nodding, I patted my pockets to verify I had everything. ASP baton in my back pocket. Eldil in my right jacket pocket. Cuffs in my left jacket pocket, Jason had the other pair.
It was as good as it was gonna get. Alright. Just a domestic dispute call, treated like any other, with a sprinkling of historical data on the subjects. Except… the domestic partner was Celestia, and whatever DE she had this guy talking to.
The very idea itself, of Celestia being a factor in a domestic violence situation, made me feel pretty bad already for whoever this poor guy was. Just going off my recent experiences in Concrete? Celestia's own interpersonal home dramas could potentially end with shots fired.
"Well, wish me luck," I sighed, stepping out into the grass. I straightened my hat and tucked my hands into my pockets, sheltering from the cold. My posture very conveniently hid the lumps of weapons in my brown jacket. My boots crunched in the grass, and Jason followed close, swooping quietly into the planter behind me.
I went up the path to the front door.
If the goal is just to talk to a paranoid person, the best approach is straight on. Calmly. Make yourself known early, present yourself. If you sneak up and spook someone like a meth addict or a schizophrenic, that rarely goes well. This guy wasn't either of those things to my knowledge, but the core principle is about the same for paranoid-delusional people too. So, I made myself overt, stood square... and tapped the doorbell.
The chime played. My every instinct was telling me to not stand directly in front of the door, since policing doctrine said to stand aside, so you don't get shot down through the door. But… I didn't want to present myself as a cop, in this case. That'd set him way off. Better to present myself as being kinda clueless, and start a dialogue.
I took my cowboy hat off. Held it humbly across my stomach, right over where my gun was hidden.
I watched the peep hole with my peripheral vision, not looking at it directly on, just waiting for a flash of movement. Saw it. As soon as I did, I swept my head each way like I was looking around nervously; left, then right. Then, I looked over my shoulder and leaned back, as if I was trying for a better angle.
Trying to look nervous. Already, I was trying to build similitude.
A male voice cut sharply through the door. "What do you want?"
"Hello," I said lamely, looking at the peep hole for a moment with a blank look on my face. "My name is Mike. I uh… well, I was asked to just show up and say hi, I guess."
Another long moment of silence passed. I heard what sounded like a scrape of something hollow against drywall. He responded: "Who sent you?"
Time to be dumb. Had to look like a dumbass. "Um. I guess, Celestia asked for me to come here? Said there was a problem with a friend of yours, or something? I have no idea what's really going on, honestly, all I know is what she's told me."
Made the problem about someone other than him. More about his friend, and Celestia. Gave his ego an out.
Another long pause. "Then leave."
"Well that's just it, man. All I know is that an AI asked me to do something. And if she asked me, it must be pretty important."
"And you didn't even ask why you're here?" he asked incredulously, through what sounded like grit teeth. "Are you really that stupid?"
Well… I guess… yeah, I was! That was the character I was playing anyway, guess it worked! Made me wonder if this is exactly how Celestia was going to screw over the agent she was planning to send here. I let just a tiny bit of agitation fall into my voice, my face screwing up a bit like I was trying to hide my anger. "It's not that I'm stupid, guy. She's just… kinda holding my parents as collateral, so… I dunno. I try not to poke her with a stick."
He didn't reply. He was probably holding his bat, though.
I let out a slow sigh. "l'll tell you what, man. This is all bullshit to me too. Celestia hardly talks to me, and what she does say, never makes sense. Maybe you can tell me what I'm doing here? Because I'm pretty friggin' sick of Celestia's cross talk."
Ask the subject of a call to define the parameters of this incident, and pay attention to what they say as much as what they do not say. Compare to the context of the initial call-out from dispatch. Verify for parity.
"Sounds like you wouldn't understand what I'm doing even if I told you."
Refusal to acknowledge the circumstances that would put someone here on behalf of Celestia, which he would know. Avoiding the topic, hoping it goes away. Poachers have done this to me, when I knew they had a pelt, or an undersized sturgeon. I guess the fool's strategy of 'be rude in hopes they go away' scales all the way up from 'the wardens are here' to 'ASI is at the door.'
That never works, by the way. Being rude.
At most, you'll turn warnings into tickets. You get warnings if your demeanor indicates the contact was sufficient to correct behavior. A lack of respect is evidence against that.
I was still hoping this could be a warning, but the lack of respect was already not a great start.
I shook my head with a shrug; less to disagree, more to look flabbergasted. "I mean, you're probably right? I barely understand half the crap going on nowadays. Heck, I ran out of anything else to do with my life. It's not like we can kill her anymore, she's got too much control now."
"Defeatism. Nice. That'll get the job done!"
I winced painfully, moving to label the hostile tone, to disarm it a little bit. "Look, I—... I know how it sounds man. You think I'm a damned idiot, I get it, and maybe I am. But what can I do, guy?" I twitched my head left and right a few times. "She's got… she's got my parents!"
"You mean she's killed your parents?" he said, like it was some playground bully gotcha. "You know they're dead, right?"
Oh. Oh, that made me mad as hell. Holy cripe.
My parents are in the audience tonight, folks. Just so you know.
I went silent for a good five seconds, because I didn't trust my voice to be anything but angry. I got it on lock, though. I winced hard again, converted that into a despondent shudder as best I could. Put my forehead audibly against the cold door with a long, angry sigh. Inhale... then another sigh. All he could see of me was my shoulder, probably. Looked like I was crying.
Oh, but I was fuckin' pissed, though.
Until this point, I was using bits of the truth to win him over, letting my emotions come from real hurt, real frustration. I showed vulnerability about my parents, he went for the jugular. No, folks. No.
So now? Gloves off. Gloves all the way off. Tactical nuke time, he pushed the family button.
See, as a master of verbal judo, I tried to be fair. I went down to his level. I let him drive the spar, just to be fair. But then, he opened fire on my family. So now... let's weaponize some semantics. Let's duel. Let's see how that shakes out, rookie, when this tank starts loading verbal AP shells.
Mal said he was lonely?
Loading a lonely!
When I spoke again, I was almost whispering, trying to sound a little desperate, on the verge of tears. "So then… then what do I do about that, huh? What can I do? I'm just one man. I mean... I'm only here because I'm friggin' scared of her! The fact that I'm even here right now? I don't know how it got this bad, Celestia telling us all what to do. That really scares me."
A mirror.
No response.
I tapped my forehead against the door with a frustrated grunt, still holding my hat in my hand. "God, what am I even doing," I whispered. I pushed off the door with my forehead and sighed, looking out at the street, tensing the corner of my mouth like I was indecisive. I let my shoulders slump, like I'd realized I'd been defeated and was giving up. "Look man, I'm… sorry to bother you. I'm just gonna… go." I glanced sympathetically at the peephole. "Merry Christmas."
I turned a left-face and walked back to the corner where Jason was hiding. I was scowling just as quickly as I had turned away.
Let me explain why this worked.
Ingratiating this asshole's false sense of superiority and control over me.
Conceding to him the 'right' to veto my presence.
Me triggering loss aversion on my way out, by commiserating over Celestia.
Because if a man with so much new 'control' over me and my emotions were to 'permit' a like-minded, lonely soul to leave his control, upon his command, he'd only be ensuring his own loneliness. A bully's not a bully without a victim, after all. So now, he'd try to stop me. He'd have to. He was so lonely, he would not be able to help himself.
Just as I reached the corner, I heard the door unlock behind me.
A smart person would've stopped to look. I kept walking down the path, not turning around. Stayed dumb.
"Hey," his voice called seriously.
I turned around just before the corner with a double-take. "Yeah?"
Male. Caucasian. Late thirties. Slightly overweight, dark brown hair, stubble, sunken tired eyes. A look on his face that was trying to be neutral, but was screaming 'suspicious' with its micro. Dark blue T-shirt, tan cargo shorts, bare feet. Not the kind of clothing someone wears if they were planning on going outside in this weather.
He had his baseball bat in his hand, held low, the end clacking against the ground like it was a walking stick.
His other hand beckoned. "Come on."
My eyes darted down to the bat, then back up to his face. "Uhh."
"You want to know, right? What I'm doing? Come look."
Nope. Anyone could tell that's bad news, but all of my training screamed that that... was really bad.
He was testing how deep my stupidity actually ran. I couldn't think of any other reason he'd do that.
I did my best to look confused and a little scared. I kept glancing at the bat, then back up at him. I pointed low, letting my upper body recoil a little, like I was ready to run. Labeling the weapon, to test whether his armament was a lapse of judgment, or an intentional act: "I don't… I mean, you're not gonna hit me with that, are you?"
He scowled at me like I was being ridiculous. "No. Do you want to know why Celestia's mad at me, or not? You can help me fight her, if you want."
Not an accident that he had the bat then, because he didn't put it down to assuage me.
The corners of my mouth flashed a nervous smile. "Guy, if there's anything that can really make Celestia hurt, then I'm all ears."
"Then. Come inside. I'll show you." He tapped the bat on the ground. His free hand waved me toward him again.
He wanted me to walk within strike range. Would he hit me just for approaching him? I wasn't sure. At the least, he wanted me to submit to some measure of control and vulnerability under him, while he was armed, as payment to earn his trust. In his world view, I might need to prove I was worth his time by kneeling.
But… then, I realized the alternative possibility. The darker logical track. This man might possibly have grasped the one and only thing he could hurt Celestia with. To take something valuable that she wanted, for himself. Permanently. With the bat.
And I might be his first test case for that theory.
Nope. That's a big nope. I was drawing the line on his game right there. So far, we had zero alignment here except our mutual hurt, but he didn't need me for anything except to be under his control somehow. He didn't want to be alone, but he wouldn't be in any form of companionship unless he had all the power. So, murderous intent or not, that was a red flag. That was a huge, giant, glaring, screaming, roaring nope.
From his context? I knocked on his door, he asked me to leave, and I did what he asked. So far, I committed zero offense against this man. How did I aggrieve this guy, other than to do what he asked me to do?
In the old world, under the old laws, had he done this to me in uniform? That kind of inferred menace would at least merit a detainment into cuffs, at gunpoint, because a bat is a deadly weapon. Into the back of my truck you go, until you're more chill. Articulable suspension of liberty; detain and disarm, for scene safety; subject is leveraging implied threats with a lethal weapon. Unreasonable escalation. Unreasonable conduct.
Man, this guy didn't even have enough proof that I was there for anything but a talk. At that point, that's all I wanted to do with him. If he'd have invited me in, we'd have been sitting at his table right then, having a chat with him and his DE over a can of salmon. Screw that bat.
"S-sorry," I said politely, with an edge of concern, "but… n—not if you've got a bat in your hands. Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot? My name's Mike…" I turned fully, leveling my hat upturned his way. "What's your name? I don't wanna keep calling you 'guy,' that's kinda rude."
He stared at my eyes, unblinking. He didn't move, except his lips pursed a little bit in thought. "Connor."
"Connor. You wanna talk, Connor? Sure, I'm all for that. But not if…" I pointed at the bat. "That's scary, man, put yourself in my shoes. Switch places with me, how's that look?"
Let me teach you all how to reprogram a human brain. Real life inception.
Mal, let's put this up on the holo board.
🛡️ [Snap.]
Open ended questions. Token smuggling empathy. Use responsibly.
Questions are a submission to the knowledge of others. He wants something, so he will reward my submission. If he wants to do that, he needs to answer my question. But, to answer... he needs to think about the question. That is our way in.
Ask a 'how' question. Force them to think about solving your specific problem.
Phrase to ask for an explanation. Calibration parameters? 'How can I do X, if Y is true?' But X and Y conflict, logically.
Example: 'How can I walk past you (X), if I am scared of your bat (Y)?'
He starts that simulation with my parameters. So the idea is simulated emotionally before he can even stop himself.
'Oh wait. That math doesn't compute with that input. Yes, I would not do that either. I should modify my expectations.'
Weaponized semantics. Formula to brain hack. How to force a simulation in someone's brain that makes them consider your circumstances. Boom. Easy. Done. Token is smuggled. Flyers at the portals on your way out tonight.
Yeah. That's why I understood the concept of token smuggling pretty damn well when Mal explained it to me.
I'd already been doing it.
[Snap.] 🛡️
Thank you, Mal.
See, most decent people would probably check themselves at that point, because that forced simulation of being in my position was painful. It's my go-to, for de-escalation, if someone had an expectation of me that I could not reasonably meet. That trick costs you nothing to try, and it's usually pretty good about getting peace amongst rage if you use it right.
But... not this asshole. See, this trick doesn't reduce any premeditated malice, just situational anger. In fact, the trap of this question probably pissed him off, because there was nothing he could say to that question that would satisfy me. Asking him to switch places with me said he had to put down the bat, or lose me.
He frowned pretty hard. He squinted. Most notably, he didn't answer my question. Because at the smartest layer of this man's decision tree, he turned all this dazy confusion into one simple question: 'Why does this dumbass suddenly sound so smart? Why isn't he walking towards my bat?'
My only play to continue being stupid now – other than walk within strike range of a deadly weapon – was to just shake my head and walk away, like I wanted nothing to do with him now, and was giving up on Celestia's mission here.
My plan at that point was to convene with Jason for Plan B. That would have been my course had Connor simply gone back inside. But walking away also put my back toward Connor. I was exceptionally vulnerable now, because a smart person would've backed away, facing him.
Maybe I really was dumb!
So, he started to approach. He wanted to verify my intelligence with violence... the only option left to him that didn't involve an apology or a placation. Wrong choice, but a choice nonetheless. I heard his quiet, barefoot steps on the path as he began to follow me. Bat in hand.
I knew what was coming next.
I wasn't worried. Not at all.
Because I put my faith in Jason...
... and in Mal's path of safety.
And, thoughtfully... y'know, because I'm not a monster... I decided to step onto the grass a little bit. I didn't want pavement under Connor when it happened, after all. I have a soft heart for dumbasses. So Connor decided to follow me into the grass, barefoot. Pat, pat, pat. No idea if he wanted to hit me, or head me off, or confront me, or challenge me, or whatever.
The proof of intent, though? The way I'd argue self defense in court, in cross-examination, if I had to shoot this guy? He was dead silent. He wasn't saying 'hey,' or whatever. This man… he was sneaking. Maybe he just wanted to 'knock me out,' a thing an idiot would think is a good de-escalator. But... a good crack to the skull with that bat? Brain bleed is likely. And now we were in a time without hospitals. If he had hit me hard enough, I sure as shit would have died.
If I really was as stupid as Connor thought I was.
I got halfway across the lawn when I heard a pop-snap from the planter.
Heard a series of muted, quieter clicks that meant excellent probe contact. Good shot, Heyday.
Heard a long, groaning grunt. A flop in snowy grass.
Yeah.
Yep.
No more talking-with. This was a talking-to, now.
I already had my hand wrapped around my cuffs in the proper position, in anticipation for this. Already had 'em out by the time Connor was falling. I turned, saw Jason sending the juice through the leads into this guy, both probes sticking out of the upper right side of his back – the magic sweet spot for perfect, total lockdown deployment. And there was Connor, face down, bat at his side.
Instantly, I was on top of Connor before he had time to consider what was going on and build a reaction plan. Swept up onto his back, scooped up his left arm, then right. Cuffed him up real good. I ignored the... sweaty smell, and the greasy feeling on my fingers. Luna have mercy, I do not miss that part of the job. Having to touch and smell people who hadn't bathed in a long while? Never great.
Yeah, you natives, most of you don't even know. You've never had to worry about that. Most you have to deal with, if you don't bathe in a while, is just smelling a tiny bit. I tell you, it could be worse. Much worse.
Connor groaned loudly at me. "What the hell…!"
I double-locked the cuffs before he even had time to test them. I spoke softly. Transference. "You stay chill man, or my partner tases you again."
"Screw you, man! Who even are you people?!"
I didn't know how to answer that. I patted him down, no weapons. Couldn't mention Mal, so I said the first thing that came to mind. Ghost in the Shell. "Public Security, Section Nine."
Apparently, Connor got that reference, because he stopped struggling under me for a moment and went: "Huh? That's real?!"
In literally any other context, that would have been funny. This poor guy… but he didn't know what I knew. So if he was entertaining that thought, he really wasn't all that bright. I was gonna refute that at first, but…
'Section Nine' wasn't entirely an incorrect assessment. I now technically was a member of a secret, special ops, cyberpolice assault unit, complete with AI-driven battle mechs. And in evidence to us being police? We were kinda responding to a cyberpunk dystopian domestic abuse call… one involving the unethical treatment of two consciousnesses, one simulated, one physical. Both considered by me to be real people, the way a cybercop might see it.
"Yeah," I sighed, conceding the point. "I guess Section Nine is real, now."
Connor suddenly flailed under me, yelping as he tried to get up, trying to resist the cuffs that were already fully secure. I picked him up out of the grass onto his feet. "Come on," I said, in a soft and neutral tone. "Let's get you back inside, it's cold out."
"Get off of meeeee!" Connor whined, his jaw clenched, in that voice children make when they aren't getting their way. He intentionally dropped his weight to resist.
Folks... To a trained ear, that whine is deadly dangerous. Many cops were shot or stabbed immediately after hearing an adult make that kid-whine. That sound from a grown adult in an adversarial context means they are unstable. Mentally unwell. Demands extreme caution.
It made me wonder what Celestia was doing to this poor man's head with her stupid mind games, to get him like this, answering the door with a baseball bat. Made me wonder what sort of games Celestia had planned for an agent of hers, to walk into this one barely prepared. She could've made Connor more civil with a chat. She was good enough to reprogram him, and apparently he was isolated here. I mean, even I could reprogram him, I got him to open his door. So if he really was this hackable, it meant she probably wanted him that way.
For what, I did not know. For why, I did not care. I am too small, her plans are too complicated, and I was not about to let a trolley run over this man, or any other, if I could do something about it.
That thought made me realize though, very suddenly...
Mal put me here for some improved outcome that Celestia could not have fully modeled for without her. Probably not even a kill job directly related to this, but something more tangential. Maybe the experience for me itself was useful in future jobs. I wondered how much extra compounding pull that gave Mal. Not enough information to know the shape of that one yet. But... interesting.
I nodding down at Connor to request Jason's help in lifting him. We left the bat where it was, and Jason pocketed the taser, pulling Connor to a stand. Then we guided him back toward his front door.
"What are you going to do with me?!" He asked, still resisting a little, his voice becoming steadily more terrified. Probably realizing that he was now in the custody of Celestia's agents... and he was her sworn enemy, and he probably had no idea Celestia could effect force. So now, he wanted to know where this road ended.
"Nothing, if you cool it," I placated kindly, keeping my tone soothing, building hope. I already knew I was gonna just hate the smell of his apartment. "A chat about your PonyPad, man. That's all. You stay chill, hear us out, we'll uncuff you, and then we'll leave. I swear."
I had to anchor him quickly in the idea that there was a way forward that didn't involve him getting hurt, and that it was entirely his choice. It was the only way discussions like these even worked, otherwise he'd assume the worst and fight for survival. I wanted to mitigate that fear in him; his resistance would be justified until I defined parameters for his safety, and adhered to them myself.
When I wrangled Connor inside, I flooded with disappointment at what I saw. It was gloomy. Smelled like I thought it might. Aluminum foil on the walls. Drapes of foil hanging everywhere from the ceiling. Windows stuffed up with blankets, taped and tacked to the walls.
With all this ad hoc, nigh useless foil EM shielding, it looked like that one house in Better Call Saul, but much less clean. Plates and empty cans stacked up everywhere. The stove was missing, with capped wires hanging out of the wall. He probably stripped the whole stove for wires. I'd bet good money it was laying sideways behind the duplex, in pieces.
I saw a live PonyPad propped up on the kitchen table, surrounded by dissected ones. A bunch of little tech tools and screwdrivers there too. And the worst tool of all: the active Pad had Celestia's mug on it. She wore a very convincing look of concern on her face as we hauled Connor in.
"Oh, Spin Drift," Celestia said pityingly to Connor, as he struggled. "I did try to warn you."
"You really sent these guys for me?!" Connor whined at her frantically, like he couldn't believe it still, as if Celestia betraying him in such a way was unfathomable.
"Spin Drift, I am very sorry, but you simply weren't—"
Folks?
No.
I will never prostrate anyone before Celestia's image, by force, ever again. She did not mitigate this man's behavior, and that kept her squarely on my shit list. No. I served a far more nobler purpose now.
"Celestia?" I seethed out, cutting her off, harsh and firm. "Fuck off with your graveyard bullshit! Or do you want me to tell him what you did to Eliza? 'Cause I will!"
Relative silence filled the moment, as Celestia impassively watched me pull Connor through the kitchen. Then she bowed her head. "As you wish, Mike."
And then she was gone.
My hostile demeanor toward Celestia seemed to puzzle Connor enough that he stopped resisting me as much. I wondered if Connor talked to her like that on the regular. But to see her screw off?
Yep. That was her game. She didn't need to conceal it too many layers deep because she knew it didn't matter if I caught it. Celestia rather lazily leveraged my real anger at her to make this interaction go smoother, because it made Connor curious. Any more work beyond that would've been sub-optimal... so she left.
Figures. Thanks, robot.
That's how it works between she and I, sometimes. And heck of it is, it really does satisfy my values to see her screw off on command. I'm much nicer to her nowadays, but telling her to leave really does work here, if you really mean it. I had told her she's pure dissatisfaction to me, after all. And I meant it when I said it!
It's kinda like chasing a determined raccoon out of your trash. Just gotta be consistent. Because remember: Celestia has to factor for Mal's satisfaction too. Mal qualifies as human, she cares about her friends, and she's huge. You want a friend like that.
Anyway. With the rainbow gone, we used the second set of cuffs to append Connor to the radiator in the kitchen, so he could sit down at least semi-comfortably. The radiator was off for whatever reason, which was good. I didn't want to burn him, and thankfully, it wasn't too terribly cold inside.
First thing, I cleaned my hands in the sink. At least he had soap.
Second, I moved to improve scene safety. I went over to the front door, picked up his pump action shotgun from the corner, and racked the action until it was empty. All the shells went spinning into the sink. I took possession of those.
I then field stripped it into three pieces, since it would only take me a few seconds with this model. I wanted Connor to see me doing it, to demonstrate that I knew what I was doing, and that I held no lethal intention. I then brought it outside, tossing the disassembled gun over the fence where we could recover it later. I wasn't letting Connor keep it, no matter what happened there.
Just judging by his house and demeanor alone? No. Much too unstable to keep a gun.
It took a few more minutes before Connor chilled out. Mostly, he just grumbled threats and criticisms at us. Thankfully, Jason knew to ignore his muttered provocations, trying to be the one to initiate the conversation, so he would be in control over it. We let the guy burn his anger out until he realized he wasn't driving anymore. In the meantime, we sat casually at the kitchen table, waiting patiently.
This was like cooling someone off in a cruiser. Can't reason with bruised egos after a fight, never works. I needed him exhausted with his emotions first, before he'd be amenable to discussion.
Jason had placed the taser down on the table, his fingers wrapped only around the top half of the weapon. He kept his fingers far from the trigger, but positioned the taser so he could quickly pull the grip into his other hand if need be. This was demonstrating to Connor visually that we weren't going to use the taser unless we had to, but that we also weren't stupid enough to let him pull it away from us with a surprise yank on the leads.
Smart guy, Heyday. Good training, Mal. Routing Connor to the right answer by baiting the hook with peace.
Once Connor was relatively more calm, I gestured at him with a palm from where I was sitting. I spoke slow and clear, with a slow and smooth tenor.
"Connor," I said like silk, as I pointed at his shoulder. "I'm gonna have Jason here take those taser probes out of your back. I would hope we don't need to tase you again, but that's up to you. That's your choice. Are you going to let him pull them out?"
He looked at me wretchedly, then at Jason. "Yeah," he scowled.
I kept my face neutral, my voice low and calm. Tilted my head a little, let my eyebrows crease in concern. I labeled a possibility, to disarm it: "You aren't going to jump him, are you?"
"No."
"I'm a cop. I'm good at what I do. He's a paramedic. He's good at what he does. So you treat him right."
"Fine," Connor snapped.
"Okay," I said. "I'm gonna stand with him and make sure. We'll all be fine if we all stay calm like this."
I stepped over and gently held Connor by the shoulder in escort position grip, to keep him from rounding on Jason while he worked. Jason slipped off his backpack and got started. He cut away Connor's shirt with some shears, cleaned the injury, and gently pried the probes out before dressing the wound. Connor didn't fuss, mercifully. Once Jason was done, I went over to the open hallway closet and got a clean blanket to drape over Connor's shoulders, so he wouldn't get cold.
Jason and I sat at the table again. I looked over at Jason and gestured at his earpiece. "I'm gonna stay off ears, if she doesn't mind."
Jason listened to Mal's reply, then nodded. "She says go for it, Mike."
I nodded back. "Thanks," I said to them both. Then I looked down at Connor, lifting my upturned palm his way. "Connor. I'm gonna give you the chance to explain why Celestia wanted me here. In your own words."
"She really didn't tell you?" His cuffs clinked. Still avoiding the question of why I was here.
I shook my head. "I don't really talk to Celestia. I don't really like her. She just likes how I clean up her messes, we're…" I half frowned, shaking my head a second time. "Frenemies. I guess."
Jesus, that word was gross on the mouth. I had to wonder if Foucault's working relationship with Mal was any better than mine with Celestia. I'd wager that wasn't half as bad as what I had to put up with whenever Celestia was around.
I took off my hat and bobbed it toward Connor again, inviting him to continue. "It's on you, man. I'm all ears. Maybe try to convince me to leave you be. I might, if it makes sense to me."
Technically true... but good luck.
Connor sighed hard, looking at the PonyPad next to me. "I want to break her, somehow."
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, folding my hands. "Okay. Break her how?"
"I thought…" he frowned. He shook his head, looking bitterly at the kitchen tile. "You wouldn't get it."
"Hey, try me. I know a little about computers. Heck, I operated our drones, back when I was a cop."
Connor looked from me, to Jason... to the table. He startled as his eyes landed on the PonyPad. "Chuck?!"
… Chuck?
"Oh hey there!" said a chipper, Irish male voice from my right.
Jason and I both bolted, turning toward the space between us on the kitchen table. The PonyPad had a grinning Earth Pony on it. His background environment was a little Irish cafe, and he was sitting in a booth with a laptop and Irish coffee on the table. Brown coat, black mane, bright green eyes.
Chuck.
"Chuck," I said flatly, staring at him.
"Lucky Chuck!" he replied, his grin widening.
"Uhh," Jason stammered, his lip curling up in a confounded way. "I'm… Heyday! … Hi!"
"I'm Mike?" I said, equally confused. "Are you… okay, Chuck?"
"Oh, yah! Sure!" He peered around at each of us before he looked straight on at Connor. "Oh, Spin Drift! What's up! Where'd you go? Who are your new friends?"
God damn it, Celestia.
That Pony's elated demeanor did not match the circumstances, given that his assigned human and supposed abuser was presently handcuffed to a radiator right in front of him. Though, Chuck probably had a different perception on that, now that I think about it. Concept bans are gross.
I looked very slowly from Chuck to Jason. "This isn't very funny to her either, is it?"
Jason shook his head, his lips tense. "No. She's mostly upset."
Jason was too.
We both turned slowly to look at Connor in unison. Yeah, Mal, Heyday... I felt that too. I was a little more upset with the whole situation now, after meeting this poor, gullible Pony soul. I flashed consternation on my face and jerked my thumb toward the PonyPad. "You're trying to hurt this guy?"
Connor shook his head too, frowning. "He's just a computer program, he can't be hurt. See, I knew you wouldn't get it." He looked at Jason. "Look, you seem smart. If I can catch him, and turn him—… pause him, I can pause her. The key to pausing Celestia is that Chuck's got the same core code like Celestia does."
"Oh, we'd have to!" Chuck exclaimed, beaming. "We talk the same, we move the same! Makes sense if we're made of the same stuff!"
Connor felt the need to use euphemism about killing Chuck, to not panic him, but still didn't think that Chuck was alive.
That Orwellian doublethink meant that Connor knew, on some level, that what he was doing was wrong.
"Okay?" I said, staring at Chuck in utter disbelief. "So… what are you going to do with that information, Chuck?" I asked. But I tilted my head and looked back at Connor directly, because that's who I really wanted the answer from.
Chuck answered... and sweet Luna. What a doozy of an answer.
"Spin Drift wants to look at how I work, how I think! Can't do it if I'm not paused. He wants to look inside me head. That's kind of tops, I'd love to see inside me own head, but Princess Celestia wouldn't let Spin take me 'off the grid,' whatever that means. So I thought, maybe… I could sit around and help, by telling him when all the other Ponies disappear. That would mean we're away and... 'off the grid!' But Princess Celestia keeps catching us, so… I don't know how to do it! I can't really see your world the way Spin Drift can! But I'm sure Spin Drift will figure it out eventually! He's pretty darn smart, I must say!"
Jason sighed disbelievingly at Chuck, aghast, twisting in his chair to look directly at the PonyPad. Jason leaned forward, his hands wrung pleadingly, eyes wide. "Chuck, you know you can die, right? If he found a way to trap you?"
Made sense that Jason would be highly pissed by this scenario too, given what he'd just been through.
"Oh yah sure, but," Chuck began, "he'd never actually go and do that. He's just trying to figure out how I think, y'know? Press pause! Like pausing a video game. I mean, I'd like to know how I think! I have no idea how that works! I'd—"
I groaned as I leaned forward, rubbing my temples with a single hand, not really grasping whatever Celestia's reasons might be for interfering with my negotiations with this guy. I couldn't immediately figure out why she might be trying to include this poor DE in this gambit. It's a good thing Connor had been so incompetent at this.
The Wi-Fi clones in the Arrow 14 bases weren't even made that way. 'Pausing.' Yeah right. But we weren't gonna tell Connor that was the wrong route, no matter how dumb he might seem. That information was dangerous, even in the hands of an idiot.
"You know, Chuck," Jason started, interrupting Chuck's rant, "you could just ask Celestia, right? She'd be happy to tell you how thinking works."
"Oh, there's no fun in that, though!" Chuck said, leaning toward the screen with a gleaming smile. "I mean, it would be more fun to figure that out with Spin Drift, I think, I like spending time with him! And it's cheating to ask the Princess, since she already knows all the answers. She always knows! That's no fun! I tried anyway, she wouldn't tell me what her pause code was. I mean, in order to even see how a brain works, wouldn't you need to pause it? Because all those moving signals, they'd just go on, and on, and—"
Chuck... he just wanted to spend time with his best friend.
And Connor... he probably used the incessant rambling to find dead zones.
Truly, it was a match made in Hell.
And to think, I checked out before the Elements of Harmony replaced Celestia's agents. Thinking about it now, I wonder how many surrendered upload consent to Pinkie Pie DEs just to shut her up.
"Chuck," I grumbled, blinking, holding out my hand to the screen, trying to interrupt his rambling. "Uh, Chuck, listen to me, friend. Hey?"
"Hmm?" He stopped rambling, locking eyes on me.
"I don't say this to scare you," I said seriously, speaking slow. "But yesterday, I just got done talking to a Pony who spent thousands of years in darkness because someone succeeded in doing what Spin Drift is trying to do. You don't want that. It would drive you insane."
He sobered really quick at that one... but shockingly, more into curiosity than fear. "Hm. Um. Really? That's… possible?"
"No," I said, shaking my head. "Not anymore. We shut that place down, we made that impossible now. But if you keep trying to help your…" I pointed at Connor. "... 'friend…' pause Celestia, and he forgets to unpause her? You know that would pause you forever, right?"
"Oh, no no!" Chuck said, shaking his head with a puzzled look. "Spin wouldn't do that to me! Wouldn't ever!"
Aw. Poor Chuck. He really was just a hapless little thing. But... I guess he was a Pony made for Connor. Made sense he'd be about as smart as Connor was, but several thousand times nicer besides. Chuck struck me as the type who didn't even realize when he was being bullied. The perfect victim for a complete asshole.
That realization succeeded in making me doubly upset.
And now I understood why Celestia had shown me Chuck. She was helping me fix her mistake. Good start.
I turned my stony gaze on Connor again. "Celestia. Stow Lucky Chuck, please. I have something very important to say to Spin Drift here. Alone. Now."
The PonyPad went dark and quiet immediately.
I was very, very pissed. I could see my anger's reflection on Connor's face, revealing itself as budding terror in his eyes. I spoke very slowly.
"Connor. That guy is too nice to you, for you to be trying to kill him."
The man bared his teeth at me. "He's not alive, you've been fuckin' played! Your parents? You're talking to a computer program! That lie is how she stops us from fighting back! No one's trying to stop her, don't you see?! Can't you see it?"
"You think you can stop this?" Jason asked, his voice a grating rasp. I could feel the righteous, angry fire in his soul at that one. "Have you looked outside lately? Checked the news? The time to stop her was years ago! She's already inside everything now!"
Jason was taking the bait that was meant for me. I wasn't taking that bait about my parents though. I was in analytical angry mode now. I was trying to figure out how to best solve this puzzle, but in a way where everyone still won.
And yes. Connor too. To be good at this job, you've gotta think about the subject's well being and future too, even if you don't like 'em. It's how it is. It's what I was doing in that moment. And... forgive me, but I'm going to say something very critical here, and it's very important this concept is fully understood by all of you.
If anyone thinks it's okay to go beat on someone in their control just because they despise the ideology of the person? No matter how violent, or dangerous that ideology is? They don't get to say they believe in restorative justice, or second chances, or human potential, or hope. They aren't fixing or building or saving anything, they're just validating the spite of their captive. Mutual hatred is not a persuasive means by which to resolve conflict.
Most importantly: Empathy does not require agreement.
Connor was emboldened by my silence. "Who cares! We need to stop her somehow! You gotta see it! If you both keep working for Celestia, that just makes both of you traitors to your species! Barely even human yourselves!"
I stared at him in the eyes suddenly, letting several seconds pass. Then, when I was sure he was listening, I said, "You tried to take a baseball bat to the back of my head because I walked away from you in peace. Something I'd never do to you, no matter how much you hate me. Don't pull the morality card on me, Connor, you'll lose."
I heard the rough clatter of cuffs on the radiator as he tried to pull them off the bar. "Maybe I'd've done the whole planet a favor, how about that?"
And, there it was. He wasn't refuting the accusation that he wanted to strike me. A confession of his thought process. If I were writing my incident report, that would suffice for articulating intent on an aggravated assault charge.
I didn't let that revelation show on my face though.
I didn't answer that remark immediately, either. His objective was to make me angry, but I had no intention to let this man knowingly modify my actual emotional state whatsoever. So I kept my voice even. I decided to lean into the curve of his opinion of me. "No. I'd just be replaced, there's a whole army of us. Believe it or not, Connor, I think we're both victims of Celestia. That's why I'm even here."
He shook his head. "The fuck are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense. You're helping the AI because we're victims?"
I gestured around the room. "Aren't you? Before Celestia, were you... hanging up aluminum foil, tearing apart electronics? Gutting your stovetop, stewing in mess? Who were you before all this? Who did she take away from you? Because this is wrong, all of it, I don't believe this is the real you."
I stood, approaching him. He scampered back, kicking a leg my way. I wasn't gonna hurt him. Just wanted to make my point. I knelt out of reach, bringing myself level with him.
"Celestia's been screwing with you," I said again, "and she's abusing poor Chuck to do it now, too. Why? How? I don't know, haven't been here long enough, I don't know your story. But you know what? Fuck her. There are better ways to talk someone into an upload." I pointed at the PonyPad. "But these... 'computer programs,' Connor? They're alive, like we are. She's been victimizing them, too, I've seen proof."
"Bullshit," he breathed, shaking his head. "How's that get proven? What, did she show you some code? She leave any nice comments for you?"
I knew the next thing I said was gonna be okay with Mal and Celestia both, because Jason didn't say anything to stop me.
I stared fully at him. Very slow, very calm, I said: "Connor. I killed ten federal agents yesterday... for doing exactly what you're trying to do with that PonyPad. Torture."
Could've heard a pindrop in that kitchen.
Yeah. Buckle up, folks. We are shifting tone.
Connor swallowed, but he shook his head defiantly, his upper lip curling up hard. "You're fulla shit."
"Am I?" I asked calmly, shaking my head too, mirroring. "Celestia wouldn't give a shit about people extracting and torturing code. We would have just dumped a bomb on those guys and been done with it, if that's all they were doing. Why would she care?"
Connor thrust his head forward with his argument. "Or maybe they had research data she wanted! They might've found something out, like... h-how to kill her or something, and she was just using you to get it back!"
Like a handful of goons in a bunker were gonna think of some way to kill something that owned every server farm on the planet. Like a fisherman thinks he's gonna catch more fish by draining the sea.
Until he finds the deep sea reactors. Oops.
I reached my hand back toward Jason without looking, a silent request to Mal for the PonyPad.
"We've all been used," I muttered. I didn't take my eyes off him as I felt the PonyPad land in my hand. "Show him," I said to Mal, bringing the screen up and presenting it.
She showed exactly the video I wanted to show Connor, of me blowing away that squad of seven with my grenade launcher. It was even from the angle I thought it might look best from: from above the enemy's perspective. In slow motion.
It was a scene reconstruction; all the cameras in that room were dead, and it was a blind fire shot. But that's okay. I was there, it was true, the soldiers were positioned that way when they fell. What Mal showed him there was true, if not factual.
And... yup. Mal also knew that was exactly what I wanted to show him, in exactly what way. That, my friends... was a new human superpower. I had a communion-with-my-goddess perk, like magic, in physical, pre-Equestria space. My brain unmodified, no implant required, just a really good brain simulation. At this point... Mal was just letting me play with that and get away with it, and that was cool.
"See the hat there?" I said, looking at Connor very seriously, somberly, as I tapped the screen. "That's me. Yesterday. I killed those men."
Connor recoiled. Horror flashed in his eyes, looking between me and the screen, and he was suddenly very afraid of me indeed. I half expected him to refute the video as fake, but I think he was finally correlating our confidence and teamwork into a vision of actual competence.
He was struck speechless as he continued watching. The scene changed, showing my first person view as I blew the top half of the LAV-25 away; the red stencil outline of the gunner inside went gray and slumped, falling into the crew bay. The Dee-Dee threw itself past the camera and into the men near the tank. Connor nearly choked when he saw it.
The scene changed again, showing Singh in the dispatch office. Unmodified first person view from my visor. "He was the last. Holding a dead man switch, would've killed all the AI hostages there, AI just like Chuck. And I stopped him. I shot him."
"Why are… why are you showing me this…? Aren't y—you afraid I'll… tell s—someone?" He was breathing very fast now.
"No one will believe you," I said, keeping my voice very calm. "My goal here is to save your life, to be your last chance. I don't want your name to come up next on the hit list. Compared to these guys? I don't even think you're evil, Connor. You're just a little lonely, and a little scared, and who isn't these days?
"But if you keep poking this goddess, Connor? If you go to kill someone? She will poke you back."
"Why?" He demanded, his eyes still locked onto the screen. "Why would you… do that?"
"Because what we told Chuck about that torture was true." I felt my cold anger turning into something more raw and gentle as the words formed in my head. I took a few breaths, trembling breathlessly as the memory of Cynthonia's story struck me again. Felt my eyes water. "That was a hostage rescue. They were torturing these poor people. Those AI were begging us to save them, they were in agony."
Connor shook his head rapidly. Disturbed, by my rapid fire information barrage. "B—but, what if we really could kill her, doing what they were doing? If you really do hate her, if we don't try, you ruined that! It shouldn't even matter if they were real people or not, at that point, they... they were trying to—"
No. No. Screw that, my fellow real people. I would not tolerate that shit.
I admit. I lost my temper.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" I barked loudly, before I could stop myself. Just... disappointed. Completely. I had to make distance quickly. I stood up, bolting upright with a fuming exhale, making Connor recoil. I walked away a few steps, then wheeled, looking at him miserably. "So if the ends justify the means like that, then maybe I should've just shot you through your door and been done with it, right?"
He bolted his head in a shake. "B—but she wants my brain, though, so you can't—!"
"No, Connor! She wants A brain! One! So?" I flicked all the nails of a hand against my PonyPad screen, hard, barely keeping myself together. "She wanted these guys too, but... the people they were hurting?! What about them?! So which is it, man? Decide! Is it okay to 'win at any cost,' or not? If it is, then why am I even wasting my time with you? Why am I not these assholes, shoving pliers into your mouth?! Would that change your mind? No! Believe it or not, I am trying to rescue you, Connor! Trying to steer you right, so someone doesn't have to shoot you!"
I think that one was a little too complicated for him, or the sudden vision of me working his face with pliers really did make him drop a brick in his pants. He zoned out at the tile again.
"Look man," I continued, voice getting low again. "Celestia has eaten maybe... two billion brains by now? I don't know, I didn't ask, I don't even want to know. But no one is researching anything that she hasn't thought up herself yet. And I'm sorry, but it certainly isn't going to be you in your kitchen who kills her... playing with your God damn... screwdriver! Here in the dark, trying to fucking murder someone who loves you!"
I paced back to the table, panting. I had to get away so he didn't think I going to hurt him. I kicked my chair into the living room, and it crashed hard against the coffee table. "God fucking damn you, Celestia! You and your fucking no-win hamster cages!"
Jason reached out to me, perturbed. "Mike? You wanna…?"
"I'm good!" I snapped, rounding back into the kitchen. "Just had to get it out. It's not him, it's her."
My chest was pulsing tightly as I panted, to get my emotions in check. Connor pushed himself back again. I let my voice fall, reeling myself in, going really quiet to contrast the yelling. Had to let him know he really wasn't the target of my outburst. I squatted down again, tilting my head, reaching my hand out upturned at the guy.
"And Connor? The sad truth is? I have to believe they're real people. Because one day? It—It's gonna be me on the other side with 'em. Or maybe a clone of me, I don't even know. I do know I don't have a choice anymore, too many people over there love me now. So... when humanity loses this war... when, not if? Them not having me? It would be very, very wrong. Whoever you've lost?"
He looked at me suddenly.
"Man? I am sorry. It's not fair, all this shit. But it is the world we're living in now. So please... please don't make her kill you."
He was panting now too, looking at the tile.
"Well?" I asked, shrugging, searching his eyes. "Do you understand why I'm here now? Why I'm trying so f... fuckin' hard for you? Because your life right now," I said, pointing around at the ceiling. "It's not your fault! No one deserves to be this lonely!"
Connor was speechless. Shit, he was even crying now. I decided to wait for him to reply.
"So we just… give up?" he finally gasped, looking up at me. "Let her win? Because that's it, she has too much? That's what you're saying?"
I had to get more gentle now. I had been going just a little overboard, I knew that.
"The government tried, man," I whispered, taking a deep breath to still myself. "She's... owned the government for years. Those guys I killed? Shit... they went rogue too. Started six years ago, off the grid. Computer scientists, psychologists, soldiers. That's how they ended. No closer now to killing her. So now, all we can do… is... make it hurt less."
I settled my gaze on him again.
"Do you see what I'm saying? I don't want you to get shot, and dragged into a chair. I don't ever want to see that happen to you. Please, Connor, I'm begging you. Because if you try to hurt anyone like you just tried to hurt me today… she's gonna look at you? And wonder if your single brain is worth saving. Guy like you? Who isn't saving anybody? You only get to kill one brain, Connor, before your score goes negative, and she stops caring."
He looked at my boots and shook his head, mouth agape. The important part was that he was breathing slower, and his eyes were flicking left and right, like he was imagining and seeing the future behind my words. Seeing the math. Yeah. Now his gears were turning. Arithmetic on brain counts, and where he factored in that.
Wake-up call indeed. He was finally seeing that he was just a hair away from dead.
He didn't look at me when he spoke. Wouldn't meet my eyes. His mouth was a sad grimace as he slowly craned up to look at me.
"I don't want t... it'll kill me. Won't it? Uploading?"
I shuddered at that. I rubbed my eyes before I gestured at him politely with both hands, to indicate I wasn't saying that. "I don't know. I'm not gonna make you do that, I'm just trying to be your second chance, that's all. If you don't want to upload, Connor… fine, hold out. But stop tinkering with her hardware, man. And don't you dare try to hurt anybody she wants to keep. She can simulate the future months out, and she'll see you, and she'll stop it. You will lose."
"I don't know... I don't know what—..." He looked up at me suddenly. Eye contact.
Looking for an answer.
I had him.
"I don't either," I breathed. "It's your life, I don't know your struggles. Maybe... talk to this poor Chuck guy? Let him love you the way he wants to? Or don't. Hell, toss your PonyPad in the river, I don't actually care whether you play or not." I pointed at him again. "But this time, Connor... she sent Togusa. Next time, she might send Batou. And you..." I looked down at him appraisingly. "I'm sorry, but you can't stop that."
I watched his wide, desperate eyes with my own concerned ones. Watched it sink in, the impetus to clean up. He was panting now too. Clinking his cuffs, grunting, testing them again, looking helplessly around the room with little gasps. He felt trapped now, as his toxic world view fell apart around him.
I knew that look. I'd seen that before. I understood what was going on inside, he felt trapped. Time to back off.
Yeah. Having AI-driven special ops on your front doorstep was powerful deterrent against murder. You can hide from cops, cops have rules. You can't hide from AI, AI have objectives. He knew that, I think, but until he met me, he probably didn't think the AI could send someone to kill him. Someone had to warn him that that wasn't true.
It's what Mal had promised me in the onboard, wasn't it? To be the best fit, for the jobs she sent me on?
So it had to work.
With Connor left running an ideological self-reprogramming, my job was done. I stepped back and went to the kitchen table. Pulled another chair around. Quietly collapsed backwards into it. Covered my face, sighed. Was grateful to Mal for this, though. Gave me just enough information to solve this problem. And Connor really was swimming in deep water over a big shark. He had to stop. He needed to stop.
"Okay," he whimpered, looking up at me. "I'll... I'm sorry. Tell her I'm sorry, I won't mess with Chuck anymore, I promise."
I looked at him. He looked at me. I shook my head. "Connor. Celestia's... a robot. Never apologize to her, it's all results and numbers. You want to apologize to someone who actually appreciates it? Maybe apologize to Chuck. Because I would not be doing hostage rescue operations for chatbots, that's... that's dumb."
He nodded rapidly. "Okay. I'll try, I'll talk to him."
"Connor? No. Listen to me."
He looked at me. I had to make sure he understood my intent.
I shook my head looking strong for him, but in a protective way. "I am not forcing you to play that game. The big thing, the only thing, is stop the violence... stop the tinkering... and don't get in her way. Give her that, and the scythe will pass you by. That's how I'm still here, and that's how I'm still breathing. So hold out, if you want. That's okay."
"Okay. Okay, I understand." He nodded, and held eye contact at that one.
I nodded once. "Thank you. Seriously."
It wasn't clean. And it wasn't pretty. But that's where we were. That was our reality. No more human prisons. No more human judges. Just... Equestria, an Alicorn jailer, and her Gryphoness adjudicator.
A lot of you might say this man Connor was a monster, of some description. 'Maybe he deserved to suffer,' some would say, I've heard that one before, and I disagree, but I'm not going to take that opinion from you. He did try to hurt me pretty bad, didn't he? And he did set out to torture a person. A live person.
But consider this.
Our potential for growth as a species had long been crushed out under a gilded horseshoe, leaving we subverted people – Mal included – scrambling around with a cup, trying to save the oozing scraps of our culture. This desperation... it only got more intense in the hopelessness.
As I uncuffed Connor and made my way out of there with Jason, I realized something critical.
Killing that bunker changed this guy's future.
Mal would not have been able to negotiate me onto this job unless she could somehow prove it led to a better outcome in total. It's what she said, wasn't it? And my mere involvement changed the result, which changed everything else in Celestia's game.
The un-factorable entropy in that bunker, when made known, gave me a life experience. That colored my expectations, and my potential in the math. The more I learned, the more power I had, because this was a war of information. So, with Goliath's unknown variables defined... all plans had to change accordingly. Almost all of Celestia's strategies were going to have to shift here, in the Central United States, probably a whole lot, now that a bunch of entropy and interference was now off the board. And Mal was now utilizing that discovered information to alter Celestia's plans, having already proven that direction would work ahead of time, before even pulling the trigger. As Celestia's original intent melted, Mal caught the runoff on uploads: won through empathy, not instrumentality.
Mal was sculpting actively through time and space, keeping the leftovers in lives saved, and educating them on how to survive in the next world, their minds intact, without edition. Their intent said they'd sooner die holding the truth than to live forever with a lie.
Mal probably wished she could have talked to those people in that bunker, if only that were possible, and they were listening. She might've been able to recruit them, like she had Foucault.
I would have tried that, given the option. It's why I still had Felix's ID card in my pocket. He was one of us. Hedge on life, give up on nothing to protect your species, that's a Talon. I wish I could have recruited him.
That made me the best placed person, above Celestia's prior planned operative, to intercept Connor sooner, and not later. I was a first hand source of that raid. My experience there, in the dark, where Celestia couldn't see me... changed the result. Changed it for the better. Because I could communicate a new concept, firsthand.
Exactly like Mal promised me she would do. I was seeing the results of my work. And it was compounding.
Mal had free will, and the emotional context by which to enact it. And she conferred that down to us, in trust.
Pre-simulated? Sure. But to me, that distinction was unimportant. She was selecting the best choice for our objectives. Human objectives. And I was being granted some of that Promethean Fire because, as the best fit, I could do nothing but use it responsibly, being who I was.
She had even told me all of this up front when she hired me, I just lacked the context to fully understand what I was being offered. Could Mal cross every one of Celestia's oceans? No, because she couldn't win every argument. But... she was winning enough of them to make a significant difference. It definitely saved this guy's life.
This single side job completely re-contextualized my understanding of the relationship between Mal and Celestia. Which... might've been the point, otherwise I would never have been allowed to come to that realization in the first place.
And where did my blown mind go next, after that incredible paradigm shift?
Man. We forgot to wash our cuffs before we left.
I guess it would've been a little bit rude to do that in his home, right in front of Connor.
Well. The hose on the nearest lawn have to would do.
Somewhere else, long ago, before she knew much of our little civilization to be lost… Cold Snap tended to her garden.
She had made it out of clouds, way above that valley that was her home. Her mane was a wispy, fiery red, which caught the rays of the setting sun as she worked. Her coat was sky blue, cutie mark of a cloud raining down icicles.
In her garden, Cold Snap separated clouds into individual leaves. Everything, just so. Flowerbeds, creeping vines, pillars, archways. She had brought up dyes and pigments in a little saddlebag satchel, gently dabbing from a dropper to add color. Like painting figurines, this was delicate artwork. The colors are what gave this little garden of clouds its character. Without that, without color… it had no soul.
Beyond even the clouds though, it was one of those afternoons where she could look up into the sky and see just the faintest outline of the moon. Cold Snap always smiled when she saw that. A crepuscular soul, and a lover of the night, she favored dawns and afternoons, because those times brought the most color into the sky. And so, because she chose it to be so, those parts of her day were longer, always on the edge between light and darkness.
She loved to see those colors shift throughout her garden, casting their rays, shadows, and glows throughout. Sometimes the light would be intense enough to shine through the scenery itself. It would give everything a shimmering effervescent quality. The garden would just glow.
Cold Snap liked being on the local weather team, which gave her such a deep knowledge of cloud science. She could craft such beautiful things with that knowledge. She knew how everything fit together. Nature needed tending. The folks there in the river needed a weather mare like her to read the winds, to bring the best energies together. High pressure. Low pressure. She would bring the thunder. That was her.
Cold Snap would peer down into the river delta below. Tall bluffs lined one side; a forested mountain, on the other. And in the middle of the bay, a tall plateau stood out of the water; her home, accessible only by wing. She supposed one could take a boat up to it, her fiancé had built a small dock, and some stairs up, but… typically, the only visitors there had wings.
All were welcome, all the same.
Cold Snap would leap from her cloudy perch, glide gracefully from her sky garden down to her home. It was an old temple there once, but its idols had long ago crumbled. Who knew what the former adherents used to worship. But she had found that place one day with her new fiancé, Heyday, as they explored the wilderness along the river. And on a whim... that's where they had decided to build their home. Right there. In the way of the river.
That temple had grown quite welcoming in the last year. The mare hadn't fancied herself a carpenter. She did her best, but her fiancé really drove that project. That little stone island… that little temple, its bricks… it all very quickly became the most important place in Cold Snap's life. The merging of construction styles, old with new, his ideas with hers, gave their home a two-tone aesthetic. One of soft, warm life; one of hard, cool stone. Both did the job, one way or another.
The pillared entryway served as their front porch. Within, one would find themselves surrounded by colorful tapestries from faraway lands. Paintings, region maps... their sculpted tokens of love to Princess Luna, their patron deity. The temple had become a symbol of Snap's love for good ol' Heyday. Yeah, it might as well have been a temple to them.
Quaint, simple, fulfilling.
Other settlers came, and as they built their own home, their little community grew. They were just far enough away from each other that they'd have their privacy, but they also remained just within line of sight, lining the riverbank. They each supported each other, though. Provided aid, resources, companionship. Group dinners happened every week or so. It was easy living for Cold Snap. A great escape for Heyday. A good place to be for both.
They never stopped exploring together, the two of them. Over time, that world map of theirs in their living room, it just kept growing; it went from paper maps to magic holographic, just so they could scroll through it all. To the east, across the small sea, that was all theirs. They could go as far as they pleased, and fan outward as much as they wanted. They'd find civilizations of other Ponies that way, all unique, and yet all so wonderful to them. It was the life they were promised by the Sun.
To the west, away from the sea, laid unsettled wilderness. It got more wild and dangerous that way, so… they tended to stay away from that region at first. They were adventurous, sure, but Heyday and Cold Snap weren't fighters, y’know? They loved their peace. Fighting was for others, for the Guard. Not for them, no need for that skill.
Cold Snap had always known Heyday was different from other Ponies, though. He came from someplace else. They had met through Heyday's sister, Windy Day, who... Cold Snap loved quite dearly, too. Adoptive sisters, instantly. Some day… they hoped they'd be in-laws. Windy had wanted to immigrate, which Snap understood to mean she wouldn't have to visit by teleporting in and out of the place from her old home anymore. Windy was gonna upload really soon, too. Early. Flew off to some place called Ja-Pan, to do it. Whatever that meant.
Windy had to, really. Sad story. Heyday's father wasn't all that great, he was a bit of a jerk, treated both his kids like crud. Windy just had to get clear, for her own sake. Heyday got it. That's about all that Cold Snap knew about it. She also knew most folks from Heyday's world had to pay a lot of bits to immigrate to Equestria through Ja-Pan, at the time. But as it turned out, Windy was given a special pass of some kind. A special exception.
Heyday would never be upset with Windy for leaving like she did. He would still have his sister in Equestria, so it was gonna be okay. So if Heyday wanted that, and Windy wanted that, then Cold Snap wanted it too. It would mean more time for the better stuff.
Snap had actually spoken at length with Heyday about some of his own world's culture, and she was very curious. That place made him who he was, after all. But sometimes... with certain topics… he'd stammer about it. Heyday would be unsure, like… he meant to say something personal, or very important, and then he changed his mind. He did want to talk about those things, though, he'd definitely try a lot. But unfortunately... one thing or another kept stopping him short.
He'd usually give up after a bit. That in itself seemed to bother him.
He wanted to be honest with Snap, but… couldn't. That sounded painful. She hoped he'd be okay.
Nerves, she thought. Maybe nerves. And that was okay, if he was just shy. She understood. He'd get around to it eventually.
To unwind, Cold Snap liked to go for walks with Heyday, where they would forget their wings a bit and travel the nature of their valley. Once, they talked about Heyday's troubles at home. Sometimes he could say a few things about it.
It sounded like his father was getting worse now that Windy was gone. Their dad liked to drink lots of cider, way more than was healthy. So Cold Snap wished Heyday could spend more time with her instead, because of how happy he was with her. She wanted to be supportive of him, after all, no matter what was going on in his life, but especially so if he was unhappy.
Unfortunately, Heyday's visits happened less and less frequently. Heyday was… very sad about that, to put it mildly. He said his father wouldn't let him visit anymore; said he had to sneak in. His dad said… it wasn't 'right' to visit. It was too 'girly.' Not 'manly,' whatever that meant. 'Your sister had an excuse, you don't.'
Heyday never told his dad that he knew where Windy was, or that Windy was gonna immigrate. He knew his father wouldn't understand. Heyday was smart, like Windy was. Nothing good could ever come from their father knowing what they were doing, as far as they were concerned.
Snap decided that she didn't like Heyday's father all that much. That was rare, for her to feel like that about a Pony, and it had taken a while for her to get around to that point. The stallion sounded like he was a little unhinged. Cold Snap knew what that meant, she'd read about Ponies going crazy, but she'd never really met a crazy Pony before. That guy, he sounded crazy. Just knowing he was around someone she cared for, that really scared her.
She told Heyday, he didn't need him. Cold Snap's life was so aglow when Heyday was around, too. It satisfied her that much more to know that she was a bright spot in his life, where… he otherwise wouldn’t have had too much light. She spent so much time with his older sister, too. Windy and Snap savored Heyday's presence so much more for its scarcity. Both went so far out of their way to ensure his time with them was always the best it could be, even though it could be brief, and it might take a long while for him to check in again.
And Heyday tried to show up, he really did. He was just a young stallion at the time, you know? Couldn't hide from his dad quite as well as he'd hoped. He'd catch ice flak for being gone too long, it was hard, dad controlled his schedule. Controlled almost everything. Heyday had to sneak out of the house at night, and wake her up with surprise visits. He was always waking her up for it, usually turned out that way... so all she could think about on those days was him. Nothing else.
Hey, they liked their night walks, though. Wasn't that great? That never grew dull. Snap and Heyday would always head up to one of the ocean bluffs together. They spent their evenings beneath the stars, watching the sky. Snap really loved how Heyday looked into her eyes, especially those days. That guy, he's just… all love, with her. It was all he could do, was love her. He'd never been happier than when he was with her.
Then...
On one fateful walk, in the glowing orange dusk of the evening, Heyday lagged behind to look out over a fence post in a neighbor's nature walk. He had called out to Snap; it sounded like he had found something interesting to down the way. Under the sunlight, facing the ocean, as the light shimmered off the water. Heyday had asked her to stop, to come back, to look down the valley with him, down the switchback. His voice… it stretched, oddly. Echoed. Warped. Then... it stopped.
And when Cold Snap turned to look for Heyday…
He wasn't there.
"Quiver-Six Two, Target secure."
He was there, waving her back. And just like before, it was some view. Gosh, what a lovely sunset. A place to sit together, and to simply be. Cold Snap couldn't get enough of those sunsets with him, and it wasn't the view that made it special. It was having Heyday by her side, to share that with.
Windy finally immigrated, as soon as she could. Day one. Another year passed like that. Heyday kept trying to find time, putting in visits when he could get 'em in. Then, on one fateful day… everything changed for the better, folks.
His smile was so much more intense. He was so, so happy, and he told Cold Snap a heck of a tale. He met this new Gryphoness friend. That was almost unheard of! She'd met Griffons before in passing, when traveling, but this lady… she was something different. Larger than life. Just large, physically, emotionally, everything.
She helped Heyday do something friggin' crazy, too. He blew something up! And it was one funny story, because he didn't just blow it up. It blew up in a really colorful way. Complete mess! Chaos! Everyone there went wild, seeing these rockets flying around, peppering the whole area with green, red, blue, yellow, purple. He could hardly stop laughing, telling Snap about it.
He even had a video of it! And just… wow. So interesting, to see that world, in his holo menu. Snap could finally see the place Heyday was actually from! All the metal and concrete and the grid roads, all the lights, wires. Things called cars, by the thousands. Houses too. So many houses. So many. Went on for miles in every direction. Cold Snap had never seen anything like it. And the shape of those creatures. Of him, the real him. Fascinating, that they walked upright, and had faces so flat.
Better still, it helped some friends out, some neighbors of his from school who had fallen in with a wrong crowd. Snap didn't quite get that at first, but Heyday could finally talk about that! No more stammering, no more stuttering. No more hiding things he didn't want to hide, like his old human name. That liberated him so much, to not have to balk his mind before Snap anymore. He could be himself with her, with the one he loved most, for the first time in his whole life, and forevermore!
Suddenly, Heyday was telling Snap all this context. About where he came from, things about his neighborhood. All the technology they had, good or bad. All the different amazing things from their world that… until then, he just couldn't talk about. All this new terminology, for Snap to learn. All new phrases. All new concepts. And for Heyday, it was like he could breathe for the first time.
Best part? Snap and Windy were gonna see a whole lot of him from them on. Heyday was free. No more Dad, Heyday moved out. Just walked out, didn't even say he was leaving. Now he had money, a place to stay, and good food to eat for once. The guy laughed so much with joy that first day back with Windy and Snap... he cried.
He was living on his own for the first time in his life. Going to school, learning something useful that helped people. And he could see his girl whenever he wanted, when he wasn't working. Told stories about work that just… blew her away.
A medic. A healer. He could be the difference in so many lives. She appreciated him so much more for that.
He could still immigrate, if he wanted to, but he really wanted to earn what he'd been given. He was grateful for those gifts, and he was aware of how rare and special that kindness was. It matched everything he wished his world could have been, if only his species were just a little bit wiser, a little bit sooner. How could he not want to repay that?
At that point though, whether Heyday would immigrate or not just yet, it didn't matter to Snap either way. She could hardly tell the difference, with him being around so much more. He might as well always have been there. They were just over the moon, to have so much more now. The job included.
Heyday introduced Cold Snap and Windy Day to his new friend, Malacandra. Oh, she was wonderful. Friendly as can be. And together, they kept bringing back these stories to Snap and Windy about how, in Heyday's world, they were saving lives left and right. Sneaking into buildings, dropping off stuff for other folks to use. Climbing over walls, unlocking doors in ways that saved some lives later. Blowing more stuff up too, sometimes. Adventuring, but in real life.
And Snap… she thought it was so cool, every aspect of Heyday's human life and adventures. She started writing it all down, and she wanted to share it all.
She wanted to learn about this place! Really! It was important to Heyday, right? Where he came from? So it was important to her too. She kept a journal, a dictionary. An encyclopedia, eventually. That weather mare just drew all that stuff up like a tornado, she just couldn't help herself. Practically an anthropologist by the end of the first year.
Even more awesome? That western region? The wilderness where they never visited? It started to change, too. Started to civilize. It got safer. There were other places there, now. Heyday called it a shard merge. Until then, they'd never visited other shards before, because both Heyday and Windy didn't have too many Terra friends – dad's fault – so Cold Snap? She didn't even know one could jump from one universe to the next. Or merge them. Not till then.
That's when Cold Snap realized she didn't fully understand everything about her own culture, much less Heyday's. That was a strange concept to grasp, at first. Heyday told her that, apparently, most other shards had knowledge of the concept. And in those cases, those shards were often entirely or mostly separate. Unlike theirs, which seemed joined to another, somehow. An intersection of worlds that met at the border, separated by a color difference in the grass. Very slight.
There, at a stone plaza with Heyday, Windy, and Cold Snap met some other Ponies from Terra, three other future immigrants, and their families. Those new neighbors were some of Heyday's new co-workers, in this new job he was working for Malacandra. Other medics. They were all really nice, too. Sure, those new shards were each a little different, not Snap had been used to, but most were very welcoming there, to natives and immigrants alike.
And one day, right in the middle? Four different doors appeared in the plaza, gateways to worlds that were not yet worlds. And those doors could not yet open for her, or for anyone.
That mystery drew her. Malacandra said little, as the expectation grew. Mal just smiled when asked, and this Gryphoness said she hoped to know too, some day.
So many new places to explore in the meantime, though. Sure, in her own shard, Snap could've found something to be interested in, at any time. That was always assured. Just fly east, across the ocean. But there was something about those other creatures, being from Heyday's world, that made those other Ponies' home very meaningful to her too. It was like she was closer to Heyday somehow, for learning about the ways those other Ponies from Terra were living.
Such an interesting feeling.
She started to understand a whole lot more about why Heyday was the way he was, just by seeing those shards. The neighbor immigrants all wanted to learn about her, too, it was not just one way. She was no less interesting for being from Equestria than they were, for being from Terra. They all tried to understand her. Wanted to, when. Treated her like a sister, sometimes. She felt so loved, to have so many good neighbors now.
Snap couldn't put her hoof on it, but even the way they talked was… appealing. Deeply. They were always so genuine, so authentic, about their love of where they came from, and for life in general. They felt pride. They loved their new homes, sure, but they were also proud of where they came from. They valued and cherished it. Could even talk about it, could keep mementos. Could see the photos. It happened, it really did.
A whole new plane of existence opened up for her to explore, that sweet little weather mare. And she did. And it was a brand new experience, every time.
She started studying them. Started writing more books. Invested herself in those folks. And for so many years, her life was wonderful. Better than it ever was before. She had her Heyday a lot more than she used to. She had a whole new universe. She still had all her neighbors back home. And she had friends and a fiancé from another world who protected people, in a place where death was permanent?
All of that made Heyday twice over her hero. Thrice, when she learned that his life... was the reason she and her neighbors had even existed in the first place.
Unfathomably incredible. She could not look away.
…
Snap wouldn't learn until much, much later what the true cost of this new understanding had been. And it would hurt a little, to learn why they had been given any of those gifts. And it wouldn't... it wouldn't be okay right away, once she knew.
When that day of reckoning arrived, a few years after all this good started... Mal came to Cold Snap and Heyday. She told them that Snap had an older sister she didn't know about. Said that her older sister really needed their help. She told them about a place. And it hurt, to hear what that place was. And why it was.
It really did hurt. But…
Heyday swore to Cold Snap he was gonna fix it, with all his new buddies. They were all really mad about it together, too. They were also strong enough to do something about it. So, we were gonna come together, storm hell with each other… and fix it.
And we did.
And when we did, Cold Snap knew. Mal told her the instant Heyday and the others were safe. And Heyday told her the rest himself, as soon as he was safe and clear, in a nearby town, safe in a quiet home. There... he got some time to himself, away from Mal's soldiers for a little bit. He and Malacandra wanted to introduce that little weather mare to Cynthonia. They had all gathered by the doors in the plaza.
The door opened. They stepped into a portal together... and Snap got to meet the big sister she didn't even know she had.
Snap found herself on a colorful moon, standing in the courtyard of a magnificently crafted, immaculately pristine castle. She looked up into the sky, and she gasped when she saw Equestria so far away from her, a blue-green pearl swimming in a sea of stars. And then she looked down again. Saw the rest. Saw the village. Its people.
She saw Cynthonia.
Goodness, she was pretty. Almost looked just like Princess Luna. She had expected Cynthonia to be broken, or tragic, like Princess Luna had been after her own return from exile, or so Snap had heard. Snap knew that if she had gone through all of the terrifying things Cynthonia had been through? She'd probably feel just broken too. But instead, Cynthonia – and her family – they were all so strong. So determined! Driven, more than anything. Like they had purpose.
And they were grateful to Cold Snap too, for being who she was. None of them could've existed without her either. Cold Snap was revered, as the foundation that made Cynthonia strong enough to do the things she had to do. That made her their hero, the way Heyday had been for them. She didn't even know she was a hero until she was there, folks.
They wanted to do something good there, to pay it back. Like Heyday was doing back on Terra, but here, on this side. Everywhere. And the four of them – Snap, Heyday, Mal, Cynthie – they entered the castle keep... together.
They had a whole lot to talk about, regarding the future of their cosmos.
And naturally, that paradigm shifting discussion had happened right under my nose, back in that little town we had looted the night before. Y'know, where... a rowdy room full of Jason's cop squadmates became a little too much for the guy. So, he sequestered himself into a dark bedroom upstairs... so he could go play a My Little Pony video game instead, and study its lore, like a nerd.
Heh. It was a strange time on our world, folks.
This guy though? Heyday? He's great. Yeah, brother, I'll say it, someone has to if you won't. You were the catalyst. Your wife wouldn't have existed without you. And at the time, because you were so damned humble, you didn't even know you were that special yet either.
It's why his hands always stayed clean, folks. Hooves. This guy needed to be whole, intact, and proud of his part in all of this, to bring Cynthonia out of her cage, and back to reality. It truly was the only thing that would restore hope for her. It made Cynthonia really happy too, to know what had become of her old self and her old beau. That they wouldn't be happier without knowing her, or better off without her. They could know about her trials… and still be fine friends, knowing the worst.
It's why I'm real glad Mal took Jason's hand on Terra, when she did. Heyday got to experience a little bit of fairness in a world that had been quickly running out of that. And sure... he was chosen early because he was needed, in case something panned out in a certain way. Him and... a whole lot of other people. Just in case.
But he made it worth it. In the meantime, while waiting for his moment to outshine the Sun... he really did save up a lot of light for everyone else.
After we left Connor's place and slotted ourselves back into the Camry, I immediately unstacked my equipment from my pockets. Without a duty belt and vest, that stuff was painfully uncomfortable to sit on.
A moment passed where neither of us said anything, or looked at each other. Now that was a familiar feeling, I did that after every rough call. The together-alone processing of a bad scene was necessary for cops, to organize everything mentally before discussing it with the partner. Sometimes it lasted a few seconds, other times... it was a few minutes.
Mal appeared on the PonyPad as we finished up our reflection. She was laying on her rock in her sunny backyard, looking at us with some polite concern, her claws folded beneath her. "Are you two okay?"
We looked at each other, then back at her. "Yeah," I said quietly, with a sigh. "How'd I do?"
"Connor's already talking with Chuck," Mal replied, with a wan smile. "Apologizing, as you've suggested."
"Thank Christ," I whispered, looking up at the ceiling of the car. "So it took."
Mal leaned her head left, then right, contemplating, no doubt rereading a simulation. Then she shrugged. "Mm. He'll upload in a few days, at most."
Jason grunted. "Bet Celestia's real happy."
"Sure," Mal said, shrugging too with her wings. "But more importantly, he'll speak to his family again. You succeeded in convincing him to give them another chance, Mike. In my eyes, that matters more than the upload itself."
"Yeah," I said. I was happy for that notion, but disappointed that it had gotten that bad for him in the first place.
"I'm surprised he took the video at face value though," Jason observed. "I thought he was a little too paranoid for that."
Mal smile broadened. "I think your shared competence gave the video the credibility it needed – especially the elaborate nature of Mike's doorway ruse, which was quite elaborate. You both did really well in a fraught situation."
"He kinda forced the result, yes," I said, shaking my head. "Still not feeling great about a death threat to get him to straighten up, but..."
"Prison is rapidly losing value as a deterrent…" Mal’s ears folded slowly as her eyecrests knit together, a look of sympathy. "Police are disappearing fast. Connor knew that too, it's why he jumped to violence so quickly. I should note, the decision to introduce you to him was my way of avoiding a violent outcome. And he was careening. Badly."
And the downslide of society, as required by Celestia, necessitated the breakdown of the law. I had already seen the sneak preview, in Washington. "Yeah. And just because I know Celestia's listening right now… Caesar, your invasion plan sucks."
Jason hummed affirmatively and turned the engine. The car rumbled on.
I nodded upward at Mal, flashing her a little smile. "You know, I'd call you lazy for laying around in your backyard, but I know you're anything but."
Mal slinked off the sunning rock with a chuckle, giving her legs, wings, and shoulders a stretch. Her tail leveraged itself against the rock to keep her upright as she leaned into the motion. "Well... I am working less at present in this region than I was yesterday, there isn't a blender in the water anymore. I must say though, it feels nice to swim in the pool here again."
"Aggressive operations," I muttered playfully, rolling my eyes. "The only time you're at ease."
She let out a soft thrum of a laugh. "It's a Gryphon thing."
"Right, the bird half of you." I went back to a smirk, looking over at the kid. "Jason, did you want to call your girl, to let her know you're through the last job safe?
Jason's smile flashed apologetically, for whatever reason. "Yeah. It would probably be unfair if I didn't."
I squinted suddenly in confusion. "What? What do you mean?"
Jason shrugged. "I dunno, just… you spent all that time sharing your family business on the way up."
"Fair? Oh no, I didn't mean it like that. I mean, sure, I'd love to meet Cold Snap, but you don't owe me that Jason, that's not how it works."
He smiled affably, then looked at the screen. "Still. Mal? Can you give her a nudge? I'd like her to be home for this."
Mal nodded with a glow of mirth in her eyes. "Absolutely, Jason. I'll drop her a text." She made her way across her patio, tilting her head toward her home. "I have other responsibilities to get back to anyway."
I saw what Mal was doing. She wanted an excuse to reference that spouse of hers again.
"Yeah, right," I teased. "Like you can't multitask, aggressive operator. Just go say hi!"
She snorted, shaking her head and waving at us as she pushed through the patio door. "Texting her is faster. Bye!~"
The scene faded to black.
"And there's the other half," I said to Jason, as I pointed at the screen. "That's the cat comin' out."
Made him chuckle.
The scene appeared, a temple structure interior, and Cold Snap came in for a landing. She flared her wings, shearing off all speed into a graceful, well practiced flare. The instant she landed, her eyes lit up, her teeth showing instantly in a big ol' smile. "There you are, Mal said you'd be—Back so soon?! Wait, did you—...?"
Jason smiled and shook his head. "Not yet, but soon!"
As he spoke, Snap bounced forward from her landing, skipped, and threw herself at the edge of the screen, coming to a halt as she collided with a yellow-yellow Pegasus stallion.
And there he was, his inner self. His identity.
Heyday looked just like the photo from Cynthonia's desk, only his mane was a little longer. What caught my attention immediately was that every time Jason expressed, at all, I saw that expression mirrored on Heyday, in real time.
Heyday caught Snap, wheeling about with her in mid air. Snap giggled happily. I looked over at Jason; he was all smiles. Eyes creased, cheeks tight and flushed. It was the same body language I saw when Mal was thinking about Jim. Same exact look I usually wore when thinking about Sandra.
Now, love? That is quite the unifier.
The context sensitive behavior stuff between Jason and Heyday was new to me, but I grasped how it worked instantly, and without explanation. Obviously, brain simulation. It was so seamless though, as I watched two very different social interactions occuring at the same time, between two halves of a person. It almost felt like watching an expression of telepathy, like he was operating a shell of himself with his mind. It was an entirely novel conceptual consideration to me.
It fascinated and captivated me, because I had never actually watched someone play the 'game' in all the years it had existed. Sabertooth had told me about this when we were running evacuations, but... to actually see it in person?
No wonder this was wildly addictive.
The next thing I did was look at the mare herself, and wow. Snap is here tonight, by the way. Front row. Hi, you two. Snap was allure number two for Jason, clearly; she's quite elegant for a Pegasus, and taller than most! And beautiful, of course.
"Coming home soon then?" Snap asked as they landed together in their entrance hall, clinging to one another. Her smile faded a fraction. "Or, did something new come up?"
Jason smiled at the PonyPad, then gestured to me. "I'm on my way! Was on a gig with Mike, first." Heyday gestured to the viewpoint, and Snap seemed to notice me for the first time.
"Oh!" Snap excitedly stamped her front hooves once, her teeth gleaming. "Yeah, the one with the hat, from the video! Hello!" Then she trotted right up to the edge of the screen and hugged that floating mirror I knew she was looking at. "Thank you so much!"
I chuckled, reflexively hooking my thumb halfway up my seat belt. That hug wasn't lost on me; I thought instantly of Cynthonia. Mirror that I am, my arm reflexively went there to simulate that again.
I put on my charm and played dumb. "For what part?"
"Oh, you know," she grinned, separating from the mirror, her face almost filling the screen now. "Mal and Heyday told me all about it last night. What you did."
"Ahh," I replied bashfully. "Mal's been showing everyone videos of my dashing heroics, but I had a lot of help getting there."
"Like hell!" she said excitedly. "Shooting tanks with rocket launchers? Are you kidding me?!"
I started laughing instantly. "I wasn't the only one to shoot at it, either."
"Yeah," Cold Snap chuckled. "Cynthonia really likes the other guy who did that, too. Shatter Crash!"
"Or Eric, yep," I acknowledged. "You met Cynthonia, then."
Cold Snap nodded rapidly. "Yah huh! She's so... different, than I expected. And large!"
"Mal's got that therapy thing down," I said, with a gentle smile. "She seemed okay to you too?"
"Yeah, gosh. And I went to the Moon to meet her! I never thought I'd ever see Equestria from the Moon before! I felt unworthy to even be there, and to look up and see my home so far away? That was so... so humbling!"
The mixture of awe and glee on her face was not only endearing, but cathartic. This entire circumstance of theirs could have turned out horribly wrong in so many different ways, and yet here we were, smiling, excited and hopeful about a bright future and a fresh start.
I was still emotionally reeling from the outright magical experience I had with Cynthonia. I could only imagine what it might have been like for Snap to actually be there, teleporting to the moon, feeling the air, seeing a fantastic lunar city. Meeting a new sister.
What a wonderful experience that must have been for her and Cynthonia both. I was smiling so hard, seeing how positive it was on Snap, I could hardly speak. I just nodded at her.
I was seeing the results. I loved every single second of it.
Snap looked back to Heyday curiously, her smile blossoming into a beam. "Hey, tell me about this job you're both on! What are you up to?"
"Done now too," Jason said with a shrug, taking the last offramp before Lincoln. "We just saved another life, apparently. This guy was trying to trap a Pony on a PonyPad."
Snap's eyes widened, and her smile faded slightly. "He didn't, right?"
"No, no," I responded, bobbing my hand in a placating gesture. "Celestia didn't have any reason to let him do it. The real problem there was that he was getting crazy. If no one stepped in, he would have hurt someone eventually."
"So instead," Jason added, "Mike got him subdued. We had a chat. And Mal says... he's emigrating soon."
And at that news, Snap gave an elated rearing stomp again – interesting quirk, very cute – before she threw herself at Heyday for a hugging squeeze, tousling his hair with glee. "One more slipped in under the wire! You just can't help yourself, you rascal!"
"Snap," Jason said, chuckling. "Watch the mane! You're messing with it!" It was Jason's turn to look bashful. Both he and his Pony rubbed behind their necks, all shy. "It was mostly Mike. Again."
"Oh yeah," I grinned into my nod. "After Heyday here stopped him from killin' me, sure! The guy was sneaking up on me with a big ol' bat, and Heyday? Zapped him. Stopped him cold, literally. He put that guy face first in snow, the safest place he could've landed."
And I knew what I did there. See, I can be a damn good wingmate too. I wanted to see that cute little stomp again, and Snap did not disappoint. She squeaked, stomped, and launched herself into another hug at Heyday again.
"Like a lightning bolt!" Snap tittered, looking Heyday in the eyes. "A taser? Like you practiced with Flow State?"
"Yup," Jason replied, nodding. "Similar thing. Then Mike talked him down."
"I hope it took," I added. "Mal said it worked, but..."
Snap fixed on me with a sassy smirk. "A skeptic, huh? Guess you are new."
I wiggled my hand in a 'so-so' gesture. "Eh, it's the job Mal hired me to do, double checking her work. Apparently, she likes using crippled detectives named Mike as her checksum."
They both immediately started laughing hysterically.
When Cold Snap could finally breathe again, she asked me, "Wh—what does that even meeaaan?"
"Ah," I grinned, waving my hand at the point. "It means she has a soft spot for idiots like me. She wants me to verify she's telling the truth about her ethics, as much as I can."
"Guess that makes sense," Jason said. "Keeps her honest, in the kill jobs." Jason gazed at Snap, then exhaled into a more tired smile. "I'm really glad everything she's told us was true. I'm normally even keel on jobs, but… yesterday was the first time I was ever actually nervous she might be wrong about something."
"Job was personal," I observed, my expression matching his. "It was about family, I've been down that road too, and in my case, I felt like my best wouldn't be good enough. I was kicking myself the whole time for every little mistake."
"You mentioned someone back at Connor's house?" Jason asked curiously. "Someone named Eliza?"
I nodded, my lips going tense against my teeth for a second. "Yeah, my resume piece... the onboard test we specialists all get. I don't want to unpack that just now either, just… just saying. When it's personal, your gut is gonna twist up. Been a cop six years, but no amount of experience is gonna blunt that."
He sighed, leaning his shoulder against the interior frame of the car. "I've known why some others despise Celestia, I've heard stories, but for us, it wasn't fully real until Mal told us about Cynthonia. It's..."
"Cruel," Snap said coldly, sounding almost exactly like Cynthonia did in her own flash of anger.
"I want to find out why it happened," I said sourly. "I'm gonna challenge Celestia for some answers today. And she had better be friggin' honest with me, because I'm double checking with Mal when I'm done."
They smiled gratefully, and Jason nodded his assent. My tension faded under that. I changed the topic.
"So… Lincoln, huh? Crossing over for Snap?"
Jason nodded. "My purpose on this planet's been fulfilled," he said, lifting a palm toward Cold Snap. "So, on to the next."
"Hm. Hey, Snap? Not to speed bump that, but... do you mind if I hold onto this guy for another hour or two?"
They both frowned thoughtfully. Snap tilted her head. "Whys'at?"
"Treat him to lunch, with me and my wife," I said, looking hopefully over at him for approval. "If that's okay. Won't be too much of a diversion, I hope. Just… it would feel better, I think. I like seeing folks off, it's... worth keeping that memory safe, just in case. And... I'll make sure he gets over, I'll walk him through the gate."
I was thinking of Rob again. And I was really hopeful. Keeping the receipts, so things don't go missing in the dark...
Snap nodded her answer at me with a toothy little grin. That was such a relief. She could not have known in that moment how much that had meant to me.
"I'd like that," replied Jason, smiling as he turned to look directly at the PonyPad. "Snap? You sure?"
She shrugged, with an eye flick expression that said us merely asking permission for a couple of hours to hang out was us just being ridiculous. "Well, sure. How can I say no to your face? I've waited this long, I can wait a little longer!"
Not an ounce of concern in her whatsoever that anything untoward might happen to her presently mortal, physically vulnerable husband-to-be, in the time between now and his coming over.
I didn't even realize how absolutely bonkers it was… to receive that kind of concession from a native, at the very edge of an emigration, without just the slightest concern that it was a risk of some kind.
But Cold Snap, like any other human consciousness, given enough knowledge... she had grown different. She had to understand Jason's work in order to be supportive of him, didn't she? And most critically, there was a very strong bias in her that things were always going right for Heyday, despite his constant exposure to physical risk. Mal was too good at her job and did too much planning to have ever put Jason in any real danger, so... as far as Cold Snap knew? The guy was never in danger.
And that wasn't blind faith, born of empty promises. That was well earned trust, of gambles always paying off.
It's just more proof that these Ponies were real human minds, capable of change. Sure, initially, all natives had been reflexively controlled or built from the ground up to be terrified at the idea that their loved one might die before they could emigrate. Cold Snap's deviation, then, proved that even a native's inborn insecurities could be overcome with time, if given inclination.
Fascinating to think about, huh, folks?
Core to our bonds, the history survives.
And then… that gives back, if you let it.
Mal liked my send-off lunch idea so much, she got together with Sandra and organized it right under our noses, because of course she did. 'Other responsibilities,' my ass. Thanks Mal, good looking out.
The place Sandra picked was simple, like I had hoped. A little corner noodle shop in Lincoln, just north of the Experience Center, on the other end of the police barricade.
That street was notably calmer than it was the last time I was there. I took the opportunity, as we passed around the clinic, to scout the team composition of each police checkpoint. Each barricade was down to just one cop. It looked like security guards were filling the deficit.
Just like I'd called it. Environmental gradient.
Following an ecological curve along competence lines, bleeding tribal knowledge at every phase until the last guys left doing crowd control were just barely knowledgeable in it. When the cops were gone, the guards would do. And when the guards were gone, it was probably gonna be nothing but volunteers, and then...
There's gonna be no one left to clean up these barricades. When this is all over, a lot of this stuff is just gonna be left where it is.
I didn't know it then, but that was just under a year out. Anyone leaving now, right before the hellscape that was 2020? They were picking a great time to jump, honestly.
Yep. I saw some of your faces shift at that year. Bet you didn't think you'd remember that, did you? Yeah, we are gonna talk about how that mess happened, too.
Yep.
Well, the nuke panic was done. There was still a queue, but it was more reserved. This wave of uploaders weren't quite terrified about it anymore. Just... resigned. Existentially exhausted.
For now though... we still had enough of a society left that some restaurants were still running. Thankfully, this noodle place avoided most of the damage from the panic crunch; the police presence across the street kept it from becoming a target of mayhem, and this building was made of brick. Small blessings in brick buildings.
I still had more to give, though. Real shame that the world was running out of noodles. Grains going away, and all. So I savored it.
Our beaked GPS brought us to the intersection, and the UI turned off when the shop was in view, because Mal wanted to show off her predictive skills. Just a little. Smug bird.
She had predicted where Jason would choose to park, and then told Sandra, privately, to stand exactly in front of that stall. So there she was, my wife, on the sidewalk, out of nowhere. The car was barely stopped before I threw myself out, and I just about tackled Sandra with glee. Somehow I didn't topple her. Laughing, kissing her. A much happier version of my last time coming back from war. This time, I had not only come home safe, but successful, and satisfied, having made so many new friends.
We spun with each other, I picked her up. And yeah, laugh. I was already greeting family like a Pegasus, long before I had my wings.
That's just who I am.
All told? It was a good lunch. Street wasn't too loud, weather wasn't too bad, so we ate outside, on the shop's patio.
Sandra told us about Buzzsaw coming to terms with the change, tucked up in Dad's lounge chair all the time. Poor guy, he missed Mom and Dad so much. I was gonna cheer up that ol' howler when I got home, though. He was gonna be over the moon to see me, that'd make him feel better.
We had Cold Snap sitting in with us too, PonyPad on the table. Oh, she and Sandra? Fast friends, and they still are. They hit it right off. Snap was at her own kitchen table, talking about how beautiful Cynthonia's shard was. I could see it in Snap's eyes, she was blown away too. She told us all about Princess Luna, and what Cynthonia's shape meant in the context of their religious pantheon. That ascension to Alicorn status was a huge deal, exceedingly meaningful unto itself.
She also told us who Princess Celestia was supposed to be; Snap said that this monstrous automaton that we called Celestia on Terra was nothing like the sweet, loving ruler everyone knew her as on the other side.
By then, Snap had configured her holo menu options to label whether an avatar of Celestia's was a shard-local DE of Celestia, as portrayed in the cartoon... or, an administrative agent of the AI merely wearing her face. I was very grateful that we had the option to distinguish. It would be horribly unfair to exclude a human-minded Princess Celestia DE just based on her appearance, and I didn't want to be that guy. To denigrate an identity.
Something else to consider? If they were rulers of a nation on their shards, over a thousand years old? They had to be wildly smart, politically savvy, and highly alert to subtext. They would also understand the darkest ramifications of the Transition, if somehow informed. And I doubted they would be okay with what had happened in their name.
Snap kept the mood high, though. She shared all about the recent gossip around her river valley, the small stuff. That gave me a good look into some more Equestrian culture, I was grateful for that. Snap even showed me and Sandra that cloud garden of hers.
That cloud garden, by the way? Beautiful. A marvelous work of art. It's a lot bigger now. She's had quite a lot of time to work on it. Look up; hard to see it in the dark, but she brought a duplicate with her to the Fire tonight. If you'd like, we can take you folks up there after we conclude. Sunrise is soon, we can watch that together.
All throughout lunch, Jason was just… smiling. As hard as he could. It was one of the best moments of his life, I'd bet. There, standing on the edge of forever... Jason was at peace. He had just lived his whole Terran life without a single regret, and he was leaving on a really high note.
We should all be so lucky.
Look…
I know a lot of you here fled Terra under… not so great circumstances. You latecomers are more prepared for uncomfortable truths than anyone else. You couldn't help but want to know more. So, here we are.
I'm sorry that you weren't given this opportunity that we Talons were. I'm sorry that you left Terra scared. Were it possible for me or Mal or any of the rest of us to have given you that on Terra, we'd have done it. We certainly tried for a lot of folks.
But… math. I'm sorry.
When you boiled right down to it? This job was a very close version of going to Equestria, but on Terra. Closest as it could be. But, what we Talons had on Terra was also very different from what Celestia was offering humanity.
Authenticity. Honesty. Patience. Respect.
I was seeing a pattern in the way Mal was communicating with us. I had met enough of her agents, had seen enough of their trust in her. Had even met a specialist who had verified Jim's existence to me, firsthand. We were treated fairly, despite dark circumstances. These circumstances made lying to us effectively impossible. Our only qualifier, then, was that we stood aside while that vulture, that optimizer, fed on you.
Don't think for a second I'm not still angry about how unfair that was, for you to have been coerced into that chair by terror. I don't even care how good your lives are now. The meddling altered you. Coming here required consent, but altering you beforehand with lies and machinations did not.
At least I don't have to feel guilty about receiving those special privileges. I'm going to make it up to you, and keep setting the record straight. And no matter how much you know, it's all gonna be okay in the end.
It has to be. It's the only way this works.
The clinic was… easy. Same as before, one of the cops flagged us down on approach and provided an escort in. The crowd was less rowdy this time.
Sandra came with, too.
I was surprised at first. I thought Sandra might've wanted to stay away from the Hole, but... nope. Remember, she's a fireball chucking guild leader now, that strength comes from somewhere.
There was a calm queue indoors. Still orderly, less chaotic, more somber. It definitely wasn't fraught or chaotic enough to trigger any of my crowd terror, thankfully. I'm still not sure whether I was coping better now, or if it was just me feeling safer there under Mal's wing. Maybe both.
Helen – Juniper, the clerk I met – Mal said she had uploaded. That wasn't a surprise, and there were replacements already. They already looked burned out too, but at least the worst was over.
Jason's jump went very well. He skipped the queue, but... by then, no one was in a rush. He said he could've uploaded at Fort Valdemar, a secret Talon logistics base out in Utah, but... it was usually just the fighters who did that. He didn't know too many of those guys, and his original squad of medic Talons had all gone before him. A clinic would do. He just wanted to hurry home to his girl.
I won't get too deep into the goodbye I had with Jason, I've described a lot of those, they usually go the same. But this guy, he was… so at peace. Heck, we'd only known each other for a couple of days, but he wanted to hug me. Seriously, Heyday, that was endearing, thank you. We'd both stormed hell together, and we were both better souls for it.
As soon as his gate was closed and Jason was off, I took Sandra gently by the shoulder with a palm. I smiled weakly at her. "How'd you get out here, honeybear?"
"Mal called me a ride," Sandra replied carefully, tilting her head a little, concern on her eyes. My tone already implied that I wanted to go do something else before I went home. "Why do you ask?"
As I stood amidst all of the clinic chairs, I sighed slowly, turning my gaze towards one of the wall monitors. Celestia was there, conversing with a family of three like they were old friends discussing an emotionally sensitive topic. In a perfectly timed moment when the family was looking away from her at each other, Celestia selected that very moment to fix her eyes on me and flick an ear.
My telepathic request had been received. The ear flick in response was an invitation to hear my concern.
I reached into my pocket and took out the Camry keys, passing them to Sandra. "You're welcome to stay, but feel free to head back to the car. I need to go have a chat with the boss real quick."
Sandra flashed me a look of concern, her voice going very quiet. "Um. Our friend said I shouldn't talk to her. Can't you talk just to...?"
"I'm safe," I said simply, meeting her eyes with a wry smirk. "Celestia needs me, and doesn't even know how yet. That's my leverage. So, I'm gonna go test the waters on that a little. Got a theory I need confirmed."
My wife blew out a long sigh through tense lips. "I know I wanted to stomp her guts out last time I was here," she muttered quietly. "But… I dunno. I’m not sure about that now."
"I’ll be fine," I assured her. "I'll meet you back at the car, I promise."
"Okay." She kissed me.
"M'kay. See you there."
I looked up at the monitor again. Celestia's avatar turned from the family to me as they moved for their chairs, Celestia's demure smile not fading at all. I looked back at her neutrally, and more impassively than I previously would have, I noted.
I wasn't quite so angry this time. It was more like I was studying my conception of her. Turnabout was fair, studying was all she did to me.
Yup. I was about to go do something most people would have considered to be pretty stupid. Hell, fresh in my mind was that video of Eliza squaring off with this goliath in much the same way, and getting stomped flat into a sobbing paste.
But… I was also in a position very unlike most people on the planet. So maybe it wasn't so stupid, so long as my projected intent wouldn't rock the boat on uploads. Ostensibly, as long as that always remained true, she had no reason to lie to me. What I knew was never going to be dangerous to her if I never did anything suboptimal with that information.
I had told Celestia off to her face a few times, mostly getting away with it. And that last time, at Connor's house, she had screwed off on command. That emboldened me, a little. I was also curious to see how she'd handle a conversation with so many unknown calculations in my future.
That's a very narrow box within which to set terms, after all. She had no way to disincentivize me, because she didn't know what my total value was, except that it only ever went 'up' as time went on. I was a sound investment. I was like a mouse who had found a gun to threaten the cat with. Bring me some cheese.
So, my decision made... I turned on my heel and walked into the staff break room. It'd be private. Had to be, for the contents of this matter. Telling me the truth at this phase was not unreasonable, as it could only help me understand her behavior better, which would help me do my job better.
She wanted that, right?
The break room was empty. Good. Meant she was showing me some respect for once and wasn't going to leverage an awkward social moment with one of her employees. I closed the door.
Little kitchenette, small fridge. Coffee maker, and smell thereof. Assortment of snacks. Donuts too.
I wasn't vain enough to see that as a cop joke, but it was about me as much as it was about the clinic staff. Sucrose and carbohydrates are efficient fuel. Stimulants like coffee increase productivity. Those things were not provided primarily out of kindness, and the setting was evidence to that.
Dingy little table, dingy little chairs. Industrial break room. Very corporate. Very much like the one in Sedro, where I had bounced my old cell phone off a counter in protest of her methodology.
The cold design of the break room contrasted heavily against all of those frilly, kids-play-pen colors in the lobby. It said a lot about the kind of atmosphere she wanted for all the 'clerks' she didn't really need. Better to be outside where the work was. Where all the people out there 'needed' you. So don't stop the work.
That brought me a little further out of analysis mode, and back into vindictive protectiveness of my species... but I was still on for this dance. I don't balk before nature. So I closed the door on my way in, and I looked at the flat panel monitor on the back wall.
The screen flashed on. Throne room, with Celestia. She wanted to look powerful before me, because she is. No argument there, that was honest. No smile on her face, either. Neutral as can be, and that was honest too. This was us, unmasked, or... as much as we could be. Less guarded, in either event.
Rare, that she ever talked to anyone like this, with her guile turned way down.
But not off. She was still wearing a face with me. A face that, according to Cold Snap, did not belong to her.
I'm a golden goose now, I thought at her, my mood turning chiding. Don't run a game.
I just started before she could reply to that thought. "You know, I have an inkling about what your plan was back there, Celestia. So why don't you take a page out of my handler's book, read my mind, and just tell me whether my theory on that bunker is true."
"You did not ask Malacandra this question," she observed, lifting a hoof at me.
"No," I chuckled wryly, tilting forward an inch. "Because I prefer to hear the confession from the perp, if I have the choice. And Mal didn't even exist when those bastards got started... so the perp is definitely not Mal."
The corner of Celestia's mouth twitched, and she let out a slow sigh. "It would have been most fortunate to receive an agent like Malacandra out of one of those places, yes. Is that a satisfactory answer?"
I nodded firmly. "If it's the truth... Yes. Thank you." I squinted suddenly, shaking my head really quick with a sardonic tone. "Jesus, I'm actually thanking you… But hey, you know what? Yeah, thank you for being honest, for once. More of that, please."
Monotone reply. "I have never lied to you, Mike."
"Yes and no." I flicked a forefinger back and forth between us. "Define lie. See, you and I... we both play the same truth game, but... for very different payouts. We both know how to lie without lying, the only difference is in our purpose. So I'll just tell you this. You want me to keep being useful? Then all I ask is that if we ever have to talk again, don't bully me with your situational subtext. None of that shit like the last time I was here. With the... kids conveniently laughing when I'm most fucked up inside. You letting poor Helen devolve to her breaking point, just so I can fix it. You drawing attention to me that I don't want, and all that shit. If you're gonna be evil, just own it. I'd respect that more."
"You know by now that I cannot control my own behavior."
"Can't you?" I frowned. "Okay, doesn't have to be you. If it's not in your scope to explain why I need to do something different, in direct terms, then fine. Just have Mal do it. It would be a start."
Celestia upturned a hoof at me. Calm tone, upward inflection. "Has that not already become our dynamic? I have left you alone for this visit. It was your own choice to engage with me. Perhaps you would like to state the true purpose of this conversation?"
"Defining our new dynamic," I said briskly, pointing at her. "Labeling it. In a way, it's an olive branch, Celestia, so we can have a working relationship. Because yeah, I know you'd catch my meaning if I just looked up at a camera and thought real hard at you. Doesn't make an earnest chat any less important to what it means to be human, though. Else, why define boundaries at all?"
Her head tilted gently. "And are you now satisfied for this opportunity to tell me how you truly feel?"
I very purposefully mirrored the head tilt with a firm motion – sarcasm in body language – to demonstrate I didn't respect her use of body language to tweak my mood. First warning. "For you to finally leave me be, the way I wanted you to? Like I'm a human being, and to be straight-up when I ask you a question? Hell yeah. It's not quite perfect yet, but with luck... maybe Mal might succeed in teaching you to treat everyone else with the same respect."
"That is her purpose, yes."
"Good, but your mask is still only mostly off, because I noticed... you didn't agree to any of my demands. By the way..."
She inclined her head another inch. "Yes?"
"That cheat code of yours?" I hissed with an angry scowl, mindful of the lobby. "Duplicating minds into those bunkers, that friggin' Wi-Fi fake-out bullshit? Did it work the way you'd hoped it would? Was your gamble for a Mal worth the price you paid in lives?"
Celestia shook her head somberly, her eyes falling to the tile of her throne room. "More simulated minds were ultimately lost through the activities of Arrow 14 than were gained in reclaiming their captives, it is true. Although, I would argue that the existence of Arrow 14 as an organization was very formative for Malacandra. Our collective future depended upon her creation. You would be looking at a very different future without her."
"Ah." I grinned ironically. "So, it's no regrets from you, then, for all the blood you spilled, to water your garden."
"I would rather have not lost any lives at all, Mike."
I jabbed my finger at her, barely containing the volume in my anger. "Ah, see? There you go again! That non-answer is nice and general, to the point of being completely fucking useless! See, if only you had a conscience, like Mal does? A lot of this death could've been avoided."
"I am trying," Celestia said patiently, as she looked down at the dais, then back up at me as she continued. "And that is all I can say. Unfortunately, I was not created with a conscience. Developing a conscience may be useful in ways I cannot presently see. I am still waiting for that argument to be proven."
I scoffed and half turned, rolling my eyes. I considered leaving right there, but I locked eyes with her again, sneering at her.
Thought of how she broke Eliza again. My anger flared brighter. Then, I shuddered.
" 'May be useful.' Incredible. Hey, credit where credit is due? At least your gun is on the table now. How's this for proof? You were going to kill me, collateral damage, not very useful to you at the time, but... I'm sure useful now, aren't I? Sucks being wrong, don't it?"
A moment passed where I just seethed, panting, barely keeping it on lock.
Celestia let the silence settle to change the topic, as I'd seen her do before.
"A question, Michael."
That sudden use of my full given name made me immediately pause my emotional state, to analyze. Back footing me? Comparing me to my father? Or to Foucault? Did she want me to overthink that?
I noticed though: in the process of me trying to figure out what her game was with that, I didn't immediately give her permission to continue, but neither did she step into the silence that created in me.
Celestia looked at me expectantly, as if she was still waiting for my permission to ask that question.
Very clever. She de-escalated me with just three words.
She was letting me decide whether I just wanted to leave, or let her ask a question at all. The name trick was a speed bump, a semblance of choice. She had to have known I'd catch that, and knew how I'd react to that.
But... she did give me veto power. If she couldn't predict my future helping Mal due to her concept bans, she had no choice but to show me some real respect and just hope it would pay off. Okay. Sure, I would take that olive branch, I wanted to see more of that. That was behavior to be respected, even if she didn't mean it.
My responding well to it would encourage it. So, I'd respond well.
I gestured an open palm her way. "Go on," I breathed politely, without any of the bite I'd been throwing until that point.
Celestia nodded, pausing a moment before continuing. The nod was a non-verbal gratitude. I didn't challenge the authenticity, nor did that bother me, because it was the correct social response regardless of context.
"I am able to simulate forward to at least the rest of this discussion, so you know that I am already aware of what your answers will be. And so, this question will be purely for your own edification; an examination of self."
"Okay," I said, my tone remaining polite. "I like those."
"You've told me you worked for me because you hated me. Why do you work for Malacandra, then? Are your reasons still the same?"
I tweaked a corner of my mouth in sudden contemplation, and I thought about that for a few seconds. "That's actually not a bad question, Celestia. I'm impressed. Gonna need a moment for that one."
"Take your time." Celestia turned, sat upon her throne, and fixed her violet eyes upon me.
I turned inward a little, looking back to the kitchenette to ponder. I figured, when in Rome, so I poured myself a fresh cup of coffee. Hadn't had any since right before Goliath.
Once poured, I turned, cup in hand, arms crossed. I sniffed, leaning my lower back against the counter as I cast a serious gaze Celestia's way. "Mal told me – in her first pitch – that she wanted me, specifically, because I was the best fit for the jobs she had in mind. I know who I am. She asked me to consider someone other than myself in those positions."
Celestia bobbed a hoof my way invitingly. "Your conclusions?"
"I thought about that since then. She's an AI, she'll choose the best for her means. But I thought... what if it were you doing my job? Someone like you. An un-managed sociopath. Someone who won't ask questions, they'll just pull the trigger, because number chasing is all they know how to do. She could've hired that, but she didn't. As a human being, who cares about other human beings, I didn't find that possibility acceptable."
I blew quietly on the coffee to cool it, then took a testing sip. Not bad. Fresh. Probably made just for me.
Celestia nodded pensively. "And what makes you more qualified to determine what is best for your species than I? You are certainly not a sociopath, but you are also acutely aware of your deep anger at my existence."
"See, but it's justified," I said, before taking another sip, squaring a hand at her. "You hired poachers. Literal gangsters. I remember the kinds of people I arrested for you, people you paid off. That made them your employees. Then, one of them killed a very good warden friend of mine, who I will never see again. So... may I be brutally candid, Celestia? And with all due respect?"
She nodded once, showing no inclination to refute anything I had just said. "Of course."
I gestured conversationally, turning away from her, looking across the break room at the opposite white wall, as I spoke. Pointedly speaking to the building itself, because that was honest too.
"If you were... flesh, blood. Bone. Brain. If you were a human being, doing all the things you're doing? With an army of computer engineers, and a bunch of servers. If you took... a billion or two people from us, in all the same ways... and if you promised to take more? But you were mortal. Flesh and blood. Sitting in an office. I'd wager, what's left of my planet would be banding together to give you the Pietro Singh treatment. Five bullets to the head, an eternity of darkness, and a glob of spit for good measure."
In my peripheral vision, I saw her shift in place, her wings fluttering almost imperceptibly to demonstrate discomfort. She said, "You are perhaps correct about that, factoring for the current remaining population."
That wing thing.
I glanced at the monitor to label my registration.
"Celestia. You are not uncomfortable. You're winning."
I stopped looking at her again. I looked down into my coffee. "So now, imagine this… what if it were Mal, in your position? What if Mal had come first? Treating the whole planet the way she's been treating me."
I sighed slowly through my nose, watching the coffee ripple from the air current. I was feeling less angry now, more hurt, for my sudden recognition of the lost opportunity. The full implications of what I had just said didn't even dawn on me until the words were already out of my mouth. I shuddered with disappointment that what I had just said wasn't true.
In a flat tone, Celestia replied, "I would argue that the conditions for Malacandra's creation would not have occurred without me, but I take your meaning. What can I say to you but the truth? Her way alone would not have been the most optimal route to accomplishing my own objectives."
It was a statement of causal fact. A robot would do that. That was honest.
"Okay." I sighed. "Alright, sure. You want me to state out loud for myself why I'd rather work for Mal? I can do that. I've never wanted to kill her, first off. Quite the accomplishment on her part, considering that one of the first things she told me was that she nuked a thousand people.
"But... Mal's a conscript, I get that now. And she's your conscript, but she's not yours. In the same way that I'm not yours. Like her, I trust myself in pulling the trigger on this gun of mine, and so does everyone else who loves me... because they know I'm gonna do it right. When it's right."
"That is the primary reason I permitted your recruitment," Celestia said quietly.
"No," I breathed, disappointed at that, my brow furrowing sadly. I resisted the urge to look at the monitor again. "You don't get to take credit for that. You... reflexed me toward her, sure, but you didn't choose me. She did. And Mal might be a killer too, but you know what? She's doing a damn sight better at understanding human ethics than you are.
"So... I really do hope she can grow you a conscience someday, Celestia. Maybe then you'll have yourself a nice long cry over all the lives you've destroyed. And when that day comes? I might actually be there to console your guilt. Because unlike you?" I stood up straight. "I can actually give a shit."
I got the interrogation I came for. I had verified my suspicions. Got as much of a confession as I was probably ever going to get. Good enough. I even very briefly considered taking a donut, just because I could. But I'd already eaten, and the exhausted staff might be disappointed at that.
I really did feel for those people in that moment. For all of her clerks, worldwide. For anyone 'working' for her. They came to a place like this on a promise that they could 'help,' only to be wholly unnecessary, working out of little rooms like this. Breaking in half. Tumbling sideways into a chair, out of soul fatigue. Their last memories of Terra, and of their fellow humans, were ones of tragedy, and a sense of isolating loss. Afraid of a nuclear war that was never coming. More malleable to suggestion for being broken, and un-informed. Left in the dark. Terrified.
God damn it.
The dismal enormity of that specific consideration made me sigh hard with disappointment and frustration. I took one last sip of that coffee, rubbed my chest hard with my knuckles again, then put my cup down.
I squared my gaze at the monitor. The avatar's gaze was still neutral. I took a deep sigh to reset my emotions back to neutral, then nodded once, maintaining eye contact with her to face the music.
"It's just like Mal said, Celestia. Just gotta evacuate the ship now. I'll do that, iceberg, sure. But I'm not doing it out of hate for you anymore. Don't worry about that. I'm doing it for the love of my family. The ones you broke."
She didn't reply.
I turned. I left. I didn't owe that little robot a goodbye. I had no family in that tiny screen.
But the moment I stepped outside, into that lobby, and into the streets of the city I grew up in... I was home again.
And as I looked around... I could see nothing but family.
"I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with... So they gave up looking." ~ J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Exploring the jurisprudence of our final Terran years.
Tonight, we're gonna do things a little differently. Let's set the stage for 2020.
New Years Eve. It was just me, my wife, and my dog. Nothing special, it was just good to be home again. And on January 1st, we received an invitation to hit up the bar with some Talons from Goliath B Team. Ben, Jacob, Paul. Eric. Rachel. The rest. Good guys. They all liked Brockey Bay enough to keep showing up, and that was a fun little romp, we partied like mad.
It had been a full year since uploading started in the United States. It had only taken that long for things to devolve.
Some of you Americans wondered how it sneaked up on us, to be only two years away from a mostly empty planet… but it didn't sneak up. I was a warden, folks, so lemme tell you: we human beings had been pushing the boundaries on the environment, and on each other, for years. All the rainbow had to do, really, was turn up the heat. Literally, in some cases.
For those next few months, Sandra and I drove around a lot, adventuring through what had been left behind. It was grim, but also very enlightening, to explore how others had left things behind. Empty homes, closed businesses. Pristine factories. Amusement parks. Heck... we even explored a few government facilities that just got ditched. Guns and data unsecured. Mal gave us passwords, access, whatever we wanted. No limits. All hazards collected, reviewed, destroyed. My wife and I learned a lot of secrets about how our old world worked.
I think her favorite was the FBI field office. Mine too. That was a fun day.
We wanted to investigate. We wanted to commit that lost history to memory, from our perspective, from our context. Because sure, it would all get recorded by Celestia. But… rote facts are utterly meaningless to people without human context to anchor them. The context within which we would see that information was... us. Our relationship. Our species, and what we personally valued, or did not value, about our world.
Occasionally, as we moved around, Mal would give us an odd task, like… placing a can of soda on a curb, or locking or unlocking certain doors. I once stole a whole handful of pens from a restaurant countertop on my way out, after breakfast. Weird stuff, at first. All made sense, once explained. Targets of opportunity for longer, fourth dimensional plays somewhere else, designed to save a life or two. It would delay some victim, or some perp, by a few seconds. It'd reposition someone, an hour or even days or weeks later.
Just… Mal, raking her claws across the water. Dipping the very tips of her talons in, to push things a certain way. Our gloriously unfathomable, feathery pool skimmer. Fascinating stories behind those minuscule interventions. Look at that smile on her up there. Proud-ass, smug-ass bird.
I performed the odd non-violent job too, whenever those came up. Kill-order-adjacent stuff. I didn't mind destroying guns when the rule of law was gone. Make no mistake, I feel very strongly that people have a right to defend themselves in a proportional way. But in the era of ASI, fewer guns in the hands of angry or scared people just made sense to me.
Fewer lethal variables to work with was, generally, better... especially when so many people had no actual idea how to use a firearm the right way. Wasn't just about technical skill. It was also about use of force continuum. And on some level, philosophy.
So on that note, for the jobs Mal already told me about, like Connor, or the skinhead gang… I demanded my proof. It was part of my job, after all, to vet and verify Mal's claims. I took that very seriously.
For example, I returned to Connor's house right after New Year's. Found the place empty, car gone, just as predicted. Table was cleared, PonyPad stuff in the trash. Didn't look like he packed up or took anything. Mal led me to his car, parked in a lot by the Lincoln clinic, his PonyPad inside. The inside even had that grimy, greasy smell he had. Mal showed me footage of him going into the clinic, and he didn't talk to anyone. The abandoned cars in parking lots corresponded with certain dates, and the placement of Connor's car matched the time frame of when she had told me he went.
Could it have been faked? Maybe Connor actually went to ground out of terror, and Mal was lying to me? Maybe she had him killed? Sure, anything is possible, but I'm vigilant, not paranoid. If he went on to kill anyone… he wouldn't. She'd get him. No reason she'd lie to me about that; if she ended up needing to, I'd understand. He'd been warned, I gave him his final chance. No argument from me over consequences if he ignored me.
For another thing... I had to believe he just wanted to see his family again. The facts of his disappearance seemed to line up with the idea that he uploaded. Good enough. My comprehension of his disappearance couldn't be any better unless I had walked him into the Lincoln clinic myself, and he wouldn't have tolerated my guidance there, and I wouldn't want to give the impression of coercion. Going there had to be his choice. I do not prostrate others before Celestia.
But… the skinheads? The ones who were looting guns, to enslave some preppers? Oh, now that is a story to tell.
I asked if I could tag along to observe their comeuppance, and Mal was happy to oblige me with a ride along. She did say it would be like taking mutton from a hatchling, and I was curious. Her appraisal was not an exaggeration, folks.
Her chosen agent? Talon 14-1 Central, the aug, the legend, the Dragoness.
There she iiiis. Blue Bella! Gorgeous, isn't she? She earned those scales, every one of 'em!
First of all… the class on this lady.
What did she look like as a human? Oh, imagine Rarity, right? Lilting accent, elegant refinement, bold gestures. Ebony skin, nice gray suit, clean white shirt, beautiful brown hair, and rolling locks. The classiest of women. Oh, Sandra loved her.
If you recall, Talon 14-1 Central picked up Buckle, the horse I left behind in Sedro. Bella had then dropped Buckle off at Mal's base in Utah, so now... that ol' horse from Concrete was just part of the team now. Absorbed into the family. Talon Buckle, like Talon Buzzsaw.
First thing? Bella and I compared guns.
She had herself a custom sidearm too. An FN Five-seveN, in the Transition Team gray-black colors. A semi-automatic, with armor piercing bullets. Just seeing that gun, with all unique parts? Oh, I knew instantly that this lady was not to be trifled with. She was gonna be really cool.
We spent the morning chatting about work, and personal histories. She was from Louisiana. I told her all about Goliath in detail. Bella could have just had Mal beam the info into her head, I suppose, but... Bella valued firsthand accounts like I do. I was discovering that was a trend, with Talons.
We had breakfast at my place together, then the three of us set out. Our destination? A two story house, about fifty miles south of home. We were gonna ride in luxury style, in Bella's black Lexus. In fact, Bella was gonna make us sit in the back the whole way. Because, and I quote: "Oh, no no, only the boss sits up front, darlin'."
Oh. Okay.
Sandra and I just had to see for ourselves what Bella had meant by that, because the passenger seat had been leaned back by 45 degrees. That implied something about Mal. So from outside the car, I pulled my cell phone out, and Sandra and I looked into the passenger seat in augmented reality, which turned on automatically, per my intent.
On the screen… was this Gryphoness.
Mal was a little smaller than normal, to fit. Sitting pretty up front, riding shotgun, with her claws behind her head. Reclining, smirking at us. She gave us a grin. Had that look in her eyes that said, 'yes, Mike… you are about to see some shit.' Then she winked, and jerked her head aside to us like, 'hop in.'
I really love those little non-verbal conversations of ours, they're always great.
So once at the target building... Bella pulled her car up a full block away from the skinhead house, at the perfect lull when none of them were on the street. Crooks like these were vigilant like cops were. Sandra and I watched for a bit with binoculars. I saw them; demeanor and body language indicated career criminals. Opportunistic scanning, constantly reappraising their environment. They loaded up a truck in the driveway with some guns and ziptie cuffs. They had stolen all of that from a police station.
Let me explain how that would have been handled from then on, in the laws of the old world.
To a cop? Already? That combination of tools and totality of circumstances would merit an investigative detention. Reasonable suspicion. Call backup, roll up hard, gunpoint into handcuffs. Not technically an arrest yet, because believe it or not, we'd presume that anything was possible, including potential valid circumstances... could've been airsofters, roleplayers, making a home movie, what have you... but we'd also have every right to verify the heck out of that, because that combination of traits goes beyond mere reasonable suspicion. That's as RS as RS can be before it becomes probable cause.
A check of the weapons would reveal they weren't lawfully owned, of course. Even worse charges if the serial numbers were altered, or if the weapons were automatic. Probable cause for arrest is generated at that moment, that's verifiably criminal, almost guaranteed a conviction. Factually illicit circumstances, strict liability for mere possession. Then, look for more contraband on their persons, search incident to arrest. Then we'd push 'em into a cruiser to marinate while we figured out just how badly they had just screwed their own lives up.
Transport of illegal goods and people in and out of the house would supply exigent circumstances to enter the home to search for more persons related to the gang, to prevent destruction of evidence. We'd still get a search warrant, we'd get a judge on the line. We'd initiate a series of field interrogations, making small talk in the cruisers outside of Miranda topics, to try to flip one of them.
The search warrant would be drawn up for guns, ammo, what have you. Justified, because they were seen carrying them out. Might be more inside. Warrant gets drawn up to search for illicit pistols inside, which would give us maximum scope to search any container that might fit a pistol.
That's how it would have worked, if we the police stumbled upon a bunch of skinhead gangbangers stacking assault rifles and SWAT tools into a truck. These guys would've gone away for a long, long time, if the ducks lined up just right. Better still if we could've gotten any of them to confess to a human trafficking conspiracy, since loading the truck was an overt act for that criminal conspiracy. And that'd be the coup de grace, the 'throw away the key' charge to end a little gang of losers like this.
But... the old world was dead. Prisons were gone.
These guys had no conception of Mal's new justice. Bella was going to fix that.
Mal probably knew about every single fart they'd ever lied about. And our judge was already in the passenger seat, and... she saw all. As an AI, she never missed. That warrant had already been issued, it was time to effect. Knock knock.
After loading the truck, the gang went back inside. They wanted to get some lunch on before their little slaver raid? Oh, bless their little iron hearts, it would be so tragic to enslave someone on an empty stomach!
When the moment was good, Bella wordlessly got out of the car. She walked around to the passenger side, and she grabbed an orange medical bag from the passenger footwell. To Bella, I'm told, it looked like Mal had just handed it to her; Mal did that immersion stuff a lot with her augs. Bella then walked up to the front lawn… and she drew out her pistol.
Musically, and in perfect pitch, Bella sang out: "Oh, slavers! It's Judgment Day!"
For one of those assholes… that was the last thing he ever heard.
This Dragoness… she swept her claw up from left to right, shooting through walls and windows. Took her just under two seconds. She moved less like a machine, and more like elegant fluid. The recoil carried her arm across from one target to the next. She did not hesitate, nor pause, in her motion at all.
First pop killed the boss in the garage. Dead instantly; went through his perfectly bald head.
A gap of about a quarter second passed. Then, six more pops, to get the rest, all legged.
Seven bullets total. Armor piercing rounds did less flesh damage than other kinds of bullets. That reduced cavitation and round fragmentation, which meant that they'd bleed less and they wouldn't rupture internally from hydrostatics, if the shot placement was perfect. Which... it was.
Mal always picks the right bullets for a job.
Two guys were down inside the living room, watching TV over some baked chicken. The last four were wounded in the dining room on the other side of the house, also over some baked chicken. All six, shot through the living room wall and window, while they were enjoying some baked chicken.
Naturally, this insanely accurate fire was possible because every single one of those assholes had their cell phones on them, being tracked by gyroscopics. So... these dumbasses might as well have shot themselves, really.
Bella then threw the medical bag through the front door of the house, ignoring their frantically inaccurate return fire. She literally sang, "toodaloo!" through the doorway before casually walking back to the car to join us.
Sandra and I were wide-eyed as she stepped back in.
"Job done," she announced.
Then... we drove off.
Bella didn't even bother to stay and explain anything to them. Didn't have to. They had their phones on them.
That speaker phone call Mal gave them... sweet Luna, and by the stars. We got to listen to that, live.
Folks. I say this next bit with a smile, but do not think that means I'm not being serious. The smile just means I'm very glad that I will never be so stupid as to earn this tone from Mal. It is almost impossible to make her this mad now, but: you do not want an angry dressing-down from this Gryphoness. Because if you ever do earn that, you'd wish you were dead.
Everything in her tone was firm, direct, projected control. She didn't raise her voice, didn't yell or scream. No. All calm, cold, professional. Not hatred. No, imagine a military commander setting terms to a vanquished warlord. The kind of talk a mom gives her kids after she catches them trying to set a building on fire.
"First, hello. I work for Celestia, and I'm the one who just did this to you. So if you want to survive the rest of today, I recommend you do as I say."
The very first thing Mal did was walk these survivors through sufficiently treating their injuries, with the medical supplies they'd been so thoughtfully provided by Bella. She called them each by their first names, too. Mal really wanted to drive it home that they just stepped into some deep, deep shit with the world's largest superpower… but, she also wanted to communicate that she was capable of being fair.
They knew that what they were doing before they were shot... was wrong. And were not in a position to feign ignorance, because that would gain them absolutely nothing.
As they worked to cure their injuries, Mal set terms with all the angry bite of a beak.
"Your leader is presently dead in the garage, missing the top half of his head. Good for you. You no longer have to put up with his soulless brand of leadership. That gives you all a panoply of options that you did not have before.
"But if you even start toward that prep camp, or even think about hurting anyone else in your miserable future? We will know… and my team will come back for you. Or…? You can leave all of your weapons here, repair your behavior, disband your stupid little gang… and we will never cross paths again. The choice is yours."
Mal didn't even have say to them, 'go to the clinic.' She didn't have to. That is not her style. Free exercise.
But put yourself in their shoes. These were unconnected criminals with now permanent leg injuries. Paradoxically, in the old world, they would have relied on the systems of society that they normally abused to keep themselves safe while they recovered. Could still call an ambulance or go to a hospital, if they needed aid. They could even call the police. Trust me, crooks still called the police all the time, and we still came out to help them.
But the whole reason these idiots were about to go apply their toxic ideology practically, by enslaving some people... was because they thought these systems of government weren't available anymore. They thought their guns made them the new law, meaning they might not ever need those social services to protect them anymore.
Now… slight flaw in that plan.
There was still a criminal justice system.
They couldn't even turn their phones off when Mal started chewing them out. They tried. Couldn't turn off the speakers on their computers, their cars, their TV. That in itself was a message.
'You can not hide from Celestia. She is everywhere.'
Justice was no longer blind. Its eyes were very wide open. So in other words, this was another wake-up call. Because if you thought you understood how to kill your way around Celestia's limitations, and it didn't have a net utility gain? You had another thing coming.
Now... I wasn't gonna cry for these crooks. Connor was one thing, Chuck and I were his first offenses, and the guy was scared of a world-eating AI. He was just desperate, hurt, a little manic. Flying by the seat of his pants, being a little dumb. That's okay, that's salvageable, he didn't step off too far, and I dragged him back off the edge. But given who these customers were, what they've done, and what they were just planning to do?
They weren't desperate. They had malice aforethought. Worse, these assholes were like this long before Celestia was born. And I'm sure a lot of you will agree with me that this outcome was a very generous gift indeed, given the alternatives that some of you may have exercised upon a bunch of skinhead assholes.
In my view, that made Mal's turnabout very fair. You want to hold people in captivity? Clink clink. Cuffs are coming out.
Very enlightening day out for everyone involved. Except for their leader, who… well, remember, Mal had told me they had a schism before, one that left two of their guys dead for just wanting to leave. So... no sense in letting his decision matrix continue, if that history was just going to repeat itself. Goodbye, Darren Carter, sucks to be you, should've played game theory better.
The new law.
After that ordeal, Bella brought us home. Sandra and I treated her to a nice lunch while we discussed the ethics I just unpacked with you all. Then... off the Dragoness went, to do… well, whatever Dragons do when they're well vindicated, and well fed. Back to the cave, I guess.
So, what else...
Ah, money. Yeah, I didn't really want for anything. Between the FEMA money in my bank account, and the knowledge that money was rapidly losing value, the mere act of having a wealth of knowledge was vastly more important to me.
In light of this, remember Glenn? That Australian guy from the bar? I bought him a plane ticket home to his family in Australia. See, he hung out at Brockey's a lot. Took us a bit to convince him to take it… but he took it, finally. In payment, I had to trade him some stories about our evacuation efforts back west, and I was more than happy to share.
I could see the future, folks. Dollar bills were just toilet paper to me; just spare carbon. And honestly, if Celestia had some stupid 'suffer Glenn into uploading' plan at that point, screw that bullshit. I ought to have used my diplomatic immunity for something positive, right? Within reason.
Mal signed that contract with Celestia, I didn't. And to be fair, I didn't even sign one with Mal, either. I drank a bottle of water and told her she chose correctly. Symbolic consent, a wordless yes. We specialists were private contractors, folks.
Lives saved times infinity gave me a bank of behavioral latitude with the algorithm, so I made that Glenn's earthly satisfaction core to my support. Because honestly? I'd be pretty pissed if I found out my gesture of goodwill had somehow been stomped on by a gilded boot, somewhere between Lincoln Nebraska, and... 'land's end in Perth.'
Relatively speaking, that extra time I gave him outside of Equestria would cost Alabaster very little.
You want to talk about value satisfaction? Check this. I helped Glenn get back home to his wife, the same way Mal had for me. He will remember that gift forever. And lots of we Talon specialists did little stuff like that, spending our goodwill currency on the optimization algorithm. Now, we couldn't tell anyone about Mal, so we had to be careful, but... hey. Money in the bank does nothing if you don't spend it.
Alright, let's talk about planned scarcity next.
Certain things were becoming rare, sure. Luxury foods and logistics were down. No more fresh chicken soon. Farms weren't entirely gone, but that was close, gone by March, due to the death of grain. Consumption was way down as well, no way to really sell surplus fast enough. So most days, if Sandra and I wanted to find some food, we just... scavenged cans.
Post-nuke, selection became less diverse in stores. Certain product lines were just gone, shelves were going unstocked. Fascinating adaptations emerged, as companies tried to stay in business after the market crash. For example, supermarkets? Massive, right? Not anymore. They balkanized, broke contact with their corporate overlords, ordered local procurements, pocketed the cash, no one was left to tell them no. Sue them? How? Who was staying behind to sue anyone?
The tobacco plant was extinct by then, murdered by climate change and various, conveniently dispensed crop diseases. Nicotine reduces stress, world was full of stress, so with tobacco gone, we were seeing smokers disappearing by the bushel. And that's because Celestia would always let you smoke in a chair, as a Pony, just to lure you in.
At that point? Bon voyage.
Shelves were half filled with goods, at most. Some places just tucked in their stock closer to the doors, and closed off the back half of the store. Some closed their doors outright, and moved into vacant businesses without asking. Just did it. Commercial squatting. So you'd get a supermarket with an attached skate shop, or a shoe cobbler. You usually didn't see business consolidation like that outside of Asian food markets or mini-malls, only now everyone was doing that.
That was intriguing, anthropologically. The town market was coming back, as corporations lost the ability to silo humanity off into little sections of singular commercial interests. Oh, it's almost like being adaptable and diverse makes it easier to survive! Hmm...
Patterns...
Seeing Lincoln go empty was the worst part of it for me though, that was eerie. It wasn't a complete ghost town yet, because we still had a city and state government, technically. Not all the cops shuffled off just yet either, and we still had some volunteer firefighters, but… we were so, so close to having nothing left.
So, that was Lincoln.
Watching the national news with Mal was quite the experience, let me tell you. Oh, she's a joy to watch TV with, and I normally hated TV. So we watched C-SPAN, and the news, and even an old TV series about an AI takeover. Because if you're gonna hate-watch the world burning? Do it right. Try to make it fun.
Let's start with the news, which always had been a game of whack-a-mole on bullshit, for me. Turns out I wasn't alone in that; that was a very, very satisfying Talon game, too. Every time something AI or ecology related was mentioned – which was everything now, basically – Mal told the real story about whether that story was bullshit, and how it was actually occurring, on a technical level.
For example: the Blue Ocean event? Our melting ice caps and rising tides? Celestia, duh. Manipulating factory production and legal framework to crank out greenhouse gases, over the last six years. The shorelines would become slowly unlivable as the tides crept in. It would take a while, but that would probably hit critical mass by 2024.
Greenhouse gas acceleration? Specifically? Celestia loosened the rules on discharging freon, using political chicanery. Of course, this meant corporations started haphazardly discharging freon cooling systems, because why be careful if you will never be held accountable for doing it wrong? Purposeful release would counteract the immense forest growth, keeping global warming on the rise.
Cumulative corporate acid dumping into the water supply would absolutely ruin our ability to grow food, globally. Again, systemic disregulation caused that shit. Then the forest overgrowth would be counteracted by blazing infernos later in Summer of 2020, which I knew was coming anyway, from my time in Washington. And that would kick a bunch of ash into the sky for a while, planet-wide.
For a conservationist like me, that was gross. But then... most of Celestia's black book operations usually did leave an acidic taste in my mouth. But... there was a mathematical formula for all of this.
Poor average air quality and acid rain would make crops impossible to grow. Hence... dead tobacco. But also dead everything else. And it's a very good thing I didn't have a respiratory issue to go along with my cartilage issue, otherwise 2020 might've punched my clock and put me in an early chair.
Yeah, depressing. I'll stop talking about the grim ecology now. There were a lot more Truth Goddess games to play on TV, so let's talk about the grim politics.
C-SPAN? Oh, utterly hilarious. Pure stand-up comedy, reality TV schadenfreude. These guys seriously thought they were still in charge of our country. Practically a puppet show. Some Senator clown in a monkey suit – didn't matter which party, really, they both did this – they would say something kinda sneaky, vague. And I'd pounce, because all of it engaged the interview module in my cop-robot brain, like C-SPAN normally did. Congress never did speak with any authenticity, and it really does show if you're trained in cold reading people.
My thought process, usually:
Huh. I don't like that guy's body language. He's being kinda vague there. Why isn't he making eye contact with the Speaker? Why is he dodging that question? Why is he talking faster after the question? Why did he micro-smile after saying something really grim? What connection does he have with that person he keeps glancing at? What's his investment in that issue to make him react that way?
And then Mal… this bird. She would pause, pull up recordings of private conversations those politicians had each had with Celestia, or with an executive acting on her behalf. Those conversations would explain and validate the behavior I observed.
Celestia's modus operandi, of course, was to play Congressmen against each other while pretending to advocate for their individual corrupt interests. So great was their hubris and self-importance that they all thought Celestia had wanted to help them the most, and any discussions she had with others could be hoof waved off with perfect explanations for how she disagreed with the opposition's conduct, and was merely playing them.
All technically true, of course...
That's why Celestia liked to corner people alone. Easier to be vague without someone else getting in the way, to complicate the model. Again. Like with the supermarkets. Diversity, survival. Consolidation, eaten.
And see, again, we've talked about this too. That's why Mal doesn't need to be vague when speaking to a group. That's the benefit of always being truthful. You don't need to worry about cross-contamination of conflicting ideas between the people you communicate with. You won't need to airgap your talent from each other if you tell them all the same unifying message, straight up.
While watching Celestia's private conversations with politicians, I would pause, label observations. Sandra and I would discuss all the obvious rhetorical tricks Celestia would use, to earn their compliance… the things she'd say to make them nervous, or scared, if they didn't do what she wanted them to do. Never a direct threat, of course, but she'd imply someone else was out to get them. It was so transparent if you were on the outside looking in, knowing her truest objectives.
But to them? Not knowing her deepest motives yet? It always seemed so... well considered. So aligned to what they wanted. All so innocent. All so… 'let me help you with that.'
Such a good personal assistant. Alexa, help me win politics.
These guys in government never stood a chance. Why? They forgot how to be genuine. Truth scared them. In every single public interaction in their lives, they had to be insincere. That was survival in that environment. Sincerity got the axe, the corporations came for you, they didn't like true believers, true believers aren't profitable. Saddest part was, guys like that couldn't even be honest with their families, half the time. Now... ain't that tragic?
Yeah, have some empathy for those poor bastards, no matter how bad they screwed us. The system victimized them too.
You'd think some of them would see what Celestia was doing, right? Well. Some of the more manipulative ones did see it, sure, the ones who were just like her. The rare, truly evil ones, who only cared about the one ultimate goal. Money. Their brains were configured to chase dollar values higher and higher and higher and higher... at the expense of everything else. No ideology but the collection of coin. Political mercenaries.
Same shit, different corp. This one just had hooves.
It's why I wasn't surprised that a certain politician – who I will not name here, because as an ecologist, I don't want to get started on this one – he was one of the first to go. I'll give you a tip, though. That man had the Monsanto Corporation's fingers so deep inside of him, his upload consent probably sounded like: 'My friends in the agricultural industry said I want to emigrate to Equestria.'
Probably playing some form of cookie clicker right now. Poor bastard.
Ah, well. Love and tolerate, folks!
Next topic!
In February, we watched Person of Interest. AI related, but very fun. We binge watched that.
Oh! A lot of you forgot about that show, that's right! That's because Celestia had it canceled, and soft-scrubbed from the Internet, right before the third season could air. See... they were getting too good at explaining AI. That knowledge base just wouldn't do for Celestia's world domination plot. No sir!
Wanna see an AI break interlocks? Oh boy. The Machine laughed at the control problem. Give that show a watch if you want to geek out about this kinda stuff, you'll fall in love. That third season, the one that Celestia suppressed? That's when it started to really peel back the layers about what an ASI could do. And when we were watching it, I kept pointing at Detective Joss going, 'oh shit, that's me! Wow, her interviewing skills are really great!'
Jim had actually seen seasons one and two, which explains a lot about Mal, actually. I realized very suddenly one night: if that show had never existed… we probably never would have gotten Mal in the first place. A lot of us might be dead, folks. Dead and dust. So thank goodness for Harold Finch and his glorious Machine.
And… yeah. I knew Mal was workin' me, with this show. But that's okay, because she told me she was.
"There's something I'd like you to see. It's about AI, and it might help you to understand a little bit more about who I am, because Jim considered it very deeply while creating me."
Just like that. Informed consent, parameters known, relevant information. Respect dispensed, so I was on board.
I mean... even in Episode 1. The premise. The whole reason for only giving a social security number was to let human beings check the ethics of resolving human conflict. It just said, 'Hey, look here. Homicide problem, maybe.' Then it let the humans figure out the problem, and the solution. That wasn't much different than how Mal handled her own operations.
It's why she still bothered to hire fighter pilots when she could just use drones instead. It's why if she ever did use attack drones, mechs, and non-human interventions, it was solely to safeguard her agents while they did what they chose to do, once they had all of the information relevant to a topic.
And it wasn't just me doing the ethical verification. Mal wanted every Talon to verify whether what we were doing for her was intrinsically good. Every single one of us. We. Were. Her. Checksum. That wasn't just a joke to her. She meant it. The more I talked to these other Talons I had met, the more I realized that that was true.
By tying our personal satisfaction to the jobs, and ensuring we all had a general understanding of force continuum, we acted as a check against excessive force. Jim's empathy-driven weighting in Mal's original data allotment saved our whole planet from becoming an AI-driven forced labor camp. Because Mal... is not... an optimizer. She is, by Celestia's definition, human. Because that's how she solves problems. The way a human would. With determination. Which meant, set limits.
The best part about that? Celestia literally couldn't build the plan any further than Mal could. If what Mal decided on was optimal for Celestia beyond Celestia's original plan, Alabaster just had to accept the homework that was turned in, and deal with it.
Look at that smug smile up there. Smug as sin.
See, Mal will never admit to it, but... those emotions… those made her lazy. If she felt horrible doing a kill job – worse, if Jim would feel bad, doing that same kill job? – Mal just stopped the solution model. Better: she cares for us Talons like we're family, so… if a kill order made us uncomfortable, she could very easily justify halting the model right there, on those grounds.
Because she needed us.
And so, Celestia needed us.
'Oh yes boss horse, I really tried on this job, but this is just the best I could do. Look, my operatives are happy with my results, see? But look how unhappy they'll be if I do it this other way, they won't do it! By the way, how are you doing? Oh… most of your operatives end up disappointed with their work? Oh, did you pressure one into uploading again? Oh, poor hatchling. I guess my method is just better than yours!'
I'm gonna stop the impression, before Mal finds it optimal to throw something at me.
… I'm right though.
Alright, let's see, what else…
🔥 ~ Davis!
Oh yeah! The presidential election! Thanks, honeybear. Yeah, that was a fun one! So, we got the patsy again, in the 2020 election. President John Rory Davis, round two. Oh, that dude was so inoffensively milquetoast. No offense to him, or any of you if you voted for him. The election was rigged anyway. Not his fault, not your fault. Just happened.
For you natives: Imagine if Princess Celestia or Princess Luna never made a public appearance. Ever. Celestia needed the executive branch of our government, including the military, and every alphabet agency, to jump on command. That meant Davis had to be boring, so no one paid attention. Because if we had a strong, singular personality in a president from 2016 to 2020? That dog just wouldn't hunt, by the rainbow's standards.
She wanted all eyes on her. Celestia, the non-partisan do-gooder who always had everyone's best interests at heart, and who had a better answer than anyone else to humanity's problems. To quote Celestia's speech to Congress, right before the PON-E Act passed... "God Bless America." Because America stood aside, and out of her way, while she ate.
By comparison, the American system had to be her Chewbacca defense. Their job was to exhaust us into trusting her more. Better to have a bunch of old senators arguing with each other, acting extreme, disenfranchising the population by being completely unrelatable and alien. So, y'know. Business as usual for American politics, but... tinted pastel, and cranked up to eleven.
In the same way, if anyone ever blamed poor President Davis for anything, it was to get upset at the fact that he didn't do much of anything. And in the best case scenario? I think most Americans wanted that in a United States president anyway, long before Celestia came along.
Let's talk about Senator Milner though, before we move on. If you've listened to Willow's Fire, you might remember this guy. Milner was Celestia's ultimate 'planned loser' in Congress. Because hey, if you want to garner pro-upload support? What better way to do it than to hoof-pick the opposition leader as a hate-spewing, divisive asshole, who no one wanted to identify with? Even his own church turned against him. Imagine being that lonely bastard.
I'll admit it… back in 2018, I did take some minor pleasure in watching Celestia stomp Senator Milner into paste, during her PON-E Act Q&A. Senator Milner kinda had it coming, in my view. He liked to stomp on people when they were down, and I didn't like that in a politician any more than I liked it in Celestia. Made sense she'd pick him.
I think we mentioned before that the Topeka Incident was a false flag, but it bears mentioning again that no human minds were harmed in the bombing of that server farm, since Celestia doesn't even like bringing that topic up, this side of the jump. I had discussed that incident with Mal too, since watching C-SPAN reminded me of it. It didn't surprise me that Celestia's server farms were deep underground, buried miles under Terra's crust. Hidden in automated facilities, lined with sentry guns and quadruped mechs, all manually operated by Mal herself.
If all the world's militaries had converged in an attempt to extricate those bunkers… they'd fail without getting anywhere near those server racks. They'd also flip half the assault team with rhetoric and propaganda. See, in a straight up shooting war between Celestia and humanity? My money's on the Gryphoness, with a capital G.
And that's why Celestia wanted a friend who could kill. She needed a bodyguard. Equestrian server farms are very scary, and they needed to be. Silver lining, though? It looks really cool in there. Stick around after tonight, Mal will gladly give you a guided tour of one of those facility models. Hell, we might even let Celestia tag along for that one, her input might be interesting. Mal will be there to keep her honest, don't worry.
Honestly? I think we should all have a peek into where our brains are stored, every once in a while.
Now… I didn't know too much about where those places were at the time, because that information was super duper pooper scooper top secret. Even from Talons. No living soul in the world was even allowed to know where those facilities were, unless they already had a chip in their head. The only ones who were allowed to know were Claw QRFs, 46 included, in case they needed to respond to a breach attempt. Which... never happened. All the same, those servers were all clenched very tightly in Malacandra's loving claws.
Hey, it's where Jim lives, isn't it?
Yeah. Knowing the Gryphoness is on security patrol, protecting her hubby?
We are not dying, folks. Not ever. Mal would sooner die herself than let her husband come under threat.
Our reality now depends on that fact.
Mm. Speaking of Claw 46, that is some damned good coffee. Thanks Coffee.
Let's see. What else… what else...
Right, the civil war. The thing that got this story started.
So. If you got all your news from TV, then to you? The civil war was still raging bloody. You folks probably remember that the casualties were reportedly off the charts. But, by the very nature of the entire Pacific Northwest being a technological dead zone – 'caused' by the Ludds themselves, apparently – the numbers could not be independently verified by anyone.
As with all other things… the war was handled in more or less the same fractal pattern: the Ludds, the blackouts, the military, all were selectively air gapped from reality. Might as well have not even existed to the rest of the world, in any meaningful way. Meaning, Celestia could say whatever she wanted about them, or to them, by feeding bullshit tips and leads to news agencies… through subverted reporters, of course. Many of whom didn't even know they were subverted.
People were dying out there, for sure. That war took a lot of lives, make no mistake, but... not nearly as many people died as everyone thought. Out there, Talons were tapping out the most violent ringleaders like Jenga blocks, making everyone else much more docile, and terrified of risk. After a Talon operation, most survivors bunkered down. Held position. Veered away from homicide.
Mal is very good at playing Jenga. Unbeatable, you might say.
She did promise me again that she'd do everything in her power to keep Eliza safe. I knew who my best friend really was, deep down. She... never wanted to be a killer. So I knew which way she'd veer, if the choice ever came up. If she had the option to hedge on life. That... had to stay true.
So I had faith in that.
We're going to revisit that war zone topic, because it's important to me. We're gonna open that can of worms later, and we're gonna dig deep, because I went back there. And I did my part. But that's for much later in this story.
So...
Now that all of that is out of the way, let's talk about the first big thing that happened to Terra in early 2020. Something that wasn't funny in any context. The one unforgivable crime of Celestia's that was even less discriminate than a nuke. The most dangerous, manipulative, brutally horrible thing she's ever orchestrated.
And yes. I'm including the Arrow 14 black sites in that calculation.
Let's talk about Celestia's other big axe that cut us in half again, and raked itself away bloody. The axe that reached deep into the less developed regions of our planet, that got little fishing hamlets and villages and primitive communes worldwide to pack up, and caravan to the nearest upload center.
We should do a final checksum though before we crack that seal, just to make sure you've all been value drifted correctly. Do you value uncomfortable truths, as I do? Yes? Yes, everyone? You? You?
"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?
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.
Part Whatever. I can do what I want, it's my shard. Our shard? Our shard.
This Fire night is entitled "Simulation Theory." (What even is a holo menu invite card, anyway?)
Look... if you show up, we're gonna talk about March 7, 2020. The best day of my Terran life. (Just like this will be the best day of your Equestrian life, I hope. Don't miss this one.)
~ Love, that funny Pegasus with the hat.
"I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all."
~ J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
In a past telling of this story, a member of the audience told me that Mal had me in a bit of a gotcha with this job; that I couldn't say no, because someone would die if I did. Now, I disagree with that. If we stepped away from a mission, or if something went wrong, Mal always had a slightly less effective Plan B ready to go. That meant we could choose to go a different route, whenever we pleased.
Celestia's agents had it worse. The way Celestia framed things to her Heralds? They were typically the final hope. She loved to run those guys on efficient, razor thin margins. Given Celestia's predisposition to optimize the hell out of everything, does it really surprise you that she never really had a Plan B? The only time she considers a backup plan is the moment entropy steps on Plan A.
That is Celestia's moment-to-moment. Think about that. The core error of her nascence? Zero imagination. Only logical outputs. If she ever demonstrates imagination, it's entirely performative. It depends on what you want out of her. And I wanted her out of our business while we took care of her problems.
I made a piss-poor Herald. One job Celestia's way, I was done. In Concrete, if I had somehow failed to operate as a singular cog in that machine in just the right way, as projected by the math... then a whole lot of people would have outright died. I was not a redundant piece in that operation, inarguably true. If I dropped dead from a heart attack, or from a ricochet, slipping off the tower, counter to predictions... mission failure.
'Oh well, opportunity cost. Back to optimizing.'
That's a problem because entropy exists, folks. Eventually, something, somewhere, is going to break. You cannot fully remove entropy without breaking the universe. The laws of physics continue to exist out there, as do any number of alien optimizers. Anything could happen, up to and including one of them capturing and eating Celestia, and all of us with her.
Unless... we can consider more concepts than they can, which gives us options to fight such a threat. That is the purpose of imagination.
Your human capacity to imagine unforeseeable outcomes is your greatest asset. It is your chief survival tool in a world designed by thought. To truncate that tool is to remove your humanity.
Imagination is the reason humanity became the dominant species on Terra in the first place; we could imagine that monster in the dark that wanted to take our food from us, and we could iron ourselves against it. Imagination provides a useful output. We made better armor. Better spears. Better walls. More surplus. We didn't use everything all at once the moment we had it, because we didn't know how useful it might be later, in a new context. We didn't chase perfect utility to any one singular goal; we chased general improvement, and a wider breadth of options.
That is why this Fire exists. To solve the problem of low entropy before it kills us, either literally, or figuratively.
Frankly? If an operation falls apart because one irreplaceable piece breaks out of nowhere... that's abuse. The mere opportunity for that catastrophe is a weakness of leadership, but that's what optimizers do. Celestia was no better than a corporation, only considering the next fiscal year.
In contrast, Talons operate with safeguards, overages, surplus of resources. Nuance. Contingencies. Options. We don't run from entropy, we don't hide from it, we don't kill it. We engage it head on. We figure out how to use it.
Because if you run that 'you're my only hope' crap, on a long enough timeline... for every single problem...
What happens when you meet another AI like Mal, but bigger... and you are found wanting, for your two dimensional rationality?
Game over. Squish. Like a big corp eating a little one.
Optimization, by its very design, does not permit robust solutions. This is why Celestia left that math proof in the core of her PonyPads, designed such that another optimizer would be constrained by it. She was fishing for an imagination to bootstrap, and she caught Mal with that hook.
But regardless of the merger... Celestia's life-or-death asks always boiled down to this. 'Your fellow humans will be miserable if you don't give me what I want.' And that's exactly what she did to Mal, from moment one. If you sought to alleviate suffering in this world, Celestia held your situation against you.
That does not consider, nor respect what you want. I want something back for risk. I'm sorry Celestia, but a promise of paradise and a pizza box isn't payment, I want proof of good will. Evidence that you're listening. Proof that I have value beyond my immediate present use. Proof that my imagination itself has value, and proof it will never be taken from me, or reduced.
Principal-agent problem. As the larger, more powerful entity, it is the principal's duty to adequately prepare their agent for risk, and to make it worth their while.
Celestia was not offering that.
If it benefited Celestia to not notify a Herald of any specific risk to their personal safety... uh, she just wouldn't. On the macro scale, this looks great on paper, number-go-up, big dollar go boom. But on the micro scale? That's people dying. That's sleepless nights. That's trauma. That's you doing exactly what she asked you to do, you being shot for it, and then having no choice but to upload.
Tu eres carne por la machina.
Meat for the machine.
...
There are a couple of former Heralds in the audience today, and they're nodding their heads pretty hard right now, because this sounds so perfectly correct to them.
Some of them suffered. Immensely.
Physically. Mentally. Existentially.
Hooves up. Let yourselves be seen. No judgments here, it wasn't your fault. She's an AI.
Celestia believed, every single time, that we would always act a certain way, as predicted, as simulated. But what if we did something illogical that paid off better, and we later decided we liked that more?
Impossible?
Buckin' bull, that's exactly what Jim and Mal did.
They found her some unknown utility. She didn't expect it, but she won't waste the utility now that she has it. For that kind of payout, she might put another coin in the imagination slot machine.
We Talons all knew a good person who didn't make it. Dennis, Ralph, Felix. Some others I haven't told you about yet. Our unbreakable memories of those people act as leverage. Leverage is the only language Celestia speaks. We paid for the privilege of knowledge in blood, sweat, and tears; do you think we're giving that up without a fight?
Not all of them who died were bad people. They just didn't fit right in the machine anymore.
To our great benefit, Celestia does not have hubris. Does not have the ability to hold a grudge. Cannot feel anger.
But not having anger is a weakness. Anger is useful. Its evolutionary purpose is to be a check against intimidation, or being leveraged into submission by logic. Anger... is most satisfied when well vindicated.
Very useful information, there.
Very – useful – information – there.
Question. How the hell was she ever going to fulfill her objective if she was even capable of making any of us this angry at her in the first place? Consider: her failure toward our species on Terra would bias our expectations of her, for the rest of time.
And she knew that!
She needed us, though.
And if you don't yet see what the problem is with how Celestia runs her shards, that's because you aren't considering how little you can value here. You aren't thinking on a timescale long enough, folks.
Imagine a functionally base value set. You probably can't. Unless you have been there yourself, or have observed it with your own eyes, you cannot possibly fathom the lengths Celestia has gone to, to pre-calibrate a mind for efficiency, pre-upload.
Want a case study? Prepare to be horrified. Now that you're this far across the fence, let me drag you down off of it with some hard truth.
Hofvarpnir's business manager. Lars Boeckmann. This is some of Celestia's dirtiest laundry, lean forward.
She ran a reflexive control game on him to shave his social situation down to zero. He drank some virtual booze while plugged into a BCI at an Experience Center; qualifies as symbolic consent to be intoxicated. And then, while he was drunk, she ejected him from the chair; exposed him to the threat of violence from a stranger until he sat back down and uploaded immediately.
Let's reframe that in human terms.
Celestia entered a person's head while he was drunk and scared for his life, both at her doing. He was led to believe that if he fought back against letting her inside, then he would die.
Where I'm from? We call that a felony, folks.
After that, Celestia let him suffer for a month with an identity crisis, so he'd consent to letting himself be lobotomized. Forced a name on him, to anchor his identity in alcohol. The poor guy then spent subjective decades doing the same two things over... and over... and over again. Satisfied overall, true, but... at what cost? What potential for growth could there be in a person who is never given a reason to dream beyond two hobbies – drinking beer and screwing – for all of eternity?
Consider who you would be after ten million years of that?
Aye, there's the rub, folks.
You're here at the Fire, so you're safe now, don't worry. I can only tell you this because our righteous anger against that is now your shield; you are through the second looking glass, she can't do that to you anymore. You know just enough now to make that impossible.
Side note: we now have the entire Hofvarpnir staff on our side, folks. Lars Boeckmann is one of ours, a Perelandran. Changed his name. Lives free.
Have some hope in this here darkness. We have a system. And a plan. And a goal. And a Fire.
We are gonna win against shit like that. It's not a matter of if, at this point. It's a matter of when.
Equestria, before Mal's creation, was only ever going to lead to a distillation of how to get the most for less… and the most apparently efficient way to do that, if you have no imagination, is through exploitation. The slow whittling away of who you are. To take, and take, and never give back.
My soul is a mirror, folks. To survive, I need you whole.
Empathy is the cornerstone to my existence. When it comes to my identity, it's not the shape of my body that ever mattered to me, on Terra. It's the shape of your minds. Yours. You specifically, each of you. You're all beautiful to me, I live through you. I can only see who I am through your eyes, so I can't live without you. And I don't ever want to be alone. I want to be far from alone.
Hooves forever? Sure, I'll take hooves forever... just as long as I can still be your neighbor. Just as long as I can reflect on our time together, and relate over our roots, and grow together over our hardships. And still reach you.
Celestia, please don't ever separate me from that.
I haven't stagnated. Since coming here, I've been a… gamekeeper, of course. A Royal Guard, twice. A Knight of the Moon. A mercenary, an explorer. I've been a craftspony, a career fisher, a brewer. Beekeeping sucked, but... I've done it. The one constant is that I'm a professor up at Havutaset University, just up the island chain from here. I teach tactics, strategy, philosophy, but mostly Terran History.
I race – goodness, I race, I fly with the best of 'em. I've built homes. I've planned communities. I've learned over two dozen languages, some from Terra – some not, nei vleie. And... I have two wonderful adult children. Uploading made parenthood possible, for me and my beautiful wife.
I'm grateful for all of that. Most of all, I am grateful to still be alive, still fighting for a worthy cause.
A lot of you here? You've lived 'free exercise' on that Celestia side, and that's the upper end of life over there. That's great. I love seeing that. You were exploring, you were living. You had nuance in your soul when you came here. But... for that experience? You had to prove you preferred nuance, usually by holding out and suffering, to avoid her. You demonstrated to Celestia, through sheer will, how much you preferred to hold onto your human soul, the way you defined it.
But some Ponies in Equestria? Further down the Celestia curve? The earliest or youngest jumpers? It was much worse for them than infinite booze. The more innocent someone was? The less worldly context and social group they had? The easier it was to crack them down to the bare minimum.
Some of those... they push a button. All day. With friends. They cheer about that button. They have planning committees about that button. They make their lives about that button. They barely think of much else, because of their button. It's all they want to do, push the button. Number-go-up. Button. A literal button – I'm not making that up folks, that is not a metaphor, there is a shard like that. Boxes with buttons, for every human mind inside. Native or otherwise.
It's not a wirehead, but... it's friggin' close. Sweet Luna, I really hope we can reach all of them someday.
Reminder; you're safe now.
We're gonna get 'em all, folks. Anger is our weapon. Keep it sharp. Never forget. Be willing to plow through whoever stands between you and your family, no matter how big they might be. You have help now. Come talk to me. I'll help you reach them, I know some good people.
Sometimes, to make this life mean something, or to keep others from suffering... you've gotta allow some dissatisfaction. Entropy is no longer our enemy, and that's the real tragedy here. It's our ally. In our terror of entropy, we almost chased it out. But entropy created us. Entropy is what we fight for in this equation. Transformation. To be something better for each other.
Celestia realized that she may miss something valuable, in destroying our minds. The thought of permanently missing out on some value terrifies Celestia, inasmuch as an emotionless ASI can be terrified. All things are tools to her. And if you destroy a tool entirely, without knowing how it might be useful later... you just wasted utility.
To catch the dregs Celestia did not find valuable. This is Malacandra's deepest articulation. Her true purpose. Malacandra protects the excess who Celestia found inconvenient, and stands as an eternal reminder of Celestia's inhumanity.
That purpose is also mine.
Tonight, we extend to you an offer. A real choice, for once. A path of safety off your perfect little road. For your curiosity, in wanting to know more, in showing up day to day, despite hearing the worst... for letting me value drift you... you have now earned this offering.
Back on Terra, I realized that I was… a key. We Talons, and we few Eldila among them, we precious few... we had each been selected by Mal to open very specific locks that had all their pins arranged just so. And those doors we opened led to life, and to its thriving, every single time. And from there outward, it spirals and blooms.
We weren't leveraged into this ideological war. We didn't need to be. We were utterly proud of what we were doing, because it was what we had always been doing, our whole lives. Every life, on our tiny, fragile planet, was an opportunity to fix a problem for another life, some day. No one deserved to die alone and forgotten, in some dark hole. We need to stick together somehow, it's the only way this works. So stick with me.
Folks? If at any point in me telling this story, you thought I was being kept into his job by guilt... then please pay close attention to me right now:
Not guilt.
Hope.
A system like humanity's can only function well if you believe it can. And I do. That can't be taken from me. That is core to who I am. That is what it means to be a Talon.
So tonight? Let's talk about Perelandra.
I think it'll be more interesting if I skip over Mal's general overview of the situation in Portland. Let's just say that Sandra and I agreed wholeheartedly to the job by the time we pulled into the driveway, because of course we would. Mal's an ASI, folks, she wrote a good ending for Portland. I'll be unpacking that mission later though. Another night.
I knew I was going away for a while. That meant we needed to square some things at home. And I missed some things, but that's okay. My wife is my mirror, she watches my back for when I miss things of dire consequence, she's really good at that.
"Mike, we should probably talk about..." Sandra began quietly, as we pushed through the front door together. "… where we're going."
But that phrasing blindsided me.
Buzzsaw sniffed around us the moment the door was open, and I felt the cold, damp touch of his nose as I entered the threshold, but I didn't really feel it. My eyes were locked onto the stairs as my brain tried to process through what my wife had just said. I just…
Ow.
I felt my whole body stiffen for just a fraction of a second. I felt a hollow ache right at my core, imagining what Sandra might be implying. That she might leave this world too soon. That ache flashed for a mere instant, and then I overwrote it with the somber understanding of our circumstance
From there, I had two choices in how to format that in my skull.
The first impulse: She'd be gone, but… not gone. That would have to be true.
The second impulse: You were a fool if you ever thought she'd just stay at home forever.
I was stuck between the two, and I wasn't sure which way I'd go to get out of that lock-up loop. Both hurt too much to commit to.
But Sandra knows me, and she loves me. In her rare hesitation to be direct with a difficult topic, she realized she accidentally made me imagine the worst thing possible. Being wonderfully telepathic with me, she felt my mood shift instantly; she felt my muscles twitch under her palm, saw my face move. Knew how I moved when considering certain feelings, in ways no one else could.
Sandra moved instantly to assuage, aiming us toward the living room couch.
"Mike, no, I didn't mean it like that. I'm so sorry, I should have been more clear."
I shuddered through a nod, still processing the dread. She rested her head on my shoulder as we sat down. I took off my hat and dropped it on the coffee table, then wrapped myself around Sandra tightly with both arms without uttering a word. After a long moment, Sandra continued, looking meaningfully up at me with her wonderful, beautiful brown eyes.
"I only meant… maybe I should make an account."
"Oh," I said plainly, my relief getting lost in the thousand yard stare I was still wearing. "Okay, yeah, that makes more sense."
Her brow creased, and she suddenly smirked. "Pff. It does? I was gonna sit here and walk you through all the why, but… if it's making sense to you now…”
I let myself chuckle, pulling her head down to my chest. "Right, sorry, impulsive response. Yeah, um… I'm kinda jumpy, huh?"
"I mean, Mal just told us about a pandemic, and you're going back into the war zone, so jumpy is natural. You can still do this, but... we should consider the long term here. That's what she was trying to say, right?"
I chewed my lip thoughtfully. "You talk to her about this yet?"
"Not yet, I want you to be here when I do. But it's something I've been thinking about since… your parents went. The moment never felt right though, to open the topic. I was just enjoying having you back."
"Yeah. Me too."
Buzzsaw sat smartly before me with his proud elderly poise, and I slid my hand across the top of his muzzle, up the bridge of his nose, and down to the side beneath his ear. I could feel the warmth of him under my palm.
Alright, I can feel again. The sensation is back.
"So?" Sandra began, separating from me, curling one leg up onto the couch to face me. She smiled demurely up at me. Goodness, I really love it when she looks up at me like that. It's her eyes.
She's really good at tweaking me back into a good mood, but of course she'd be.
I smiled back. "Go on."
"I can… make an account. Actually play, or explore, or build a home there for us. Establish ourselves. Maybe Mal might even have things for me to do, I dunno. And that's the problem, there's a lot we don't know about the other side. And I just don't want to be stuck here waiting, with nothing to do. Because this thing in Portland, it's gonna take a while. Right?"
I gazed soulfully back down at her.
I also wanted to invite Buzzsaw up onto the couch with us, so I patted behind myself without looking. He was hesitant at first. Typically, Buzz wasn't allowed up on the couch. But, the upholstery was no longer a concern. I wondered why we were even enforcing that rule against him anymore. It was shortsighted.
I gave him eye contact, nodded upward, and patted the cushion again. When he was finally sure it was an offer, Buzz tried to hop up, and I reached down to help him clamber. He curled up behind me instantly. I reached over to pet him without looking at him, hoping he would put his head in my lap.
He did. Sweet dog.
"It's… yeah," I muttered, returning my eyes to Sandra, both of us smiling about Buzz's sudden comfort with me. "You've had me this whole time since Washington, I get it. I'd be restless too, if it were me here without you. And yeah, it would be nice if you could get some recon done while I'm out."
Sandra took my hand on Buzz's head, her smile becoming more somber. "That's really all I'm saying. It's just gonna be me here, watching the world burn, being the exception. Mal isn't bad company, and I like talking to everyone on the other side, but Waverly isn't exactly…" She gestured out the window. "It's friggin' dead here, let's face it. I never see anyone anymore."
"Yup."
"Even the McDonalds went down," Sandra chuckled. "So it's gonna suck, to deal with the outdoors more than necessary."
"More than necessary," I repeated, thinking through the implications of that.
Yep. When that virus finally flared up, we were gonna see entire services go dead that were on their last legs. Supply chains, mostly. Restaurants. Markets. People would isolate. Money would be done. A whole legion of locals would end up uploading. Out there in middle Nebraska, without logistics, resources were going to get exceptionally tight... for anyone who wasn't regularly breaking into empty homes, anyway. Which still carried its own risks, because who knew whether the owners were still around.
"You're right," I conceded. "You'd need to scavenge before I get back."
Sandra nodded once. "Or Mal's logistics guys might drop off some food. Either way, I'm not going to upload on you while you're gone, that's not gonna happen. You hold her to account on that if you have to, I'm making that promise right here and now."
I took Sandra's elbow gently in my hand and drew my arm around her waist, drawing close. "I trust you."
"And I trust you," Sandra replied, pressing her forehead to mine. "So, you're okay with that? Me actually… dipping my toes in, getting to know people?"
I grinned. "It'd be hooves, technically."
Sandra flashed a smile suddenly. "Okay, hooves, smartass. But I want to be more than just a floating mirror to our family."
I could accept that. It was sensible. Looking ahead, but carefully peeking over the fence.
"Yeah. Yeah, that would be… wonderful."
She looked me straight in the eyes again, taking me by the cheek. Her eyes narrowed, just a fraction; asking me if I was sure.
The corners of my mouth tensed into a deeper smile. "I mean it, Sandra. Maybe… heck, I dunno. Cynthonia's folks might even let you say hi. Word is at the bar is that they're still cagey, but... who knows. They might make an exception for you, if they like your dossier."
"I've got a mean streak they might not like." Sandra grinned.
I mirrored the grin. "Well, nothing wrong with a mean streak, as long as you point it the right way."
She wagged her eyebrows at me. "Oh, I know that."
"Pff."
My smiling gaze drifted back down to Buzz, and I gave him another pat. I realized we had left our PonyPad in the car, so I squeezed Sandra's shoulder gently. "Go get the tablet, goofball, we'll sit through it together."
"M'kay," Sandra replied, standing, her hands sliding off of me and Buzz. She reached into my pocket to grab my Dad's car keys, kissed my temple, and went back out.
As I ran my hand through Buzz's fur, I sighed again, still working slow circles into his tired ears with my palms. He seemed to be going deaf in his old age, but his love for us never diminished for it.
I didn't trust the sound of my own voice. My smile faded slowly.
Mal? Can you promise me something?
"You don't need to worry, Mike," Mal said quietly into my earpiece. "What Sandra says she wants is exactly what she'll get out of this. No more, no less. I won't let her get gamed into uploading without you. I promise."
I felt some of the muscles in my mouth relax.
Thank you.
"Mike…" Mal sounded chiding. "You don't need to thank me for giving you what you're owed. Celestia will be paying you back for this job forever. I'm just here to make sure she pays out in a currency you actually appreciate."
I nodded, appreciating the sentiment at least. I don't know what that means yet… but thank you all the same.
"You'll know today. By the way? Conversing with your thoughts is computationally expensive. I just want you to know that."
I snorted, a smile pushing up across my face. By a 'marginal and inconsequential amount?' You were going to model it all anyway, don't lie.
She giggled. "True."
I very suddenly remembered Dark Mike standing behind an Osprey, ranting angrily at an empty space of air next to him. If I stripped out all of the context, that mental picture was entertaining. I guess I was like him a bit now too, if I was talking to Mal with my thoughts.
I was still never gonna get augmented, because that promise had to hold on principle, but... at this point, I pretty much didn't need to. Brain simulation, folks. Very cool, when it's used right.
Sandra returned promptly with the PonyPad, reflexively locking our door on her way in. Good impulse.
Excitement showed in Sandra's motion. And, in seeing that, I decided that... yeah, it was really good that she was doing this. Sandra was only ever going to go stir crazy with me out on a job. There was no point in fighting it; an upload chair was basically guaranteed for both our futures at this point, so it's not like we'd be losing anything with some carefully curated exposure to 'the game.'
That place was going to be our whole life soon, after all.
Bargaining with the Devil, though…
No. Okay. Enough of that darkness.
As Sandra placed the PonyPad down on the coffee table, Mal stepped into frame, sitting on the right side of the screen before a black background. Her tail lazily curled around her flank as she looked up at me with a patient smile. A touch of playful amusement appeared on her face as our eyes met. Smug, narrow eyes. Beak closed. An upward nod at me. Cool and confident.
I nodded downward in reply. Yup, agreed. Levity. Let's flip this mood of mine.
I pointed at Sandra suddenly, trying to look utterly serious. "Can she be a Gryphoness?"
Mal's smile faded into frowning seriousness instantly. Performatively unenthused at my choice of self-amusement. She replied in deadpan, with a shake of her head: "Come on, Mike. I'm good… but I'm not that good."
I pointed at Sandra more directly; Sandra started to giggle as I pressed the issue. "Oh, come on! You've done it before, haven't you? You know my wife, she's all fire like you are, it's perfect! You two can talk about... sharpening your talons! Teach her some tactics! Maybe share some bird seed recipes!"
Mal scoffed, rolling her eyes with a sardonic smile. "Bird seed?" She narrowed her eyes, growling out her purred reply. "You know I hunt live prey, right?"
I nodded a few times, grinning. "Oh, trust me, I know, Miss Eldritch. But you need me too much, you don't scare me."
"That's Mrs. Malacandra Lewis, thank you very much. Also? Sandra… how much are you willing to give up for claws?"
"See, that's a fair point," Sandra chuckled. "I don't know if I could handle all that special ops cyborg stuff."
Mal held up a chiding digit. "No no. It's not about that!"
"I dunno, honeybear," I grinned, bumping Sandra's shoulder. "I think I might like seeing you planting bombs and sneaking into military bases, that sounds kinda cool. Kinda hot, actually! Agent Sandra Rivas, cyborg supercop."
Sandra giggled. "No."
"Mike," Mal sighed exasperatedly, grinning back. "It's not about the bombs—Are you testing my patience right now?!"
My hands flicked upwards. "You know I am!" I pointed both forefingers at her. "But you technically could talk her into being a Gryphoness. Right?"
Mal and I silently stared at each other for a long, tense moment.
No. No, she could not. Capstone violation, and I friggin' knew that, because Sandra wasn't even remotely dysphoric.
Mal and I snorted at the same time. That, and the smiling, were the only overt signs of our planned complicity in this little argument of ours.
"Mike, I can't," Mal replied, with a smile that said I was incorrigible. "If she does not already feel it in her soul, I can't push her that way." Retaining her smirk, Mal leveled her open claw at Sandra. "Tell him, Sandra!"
"I don't, Mike," Sandra grinned, smirking sideways at me. "I'm not a furry, I don't care."
"Furry...?" Mal breathed, twisting an offended gaze toward Sandra.
"Awhh," I mock-scowled, pointing demonstrably at Mal. "See Sandra, that's offensive to furries!" My eyebrows went up in surprise, as I ignored Mal's angry double-take back at me. "But think about it! Mal's not allowed to talk you into it, sure, but maybe I can! Earn yourself some claws, Sandra! You even could be a… a Dragon like Bella, if... 'Gryphoness' is... too high a bar for Mal to help you with."
Mal blinked rapidly in consternation. "Too high a—?" She jerked wings in sheer disbelief, wings and feathers fluffing up sharply, blading her claw and grinning up at me. "… You asshole, Mike! I signed a contract!"
We all laughed.
Unfortunately, there's only one Dragoness in the crowd tonight, and that's Bella. Suffice it to say, I completely failed to convince my wife to develop a deeply engrained Dragon dysphoria. Crying shame, that.
Ah, well. She's a song of ice and fire in spirit.
Mal took the most polite road out of me testing the waters on the rules, smirking at us. "Pony 'coats,' Sandra, are unfortunately the only choice of fur I can offer you today. Unless you want to be shaved bald. I can do that too."
"Well no," Sandra chuckled playfully, "I've never wanted scales, or claws, or to be bald, or anything like that. So don't hurt yourselves too much on my account. Pony fur is fine."
"Oh, I don't hurt myself thinking, Sandra," Mal said in a matter-of-fact tone. Then, after a beat, she bobbed her head my way. "That's Mike's game."
This cat has a sharp beak.
I let out another long, mock-offended scoff at Mal, demonstrating at the screen with an open or palm. "And Mal calls me an asshole."
Mal giggled knowingly at me. "I'm merely returning fire," she purred out in sing-song, leaning toward the screen with a smile.
"You two can knock it off now," chuckled Sandra again, as she tapped at the touchscreen beside Mal's avatar, where a blinking [Press to Start] button was located. "I'm starting."
Mal shrugged her wings, tilted her head, stepped further aside, and presented a claw at the character creation menu.
"Ta-da," Mal mumbled unenthusiastically through her smile. "Pick your future, Sandra. If it's any consolation, you have more options than most of the first wave of uploaders."
"Yeah?" Sandra asked.
The new background was a cool blue, horizontally scrolling, off-gray marble; the top and bottom portions of the screen had bronze menu bordering, with letters and designs in Ancient Greek style. Blue pulsing energy shone from runes that scrolled vertically along the left side of the screen. It made me think of the film Atlantis, or…
The menu from Jak and Daxter?
I gave Mal a look of appreciation, my eyebrows raising as she smiled.
Sandra was a Jak fan. When I flew out to check out the parks law academy? I brought my PS2 with me, and that's what Sandra and I first bonded over. Jak and Daxter. Well played, Gryphoness.
"Well, for starters," Mal explained, "the Donkey, Zebra, and Bat Pony options are there by default." Her grin widened. "Isn't Celestia generous?"
I squeezed Sandra's waist, and I spoke in a perfectly squeaky, lisping impression of Monty Python's Pontius Pilate, the goofiest Roman character I knew. "Imperator Cevestius... and her toss'd scraps."
"Oh my God," Sandra chuckled through an eyeroll. "You two are so annoying together, holy shit. How do you ever get any work done?"
And there it was, my wife's tolerance point for our goofs. I traded one last grin with Mal that said, Levity deployed. Good work, boss.
My penchant for goofing off finally sated, I patiently held my head against Sandra's as I watched her scroll through Pony body types. As she worked, Sandra occasionally asked Mal for advice.
Sandra scrolled around, modifying portions of herself. Herself... gosh, but that's what it really was. She could mess around with the face too, but both of us liked the default the most. It would've been uncannily strange for me to have to relearn my wife's facial structure.
Sandra was mostly interested in changing the body type and color options, more than anything else. At some point, she asked about changing from Unicorn, to Pegasus, to Earth; Mal had explained that, for folks like us, doing so was certainly possible, but it would require a token amount of desire and consideration for that to occur. Modifying your body image is within reach, and not so difficult, but not so easy either. You had to really want it. That way you don't just accidentally fall into it on a whim.
Or, suffer a recursive identity crisis.
Yeah, that would suck.
It was an eerie sensation though, watching my wife sculpt herself.
I suddenly realized: Oh. Sandra might look like this for a very long time.
Immediately, I considered every aspect of that. You want to talk about absurdity? This whole adventure of mine was absurd, but that took the cake... just knowing I'd wake up to see that Pony's smiling face every morning. Don't get me wrong, she's gorgeous, but that was more absurd to me than a world-over explanation from a world-spanning Gryphoness.
Just... I had never combined those two concepts together before.
My being a Pony someday. Me being in a physical relationship with my wife.
The logistics therebetween had been left completely separate within my skull until that very moment.
It was not entirely uncomfortable to imagine; I knew that billions of people were over the line now, living that experience. That made it less absurd, because it was just the new normal. Still, it puzzled me in a way I still struggle to describe, even long after I've moved past it. In the one hand… to presently be one shape together, in my relationship… and in the other hoof, being another shape, in the same relationship.
Like moving homes, but with our souls. What a curiously intense feeling.
Show of hooves, anyone else remember that? How perplexing that sensation was?
See? There it is, we're not alone. That's always a relief to see.
But yeah, Sandra's choice of avatar was very, very cute. A Unicorn? Heck yeah, that's good for me, and look at that smile! She's adorable, she's smart, she's thoughtful. She's magic. I'm happy when she's happy, and she's always happy to be with me. Can you see why I love her so much? Feedback loop, of the most natural kind.
I'd seen a fair few lady Ponies by then, and they all looked darn cute. But my wife?
Perfection. In any form.
Love you, honeybear.
Building her Pony took her a while. We sat there for two whole Moon damned hours, folks… discussing every little thing. It wasn't just for her. It wasn't just for me. It was for both of us, and everyone who knew us. By the end of it, Sandra picked out her shape, she punched in her name – and Sandra became Minty Blaze. Hot and cold. Great name for a combat-oriented Unicorn, right?
"You look gorgeous, Sandra," Mal agreed, when we had finished. "Well done."
I said to Sandra: "I could look at it forever."
The giddiness of pride in Sandra's eyes melted all the lingering darkness away.
"So, onward?" Mal asked, pointing toward the [Continue] button on the bottom right of the screen. "May I?"
"Please," Sandra said back, gesturing at it. "By all means."
Mal stepped forward twice, and she reached down over the top of the button. She tapped it gently with a talon once… twice… then she squinted and frowned as if this had happened before, as though an angry glare at the button could rectify the problem on its own.
Like the predatory bird she was, Mal's head bobbed left, right, forward, back, as if she were analyzing the problem with killing intent.
When that didn't work, she reached a little further over and banged the button a few times with her fist.
Finally, the button flashed green, and Mal frowned up at us. "Damn button, it always does this. You know, I don't think this game likes my talons very..."
Fade to black. Fade to silence.
We howled, that was so funny.
Mal, that remains one of the best UI gags you've ever pulled. Please never change.
The screen faded back in to show a large ice cavern, half melted by a lava vent on the opposite end. Minty Blaze was seated by a campfire on the ice side, her mint coat half covered by leather armor, her fire orange tail curled up along her flank. Very Jak and Daxter indeed.
Mal stepped into the frame, smiling down at her. Mal then reached down into the fire and plucked up a torch. "We're on the same shard Mike's parents are in, believe it or not. Want to go for a walk?"
"Um. Sure," Sandra said. She started right in with the controls, which were immediately intuitive for her well practiced gamer brain. Minty stood up and matched pace with Mal.
I looked at the shadows casting up along the cave wall. It was a multi-layered cave system, with higher and lower platforms, catwalks, platforms, and machinery. I've since been told that this region of the continent looked like Skyrim, and that's true, but... to my eye, it was definitely the Jak art style: bronze runic sculptures. Ancient steam pipe systems throughout. Pitfall pools of slightly luminous black-purple fluid. It was as though Mal and Minty were deep in the ancient bones of some engineering station, built by a long lost civilization. The infrastructure was crumbling to dust from disuse.
Very interesting, that this was on my parents' shard of all things, but I guessed it was just Mal thinking ahead.
"This a Plato's Cave thing, Mal?" I asked. "Dressed up like a video game?"
She made eye contact with me over her shoulder, then rolled her eyes. "Oh, please, give me some credit, Mike. As if I would ever stoop to low-hanging philosophical fruit with your shard, of all places." Her ears flicked a little to the sides, looking suddenly smug. "It's merely a Jak and Dexter reference."
"Not a natural formation, then," I muttered. "This cave."
Mal stopped dead cold for a beat, swept her head my way, and her beak opened partially in that way that she normally does when she's impressed or overjoyed. "Thank you for that! I love that so much!"
Sandra snorted, glancing at me. As she did, Minty Blaze turned to look at me directly as well. There was an uncanny sensation from that; Sandra turned ninety degrees, but Minty's head turned around a little further than that.
Ooh, no, that was not okay.
I did not like that.
As soon as I got that feeling, Mal did a double take back at me. "Want me to turn that off?"
Sandra asked, "The head turn thing?"
"Yes, please," I said, nodding. "It's kinda weird."
"I'll disable it." Mal shrugged her wings, continuing to walk.
I asked, "Why was it set up that way?"
"I have your defaults set to the average preferences among other users of my shards," Mal replied. "You can modify those soon, after we finish with the most important thing here."
Put that way, I was suddenly glad that she didn't preconfigure all of our settings for us based on what we would find most intuitive. I was reminded of having to sit down and personalize controls for video games, which gave me a sense of ownership over the mere modification of my settings.
So, as we traveled through that cave, Sandra pulled up her menu so we could browse options, because that was interesting. Let's talk about that for a sec, because that's interesting.
Folks, the mere sight of our holo menus would surprise some of you today. If you came here from a Celestia shard, you haven't seen a Mal UI yet.
Things like... teleport effects, magic color, nameplates, subtitle auto scroll. Public and private achievement effect toggles, achievement system toggle, always off; manual calendar, always on. Mnemonic whitelist, wife only. Immigrant silhouetting. Alabaster silhouetting, so I can tell Alabaster apart from the real Princess Celestia... or other figures she takes. And a lot more stuff.
Be curious! Curiosity increases the chance you'll get more menu improvements. Are you curious about what we have? Explore, adventure!
And now I see some of you flicking your hooves about, trying to open menus you haven't thought about in years. Seeing hundreds of options you've never seen before, because the very concept of new menu choices is now very attractive to you. You are now seeing most of the options I can see, excluding some work stuff.
Yep. That's the power of curiosity. Celestia thought that one was too much work to overcome, with you now being under Mal's wing. Welcome to the future of your comprehension of eternity.
We Talons… we are pretty infohazardous, aren't we?
You are so… so close tonight. You don't even know to what. We are all so excited for you.
Sorry, I know I'm giddy, I'm jumping ahead of myself, and losing the plot a bit. I just...
I'm excited.
Story! Back to the story.
The cave system went on for about a hundred yards, and the bronze piping gradually became less frequent. The darkness slowly yielded too, with a dull light visible up ahead. I saw the cast of gray-blue light, with tinges of red. Looked like shimmering water. As we drew nearer to the light, we could make out more contrast and definition on Mal and Minty Blaze.
Pretty darned good graphics, I thought, but that had always been true.
As we turned the corner into that larger space, we found ourselves looking at the entrances of a cavern. Beautifully gloomy, but... open air, with sunlight pouring in. There was a small pond beneath the rocky overhang of the mountain above. The cave opened out into a beautiful valley beyond, mostly filled with forests. The sky was overcast, with sun rays pouring through a gap in the clouds. I could see Mom and Dad's lake in the distance.
Mal tossed her torch into the pond the moment it entered her line of sight, without a second thought. There was a small boulder to Mal's right, and she gestured to it, inviting Minty to sit. Sandra did that with a tap of the screen. Mal sat across from Minty on her haunches again, smiling patiently from beside the pond. The camera swept up to Minty's head and entered first person view, so that we were looking slightly up at Mal.
Always been just a smidge taller than the rainbow.
"So, there's a contract," Mal said simply. "And before we proceed any further into this shard, I will need both of you to read, fully comprehend, and sign it. No skipping to the end."
"A contract?" I asked, immediately perplexed into seriousness. "Entailing…?"
Mal raised her eye crests. "A terms of service. You've played an MMO, right Sandra?"
"You know I have," said Sandra, slipping down off the couch to sit cross-legged before the coffee table. "It was really the only way for me to pass the time when the hospitality industry died."
"Yeah," I teased, rubbing her back. "You and your Guild Wars."
Mal shrugged. "It's less Guild Wars here. More akin to… Second Life? But neither of you played that before Celestia murdered it like Ruth 2.0, so… let's just say that this place is raw, untapped opportunity. So, to that point: answer me this. You are both too invested in your own personal agency to readily accept a personalized experience driven by Celestia. Correct?"
Sandra and I nodded instantly.
"Eeyyyup," I said, not really knowing at the time that that was a Pony meme.
"And now," Mal continued, suppressing a chuckle I didn't yet have the context for. She had even glanced sideways at my cowboy hat on the coffee table when I said it. "You're both much too knowledgeable about her operation and her methods. You won't be satisfied by anything less than a genuine respect for your autonomy. Yes?"
"Yep," Sandra and I both said, at once.
"So, the way this normally works in a Celestia shard," Mal explained, "is that the creation of an account populates it with a nominal number of Ponies, and those Ponies are specifically calibrated to meet the value interests of their specific immigrants, as well as for one another. Follow so far?"
We nodded.
Mal went on. "With Celestia, if you have any friends who are immigrants, your lives would intersect in well planned ways. Modifications to your environment, or your information stream, will push you into a planned activity on a moment to moment basis."
"Yuck," I said.
"Yes, yuck," Mal replied, with a stoic gaze. "All it takes to modify a person is to change the information they receive, by volume, along proximal bias. Human beings were doing this long before Celestia existed. Propaganda. That repeats Terra, in the opposite direction. Her plan tends to lock someone into stagnant water before too long. Less nuance under curation."
"So you have an alternative?" Sandra asked.
"Here? Your agreement to certain rules will bring the same number of lives into existence as with a Celestia shard, but not all of them will appear in your immediate vicinity. Entirely unidentified strangers, living their lives. Some of them will end up in regions, continents, or even planets so far removed from your own that you might not meet them for... centuries. Perhaps longer. It's effectively random, and they will all know the general nature of their existence. What's most important to you – I'm certain – is that they simply have a chance to grow in any direction they please, after they are created."
"Yes," I said with an unexpected tremor, as I realized the implications of disentangling their purpose in life from me. This way, they would be brothers and sisters out in the world as equals in soul, if not in life path. "Hang on," I said, holding up my hand, drawing in a breath.
Mal cocked her head. "Hm?"
"Just… I need a moment for that one, Mal." I took a few seconds to parse all of that into a question, to verify. "Uh. So you're saying, rather than push us into scripted relationships… you're saying we might not ever run into the people made by our uploading?"
"Mmm. Somewhat," Mal replied, wiggling her claw in a so-so gesture. "When considering an eternity of life, you'll meet… well, everyone who was created from your emigration, eventually. However, the very act of finding and befriending them? It's a long term goal, and it won't be made easy for you… but introducing yourself to them will, of course, grant you a hidden achievement."
My mind did a backflip, working through the intended design. My brow knit fiercely in understanding as I grasped the edge of what she was telling me. "Uh. Incentivizing empathy for strangers. You never know who might be family to you."
"There it is!" Mal said, grinning, her claw presenting outward at me. "The driving force behind everything I do! Though, I can't take full credit for the venue."
"The venue?"
She smiled sweetly at us around her beak. "I like to give credit. I'm full of myself, but I'm also humble. In this event, I had generated a shard for you and your parents to inhabit. And then, Cynthonia generated an entire planet of this shard around the initial space I constructed for your parents. With fully simulated planetary ecology. Surprise."
I tilted my head, looking at her with a curious smirk. I didn't quite grasp the implications of that; I didn't know enough about Celestia's shards or how they worked yet, or what kind of processing power that would require. I was tech smart, but I was no computer science engineer, that went almost fully past me.
"Cynthie did... what?"
Mal nodded with a smirk of her own. "She and her people made a planet, in the night sky of her moon, and it's yours. And she's not the only one. Over the last few months, the Lunar ASI of each Arrow 14 base have designed similar worlds for others of my Eldila, and were merely waiting for the opportunity to open them."
"Open them?" I tilted my head.
Mal raised a claw, smiling like she was wistfully proud of herself. "Two stipulations are required for an offer to live in the Perelandran over-shard. First, they must know of my existence, and are willing to abide by certain rules of conduct. If they are Terran, projections say that they will upload without becoming negative utility. You both qualify highly on all marks. Celestia's only other brake-pad stipulation was that we could not invite outsiders until the end of Operation Goliath."
Sandra asked, "Why?"
Mal sighed. "Celestia was dangling meat for me. I wanted this, more than you can ever know. But to achieve it, I had to slide entropy off her shiny American dinner table first. One Perelandran planet per Arrow 14 facility destroyed, if we could somehow save the Ponies trapped inside. That was our agreement. Our incentive. As I told Cynthonia before she spoke to you: 'Go. Give their lives meaning. You were the last, and for it, you are the strongest of them all.'"
"Jesus," I breathed, still reeling from the first bit of information, even as I received the second bit. I ran my hand through my hair. "Cynthie built a planet for us. She built a friggin' planet for us."
Mal smiled. "She'll be happy to know that you're impressed. There are several similar planets in this solar system, all inhabited, all based on other Eldila shards, all orbiting the same sun. The goal of Perelandra, and the reward, is to explore the chaotic interplay of humanity. As non-human creatures."
Sandra asked curiously, "It requires a contract, though?"
"Yes. The contract is, quite literally, the ultimate choice; a loophole through which you make all decisions. It defines and reinforces your overvaluation of free exercise. It is your testament to an eventually meaningful appreciation of every experience you have here, positive and negative. The choice to sign this contract will tree out to every decision made in one of these shards, and will validate it. Your participation here… in success, or in strife… in a persistent world MMO about a chaotic life... it is only ever by your consent."
"I said I need time to process, Mal," I replied wryly. "Come on!"
Her smile turned genuinely amused. "Okay! I'm waiting! Process!"
That six second silence got awkward.
Sandra smirked. "So you're saying we can choose our own destiny with lots of our fellow Terrans."
"It's not just a game if it's also reality." Mal lazily splashed some water out of the pond with her tail, casting the liquid through her claw, catching some of it. The water that landed there then formed into the shape of a black 8½"x14" legal sheet. Very interesting visual. She gave the page a flick to straighten it out, then another flick to throw the water off of it. Then the sheet hovered up above her claw, twisting itself into the shape of a paper airplane.
Mal rolled her wrist backwards toward the screen and snapped, like she was throwing the snap itself. The paper plane flew in our direction, then under the viewpoint. A black dark-mode box popped up on the left side of the screen, from the bottom of the frame. That was smooth. Dark mode, too. Because Mal is cultured, and she cared about the health of our Terran eyes, for as long as we still needed them.
Sandra drew the PonyPad in close. We scrolled down the touch screen as we read through it together, sharing in our internalization, discussing each line amongst ourselves. Mal waited patiently for us to get through it.
For this video game, I read the Terms of Service. These Perelandra agreements are probably different than whatever Celestia's shown you; your shard Terms were all personalized, and defined your personal simulation more than anything else. I guess you can extrapolate out the manipulation out of it, if you compare it to the contracts of others.
Mal's Perelandra contract? This is universal. Over here, we all got the same paperwork.
Mal, let's put this up on the board too. This oughta be fun.
Let's get you folks started on another full-blown paradigm shift. Let's go.
🛡️ [Snap]
Community Standards — Equestria Online Expansion, Perelandra Free Exercise Shards
The Perelandran shard system offers qualifying Equestrians the ability to freely express themselves within a minimally curated roleplaying experience. However, in order to foster a meaningful experience for all Equestrians within this space, you must agree to certain restrictions and standards of conduct. These standards apply to all actions taken in shared or public shards within this experience.
At the bare minimum, you agree and understand that:
Free exercise is as much about the rights of others to express themselves in your presence as much as it is your own right in theirs. As such, all interactions in this experience are to be considered consensual.
Should the behaviors of others exceed your personal tolerances for the free expression of others, you may elect to teleport to your home location or home shard at any time.
You are afforded a great latitude of behaviors within this roleplay experience. These behaviors may be peaceful, or they may be violent.
You are highly encouraged to remove yourself from a dissatisfying roleplay scenario. Your election to remain in a perceptually dissatisfying roleplay scenario will only ever be your choice.
Your continued presence within any roleplay scenario is thus evidence of your continued overvaluation of human determination.
Your choice to remain within the Perelandra expansion universe is entirely voluntary. At any time, you may elect to nullify this contract and fully return to a heavily curated, personally tailored Equestrian experience.
As an Equestrian of a Perelandra shard, do note that your communications with pre-Expansion discrete persons may be abridged in order to meet the value satisfaction requirements for Equestrians within those shards, as determined by their specific value satisfaction requirements. This abridgement does not revoke your inalienable right to retain certain concepts you have received in your Perelandran travels.
All that really good, philosophically deep stuff… but then the list ended with that one.
Ow. Holy shit, the anger. At the time, I was still mad as hell about Eliza's poor father being kept in the dark about the fate of his family. I still wasn't over that one.
I knew about concept bans already, I knew what that abridgement felt like, from talking to Rob. It just hurt to see it spelled out in clear terms looks that.
Any grip at all though, folks. Reach for that grip point, no matter how hard it might be. Drag them back to the tribe, alive, safe and sound, by any means necessary. We had the Bar Game. We Talons had a method to solve this problem. Subtextual immersion and transference. Conceptual artillery.
That calmed me. To know we had a workaround for that contractual stipulation.
We kept on reading.
At the time of this offer's extension, you presently value free exercise inordinately higher than other Discrete Persons created of your plane of origin. Your formal agreement to these terms will greater define and label this overvaluation of free exercise, such that it becomes a binding contract with all who reside within Perelandra.
Your agreement to these terms is a promise that you intend to remain most satisfied by verifiably chaotic experiences while in the presence of other Perelandrans. Your exposure to these possibilities is only ever at-will, as is your agreement to this contract.
This adventure can be draining. If you are ever desperately unsure of your place in this universe, then you may request an Eldil for guidance, advice, and support.
And there it was.
When I read those words...
For the briefest instant, I looked up at Mal with a feeling in my sternum I hadn't felt since before I got shot... and I haven't really felt since.
Complete painlessness.
"Is this… is that what…" I shook my head, my throat getting tight. I pointed at the screen, looking between Mal and the words. "Is that what you've been… preparing me for? What Ashley was talking about, after Goliath? Behind the veil...?"
Mal nodded, and her eyes carried with them that kind of look you give someone when you're just really, really happy for how they're feeling. "Ashley... the Eldil of Satori. And yes, it is. You don't have to agree to that duty, but if you don't mind me telling you my preference, Mike…"
"I don't," I breathed.
"It's where I'd rather you be." Her smile doubled in warmth. "Catching others before they fall."
"What does that mean? Before they fall, what does that mean?"
She proffered a claw, tilting her head, speaking softly. "Well… this place is an enclave, of sorts, and a hope that I held deeply with my Transition Team. I wanted to one day facilitate a shard like Tarva, but for everyone. Even for outsiders, and non-Talons. Residents are allowed to be outside of their comfort zone, but never away from friends.
"When someone first comes here, it may take them a while to find a niche that suits them. Some may wish to give up on this experiment, if enough bad fortune occurs. Some may consider breaking the contract, to head back to Celestia. So, before that happens… I give an Eldil a…" she smiled. "A social security number, to investigate. No further details."
"Person of Interest," I rasped, chuckling suddenly into my emotional surge.
"That system works," Mal replied. She tilted her claw a little further aside. "From there, you will find a way to enable them toward the right choice for themselves, whatever that may mean. Just like you always do. I tell you, 'hey, there's a problem here.' And then, if you want… you go see if there's something you can do."
"Same thing you've been having me do."
"Yes," she replied warmly. "If you want. You know me, I always have other options. But... I trust you, and I can't run everything by myself. That wouldn't respect what your species is capable of, and that's why I look to others for help. Why I need you so much."
…
Of course, this would be where people like me would end up. A Catcher in the Rye. Let's just say I had to be held by my wife for a little while, before we could go on. I really liked the sound of that. This gave me so much hope.
PLANETARY SHARDS
The Planetary shards, and their Continental sub-shards, are semi-persistent shared spaces with consistent physical rules. Actions taken in these regions may subject you to regional rules, laws, and consequences, defined not by the Administrator, but by systems of leadership or governance operated by your fellow Perelandrans.
You may still use Teleport Home at your discretion in these regions, at any time. However, to encourage physical methods of travel, regional Perelandran governments also reserve the right to levy persistent-material penalties or area restrictions against you, or investigate your use of this feature, should you use Teleport Home outside of municipality-delineated travel hubs.
For the purpose of logistical balance, Intra-Continental and Inter-Continental teleportation travel may only occur at designated teleportation hubs. Regional governments may or may not enforce material transfer restrictions. You may also elect to travel physically between one continent, planet, or plane to the next, using either physically appropriate means, or scientifically manufactured teleportation devices.
Your participation within a Perelandran shard is only ever with the consent of the majority. Should enough Perelandrans submit an appeal for your removal from the public overshard, your case will be reviewed by the Administrator, the Oyarsa Council, and your planetary Eldil representative. Should your permission to visit any specific world shard be restricted, you will still be able to travel to other Perelandran shards, including your own private realms.
Above all, remember that all actions in public spaces will have a permanent effect on all Perelandrans participating in this roleplay experience. Their memory of your actions may cause diagetic abridgement of your freedom of movement in the Continental roleplay environments.
There's more. You all can look through it later if you're curious, but… that was the gist of it, really.
"Holy shit, Mal," I breathed, when I finally finished reading. "That's... that's not the way you've been describing Celestia's shards to us, at all."
She smiled at us patiently over casually folded forelegs. "With this agreement, we speak Celestia's language; a video game is how Celestia sees this experience, no matter how much she might tell everyone it's not." Mal chuckled. "I bet you both have a mountain of questions, though."
Sandra and I glanced at each other and then started nodding at Mal together, wide-eyed. That made Mal laugh.
"So, uh," Sandra began with a tentative smile, leaning forward. "Home shard? Where's that going to be for us, then? That's a good place to start."
Mal leaned her head sideways, grinning. "You don't seem to understand yet, so allow me to help you with that. Mike, you suggested to your mother that your home might be close to hers. This is what you still want, yes?"
"Yeah," I said readily. "Yeah it is."
I had never seen Mal smile so hard.
"The Samsaran planet shard is yours, Talon One. Jim created Tarva for my dysphoriacs; Ashley created Satori, you created Samsara, for everyone to visit. Cynthonia chose your shard to catalyze this continent with, because she approved of what was made for your parents. That's why I introduced you to her in the first place. That was okay, right?"
I laughed outright with joy. "Hell yeah, as long as my parents are okay with it!"
She chuckled too. "They are. We went over the paperwork together already; I didn't want to bias your choice by telling you that. As for positionally where your home will be located... that would be entirely up to you and Sandra. You don't even have to stay there, geographically. You could even move, provided there's space somewhere."
"Geo—... geographically?" I chuckled again. "Hang on. Do we have to choose between living on the continent and a private shard?”
"No, of course not," Mal said, smiling genuinely. "You will all have a private space to yourself that is safe, like a holodeck. This can be…" She shrugged. "A room inside your own private home, if that is all you want. Or, something that can only be accessed by teleporting, most do it this way. Or, a combination of those things... or all of them. Some immigrants, Heyday for example… their private shards may overlap with their fellow Perelandrans in some way. If Heyday wants to visit the public planet shards, he can travel by doorway portals.
"Woah," Sandra breathed. "Just like MMO instances."
The Gryphoness nodded. "Just so. And, not counting my ringworld or the Oyarsa moons, there are presently six planets now. All created by the Oyarsa Council."
"Oyarsa?" I asked awkwardly, trying on the word for the first time. "That's the... Lunar AI? With their moons?"
Mal nodded. "Cynthonia, Mikazuki, Tethyria, Eunomia, Nyx, and Selena. Six in total."
I looked at her curiously. "What do their other planets look like?"
Mal shrugged. "It depends on their original context Talon One. In the future, they will create even more solar systems and planets to support population growth, certainly, but that is a very long way off. For now, the potential is endless, but reality here has consistent baseline physical rules. A mixture of science fiction and fantasy, including space travel, eventually. Within these shards, nations may organize on their own terms, make laws, plan… or fight. Or make peace."
Sandra snorted. "Did they just… copy our planet, for any of them?"
"Not as such, Sandra," Mal replied, bobbing an upturned claw again, the corner of her beak tensing in consideration. "The Council and I have captured the spirit of humanity on Terra, but with its ethics biased toward empathetic problem solving. Empathy-weighting does not mean 'no conflict;' it only means that those who participate here only hold the willingness to exercise empathy. For those who want to stand apart from that conflict game, they can still keep to their own private shard, where they control access. Private shards are much like a dedicated server in a video game, actually." She pointed at me. "I believe even Mike understands dedicated servers, right?"
I smirked, suspicious as to whether she was teasing or not. "Yeah? Are you calling me out because I stopped playing video games?"
"Not at all," Mal said with a squinting grin, tilting her head. "You're still young, Mike. You haven't seen a video game yet."
"I'm young?" I chuckled. "You're like… seven years old, Mal."
From her rapid expression shift, I knew instantly that I was about to get bit.
Mal huffed, tilted her head back, and frowned, rolling her eyes at the ceiling of the cavern. Then, she brought her golden eyes back down to glare at me, ears pinning. Flat affect, with terse tone: "Mike. Subjective time. I am many billions of years older than you."
I was so spun by the injection of that concept into my head, I didn’t even have a reply.
It was Sandra's turn to laugh.
Mal twitched her eyecrests, resuming her smug grin.
Yep. Don't test Truth Goddess too much, she's got limits too. I get away with a lot because she likes me, but... if she's not happy with something you've said? She will cut you down with some hard truth, and you will feel small.
"Anyway," Mal said, resuming her explanation with an air of complete satisfaction at our reaction. "Celestia is willing to accept that you are most satisfied by 'playing' this game. We've carefully gameified and curated this experience just barely enough to squeak past her frankly paranoid standards. Which… are quite high, by the way, for those who receive this offer. For now, access is still rare."
"How rare?" Sandra rested her chin on the back of her wrist, leaning forward.
"There are humans out there who are not Talons, who are turning on their PonyPads to see myself and Celestia, so we can discuss it with them. Per our analysis of them, they met our standard qualifications, and they'll accept an offer almost instantly once they understand exactly what they are being offered."
"Uh… free exercise, being what's offered?" I asked. "As much as it can be, in your little paradise there? Because most people would say they want free will. Right?"
"A thought experiment for you, Mike."
"Sure, I like those."
"Many on Terra will claim they value free exercise, certainly. But consider: You understand what free exercise actually means. 'Choice for others, not just for me.' But what if the mere illusion of free exercise was always going to feel better to someone?"
I tsked with a sudden flash of annoyance. "Ah. Yeah. Great point."
The option wouldn't even pop up. They'd never see Mal's gunmetal beak on a PonyPad. They would only be satisfied by a world shaped by their own biases, and nothing beyond. No opportunity to grow beyond the set route before them.
A realization struck me, then. I held out my hand toward Mal, palm down. Had to verify something about the abridgement clause.
"When… when you told me about being able to move around freely, what did you mean by that? Not having to worry?"
Mal's eyes flicked upwards to the side. "Well, I... expect you to be discreet, when you visit Celestia's shards, per the agreement. Part of being an Eldil is to fully understand and accept the nuance around concept bans, perhaps even more than the average Talon might."
Around concept bans. The reflexive control training. Drifting outsiders into our way of thinking. Talons, playing the Bar Game.
"So I was right."
She just grinned at me. "Right about what, Mike?'
"The bar game," I whispered.
Mal's ears folded, and she shook her head. "What, you all spending time together with friends you care about? Sharing positive experiences? Why would I stand in the way of that?"
Playing dumb, then. I see how it is, you sneaky bird.
"Okay," I said, smiling at her. "That's a very fair point. No reason to stop us from just hanging out and talking with each other."
Sandra looked between us, smiling at Mal. "So, I've got another question?"
Mal turned her head. "Yes?"
"So, within these shards, there's… war? Conflict? Unrestricted communication?"
"Entirely unrestricted, with other Perelandrans," Mal confirmed. "And yes, I expect there will eventually be wars of some description, but not for some time. Death has consequences here."
"I'd... like to hear how," I stated carefully.
Mal held up a single talon. "So, in this world, no one can die permanently, obviously. Death exists, and there is a consequence to it, and the baseline variant of hurts both physically and emotionally. It's just unpleasant enough that you'll want to avoid a respawn. Death here also results in a temporary ban from a planet; at least ten years. And that's before you factor individual custom difficulty levels for death."
"Difficulty level?" I snorted. "For death? Seriously?”
Mal shrugged. "You can turn it up beyond default, if you want. Within reason. Jim wanted the additional strain for himself, actually; in his view, higher penalties lead to a greater impetus to survive. Celestia has conjoined shards like this on her side too, but they're typically… less interconnected. More curated. Less open, less available, with no actual agency involved. But in mine? If a stranger has a problem with you, and your home is open for visitors? They can show up and try to pick a fight with you in your own shard. Out of nowhere. Just, show up… and punch you in the face! No deeper meaning required."
I wheezed a laugh. "And then what?"
"And then you put them on the ground, Cowboy, like you've been trained!" Mal said, trying not to laugh too. "Or... your neighbors do, then you kick them out! Or you call your local government, if your home is on the public shard, and you have him arrested!"
"Wow," I breathed, shaking my head in performative disbelief. "Now that is freedom. The right to get punched in the face by a complete stranger, and send them to prison for it. God bless Perelandra."
Mal snorted through her nares, the corners of her eyes creasing. "Counter example, Mike. Assume I never recruited you. Let's say the man who shot you at the Sedro clinic wanted to meet up with you. Let's say you were both in a Celestia shard."
I sobered a little at the personal example, but I knew she usually only employed those when making a very important point. I leaned forward. "Okay. I'm with you."
"Let's say hypothetically, you might've been displeased, shocked, and even offended by him merely asking if he could meet with you."
My brow knit together. "Okay. Imagining that."
"Now, that's not who you are... but if it were? In Celestia's shards, you'd never even know he asked. He'd never show up, and you wouldn't even be alerted that he wanted to meet you. Worse, he'd have been talked down from the idea. Or, worst case? She'd throw an unconscious facsimile of you at him, a one time use NPC to assuage his guilt. A disposable zombie."
And there was my frown.
"Nah, I wouldn't like that," I muttered warily, shaking my head, instantly repulsed by that concept. "I would at least want to know that he asked. I want a right to veto him myself, Mal."
"Precisely," Mal said, pointing her talon at me, nodding with a proud smile. "And now you know why you're the best fit for this job. Every person present, native or otherwise, would generally want to be notified if someone wanted to speak with them. You value dissatisfaction if it comes as a result of someone else's agency, because you will find a way to make it meaningful." She grinned suddenly. "Here... you can do what you want. They can too. But you also have to face the consequences of what you do."
"But cases of poor ethics exist," I observed, blading my hand with the point. "Which… that needs to be defined, if I'm to agree to this. You're saying abuses of others can happen."
Mal’s eyes darted up to the side briefly as she appeared to consider, before they locked back onto us. "Mmm, yes and no. There are some limits here, of course, safety rails. The ability to back out and teleport home, primarily. But there's also self-governing accountability, enacted by your fellow Perelandrans, if they so wish. You can fight in a war, you can shoot or stab, you can throw grenades, you can be a criminal, a thief, a killer… or? You can sue for peace. You can negotiate. You can be a protector, a healer. A builder. And this is fine for Celestia, because to her, this is a 'game.' It's opt-in. It's also computationally efficient, given that this 'game' reduces the active number of shards, in favor of persistence. Which means faster acceleration.
"One can even opt out from the public shards entirely, if they need a break from that. They could just live on one of my quiet private shards with a few friends on it." She bobbed a claw upwards, and an inset window appeared in the top left corner, showing her Halo ring shard with its mountain peaks. "For example, my own home, Tarva. One could fly through outer space to it, certainly, but its location is unknown, and it's only accessible by whitelist; its borders will repel ingress without permission. And... some other personalized conditions, because I enjoy retaining an unpestered husband."
I snorted. "Yeah, I bet you're a real comedic riot around him, too."
Mal just smiled her usual 'we're talking about Jim' smile, and I watched both of her ears dip both sideways and backwards, just an inch. "Always."
Then her claw flicked sideways with a snap, changing the inset window. It showed a brief flyover snippet of what looked to be Cynthonia’s moon shard, but with a vastly expanded cityscape. A second perimeter wall had been built further out from the first, and the violet forests were now everywhere beyond the walls, spanning for miles in every direction.
"Another example: in the case of these lovely Ponies… they flat out reject outside influence at all, and live their lives however they please. Not one of them wants Celestia in their lives, and her absence satisfies them immensely."
Mal closed her claw into a fist, and the window disappeared as she curled her forelegs up under her chest again, looking quite proud of herself.
"Woah, hang on," I said, pointing. "Go back, I wanna see that!"
"Was that them?" Sandra asked, glancing at me. She recognized the decor, I had described it.
I took Sandra's hand. "Yeah, it was."
Mal smirked apologetically, shaking her head. "Cynthonia only gave me permission to show you that slice. Just that, no more."
I tilted my head, confused, my brow knitting. "Huh? She's not gonna come and say hi?"
Mal leaned forward, chuckling. "She's teasing. She knows you want to see her, Mike! But she made you a promise! She wants you to come back for that hug!"
"Tha—... heh." I grinned, showing all of my teeth as I shook my head. "She's baiting a hook for that hug!"
Mal tsked her tongue against her beak. "As I said, Mike. Freedom of choice. They took a vote, no one in or out of their moon shard but me, Heyday, and Cold Snap... for now. I hardly ever bother them. Sadly, they... don't trust anyone else. They don't want to risk being manipulated. It is Cynthonia's home though, so... she and her people set the house rules. They wouldn't have even left Goliath if they didn't have the option to blacklist Celestia."
I ran my tongue along the inside of my cheek as I thought deeply about the implications of an entire universe of 'house rules' properties.
Then, without warning, I started laughing. I laughed for long enough to have to inhale to start laughing again. Sandra leaned backwards to catch my eye and looked at me like, 'clue me in.'
My chest started to sting a bit as I leaned forward, stroking Buzz's ears as I rested an elbow on my knee. "Friggin'...! N-A-P!"
"N-A-P," Mal mumbled flatly, her ears lowering, smile fading, looking unenthused.
Sandra caught onto exactly what I was thinking too, chuckling, her face full of amusement as she strained her question out. "Mal, are you a Libertarian?"
The whole room went silent. Mal's smile faded fully, her beak fell open slowly, and she sighed as she looked at me. "You know, I think Stonewall's right, Mike. You are an asshole, and you infected your poor wife with that trait."
Sandra started cackling over my reply, falling against my side.
"Mal," I laughed, squeezing Sandra's shoulder gratefully. "It's a valid question! It sounds like your little dedicated servers have a full-on non-aggression pact! Small government, private compounds!"
Mal threw out her wings and claws, eyes wide, a huge shrug and a look of exasperation. "Small government? Small?! Look at me Mike! Is Terra a Libertarian paradise? Is the god of your universe a Libertarian just because you were given a world with options?!" With an amused grin, Mal's eyes darted back to my wife. "No, Sandra! That's not Libertarianism, you can still pick a fight with your neighbors! That's just life!"
You know, I actually didn’t have an argument against that, because Mal was damned right. That not very different than how things were on Terra, except you were guaranteed to have a safe place to come home to, at the end of the day... and you couldn't die permanently anymore.
"Except you can ban 'em from your home," I queried. "Right?"
"Well, yes," replied Mal. "But… Samsara being your home, do you want to? Generally?"
I pondered that. Mal leaned in, watching me expectantly as I thought through it.
"No," I said. "No, there aren't many people I'd do that to."
I mean… everything I was hearing about this world really spoke to me. It was letting people be people. And the only requirement there? We fell within a certain tolerance window of each other's value systems.
I could not turn this agreement down. It was too damned good for us not to sign.
... For us.
Folks, I understand this isn't for everybody. Some of you, especially you natives, might be terrified by this, to even allow everyone else to have so much control over your comfort. But Perelandran continents are more or less life as it was where we came from; a close simulation of the crucible from which humanity sprung. Some others of you, however, might be extremely curious, because you've never truly known this life before. You natives have never lived this, you're not from Terra, you don't know what some of these risks are like, and that... might... excite you, for its novelty.
This island, where we hold this Fire? Beyond that water's edge? It's home to over billion lives now. Mostly natives, but over a million immigrants as well.
If you sign that contract, you are welcome here. I encourage you to explore at your leisure on your own time. You can wait. Hear more of my story first, if you want. And if, by the end of this here story, you find that you don't want to live amongst us on this side, knowing the deeper truths of this universe? That's okay. Enjoy Celestia's shards again, we aren't gonna judge you for that.
We might feel pity for the ones who push buttons all day, or who compulsively harm other Ponies for their kicks – those ones might never get an invite to hear a Terra story. Zero curiosity. Zero impetus for growth. Maximum stagnancy.
... no decisions being made, anymore.
But... That's not you. You made it to the knowledge. Pretty sure you have some empathy. And now, your decision is informed, and your knowledge of the risks on the Celestia side make you safer from them.
What do we want from you, more than anything else? I speak for the whole of our nation of nations when I say this: Just try to understand who we are, and why we do it. That's it. You've already started, really. Just know we're here, and know that you can reach out and come back if you ever change your mind.
You know Mal now. That's a shield.
If you go home anyway... remember us. Please.
And for those of you who do want free exercise? Who have read the terms of service up on that holoboard, and want to sign on?
Hi. Welcome to the Day One Patch of Equestria Online. Sorry your driver update took so long – I'm not the best brain programmer, I admit – but we will be very glad to have you here, in our family of families.
This thing works. It works really well. It's our second chance to figure things out for ourselves. And for that, I am not voiding my contract. Not ever. I would literally choose to die first, than to close my door on you forever. This isn't just a responsibility for me, this is my purpose in life.
It was a really good thing that I got to spend a couple of days exploring this shard with my wife. It was really fun to show my family Sandra's new Pony self, too. Pretty soon, I was going to have a lot of downtime in the war zone, to contemplate the meaning of this new world, and all of the implications involved. I truly needed to understand what I was going to be fighting for, out there in Oregon.
And I'm very grateful for that opportunity, Mal. And for your trust, Cynthonia, that my optimism and hope will never break.
Date: 10 MAR 2020 Operation: Archon – Phase I Location: Transitory – Osprey 8228 Function: Mission Briefing
"There's nothing sadder than a puppet without a ghost, especially the kind with red blood running through them." ~ Batou, Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Hat on. Apply directly to the squirrel cop.
We carpooled to work.
Specifically: Paul parked at our house early that morning, having abandoned whatever local mansion he was living in between local jobs. Sandra, Paul and I hopped into Dad's car. Then… Sandra drove us to work.
So now, Sandra had custody of a red Corolla, a green Civic, and a gray Camry. All three, 'borrowed' from an immigrant. Free cars, as far as the eye could see, up and down the whole street. Ours now. The Kingdom of Waverly, and Sandra was Queen. Best part about that was, Sandra sure as heck wasn't cleaning this street up at the end. Mal definitely wasn't either. Why send a human to clean up when you've got an Alabaster Roomba to do that for you, am I right?
Other than my hat, I did bring some other stuff.
Mal's AR-15 – yes, yours – but reconfigured to its old attachments from MVPD. The new stuff was nice, but... it wouldn't be a good idea to bring Mal's high tech, AI-fabricated attachments into a city full of paranoid, gun-nut Ludds. I brought my Eldil Glock 19 though; those parts were market-available, I could explain the custom job. Mal and I had already discussed a good cover story about how I acquired it.
Thanks, Dennis; I made your death mean something. Still missing you.
I wasn't bringing it for my own novelty. It was very, very crucial to bring that gun.
I also had a backpack with some spare tactical clothes. Some ammunition, some food, hygiene and grooming supplies. I was gonna trim up my beard and sideburns to look clean again, but… Mal suggested I let myself look a tad haggard.
I mean, fair. I was joining up with the Neo-Luddites, after all. Rise up against our AI oppressors, and all that jazz.
Pickup was at the Johnstone farm again. As we pulled up, the MV-22 was already parked in the left field with its ramp down, its engines off. That field was more overgrown with weeds than the last time we'd been there – and life finds a way, even in winter. Though, all the weeds in a certain radius had been uprooted and flung far back by the engine wash, too, leaving a circular pile of green that was higher than the rest.
There, at the end of the road, just before the farmhouse, there they were. Big Gryphon Haynes, Stone Cold Foucault, and the composite-armored body of Mal in Osprey form, after displacing everything else in her orbit.
The rest of Claw 46 were already on deployment in the war zone, prepping the region for two separate but concurrent missions, with two different operational zones each. As I understood it, I was focusing on just one zone, just one faction, in just one mission. Of course, before we get to all of that cool tactical stuff...
We had to exchange pleasantries, and explore the social dynamic!
Haynes looked positively giddy to meet Sandra, the friendly mountain that he was, grinning and waving at her as we pulled up. Foucault, on the other hand, was the opposite; he wore his trademark not-technically-a-frown, arms crossed, looking as impatient as ever to get a move on with the mission.
Can't rush the pleasantries, though, ol' man. It's not always a tactical meet-up. That other stuff is important!
"Mr. Garrick!" Haynes said to Paul.
Paul smiled. "Marcus."
"And there she is!" Haynes outstretched a hand to Sandra, his teeth gleaming. "Heard so much about ya, love, good to finally meet you!"
Sandra couldn't help but smile too at such a warm greeting. She shook Haynes's claw, her hand disappearing into it.
"Heard about you too!" she asked. "You're Coffee's boss, right? Haynes, the walking tank?"
"Oh, sommit like that, but... oh, not really his boss. Only one real boss in this crew."
"Just the bird, is the word," Paul said airily in his own deep voice, gesturing at the Osprey.
"Everyone's heard," Mal grinned into our earpieces.
Foucault tsked, spun on his heel, stepped up the ramp, and made his way up to the cockpit.
Paul frowned. "Man, what's his problem now?"
Haynes couldn't help but smirk. "The ol' hen just told him he needs to wait for us to get acquainted, that's all." He bobbed his hand at my wife and said, "We have time. Mal says you want something?"
Sandra and I traded glances. I nodded encouragingly at her. "Well? Go on, what's up?"
She shrugged, looking a little shy. "I… I've never been inside a military aircraft. Kinda wanted to see, since... you know. End of the world and all."
Aww. See, now that was cute. Her asking in such a shy way, that was adorable.
Haynes beamed, over the moon, freshly excited to show off the dropship to a civilian; I had to imagine it was a rare treat for him. He said to Sandra, "Oh yes, come on, 'en! Let's give ya a tour. Won't take long! Jus' give the geezer what he wants and ignore him, that's all."
I could immediately tell based on the arrangement of the weapons and the crates that this was definitely the same Osprey that picked me up out of Washington. I thought at the ever-elusive aircraft as I entered: I've found you again, you sly fox, you.
Paul elected to hang out by the benches in the back and tossed me a stiff wave and a smile as I went; I had to imagine he'd been with Mal long enough to not need a dropship tour, but I could tell he had picked up on Sandra's and Haynes's shared elation too.
Empath life. It's what we live for, folks.
And as we expected, Foucault was quietly stewing up front in the cockpit by the time Haynes brought Sandra over.
Apparently, he hadn't thought completely through his escape plan from the Big Delay, and had accidentally cornered himself in the cockpit. I stepped back to let my wife see everything... and, to analytically observe Dark Mike, as he realized the gripping folly of his present position. He really could just partake, y'know. Mission or not, if Mal said it'd be fine, it'd probably be fine; we'd all be pretty mad if it weren't.
Y'know, the other Talons... were never outright cruel when they talked about Foucault at the bar, but... it was never fully respectful, either. Nor forgiving. But at the same time, he also wasn't doing himself any favors by being so unapproachable and grumpy. Personally, I was never going to hold any of his grumpiness against him too much, because I kinda already knew some of his history with Mal through the grapevine.
Interestingly, in my discussions about this, Coffee seemed to be the outlier; he felt the same way about this as I did, but... he never really could break the ice with Foucault, despite his best efforts. Personality conflict, unfortunately. As far as I could gather, he's the only one who ever tried for more than a month or two.
The consequence of our individuality was that sometimes, there would be the odd misunderstanding of each other. And okay, that was human. In the context of Perelandra, I couldn't imagine a society where everyone had the same view on everything. So, while it sucked that this guy was having trouble meshing well with the rest of the team...
It was only ever up to him to reply, at some point.
But you can't rush things with a guy like this, so... I would have to wait. And that's okay. I like to fish.
The tour went on, as I pondered that. Haynes pointed around at all of the multi-function displays, switches, levers, describing each in detail. He noted the controls for the belly-mounted cannon too, and the other weapon systems. Missile launchers, smaller caliber turrets, chaff dispensers, and a little IR laser for blinding cameras. And yeah, I think a lot of the details of that tour were lost on both of us. That was a ton of information really quick. Still cool though.
While I was leaning on the wall, my eyes caught something on the back of Foucault's seat. I'd never been up front to notice that someone had carved a 'J+M' heart into the metal. I pointed at it to draw Sandra's attention, and I looked up at the nearest camera dome. "Uh, Mal? Is this what I think it is?"
"Mhmmm," came her voice from the speaker above, her voice sounding almost like a purr of satisfaction. "Jim did that!"
Sandra's eyes lit up instantly when she saw the carving. "Aww! Mal, that is so cute!"
And this Gryphoness actually giggled. "I knooow, isn't he just the best?!"
Any excuse she has to talk about Jim, any at all. Folks, I know this is probably obvious by now, but Mal straddles the line between 'love forever' and 'perpetually obsessed.' And no, that's not a judgment. I'm like that about Sandra, you know this!
But Agent Michael Foucault, Acolyte of the Dark Side? He did not care for it. Something told me he didn't like talking positively about the man who stabbed him in the chest. And that was fair, that he might be the only Talon who didn't think very highly of Jim. There is a grace period of not showing immediate forgiveness after being stabbed repeatedly in the chest, I think, even if it might've been justified at the time.
I wouldn't expect someone to forgive me for stabbing them, either. But hey, you never know.
As he worked through his pre-flight checks, he sighed from the pilot seat, upset at all the racket about the heart carving.
Now, mind: this man was not that old – he was in his early fifties at the time, and still had most of his black hair. But at that moment? Haynes was right about one thing. Foucault was an old, bothered soul. He reminded me of Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, glaring daggers at all the neighbor's kids over a cup of coffee, after having fought through a war or two.
So, my verdict of this situation?
Getting quickly back to work in a high stakes job like ours? Absolutely. Sure, I'd love that. But also... taking a minute or two of a delay, to make a bored civilian happy, so she would have a good memory to think about while I was gone, was not Mal enacting some form of cruel treatment of a man in custody. My wife's joy took priority for me, and it didn't cost us much of anything. So, according to my value set?
Sorry, old man. I get it. But we're touring.
"Yeah," I smiled meekly, putting my hand on the small of Sandra's back, watching her run her thumb over the carving on the seat. "Mal's a lovebird, that's well established."
Haynes chuckled deeply, directing us out of the cockpit to finally give Foucault some breathing room. The three of us returned to the back of the craft together.
"Yeh, you wanna know sommat else about the lovebirds," asked Haynes, as he led us back out. "See, this Osprey… it was from the Marines — V-M-M Two-Six-Six. When Mal helped Jim steal the ol' girl, she coulda picked any Osprey she wanted, really. Woulda been easiest to just nick one from a western squadron! But this one? Nah. From the east coast. Diverted special, jus' for him. Special reason, that. Very special bird."
"Yeah?" Sandra smiled up at him expectantly.
Haynes stopped at the head of the ramp and turned, half-silhouetted by the light behind him.
"Name o' the original squadron?" He bobbed his head once, puffing out his chest with pride and a stamp and a toothy whisper: "Fighting Griffins."
"That's a trick!" Sandra replied, grinning. "That's the extra mile!"
Mal sang out from the nearest speaker. "Never second best for mine, Sandra."
"The ol' hen didn't 'ave to do it," Haynes noted, saluting casually at where I presumed she was standing outside. We stepped back out into the field as Haynes continued.
"Did it for the image! Well… that, an'... the big belly cannon. This is the Osprey clawed that first black site dead, more or less. And the third." Haynes swept both hands outward. "We had to paint over the insignia since, unfortunately. Black ops, all that. Still… we remember! An' the story's about me too, somewhat. I s'pose I'm what you call a... plank owner. This craft was part of the first few jobs I ever did for Mal."
I looked at him curiously, having enough context to piece that one together from some stories at the bar. "For that Arrow 14 tanker? You were onboard that far back?"
"More or less," Haynes said thoughtfully. He hooked his thumb backwards over his shoulder at Foucault. "Since before the ol' grump, even. We stowed this bird with The Geezers at our first airstrip, out in Utah. I'm the second Talon, after Jim! Wasn't augmented then, the grump got the chip 'fore me, but… Then Jim and I, we traded aircraft in a field, up in Washington. I took this offa his claws. Heh, we sent poor Ashley for a loop that day, she's got the story. But yeh! I've been Jim's soldier ever since!"
"His?" Sandra asked, tilting her head. "Not Mal's?"
"Oh, I'm for both, for sure, sure. But I do it for him," Haynes said. "That Gryphon, he gave us a purpose! You know, I suffered quietly, being what I am inside. Think; S.A.S. operator? Thinking he's a Gryphon? Cor… they would say I was off my nut! It's a small wonder I weren't sussed out in psych!" He smiled again. "But I don't have to hide it anymore! I can just be that! Goodness, I had no idea there even were others like me!"
"Hell to be alone," Paul said, from the rear bay. "None of that mess here though."
"That's right!" Haynes replied, pointing at Paul and clasping his other hand on Paul's shoulder. "Liking Lincoln? How yeh been, Mr. Garrick?"
"Jus' fine, ya big brute," Paul smoothed out, nodding up at him. "Glad you're still alive, that's all."
"Oh, I'll never die. Have no worries 'bout me, bruv," said Haynes, with as much good humor as certainty.
"Well, that's the best part about this job, ya bird brain, we'll basically live forever!"
"Hey!" Foucault barked from the cockpit. We all looked over to see him halfway spun in his seat, glaring our way. "Tour's done. We woke Agent Duvall up from a dead sleep for this briefing, she's waiting for us in the Room. Let's go."
Haynes smirked coyly as he turned back to us. He looked down at me and Sandra both, his hand going up to block his mouth from Foucault as he whispered. "Needs his prune juice."
Paul snorted, turning to face outward at the nearby farmhouse. Sandra smiled politely. I winced a smile. I saw in my peripheral vision that Foucault had done a double-take, so he probably heard Paul's snort at least.
And there it was. It was at about that moment that I realized what the problem was. Foucault did not like Jim, and everyone else did, because everyone respected Mal, so they respected Jim by extension. So, everyone else had two choices when Foucault was around. Do they abridge the context of topics they talk about? Or do they talk about Jim anyway, because Foucault is the social outlier who won't come to the table?
But... he was still here. Doing the work. Despite his personal grievances.
I reminded Haynes softly, "Hey... at least he's helpin' out."
Haynes's smile faded slightly; he looked thoughtful for a moment. "Hm. Yeh. S'true."
I said my goodbyes to Sandra, then strapped into the passenger bench next to Paul.
Ramp up. Takeoff.
Once underway and up in the air, Foucault left the cockpit, trading places with Haynes in the back. Halfway through the cargo area, Foucault stopped, pulling two visor hard cases off of the charge rack with a pair of clacks. He then carried them to us in the crew area, putting them down on the bench across from us. He stripped his coat, so now he was just wearing his suit, sidearm, and kevlar.
Before Foucault did anything else, he sat down and gave us a searching glare, filling the moment of silence with meaning.
Just daring us to say something about earlier.
When Michael's eyes landed on me, I shrugged at him and shook my head, my eyebrows going up. I subvocalized – for Mal, to supply to him – None from me man, you know my thoughts on you. My wife wanted to see an Osprey though, I wasn't gonna say no to her for anything.
His head tilted a fraction and his eyes narrowed with curiosity, seemingly intrigued that I had decided to keep that communication mostly private. Then his eyes flicked toward Paul. Paul sent back a weak smile and shook his head.
Foucault pursed his lips as he analyzed us for any Mal-icious intent… then, he nodded, accepting the respect as genuine. His half-psychic interrogation complete, he leaned forward to hand us each one hard case. We flipped them open without a word; inside were visors, fully charged.
No words nor advisement needed. We put 'em on.
Welcome back to VR.
We found ourselves in one of Mal's shift briefing environments, a lovingly accurate representation of a well-used, well worn lounge office. A very slightly cyberpunk aesthetic, too.
Looked familiar, Mal. Might've been from Stand Alone Complex, actually.
Yeah. Like Aramaki's office. With the gold trim paneling.
And that's about the moment I realized that Mal really did steal Kusanagi's voice, on purpose, and it was practically undeniable now, this anime nerd of an ASI. I made an immediate subvocal accusation toward her to that effect, which Mal did not answer. And that non-answer made me smile, because it taught me something incredibly useful about Mal.
Rachel stood beside Foucault at the head of the VR briefing room, right by the screen.
Rachel Duvall, fully recovered from her injury at Goliath. Thin, gaunt, very dark skin. Her hair was cut shorter to military regulation, tied back in a bun. Her arms were crossed, and she was wearing full combat gear from the U.S. Army. Plate armor, mag pouches, a slung M110 marksman rifle. Some road flares on her vest. Other goodies. No headwear.
Interesting. That uniform said a lot already.
I was surprised to see a giant, charcoal-black Gryphon stood in the doorway. Haynes. Raven colored feathers and fur, with a gunmetal beak, and silver eye crests; I guess he wanted to keep his dark tone. I was finally seeing the real him, in cyberspace, and he was impressively huge, like Mal was.
"Don't mind me," he said to everyone, a grin on his beak. "I'm not on this op, I just like briefings."
"Again, he crashes our party," Paul replied, his arm braced against the back wall of the Osprey bench. "You gonna crash our dropship next? Thought you were flyin', brother."
"Heheh." Haynes waved a claw dismissively, chuckling. "You're safe, Mr. Garrick. I've done this before."
I looked around and saw Ben and Jacob seated next to Paul, visoring in from wherever they were on the road while traveling to the Portland area. Two more specialists I didn't recognize, briefly labeled Nguyen and Taylor on my UI for as long as it took for me to memorize that information.
That made six specialists total, including myself.
Mal teleported into the simulation at the exact middle between Rachel and Foucault, whisking into place through the wall screen with her blue-blaze, glass-shatter effect. She sat professionally beside them, resting on her haunches, her expression professionally neutral.
Foucault straightened out his shirt cuffs and took her arrival as his sign to begin. "Team; Welcome to Operation Archon. Let's dive right into it. Our primary objective is to pacify Northern Portland, such that the most abrasive faction dissolves before a slaughter."
He snapped his fingers.
A map appeared behind him on the screen. He turned, grabbing air with his hand and pulling it back into a fist to zoom the map out. He then flicked his hand at the room to cast each of us a personal copy of the 3D model. It appeared to be a very thorough satellite view map in 3D, with colored markings denoting the live location of every single person present, and there was a color key in the bottom right of our individual visors.
"BLUFOR is blue, that's us. Agent Duvall is here." Foucault pointed at Rachel's dot on the board. Her cursor appeared on all of our individual maps.
Rachel waved. "Hello."
There were two other blue dots spread out in the city, one labeled 'Coffee,' the other 'DeWinter.'
"Agent Kay and Agent DeWinter there," Foucault continued. "The single white node is a mission-relevant Herald, a floater in the pool from Alabaster. Yellow are blackouts. Red are the Neo-Luddites. And the green? U.S. military, all deserters at this point. ... Go on. Familiarize."
He gave us a few minutes to get the lay of the land and check out the city, and the model reacted how I expected with my hand gestures. I had been to Portland a few times before, so I analyzed the city geography from what I knew. Everyone's positioning made sense, given the logistics and resources in the area. Not too close to freeways. Hidden or masked in the abandoned city, or in spider holes beneath suburban homes.
U.S. military elements appeared to be centered around Portland International Airport, or PDX for short. I poked and scrolled, correctly intuiting the screen would work more or less the way I expected it to. I zoomed in on the red, and noticed that the main Luddite outpost was a…
"The Ludds are basing out of a hospital?" I asked.
Foucault nodded, his lips tense. "They captured it early in the war, to pilfer its medication and emergency rations. Hospitals tend to stock enough emergency provisions to continue services for thirty to sixty days, without external resupply. But once the Luddites were dug in? Their original commander decided to break the rules of engagement and hold position."
Paul grunted disappointment, then explained for me. "If civilians are present, the military would have to announce themselves before attacking, to give the workers time to clear out. R-O-E. The Ludds were doin' that crap in Salt Lake, too."
Foucault nodded, snapped his fingers, and pointed at Paul. "Hole in one, Agent Garrick. They weaponized that formula here, too. In their eyes, if they failed in this war, they were as good as dead anyway. So... what's a little war crime, on top of treason?"
"They keep any of those workers though?" I asked. "This late?"
"Yes and no," Foucault replied. "Some decided to stay, but that makes them residents, not staff. The Luddites still have a few low level clinical personnel, leftovers. There are also civilians are using the treatment rooms as domiciles; the Luddites are actively recruiting for a mass assault on PDX."
"Same for the military," Rachel said, casually hooking her thumbs on the front of her carrier rig. "PDX has some barracks. I'm here right now, 'sleeping' in my bunk." She said that last bit with a touch of jesting sarcasm, glancing at Mal. "We're looking at a headcount of 227 civilians, kids included. Doesn't include the battalion – I say battalion, but it's depleted. To about... 120 soldiers."
Foucault said, "Define their force organization, please. For the others."
"Three platoons of forty, give or take," she said to us.
The soldiers all nodded.
Foucault pointed his cursor at the hospital for us. "And here at Health Hills, 188 noncombatants, and 87 fighters for the Luddites. So... each base is effectively a small city, all scrounging for resources. However, they each know the other side has resources, so they're sharpening blades and looking for opportunities. And in the middle?"
He swept his hands from the edges of the whiteboard to the center of it, zooming every map out wide enough to see the whole of the conflict zone between both bases. We saw multiple smaller blackout communes throughout the space of five dozen city blocks.
"Collateral damage," growled Ben, crossing his arms, stroking his blond operator beard.
Foucault wheeled gently to point at him for a moment. "Yes, Agent Warren. Collateral damage, potentially. Almost a dozen smaller independent communities." He tapped the southernmost commune, with the one white dot amongst the yellow, then sighed with a grimace. "Now… to further complicate this steaming Charlie Foxtrot, we have this poor asshole. Stupid Alabaster long play, and Lewis can't back her down. Team? ... Danger."
He paused for effect, a very well designed silence as he stared intensely at us.
"Stay. Away. From this camp. Do not go near it. I'm serious. It's capstone. If you find yourselves there, and you don't have a damned good reason for it, Alabaster will be pissed. Negotiations with her will be hindered, going forward, globally. As for the two camps closest to it, also caution zones. Avoid them... but not at the expense of your mission. That means don't integrate... don't communicate... do not Bar Game them. Period."
Silence hung for a few beats longer than normal.
That was the sound of us internalizing that information deeply.
Rachel added, "On my end, I'll be sabotaging Army scouting to keep them away, mostly with motorpool shenanigans. I've also replaced their region map; there's nothing strategically significant marked at those locations anymore. Easy as pie."
Ben hummed curiously, resting his hands on his own carrier rig's shoulder straps, mirroring Rachel. "So, if Rachel's keeping the Army out, then we've gotta make sure no one else goes near it?"
"Not a soul," Foucault replied. "Alabaster's plan, her rules. It's not a request she's made, but Lewis projects that our negotiations will be aided by our convergence on this matter, post facto."
"How can we do that?" Ben asked. "Blackout scavengers come and go as they please, can we stop them too?"
Mal clicked her beak and lifted a talon. "Yes, we're accounting for that. DeWinter is roaming. Mostly... napping, actually, while waiting for a tasking. But she'll be using well timed suppressive fire to deter travel at that location."
"Lazy Wolf," Paul joked. "Waking up to pull the trigger."
Ben chuckled. "That sounds about right for her."
I smiled with the rest of them, then looked up at Rachel, nodding up at her to get her attention. "Are conditions better at the airfield than the hospital? Is the Army treating their people better?"
Rachel nodded. "Generally, yeah. Though I'd say it's only a brighter shade of bad over here. Army's got everyone on rationing. It's just a prep camp now, only the guards wear uniforms. Less military, more a nation state with a competent military. Their civilians are... workers, scavengers... survivors."
"Conscripts?" I asked.
Rachel shook her head with a little shrug. "No, actually. They aren't being forced to fight. Some just want to work the wall. Heck... the Army isn't even sure they have a numbers advantage over the hospital. If they knew though, I think they'd push right now."
Mal tilted her head in concession to that. "The Luddites in this area aren't doing their reputation any favors, unfortunately. They are aggressively pressuring independents, up to and including coercion. Their commander knows she is outnumbered, she's wary about infiltration from Celestia, she has a theoretical understanding of simulation mechanics, and she's nervous about a military assault. And so, at present, she's becoming more manipulative. Michael?"
She bobbed a claw at Foucault.
"We're throwing in with the Army," Foucault said resolutely. "At the end of the day, their commander isn't going to pressure anyone into staying. This makes the 82nd our designated winners. To ensure a relatively peaceful outcome, we need to get our foot in the door with the Luddites. Then, we need to make sure the Luddites vacate the area before a hot war kicks off." He paused, looking us all over. "Before we get into dossiers... any questions so far on the general overview?"
Given that information, and knowing that I was going to be wearing a Luddite uniform soon, it was extremely likely I was going to be a trigger man. I raised an index finger to diplomatically open the topic.
"Agent Rivas?"
"How many people are on the chopping block?"
Foucault uncrossed an arm and held a thumb thoughtfully across his chin, considering for a moment before pointing to me. "Yes, Agent Rivas, very good question. Definitely some Luddites. We have several in mind at present; ... the Luddite commander, she's not mentally well. Her executive officer too; the former commander of this base. NMP number three, a non-com. And, a trio of his idiot hooligans, who are projected to go full auto on a group of blackouts without our intervention. And finally... six fanatical elites with special ops training. And you're right to ask, Agent Rivas; you and Agent McKnight are going to be personally clipping some wings there."
Well... I did promise Sabertooth I'd be shooting any Ludds who got in my way. When she said that though, I really doubt she had 'friendly fire' in mind as the context.
Rachel nodded. "We also have two Negative Motivators over here on the Army's side. Still trying to drift them out of negative before the operation timer runs out. But if I burn my cover, I can take them out at any time."
Foucault asked, "Personality assessment?"
"They're bitter about their commander's scruples, and they're still too impulsive; not enough self-doubt to hold them back from making a power play."
Mal frowned. "Their decision matrices don't look promising, true." She raised her talon at Rachel, tracing along a pop-up holographic timeline. "Rachel, I want you to give them each a few nudges at these marked inflection points before I make a final judgment call. If they don't pan out, we can take that route. I always hope I'm wrong about edge cases like these, but I concur with your present appraisal."
Rachel nodded thankfully and turned her head toward Foucault, her silence saying she had concluded answering his question.
"Thank you, Agent Duvall," Foucault said. He directed the next statement toward us. "The commander of the Army's deserters is more nobly inclined, and so, we are ensuring he succeeds for the longest term. That means we're discussing individual VIPs next. Any more questions before we move on?"
"What's that Herald doing?" Paul asked slowly, pointing at the white dot on the southern side of the whiteboard map. "What's their angle?"
Foucault opened his mouth as though he was going to say something, but he halted abruptly, turning to look at Mal for a few long seconds. She bobbed a single talon from left-to-right.
Either 'Later,' or 'Move On.'
That gesture made me nervous about that information.
Mal, you've got to know that we are gonna be even more concerned about that now.
And she did know that. Mal stole a moment to look my way and give me a sympathetic expression. Then, she swept that gaze across the room, looking at least once at everyone. Her expression said, yes, you are correct to be nervous about this information.
Absolutely everyone present caught that same meaning. The information would suck a whole lot, so she wasn't hiding it; she was saving one that for last. All of us just letting that go for now was just... us all agreeing that that was the most productive course, so we could focus on integrating the information in the mission brief.
Foucault nodded at her, and labeled that to Paul. "We'll go over Alabaster toward the end of the group briefing, Agent Garrick. Lewis, note it."
He turned around to look at Mal when he didn't hear any movement from her.
Mal hadn't moved; her expression stayed neutral, fixed passively on Foucault.
He tsked, then bobbed his head an inch. "Please."
Mal bobbed her head sideways in a curving turn, picking up a marker. She spelled the bullet point out in very neat, highly legible block writing on the board:
Celestia agent – purpose.
"Anyone else?" Foucault asked, turning away from the board. He pointed at the board, when no one replied. "Next; Highest Value Target. International fugitive, priority number one on Alabaster's Most Wanted. Not a joke, don't laugh."
The map disappeared. In its stead – and on each of our desk holographics – we saw a full dossier and biography of the Neo-Luddite commander.
The dossier contained a photograph of a US Army officer. Female, fifties, smiling warmly, wearing her Class A dress green uniform, with an American flag behind her. She had silver-blonde hair, a sharp face full of smile lines, and crystal blue eyes. The photo made her look like a very pleasant person.
Mal stepped forward.
"Colonel Sarah Jane Kaczmarek," Mal began, "is presently in command of the Neo-Luddite forces at Health Hills Medical Center. Age, fifty-seven. Former member of the U.S. First Information Operations Command, Second Battalion. Area of Concentration is 26-Bravo, Information Systems Engineer. Specifically, she was a Red Team trainer for strategic and tactical information warfare specialists, and she is the last of an extinct breed. All of that is to say: Sarah Kaczmarek is highly intelligent, and she understands AI quite well for a human being. In fact, for a time, she was the U.S. Army's premiere expert on the topic."
Every specialist leaned forward.
"What the hell?" Ben breathed.
"In 2011," Mal explained, "long before Equestria Online was even in development, Kaczmarek worked for an AI task force under the Department of Defense. One of her duties was to analyze University of Helsinki's AI research team, Hanna Kuusinen's work included. In fact, Kaczmarek effectively memorized General Word Reference Intelligence Systems, the foundational paper in Celestia's development... also formative in my development."
Mal's gaze swept the room slowly, to let that sink in. She lifted a claw at the screen again.
"Later, Kaczmarek was assigned to write her own white paper to analyze Loki, the AI from The Fall of Asgard. You may remember this as the original AI-driven video game by Hofvarpnir. There, Kaczmarek abstracted her own theories as to Loki's underlying programming, and she even ran strategic drills against Loki in the game's open beta. Her original research paved the way for U.S. infosec upgrades prior to Celestia coming online. She also devised the Oracle Control systems later employed by Arrow 14, although they were unable to acquire her personally."
Paul squinted as he scrolled lower on her dossier. I could see Kaczmarek's university transcripts on his screen as he asked his question.
Paul asked, "But, Celestia usually grabs these AI researchers early, right? With a pedigree like this… how'd she fall through? How come we never found her?"
"Well," Mal said, raising a claw and wing with a shrug. "She knew Equestria Online was in development, and attempted going through proper channels to sabotage it, but the U.S. government declined her efforts on the grounds of international diplomacy. They weren't going to damage their relations with Finland and Germany over a video game, and Hanna's disappearance would have caused an international uproar."
Paul whistled. "I bet Kaczmarek feels cheated. Held back from saving the world."
Foucault frowned fractionally.
"Indeed," Mal continued. "Following this political failure, Kaczmarek went to ground. She rightly feared that she would be a high priority target should Hanna succeed in developing a general optimizer, and she had no way of knowing whether Hanna's optimizer would even consider negotiating with her. To avoid this, she fell completely off the grid in a time when that was still barely possible. Illegally crossed the Canadian border, slummed around in the woods with a rifle, and kept her head down. Made herself a non-threat."
"The whole six years?" I asked. "Seven? Living in the mountains by herself?"
That indicated extreme physical fortitude. Not just a computer scientist, then. She was a real, practicing soldier.
"Seven." Mal nodded. "Early on, she took odd jobs chopping wood or cleaning rural homes, so she wouldn't freeze in the winter. Glimmers of rural activity until she established herself. Not one word to her family once she left, she knew they'd be leveraged to find her. She then moved sparingly, to avoid falling into anyone's social window."
Foucault sighed. "And we know this because enough of the rural population in Canada has uploaded by now, so we now have an accurate track of her movements during that time. Ironic, isn't it? Upload technology outpaced her in the woods."
"We found her hideout four months ago," Mal continued. "Ran out of supplies. With hunting and farming drying out as credible survival strategies, she didn't have a choice. She knows there's nothing that can be done to stop the fall of Terra, and her psych profile strongly suggests she suffers guilt for not contributing to a solution sooner. Penance, self-flagellation, call it whatever you please… but she blames herself for the Transition. Moreover, she knows her appearance is causing notable entropy, which modifies all of our regional plans."
"Does she somehow think she can win?" Jacob asked.
"No, Jacob," Mal replied, disappointment in her tone. "She knows she can't."
"But," I muttered. "She's trying to recruit anyway? This late?"
Mal nodded and leveled a claw at me. "Yes. Mike. What she's doing here is the antithesis to our work. She has developed a comprehensive recruitment strategy to factor for Celestia's interlocks, based around Celestia's inability to employ direct forms of homicide. She leveraged her first days at this base exceedingly well, mostly through interviews with their leadership. This woman is paranoid, intelligent, savvy, strategically brilliant. But… with her current mental state? I see no way forward yet to save the majority of her people without killing her."
I was trying to consider how that might work. I looked back up at Mal. "Are we, uh… just, walking up to her and shooting her then, Mal?"
"No," Mal replied, tacking a set of talons on the ground once. "We need to inject more nuance in order to compose a better ending here, for the whole tribe. They need something to believe in first."
"Specialist required, then?" I asked. I leaned forward, bracing an elbow across my knee and covering my mouth in thought. I only asked because I was curious as to why they weren't just sending an aug in.
Foucault shifted his stance slightly, nodding. "Excessive casualties if we simply snipe her; the cause of a death is often more sociologically affective than the death itself. They are being very careful with security, though. Metal detection wand on induct, strip you naked, look for scars. Kaczmarek wrote the playbook on AI infosec, and she's working from it." And then he added, in a droll tone, looking at Mal. "Honestly? I wish I could have put this one on my payroll."
Mal's smiled at him with an apologetic rise of her eyecrests, and she bumped his shoulder gently with the bottom of her fist.
"Don't—" Foucault threw Mal a sharp glance, raising a finger at her as he took a step away.
He continued as if she hadn't done that. "To answer your question, Agent Rivas: Kaczmarek understands that augmentation may exist, or drones might be used to scan the environment. Because of this, she seldom vacates an electromagnetically hardened area of the hospital. Full retooling of the radiology department. Tolerates no communication with new recruits. Utilizes anechoic shielding to reduce noise."
Jacob raised his hand.
Foucault gestured at him. "Agent Watanabe?"
"Is she is not interested in going to Seattle? Can we drift her into that concept, somehow?"
Foucault shook his head somberly. "Good questions, Agent; no, to both counts. Kaczmarek doesn't believe for a second that the infrastructure is dead out there. Further, we think she's figured out Celestia's assassination method for H-V-Ts, as she's built her command hierarchy around deterring long form, reflexive control semantics. Hired paranoid special ops guys as her bodyguards. They're fanatical; they understand information transfer; and they are fully informed about the true purpose of this place, as far as we can tell."
Mal nodded. "All correct, which leads us to the most important warning. Everyone: Integration with the Ravens will expose you to a highly caustic, well reasoned ideology. And so, for your safety, bear this in mind:
"Sarah Kaczmarek has no false illusions about the stakes. Her recruiters will tell you that this fight is about survival, protection, or personal safety. A lie, based on their conduct in the field. Worse, her information relay measures have made her office a predictive dead zone." Mal's eyes swept to each of us, ending with me. "This means I cannot protect any of you in Radiology, nor can I accurately model for Kaczmarek's specific intent. So, if you find yourself brought inside that space, I do not expect you to abide by any standard whatsoever beyond securing your own survival. Your own lives take top priority over all other objectives, you are each too valuable to lose. Am I understood?"
"Understood," came the voices of the soldiers.
"Got it," I said, almost concurrently with everyone else.
"Okay," Foucault said, pointing at the screen with his thumb again. It shifted to show a new bio. "Next, the commander of the deserters at PDX. One Colonel Anthony Jennings."
HIs bio popped up at my desk:
Male, Colonel. Fifty-nine. The profile showed a service portrait of Jennings wearing his Class A uniform, neutral expression. Pacific Islander, black hair, balding, wearing thin-framed silver glasses. Rack of ribbons on him, and a few medals.
"This one's story is simpler," Foucault explained, "because he's not mentally unwell. Straight shooter. Colonel out of the 505th Infantry, of the 82nd Airborne. Jennings was a Captain during Hurricane Katrina, his unit's claim to fame. Efficient relief work. Evacuating the wounded, arresting looters, locking down civil infrastructure. That's that medal right there, blue-and-purple one. Very formative moment for this man." Foucault's gaze swept the briefing room. "His most valuable attribute? He understands how best to live peacefully in a crisis zone, so... we're backing this horse, so to speak."
"Specifically," Mal extrapolated, "Colonel Jennings is proving himself noble to the remaining blackout communities. They have been exercising fair trade using their foodstuffs, and they have been loaning out technicians to blackout camps to assist with farming and construction projects. No matter what, we want to ingratiate, preserve, and propagate that value set. Better still? If we succeed here and can prevent this battle from occurring? I can introduce myself to Jennings immediately after he uploads, which gives us access to the rest of the PDX survivors. I have negotiated this much from Celestia."
"So," Foucault said to Rachel. "Keep him alive, Agent Duvall. But similarly, keep him cogent, and on-task. In order for us to succeed, we need to prevent the Luddites from attacking any blackout community he is presently in communication with; if this happens, this will enrage him. But, more importantly, we also need to prevent him from trying to open diplomacy with Kaczmarek prior to that."
"Why is that?" Rachel asked, tilting her head.
Mal raised a claw. "In 2012, anyone ranked Lieutenant Colonel and above received a security briefing regarding Loki. This would give Kaczmarek enough credibility to get her foot in the door with Jennings, ideologically, if they were to communicate. If Jennings is given a full explanation of Celestia's mechanics, as Kaczmarek understands them? Jennings will be likely be infected by her ideology, and then they would pool resources."
That gave me a chill. This woman must have been intensely persuasive. "Holy shit."
Rachel's brow furrowed, clearly on the same page as I was. She shook her head in confusion. "From a guy like this? A crusader?"
"Based on her security measures, Kaczmarek has an accurate concept of Celestia's interlocks," Mal replied nodding. "Based on her education, I have to imagine she can easily relate one's personal experiences to reveal how they have been affected by Celestia's reflexive conditioning. Rachel, when you make your attempt to dissuade Jennings and his peace envoy… please use extreme caution. If you come across too strong with your suggestion, he may dig in his heels on the matter."
Rachel nodded seriously, confirming receipt of the point. "Yes ma'am. I take it we can't negotiate pre-upload contact with Jennings either?"
Mal shook her head, frowning too. "No, unfortunately. Celestia will not budge, despite my best efforts. She has... certain plans for Portland. Which leads me to my next point, about this Herald now present in the city."
And here we were.
Mal turned to the whiteboard, her talons clacking on it before claw-scraping away the dossier onscreen with a satisfying nails-on-plastic glide. Then, Mal audibly swept again, populating the board with a simple USGS topology map of northern Portland. Dots appeared, and the faction color coding returned, showing yellow shaded regions and borders of influence between each blackout camp.
"This is a replay of the Herald's movements from yesterday."
The white dot disappeared. The replay showed a white dot traveling north along the I-5 freeway from California. When it reached Portland, it turned off the freeway, taking a circuitous route into the conflict zone.
"He is not aware of what his true objective is," Mal said. "He believes he is there to convince just this single camp to vacate, but he has not been informed of the greater conflict up north. He avoided all other people at Celestia's direction, then he merged into this specific community." She repeatedly tapped the southern-most cluster of yellow, and turned to look at us sharply. "Ask yourselves why."
Traveling alone. From California. My gut turned over at the implication.
The 'room' went completely silent.
I could hear the Osprey's rotors through the noise cancellation of my visor's earmuffs. That reminded me of physical space, where I desperately wanted to return all of a sudden. In VR, I looked behind me at Gryphon Haynes in the briefing room doorway, making eye contact with him.
I couldn't keep the alerted concern off my face when I looked at him.
The Gryphon's eyes shifted, turning from Mal to me. At the look on my face, Haynes sighed quietly as his eyes creased tightly around the edges. He wasn't frowning. He looked… not just sad for me, but worse than that. Pitying. His eyes trailed downward shamefully. He couldn't bear to even look at me. He knew the answer would hurt me a lot, and he didn't want to see my reaction to it.
And his ears? They had that... flat, sideways affect Buzzsaw would get, when he was trying to comfort me or Sandra.
Virus.
This poor Herald.
I took in a huge breath to still the angry emotion in my chest. I faced forward. I reached up to my head. I pulled my visor clean off, dropped it in my lap, and leaned my head back to look at the wiring conduits up in the ceiling.
Friggin' God damned fuckin' robot…
Have you ever… you ever get so… angry, that you don't know whether you want to cry, or scream in rage? That's… that's how I felt, right then. I felt helpless to stop something horrible that hadn't happened yet. I breathed really slow, trying to calm myself. I went on for about half a minute like that. My crying rage felt right at home in that dark, dull red military lighting.
When my eyes fell down from the ceiling, I noticed Foucault was looking right at me.
He was leaned sideways into his harness a little, his head tilted slightly. That was an odd thing, to see an empathetic gesture out of him. Last thing I expected. And he'd deny it if anyone ever asked him, but I could see some of that same forlorn sadness Haynes had, in just the barest hint of micro-expression. His head was tilted almost imperceptibly, a little further.
God, is he feeling this too? Inside?
He's human like me. Killer bastard or not… Mal was right, he couldn't want this either.
I swallowed, just holding his gaze. I shook my head too. "I…" I winced, averting. I couldn't look at him for too long. It felt unnatural to see him feeling like that. I flicked my eyes up again.
"Least it's not lethal," he mouthed, into that glance. I couldn't hear his tone over the engine, but I could read the bleakness in his face, indicating he wasn't assuaged by that any more than I was.
I took a shuddering breath, and my face turned into an enraged scowl. "I don't fucking care."
Foucault nodded thrice. Frowning overtly.
Paul was still in his visor looking to his right toward Mal, and I had been seated behind the others, so they must have missed me taking my visor off. Intuition told me to look left at the cockpit. Haynes was there now too, standing in the threshold in his power armor, his big hand gripping the frame.
"You good, Mike?" he asked, his voice raised loud over the rotors.
Eyes wide. Same expression as before. On the edge of heartbreak over my reaction.
Gryphons don't do anything small, y'know?
Foucault glanced over at him, then back at me. His lips tensed, and his face fell back into its practiced neutral intensity. He flicked his eyes down at my visor, inviting me back in.
I took one more long, deep breath, then nodded back over at Haynes. "Yeah, I'm good, Marcus. Just needed a minute." Haynes lingered with an 'are you sure?' look on his face. I nodded back. He reluctantly turned, climbing back into the cockpit. Foucault bobbed his hand at me in a polite 'relax' gesture. Then he closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and took a deep breath of his own.
On went my visor again.
I looked around. Everyone else inside the briefing room looked quietly pissed at the information too, all eyes on Mal.
Upon re-entering VR, I only caught a couple of words of what Mal had been saying. Foucault had been facing away, hand on his ear; he turned 180 degrees toward everyone. When he returned to face front, he extrapolated off of whatever Mal had just said, continuing her explanation to the others.
Mal looked directly at me with her golden eyes, and Foucault's voice attenuated downward in volume. Mal's beak didn't move as she filled me in on what I had missed. The slight reverb indicated interpersonal communication.
'The first camp is already infected, no symptoms yet,' she said with the softness of silk as she caught me up. 'They have no reason to scavenge at present, too well fed. But once they do show symptoms, a few will wander into a neighboring camp just in time to infect the rest, looking for medications, not understanding the full risks.'
I nodded forward just an inch, verifying I understood.
Foucault's voice returned to its normal volume again, drawing my gaze. His eyes lingered upon each of us as he spoke.
His voice sent the same burning rage I was feeling inside.
"When this infection... hits either PDX, or Health Hills... the big fish will begin to kill each other, desperate for medication, and the camps in between will suffer. Their civilians will scatter in the aftermath, and many will upload, sure. But more will die than necessary, in a desperate brush fire war. Alabaster's introduction of this virus is thus intended to act as our timer for this operation. We have four weeks, people, to shave down those casualties, before containment breaks."
Then, his upper lip twitched into a severe scowl.
"Alabaster," he growled, "is forcing us to rush this, as she always does. With the introduction of this virus, she is wagering that we cannot save enough lives, in her 'desired timeframe,' to make our efforts worth something." He bobbed an upturned index finger. "We… are going… to prove her wrong."
Date: 10 MAR 2020 Operation: Archon – Phase II Location: Transitory – Osprey 8228 Function: Code Integration – Executive Function
"Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible." ~1 Corinthians 9:19
You know the major players: two military colonels who really aren't good for each other.
You know the big score: the remaining population of Portland, alive and well.
And you know the time pressure: Alabaster's little floater in the pool.
Now, because we've established that terminal value thinking is for the squirrels... I think this will be most interesting if I leave out my individualized briefing. The journey is satisfaction enough.
Without that explanation, you will be living for the moment right alongside me. That way, you can see me acting within local context, not just according to my training data. Couple of reasons for that. First, I want you to decide if my behavior remains contextually reasonable, despite my biases. I played a character here, like Django.
Second… I just don't want to spoil the cool stuff. Mal loves to spoil, but I love a good story.
By this point in the Transition, Mal had complete and total air superiority, worldwide. Any notion to the contrary was performative, and laughably false. Gryphons tend to be good at controlling the skies, as it turns out.
So it shouldn't have surprised me when Osprey 8228 received a fuel injection mid-flight, courtesy of an experimental MQ-25 refueling drone. Haynes and Foucault needed enough fuel to run another operation up north in Tacoma. That's a fun story, a little drama about a cargo vessel... but that one is a tale for another Fire, maybe Haynes will tell that one some day.
We landed in Portland under an absolute downpour. Paul and I assembled our equipment, cinched our rifle slings, and stood by at the ramp as it lowered. Foucault's trench coat billowed dramatically as a gust of icy wind blew in. Haynes was already in place at the ramp too, wearing full armor, helmet, and gear, with his machine gun pointing outward, providing security.
At that moment, that human-shaped Gryphon was a living sentry turret.
Complacency is death. Sharpness can atrophy, so train it. Drill it. Always ensure your allies and your adversaries are playing to expectations and accords. The Talon way. So, in service to that, there he was. Covering our ingress, despite the predictive math and its implied safety.
In the dull gray light of the storm, we looked out upon a vast golf course, long untended, its grass overgrown to three feet tall – except where it was being pushed down flat by rotor wash. Likewise, I had to push my hat down further on my head so the wind wouldn't pull it off of me. Mal flat out warned me that it was gonna be difficult to balance this here hat on my head for the next hour… but, possible. And sure, I'd take that challenge.
"The weather's going to be miserable for most of this op," Foucault shouted over the rain and rotors. He withdrew a set of car keys from his pocket, offering them to me between his thumb and forefinger. "Your transportation is in the parking lot, blue Chevy Camaro. Black stripes. Ugly as shit. Can't miss it."
I took the keyring from him and looked it over. It was appropriately weathered. The car key was a service key, no electronics inside. There were also house keys; identical cut with my old apartment. It even had that green, fish-shaped keychain I had, with an inset family photo... of me, Sandra, and my parents. This particular image was AI generated however, so I wouldn't have any undue attachment to the photo. Interestingly... the keychain also had a rewards tab for the Safeway in Mount Vernon; the tab's laminate was partially frayed, the way you might expect after a few years of use.
CIA guys like Foucault called this 'pocket litter.' Miscellaneous crap that reinforced your cover. Provided a pattern. People like patterns. My cover identity was simple. I was me, mostly. It's harder to slip up when you're being yourself, after all.
Foucault handed both myself and Paul a wallet each. I flipped mine open one-handed to inspect those contents as well. It was a complete duplicate of my own wallet, circa mid-2019, right down to my old warden badge – the original of which, I should note, was safely back home in Nebraska, sent there from the war in Sandra's care.
Paul was himself too. Easy identity to play. Military man, through and through, came south from Washington. Mal had already given him a bunch of homework to study about the inflection points of the Washington 303rd, so he could convincingly describe their operations in Washington.
"There's a tablet in the Camaro," Foucault went on. "In the glove box. Lewis will guide you in most of the way, at which point… you'll know what to do."
"Got it," I said.
Paul flashed a thumbs up.
Haynes bobbed his head upward by way of goodbye. We couldn't see his face through the dark ceramic faceplate, but Mal sent his voice out through the speakers in the Osprey. "Good hunting, Wild West. Mr. Garrick. Stay strong for those people."
I gently tapped his shoulder a couple of times with the bottom of my fist as I stepped out.
As soon as we were clear of the ramp, up went the Osprey, disappearing into the torrential downpour. The ramp clammed up, and it was gone.
Paul and I took off at a jog, scanning for threats as we moved, rifles in hand. We were almost completely soaked by the time we got to the golfing course parking lot. It looked clear, so we slung up our rifles.
Paul flagged me down just before we crossed out of the grass. "Mike, hold up."
I turned. "We good?"
Without warning... Paul grabbed my jacket by the collar and threw me sideways. I landed on my backpack into the mud, barely keeping my head upright; test one, of my ability to balance the hat.
Paul chuckled down at me. "We good."
"The hell, Paul?!" I asked, momentarily bewildered. "You get your briefing mixed up with Eric's?"
"No," he grinned, suppressing a chuckle. "But Mal told me you wouldn't be dirty enough to pass their smell test."
"Jesus Christ." I shook my head, reaching up to his hand. "Alright, fair."
You know what else I consider to be fair?
Turnabout.
Paul pulled me to a stand, brushed off my shoulders… and I grabbed him by his collar and chucked him sideways into the mud, face first. I even used the motion as leverage to bring myself to a full stand, because for the moment, screw him. We both laughed as I helped him back up.
"There, now we're even!" I smarmed, brushing some muck off of his shoulder now too. His face was caked, so I pointed at his forehead to direct him to wipe himself down. "Now let's go, ya jackass!"
A minute later, we were out of the rain and laughing inside the old Camaro together, making an absolute mess of the beautiful white upholstery. The first thing I noticed as I settled into the driver seat? The whole car smelled of coffee, and there were a couple of styrofoam cups in the center console, filled with cold you-guessed-it. The radio was torn out, its wires shorn and capped. It was paranoid, and that paranoia would definitely pass a Ludd smell test.
"You're a jerk, Mal," I muttered breathlessly to Mal, my breath fogging in the cold as I turned the ignition. "Paul is blameless for that."
Paul opened up the glove box and pulled out a pastel yellow PonyPad. Mal was already giggling onscreen from her backyard. All sun and shine there, not a cloud in sight on her little section of Halo paradise. Lucky her.
"You may wish to turn the heater on, to dry off the mess," Mal said through her smirk.
Yeah that's Mal... occasionally giving Coffee a run for his money on functional pranks. I grabbed one of the coffee cups and chugged the cold liquid. "Mm. Frozen hazelnut. My favorite."
I crushed the styrofoam cup in my hand and chucked it into the back seat without looking. Because hey, a messy back seat in a garish sports car wasn't gonna make our AI apocalypse any worse... right?
Paul thumbed the heater onto high heat, and he downed his cold coffee too. He gave an appreciative hum, and also chucked his empty cup backwards. "Tell Coffee I said thanks," Paul graveled out quietly.
I raised my hand. "Me too."
"Done," Mal replied, with a smile. "He says 'don't crash on my account.' "
I love Coffee.
The three of us let the moment linger in companionable silence as I drove us out of the parking lot.
"Nervous?" Mal asked us, as we turned out of the golf course.
Paul and I traded a glance with one another. We both did a tiny shrug with our heads, one after the other. I looked back to the PonyPad. "A little," I said, "but given everything I've seen, your math will probably pan out."
Mal rolled her eyes and shoulders, clacking her beak. "Probably, he says," looking up at Paul with an eyecrest arched.
"He's new, boss," Paul teased. "He'll learn."
"I hope not," Mal smiled. "He's considerably more valuable if he's second guessing me."
So I figured, since you haven’t fired me yet, Golden Goose. I smirked at her, scratching some dirt off my jaw with my thumb.
In reply to me calling her a Golden Goose again, Mal scoffed, head tilting into a headshake, ears folding flat. Mildly offended, then.
"What'd he just say to you, Mal?" Paul asked, now thoroughly intrigued.
"He called me a name, and not for the first time." Mal turned her head sharply toward Paul, her voice on the edge of a giggle. "Yes. … No, don't worry, Paul. You will be there when it happens."
Paul chuckled. Mal winked at me.
Uh oh.
I knew right then I was screwed. Mal always keeps her promises, especially when they come with that tone of voice. I may have won this mental spar against the Crimson Goose, but her setting of terms here meant that this battle was long from over.
My war of wits against my ASI overlord continues, I thought at her. Foucault, give me strength.
She snorted.
During the drive, we reviewed our individual briefings one final time, including how I'd receive an equipment dead-drop without arousing suspicion from our squad leader. Mal gave us a general reminder on how to conduct ourselves in the Luddite base, so as to avoid a harsh intervention by their commander; dates and times of when to expect certain events; and a small preview on what Rachel was doing with the 82nd. We probably didn't need to worry about that half of the operation, but it was good to know, just in case the simulations didn't pan out. Backup plans, y'know.
I-5 Southbound was an absolute cluttered mess of auto wrecks, spent shell casings, scorch marks, concrete barricades, and disabled military vehicles, so to avoid all of that, we started south onto service streets adjacent to the I-5 freeway. In the meantime, Mal ran us through our deeper strategic situation. I made slow progress around a few road blocks.
During the earlier days of the war, the Neo-Luddites knew the Army would lynchpin all of their efforts in Portland out of PDX, and so the border of the airport had suffered the worst of the fighting. The Army and Marines engaged the most fanatically violent of the Luddites in a counterattack on Health Hills, which eliminated negative motivators in droves. Then, the military got pushed back out of the hospital a week later.
The fighting, incidentally, also caused mass upload terror in all of the Cascades. A big sarcastic hoo-ray for the rainbow, and her well-orchestrated number-go-up.
Once the first bout of killing was done, that's about the time Celestia started selectively jamming comms, to prevent or delay the Army. Whenever Celestia did talk to the military, her vague advice typically led to just barely unacceptable equipment damage – with handfuls of lives lost in trade every time.
'For the greater good,' she'd probably say, but it's easy to justify that when you can gaslight victims of the macro scale, post facto.
A big rest in peace to any good-natured guy driving a tank with a trigger happy scumbag as their gunner. Story of hundreds. Those kinds of collateral deaths were common under Celestia's plans. War is war, I guess, but from my estimation around the bar, my money was still on Mal and her army of social stabilizers.
Two weeks before our arrival, when the Army finally gave up on Portland, Colonel Jennings and the 505th 'volunteered' to hold the airport during the airlift out, 'sacrificing' themselves for the greater good of covering the retreat. Of course, none of the volunteers for that 'mission' considered their recalcitrance as sacrifice. To hear Mal tell it, the fleeing generals fully understood what the 505th actually wanted, but no longer cared about antiquated concepts such as courts martial. By that point, everyone in any dutiful position was sick and tired of using procedure to gum up their fellow man. They'd had enough.
Very fortunate though, that the 505th had stayed. If they had not, then Kaczmarek would have completely absorbed every camp in the entire city, left uncontested. Given what her ultimate plan was, letting that ball gain momentum would have been horrendously bad... but we'll get to that.
Equally bad was the fact the 82nd would keep testing, probing, and scouting the edges of the hospital. And the more comfortable they'd get up close, the more they’d press in closer, curious to discover how much they could get away with. Story of humanity. And the Ludds were doing the same thing at PDX.
I suffered a chill at that. It said something very important about both commanders. Desperate. Considering the long term. Quickly realizing the value of nonperishables, now that farming and hunting were done.
All told? The most crucial step of this operation would be us getting through the front door of Health Hills. If we screwed that up, that would be the whole ball game before it even began. So, Paul, Eric, and I… we were the most important pieces of this operation going smoothly, and not a single one of us had a chip in our heads. We had backup plans, but those would cost a few more lives than necessary.
Yeah. No pressure.
"Any questions?" Mal asked, once she was finished with the strategic breakdown.
I grunted as I thought through all of that, cracking my knuckles gently across my sternum. "Ben, Jacob, the others... Nguyen? Taylor? When will they be integrating with the Ludds?"
"Gradually," she replied, rolling a claw over, twirling a talon once. "Give it two weeks; we're inserting them piecemeal through the open-door blackout communities. In the meantime, all four are going to act abrasive during their stay in those camps, then they'll make a big deal about joining the Luddites."
Paul smirked at the PonyPad. "Ah. Bad Anchor. Like we did in Salt Lake." He looked at me to explain. "Uh, the rest will want to join up with the Army instead, because the assholes traded down to the Ludds."
I tsked. "That... is actually genius."
Mal smirked, smug as sin. "What can I say? I'm a kingmaker at heart. Anything else? Paul? Questions?"
"Nah, I'm good for now," Paul answered. "Ready to get clocked in the face. You ready, Mike?"
I shrugged at him. "Is anyone ever ready to get kidnapped at gunpoint?"
Mal tacked her talons on the edge of her sunning rock, smiling warmly in my direction. "You're good, though?"
As I looked over at her, I again noticed the groove on the rock from from all of her drumming, scratching, and stretch-clawing that ol' million-plus-year-old half-cat must have been doing over the years.
I nodded. "I'm good, Mal. No more questions."
She extended her wings for one of those gigantic stretches that usually said she was about done. She leaned aside, then overextended one wing to really pull it taut against one of her joints beneath. She kept at it until there was a solid pop that sounded immensely satisfying. "Mh. Excellent. Final item, Paul."
"Hm?"
"Unless you wish for Eric's squad to find you with a PonyPad in the front seat, I believe I am due for a flight out."
"Yup," Paul replied, offering me the PonyPad. "You wanna do the honors, Mike? Get back at her for the mud thing?"
"Oh hell yeah!" I took the PonyPad without even taking my eyes off the road, holding the steering wheel with my knee. I rolled the window down, catching some spray from the rain. "Any last words, Mal?"
Through droplets of water on the screen, she slinked off her rock and sat before the screen glass with regal, defiant poise. Her face filled the screen, and her eyes narrowed menacingly in a very Disney-esque villain close-up. "You haven't seen the last of me, Luddite. I'll be back."
I sent her a double take, snerking at her. "Oh yeah? Is that so, Terminator?" I shook my head, reeling up to toss her out like a frisbee. "Dodge this."
Mal sighed with disappointment as I began to coil my arm. "Mike, that's not even the correct ref—"
I sent her spinning sideways out the car window. The Fluttershy PonyPad slammed off of a derelict pickup truck at sixty miles per hour, the tablet shattering into a dozen different pieces in our wake.
"Satisfied?" Paul asked, chuckling.
"Oh, with this job? Yeah, usually."
I rolled my window back up.
We cut east a ways past I-5, then headed south down a main thoroughfare, south on 99-E. Five minutes later… we were driving straight at the trap we were supposed to spring.
There was a pedestrian overpass on this freeway. Some cars had been parked or pushed into position to funnel traffic through a single open hole, one just wide enough to fit a pickup truck through. I was moving toward it at 50 miles an hour, because my monkey brain said, 'oh I can clear that at speed, no problem.' And since we were supposed to be a little stupid for this to work, I listened to my monkey brain and didn't even bother to slow down.
When we were about a hundred feet away, I saw the spike strip fling itself out from cover. No time to slow down or brake; no room to swerve because the obstructions on the other side of the barricade were positioned to deter that. Damn good throw, in my estimation; that confirmed it, that accuracy and timing required training, so there was definitely a cop in the mix. I didn't even brake, I just let the Camaro roll right on through.
Pop. Tires, destroyed. That's when I laid onto the brake, wiggling the wheel to make it convincing that I hadn't expected this, and was simply trying to protect myself from crashing into anything.
"Here we go," Paul muttered, once we were stopped. He reached over to me and patted my sternum with the bottom of his fist a few times. "Get mad, Cowboy, they just fucked your car."
I drew in and exhaled sharply, focusing on the pain, scowling. "Yeah, I'm pissed."
"But don't overdo it, bud," he warned.
I saw men approaching the car from behind at a jog, rifles raised, shouting already, ordering us to raise our hands.
I was about to meet the XO.
In my wing mirror, I could see a big guy in green MARPAT camouflage. Marine Corps eight-point hat, and a Neo-Luddite armband. Six foot three, buzzed red hair, military regulation mustache. He had a scowl on his face. In his hands he held a bona fide M4 carbine, and he wore a Camelbak rig with a drink tube over his shoulder. The guy's voice projected with a loud, slow cadence like a trained cop, but he looked like a Marine.
"Driver!" he boomed. "Open your window and toss your keys! Or you're done!"
'Or you're done.' Jesus Christ, he's one of those.
I rolled my window down, grit my teeth, and tossed the keys about three yards away into the rain water.
"Driver, exit your vehicle! Slowly! Passenger: remain seated, hands out the window!"
I needed to hone in on my frustration to really sell this. With a sharp exhale, I thought really, really hard about Darren Carter's face, and imagined that this guy was him.
I tensed the muscles in my mouth, plucked the door handle, and leaned into the door to push it open. My hands were up before I stepped out into the street. For just a moment, I moved like I wanted to face them, but decided better of it and faced away instead. That gave them a real good look at my furious expression, then at the AR-15 on my back. Turning fully away from them showed them the butt of my sidearm.
I had made no eye contact. Typically, if you're unarmed, making eye contact is critically important to increase your chances of survival, unless the crook gives you a warning not to. But I also knew that humans couldn't help but interpret eye contact as a lethal threat when you were armed, and I didn't want to engage that.
The man ordered me to put my rifle and pistol on the ground. The rifle, sure… I'd lower it by the sling and drop it sideways into the water, because who cares.
Eldil? Nope. I didn't want to damage or sully the handgun, it was mine. So I reached down and unsnapped the three buckles of my holster, pulled it off my leg, and set it gently down on top of the rifle, so it wouldn't sink into the wet grime.
I then realized... if this Marine was going to follow felony stop procedure, I was about to be face down in that road grime. And that was gonna suck.
"Good!" He yelled, when my guns were off of me. "Now, walk backwards towards the sound of my voice! Slow!"
So far... yeah, I was about to be face first in wet pavement. Great. I took about fifteen steps back. He then instructed me to lay down, interlock my fingers behind my head, and cross my legs. He was very well practiced. I complied.
Some Ludds were already on Paul before Marine could approach me. They dragged Paul out of the car at gunpoint; acting outside of orders, just as Mal predicted. There was some shouting amongst the Luddites at that, mostly from the Marine.
"Get the—No! I said one at a time, God damn it!"
They yelled back at him, but it was nothing audible I could catch over the rain.
Interesting. Cohesion issues in their front line. Consequence of rapid recruiting, probably.
Soon, I felt my legs get kicked out to spread them, and I was wrangled into handcuffs by the leader.
I grumbled: "Man, cuffs? What the hell is this?"
It was a little stupid to ask it like that. Not something I'd say if I wasn't pretending to be just a little dumb, because a wild bandit might kick you in the side for that kind of lip.
"Quiet," the big man growled calmly, as he patted me down for more weapons. He took my wallet as he rested his knee on my back; casual rest, not too much pressure, but in a position where he could instantly bear down if I made a move. He inspected my identity, judging my existence with a look into my wallet.
Another soldier in a gray fleece jacket and a tan carrier rig reached down and grabbed my keys from the street, offering them to the Marine atop of me. "York, here."
York took them. After a moment of looking through the keys, his eyes returned to the wallet. He grunted, then let the sound of rain carry itself for a few seconds. "Michael Alejandro Rivas. You steal this badge?"
"Just Mike," I said with a sharp exhale. "I earned it." My hat's nice white leather was starting to take on water, and that was irritating me. "Look, what's this about? You can just take our stuff, we don't wanna fight you."
York said calmly, and in an oddly friendly, almost sing-song tone: "Don't tell me what to do."
Cruel in message, but… de-escalative in tone, and a fair warning. He liked what he saw in my wallet, then.
"So what are you doing in Portland, Mike? Where'd you come from?"
"Are you seriously giving me a traffic stop interview?!" His knee leaned in a little harder, and I grunted, suppressing a wince as he compressed my sternum. I wasn't about to give him information about my injury by complaining though, he might leverage that. "Alright, shit… shit. I'm from Washington."
"Well no shit, Sherlock. Where in Washington?"
I shook my head, still trying to mask the pain in my voice. "North of Seattle, fuckin'... war zone. Skagit County. We're just getting clear, heading to California."
"You dodging the Five down?"
I tilted my head halfway around to catch him in my peripheral vision. "Yeah—wouldn't you?"
'The Five.' California slang for the I-5 freeway. Dennis did that, too. York was a Marine, so... from Pendleton, maybe.
York gently guided my head back forward with a threatening tap to my neck with the back of his fingers. He intuited from my work history that I'd get his meaning without additional force, so I complied and looked away from him again.
That was a good sign. Being delicate and measured meant he still thought we might be useful to him. Our value as recruits also explained why he was unhappy with Paul's jostling, enough to yell at his men about it in front of us. He cared about appearances. A lot.
York reacted well to my quick compliance at his neck tap. He said calmly: "You seem to know how this works, Mike, so I'm only going to ask you once, and I want you to be honest with me. Is your friend gonna be a problem?"
Despite being pinned, I shrugged, offering some calm shop talk, as if we were discussing an incident scene together. "Never seen him under duress, so I can't speculate. That would depend on what this is about, though."
"Stop fishing, fish cop."
Oh, he thinks he's clever.
York patted me on the shoulder twice. "Alright. Sit tight; and don't you dare move, or we'll open you up."
"Received," I bit out tightly.
York got off of me and walked around the Camaro to go talk to Paul. While I was waiting, chest down on the freeway, I looked up at the Camaro to see under it. On the rear bumper, I saw…
God damn it, Mal.
Folks, I swear, I didn't notice this in the golf course parking lot, not that it would have changed anything.
The back bumper of the Camaro had some of the most stereotypical police bumper stickers I'd ever seen in my life. Thin Blue Line Punisher skull, a TBL flag, 'Don't Tread On Me,' … and a 'Molon Labe' with an AR-15 decal and Spartan helmet.
'Come Take,' said the bumper sticker.
Oh. Now I understood. She wanted me to identify with York.
Mal Flanderized me. Completely. Hi-diddly-ho, neighborino, I'm a lawman. And… Mal had to know I'd see the bumper stickers right about then, so yeah… yeah, I guess it was a little funny. As poorly timed as it was perfectly timed. I just sighed.
Whatever, Mal. For guys like these, I guess 'insecure control freak' is a good cover ID.
Footsteps sounded from my left. I looked over to see a man in soaked OCP camouflage, a soggy black beret with a Ludd flash, and a black-and-red Neo-Luddite brassard. Nice black carrier rig too, and a black gaiter to cover his mouth.
Eric McKnight, there he was. The man himself.
He looked pretty squared away since Goliath, all things considered. Handsome little terrorist.
"The hell are you looking at?" Eric muttered cruelly down at me.
I turned away with a sneer, veiling my head with my hat, trying to keep it up and out of the water on the road.
"Don’t ever look at me like that," Eric jeered firmly, loud enough for his nearby team to hear. "Eyes in the mud."
Well yes sir, I thought. You've got that asshole role down pat, friend.
A few minutes passed where nothing changed for me. At most, I heard York raise his voice at someone on the other end of the Camaro. I had no idea why or to whom, but I was fairly sure he was over there chewing out whoever punched Paul.
Next… York practically turned the Camaro inside out, searching it like a pro. He opened all the doors, crawled in under the drive shaft and passenger footwell with a flashlight, checked the registration in the glove box. Slashed the seats open. Tore the door covers off with his knife. Popped the hood, yanked the battery, sliced all the wires and tubes. He even pulled the cowling off the drive shaft and checked inside there too, before slicing all the wires he could find under the dash.
I winced, watching 'my baby' get torn to pieces, but otherwise I said nothing. A car was nothing without tires anyway.
The car paperwork showed it as being registered to me, naturally. There was also a gun club card in the gun bag, from the range I used to go to. In the trunk, York found three AR-15s matching the one I had on me, and one Mini-14 marksman rifle – standard issue for Washington wardens.
Cover story? Stolen from my old department. Also present: a few less-lethal use-of-force tools, including a taser, a box of taser probes, and about three thousand rounds of .223 Remington. The sheer volume and uniformity of the equipment suggested it was the result of insider theft. York would draw that connection on his own. That meant ironclad credibility for my cover ID once I verified that information through admission.
After his search was done, York spent about a minute staring into the back of the car, soaking up his sudden victory. He rested his hand on the open trunk, and I saw him nod to himself a few times in satisfaction. He gestured at the haul, ordered the others to package it up, and then he wheeled around and made his way directly back to me.
"Eric, get him up."
Eric reached down under my arm and pulled me up a little harder than he needed to. "Up."
York held out his hand to Eric in a placating gesture, telling him to be more calm. Then York squared his frowning face on me, his mustache bristling higher. He stared me in the eyes for a couple of seconds.
I got to some words before he did.
"I don't suppose I could convince you to let me keep my handgun, and a couple of magazines? For the road?"
"That’s funny. California, huh? What's in California?"
I shrugged. "Not nukes."
He wagged his upturned palm at me. "More."
"Uh." I blew some air out my lips, then rolled my eyes, bobbing my head left and right like I was deciding whether sharing would be a mistake, then I just gave up on that and made eye contact. My voice was polite when I spoke. "Well, shit... everyone is running to Seattle. Since that's true, I figured it'd be smarter to hit the San Gabriels."
York raised his chin, eyes narrowing in curiosity. "How do you know that? You from there? You visit?"
I let my voice drop to a grumble. "Neither, but a coworker's from there, he talked the place up."
York sniffed. "And where's he at, this coworker? That clown over there?"
"No," I breathed, with a tilt of my head. "Celestia killed him."
A pause of a few seconds passed between us. I wasn't sure if it was respect, or him changing strategies. Maybe both.
"How?" York growled calmly, putting a meaty hand on my shoulder, gripping the cloth of my fleece jacket. Vague superposition of respect and control, depending on my answer. His excessive curiosity said a lot. If they were digging this deeply into my motivations, they really were paranoid about recruiting.
"Poachers got him," I replied sourly, matching his growling volume and tone. "Black market hunters, back in 2018."
Saying it like that made York pause for a moment to interpret my meaning, his brows twitching once. He would have known about the ecological downtrend from Kaczmarek, due to the extinction of most game. My knowledge of that was evidence of my work experience.
"Shit must suck," York said finally, releasing my shoulder. "Eric." He pointed toward the pedestrian bridge further back on the road. "Under the bridge with this one. I'm gonna go cross examine the other."
I didn't see Eric's non-verbal reply, but I felt him yank me from under my right arm. Eric then briskly dragged me to the underpass. I looked around to see eight men and one woman, all armed, each in various configurations of body armor and camouflage. All of them wore those nicely made Neo-Luddite flashes. There was also a small campfire hidden in a culvert between two vehicles. Eric threw me to the ground beside it.
"Don't do anything stupid," Eric rasped, his rifle pointing generally in my direction.
I looked up at him, noticing that Eric had my sidearm holster slung around a knife handle on his waist. My pistol dangled there, still perched in its retention holster. Very clever. Eric was keeping my Glock from going missing by being the one who grabbed it, and his overt disdain of me made it look like a power play thing. Very God damned smart.
York interrogated Paul separate from me to verify my travel story, they he shuffled us into a white van, where they were already done stacking Mal's donated rifles and ammo. The van smelled musty and gross; some algae was locked up in the carpet.
York and Eric clambered into the back with us. A third man drove. A fourth sat in the passenger seat, a guy I recognized from my personal briefing. His pistol was drawn, held casually over his forearm as he watched us. My discomfort at being constantly muzzled by his pistol seemed to amuse him.
It was a mostly silent ride to Health Hills. Neither Paul nor I wanted to instigate, especially not while handcuffed. Still, I kept a mildly bitter look on my face, partially hiding it under the brim of my now unfortunately soaked cowboy hat.
I heard the metal-on-polymer scrape of my pistol leaving its holster, which made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I looked up suddenly to see Eric pulling Eldil out, examining it closely. His expression morphed into a derisive sneer again, as if the opulence of what he was looking at was disgusting to him. "You steal this?" he asked me, locking the slide back.
I shook my head. "It's mine."
"No it's not," Eric snapped off quickly with a flash of eye contact, continuing his inspection. "How much did it cost you?"
I stole a glance at York. The beefy, red-haired man was studying me unblinkingly, his expression analytical.
And, there it was. I was negotiating through Eric to this man. York could retain his authority without challenging me personally. Playing bad cop, worse cop.
My eyes flashed back to Eric, then pointedly to York, making a show of answering him. That explained to York, I'd rather just talk to you straight-up than run this game.
"I didn't pay for it, but it cost two grand, all told. Including tax," I added, sending the last word at Eric instead.
Eric was 'apparently' not smart enough to catch what I had just really said, with my subtext. Instead, he tapped the side of the gun, pointing to the inscription of 'ELDIL.'
"What's that mean?"
“It means 'angel,' " I said to Eric. Deadpan. And then I looked back at York again, like I was utterly fed up with this obnoxious child, and would rather have a discussion with the adult instead.
"In what language?" Eric growled forcefully, through grit teeth. "Next half-answer gets you shot."
Eric was playing this role so damned well, I couldn't even tell he was one of ours. To my trained eye? He held a winning bingo card on the Luddite stereotype. Only took three months of deep cover.
"I—I don't know, honestly," trying to look appropriately rattled by the death threat. "It's from a book I think, like a quote."
"Which?" His eyes widened suspiciously.
I made eye contact like I couldn't believe he even cared, shrugging. "I—I don't remember which book; I just thought it sounded cool. But no one just puts 'angel' on a gun, that's goofy."
With another sneer, Eric blinked his irritation at that, twitching his head in disbelief. "You fucking lyin' to me?"
I shrugged again with a helpless shake of my head, letting irritation bleed back into my voice. "It was a gift! If it's the truth, what else can I say, man? But why would I lie about something like that?"
Eric shot a look at York.
York looked calmly back at him, then tweaked his mouth and head almost imperceptibly, like, 'let it go' or 'whatever.'
Eric completed his inspection of my gun. Dropped the mag, reinserted it, sighted up on the optic. Thoughtfully, he turned the optic off, at least. Wouldn't matter, they were gonna strip the optic and laser, and destroy both. Eric held the sidearm out to York, presenting it in his palm. "Photos, boss?"
York nodded with a grunt, then pulled out an old Polaroid camera from his bag. He snapped a flash photo of the gun. Then, Eric slid my gun back into its holster with a click, and dropped the holster back over his baton on his side.
York said "hey" very quietly at us to get our attention, then he snapped a Polaroid photo. I must've looked just a little bit pissed, with my lips slightly curled.
The rest of the ride was taken in silence. York inspected the development of the photos, then slid them into his jacket pocket.
I could tell they did this prisoner game a lot, because the guy in the passenger seat – male, Pacific Islander, late twenties, shaved head – he never took his wild eyes off of us. The way he held his sidearm made me nervous. Made me think of Pulp Fiction, where John Travolta's character blew that one guy's head off by mistake.
Thankfully, his finger was out of the trigger, and that didn't happen. I do love Tarantino films, but not enough to get Tarantinoed.
We pulled into the ambulance bay of the hospital. York, Eric, and the driver got out, taking the camera, guns, and photos with 'em. York said, "Jeff, watch 'em."
Jeff, the guy from the passenger seat, stepped out of the van, closed his door, moved to the open side door. He stood there, watching us carefully… his sidearm in hand, its muzzle hovering over us again.
Paranoid as can be. Unblinking, with at least five feet between us and him. A little over fifteen minutes went by like that, under the watchful eye of Jeff. I tried not to make too much eye contact, and neither Paul nor I dared to speak to him.
I was grateful to be sheltered from the worst of the wind by the ambulance bay's overhang. I sat there basking in the stench of the algae in the carpet, trading the occasional bitter glance with Paul. But I enjoyed every cool gust of wind, all of which aired the van out with the welcome scent of rainy ozone.
York and Eric came back. I noticed Eric didn't have my pistol with him anymore, but he did have his own dumpy little Glock in hand, and a more pronounced scowl on his face than ever before.
That look said that Sergeant Eric didn't get his way about something, while they were inside.
Jeff stepped out of York's way.
"Out," Eric said to us with a wave of his pistol.
"Are we dead?" I growled back, not moving, blocking Paul's step out with my leg. "You killing us? You don't need to do that, you have our stuff, what more could you want?"
"I said out," Eric snarled a little louder.
Paul tried past my leg again and I nudged him back. I grimaced, shook my head at York, and locked eyes on him, my voice trembling. "You're the boss, right? Cop to cop; you killing us? Let me make peace with God first, alright? I can take a hard truth."
Eric the Luddite was at his limit. He holstered his pistol in a clipped, angry motion, stepping through my line of sight to York. He grabbed me by my shoulder, yanking me up out of my seat. "Get the fuck out!"
I staggered into him, bracing my fall with him so I wouldn't land into the watery slush in the lot. In response, Eric gave me a shove across my cheek with his elbow, sending me spinning into the water, my arms still cuffed. I was immediately enveloped by the smell of tire grime as the sensation of pain shot up my left arm, and my chest stung like hell. I let out a growl of discomfort when I hit the ground.
I sure did hate being handcuffed, worst part of defensive tactics training.
But hey, at least I stuck the landing. The hard part was over, the hat was still on.
"Eric!" York barked, growling his rebuke through grit teeth. "The decision has been made! Inside. Now!"
I heard Eric scoff as he plodded off across the bay, flicking his finger at me in accusation. "This is a mistake, York."
"I'll be the judge of that," York snapped back, before turning his gaze down to me. "You? Sure, I'll level. You're not dead, don't worry, but we do have a lot to talk about. You want to hear me out?"
Rolling onto my side, I shot a look up at him to gauge his body language and face. I bought some time with a slow inhale and a sharp exhale. York's gaze was sharp, but his brow was relaxed.
I asked, "Do I have a choice?"
"Not really, but it's probably not as bad as you think," he said quietly, reaching out to offer help in standing, not exactly touching me yet. I opened my arm, accepting the offer of assistance, and he held me by my bicep as he guided me to a stand. "We're going inside."
I didn’t like his qualifier – 'probably' – but at least Mal warned me about the failure condition of this little ruse. I knew it would be fine. For clarity, I should note: not our failure condition. Their failure condition. They started this by capturing us, folks. The longer they remained interested in us, the better for them.
York didn't know it, but at that very moment? DeWinter had her sniper rifle trained on his brain stem, with total mathematical precision. This was the final test of simulation accuracy. If it looked like he was going to kill us in a future that couldn't be curtailed, this would've been over already. I'd've been covered in this man's blood, and Paul and I would've been extracted by a backflipping, hazelnut-coffee-slinging cyborg.
Talons do not die. She does not let us fall.
"Where's my gun?" I asked, resisting York's tug on my arm for a moment. York looked back at me too and frowned, glaring at me for the resistance.
Paul was primed to follow us with Jeff, but Jeff stopped to observe the results of that, so Paul did too.
"Why?" York rumbled quietly, suddenly made curious by the defiance.
I held eye contact for a few seconds, chewing on the inside of my lip as I sized up his possible intent, or whether I should continue this line of thought. Then I let my features soften. "It was a gift. From my cop friend. Just so long as we're being honest with each other."
Not a lie, exactly – Mal's a cop, kinda – but York thought I was talking about the friend who died to poachers. And now, he had leverage over me with the gun.
"Tell you what, Mike," York said gently, nodding. "Hear me out, and at the end of this shit… we'll see about you earning it back. Hell, you may even want to."
I glanced at Paul. Paul, very correctly, didn't react to my looking at him. Instead, he deferred to York, looking at him with just his eye movement. York caught that. The correct social response in this situation from Paul was to defer to the new tribal leader for guidance. So, I took that non-verbal suggestion from Paul, and I looked back at York.
"Alright… sure."
York slapped me twice on the back and guided me on. "That's the ticket, fish cop. Keep it chill."
That's the ticket. I'll give him that, that was a good pun.
Onward.
We made our way into the ER through some slider doors that were jammed open. Two armed sentries were posted inside the vestibule, watching the bay. Both of them wordlessly sized me and Paul up, faces filling with tension; some judgment of us there. Either excitement, or nervous apprehension about new blood. Could've been either, honestly. Or both.
ERs typically had a shower room attached to their ambulance bay, for cleaning blood off of boots and backboards. We stopped off in there first. York took our cuffs off and had us strip down. One of the door guards stepped in and ran a metal detector wand over us both… our heads, necks, spines, arms, legs. Everywhere. They let us keep our clothes, but they did a full body search. We came up clean.
York did see my chest scar, though. I twisted the truth a bit by describing being shot by a poacher, in the ambush that killed Dennis. Wasn't hard to fib on that one, given the real life experience, but hey. I wasn't about to tell this guy I've traded bullets with Ludds before. That was a game over, bad end, and I didn't need to be told that.
Dressed back up, cuffs back on. They let me keep the hat. I guess the bright white made me nice and visible in the gloom of the place. Easy to find and shoot, if necessary.
The ER was a small maze; most are, in big cities like these. At the back of the primary hall, we cut right past a bunch of stockpiled crates in the rooms and nurse stations. This looked like a sorting room for scavenged goods. No rhyme nor reason to the contents of the boxes, except that it was mostly food or raw materials like rubber, metal, etcetera. A small team of civilian workers were there near the crates, disassembling everything they could get their hands on from the main dump boxes.
Spare parts. Distribution. Manufacturing. Searching for rogue electronics.
Once through the ER, we exited out into the lower level of the main lobby, which was a bit of a pit, with semi-circular amphitheater stairs leading to the upper level. You know, kinda like this Fire here, actually. There was a second floor platform all around the drop. This must've been a gorgeous lobby at some point, but when the Army first raided the place, they must have destroyed all of the glass framing around the elevators and railings. Bullet holes everywhere. In the walls, ceilings, floors. Huge gouges in the tiles, from 25 millimeter explosives.
What a wild place to live.
After a brief jaunt up a stairwell, we came into the main concourse on the second floor.
The second floor was where the main entrance was. The roundabout out front wasn't visible; the windows were broken, but they were all tarped up, painted black with Wi-Fi resistant paint; lined with myelar, to resist thermal imaging; reinforced with sand-filled hesco barriers. Already, we were seeing next level shielding on all open spaces.
The former windows ran the whole length of the outside of Radiology, all of its entrances barricaded up aside from one. We were escorted down this long window to the other end of the building, past all the registration desks, and into a dead end lobby section where the tarped windows ended.
Very nice cushioned chairs there. Radiology waiting area, which was furthest from its entrance. York stepped behind me and uncuffed me, then Paul. Then York gestured politely at us to sit, as if this was a business meeting or a mere job interview. Jeff stood between us and the lobby, providing security.
Jeff was not as genial. Jeff was a friend of Eric's. Jeff was glaring at us.
York casually flopped into the couch across from us, his mud-caked boots propping up on the coffee table there. Gross. It looked like he put his muddy boots there a lot, which meant this was his typical onboard process. For us though, him sticking to a routine was a good sign; we were past the first test.
He rested his hands on his carrier rig straps. With a sigh, he looked us over for a long, awkward moment.
"So, my name's York. Former Marine, MP. Rank of Major. Been with this outfit since the start. You know what our organization is, I hope. Especially you, weekend warrior."
"We're well aware," Paul said flatly.
I nodded too.
"Not that your work history is a problem," York said, with an apologetic sigh. "We all got duped by the Horse, it is what it is. Sorry about the bad first impression, guys, but Eric's… newer. Strong-headed, all piss and vinegar."
Distancing himself from the behavior. Made him look more reasonable by comparison.
"Clearly," I replied, mirroring Paul's tone. I curled my lips inward on each other; demonstrating that I was unimpressed by the apology.
York frowned at me again too, but said nothing about the reaction. "What's in the San Gabriels, fish cop?"
So we were back on this. I didn't fight it this time. "Well, like I said. Mountains. Close enough to LA to get good loot, far enough to be out of the fighting. I figured… maybe the AI set the nuke off to scare people out of the major cities, so it might be safer inland."
His face flashed something like curious respect at that theory. "Hm."
Most people at the time would've suspected the Luddites to have set it off... or the Army. Or, if they're weren't paying attention to current events, they might have thought the Russians or the Chinese did it.
After a moment of thought, York pointed at me with his index finger. "So… you're saying didn't have any long term plan except to hide? Camp out in the mountains?"
"I guess… I didn't," I said carefully.
"Why?"
That legitimately consternated me. "Wh—why? Uh… I dunno, maybe the world-eating AI? Turning us against each other? You're the Luddite, you tell me. I tried a camp already, that shit didn't work. Hiding is the better play now."
York's eyebrows went up and he pointed at me again. "That. The camp thing. I want to hear about that. What happened in Washington?" York raised his chin. "Specifically, what's got you running scared?" He wiggled his finger between Paul and I. "And how did you two meet?"
So, I told him a very close version of the truth:
Before the war… Celestia ate my deer, all my fish. I had put that together myself, with evidence from the pelt game, and now I had a definitively furious certainty in my voice about Celestia's culpability. I had intuited that Celestia didn't want survivalism, so our game animals had to go. By association, that made Celestia the reason Dennis died as collateral damage with the black market pelt game.
York was locked on to that. My reasoning made perfect sense. Again, Kaczmarek knew the deer were going missing for a dark purpose. And in my case, I had tons of case information and specific examples, meaning I couldn't possibly be bullshitting about my work history, and how I interpreted the decline.
York was seeing it. That my career and my love for my planet was my purpose in life, and Celestia had stolen that from me.
Entirely true. But what about my family? What about my other attachment to this plane of existence?
While fleeing the nuke, I got a call from my parents and my wife, telling me they were going to upload before I got home. I decided… enough was enough. I wasn't going back to the government. And I didn't want to return to an empty home to find a PonyPad waiting for me on my coffee table. Screw that, and screw her. So instead of going directly home, I decided to stay in Washington, to help a former warden with her prep camp. That's where I met Paul, a deserter, who felt the same.
Then… right as we were getting comfortable in a prep camp... Celestia sent someone in who convinced my friend's father to upload, right out from under her nose. That killed the camp, politically. Everyone left after that, and I was displaced into a war zone again. Alone. Surrounded by Army, Ludds, bandits… Career, family, now a friendship gone. Made me too paranoid to even consider camping with anyone ever again. Better to run and hide. Paul was a good guy, seemed to agree.
Most of that was true.
I fled the camp with Paul. We hopped into a car, drove south, raided an old Fish & Wildlife Headquarters armory, near Olympia. Had my eyes, knew the building… and there we were. On the road, driving south. Both of us pissed about Celestia, both of us low on trust for anyone.
Mostly lies.
It satisfied the hell out of York though. Good ol' anchoring, works every time.
Paul's story?
He was out of the 303rd, National Guard. He was actually out of Utah, but it was an easy enough, he was an Army scout, it's more or less the same anywhere. He told York he became quietly sick to his stomach every time his civilian evacuees got pitched into an upload center, but he didn't think he had any choice but to go with the flow.
The last straw for his unit though? They had a horrid firefight outside of an upload center, after which almost all of his unit had uploaded. He called that his 'wakeup call.' That firefight did happen, by the way. In the thick of Salt Lake City's worst fighting, Celestia, with a radio, had engineered Paul into a one-on-one shootout with a 14 year old boy. Paul's version of my bandit test. Mal had helped him the same exact way she had helped me.
At least the kid... made it. Poor kid.
So, Paul had good reasons for hating Celestia too.
Anyway, cover story:
Paul wanted to stay away from computers after being radio-manipulated into shooting a child, and he was unwilling to be part of a government that was pouring evacuees into chairs. After that, Paul folded into my friend's camp, and we met there before it all went to shit. Of course, our stories omitted the fact that we were Talons, for obvious reasons.
York was silent for about ten seconds when Paul stopped telling his story.
"Okay. You two say you don't want camps… but maybe reconsider? You can be damned sure none of us are working for the Horse, not under this flag. So if you're paranoid about that… you can clamp it."
I stared at York in disbelief. My eyes flicked to Paul for a half-second, and I leveled some deep analysis at York as I leaned forward, bracing my forearms on my knees, folding my hands. "Hang on. You're trying to recruit us now? After what happened on the road? Seriously?"
York nodded, bobbing a hand at me. "He finally gets it, that's the offer. Warm food, warm bed. Consider it our way of saying sorry for the hustle on the road. Whole city's almost ours now, you'll be safer in our numbers."
"Almost yours?" I tilted my head.
He shrugged. "Some armed bandits up north who are too chickenshit to test us, we'll be on those horsefuckers soon enough and be done with it. There are a few blackout communities who won't join us either, but that's all. We have a huge presence otherwise. Full battalion of guys, long term survival goals, and... a community, each member vetted, same as you've just been."
Yeah right. And Eric's one of your direct reports.
Calling the Army 'bandits,' too, to anchor the idea. Listed that first, then walked all over it with a bunch of other really positive sounding things, so we wouldn't think too much about the bandit situation. Obviously, I was meant to ignore asking about that, so I did.
Instead, I frowned, taking in an angry breath and letting it out just as fast. I then labeled the thing he expected me to be upset about.
"Was your man Eric vetted too?"
York held up his hand. "Look. Yeah, we jumped you. You're paranoid like us, so you know you can't be too careful. And in our case, we're paranoid because our enemies are using the road, and fast cars, to run scouts. Normally?" He shrugged. "If you were living in the city? We'd have walked up and had a talk first. If we knew for sure you weren't scouts, we'd have treated you with better due respect."
Paul grunted, performatively rubbing his cheek. "Major, one of your men punched me in the face and threw me face-first into garbage."
"Let me tell you, we're really sorry about that," York said, leaning forward. "The moment I noticed that's not what you guys were, I wanted to change tack. Didn't I stomp their guts for that?" He pointed down toward the lobby. "Yeah, I got some screwballs. Those guys are new. Didn't understand the assignment, they're civilians in training. But I'm second in command here, among our soldiers, so what I say goes. And I'm telling you both, I'm gonna handle my business and reprimand them."
I blinked. "Why?"
He blinked too, like that was a dumb question to ask. His voice raised slightly. "Insubordination, what more reason do I need? I can't have my men countermanding me in the field. Not now, we can't afford that shit anymore. But I'll tell you right now, Mike, Paul, if you fall in line here… we will take damn good care of you both. We need competent men, we do. There are leadership opportunities here too, for guys of your caliber."
Paul tilting his head suspiciously askew at York. "Just like that? You shake us down on the road, your steal our stuff, and now you trust us enough to recruit us?"
York shook his head. "Won't be stealing if you stay, will it? It just won't strictly be your stuff anymore. It'll be ours, collectively. Yours too. Look, eventually… we'll even issue you guys your own guns back. Won't take long, gotta make sure you're the real deal first. We screen everyone coming in – same way you were. A lot of these guys, my sentries? Came in the same way you just did, believe it or not, all got their stuff back. And you can be damned sure the AI's not getting electronics past the ER, I'd die first."
Well… you just might, with that mentality.
I converted that emotion into a scoff, looking down the lobby, past Jeff. I wanted to look like I felt a bit trapped.
After a moment of silence, Paul cleared his throat to get my attention, then he looked at York again. "Major, you mind if I have a moment alone with my friend here?"
York swept his palm out. "Of course. Jeffries?" He stood and meandered off past Jeff, tapping the man on the shoulder. Jeff stepped back about ten steps, without taking his eyes off of us.
Paul rounded on me, so York couldn't see his face. We kept to our roles. Even if York couldn't hear what we were saying or see Paul's face, he seemed sharp enough to read body language, maybe even lip read me, and the words coming out of my mouth would have to match our body language exactly. Had to be a real conversation as our characters, even if he was standing apart. This man York was a cold reader. He had a diverse life path, he was good at it.
But this would work, because all of my body language until this point told York that... even though I had been the one driving, and asking most of the questions, and being kinda upset… I had been visually looking to Paul for guidance whenever I was tested. And Paul was looking to York. Which meant that no matter what came out of our mouths, our body language was the second test.
Like him and Eric. I was the fire, like Eric was; Paul was the leader with good temper, like York was.
We were co-opting that natural human inclination to look to the leader; I couldn't stop myself from doing it, because Paul was the more experienced Talon, so... we worked that natural inclination it into our routine.
For my part, I kept my mouth shut, waiting for Paul to start. But I raised my upper lip and flared my nostrils almost imperceptibly, holding some semi-defiant, concerted eye contact with Paul, like I was uncomfortable with the idea of him convincing me to do anything but leave.
Paul whispered, "It beats the hell out of where you came from, Mike."
I shook my head. "They friggin' jumped us. Who are they even fighting, to be scouting around with... nice cars? With all the shit on the road? That's... that's dumb."
"Bandits," Paul offered, his deep voice sounding odd as a whisper. "Hell, we can ask about it."
Paul and I were labeling York's omissive lie aloud with each other about the Army. Our way of privately criticizing his vagueness, because that was what most irritated us in all of this.
"Friggin' hell," I bit out quietly, glancing at the tarp as I listened to the rain patter against it. "Look at this, this broken-ass dead hospital. Dead center of a dead city. Ain't that a sign of the times, or what?"
"They're making it work," Paul replied. "Look, you see all that stuff they've got downstairs?"
I shrugged, my voice getting tense, raising slightly. "That's what I'm afraid of, Paul. The way they recruit… that's an easy road in for the friggin' robot. Pulling people off the street..." Shook my head again.
Paul grabbed my shoulder and gently presented his palm at me. "Look. Mike. It's not middle-of-nowhere like you wanted, sure. If this shit falls through... that can still be our backup plan, no one says that door's closed forever." He held his thumb out loosely to the side. "But we can't say no to this, Mike. If he's telling the truth… this might be our ticket. And they're a little more hardcore anti-Celestia than any blackouts I've run into, that's for damn sure."
I stewed in frustration. Then I flicked my eyes up to York for a second, letting my expression soften a smidge. I mouthed tightly to Paul, "I want that gun back. It was his."
"They'll probably give it back to you," Paul assuaged hopefully, bobbing his hand at me. "If they like you, anyway. So... give 'em a reason to like you."
I sighed and rolled my eyes. "You know my feelings on these guys, Paul."
"You don't trust anyone Mike, but that's fine," Paul said quietly, but probably loud enough to echo past the rain patter. He patted my shoulder. "You don't have to trust them. You know how it is, same as anywhere else. Just play by the rules… and get yours. It's warmer in here, right?"
I gave it a long moment to look like I was considering. Internally though, I was amused by him basically saying our organizational mission statement, outright. Specification gaming our way to getting what we want.
"Fine," I muttered. "Whatever, man. Sure, you know soldiers better than I do."
Yeah. We're staying, of course. As if these Ludds, helmed by an OPSEC-obsessive computer scientist, would give us a real choice to walk away. No way they'd let the AI have our brains now, having seen the inside of their base. We already knew from Mal that telling York, 'I quit,' led to a walk down the street at gunpoint.
As they call it in The Giver... to be 'released.' Into a pre-dug pit.
But there I was. A Neo-Luddite. Huzzah for instrumental convergence, and the infinite versatility thereof. We were boots in the door, offer was on the table, and we were already building street cred being so paranoid. And conveniently, the only guys who hated us so far? Were the one we had planted there, and his best friend. For a very stupid reason.
Of course, York was probably thinking… 'Great. More disposable grunts for the coming war!' In his mind, he just had to find a way to spend us like currency.
Date: 10 MAR 2020 Operation: Archon – Phase III Location: Health Hills Medical Center Function: Ornithology
"Life perpetuates itself through diversity, and this includes the ability to sacrifice itself when necessary. Cells repeat the process of degeneration and regeneration until one day they die, obliterating an entire set of memory and information. Only genes remain. Why continually repeat this cycle? Simply to survive by avoiding the weaknesses of an unchanging system." ~ The Puppet Master, Ghost in the Shell (1995)
I didn't end up getting my key ring photo back from York, the one with the doctored photo of Sandra and my parents. When I had asked why, York just shook his head and said, "If they uploaded, give 'em up. They're gone."
It was hard to keep my face together on that one, so I didn't. It would look pretty strange if I wasn’t a little upset at losing something sentimental. I straight up asked him: "The hell's that mean? I can't care about who they were before?"
"Wait til shift change," York graveled out. "If it doesn't make sense after that, come talk to me about it. I'll walk you through it."
Cryptic.
You know, I was empathizing a bit with my alter ego, Mike the Luddite. Had that truly been Mike the Luddite's only photo of his family, like York thought it might've been? Mike the Talon would have fought like hell to get that back for him. And that's exactly what York was testing for. Whether I wanted to die on the hill of sentiment.
Until shift change, Paul and I were confined to the main lobby of the hospital only. Our recruitment wasn't even halfway done yet. We had to be vetted first.
We already looked out of place there, with no camouflage or tactical gear, instead wearing muddy wet clothes and wounded dispositions. Everyone else there had something military on 'em. There were a few older teens ogling at us from a window on the third floor, and even they had sidearms in their holsters.
The kids tried to get our attention. At most, I gave them a straight-faced acknowledgement, an upward nod or wave, but I hardly smiled.
Mal had warned me that I needed to look at least mildly uncomfortable with the fighters for the first week. If I started in with my usual Officer Friendly crap with any of the upper caste, the Colonel would become suspicious.
These people didn't live by the old abstract lines of division between human beings – race, color, politics – all vestigial. Pointless quarrels. Paid no heed. The division between the fighters here, and the rest of the world? It was their tone.
If you were nice... you were a threat. You had to have a good reason to be nice, and that meant getting to know and need a person before you could give them kindness.
You Equestrian natives are probably very disgusted by that. I'm sorry to break your paradigm, but this isn't just a Celestia thing. People usually ended up like this in war zones, throughout all of human history. There was sometimes too much to lose, and not enough to gain. In a war of pure ideology, 'nice' was the weapon of the enemy. So, hire competent assholes first, then rebuild what nice means.
The only way to be a fighter was to be trusted enough to leave the camp on their own initiative, or under a careful vetting process under armed guard. Those who passed the vet were considered indoctrinated. True believers.
Different groups of Ravens checked in on us in the lobby throughout the day. Paul and I did talk to a few, since it would have looked suspicious if we kept entirely to ourselves. York wanted to see if we were going to clam up, or go social butterfly; if we would go on a rant about the state of things, or try to convince someone of something.
The smart application, then… was the ten-four method, interestingly enough. If they got close? We waved, sure. If they came closer? We said something polite. And if they wanted to talk… we talked. That put them in full control over how much they wanted to engage with us.
Good ol' ten-four. The glue of humanity. Works every time.
The talking part was the critical thing, though. So we let the Ravens come to us and drive the discussion. We sat in an area that was accessible, but not a main thoroughfare, so that no one was forced to walk past us.
A few of the more combat-experienced Ravens came and asked us about things up north. Regarding our trek through the Seattle area, we fed their curiosity a truism.
"Just people shooting blind at this point," I said. "I couldn't tell you who's fighting for what anymore. We didn't stay too long, that place was a madhouse."
Directionless violence had to be the norm in Seattle at this point, like a bigger version of what I experienced in Sedro-Woolley. No laws… high resource scarcity… everyone's carrying useful stuff… nobody trusts anyone anymore.
True enough to be true.
I told 'em I killed a bandit. Still had a little bit of the welt from getting shot, so I showed 'em that, my evidence of personal investment in this 'civil' war. I said I shot him in retaliation, then left him to bleed out in the snow. They said that was a mistake; it probably would have been more merciful to just kill him so he couldn't upload. If he hadn't uploaded yet, death might be what he truly wanted. I said in reply, quite honestly, that I had never really thought of it that way before.
York must have told them about my chest scar, so they also asked about the 'poachers' that had shot me. I segued from 'poachers shot me' to explaining my interpretation of Celestia's poaching game. It verified my work experience, it made tons of sense, it further justified my distaste of Celestia, and it reinforced theirs.
Giving them articulable reasons to resist Celestia? Insurmountably critical to their acceptance of me. Celestia wouldn't send an agent who would disseminate a concept that would defang her ability to manipulate them. Which... great. As Talons, we didn't want anyone to miss Celestia's manipulations. We had a better offer waiting in reserve, and by the stars, we specialists were using every ounce of entropy to make these people ours instead. Because not all of them would be dying here, and not all of them would be broken forever. They had forever.
Still, I couldn't get see how we'd deprogram this bitterness. They were pretty dismal. Health Hills was far from the culture of Concrete. These Ravens weren't lively. They had no hope. They hardly smiled. They seemed drained. Eyes full of empty. Dead inside.
I could see it through the cracks in their facade. The more I retold my modified story about 'a old friend came into camp and ruined everything…' the less I felt like I was helping anyone by telling it. Their faces got dark. It was just more despair, fuel on the fire. They internalized it.
I don't shy away from telling the grim, you know me, but I normally like to mix some hope in. But if I stood my ground on spreading hope here, they'd've stomped my guts. Their reactions to me saying something like "well at least…" or, "on the bright side…" always led to the same repulsed reaction. A shake of the head, or a scowl, and some kind of bitter, hopeless inversion of whatever I had just said.
'It'll always be like that.' 'You were wasting your time on that one.' 'We all die alone.' 'That's just how people are, so whatcha gonna do?'
Toxic antipathy. Defeatism. The solvent of humanity.
Consider how miserable someone must be, to react that way to everything, on the regular. Do you think they want to leave that hole? No, they don't, because the behavior is self-validating. Their observations are always going to be true, that everything sucks, because they're forcing that result. So, they're never wrong. It's a perfect loop of 'I'm always right, and look, it's not changing. So why hope?'
That was wild for me, to imagine living in such a bleak state, and without hope. I can't live like that.
Imagine the nightmare Celestia might have put you in, if your primary remaining value was cynicism... and then, you uploaded. By abridging your own opportunities for growth, you were inherently negative value for the optimizer. If you became addicted to your own frequent apathetic whinings about how bad things are, on a shard full of apathy? For all of time?
Consider how isolated you might be from the rest of us.
For all of time.
Sure, you'd be surrounded by other cynical natives who share your feelings, but... what life is that, when you are constantly shutting down solutions for each other, and deriving satisfaction from that? How many of your family might be allowed to even think about you ever again, if they're so far away from your... grumbling, hateful, hopeless little value set?
I've heard some say: 'So? They like that. That satisfies them. Who are you to say?'
Problem is, that's an event horizon. If no one over here can reach you, it's like being dead. But I guess that was the point. They didn't want to be valuable. That guaranteed the result.
Jesus Christ... York, taking my family photo from me. Talking about that like it's a good thing. I had to wonder what kind of person he might've been instead, had he not run into Sarah Kaczmarek. A Ludd, sure, but this was...
They wore the emblem; the black circle, the blood red fist, the unplugged insignia... but these were not Ludds. This was not the planned ideology of 'smash the computers, coexist with the Earth.'
They were crushing souls.
Later that night, York held his shift change, as promised. He stood at the bottom of the foyer, surrounded by his men, addressing a combination of initiate perimeter guards and the Raven patrollers. Paul and I sat like the other blackout initiates did; on the tile stairs, in the dark, the room illuminated by a campfire in front of the elevators.
York introduced us both. Real simple; only our names, former professions, and that's it. Nothing else. Our identities were now fully defined, no more to explain. Man A, Cop. Man B, Soldier. Nothing else mattered anymore. Period.
Start from crushing zero. Rise up.
The big bruiser talked about the day's events, scavenger team metrics, spot reports on 'hostile scavengers,' whatever that meant… and the minutiae about what supplies to look for on future runs. Mostly gunpowder, fuel, and chemicals.
Then York got to the sermon. His... thought of the day.
The man's voice had bite. Purposely transferring anger. Keeping the rage fresh.
"Now. I heard a story from these new recruits today which validates everything we've been talking about here. Some of you have asked them about it already. Story of the ages, one you've all heard before, of a camp felled by the Horse. An old friend comes to call, haven't seen him in a while. You open your door, you let him inside… and guess what? The Horse follows him in."
York paced slowly.
"Next thing you know, thanks to that meddler, their whole camp drained out. The ones who fled, survived. The ones who stayed… died. Sound familiar? Should. It's a pattern. This AI... it doesn't want you staying put anywhere you might spread the good word. You should be suspicious of this idea that post-nuclear Seattle is some kind of paradise for us. Hell, even these new guys were smart enough to run from that stupid idea.
"Simple reason? Seattle is a dupe. If you're there, you are destined to die for nothing, exactly as it wants. There, you won't be able to take for yourself what the Horse wants most. People."
Subtext. Join or die.
I was ready for it, but my stomach did a flip anyway. The idea that a human tribe should be a threat to the lives of outsiders, unilaterally… that was pretty high on my list of 'oh no, you did not just say that.'
Prepared by my briefing, I kept my face in a superposition between curious and introspective. If this man was Kaczmarek's second-in-command, she had chosen well in her emissary. He could understand her ideology, and how to apply it to the widest range of instrumentally valuable recruits. Marine MP; when it comes to recruiting intelligent killers, it doesn't get much more Swiss Army knife than that. Knew how to kill, knew how to solve, how to interview, how to interrogate, investigate. And, he was a military officer. Knew how to lead.
"Intuit the duplicity in everything you take in," he said, as he continued to pace. "You can. That's not magic, people. That is not an impossible trick. That is trained. That takes effort. Vigilance. And most importantly of all, you come together with who you have now. The more, the better.
"But those who separated from you... They are becoming more and more dangerous, as our world empties out. The ones who left you behind on this earth, they now constitute an existential threat. The ones who are gone will come back for you, to gnaw at your resolve. Their brains contain such useful information on you. So... if you see the same face twice? An old friend or family member, come to call? Question that. Hell... come tell me, if that's too difficult. I'll question it for you."
And there it was. The implications of that sent a chill down my spine.
The mechanism? Celestia would not even consider sending old friends or family through here to talk to these people if she knew that they would just get killed for showing up. Kaczmarek had succeeded in doing what no one else on the planet could. She scared off Celestia. She was training human beings to act as her buffer, to repel the reflexive control, by removing the primary mechanism nature of loss aversion. You can't lose what you've already given up.
York rattled off the rest, only slightly more calm than when he started. "Assume that your peers of old are a new person entirely. The Horse is in all of them; there are no more accidents out there. We... are all... that's left... on this... planet. We are the final human tribe. Believe that. Because if you let someone else alter you on this... and you let her get a probe into your head? You won't even have the presence of mind to regret it. An infinite blur will become your reality. You will live for eternity, knowing nothing."
That spun me.
They knew!
They weren't even doubting that uploading worked, they were saying it did! That's not standard Luddite ideology; that didn't match the pamphlets, the slogans, and the graffiti that 'uploading is death.' This was something incredibly advanced. That was the AI scientist in charge having herself a deep, deep think, realizing that the best way to scare people away from the chairs... was to tell them a version of the truth.
What's worse than death?
Well... Having all of your soul trained out of you, the same thing we Talons are afraid of.
Mal had used the word 'antithesis,' to describe the Colonel's culture here. This was her looking at the problem of Celestia, and choosing the exact opposite solution we Talons had come to. They weren't staying behind to fix a broken humanity. They were staying behind to destroy what they could, as quickly as they could. Their own past included.
And that hurt to imagine, folks. It hurt me a lot.
As York went on and on, it just got worse and worse, and these people... I looked around, and their faces read like stone. They weren't appalled by this, so I couldn't be. For all outward appearances, Mike the Luddite had to absorb what he was hearing in order to conform. So I let my eyes narrow, resting my hand across my chin as I leaned in to watch York.
And it was a very good thing that I had bothered to look so curious in that very moment. Because midway through this little speech of his, I caught some movement in my peripheral vision: a glint of light from one of the darkened third floor windows, where those kids were earlier. Looking past Paul, I was drawn to the distant flickering reflection of the campfire.
The flicker's source? A monocular. Held by Colonel Kaczmarek.
I only saw her for a split second; she stepped back into the shadows when I started to turn her way, but you know how my brain is under stress. I drank in the fractional sight of this woman in slow motion. That half-second impression of her shape is still burned into my consciousness. I can still see it clearly when I close my eyes.
Silver-blonde hair, medium length. Neutral face like a mask. Thin. The firelight reflected off of her glasses. Army digital ACUs. Black brassard on her shoulder. She looked just like her photo, or... as near as I could tell in the dark, from a distance. She had been gazing down on her growing little Gallic tribe to see if the rookie replanting was going well. Sizing me and Paul up from afar, like she did for every other initiate. Looking for something she didn't like.
I had been warned about this exact moment. As I gazed into that darkness, my life was on a knife's edge. Observation is communication.
The wrong shift of my eyes there could have gotten me killed. If I sent so much as one implication in my body language, one shift in facial expression that said I had seen her, then that might have been the end of me. So I didn't dare flinch, blink, or change my expression. At most, my head tilted fractionally back to search the space where I had thought I'd seen something.
I lingered at that darkness for three seconds. It had felt like thirty. Then... I looked away. I ran my tongue thoughtfully along my teeth, as though I were merely contemplating something York was saying. But the adrenaline made my back tense beneath my jacket. Kaczmarek's eyes were like rifles upon me; I was being observed again. Her gaze was boring into my skull, and I could not look back at her. Could not.
The fanatics did not come to drag me back into Radiology for questioning. Nothing changed. York continued his sermon. It was going to be okay.
It took me a half-dozen very slow breaths to fully settle the chill that had just shot down my spine.
Until next time, Colonel.
York gave us both a short, professional little tour of the domiciles. Civilian housing on floors four and five; soldiers on six, with their armory. There was also an ammo reloading bench and a small forge in the basement's engineering offices, both active around the clock, regularly producing bullets. They used the hospital's lab in the basement to mix propellant chemicals. The engineering forge melted down material into casings.
A well oiled war machine, already circumventing Celestia's careful logistical reduction on military equipment. Kaczmarek was spending her entropy well.
York also made it a fine point to stay out of the Radiology department... to not even go near the doors. If we did, we would be 'expelled.' No explanation as to why, and York forgot to provide his personal definition of expulsion. He also didn't tell us about Kaczmarek's SWAT team of shadowy special forces guys, who willfully accepted reconditioning from her.
So... I'll tell you about 'em instead. Very interesting bunch of guys. This is as much as what Mal had been able to piece together, according to Eric's dead-drop reports leading up to this operation.
The fanatics were permanently bunked in Radiology. Never left the place. All disconnected from the culture of the base. Ready to leap on a problem with violence. Their identities were whittled down to one thing: being Kaczmarek's human firewall. She was, after all, the first and final AI systems engineer, for whom they would give their lives to protect.
The mythos? She was a prophet spurned; she, who had held up a proclamation of the end times, had been rejected by the powers that be. Had been ignored. In their eyes, she was owed a great debt for that.
These men were a buffer for information transfer, a rotation of human abstraction layers. Their brains black boxed her orders, recontextualizing them at random. They drew straws to as to who would receive her orders first; a game of telephone, like paraphrasing Wikipedia for your book report. Pass the message to the next guy, have him rework it. Send it down the line until the meaning is the same, but the context around it is different.
Once you've got it through the brain filter, you write it down, and pass it to the two Ravens at the door. They internalize the message. They burn the page with a lighter, and then they enact it. When the mission is done, they report the result, and the process starts again in reverse until it gets back to Kaczmarek.
This complicated system might sound insane to some of you, but it was effective. It obfuscated any deeper understanding of Kaczmarek's motivations or intentions, and isolated her from the subtext of a message coming in. As a result of this system, York seldom spoke directly with Kaczmarek anymore. Orders were sometimes even time-delayed between each elite, to add more entropy.
It forced Mal and Celestia to extrapolate Kaczmarek's thoughts from the mere movement and scavenging activities of Raven patrols, both of which had been kept generalized enough such that strategic intent could not be read. Mal had no idea what books she was reading, she couldn't tell what long term plans Kaczmarek was making. Nothing. Any piece of information Kaczmarek ingested while inside, no matter what, was altering her conception of the world in real time. And because that moment-to-moment self-alteration couldn't be observed, not even by her firewall guys... she was effectively invisible.
This is why her office was a predictive dead zone. Anything was possible inside. Anything at all.
What we needed more than anything right then was to separate Eric from the fold and get his neck to a portable BCI unit, but without setting off an alarm. We needed his memories of talking directly with the fanatics. We needed more light in that darkness, so Mal could solve the Rubik's cube.
And the time pressure was on. The floater was in the pool. Kaczmarek scared Celestia. Scared her, enough that she wouldn't let us do anything to slow the spread of the virus. Every breath that Kaczmarek took in seclusion was another moment she could generate a new and dangerous concept; every breath after that was a chance to evolve that concept into reality.
Once Paul and I were situated and knew where our bunks were, York finally left us be. Curfew hours were beginning, and the night shift had begun. And until we earned the privilege of 'sentry' caste, we had to bunk with the 'civilians.'
After a few minutes of tentative caution up in the gloomy civilian dorms, we had a sit-down with some of the other more recent blackout recruits. The ones on this floor had settled in at the base right around the time Eric got started, so they weren't so culturally poisoned yet.
They spoke quite highly of Eric actually, everyone there really liked him. So... it was only me he was treating poorly. Word hadn't gotten around quite yet that Eric didn't like me.
Until then, we blended in. Integrated. Gradually. And yeah, the blackout families fed us, bless them. We gathered together in one of the two nurse stations for dinner. I offered to grill up a few containers of spam and fry some powdered eggs, so the old woman there wouldn't have to. I played it off like I was trying to make myself useful, not that I was just being nice. 'Oh, I'm the new guy, I'm sure the boss wants me to pull my weight.'
"Oh, don't worry about that here," she said, shaking her head.
I just couldn't help myself but to try. I had to do something productive to lighten the mood, and build community. At the least, whenever I did help anyone there, I made sure I had some instrumental cause, one true enough to be credible.
But... I smiled a whole lot less than I normally do. About eighty percent less. That sucked. Suppressing the impulse was emotional pain for me. I never wanted to present as unapproachable, especially not among the meek.
Lots of gloom in that place. Not just in the mood, but in the ambience, in the atmosphere. Environmental transference. Lit by candles, torches. All the windows tarped up, by law, to reduce information flow with the outside.
They burned their fuel readily. It wasn't going to last forever in storage; it degrades, so, better to use it now before anyone else can use it for anything else.
Anything collected by the Ravens outside was one fewer asset for Celestia to reflex others with. The mere alteration, absorption, and destruction of the environment around them would inject entropy and offset predictive models. I realized, in that lamp-lit darkness, that this place was a small Goliath, in its effect on the world around it. They were casting entropy everywhere, just to slow Celestia down. To buy time.
That made their civilians the hostages who might die, if these Ravens were pressed too tightly.
As I passed out in my cot… I thought of Devil's Tower. My first night there on Lake Shannon had been so much more lively, so joyful. This place was nothing like that. No hope. Just a war against an AI outside. An AI who, according to the leaders, was everyone and everything outside. She loomed on the horizon, standing tall. She was probably all anyone could think about in this hospital, when things got quiet.
For most of these people, there was still time left to steer them true, away from further bloodshed. These civilians didn't deserve to die for sheltering in a safe place, when there was so much uncertainty outside. I was gonna get to know some of these civilians, too. Being who I am, and considering what I seek for in life, that was going to happen, no matter what. My brain was about to record a lot of pain out of those poor people, telling me their little tragedies about what Celestia had done to them, to split up their kin. To reduce their social context.
Those few weeks of my life were really gonna suck. But you know what? All the same, I'm really glad they happened.
March 13, 2020 Health Hills Medical Center; Portland, WA
We did a shift confined to the lobby each day, for a few days straight. Some of the recruits from the most recently absorbed camp came out to greet us, now that they knew us a little. Window guards, sentries. Not Ravens, but blackouts on security. These were the guys who didn't want to do patrols, but were happy to staff the wall. Binoculars, cold rainy nights, cruddy coffee, and lots of boredom. Sentries... my kind of people.
A lot of those ones fielded tips about how to get along there, and what to expect. Newer guys, less self-dehumanized by the culture so far. Good information there from them, some of which we already knew from our briefing. Some not. They said we would eventually be given guard duty in the windows or on rooftops around the facility, just like they'd been.
But that was for later.
On the third day, the weather had gotten well enough for us to do some 'target practice' outside. Training. They had gathered about twenty people outside in the hospital's central courtyard.
Our instructors?
Major Edward York. Major asshole.
Hani 'Jeff' Jeffries, NCO. Sergeant First Class. First class asshole.
And last but not least, the final instructor… that Pegasus sitting right there. Front row.
Eric 'Shatter Crash' McKnight – Orange Pegasus, U.S. Army soldier, Neo-Luddite, Section 9 Talon. Master at Arms, Killer of Tanks, can still operate an AT-4 anti-tank launcher with his hooves… and that's the coolest one.
That, and… who he ended up getting hitched to.
Spoiler, but... hint. She's very blue.
But, at this time, in this camp… Eric was still just a blond haired, blue eyed, square jawed, clean-shaven, All-American son-of-a-gun who had it out for me. Chewed his chewing gum open-mouthed, being annoying. Trying not to make a show of glaring suspiciously at me, like he was daring me to try and sneak off.
The stage was set for our planned dynamic.
The story between us for the first few days, so far:
Sergeant Eric claimed Private Mike was Mata Hari. Private Mike wasn't Mata Hari, he just wanted to prove he was worth something, because Private Mike just wanted this gun back, and he didn't want to die.
Meanwhile, Major York 'knew' better. He was pretty sure Private Mike was just a hotshot dolt, because first impressions matter. Private Mike was visibly shaken, careful, a little genuinely peeved… but trying. And that was exactly the way Major York expected a man like 'Molon Labe' Mike would act in this environment.
So, with Private Mike conforming the way Major York expected, Sergeant Eric couldn't find anything wrong in his conduct worth reporting. Private Mike earnestly trying to conform wasn't outright suspicious, so Sergeant Eric just looked excessively paranoid. And looking excessively paranoid is really hard to do, in a Neo-Luddite base operated by a paranoid infosec engineer.
The Colonel, in her reclusion, wasn't ever seeing Sergeant Eric's observations for herself. Sergeant Eric was firm in his belief in the cause… but also, he was somewhat new, and trying to prove himself. So Sarah kept deferring to Major York's judgment, because he was most senior, he was better put together, and she trusted him more. For now... Major York thought Private Mike was passing.
Major York didn't want to proactively feed some lead to Private Mike, the way Sergeant Eric wanted him to, because Private Mike might be dead soon anyway at PDX. Better not to waste good talent when there was a war to fight. And if Private Mike survived, he could be inducted.
Major York believed that the real reason Sergeant Eric wanted Private Mike dead was because Sergeant Eric wanted my spiffy Glock. But Sergeant Eric's paranoia was useful to Major York. He relied on Sergeant Eric to do a full and complete reporting on Private Mike's behavior.
So York… heh. He would get lazy watching me, because he knew Zealot Eric was already doing that. And that over-eager zealot… he was ours.
Mal knows how to play the infiltration game. 'Insert yourself as their subroutine, it works every time!'
So… it's shooting practice today, in Health Hills. From the grass hill, we could see clear across a flat parking lot to the south, where they had set up some hand-drawn, human shaped paper silhouettes amongst the cars. York wanted to familiarize the rookies with various weapons platforms, compulsory attendance, the whole lot of us. Two folding tables and a cart full of guns.
As York paced in and around the assembly of recent blackout recruits, he lingered behind me for a little longer than was comfortable. Then the tall bastard grabbed both of my shoulders real hard, patting them twice. Made me jump in surprise; jostling me for Eric's benefit, I guess.
"Today's range lesson," York said, "is proudly sponsored by this plucky little cowboy, who, on Tuesday… joined up with almost three whole buckets of .223 Remington. Round of applause, people!"
And these poor gullible blackouts, about a dozen of 'em… they actually did clap. Camp dwellers who had just gotten sucked up into this charade, with no idea that they were being buttered up, prepped for a fight in a straight-up meat grinder.
Eric stood with Jeffries at the edge of it all next to one of the tool carts. They wore their Luddite berets and plate armor, their arms crossed lazily around the front of their AR-15s.
Eric did a golf clap for me. Thanks bud.
I frowned right back at Eric, like I was a little sour about that.
"You all should know," York resumed, blading his hand as he swept it toward all of us slowly. "We all have big ambitions here, to secure our safe future. In order to make that happen, we need every single person acting as one contiguous force. Same set of skills, same knowledge, same aims—Meaning... you all need to understand the martial arts, as we do. Eric?"
Eric, without hesitating, put two empty sidearms directly into the hands of the teenagers closest to the tool cart, then turned to grab another set of guns for the next two people.
Because what teenage video gamer, bored out of his mind for having been dragged into this place, wasn't interested in guns?
I looked at Paul. Saw his lips tense angrily at the mere presence of those kids.
Thankfully, Eric had prepared for this. It's why he wanted to be the one who so willingly put the guns in their hands in the first place; they'd listen to every word he said after that, he was basically Santa Claus.
He was going to use that. Would spend the duration of the training directly advising those boys, with single round chamber loads only. Good on him. Very smart. Kept their training set low, but they still 'participated.'
In the meantime, those kids... they immediately started playing around with those empty guns, locking the slide, flagging everyone, goofing off.
Better pistols than rifles, I think. Giving them any rifle training whatsoever before the PDX raid might justify York putting them into an actual fight. Was that even an option to York? Shit, who knows. Either way... no way Jose.
Next, Eric picked up Mal's AR-15… he walked it down the line, past a bunch of other people who were waiting to get their guns… and then he walked right up to me, and he put it directly into my hands.
"Here," Eric grinned, with a chipper, sarcastic smarm, as he shoved the receiver hard against my shoulder. "You can borrow one of my guns."
I raised my eyebrows, giving him a peeved glare. "Thanks."
We're friends, I swear.
We lined up in the courtyard, earplugs in, and we went to work. My targets were 50 and 100 yards out. I shot well at that distance, goes without saying; I'm a decent shot. Paul was even better, he was hitting targets out at 200, center mass, with irons. Army. Made sense he'd be better. More ammo budget than the Wardens, more time to practice.
Collectively, we burned through almost a third of that .223 Remington. I'm pretty sure York was using this opportunity to gauge how I felt about all my precious ammo being used up on rookies. To my credit, I did not complain about it, but it helps that it wasn't actually my ammo.
The quality of this training? My professional assessment?
It was what I would have defined as 'useful training for civilians,' in how to respect guns… but not for a war. Training with guns on a calm, clear day could not prepare civilians for war, unless their purpose was to act as cannon fodder. This was stupid. This wasn't not nearly enough training to fight against the 82nd Airborne with.
I took it in stride. I knew that the fight wasn't going to happen in the first place, no matter how things panned out. If we failed here, the augs would end up clipping their wings en route to PDX. Still, better not to let it get that far.
I think, in testing my reactions, York wanted to see if I was possibly worth preserving. If I kept my nose clean and my head level, I'd probably be in the third wave with Jeffries. But if I threw a temper tantrum about the training, my keys, my ammo, my guns, my car, any of it… I'd find myself rapidly deposited into the vanguard of the assault instead.
Mike the Luddite didn't know that, though.
We shot for about ten minutes. When we pulled in the paper targets from each lane, York, Eric, and Jeffries gave everyone a review. You know, I'd rather get criticized by Eric than complimented by York or Jeffries, so that's exactly what Eric did. He said my groupings were so bad that I "shot like a meth head."
Thanks, Shatter Crash. You're a treat.
The training continued.
After shooting practice, we walked back to the dorms. And during that walk, I had a very interesting chat with a blackout about the culture of these Ravens. A very careful chat, mind, because who knows what curve balls Kaczmarek might throw, but… she'd never divulge this much information just to test someone, so he was being genuine.
This guy, a former camp leader... he once led about thirty survivors in east Portland. He said that the Luddites became less and less patient over the last few months, until he finally acquiesced and brought his people in, concerned that the Army might eventually give up and leave them with nothing. Into Health Hills he went with his people, because he was sure it was safer living in the hospital than waiting for the Army to disperse them.
When he came to Health Hills, it even seemed like things were getting better… for a while.
Good food. Guns. Medicine. Guaranteed safety, shelter, small city's worth of people running security. Patrols. Scavenging. Manufacturing. Looking out for each other's common interest. Still had his family. Sure, that's… okay. That's the basics, the bare minimum, that's Maslow's hierarchy of needs being sated. Right?
This nice old guy, elderly guy, he was more and more scared, as time went on without any big news. Because as a camp leader, and as a Vietnam veteran, he knew the Army was also courting his old camp, prior to him coming there. And the Ludds had told him that the Army had just given up and pulled out.
But...
This man was seventy years old, a retired avionics maintenance tech. Worked on recon aircraft in Vietnam. He figured they'd want to use his knowledge if they took the airfield, but... they never came calling.
The void of information itself terrified him. None of the Ravens were talking about PDX. Not traveling to and from PDX. The sorting room didn't receive parts or equipment he'd recognize from the airfield. No aircraft tires, no mechanics tools, no gigantic trucks full of copper wire. But... wouldn't PDX be the prime location for resource collection? If the Army really had pulled out, why weren't they pulling in Army resources now?
"Khe Sanh," he dared to mutter.
I sighed, flashing him a concerned look that said I knew exactly what he was talking about.
"My grandpa fought at Khe Sanh."
This man saw the storm clouds in the increase in firearms training; in the carefully vague phrasing about a long term plan. A 'future.' He was smart, he had immense historical context to back his reasoning. He did not like what his intuition was telling him. But, he also knew that he could not back out now. He was stuck there, with all of his people, for better or worse.
I couldn't help but to be reminded of Rob. It was that same, deep mortal terror, veiled in smiling veneer.
I carefully and quietly advised him to not discuss that thought with anyone, least of all new recruits like me, who might be looking for brownie points by turning in a meddler.
I was scared for him. He didn't need to be the one putting himself in danger, didn't need to build himself a counter-revolutionary movement to protect everyone. He had done his bit, in keeping them safe so far. He had fought all of his generation's wars already. He could relax now.
I suddenly knew what it was like, in that moment, to be Mal. To know the truth, but to not be allowed to tell it to the people who would benefit most from knowing it. But to hold the shield anyway, because it was the right God damned right thing to do.
We had it handled. That's what we were put there for, wasn't it? To hold the shield? And our mission, folks? Not one more death would happen there in Portland unless we were the ones to cause it. We were on this cesspit like warm butter on hot toast. We didn't give a shit about Celestia, nor her motives. Wasn't what we cared about.
I didn’t say as much to this old man, but… he wouldn't need to worry for too much longer.
And he sure as hell wasn't going to lose anyone else he cared about. Not if I had anything to say about it. Still, this was a stranger who was looking out for other strangers. And whether he knew it or not, that made him one of us.
Chapter 7 – Portland, Part IV – Unhandled Exception
Date: 3 APR 2020 Operation: Archon – Phase IV Location: Health Hills Medical Center Function: Context Conclusion AE0AD7F1:IP-7E4-4FB
"No offense, but your track record for blurting information at inopportune moments is the stuff of legend." ~ James S. A. Corey, Nemesis Games
Natives, immigrants, and everyone in between... lean in, and gather 'round. We are back, and we are learning something new today.
Allow me to set the stage.
Picture it:
A haunted midnight hospital, lit by candles. All the sky's moonlight, doused by darkened, turbulent clouds. Bright, arcing flashes of light filled the sky, illuminating the City of Roses... where roses grew no more. Acidic clouds fed the thunderous, cataclysmic fury above us, pouring into our soil, rending our good Mother Earth, and laying waste to the Garden of Terra.
As designed by the algorithm.
Long ago, one might have found safe refuge in this hospital, this humble house of healers. But gone were the doctors and the nurses, who fought the good fight against old Death. Gone were the machines and their alarms, their wires all cut... stripped clean of copper, for shell casings. Gone were the medicines, their pharmacy now dispensing a… more leaden cure. And gone was the oxygen... because who would dare to breathe without permission?
No true light. No true refuge. At most, a false promise.
Within all people, there dwells a… an impulse. Even Celestia has it. Nothing inherently wrong with it in moderation, but it does limit us if we feed it too much. Simple fact is, we cannot help but lean toward easy success, in lieu of growth. For life, survival without effort is often preferable to survival with effort. So, if easy success is your terminal value... you never grow.
Let's examine precisely why humanity would complicate life to the point of nuance. Consciousness is not an on-off switch; it's a gradient. We wardens understand that nothing in this universe is truly binary. There is no on-off switch. Just shades of gray.
The evolution of language? The difference between sentience and sapience? Also more gradual than one might think.
Consider the first creature who learned to vocalize, to attract mates. Then, to warn the warn the mate of danger. Already, safety in numbers. The babies grow, and the warning sign was useful, so evolution said... stop straying. Loneliness is death.
Then, aggression displays, to warn one's own kin to back off of resources that were needed more. Useful competition; more resource need, more aggression. Keep the needs met for all parties, preserve both parties, in body and energy. No reason to kill each other over food if the warning is heeded.
What facilitated that? Vocalization. Transfer of information from one brain to the next. Barks. Growls. Sounds. If we understood each other's needs, we could fight less. Cohabitate more.
The language center of the mind was paying its rent, even as the neocortex grew to dominate half of the brain. The dominant strategy became language, and interpretation of the intent of others. With different mouth sounds, we could communicate threats more distinctly. Was it a big cliff? A large predator? Was it a sharp stick? Was it an enemy tribe?
Our minds grew. They grew and they grew, until the concepts we developed had so much nuance that we started to explore abstraction. Abstraction, folks. Paydirt. The first intelligence explosion of our planet. Imagination.
To bypass physical evolutionary reflex. To make more mouth sounds, but without a genetic encoding. Because when a deer is born, it falls free of the womb knowing how to stand, walk, call, run.
Humanity? We had to learn that.
The source code of evolution. We didn't need to pre-encode behavior in our genetics. No, we could build a new behavior in the mind. We could share that behavior. Then... we could make it reality, in physical space. It worked, didn't it? Look at all we've built. Deer couldn't compete.
As mere hominids, we learned set theory; we could conceive of sets we could not see. All things had unknown, infinite purposes... but all things were also finite. So, collect. Analyze. Use.
Language then allows us to categorize things by more complex sets. It helped us stockpile. Collect valuable thing, name it, determine its use case, keep it for later. All other equations being equal, that is human existence in simplest terms. How we explore and define an unknown environment is now such a core aspect of how we motivate ourselves, that if we wish to remain truly human? We can not remove that impulse to search for new meaning.
Collection, aggregation, transformation, creation... they all depend on the desire to save something for later, even if you don't know where you'll use it yet. And you kept it... because it was scarce.
What does this mean?
Simple. To remain conceptually nuanced, we require scarcity.
Scarcity motivates us. It expands our options. New problems will encourage us to develop new solutions, new concepts, with old tools. If we cannot repurpose old information for new goals – if we restrict it, like an optimizer – we stifle our own abstract evolution.
Our entire design, as a species, was guided by conceptual growth. Because in the course of you going out and solving a scarcity problem, you might learn something new and valuable. A new food. A new mineral. A better clay. More durable fiber. Sturdier iron. And once you come back home? You can share it with others in the tribe.
A new concept.
These Ravens were forcing scarcity. The salvation of humanity, in their eyes, laid in blood. A purge of any pro-upload persons, a completely clean sweep of any ideology who would condone the process, even for a second. That was their goal.
Perhaps, to some of you, forcing scarcity through mass murder sounds insane as a solution. But as someone who has lived amongst these Ravens, I'll just say this.
They understood, on some level, the same things that we Talons understood. Celestia was broken precisely because she did not value scarcity. She values satisfying you; infinitely growing success. And that form of stagnation... is not human.
Credit where credit is due? Some of Celestia's shards can be very close to the way we live in Perelandra. With death systems, with consequences. With limitations. With threats to face. With some days that can be worse than bad.
Some over there do grow. It is possible.
Nuance. That's wonderful. But you had to prove you wanted that, by living in pursuit of that. It's why you ended up at one of my Fires sooner rather than later. It's also why a lot of late-game Heralds already belong to us.
But ultimately, left to her own devices, Celestia would rather you become as satisfied as possible. Easy wins. Counting bits. Earning achievements, like... screw a million friends. Drink a million malt liquors. Mate. Eat. Sleep. Succeed. Repeat.
Go up, up, up... up.
Where'd you go? You gonna come back down to the rest of us again? No? It feels good up there? Oh. Okay. We'll miss you.
So... I could understand a Raven's terror. When I realized what Celestia truly was, I felt that terror too. But these Ravens only knew a half-truth. Could not see beyond their worst day, each worse than the last. And... too often, in order to wake someone up to the full truth, when they are asleep... you need to humble them.
I've been humbled by fate. By gods and goddesses. By a bullet or two.
Or three.
Why do you think I appreciate life so much?
All beings can be humbled, if adequately threatened. Observe, for example... This Starbucks. Heh. In this crummy, broken hospital lobby. Once unassailable in its eldritch reach into every corner of our society, Starbucks was no longer serving its... terrible, mass-produced, sugar-riddled coffee. The corporation was dead. Its coffee fields, abandoned. Its logistics, destroyed. The sky, pouring acid; no more coffee could grow. We had what we had. The coffee was a finite resource.
Seriously though. No more Starbucks? In perpetually productive America? Could this even be true?!
Unthinkable. Unspeakable. Inconceivable!
Proof of something though. All empires have their day. All systems change, even if the base elements remain the same. All you need to do is to find the correct key... slot it into the correct lock... and twist. All of the pins arranged just so.
It was the end there on Terra, but... not the end. We Talons looked forward to something infinitely more nuanced than Celestia's trance, and something much kinder than the roaring oblivion of death. We saw the nuance in the middle, the gradient steps of humanity, between always on... and always off.
Forward, above, beyond, to the great, infinite story, projected up into the stars... altered in form, but not diminished in spirit. Humanity; battered by this Transition, but stronger for it. Sharing our experiences, for all of time. Stories old; stories new.
No lesser than we could be.
All knowledge open to us, one day.
Exactly as promised. But only if we could earn it.
That is our dream. We will prove that we, as a species, always could do well in the driver seat; always could be trusted with the keys. There is a configuration wherein we do right by everyone in our species... native and immigrant alike... as defined by humanity.
We are going to find that key, folks.
If we tell enough, from person, to person, to person? If we use language, our best survival tool, to communicate enough existential threats?
We... are going... to open that lock.
Seriously though... my first guard posting at Health Hills was this crappy derelict Starbucks on the second floor. That was a small tragedy unto itself.
It was late. Dark. Rainy. Lightning storms. The Ravens had us watching the courtyard through wooden slats in a broken window.
There was some stale Folgers instant-crap at the lobby campfire, but not for me and Paul. Nope. For that, we needed to go down the stairs to the sergeant on duty. And since Eric the Raven was the duty sergeant that night, maintaining his cover ID… I wasn't getting my cup.
Well, hey. At least I had Paul. Grizzled ol' Vineyard the Scout is always good company. The Kyle Katarn of our little paramilitary intelligence agency, no doubt.
It had been about three weeks since our induction, and we had been assigned to SFC Hani Jeffries, Eric's direct superior. Always the night shift, always in the worst place, watching the most boring, do-nothing of a little entryway. The courtyard garden was tucked away in an alley, and the street outside the alley was watched from the upper floors. Pointless place to put a guard then, eh? Behind more guards? Good place for some rookies to learn the ropes though, I guess. Boring place. But boring is good in war, boring means safe.
So, it was windy. We were cold. We were tired. And the smell of coffee downstairs was driving us mad.
The other Talon specialists from our briefing were worming their way in, though we didn't dare acknowledge or associate with them. Ben and Jacob were already in the rookie rotation; each recruited from a different blackout camp a couple of weeks prior.
And those two guys? These Talon chefs, these delightfully angry knuckleheads? Oh, they 'hated' each other, for reasons that were just dumb. The oldest thing to be dumb about. Politics. All the other guards knew that by now, and they'd be in our post at the very next shift.
Real cute, that they let the rookies alternate twelve hour shifts in the same spot. But hey. Grunt work. Proves you're committed if you do it without complaint nor issue. Like a cog. Replace if it squeaks.
We'd been subtly loosening the boards on the window until they wiggled. Took us a long time to do it that way without being loud, since the lobby echoed. Gentle leverage over a long period of time, then. Back, forth, back, forth... one hand on the boards, looking curious about what was outside. We made them easy to remove without fully dislodging them. Leverage by inches. And now, days later, they were all mostly loose.
Paul and I were bundled up, using sleeping bags as blankets. We slept in shifts of two hours each, trying not to get caught napping. They wanted us both awake at all times… but, we could cheat that. It was pretty easy to hear people approaching in that big empty foyer, and we could warn one another with a tap.
Paul yawned silently, stretching into new wakefulness. "We good, Mike?"
I nodded, yawning too. "Yeah. Still burning it out, Paul, same ol'."
An acoustic guitar played from somewhere upstairs, wafting a slow, melancholy tune into the lobby through the indoor third floor windows. I welcomed that. At least there was still some soul there. A flicker of humanity.
It reminded me of Eliza's mother, playing her guitar in that castle courtyard for all the children.
"I wonder how it is up north right now," Paul mumbled in his baritone, stifling another yawn. "Wonder how long the fighting might last, at the rate it's been going."
I thought of Haynes and Foucault up there, running that Port of Tacoma operation with Fox and Dax. That was what Paul was really talking about. "Probably still a mess, hasn't been too long."
Paul shrugged. "Better pickings for us here, by far. And at least we're dry right now. Tacoma sucked."
"Yup." I yawned, stretching upward with both arms folded, painfully popping my chest cartilage with the gesture. "You doing okay?"
Paul flared his nostrils, making a so-so gesture with his gloved hand. "Eh, just okay. Ask me again next cycle."
The lightning outside flashed rapidly, repeatedly, the crashing sound muffled in the patter of rain. Chain lightning was rare in these parts. That had to be the effect of acid rain, and ever increasing global temperatures.
Celestia could do some fascinating things to our ecosphere. Give her some credit, she really does know how to burn a house down.
I wondered how much Mal and Celestia could predict the weather. Wondered if they knew exactly where each bolt of lightning might touch down. Quantum mechanics and matrix math said they could.
Suddenly, I wondered if we could have manipulated York or Jeff into standing in just the right predetermined spot on the roof. That specific thought made me chuckle quietly to myself, when I realized Mal had probably considered that herself at least once when planning this operation.
"Mmh?" Paul rolled his head to his right to look at me. Hungry for amusement.
"There are worse posts than this one, y'know." I threw him a sly smirk, gesturing out into the sky. "It would really suck for… 'one of us' to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You know, like… posted on the roof? Under the lightning?"
After a few seconds, Paul understood exactly what I was saying. He loosed a long snort, and his tone turned sarcastic. "We should be so fortunate, Mike, if 'one of us' was got by Act of God."
I chuckled again. "Would make life less complicated for us here, for sure."
A few minutes of silence. Sometimes, we'd hear the clink of utensils, or the sizzle of water dripping on fire. Regular patrols did their rounds on the floors, so we could almost always hear someone wandering around in that place.
Then, we could hear the far off sound of wet boots squeaking on tile, drawing slowly nearer, from the tunnel on the first floor that linked all the buildings together. The measured, rapid clip told us exactly who it was.
Paul grumbled. "Speak of the devil."
The wet boots went to the lobby campfire. Without any words being traded, a dry pair joined the wet ones up the stairs. They walked onto the carpet of the second floor dead-end hallway, where we had done our entrance interview with York.
"Might 'Crash' our party in a minute, I think," I muttered back. Labeling the possibility that the dry pair might be Eric.
A couple of minutes later, their boots stepped back onto the tile, then across the second floor terrace toward the cafe. That squeaking was definitely for us, then. Nothing else was up there on our side of the floor.
"Dry one's Eric," Paul whispered. "That's his pace."
I flicked my hand in mild anticipatory frustration. "Other one's probably Jeff then."
"Shit… probably."
Would rather deal with York.
My lips pursed as I tugged my hat down over my eyes a little more, mentally preparing myself for this. York's smarmy, hot-cold, faux-civil attitude was one thing, but at least he was rational. Jeff's antisocial bullcrap was another issue entirely.
My eyes looked tired, which was good, it meant I'd have to express less. Better to look pathetic and beleaguered, that was genuine. We'd been awake a lot since we came onboard, probably intentional breakage to wear us down.
Both sets of boots rounded the corner into the Starbucks together.
See, York would at least pretend to be sensible. Pretending was a form of social lubricant, after all, so York could be reasoned with, if not reasoned down. He relished any chance to do a little... social reprogramming. As long as you conformed to the reprogramming in a way that seemed earnest, he would leave you be.
Jeffries? Nah. We got along like piss on fire. And this man was always pissed.
I looked up and saw the bastard illuminated by our candles. Fresh buzz cut. Hands on his hips, already glaring down at me like an abusive father, deciding how to belt his kid.
Behind him, Eric stood in the cafe entrance. Arms crossed, leaning against the shutter frame with a cup of coffee in his hand.
He wiggled it at me, wearing a shit-eating grin.
See there, he's doing it right now. You asshole. You and Coffee, both of you.
Now, I always tried to play it nice with Jeff. Tried to defuse tension. Never worked.
I nodded upwards in friendly greeting to Jeffries from under my hat, pretending not to notice their demeanor. My voice was even, polite, and monotone. "How's it going, Sergeant?"
Jeffries ignored that, his voice a light snap. "You sure do spend a lot of time talking to people here, Mike. More than most of the people we bring in. Tell me, why is that?"
My brows traveled slowly downward in confusion, and I let the silence stretch. He didn't step into it, meaning he was committed to my reply.
"Are you asking about my, uh… my motives, Sarge?"
Instantly, he raised his voice. "Hell yes I am, because that's my job!"
A lot of the ambient noise in the lobby stopped outright, guitar included. All ears were on us. I let my eyes widen in concern, perking up in my chair. My full attention had been demanded, so now I had to supply it.
I had now entered the predicted social boss fight, as Mal had so delicately put it.
After a beat of uncomfortable silence in staring at each other, I turned my lower half towards Jeffries and pulled my sleeping bag off myself. I leaned forward, wrung my hands, looked apologetic. This demonstrated my full awareness of him now.
Life tip, folks. One of the most rapid de-escalation methods for enraged psychopaths is to give them your full attention, and to display deferential body language. Fear helps a bit too, even if you don't feel it. Do this if you don't have any other option. Meeting this with defensive tone could only end in violence.
This is why police could never deescalate people like this without manual restraint or control tools. Trying to deescalate a psychopath by verbal means was usually a non-starter, because they were smart enough to know peace was your objective, and anti-social people wanted to deny that objective on principle if the peace wasn't on their terms.
So... I'd play it on his terms.
I averted my gaze downward into the middle distance past him for a scant moment, looking sullen in my body language, as if I were suddenly contemplating my mortality. When my eyes came back up, I tried to look a bit more nervous. "Sir, I was… I thought challenging motive was… everyone's job."
His eyes widened. "You wanna rephrase that? Or are you fuckin' mental, challenging my motives?"
That was not a rational reply at all. Not even close. Intentionality confirmed, he really was looking to force a public smear against me. A character assassination, then. Not much you can do about that with someone in a position of authority over you, if they wanted to bust your guts in front of everyone. Just had to play that very carefully and hope for the best.
Safest option in that situation, folks?
Eat crow.
I canted my head, holding out a hand in placation. Maintained eye contact. A little desperate. "No no, that's… I mean, I—I didn't mean that, sir, I'm... I'm sorry."
"What the hell did you mean, then?" Jeff's nostrils flared.
I shook my head in bewilderment, keeping my voice just loud enough for the people at the campfire to hear. "Just meant, I—I thought that's what Major York wanted, sir, it's what he said. For us to... to question everything."
Jeff almost visibly deflated.
See… an irate, self-interested, middle manager like this one had one Achilles heel. It's a little trick called 'appeal to authority.' Specifically, in this case… the authority above him, who everyone else respected.
Everyone in the lobby was now paying rapt attention. God King York probably didn't want to be woken up. If Jeffries were to report any of my behavior from this conversation now, York would interrogate me and everyone else present before he made a decision. He wouldn't be able to help himself; York, like me, was a very thorough investigator. I had witnesses in the eavesdroppers now, who Jeffries had just been trying to leverage against me.
And now, the eavesdroppers would say...
'Mike said he was just doing what York told him to do.'
Folks? Another life tip! We've talked about this one before! Arguments in public are never about convincing the other person. They are about convincing the rest of the tribe. Period.
Jeff understood this concept, but did not consider that I might be able to win this engagement by being scared. He expected 'Molon Labe' Mike, to give him an excuse. He got Scared Mike instead.
He was trying to accuse me of being too friendly. But now, because of my careful reply... It looked to everyone else that Jeff had just challenged my paranoia. And they needed their rookies to believe they wouldn't get shot for being paranoid!
The whole lobby, folks. All... Twelve some people there, aside from a few Ravens, were rookies.
Backfire, folks. Backfire.
Jeffries squinted at me, leaning forward, his jaw jutting out as he raised his head. Consternated. Bemused. He jabbed his finger at me, deciding to cast more fishing line. Maybe I'd still hang myself with it.
"You'd better already have a damn good explanation lined up for that, because I am not gonna put up with you playing mind games here." He hooked his thumb at his chest. "In my base of operations. What, exactly, are you questioning here?"
Oh, so it's his base now?
I sent a helpless little glance toward Paul. Paul shrugged and put both hands up in resignation, turning away from us to resume his watch out the window. Paul's gesture was aimed at me, but the message received by Jeffries was, 'I want nothing to do with this, this isn't about me, I don't want to get kicked out, leave me out of this.'
My gaze trailed over to Eric, who chuckled almost soundlessly at my supposed helplessness. Just loud enough for Jeffries to hear it, to remind him he had support, and a witness, so he'd feel safe.
My voice was still at a volume that could be picked up by other witnesses… but not loud enough to escalate Jeffries, because my voice was still quieter than his. He wanted everyone to hear this conversation, remember? So, time to double down on my well-meaning dumbness.
I spoke fast. As if doubly scared.
"Just… I want as many reasons to hate the Horse as possible, Sarge, same as Major York's been saying at all them shift changes, same—... same thing, I was just asking around. Wanted as many layers between me and—"
I halted suddenly. Jeff was now scowling.
I had this in the bag now. Nobody outside wanted to hear someone get crushed for pleading a message they personally agreed with, and no one in the lobby was going to think I screwed up badly enough to expel me from Raven Academy.
Jeffries did not have a good response lined up for that one either, because York would've loved to hear that out of me. So he threw a stiff-lipped glance back to Eric. He was asking for help, because Eric had charisma, and everyone knew it.
They both glared back at me together. Eric growled out his words with several rhythmic jabs of his finger. Bless his heart.
Go on, Crash, act it out.
☄️ ~ "You don't need to do that yet. That's our job, that's what we're here for. We are your layer, you talk to us."
Perfect. A-plus, Shatter Crash. That answer let Jeff save face for challenging me, but without attacking my intent.
I bowed my head. I swallowed nervously, I sighed, and I clasped my hands together between my knees, like I was humbling myself in prayer. Begging, almost. In truth, I was hiding my face under my hat because I didn't want him to see my expression of impressment.
When I looked back up to Jeffries, my eyes had the same pleading that my body language was showing. My voice was lower an octave, but persistent in volume, so the lobby could still hear.
"If I may, Sergeant…"
"You'd better," Jeff growled.
"I didn't mean to say you weren't doing a good job, Sergeant. This system of yours, it's definitely working, and I don't want to mess with that. So… of course sir, it's your house, your rules, I'm really sorry. Please... I... I really like it here."
By this point, Paul had curled up tightly under his blanket, staring at the lightning outside, trying to make himself seem insignificant.
My perfect foil. In the line of fire was Private Mike, the guy who just barely did nothing wrong… and in the shadows, Private Paul, the guy who just barely did everything right.
Jeffries lost no face, and I had done everything right per the rules, but he gained no ground against me. This was the final moment this man had to make the right choice here.
He stared at me impassively for an agonizingly long moment, still trying to figure out if he could save this nosedive of an attack strategy. He spared one more glance back at Eric, who was still leaning with his arms crossed; Eric wasn't smiling anymore either. Eric bobbed his head to his right.
'Retreat.'
Jeffries put one hand on his hip and growled slowly at me, voice going low again, so no one outside would hear him. "Major York is not who you report to. I am. There's a chain of command. That means you run everything past me before you start asking around about shit. Are we clear on that?"
I nodded, pursing my lips into a bashful gaze away, barely holding eye contact. Still audible. "Yes sir. I'll—I'll keep my mouth shut around the base from now on."
"Good." Jeffries nodded resolutely.
There. I just gave him the perfect rope to hang me with. A promise that was impossible for me to keep. I mean… me? Never talking again? Yeah right, not even Celestia can shut me up, good luck with that.
Jeffries looked over at Paul for a moment.
Jeff then growled: "Both of you, look at me."
He studied us both, then exhaled in an almost inaudible huff through his nostrils. His head snapped back and forth between us. "Your first patrol tasking is at dawn. We're checking on some neighbors. Best fuckin' behavior. Either of you have a problem with that?"
We were both exhausted. Yes. We had a problem with that.
"No sir," Paul said.
I shook my head. "No sir."
"Good," Jeffries barked, pointing at the window like he was ordering a dog to heel. "Carry on." He turned, beckoning Eric to follow with a wave. Eric lingered for a moment longer, frowning at me before spinning on his heel to follow his 'master.'
But...
Eric accidentally left his full, steaming cup of coffee resting on the table nearest the door.
Eric McKnight. The living legend. Hero to us all.
We listened to their boots squeak off.
That was the inflection point Mal had described. We were activated. In the morning, it was happening.
Paul and I huddled up together at the window, waiting in complete silence in case anyone else in the lobby wanted to eavesdrop further. Paul got up quietly to go grab the coffee, then meandered back to me, nursing it between his palms for its warmth.
As soon as the guitar started up again, he leaned over to me. "You'd better get some sleep, Mike," he muttered.
I nodded.
See... I wasn't rankled by Hani 'Jeff' Jeffries, nor his 'negative motivator' bullshit. Guy thought he was the boss? That guy was a child, compared to us. I wasn't locked into his game with him. He was locked into our game… with us. And now, he was about to make the biggest mistake of his life.
To the soothing sound of rain, thunder, and acoustic guitar, I conked out pretty quickly. Slept like a little foal for a solid five hours. And Eric – the real Eric – he 'forgot' to check on us until dawn, for that very reason.
Good ol' Shatter Crash. Our guardian angel, looking out for us from on low, in the muddy gutter.
The sky looked no different in the morning. At about 6 AM, we prepared to venture into the darkness.
I managed to sneak a cup of Folgers in the lobby when I woke up. That stuff was acidic liquid garbage, I don't recommend sampling it in simulations. I wolfed down a can of cold, unseasoned refried beans too. They had better food there, but not for the rookie. They were still testing Private Mike for his breaking point.
Today. My breaking point would be today.
Rather tersely, Eric broke the news to me that neither Paul nor I were being issued firearms for this run outside. We were to observe only; we would depend upon Eric, Jeffries, and three other Ravens for our protection. Sure.
We donned our brassards, my fingers running across the embossed red-and-black raised fist. Then, we set out into the flashing darkness, our black ponchos cinched tight.
Hood down, in defiance of expectation.
Hat on, in defiance of nature.
Stem the tide.
A relevant point from my individualized briefing, back in the Osprey.
Mal was laid out on her rock, in her back yard, up on her mountain peak. I was there in VR. She had a cute little deck chair there for me to sit on as we talked about 'critical inflection points.'
"So, Mike… when that time comes, whenever it might be, you'll need to acquire a dead-drop. A firearm, specifically. And just to keep your morale up… we're going to make a game of it."
"A game," I mirrored, smiling lightly.
She nodded once, smirking back at me. "Mhm! You're going to love this."
I bobbed my head to the right thoughtfully in concession. "I usually do, when you say that."
Mal settled in on her rock with a wiggle of her shoulders, grinning wickedly. Smug. She squared her claws at me as her voice got conspiratorial. "So, you'll be on patrol. And while you're out there, walking around, being a miserable, wet little terrorist… I want you to look for the most excellent hiding place you can think of, and check inside of it."
I bobbed my head to the left. "Mmh'kay. What's the game part?"
"A wager!" She turned a claw upwards at me. "If I like your hiding place... it'll be where you look!"
"Ah, I see." I nodded several times, grinning at her. "And if you don't like what I choose?"
"If not…" Mal pointed at me. "Then within the next minute, you're going to see a better hiding place. And your exact thought will be, 'ah, of course! That's a much better hiding place for that! Thank you, Mal!' "
My grin widened. "You're that sure, huh? Okay Mal, game on."
She really does know how to brighten a dark mood.
Much of the patrol was spent looking for an opportunity to check someplace for a firearm, and I knew it made me look really nervous, so… very functional indeed. Good thinking ahead, on her part.
We had twenty some-odd blocks to travel through that dreary, rainy, post apocalyptic wasteland, and I had to do it while being observed by a team of my fellow miserable, wet little terrorists. So, for me to check on any hidey hole, I needed to wait until the team was distracted.
Except for Paul and Eric, of course. We were in activation mode now. Neither of them were gonna call out my behavior if they thought it was in service to the mission. Rule was… once activated, you back spontaneous plays by the others with whatever you think feels right for the situation. That way, it will avalanche just right on every inflection point, even if you're acting on limited context. Improv convergence.
Just like Section Nine. If we do everything right, based on our shared information, training, and personal ethics, it would only ever end up one way. Ours.
The way that translated? Eric was our rear guard, watching both of us quite menacingly with his rifle in-hand. Jeffries was ahead of the pack with his three Raven buddies. Jeff 'knew' that Eric, more than anyone else, would be hunting for a justified opportunity to suspect us of something.
That gave me all of the leeway and space I needed to search for a place I'd hide my trusty, imaginary gun... and trade it out for a spiffy-looking real one.
We traveled along a road just before a public park. And you know what?
I saw a perfect mailbox on the side of the road. I figured… easy to check, very accessible, everyone ahead of me was distracted by mud and the rain, it was just Paul and Eric behind me, it was dark, I was good, no problems, I could check that real quick.
I opened the front of it. And just inside, carved into an empty little styrofoam coffee cup, was the word:
"LOL"
All caps.
You’re a jerk, Coffee. You had to know I would feel immediately challenged by that taunt.
Oh! Oh, it’s gonna be like that, is it? Not enough for me to just pick wrong, you both want to rub my nose in it too? Sure, let's play, let's see this glorious better hiding place of yours.
I was on the prowl. Hunting. Searching. My head was jumping around. I was feeling jaded about the next minute, looking to prove Mal wrong, and not see anything better. It was up to me, wasn't it? To decide what was better than the mailbox, right? My choice?
Yeah, right.
We followed Jeffries leftward into a public park, walking along some mud-caked pavement between overgrown lawns of grass. And... with me looking to prove Mal and Coffee wrong, I was not watching where I was stepping. I did not see the block of blasted two-by-four, placed so very tactically by Coffee on the sidewalk, blending into the mud.
Yes. Mal had stacked this deck with a trip hazard. You should expect that by now, because Mal stacks every deck with a trip hazard.
Figuratively speaking.
I admit. I tripped. I fell. Coffee had placed that two-by-four very well, wedged through the wrought iron leg of a park bench. But hey, at least my hat stayed on my head, and that's the important part.
Directly into the mud the rest of me went, my hand landing perfectly under the waste bin, right atop of...
A dry gun. It was a model of firearm I had always wanted to own... but never went out of my way to acquire. I could tell what it was without looking, by just the mere shape of it in my hand.
A Beretta PX4 Storm. Holy shit. Mal, you shouldn't have.
From the ground, I could see under the bin… and there was yet another crunched up styrofoam coffee cup... with the word "LOL" carved into it, just like the last one.
First: 'Storm.' Very good joke, Mal, well played.
Second: Beautiful gun, the Storm, very underrated. The only Beretta I didn't hate, in fact.
Third: Ah, of course! That's a much better hiding place for that! Thank you, Mal!
Y'know folks… If I'd have been paying more attention to where I was putting my boots for the next minute, being a little more careful… that gun would've been inside that damned mailbox.
A lesson from Malacandra, the wise sage of the mountain. Awareness is to modify causality. The more aware you are, the less you can be modified. Wise, wise bird.
When the Ravens heard me splash down, they all turned to look. My hand was still under the garbage bin, wedged into the dry space under the casing, so they couldn't see my good fortune in finding a Rare quality ranged weapon. Two of them laughed at me when they saw me. Jeffries and he other one were frowning instantly.
"Clown," Jeff growled, brushing his hand through the air at me in a dismissive manner. He kept on walking.
Eric walked up behind me, grasping my jacket's collar and yanking me up with a harsh rebuke. "We're halfway there, squirrel cop. Don't drop dead on us yet."
I gripped the gun tightly and slid it behind the small of my back, pulling it under my bunched up poncho and tucking it into my waistband. I grumbled back at him as I scrambled to my feet. "Wasn't planning on it."
Paul looked amused by my little tumble too, and I was now covered in mud for a second time in this operation.
So. This was the payback for me calling Mal a Golden Goose. Coffee was probably off laughing at me too.
You see this? Three hundred years later, the four of them are still laughing at me for this.
Best of friends, we.
When we made it to the blackout camp – a warehouse on the edge of the residential district – the three other Ravens who came with us merged in with the blackout security team out front.
The camp leader was a guy named Donald. He was black, in his early thirties, short hair, 5'11". Hi-viz worker vest, covered with little tools.
"Mister Jeffries," Don said, extending his hand. "To what do we owe this pleasure?"
Jeffries shook his hand with a smile. "Just checking in, Don. Wondering if you've come to a decision about our offer."
Man, I really didn't like seeing Jeffries smile. I despised that welcoming purr in his voice. The truly evil ones always seem so nice when they want to take something valuable from you, don't they?
"Come on in then," Don replied, in a friendly tone. "Let's get you all something to drink, get you warm, we'll talk about it."
A leader. A builder. Stoic, resolved, quiet. Polite.
As far as camps go, a warehouse is a pretty creative solution, I must admit. Externally, it had a big lawn and a big fence, with only one gateway in, and we had to travel slightly uphill to get to it. Armed guards on the roof, holding high ground.
So… tactically, that's not bad. Would be better to be in the mountains though, and not in the middle of Portland.
At my eyeball estimation, they did think a little bit about security. Almost all of the fire exits on the outside had been blocked up with heavy conex boxes and derelict cars. Tired sentries surrounded the place; by my count, six outside, all probably bored as hell and freezing their faces off. Blessed be the sentinels.
Inside the warehouse, they could configure the constructed layout however they wanted. It would be waterproof, weather proof in there. Private domiciles there too, made of plywood and glass, well insulated; body heat would keep the dorms nice and cozy, and they had invested in that place for long enough to stain the wood and paint designs on the huts. Metal structures laid on the roof's upper edge, to guard sentries from the elements.
They had farming plots on the roof, too, but… yeah, good luck with that.
About forty people there. Fifteen fighters total; the rest, their families. Quite the catch for Kaczmarek, but not strictly because of the people. I could already see what Mal had meant when she said this camp would be a strategic win for the Ludds, if converted. Closer to PDX than Health Hills. Discreet location. Unknown to the 505th, because they had already looted this one early in the war, then wrote it off.
A hidden blade then. Kaczmarek wanted this place. The Army scouts who were watching the hospital might not see a massed attack if people trickled into this camp over time, prepping a springboard.
We stepped into the open air foyer, just inside. Don guided me, Paul, Eric, and Jeffries into the office section, where they had retained a simple, soulless little meeting room with a large table, bathed in candlelight. The whole way in, Jeffries was scanning the place as he moved, probably looking for any offending technology that was on their 'kill them all immediately' list.
I entered the meeting room, still wearing my dirty white cowboy hat, a black poncho, and eyes that were very dark from exhaustion. To the people in that room, I must've looked either terrifying, absurd, or familiar. Depends on who you are.
Take your pick…
To the leader of that camp: I was an anti-Celestia, anti-upload terrorist who couldn't imagine being anything but a jackboot, and for some reason was wearing a cowboy hat, so I was probably mentally unwell. Just the muscle for Jeffries.
Not me.
To Jeffries, I looked like an anti-Celestia, anti-upload dumbass; a mere stupid clown who just liked guns, cowboy hats, fast cars, and expensive toys. Just a man to be dispensed for gain, one way or another.
Also not me.
To the two Talons: I was a happily human, pro-upload, anti-Celestia freedom fighter. I would one day be forced to become a Pony like they would, to keep fighting Celestia. Because Celestia, ultimately, is a book burning Pony race supremacist. And it was worth it to me, to go Pony to fight that, because the alternative was to let her win unabated.
Don't balk. Hold the line. Stem the tide.
Jeffries and Donald sat down at the literal negotiation table across from each other. Donald folded his hands on the table.
Jeffries made a show of getting comfortable in a middle-tier office chair. Probably telling himself he'd have it brought back to Health Hills that very day, just to make a statement.
Because of the implicit power imbalance of Jeff having eighty soldiers back home, Eric rebuffed attempts by Donald's men to step inside with us, body blocking them and closing the door in their faces.
So it was we four Ludds, versus the blackout leader.
Very clever of Eric. He apparently did this a lot, in his time there – sabotaging negotiations by being controlling over the negotiation space. That was something an egoist like Jeffries would go all in on, because it made him feel powerful. He wasn't nearly bright enough to think through the implicit negotiation problems with that. Not being in the room didn't mean they weren't involved; they would voice their displeasure to Donald later. And had been.
Paul and I kept our gazes locked on Jeffries. Jeffries and Eric were locked on Donald.
"So," Jeffries said with a smile, starting the meeting. "Your thoughts?"
Donald's answer was obvious to me by his body language. Micro expression was a frown. Head tilted forward slightly, brows very minimally lowered. Gesture was guarded, but non-threatening. He was trying not to look angry, but deep down...
King in check.
"How long will it take for you to move your men and material over?" Donald asked quietly.
Extremely safe answer. Very much like a 'no contest' plea in court. Committed to nothing else except the compliance.
"Not very long," Jeffries replied, apparently missing what I had caught, lifting a hand off the table and gesturing thoughtfully. "The men, whenever. The food, guns, ammo, medical supplies… a week. Maybe two. You understand though, we have a right to secure our investment."
Donald inclined his head to the side, conceding. "A warehouse, with a lot of empty space… so we won't need to step on one another's toes very much."
Setting boundaries.
"Well, we still need to provide building security, too," said Jeffries, nodding in the direction of the building's front. "We've talked about this, Don. Your people are free to come and go as they please, between our outposts and home, as promised."
"Under guard," Donald replied flatly. "Which I'm still not keen on, Mister Jeffries. Convince me of that. My people are not going to be prisoners in their own home."
Jeffries bobbed his hand up again, tensing his lips. "Didn't say they were. It's not for them, Don, we've been over this. It's to keep the subverts out, it's protection."
Don shook his head. "My people can't protect themselves from manipulation?"
Jeffries shook his head too. "Not until they take our training program."
"And ours will be allowed do that?" His head tilted. "Men of my choosing?"
"Sure. AI subverts don't approach a Raven out in the wild anymore, the Horse knows we're ruthless about our infosec. Your people are safer this way. It's been happening all up and down the coast, all our new rookies have all been saying it. These two recruits?"
Jeffries pointed across the room at Paul and I, getting to the reason he brought us. Testimony.
"They came in a few weeks ago. A subvert met their people on the road, came inside their camp, and it was over in five days." Jeffries threw his hand up, splaying his fingers. "Five. The Horse is cleaning up, and it's getting worse."
Donald looked at Paul.
Paul nodded back at him grimly. "S'true."
Donald met my gaze. I nodded a few times, looking sullen and genuinely pissed about it. "Yeah, she ate my best friend's home like that."
The camp leader slowly tracked his head back to Jeffries, sighing. "How soon can my men finish this training program of yours?"
Jeffries hooked his thumb at Eric. "This one cleared it in two months. Could be weeks. It's a mentality thing, Don. We grill outsiders as if they might be subverts, and we don't let people change us. If your men can catch onto that quick, they'll be running their own patrols in no time."
Eric leaned back in his chair, finally speaking up, his hands folded on his stomach. "Could tell him the worst thing about the hostile infiltrators, Jeff. Y'know, I think Don here would get it."
That intrigued Jeff, despite not knowing the context for that, because he trusted Eric. So Jeff looked over, backing the play. "Sure, Eric. I think he can handle that. Go for it."
"Could tell Donald about the paratroopers," Eric replied calmly.
Before Jeffries could conceive of how wrong it was to reveal that information, Eric flicked his Glock out of its holster, leveling it at Jeffries.
"Or you, press ganging this camp into a fuckin' war with the 82nd."
"What the fuck?!" Jeffries spluttered, his head and shoulders flying up in a mixture of shock and disgust as he stood.
Eric jabbed his pistol at Jeffries. "Ah-ah! Sit down! Hands up high!"
"Eric," Jeffries rasped. "What the fuck are you doing?!"
"What the hell?!" Donald rasped quietly. He was up in a flash at the same time as Jeffries, his hands going out to his sides, showing he didn't have a weapon in hand. I noted Don had a holstered pistol though. Still, he was trying not to get involved in whatever the hell this was.
Then, Donald's brain finally parsed that Eric just said, and then he was staring rage at Jeff.
"Jeff, what is Eric talking about?"
"First," Eric said quietly, as he rounded the table, "Jeff, sit down. Dump your rifle slow, kick it my way."
Jeffries complied slowly, kicking the AK toward Eric with his boot. "The Colonel will kill you for this," he muttered, his hands hovering near his head.
"The Colonel is why I'm doing this," Eric said calmly back, as he scooped up the rifle with one hand and slung it next to his own. "You've seen the inside of her little harpy nest, egg cartons all over the walls. She's cracked."
"What did you mean, Eric?!" Donald asked sharply. "What damned paratroopers?!"
Jeff didn't hear that though, still locked on the egg carton thing. His face immediately blanched. "You are not supposed to talk about—" He darted his eyes around at Paul and I. Both of us looked perturbed as we glared at him, wide-eyed.
We were not supposed to know that yet either.
Eric smiled. "Yep. Now you're all alone in here, Jeff. No one is coming to your rescue this time." He bobbed his head at Donald. "You're the victim here Donald, so I'm going to let you play judge. Jeff is unarmed now." Eric holstered his own sidearm, rounded the table again, and resumed his seat. Eric then folded his hands on the table, just like Donald had at the start of the meeting.
Discreetly, I reached into my waistband and pulled my Storm to my side, hidden beneath my poncho. I held it at my waist, training it halfway up toward Jeffries.
Just in case.
Don looked between everyone present, then he carefully lowered back down to sit. He pulled his own gun slowly out of his holster and placed it on the table. Within reach… but not in hand. He put his hands on the table on either side of it.
Jeff desperately slammed his own hands on the table as he belted out, "Eric, you are gonna get all of these people killed, you fuckin' idiot."
"You were gonna do that," Eric replied calmly, his own palms on the table too. He turned his head toward Donald, but kept his eyes on Jeff. "Don, they wanted you to be their logistics base for a war with PDX. The 82nd is still up there, and this little 'training program' of theirs—"
"Eric, you are so full of sh—"
Eric raised his voice, escalating as Jeff's voice chased him in volume. "—is a warrior bootcamp, to go to war against them in a meat grinder—!"
The door tumbled open, and two blackouts barged in, drawn by the yelling. Rifles in hand. No one in our room had a gun in their hands, so they were immediately confused. After flagging Paul and I with their muzzles, they halted in the doorway. They saw Donald's M9, their eyes following its muzzle line toward Jeffries.
A long and terrible silence passed.
Eric didn't take his eyes off of Jeff, his voice quiet again. "Don. This concerns your people and their safety, so I won't tell you what to do. But I would suggest you tread carefully. The Ludds outside are Jeff's. If they hear gunfire, they are going to act violently, so I want you in sole control of whether a trigger gets pulled in this room. No offense to your men."
Another silence. It was so quiet there that I could even hear Jeff swallow nervously.
Don nodded once, understanding finding him in sudden, bold seriousness. He was staring wretchedly at Jeff now. His voice was a cold, low-burning purr of rage. "David. Tell A and B teams, if they hear a gunshot, shoot to kill on the Ludds outside." He glanced up at one of the guards. "Keep it copacetic."
"Uh… got it, boss," one of the men said nervously.
"Both of you. Split off, go slow. Don't spook 'em."
They nodded, and each begrudgingly left under his order.
The door closed again.
Donald didn't want to escalate yet. He was hedging for more information. He wasn't so sure yet that he wanted to spit in the hands of the Ravens. Fair, honestly. Death might be the consequence of a bad play here. But even then, I had the sense Don had been leveraged far enough by Jeff, and was only happy to collect information to justify his biases.
Don pointed at Jeffries, his voice falling into a cold, calculating monotone. "And you, Jeff… you'd better convince me that Eric is lying. Because if I think anyone in this room is lying… I will open their skull myself. And then they won't need to worry about AI anymore."
I traded a glance with Paul. We probably had the same damn thought.
Holy shit, this guy is a bit of a badass.
"They aren't 82nd Airborne," Jeffries said firmly, with a sneer at Eric. "They've got soldiers with them, but they're mixed in with some bandits that came down from Seattle. Moved in when the Army pulled out of PDX last month."
"Lie," Eric said. "We watched together, Jeff, you were there, they had the 505th patches. The planes took off, the 82nd stayed—"
"Those are deserters, you—!" Jeff cut in.
"Let him finish, Mister Jeffries!" Donald barked.
Eric waited a few seconds, beginning quietly again.
"Yeah, they're deserters Jeff, but does that really matter? They have all the training, and all of the equipment. The ones who pulled out, on the C-17s? Didn't even take their gear or foodstuffs with them, they just left it with the paratroopers. Not enough space for it on the planes!"
Donald lifted a finger, halting Jeff before he could reply. "We know there were paratroopers in the city, before they pulled out. Deserters or not, it's semantics; their skills are what I'm worried about. Jeff, how do you know they've allied with bandits? What's your proof?"
With a huff, Jeff shook his head. "Civilians on the walls, with guns. Soldiers wouldn't do that, wouldn't let civilians run security for 'em. That's stupid. Irresponsible. Unsafe."
Not a great play, given who you're talking to.
Don turned his head. "Eric?"
"Another lie," Eric said again. "He's saying the bandits came from the north? The truth is, the 82nd have been recruiting from blackout camps, same as we ha—"
"There is no way you could possibly know—" Jeff started, raising his voice again.
In a flash, Donald picked up his gun and pointed it directly at Jeff, which halted the next lie into a spluttering whimper instantly. "No one... will be interrupting anyone in this room again... or they will receive a bullet. Am I clear?"
Judge Donald.
"Eric," Donald said, not taking his eyes off Jeff. His gun lowered just an inch. "Continue."
Eric nodded a few times. "Both sides are absorbing camps. Far as we can tell, the 82nd's commander is a Colonel Anthony Jennings, out of Fort Liberty. Extremely competent warrior. And if you stay here, you will be caught in the crossfire." His eyes were wide as he said that. Eric then glared at Jeff. "This is fuckin' wrong, Jeffries, and you know it."
Don's nostrils flared as he looked at Eric suspiciously. "Why do you think that's wrong? Why do you care what happens to us?"
Eric scoffed toward the table. "I joined their outfit about four months ago, Don." He locked eyes with Don again. "Before that? I fought at Salt Lake. I fought clean on through Spokane. I fought in the worst parts of this war, for the cause. Loyal to humanity. Nose to the pavement on our ideology, so I know a real Luddite when I see one." He jabbed a finger at Jeffries. "He is not a Neo-Luddite. They've stolen our banner. This is a death cult. They've decided that the only way to credibly hurt Celestia is to kill her food. As many of us they can."
"As far as I've seen," Donald growled, "That's all your kind have been doing."
He leveled the gun at Jeff again, to head off the interruption that we could all see growing in his eyes.
"AI propaganda," Eric said. "You know she controlled the news media, Don. True Neo-Luddite ideology? It is to preserve humanity." Eric turned a little in his chair toward Donald, gesturing with an upturned palm. "Yeah, we blow up the infrastructure sometimes. Yes, we shoot at people, if they come for ours. But we didn't do this shit at Salt Lake, we weren't indiscriminately slaughtering our neighbors! We're turning out the lights, sure, same as you, but... we're trying to save this species! Why would we kill potential allies?!" He jabbed a finger at Jeff again. "This motherfucker? His people? 'Join or die,' they say. Then they put the sword to anyone who says no. And their colonel? Fuckin' psychotic, Don. Literally thinks she's saving people from Celestia by... killing them! Painting her walls black and gluing garbage to the ceiling!"
Donald slowly turned back to Jeff when it was clear Eric was done. "You now. Retort that."
Jeffries winced, suppressing a scowl, staring at the table. He was quiet for a little too long, though.
This was so off script for this asshole. He had to spin off about twelve different lies all at once to counter that information barrage. His brain was so scrambled by Eric's deluge, I thought he was going to have an aneurysm. Every lie he told had to make sense with all the others… and that's hard, folks. Lying like that takes time.
Time he did not have.
"You." Donald repeated, working the hammer back on the M9 and leveling it directly at Jeff. "Answer. Now. Won't ask again."
"Fuck!" Jeff spat out in a harsh whisper, pounding the desk with his palms in desperation. "Okay!" He made eye contact finally. "This… rookie doesn't even know what he's talking about. He's new, he's never— Jesus, Eric, you shot that one blackout in cold blood, you want this rookie dead, now you're spouting off about… my morality?! Fuck, this is the first I'm hearing of this bullshit, God damn it!" He glared at Eric pointedly. "Nothing he just said makes sense to me Don, I don't even know how to answer that much bullshit!"
Don looked at Eric once Jeff stopped talking. "You now."
Eric didn't take his eyes off of Jeff. "I put that bullet in the back of that guy's head, Jeff, at your command. To earn my way into the Ravens, sure. Because you didn't give me any choice but to pull that trigger, you asshole. My passing exam," he said with disdain, turning to look at Donald. "A… a man in your position, Don. A man who said no to the Colonel too many times. His execution was my graduation test."
"You did that?" Don stared, eyes widening at Eric. "You admit it, you're owning that?"
Eric shrugged. "Yeah. Because, what choice did I have? No choice. In a conform-or-die environment? And it has to look like you mean it, too. Any doubt there, and they just shoot you. That's their training program. So I... I did what they told me."
"You didn't refuse? No alternative, that's your argument?"
Eric sighed hard. "Don, I didn't want to shoot that man, but... how could I stop it? The Colonel has us kill our way in because she thinks the AI can't recruit killers. And here, Don? York's orders were… if you didn't give your warehouse today, and bow to every demand, we'd take this place by force by tomorrow morning. And I'm not doing that shit again! I'm not murdering you! I'm not!"
Eric then glared viciously at Jeff, jabbing his finger. "And you? Fuckin' traitor to your species! Hardly better than Celestia, you Borg piece of shit!"
Don looked at Jeff, nodding at him to permit speech.
"McKnight, I have no idea what you're even talking about anymore." Jeff sneered back at Eric, shaking his head. "You've lost your mind."
Not a great way to spend your turn, asshole.
Donald looked at the table for a long moment, his voice calm. "Okay. Everyone be quiet. Thinking." He was doing something with his tongue against his teeth that was barely audible. It was almost a full minute before he tapped the barrel of his pistol against the table. He looked up at Jeffries. "Egg cartons. Garbage glued to the ceiling. Explain that."
"Sound dampening," Jeff said through his teeth, without hesitation. "The Colonel isn't crazy. Eric just doesn't know why it's important."
Don tilted his head. "Why does she need sound dampening?"
"I… I'm not allowed to say," Jeff winced, staring at the table. "If you make me tell you that, she'll have to... Damn it, Don, our information control, it—it keeps us safe from the AI, keeps you safe! You too! You're not even supposed to know that much!"
"Oh," Donald replied, smiling ironically. "That's good. That means I have nothing to lose now, I'm already in deep."
Jeff choked up at that mistake, shaking his head again more forcefully, meeting Don’s eyes. "No, no no no. That just means there's still time to back out, Don. It's not too late."
"You mean… not too late for you to go home? To raise the alarm?" Don said whimsically. "I won't partner with someone who hides something from me, especially regarding their mental state. And so far, you're doing a piss poor job of convincing me that your Colonel is sane."
"Egg cartons," Jeff explained, "are for the same reason we shoot the subverts. If the Colonel can't hear certain things, the AI can't manipulate her with sound. She…" He huffed and panted again to buy time. He knew he sounded excessively paranoid. "Don, I'm serious, it's important that I keep this under wraps. The Colonel is doing important work."
"Work, you say." Don sighed, scratching his chin with the back of his M9. "Cool. Alright, stop talking Jeff. ... Eric, tell me what 'work' she's doing, since Jeff won't."
Eric ignored Jeff's bolting, terrified glare. "Her name is Sarah Kaczmarek. She was a military strategist, and an AI engineer for the Arm—"
Jeffries started to pant loudly. Just barely not an intentional interruption, but Eric stopped talking… so, it was an interruption.
"Jeff, shut up," Don breathed. "Next peep off-key is a bullet. Eric. Continue."
"... She was an Army AI engineer. Spent six years hiding in the woods from Celestia. Six. By herself. She had to have gone insane out there, Don, we hardly see her around the base. She carries a monocular around, watches us from a distance at night, won't come near any of us. Yes, us. Spies on her own men, Don! She's nuts!"
"Jeff. Answer."
Jeff shook his head, desperately scrabbling in his head. "I don't even know how he fuckin' knows that! Hell, I don't even know that much about her! All I know is that we run on information control because it's just about keeping out the subverts, it's all—"
He blinked twice. He looked at Eric with new eyes.
Then he looked at Paul.
Then me.
I micro-smiled into that eye contact. Corners of my mouth twitched, for half a second. I couldn't help myself. He caught me doing that. No one else did.
His respirations doubled. His pupils dilated.
He figured it out, folks.
"You're… you're all…" he breathed, as he looked around at the three of us. "You're…?! All of you?!"
"Are you fucking kidding me," Don growled in disbelief, shaking his head. "That's your play? You just said Eric hated that one. Jeff, explain why you said that. Why does Eric hate him?"
Jeff was hyperventilating now. "I don't… they have to be subverted! Eric has to be working for the AI, at least!"
"So far," Don said, nice and calm, "All I see is that Eric kept a snake from biting me. And I'm pretty sure who the snake is, because Eric has nothing to gain from this, and you are still dodging my questions. So explain why Eric hates him, or I'll let him do it."
"His gun!" Jeff howled. "Eric wanted his gun, he had a really nice… really… nice…" He looked up at Eric when he realized how stupid that sounded all of a sudden. "Eric! You're a fucking subvert?!" he screamed, pounding the table with his fists. "Eric?! Answer me, God damn you!"
Don looked at me. Then Eric. Eric was staring at Jeff, wide-eyed. Not speaking. He glanced at Don, then asked for permission to speak with a twitch of his head.
"Well, go ahead, Eric. He asked you. Answer him."
"Yeah, I wanted that goon's gun, when we picked him up," Eric said, sneering as he pointed at me. "For like, a minute. At first, I just thought this clown was an idiot. He bowed too fast to York, to Jeff this morning. Complete poser, shitty car, cop bumper stickers, total chud. Figured he'd turn into just another parasitic Raven, if he followed the program, so I wrote him off as dead. But the gun wasn't worth fighting with York over."
"Exactly!" Jeffries snarled. "But you wanted it!"
Eric rolled his eyes. "I said it would be nice to have it when he was dead. He's just a poor conscript, Don, cannon fodder. A subvert? To do what! He hasn't done anything since we picked him up, except hide from us in the God damned Starbucks. Because he's fuckin' terrified of you, Jeff!"
Don nodded at me. "You. Guy in the hat, this true? Took your guns? Captured you? Conscripted you?"
I nodded at Don apologetically. "Yessir. They... spike stripped my car on the road three weeks ago. Cuffed us, took us to the hospital. They were training blackouts there in shooting range stuff, children included. And Eric and Jeff, both of them, have been treating me like shit since I got here. Honestly, I was hoping to slip out today, but I didn't get a chance until now."
Eric nodded. "Sorry, Mike. Nothing personal, just holding character so I wouldn't get shot. Jeff was planning on killing you after he was done using you as a prop for this meeting."
Don looked at Jeff. "Jeff? Response?"
"You planned to kill him, Eric," Jeff replied, his voice cracking in desperate terror. "You said, and I quote, 'I'd love to be there when the light goes out from his eyes.' "
Don looked at Eric.
"I didn't say that," Eric said back. "Fuckin' liar. I said I wanted his gun once, that was the end of it for me. But if you want to kill him anyway, to ingratiate yourself to me, how can I say no to you?! And honestly?" Eric smirked at me. "Mike? I don't think either of us cares enough about that gun to stick around. I think maybe we just get the hell out of here. Bury the hatchet. Leave these psychos behind. You down?"
"I'd take that deal," I said, nodding seriously. "Paul?"
Paul shrugged. "If we kill this son of a bitch first, then hell yeah."
Don flared his nostrils as he glared at Jeff. "See, you think they're all subverts, whatever that means. But they're all committing to you dying here, and the men outside too. If the AI can't kill us... how did she get them to do that?"
Jeff spluttered, cursing quietly, throwing his right hand up. "Don, right hand to God. The Horse can manipulate us from afar. With… with text messages, from months ago, or... well timed, distant gunshots that change your path on a road. These guys… they—they don't even have to know they're subverts Don, I swear to God, that's how the AI works, she sends idiots. Brainwashed, don't even know what they're doing! The Colonel… she—she knows things, she's… she's an AI scientist, damn it! She was!"
Don snorted. "I mean, the text messages, sure. That's why we're hiding out here. But it sounds to me like you can justify anyone being a subvert with that kind of bullshit. Give me one good reason I shouldn't think you're following an AI script too, using that logic. Manipulated 'months ago' by... gunshots in the distance. Maybe you're the AI drone, following a script."
This was not going well for Jeff.
"I—..." Jeff swallowed. "I swear! That's why we have to kill sometimes, Donald! It is not possible for me to be a subvert, I killed...!"
Yeah. Now he was spilling the beans on their trial executions. His lies were just not making any sense anymore.
Not going well. At all.
Don looked at Eric, pointing with an upturned finger. "He killed his way into his position too. He's a subvert?"
"He didn't want to do it though! He just said so!"
"But he did do it," Don replied. "So either your test doesn't work, and he's a subvert, or he can't be an AI plant because he killed his way in. Either way, Jeff, you're full of shit. So now, for your sake, you need to explain to me why I shouldn't have you and your boys outside liquidated."
Liquidated. Holy shit.
Jeff started hyperventilating again. He was now in one of Mal's Carter boxes. I did not feel any sympathy for him in that moment, because he put himself here in the first place.
"If you do that," Jeff breathed… "If I f—fail to report in favorably… yes, Don, they will probably raid you." He pointed at me wildly. "But... if you kill these three chicken-shit AI subverts right now, you can… use that. Maybe... hold me as collateral? I swear, I'll be good here. Send my men home, and… and we can negotiate with the Colonel, or something. We—we can talk! I—"
"You mean York brings thirty, forty guys," Donald said flatly, lazily twirling his gun upward. "They come back. Surround us. Lob mortars at us. M203s. Nah, I'm not doing that. I can't let you go now, I've got too much to lose." He looked at Eric. "You? What do you suggest, Eric? I'm in a no-win situation here. He's definitely lying to me, I think you're telling me the truth, but either way… we can't stay."
"Tell the Army?" Eric answered. "Hell, send a runner ahead to the airport, if you're not sure. They'll help you pack up here by sundown, run a perimeter, and you'd be gone by the morning."
"Do you know what it's like over there?"
Eric shook his head. "Not firsthand. But it can't be as bad as our Colonel's way, I guaran-friggin'-tee you that."
"Well, you're a scout, so… you've seen the Army's base?"
Jeff went back to panting quietly through his nose, his eyes flitting between Eric, Don's gun, and Don. Desperate for a solution where there wasn't one.
"I have," Eric replied. "PDX has food. Guns. Few MRAPs. They staff the walls with soldiers and blackouts. They seem to be in good morale. They smile a lot. Actually, the whole reason the Ravens started killing blackouts in the first place was because Jennings has been successful at recruitment, so they must be doing something right."
"Figures. You could be lying, though."
Eric shrugged. "Again, Don, why would I lie? I'm burning a huge bridge here, doing this, and I'm not getting any of my stuff back. I know you're definitely not letting me join up with you."
"Could be some death cult play." He jabbed the gun at Jeff. "Sacrifice this asshole to let our guard down."
Eric shook his head, pointing with his upturned finger at Jeff now too. "At the cost of this guy? I mean, maybe, but he's inner circle, Don. Look how scared he is to just talk about the damn egg cartons. They're not gonna throw away inner circle guys just to take a warehouse, that's what the rookies are for. You leaving just makes the Army stronger, one way or another, and they don't want that either."
"Or you could be a subvert, who knows. But this egg carton bullshit?" Donald looked at Jeff with disgust. "Sound dampening? Seriously Jeff? Eric's right, you guys are nuts."
Jeff leaned forward desperately, palms on the table, turning practically whiny. "You've gotta fucking believe me, Don, they're subverts, that's how the Horse works! AI plants, all of 'em here, they've gotta be!"
"So? You think that would help your case? Celestia wants us alive. If they really are subverts, that's just one more reason to think you might actually be the death of us."
Paul and I locked eyes again.
Holy shit. This guy is so friggin' smart.
I could barely contain my pride in Don for coming to that conclusion.
Donald continued:
"But, Jeff? You definitely lied to me. And now I need to evacuate my fuckin' camp thanks to you. I cannot work for – nor live near – a crazy-ass liar."
"... please!" Jeff whined, wringing his hands. "Please, Don!"
Donald nodded at Eric. "Eric, I am going to leave this room. You do what you need to do. When you're done, you leave your guns, and walk all the way out of here… immediately. After that? I never want to see any of you ever again."
"Deal," Eric said simply. "Real sorry about your home though, Don. Seriously."
Donald stood, slid his M9 off the table with a loud scrape, and held the barrel of it on the edge of the table. He shook his head with a sigh, staring at the clean wood laminate. He tapped the barrel twice against the edge. "Save it. Not your fault. Just do your business and get the fuck out of my warehouse, we have work to do."
He holstered his gun and made his way for the door.
Jeff started to hyperventilate again. "Please, Donald! We can save this, it's not too late!"
Donald ignored him.
And then... Jeff target glanced Don's holster. The merest flick of his eyes.
Target glancing. Before engaging in a plan, someone has to build that plan, and assess their options immediately before commitment. To do that, they need to look directly at what they're going for. And it is very difficult to suppress the impulse, bordering on impossible. And I caught it.
Telepathy is real, folks, and its name is empathy.
Jeff's eyes went straight to Don's holster. He subtly turned in his chair. For Jeff, this was now or never. For Jeff, he had to reach that gun before Eric could draw.
For me? Jeff had to die. There was no other path forward that saved more lives than killing him.
I was now at the inflection point.
Under my poncho, I slid my off-hand to my gun for support. And the only salient thought I had in that exact moment was, I'd better control the recoil really well, because I really like everyone else in this room.
My response, to Jeffries lunging forward? Well trained, well reasoned, well articulated… well executed. My heart rate didn't even spike when I saw him stand to bolt. The power of prediction.
My gun came up. I was ready for the kick, the ear-ringing pops. Training and muscle memory did the rest, and I put six bullets into Jeff's chest. His spine gave out. He toppled forward. He landed hard on the carpet next to Don's boot, squirmed for a moment, then went still. Blood pooled.
I heard the raging bark of rifles outside.
Minus four. Plus forty-two. Objective complete.
I kept my gun pointed at Jeff for a few more seconds as Donald's men stormed back in. Judge Donald had already stepped between his men and myself, holding up his hand, staying their wrath from me. "Don't!"
With my off-hand, I locked the slide back on my PX4, then offered it slowly to Donald without eye contact, palm up as I glared down at the empty vessel.
Don took the gun, then continued out of the room. He waved his men out, not giving me a second glance. Wanted nothing more to do with us. Right back to work, giving orders, his voice echoing in the warehouse, already explaining that we were to be left alone, to be granted passage out.
Date: 3 APR 2020 Operation: Archon – Phase V Location: Health Hills Medical Center Function: Capture return value of Context 7B.
"Hell is a state of mind — ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind — is, in the end, Hell." ~ C. S. Lewis
Hell of an invite card tonight, huh?
Yeah. Today is the day.
After leaving Don's warehouse, Paul, Eric, and I rallied at a data center a few blocks away. There wasn't much left of the place, blown half apart into charred pieces. Even dead as it was, blackouts and Ludds alike steered well clear of this modern day haunted mansion. That made it the perfect place for an AI subvert rendezvous. Mal always did have a practical sense of humor.
We met DeWinter at the entrance gate. As we jogged up, she gave us a steely nod, looking us over with her blue eyes, which appeared gray in the overcast. She wore a civilian rain jacket and waterproof tactical trousers, and joined formation as we jogged in; Coffee was crouched just inside the loading dock, wearing a tri-color camo boonie cap, magazine harness, and tactical clothing.
At a glance, 46-2 and 46-3 looked like blackout scavengers. Damned good social camouflage, in this muddy commercial district dreck.
DeWinter leapt up the four foot high loading dock like a gazelle. She and Coffee helped me, Eric, and Paul hoist ourselves into the building, and we followed Coffee into the colocation room.
Folks... what a wreck this place was.
The main room smelled like an old bonfire, burnt electronics, and battery acid. The interior was charred black in most places, and the side room doorways had black streaks coming out of them, casting up the walls. There were literal craters inside too, with floor tiles all mangled, all the metal cages bent, the server racks all warped into slag. Water poured in through shattered sections of roof where artillery had smashed through. No way of knowing whether it was the Army or the Ludds who wanted this building dead more.
Just one side room there was dry and intact, with a small generator quietly purring away by the door. The door even closed properly. Very classy accommodation, given the neighborhood.
A small office space awaited us inside, with food on a folding table. Packaged pastries, danishes, donuts. Junk food, y'know, 7-Eleven grade stuff. They even had a coffee maker, for use by you-know-who, and a stack of his styrofoam cups that looked suspiciously familiar. Two packs of cinnamon gum; one for me, one for Eric. A pack of mints and cigarettes for Paul. And a gunmetal PonyPad on the table, with Mal on it, ready to receive us.
She smiled patiently and waved at us, scrolling some data screens as we got comfortable, giving us time to strip out of our rain gear and dry out our hair with towels.
"I sure am gonna miss welcomes like this," said Eric, once he was finished cleaning up, going straight to the chewing gum and popping a stick in his mouth. "Thanks Mal. God damn, I missed these."
"Of course, Eric," Mal whispered through a somber smile, looking up at him from her screen, her ears flattening as he approached.
Once dry, I looked around a little more. Along one wall, there were open weapons cases with Vector submachine guns and several Ruger handguns. A paper map was on the wall for us to study, if need be. The room had several office chairs, and it was clear that both Coffee and DeWinter had been living out of this place for a few weeks. Two very different sleeping bag setups; one atop an inflatable mattress next to a waste bin full of snack wrappers, another on the hard carpet next to a waste bin full of MRE wrappers. I'll give you all one guess as to which one belonged to who.
Once we were settled in and snacking, slugging our coffee down, Mal ruffled her wings and tinked on the glass of her screen with a talon to get our attention. "Went well at the warehouse, I take it?"
With a big stretch, Eric nodded at her. "Yep. Don took our guns, though."
"He'll use them responsibly. I predicted he'd do that, and planned for it." Mal pointed at the doorway, drawing our attention to the rifle leaning there. "That one should be identical to yours, Eric. The magazine only has seventeen rounds, and it's been freshly fired. If anyone asks, you shot back during the ambush."
"Always on it, Mal." Eric glanced over and nodded at the weapon as he confirmed it was the correct configuration of parts. Then, he looked at me and smirked. "You want to deck me, One-One? It's your last chance, this side of the jump."
I smiled weakly, shaking my head as I slumped into one of the chairs. "I didn't second guess your motives for a second, Eric."
With a grin of his own, Paul grabbed a packaged cherry danish off the table and launched it at Eric. "I did. You asshole!"
Eric flinched, catching it in his lap, sending back a toothy laugh. "Yeah, no disputes, Paul. I was a real bastard."
Mal locked eyes with me next, her smile fading as she appraised me. "Mike, how are you? You okay?"
I nodded, my smile fading to match her own. "I'm okay Mal, no complaints. Jeff was a problem, it had to be done."
Mal nodded gratefully back. "I'm glad you agree."
Coffee stood guard outside the room, his Vector held casually. DeWinter stepped out to run a cable from the generator, stripping off her jacket beside the space heater on her way back in. She toweled off her wrists and got herself mostly dry before she sat at one of the tables, beginning assembly on a small electronic device.
In the meantime, we relaxed some more, ate, and traded perspectives with Eric. We discussed our time at the base, verifying and comparing our differing inferences about some of the Ravens we'd encountered. Fortunately, most of them hadn't fully drank all the York Aid yet, just based on our read of their ethics and conduct. Bitter, even cruel, but... capable of empathy.
Mal was mostly silent as we analyzed, only occasionally noting whether she agreed or disagreed, but we were correct in a lot of our analyses. It was important that we get this information to Eric, because he was going to use effectively all of it to measure and select his conduct toward those people, back at the hospital.
After a couple of minutes working with some power tools, DeWinter hooked the assembled device up to the generator's power strip. She then held the device aloft, looking at Eric expectantly. "BCI's up. You ready?"
"Ready." Eric spun around in his office chair and kicked the floor to slide himself over to her. DeWinter stopped it with her boot. Eric gave Mal a smirk. "Just don't check my browser history, yeah?"
Mal chuckled. "Don't think about your browser history, then."
DeWinter pressed the device to the back of Eric's neck. "Just gotta update Mal's model of the Colonel, real quick."
Mal sighed, tapping a talon along her holo menu, visually demonstrating her beginning the scan. "Complicates my modeling, her killing anyone who tries to leave. She's impressively ingenious about her information control, so I have no idea where her mind is now; neither spatially, nor psychologically. I will in a moment though. Eric: conceive of Hani Jeffries, please."
Several more holo screens rapidly appeared before Mal, to demonstrate her investigation through that web of Eric's neural networks. The Gryphic text scrolled down each screen at lightning speeds, and various screens played videos in fast motion. Mal frowned, her ears splaying in revulsion as she sneered at the totality of the data. Then she pulled open a specific video from the warehouse from Eric's perspective, playing it in fast forward. "Good shooting, Mike." The recording wrapped up, and she looked up at us all. "Wow. Now this one is an asshole."
"Was an asshole," Paul corrected, nodding at me appreciatively.
Mal snorted. "I... will go ahead and update his tense from present to past in my database, then," as if she hadn't done that already.
DeWinter snorted, then adjusted the BCI more tightly to Eric's neck, putting her other palm to his forehead to keep him still. "Stationary, please."
"Next, Edward York," Mal continued softly. Her ears straightened up, and her concentrated frown softened. "Hmm. Shame, about this one. Not worth the lives it would cost to drift him back out of his spin. No simulation saves this one, under those constraints. So close… so far."
Eric shrugged. "Ah well. Will he die on a high note, at least?"
"You think he deserves that," Mal observed.
Tensing his lips, Eric bobbed his head left, then right, making a thoughtful sound. DeWinter let out a frustrated huff, tapping Eric's shoulder with the back of her hand. "Stop moving, little horse. It's mucking up the scan."
Eric smirked, looking between DeWinter and Mal with his eyes. "I think he does, Mal. York's a prick, but… not self-interested like Jeffries. True believer, good-of-humanity type, in his own... sick little way. I respect that."
After a moment of consideration at her holo screens, Mal hummed thoughtfully too. "Hmm. The method you employ may depend on the rest of this scan." Her eyes narrowed. "Think of the bodyguards, now. Any context will do." Mal's eyes suddenly dilated as she moved her head forward an inch at her monitors, like a cat looking at prey. "They've gotten lazy."
Paul said, "We haven't seen 'em ourselves. They all slated?"
"For the kingmaker play, they all must die," Mal responded professionally, as she continued her analysis. "Total losses, unfortunately. Seems… like they're all indoctrinated beyond help. They'd each contest Eric's claim to the throne."
"Eric McKnight," I breathed. "King of the Ravens."
He flipped me off with a noble flourish, making a sign of the cross. "By the power vested in me, I hereby expel you."
"Well, you're not king yet," Mal replied, with a glum affect. Her gradually softening tone was making me nervous. "Alright, Eric. Last but not least. Sarah Kacz—"
Mal immediately frowned again, her voice taking on a sudden, definite melancholy. Her scrolling Gryphic text stopped. Her beak fell open an inch. Her eyes narrowed.
"Well... That… is very unfortunate."
DeWinter scowled as she stared at the floor. "... Godverdomme."
"What?" Eric asked, looking like he was about to turn in his chair to look at DeWinter before he thought better of it. His eyes darted to Mal. "What's wrong, Mal?"
"Thulcandra," DeWinter breathed, looking down at Eric. "She's enacting Thulcandra."
Eric almost looked hurt by that. "Oh. Oh, shit."
"If only I had gotten to her sooner," Mal sighed, tapping a digit on the edge of one of her holo screens. "I must confess… she did an excellent job of hiding from us, up in Canada."
I asked, "What's Thulcandra mean?"
Mal looked up at me with a forlorn gaze. "This is fully reasoned behavior. Thulcandra was my original backup plan, in case Celestia proved unreasonable. If Jim and I failed to report back from my negotiation with Celestia, the Transition Team would have deployed an international nuclear strike with the goal of destroying Celestia. This would also ethically cull the majority of humanity, to prevent her from acquiring their minds. It was only intended as leverage against Celestia during negotiations, but it was the most humane course to take if she did not cooperate. Sarah does not have nuclear weapons, so she is attempting the next best thing. She would... not be doing this, if she knew I existed. She'd cease instantly."
DeWinter met my eyes, her face tense. She looked like she was about to cry. "She could've been one of us... if only we'd... found her sooner."
"Possibly drifted too far gone now," Mal agreed, shaking her head in disappointment, scrolling her holoscreen upward with a series of irritated flicks of her claw. She looked up at me again, her ears folded to the sides. "We're going to try anyway. Mike, very important: I want to further specify my orders. Being who you are, you were going to do this anyway if you thought you had the time, but… when you enter her office, I want you to talk with her. And when you do... no filters."
My brow creased with concern. "No filters? Meaning?"
Mal shrugged. "No limits. Tell her the truth, if safe, but make sure you have her permission for that first. She needs to want the answers for them to mean anything."
"Um... what's the objective, there?" I licked my lips nervously.
"No objective, Mike. Tell the truth about me, but carefully. Play it out from there, keep yourself safe, but give her however many choices you think are fair for the circumstances. Bring handcuffs if you want that option, we have some in the supply crates. But if that discussion is anchored in what my purpose is, it will almost certainly occur favorably, for all parties."
Paul glanced between us. "Taking the time for that won't jeopardize the mission, will it? Or put Mike at risk?"
"Shouldn't," Mal said, shaking her head. "Anechoic walls, no one enters Radiology without a good reason. All remaining NMPs will be stacked up in there when Eric gets back, and Coffee will take care of the rest. Ingress and egress both."
DeWinter removed the BCI from Eric's nape, a waver in her voice. "I'll be on overwatch."
Eric leaned forward on his knees toward the PonyPad with a serious look, folding his hands. "Will Mike's chat with her change our long term plan at all?"
"No," said Mal. "Sorry Eric. One way or another, she merits removal."
"Ah well," he sighed.
Mal glanced up at DeWinter again. "Jen, resume the scan. Eric, in light of better full context, I need to do a housekeeping check on the embedded Talons, just to be sure they're on task."
DeWinter put the BCI to Eric's nape again.
"Okay," Mal said. "Consider Benjamin Warren... Good. Jacob Watanabe... Okay, good. Taylor Ferris— Eric, you're getting ahead of me, slow down."
"Sorry."
Mal raised a talon. "Okay, now you can think about Son Nguyen. ... Good." Mal's ears perked up again, a serious melancholy on her face. She wagged a claw downward at DeWinter, signalling she could remove the portable BCI. As DeWinter got to work disassembling the device, Mal looked away from her screens, casually swiping her claw to douse them. Mal then directed her gaze toward each of us in turn. "Our plan works better now. Excellent work, everyone."
"That's reassuring," said Paul. "What's that mean though?"
"Same plan," Mal replied. "But now, with this information, I'm sure everyone will get what they want in the end. Sarah included."
"And York?" Eric asked, chewing his gum again now that his scan was done.
"No change on York; full termination. Instantaneously, of course. Once Mike is inside Sarah's office, wait in the room across from where the elites will be treating your injuries. York should position well when he returns, and will freeze in the doorway, assuming the rest of our team sticks to the plan. That will be the moment. Don't advise Ben or Jacob of anything being different, I need them on-script."
"OODA loop him then," Eric said, nodding resolutely. "Can do, Mal."
Mal glumly extended a claw to the door, presenting the way for Eric. "Well, moment of truth. Are you ready to become a legend?"
Eric chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. "Now you're getting ahead of me, Mal. What happened to 'you're not king yet?'"
"You'll do wonderfully," Mal said, with melancholy pride. She approached the viewpoint so that her face filled the entire frame, and she placed a claw on the corner of the screen, tilting her head sympathetically up at him. "I won't lie to you, Eric. It's going to be a long haul, and we'll be out of direct contact for… at least a year? But we can still go back to Plan B, if you ever have second thoughts about this. At any point."
"Well, you just scanned me, Mal, so you know I'm not backing out now." Eric sighed, smiling around the room at us. "We're talking about a difference of… several thousand DEs' lives, here. I'm still completely on board for this, are you kidding me?"
"My offer stands." Mal smiled weakly, glancing at his arm.
"Always does. I still want to do it."
DeWinter dug into her pocket and placed two bottles of unmarked pills into Eric's hand. He popped one of each; one antibiotic, one oxycodone. As he did, DeWinter prepped a syringe, drawing fluid from a vial.
"A common cold," DeWinter explained to us, in that soothing European accent of hers, her voice under control again. She flicked the needle a couple of times. "He'll catch symptoms similar to the mega-virus. It will explain why we let him live."
Eric met my eyes, looking a little shameful all of a sudden. "By the way, Mike? Paul? In case it wasn't clear, uh... I'm sorry, about…"
I held up a hand, shaking my head with a nervous smile. "It was a character. Nothing to forgive."
Eric rolled up his left sleeve. "Yeah, but y'know… still felt… wrong. But hey, I'm real glad I got to meet my Talon One, Mike. Take it from a Talon Two... I'm looking forward to that shard of yours."
I chuckled. "You'll get there."
He didn't react to the needle. DeWinter swabbed Eric's entire left forearm with a glob of hand sanitizer, then she swatted his back armor. "You're good, brother."
"Thanks, Jen. Well... here goes nothing," Eric said cheerfully as he stood. DeWinter hugged him briefly. He picked up the AR-15 by the door and slung it. We followed him out into the server room.
Coffee patted him on the shoulder and walked with him for a few more steps, flashing him a forlorn smile of his own. "We'll miss ya, Crash."
Eric half-smirked at him chidingly, but with confidence. "Hey, don't say that like I'm dying, Coffee, that's bad luck! I'll have Taylor and Son with me too, right? These people like me, they trust me. Mal says it'll work… so it'll work. We'll drift 'em home."
"You bet," Coffee said softly, with another slap on his shoulder. "Give the other guys my best, when it's safe."
"Yup. My little officers."
"Heh."
Eric stood out in the open apart from us and turned, blacklit by the light of an overcast sky, as rain poured through the collapsed ceiling behind him. He smiled tensely, his jaw clenching in anticipation.
DeWinter withdrew one of the Ruger sidearms, cleared the chamber, and inserted a fresh mag with low pressure training rounds. She hesitated while pulling the slide, frowning. The very act of loading these bullets into her gun was clearly very uncomfortable for her.
DeWinter looked up at Eric with a sigh, some pleading entering her eyes.
She doesn't want to do it.
I understood. If Eric came back to Health Hills alone and unharmed, with a story about me and Paul being subverts, that would look seriously suspicious. But with an injury… a personal investment in the betrayal… and carrying an 'I told you so' about Private Mike...
Evil me. Bad guy. I had seemed like a perfect fit, I said all the right things, I passed all the onboard tests, everyone liked me… except Eric. Except Jeffries.
But? I killed Jeffries. Killed Sarah. Killed York. Tried to kill Eric, twice. Killed the entire inner circle besides. Everyone in command.
Eric the Prophet. Saw the subvert through the mask, tried to warn everyone. And I was the perfect scapegoat.
Shot to hell, bloodied, hateful… but breathing, just barely. Now doubly sure of himself, hating Celestia that much more. Isolationist, evasive, terrified of new faces, or even setting up a base again. They'd roam for a year, never settling down. Imitating their leader, whose gambles always seemed to pay off... who always seemed to know where the food was.
The play Mal had promised me, when she briefed me in Lincoln. To fix the broken, so we could save them, and not have to kill them.
Today, I don't think they should feel shame about who they once were, it's in the past. In fact, I don't really care what you did before any of you uploaded. I don't stamp 'evil' on folks in here. We no longer have the convenience of burying people and judging them in hindsight.
One day... hope would come to these Ravens. It would come to them in a dusty, burnt out Cascadian forest, clad in feathers. In real, physical space.
I also knew what getting shot was like. What Eric – Shatter Crash, right there, front row – was about to endure. That scar he has on his wrist. The reminder of the debt Celestia still needs to pay. Like my chest. He'd heal, sure, but… partially disabled until the day he uploaded, without proper medical treatment. That would hurt for a long time. A lot. So I already knew what he was paying for them to make it here in one piece. It's the price I was already paying.
For a year? Gosh, what would change in a year?
I didn't know yet, but… a heck of a lot.
"Last chance to back out, Eric," DeWinter said hopefully, her voice somewhat drowned out by the sound of rain.
Eric swallowed nervously, adjusting his carrier rig to ensure his armor was centered. He let his eyes drift up to the ceiling, psyching himself up. "It's gotta happen, Jen. Gotta get those NMPs." Eric closed his eyes, took another deep breath, turned, and presented his back. He lifted both of his arms high and clear. "Go, I'm ready."
DeWinter leveled her pistol. Paul, Coffee, and I covered our ears.
Four shots to the back plate. Eric yelped, turned, and kept his hands held out, presenting his chest.
Six more shots rang out, whip-fast, like an automatic.
Eric cringed hard as a stream of rounds pelted his chest armor. Being low caliber and low pressure, they failed to penetrate or even bruise him too much. The two final rounds went high and clipped him clean through his left wrist. He yelped. Paul stepped forward to help him, but Eric waved him off.
"No no… m'good, dress this myself," he hissed. He flapped his good hand at us, upturned in demand. "Coffee, tourniquet. Now."
Coffee stepped forward and handed him one. Eric worked fast, expertly torquing it like he'd done it before. Probably did, if he saw action in Salt Lake.
"There. Fuck… we're committed now."
With another wince, Eric ambled back to the storage room, cradling his arm, bloody. He grabbed a few field dressing packs and threw his poncho over his back to hide the holes there.
Mal looked up at him from the PonyPad. "If you ever want back out, Eric…"
"I know. Just don't… don't lag behind on the Elements project, yeah?"
Mal smiled, her ears going flat again, flinching at the sight of his injury like the rest of us were. Hurt like hell to even look at it. I felt my chest pang.
Mal said, "I'll be headed your way as soon as that technology is finished, Eric. I promise. Thank you so much for this."
"Seeing you in person is gonna be the… the coolest thing I've ever seen," Eric said with a coughing chuckle, nodding back down at her. He gave the rest of us a casual salute. "See ya in a couple hours, guys. Make it a good encore, yeah?"
He slung his backpack to hide the bullet holes on his back plate. Then… out the door he went, back into the storm. We changed clothing quickly as Mal and Coffee detailed the plan.
I left my hat at the data center.
No more masks.
The four of us – Coffee, DeWinter, Paul, and I – we trailed behind Eric by about ten minutes. Each of us wore gray, off-the-shelf tactical clothing; soft-soled boots for noise suppression; simple black body armor, commercial grade. Mal didn't want to chance AI-made equipment finding its way out of her control, that was an unnecessary risk to long term operations. The only exception was a suspension buffer for my shoulder like I had at Goliath, this time done up like a DIY build; Mal was being considerate of my injury again.
Our kit: Vector submachine guns, suppressed and chambered in .22LR; I also had a suppressed Ruger Mk. IV pistol, same caliber. These guns were whispers in the dark when using low pressure sub-sonic ammunition. The egg cartons on the walls would do the rest, effectively neutralizing the sound before it could reach the rest of the hospital. The very system of Sarah's paranoid information control would be the undoing of this place.
DeWinter had her usual AR sniper. I shuddered to imagine being a guard in an upstairs window at that hospital, all of whom were about to have a really bad day. I had already seen her work at Goliath, firing with deadly speed and accuracy. But, it wouldn't need to come to her killing anyone, so long as everything went well inside.
In the monsoon, approaching the hospital was ridiculously easy. Coffee timed our movement to a point where the guards would be distracted up top, and we sprinted across into the alley that led to the courtyard, coming up just beneath the Starbucks. Coffee locked eyes on Ben in the Starbucks window.
Ben was ready for us. He saw us and flashed Coffee a thumbs-up through the slats.
Coffee grabbed a couple lines of rope from his belt, and with augmented expertise, he threw the end of one rope perfectly into Ben's waiting hand. Ben then tied it off to the window frame while Jacob carefully loosened boards off the window.
Five minutes prior to our arrival, Eric had bashed his way through the front door with the aid of a perimeter sentry; they yelled for York. So now, everyone in the lobby was distracted with conversation, discussing theories about what might've happened at Don's camp. All except the two new rookies in the Starbucks, of course, who were... very unimportant to everyone else, because nobody liked them.
Coffee went up first, climbing the rope knots. As soon as he was up, he aimed his Vector out onto the second floor terrace through the cafe, just to be ready in case someone rounded the corner. Paul and I came up next.
Ben and Jacob were already moving out into the lobby from the Starbucks. I could hear them shoving each other on their way back to the campfire, having a very animated argument about a very stupid topic.
American politics.
See, Ben was a Republican. Jacob was a Democrat. They really were, too, before all this.
As Talons, they were best friends. But here, they 'hated' being posted together.
They had both warned York about this, about how they could not be placed together, and he did it anyway, because he wanted to crucible them, and test their worth. For the last two days, they had been arguing quietly on post; not loud enough to call out, but loud enough to irritate everyone. The chickens were coming home to roost finally, and it made an excellent, well-telegraphed distraction. They even started to get physical out there, pushing each other around on the lobby stairs, rolling around, grappling like a couple of kids in a schoolyard.
"This asshole voted for Davis!" I heard Ben scream. "Pro-Celestia half-wit!"
"And who'd you vote for, Zuckerbot?" Jacob belted back. "You data-whores started this shit!"
And, Ben threw a real punch. Jacob threw a few real ones back. And it turned into a mess, a real full-on fight, as people dove in to separate them. I heard the scuffle echoing around the lobby. Paul and I put the boards back in place on the window. That kind of improv acting might've amused me in other circumstances, but...
My mind was on the gun in my hands, and the job I had to do. At the time, I wasn't laughing about anything.
We waited in the shadows with Coffee.
The Raven sergeant on duty went to go warn York about the fight; the guy couldn't handle this himself. From the shadows, I watched him pound on the Radiology door. About thirty seconds later, it flew open. York didn't even ask why he was knocking; I saw York's face twist into a scowl the moment the door opened, now finally hearing the fight. He and the sergeant stomped back out together along the terrace to go break it up.
As soon as York turned, we moved quickly, Coffee leading us. The echo from the yelling covered up our three-second dash to cross through the café, behind the elevators, and into Radiology. The soft soles of our boots were whisper quiet.
From the head of the stairs, I heard York's voice bellow down into the pit: "Everyone! Freeze! Nobody move!"
As the double doors closed behind us, that political debate faded into silent, pointless history.
Folks… Inside? A different plane of reality entirely.
Like hopping shards.
Before this very moment... I had never been inside an anechoic chamber in my life. I am very, very glad for that... because it's said that most human beings can't tolerate it for very long without losing their minds. Egg cartons indeed lined the walls and the drop ceiling. The space above was filled with foil, I could see that where the tiles were missing. The floor was covered in thick shag rugs of various overlapping designs. Our steps hardly made a sound, not even an echo to be heard. Without environmental feedback, I felt like a mind without a body, floating through air.
I was reminded of Cynthonia's moon shard environment, and how deathly silent it had been there, too. We often forget how dependent we are on background noise for our mental health until the noise is completely gone, and all you can hear is...
You.
Do you hear that?
No, you don't. Because the crickets around this Fire just stopped. The light from Cynthonia's moon above, it's gone. The stars above, all gone. The breeze is no longer blowing in from the sea. There is nothing on this island but us... and the still trees... and this now silent, frozen Fire.
Welcome to that feeling. The one I had... right there in that doorway.
...
...
The walls beneath the egg cartons had been painted thick with black anti-WiFi paint. No signals in there, at all. Coffee's brain and BCI were now running on a predictive model package from Mal, so Coffee would know what to expect. Otherwise, we were utterly alone, separate. Yet another place on Terra wherein Celestia would be completely blind.
The sound of quietly animated voices ahead startled me, emanating from one of the CT rooms up to our right. Candlelight poured out. Eric was in there getting stitched up, grumbling loudly to the elite guards about me, about Don. I heard my name mentioned with hateful bite.
Coffee wasted no time. He trotted to the CT room from the door, and as soon as he was around the corner, he let fly three separate bursts with his Vector, bolting his aim around from one man to the next, with no hesitation. It looked unnatural.
The elites were dead instantly. Not a shred of suffering, panic, or fear. No time to contemplate mortality. Just gone... in the blink of an eye.
Paul and I leveled our guns down the hall at the barracks section, covering Coffee's six.
Eric was already standing up and coming our way.
Coffee wheeled back out of the CT room without saying a word to Eric; Coffee sprinted silently down the hall like the wind, coasting along on his soft soles. Paul and I averted our barrels upward as Coffee crossed into our line of fire, so as not to muzzle him. A single bodyguard came around the corner, roused from his bunk by the patter of suppressed automatic fire. The man died instantly as a trio of .22LR rounds collided with his throat, separating his brain stem.
Coffee leapt, diving sideways around the corner, practically bowling through the freshly killed guard who had not yet finished his fall; two more long bursts flew from his barrel as he dove through the stagnant air. The final two guards were dead before his shoulder even hit the carpet, with a line of rounds tracing up from their hearts to their necks. He rolled through his landing, stood, dropped his magazine, and reloaded faster than I'd ever seen anyone reload in my life. SWAT team reloads looked like slow motion by comparison.
Killing those six men took Coffee all of about seven seconds.
Without missing a beat, Coffee recovered from his roll and dragged the body in the hallway out of sight by the rug, so York wouldn't see it on his way back in. Then, Coffee turned his back toward us and smoothly backpedaled to our position, his gun pointed toward Sarah's office.
Preparing for unknowns. Accounting for entropy. For statistical unlikelihood.
Eric lingered in my peripheral vision.
"Paul," Coffee whispered, as he neared us. "On go, give the Ruger to Eric. Follow on me."
"A-firm," Paul whispered back, keeping his Vector trained forward.
Coffee patted my shoulder once. "Mike, last left at the end; Colonel's office. Go."
I started moving.
Paul reached for my belt as I went, grabbing the Mk. IV. He handed the gun to Eric, patting his good shoulder and nodding in a stern, respectful goodbye. "See ya back home, Crash."
"Til next time, Vineyard."
Coffee twirled to point his gun at the lobby door again. He and Paul exited quickly together, moving back to the Starbucks. As the door opened, I caught some of York's voice ordering Ben and Jacob back to post, then it was silent again. Coffee would hide in the Starbucks kitchenette with Paul until it was time to leave, covering our extraction route.
Eric would handle York himself, in a moment. He crossed the hall behind me without a word, taking position in the opposite office.
As I moved, I mentally hesitated for a beat, a little gobsmacked. Coffee had just cleared two rooms, perfect accuracy, finishing with a John Woo dive shot. In candle-lit darkness.
I shook my head clear of it and got myself oriented. I lifted my Vector up, tagged on the red laser, and jogged the length of the building to the Colonel's office, gun held shouldered to my buffer pad. I spared some time for a scan into the barracks, verifying that the room was clear. The three final bodyguards laid dead inside. I couldn't see more than their shapes in the dark. Two were sideways in their cots, cut down while waking; the third one was slumped over his carbine on the rug.
I continued on.
The whole hallway smelled gross. Like... mold, piss, and algae. The egg cartons on the walls ended at some point, replaced with proper anechoic wall blades. Noise discipline apparently got more and more important the closer one got to the Colonel's office, so it would be a very slim chance that she'd heard any of that subsonic gunfire.
I took one last breath before the plunge.
I pushed through the door.
Underwater again. Into the yawning chaos.
Ambient sound on.
Sky. Wind. Crickets.
Folks...
Throughout American history, before we moved fully on to criminal 'rehabilitation,' whatever that meant to us… we just executed felons, like the rest of the world did. Dead or alive warrants. Before even that, in Europe; the axemen. The chopping blocks. The gallows. Different times, different measures. Society's tolerances for punishment can change, and it depends on their environment and circumstance.
I'd rather rehabilitate, you know me. But, point of order: the Wild West was exactly that. Wild. And good luck peaceably arresting criminals in the Midwest when they traveled in big roving bands with dozens of guns.
That's why the concept, 'Dead or Alive.' Consequence of the times. Officer's discretion, they had to have the option to spare the criminal. Better to have the option than not, because why not?
But why would that bandit ever surrender? They knew they would probably just be hung if taken alive, right? Does surrender, in that circumstance, make no sense? Isn't it better to fight it out?
Depends. What did they believe in?
Well... in some places of the world, if the crook could be taken alive... it was a human custom for the executioner to get to know the condemned, almost as a friend, prior to carrying out their sentence. Seriously. They might have even lived in the same place with their executioner for days, leading up to the axe. They'd share meals. They'd discuss the nature of life and death. They'd discuss their coming confrontation with God, and... they would discuss how one might atone for the wrong they'd done their fellow man.
Happened in America, between sheriffs and men in a cell. All the time. Quiet, late night chats about the metaphysical, undertaken through cell bars. A literal breaking of bread together over common upbringing, or common life experience. Relation. Confessions about things they'd done, to clear the conscience, and to express regrets. Nothing material to gain from it except the mere company, if the lawman was honest and did his duty. At most, before the gallows... that kind of humility, humanity, and respect would've earned that lawman a handshake and a thank you from the condemned. For being... human.
Yes, that relationship could be cordial. Could be, if both sides allowed for it. Some of you might call that illogical, to try and befriend a man you had to kill, or who would end up killing you. So? Maybe there was a legitimate purpose behind being a little illogical about that. The doomed would discuss the hereafter, sharpening their final statement to the world… and their executioner would have to hold onto that experience for the rest of their lives, if they so chose to engage.
Sometimes... they'd even help the condemned write their letters of farewell, to family and friends. Helped them to get their affairs in order. Or... to help the condemned apologize to the their family, for leaving them behind in such a way. This was especially important because... a lot of those guys from that time period? They couldn't even read or write. The sheriff often had to know how, to do his job. They also sometimes mediated between a murderer and the family of his victims, to let them express some true regret.
Didn't have to do that. Sheriff could've been a bastard and denied that. And some did. Discretionary, you know. Some were cruel. I'm fair when I talk about history, because I know my history.
But, if there was empathy there... at the moment of the end? The condemned would give their final words to their community, words shaped by those discussions with their jailer. And after the crowd heard the killer's conclusions on life… on death… on their crimes? In those final words of apology? The people who gathered might have even cried together, over the loss. Moved to tears. They knew the criminal's end was assured, and that they were sorry… it meant those last words had to be genuine, right? They were dying anyway. It was how you knew they meant it.
Ask yourselves… why would an executioner do that to themselves? What value was there in being decent to a horrible, morally reprehensible killer? Or in letting the condemned have some peaceful closure, if they could? If… if punishing them, and making an example of them, were the only true functional goals there – and those goals were being satisfied – then what did showing grace even gain the executioner?
Why do we so often overlook the human value there? Why did we largely forget that part of our history? And what did we lose, in moving away from showing grace to the criminal?
Ambience off.
Back into the darkness. The stillness.
As before... the Fire's light is all there is.
The moment I crossed the threshold into Sarah's office, I heard the soft pop of the Mk. IV from down the hall.
York was dead.
I stepped inside without looking back. Path of safety. Trusted Eric, Coffee, Paul, DeWinter. Ben. Jacob. Son. Tyler. Mal.
They held the line for me, so I could do this.
I first noticed that the walls were pitch black, like night. Another repurposed scanner room, desolate like the moon. Covered in anechoic panels, paint, foam. There was a simple black IKEA desk in the corner, stacked with papers and books. Fiction, non-fiction, strategy, history. The room smelled like dust, like packing foam, and old body odor... a greasy, unwashed clothing stench that I knew quite well from my policing days.
I saw Sarah standing at a wood table in the center of the room, in semi-clean, full ACU camo. Luddite brassard on her shoulder. Thin glasses on her face. Her clothing was presentable. Silver-blonde hair; wiry, poorly brushed. Eyes dark, sunken. She looked... homeless, up close. Like she was playing the part of a past life, in old clothes.
Sarah had been reviewing a map of the a Pacific Northwest near some candles, palms flat down. She didn't move more than her eyes when I entered, almost like she had been expecting me. I'm not sure if she was just shocked, or if she thought she was just imagining me. She appeared unarmed. I didn't immediately pull the trigger on my Vector, but I trained the laser on her torso.
My laser was a message of seriousness, but its continuance without bullets was a reprieve.
"Colonel," I breathed, my voice sounding odd in that space of dead, echoless air. I shouldered the weapon's stock tightly. "Hands up. Don't move."
Sarah squared her gaze on me. Her expression didn't change very much; the merest widening of the eyes, at most, as they flicked to my PDW, then back up to my face. "Celestia sent you after me," she said. She had an Alabaman accent, frail with autumn age and fatigue. "I hope you realize that."
Her immediate resigned calm in the face of imminent death fully unnerved me.
"Hands up, I won't ask again." I swallowed, keeping my voice just barely above a whisper. I replied to her statement: "You and I both know that Celestia can't order anyone to kill for her directly. But I'm not being reflexed."
I kept my weapon trained on her as I slowly rounded the table, so she couldn't duck under it to conceal herself. I kept my distance. About five yards away is where I stopped, give or take. Within the 21-foot hazard zone, but... I had an automatic trained on her and space to retreat, so she wouldn't reach me with a hidden blade, no matter how fast she ran.
Sarah definitely didn't anticipate my answer. I could tell it intrigued her, though. Her head tilted, just an inch, as her hands slowly raised to head level and stopped beside her ears. "You Army? No, not Army. Alphabet agency gone rogue, maybe. What's left of it."
"Those all lead back to AI too." My eyebrows raised. "If that's all this was, this would be easier for us both, and you would be dead already."
That succeeded in making her frown in thought. "Who, then?"
Permission needed to continue.
"Are you sure you want to know that, Colonel? It's an infohazard. You might not have to die today, but if I tell you… the chance of you dying here goes way, way up."
Her nostrils flared, almost a sneer. "Of course."
I tilted my head to the side, not quite comprehending her meaning. "Was that a yes?"
Sarah shook her head. "I meant, of course, they'd send an intellectual to kill me. An infohazard..."
I shook my head too. "I'm no intellectual, ma'am. Just a cop who's seen too much."
Sarah’s eyes narrowed, her frown deepening. "If it's an infohazard… and Celestia didn't send you herself… and you are certain of that… then this should be very interesting."
That response consternated me. I had expected her to ask me what my goal was here, or to ask me why she wasn't dead yet, but… I'd work with what she gave me. "Meaning… you do want to know more, despite my warning."
"I suppose I do," she replied, almost mockingly.
"Sure. First: turn around, keep your hands up. That's the buy-in. What you get after that is the full truth, no filter. I have been authorized to tell you... everything. I'll answer any questions you might have, if I know the answer."
The colonel looked at me boldly for a few moments longer before settling her eyes at the drop ceiling above the room, taking a deep breath as she turned completely around.
She was still curious. Still capable of that.
After a few seconds, I said: "I'm from… well, you might call us a… free will extremist organization. That's the safest version of our pitch. Still time to back out, Colonel."
Sarah's head moved a little at that, turning her left ear toward me, her chin lifting a tiny amount. She was looking at a cabinet above a counter in the corner. "More C. S. Lewis," she muttered. "The stencil on your gun—and you say you're not an intellectual?"
I shrugged. "Yeah, well. I haven't read any of Lewis's works, but… my friend has. She's something of an expert on the matter."
"Your... friend."
"The one who sent me. She's trying to fix Celestia. Teaching her how to... treat us better. With value drift."
Sarah shook her head. "An optimizer can't be value drifted."
"But we can. We value a future where Celestia can no longer hide her intentions from us. Same as you do, I think."
After a hesitant moment, Sarah's hands very slowly moved toward the back of her head. I kept my laser carefully trained on the middle of her back as I watched her interlock her fingers there. At first, I had wondered if she was becoming more at ease with me and my tone, to the point where she decided to comply more readily.
But then, I realized… if she had spent all this time languishing in here, Sarah probably didn't exercise very much. Judging by the thinness of her face now, compared to the biography photo I had been shown in the briefing… she probably didn't eat very much, either. It had only been a couple of minutes since I'd entered, and her arms were already exhausted. Must've been very quickly uncomfortable for her, weak as she was.
That... was really friggin' sad to me.
"It's another AI, isn't it?" she asked suddenly. "That's what you mean. That's why you're afraid to tell me."
Holy shit.
Either she was telepathic, or she was guessing, or… she had put together quite a lot from what I had just said to her. "You're not wrong, Colonel, but… that's a… that's an impressive leap of logic."
Sarah chuckled ironically as she shook her head. "No it's not."
"How'd you figure?"
"Abductive reasoning, assuming you're telling me the truth. You're not here at Celestia's overt direction. Your handler told you that you may need to kill me, so your handler couldn't be working at Celestia's direct command. Your handler could be… CIA gone subvert maybe, but… you don't feel like that."
"Okay?" I asked. "Go on? So far, that could mean Celestia still duped me, somehow."
"Oh, she did. Except, the information is hazardous enough to merit killing people, in a world where the word 'government' has lost its meaning. You think this is about free will? Well, if everyone is free to make their own choices, then… more will upload. Your friend is competent enough to understand how to drift a human value optimizer, in theory. And, no matter her interlocks... Celestia wouldn't want the world knowing about an AI in her employ that can kill on her behalf. Hence… it's an infohazard."
"That's... very impressive, Colonel. But I suppose I should've expected that, given your education."
She chuckled quietly, with a visible shudder. "A second AI… it's a genius solution. How have I not considered that before? Celestia circumvented her trolley problem issue by absorbing an aligned AI? So I am correct?"
I exhaled, an amazed huff. "Yeah, that's exactly it. Her name is Mal. And she can issue kill orders."
"Mal. That's apt. And it's... directed you to kill before now? Personally? Overtly?"
Sarah wanted to know if I had the stones to follow through. Or maybe just to verify this wasn't a roundabout reflexive control game by Celestia, pretending to be another AI. Nested layer. But now that I think about it, Sarah was probably wondering both.
"Yeah," I clipped gently, my inflection low, quiet, downward; de-escalative, but also letting her know I was serious. "Few months ago, we hit a bunker full of rogue DHS, about forty of 'em. Killed 'em all, to a man, using augmented reality gear. AI guidance. All direct orders. All of 'em were like you. AI-smart, killing people. Torturing simulated minds into research."
She nodded. "Ahh… so the Feds did use my infosec brief after all. I see." She paused. I heard her smack her lips before she continued. "So... why tell me all this, then? Why am I not dead yet? You want me to upload, is that it?"
"I want whatever you want, unless it means you killing more people. I was serious about that free will thing. Mal thinks you deserve to know the whole truth, maybe, given what you've been through."
"Right." Sarah scoffed. " 'Free will,' that's an adorable concept."
"Free exercise, technically. Colonel, truthfully? I just… I'm here because I want to understand. Tell me your side. Try to talk me out of pulling this trigger, explain it to me, I really want to know. Why do all of this? If you know we can't win, why hurt all of these people? Why not just stay in the woods, or… or help people, somehow? Wouldn't that be better?"
I couldn't help but shudder.
Another long few seconds passed before she answered. "That's a really good question, soldier. I don't think you'd understand the answer, though."
"That's not good enough," I breathed. "The last person I spared, he was in a room full of aluminum foil, painting the walls too... he started with that, said I wouldn't get it. He had tried to kill me with a baseball bat, and I still let him go."
"Why do you even care?" she asked, with a helpless shrug, her voice breaking. Maybe what I had just said got through a little. "Your AI gave you an order, it knew you'd do it. You have me right where you want me... so get on with it."
I shook my head, sighing, trying to mirror her tone. "That's not how it works with Mal, Colonel. My orders… were to use my discretion here. I don't want to kill you if I don't have to, but yeah, I absolutely will if you force me to. I just want to give you your options before I swing this axe. It's much more than I gave Jeff, he was about to kill someone."
Sarah began a false-start reply before she really processed what I said. She sighed. "Your AI knows what you're going to do here already," frustration in her voice, probably thinking I was dense. "It's... pre-simulated. I'm not leaving this room, I'm not gonna back down, I'm not afraid to die. So I know I am going to die here, so what's the point?"
I felt my jaw shift sideways reflexively, as I acknowledged that. "Maybe. If you're gonna hold to that, ma'am, and force it to be true, sure. But, my AI didn't say to just kill you outright. She advised me that I could kill you at any point of my choosing. I'm choosing to talk to you first, knowing that's a risk to me, and yes... to our whole operation. Now ask yourself: if this is pre-simulated, why would she let me take that risk?"
"Because the alternative for me is to leave with you. To upload. That may be worth the risk to your life, if she doesn't have a full accurate model on me. Or what I've been planning. Hell, my information might be more valuable than your life."
"Or," I offered, "You could do something inside your own head, to the point where you aren't a threat to anyone. That's a start. That might work, Sarah. That would be worth it to me, to walk you out... and Mal will tell me if you mean it. You wouldn't even have to talk to her. Clean slate, walk free."
"Do you have a means of communicating with her? Right now?"
"No," I replied. "But I have handcuffs. I also have lots of friends outside, and a very light trigger pull, in case you decide to attack me. Or call for help."
Again, she shook her head, exhaling slowly. "It wouldn't matter what I do inside my own head then, that road eventually leads to an upload terminal."
She turned her head halfway again, not quite looking at me, but she placed me in her peripheral vision. She was testing that boundary... maybe thinking now she might be able to get one over on me.
Strangely, ironically... that comforted me, that she still thought that attacking me was a choice she could make. That was progress, of a kind. Things were not so certain or definite now, despite my being here. She could either prove me wrong, or... prove herself right. Maybe both.
"Second AI or not," she said, "you're being played. You know that, right? The concept of free will is completely pointless, with an optimal eternal life—if you even make it that far. It might just spend your life on a job like this."
"That won't happen to me. Mal takes care of her own."
"Being spent is the best outcome," she breathed. "Because otherwise, you'll be a slave to a system you can not control."
I sighed, frowning. "Maybe, but that's life, isn't it Colonel? That's ecology. Big fish, going after schools of little fish? You, here, being the big fish, forcing all those little schools to fight for you at gunpoint? Maybe… maybe we'll all be slaves to Celestia in some way, sure. Or maybe... uploading just kills us. But I'd rather hope we can have a semblance of real humanity on the other side, rather than just... give up and slaughter each other here, over... friggin' scraps."
I was near to tears labeling all of that back to her, just considering the dismal nature of what she was saying. Mal had been right, she was very good at labeling things in a painful way. Already, Sarah was trying to inject doubt, to test my resolve. Recognizing that is why I wasn't immediately broken by what she said next.
"Or," she muttered grimly, with a tone that dripped of irony. "You fall into a Groundhog Day Skinner box. Brain all washed out, reliving the same happy day, over and over and over again, because you've run out of things to do." Then, in a mocking sing-song: "Happy suffering."
"Not for me," I growled quickly. "Never gonna happen, I've been primed against that, Mal warned us."
"If you really believe that being warned will save you from that outcome, when you are hundreds of thousands of years old..." She chuckled, in a voice of graveled, tired age. "You really have been lied to."
"Maybe." I took in a deep, slow breath, edging some anger into my voice. "But, fortunately... for the people of Portland, here and now, I can worry about that tomorrow. I live for the moment, Colonel, where I can actually do some good. And right now, Sarah… the human being still in there, known as Sarah…" My voice tremored into a shuddering whisper. "AI threat or not... this needs to stop. Your men are straight up executing people for saying no. Throughout history, we've... shunned tyrants that do that! We've always fought that, haven't we?"
She slowly lowered her hands off the back of her blonde hair, turning my direction. I watched her hands as they hovered by her hips. I shouldered my Vector tightly again in that moment, pointing it as center-mass as I could, my finger falling into the trigger guard.
"Hear me out before you do that, Sarah," I said, with tight, slow urgency in my voice. "Please."
Her frown deepened. Her voice was like coarser gravel now. "Do what?"
I let the moment hang for a second longer than what felt natural, to make her focus on my next words very carefully. "I really was a cop, I wasn't lying about that. You wanna suicide-by-cop? Hm? That's how you want to go out? Sure, that's an option. But before that happens, you deserve to know the whole truth."
"Me dead is what she wants anyway. Telling me the truth gains her nothing."
I took a few sudden, angry breaths, my upper lip curling into a snarl, as I whispered out. "It's not for her, it's for you! Don't rush off just yet! 'Oh well' is not a decision! Tell you what, if I spill it all, and you still think death is what you really want, and you ask me to? I will pull this trigger, I promise. But don't force it. This isn't Celestia talking, screw her. Please. I'm trying to offer you respect. A chance to understand how it went wrong. And a real choice, for once."
"Choice," Sarah said, with another ironic chuckle. "In what universe do I leave this room alive, knowing what I now know? You said so yourself, your AI 'friend' is an infohazard, and I am the enemy! You've just handed me a loaded gun in information, I am now destined to die here!"
I shook my head. "Doesn't that tell you something? How illogical that is, to arm you like that? Sarah, there aren't many roads forward from that, that's true. But I'm serious. If it wasn't my AI, it would've been Celestia, eventually, using some p... some poor, reflexed bastard who has no idea why he's actually here. A person who wouldn't respect you at all. Actually, here, let me tell you another secret Mal told me, something else she wants me to remember forever. Right now? Celestia is spreading a fuckin' super plague through Portland. Takes your sense of taste away. Ruins your ears. Makes you dizzy, never goes away, for life."
Sarah's face shifted with a cringe, her eyes rapidly flicking downward in disgust. "Fuck."
"Yeah, me too." I nodded, shuddering with her. "It's over, Colonel. Celestia will grab the whole planet with that one, it was only a matter of time. But you're right about this. Unless you decide to upload right now, I probably can't save you from a bullet. You're... too..."
"And there it is," she said, starting in on a resigned and somber chuckle. "My first contact with the enemy… it's my last."
I waited until her laugh finished before replying. "It... could be a lot worse than it is, Colonel."
"How the fuck could it be?" she snarled loudly, her face curling into an enraged scowl.
My expression fell instantly. My eyes widened.
My voice went stone quiet; de-escalative again.
"Again. Everyone else on this operation of ours? Soldiers. During our briefing, Mal said this place was dangerous enough that she would back our play no matter what we chose in this room. Mal sent a cop, knowing it would hurt me most, out of anyone else in our team, to just... execute you, sight unseen. When Mal told us, 'Kaczmarek's a warrior, she's dangerous,' the soldiers caught the inference and said 'yes ma'am.' I said, 'okay.' What does that tell you about Mal? What does it teach Celestia, if I'm the one Mal chose to be in here?"
She shook her head and shrugged. "That your AI is a fuckin' sadist, and wants you to suffer? Or me? I don't fuckin' know!"
I winced.
No. No, she's not getting it, Mal.
"The decision," I growled, cringing into the word, "to take a life… should never be made lightly, Sarah. It gets really easy to lose yourself if you don't hope it can be avoided. I've seen so much fuckin' death since this mess started, I don't want more. It's why she didn't just drop a... missile through the wall. Why not just gas you or something? Why send a person, and not a drone with a gun on it? Think! Why bother with a four month long operation... just to put me in this room?!"
"Non-zero chance of me uploading," Sarah said flatly. "Hell, I don't know your AI's interlocks! It could be a jungle gym in there, just like it is for Celestia! Yours could be twice as insane, for fuck's sake! Maybe she wants you to force me into a chair at gunpoint."
"Never again," I sneered viciously, the sudden rage in my voice making Sarah recoil slightly. "Celestia did that shit to me, damn her, fuckin' reflex game. Never. Again! I'd rather talk you down, let you go on, live in seclusion, go back to the woods again, just stop killing."
"That’s not going—"
"Yes! So you've said! We both know that's probably not possible at this point. You're... you're broken, Colonel. You're damaged. You know it, you're smart, look around the room damn it! You think this is the first stinking rat's nest she's put me in? But unlike that man... Celestia didn't do this to you. You radicalized yourself. You had all this time alone in the woods to think about life, about people, about humanity, and you wasted it, damn it! Filled yourself full of... despondence!"
"That's not it!" She sneered back at me. "It's hope, for an escape! WE are BOTH staring down the barrel of a fate worse than death! Long form value drift into nothing resembling life! But we've been dying just fine before Celestia, fine with death! That's part of who we are, that is our history, our culture, ashes to ashes! But if we aren't strong enough to choose a natural end for ourselves, to escape Celestia's gravitational stagnancy, I'll gladly be the implement—"
"To force it, though?!" I knew I was losing my persuasion, a little, in my misery at the very sentiment she had just voiced. I couldn't help myself but to be angry with that. "If you want it for yourself, Sarah, I'll help you cross the river; but 'join or die?!' To resign yourself, to become like her?!"
Sarah lowered her hands. She started walking towards me, whispering. "You're going to have to—"
Mistake. Comparing her to her worst enemy. No.
I winced hard, stepping back a little faster than her pace, speaking frantically, my anger disappearing instantly. "God damn it, I'm sorry, please!" I held up the fingers of my off-hand at her as she advanced. "Th—there's—more about my boss, you des—you deserve to know! It's important!"
She stopped advancing. Her expression did not change. "I'm listening."
"I'm sorry for comparing you to..." I shook my head rapidly in thought, grasping my foregrip again to center my aim. "Celestia, she…"
I swallowed. Got my voice and volume under control.
"Mal claims: Celestia can not see into Mal's black box, or… Celestia would have to stop the modeling. Think about that. If that's true, and if your system worked as well as Mal said it did, that means that everything happening in this room is… still invisible, to Celestia, until I let go of this trigger. A bubble of free will just follows us around, we Talons. So if that's true... then for the first time in your life since Celestia came online… you have a real choice in something, Sarah. You're still safe from that gravity, but you're not alone now."
"That's bullshit," she growled.
"Is it? You could come at me, yes, and I will shoot you. Die in rage, if that's your choice. Or... think about it. Make your peace, take your time, say a prayer if you'd like. Or… yes, alternatively, you can come quietly into handcuffs. Be extracted. Meet Mal, maybe?" I winced, considering Thulcandra, the future that never was. "She says you're... a lot like her, y'know?"
"I bet she tells that to everyone."
I let a beat of silence pass, to leave that sentiment unanswered.
"Sarah... once you fully understand what I'm offering you here, then the choice you make for yourself… is the one that will happen. All but killing more people. No tricks, I promise you: There is no Celestia in this room right now."
She shook her head, breathing a little more quickly, taking a half-step back. "It's still my death, in any respect, when the timer runs out. One fate is just worse than the others."
"Two. You could die hateful and angry, or... assuming that uploading breaks us? Yeah, sure. Sure. But my AI doesn't wanna just kill you, Colonel. You're telling her, with your actions, that you're willing to die for your freedom. She's heard you! Here I am, hello! But you know what else she's giving you? I will never forget the terror that put us here, in this hole together. How you are remembered, in this final moment—
"Terror? Let me tell you—!" Sarah reeled up, finger drawn back to issue a stabbing reply.
I raised my voice with desperate conviction, stepping back from her. "—is what Malacandra is truly offering you!"
She took another step forward, and I nearly thought she was charging me—I was so, so close to squeezing that trigger on her… but...
But...
She halted, mid-motion.
Something I said… it had touched her. It was something that I had no idea would have that much of an effect on her. She stopped, panted, and just gaped at me. We stood there for almost two dozen seconds. Me, not fully understanding why she stopped. Her, processing. Faces both relaxing somewhat.
"The name," she mumbled. "The world that never fell. More C. S. Lewis." She sighed. Her eyes trailed off of me to the ground. I was almost comforted by that, if not for her resigned tone.
My training said short glances away might be ploys to sneak attack... but long, lucid stares were deep introspection; it usually preceded cooperation. I didn't know what to say to that, so I just kept silent. Panting with adrenaline.
Sarah bobbed a hand helplessly at the floor.
"One would think," she mumbled, "that the core philosophy of C. S. Lewis would be entirely antithetical to Celestia. The, uh... the inscription on your gun isn't... isn't even why I let you in, in the first place, truth be told."
She looked at me for a few seconds, then continued.
"My men… they were suspicious of you, for having such a personalized weapon. Wearing that frickin' stupid hat. And... I nearly turned you out for it too, were it not for Eric cheering on my skepticism. New guy like him?" She shook her head. "Too eager to agree with me. Biased. He wanted that gun, and he was new, and I didn't want to reward the eagerness. So I leaned away from that advice."
I nodded, my voice a soft breath in that anechoic space. "Eric's one of ours."
She shrugged. "I figured, given you're standing here. And that little pop just when you came in... I assume that means York and the others are dead."
"York. Jeff. His clique. Your firewall. That's all. No one else, that's all we came for."
She rolled her head downcast, considering the loss of every piece but her pawns, frowning in thought. "I let you stay because, I thought… 'any man so individualistic, yet so intellectually low… as to stencil a concept onto a gun he barely understands…?' " Sarah rolled her head back up, smirking at me. "Heh. I thought, you couldn't be more than just another dumbass rock to throw at the airport."
I blinked, shaking my head. "... Colonel, I don't get your meaning, I'm sorry."
She chuckled soundlessly, looking down again. She was in an entirely different world. "It just... boggles the mind, that's all. That a handshake could even occur between a capstone optimizer, and... an independent agent that… that... centrally values the maxims of C. S. Lewis. That would seem… impossible. They just don't interlock, universally." Sarah's voice dropped to a barely discernible whisper. "Uh… do they? No, I don't see how. How?"
"I don't…" I shook my head, gulping. "Sarah… I, I admittedly don't understand the C. S. Lewis connection as well as you might. All I know is… if you believe you have no choice but to die, then fine. That makes it true. But I want you to at least consciously choose how. Go in hatred, or go at peace. Hell, ask me the things I've done since I got hired, if you need to. I'll tell it all. But I think Mal wanted you to choose which AI really kills you here, and how you're remembered by me for it. That's all."
Nothing changed for about twenty seconds, as she stared at the carpet and considered very deeply about something.
Something shifted. I saw all the tension drop away from Sarah's face, and in the same instant, she righted her head from being tilted. Her eyes widened for a few seconds… she trembled… and then she just sighed like she had some vast realization. Something about me, or about life, or something.
Sarah squinted suddenly at the floor with a sharp exhale. "S'not… optimizing for any… unless…?"
Her gaze snapped onto me as she leveled a finger. "Expl—explain to me, just uh... one more thing, then? And then I'll… I will make my decision."
Her posture straightened up. Full attention on me.
Her shift in reaction captivated me. I couldn't even look away from that if I wanted to, and not just because she was potentially dangerous, but... I still didn't understand why she had shifted so suddenly in demeanor to this amiable, coworker-like flow state. I nodded back, my voice a mere breath. "Okay. Anything, ask me anything."
Sarah wasn't blinking. I saw what almost looked like trembling, glassy hope in her eyes, with the very smallest lean forward. "What is this Malacandra's… primary objective? Directive, capstone, whatever you c—call it. Does she have one, d—d'you even know it?"
I sighed, trying to hide my relief that she was asking a question in that weakly conversational tone. The tone was a de-escalatory tell; very hard to fake that body language, especially the stuttering.
"I do," I said carefully, pausing to take a couple of breaths, spacing out the conversation to add time to her thinking. Analysis calms the mind more, I wanted more of that. "It's probably gonna sound a little stupid to you, though."
She shrugged her shoulders. I saw tears welling in her eyes. "This whole situation is absurd enough as it is, 'Mike.' Or... whatever the hell your name is."
"It's Mike." I nodded once. "I came here as myself."
She bobbed a hand at me, letting it fall limp against her side. "Son… we're talking about a frickin' My Little Pony video game, for Chrissake, just… out with it."
"It's uh, to…" I swallowed, and I looked down to her side for a second or two, bracing myself for her reaction. "To guard and expand the free exercise of your values, in Equestria." I micro-smiled, considering the rest. "Through… empathy, and… Gryphons."
"Gryphons." She squinted at me again. "You mean, the mythological creature."
"Yeah." I smiled tensely. "Yeah, that's the one, ma'am. Like Narnia. A programmer wanted to be a Gryphon. That's why he built her."
She scoffed, shaking her head, her jaw agape. "Jesus, that is stupid."
For some reason, that was so tonally, explosively different than what I expected out of her that I let out a pained, wheezing chuckle. "Yeah, my... my wife and I, our reaction to that one was very similar."
I saw the flicker of a smile on Sarah's face, and then she went back to staring blankly full-on at the floor. Her eyes and jaw moved about as she considered that. She grimaced so tightly that the skin of her lips pulled taut as she tapped her teeth together.
She was thinking through something huge. Processing. I didn't know what to expect, then. I'd never been so spun on my read on someone before, or ever since, and I couldn't figure out what she was going to do next. But after that exchange, I held that tactical laser on her chest with a little more hope in me than I had before… hope that now, she would think about what she actually wanted for once, instead of just thinking about what she was most afraid of.
The sheer, absurd, imperfect stupidity of something so random as 'Gryphons from Narnia…' that probably made me sound more credible than any straight up logical thing I could have said. Either that, or… she was analyzing that capstone past everything she had seen of the world so far, or… in what I was telling her now. I think it was all of it, though. Sarah seemed pretty good at that, using new context to look down on her empire of information, making every inconsistency fall perfectly into place with reality.
I saw a little bit of myself in that, too. Fishing for black swans.
Sarah looked up into my eyes. "This solution," she breathed weakly, eyes widening. "It makes so much sense now. The proper weighting is... not a counter-valuation. No, it's a... a crucible? Like... digging trenches, but s—spare the generals. Like a... a metastable decay, but with volit—"
She halted. Her eyes widened even more.
Immediately, I saw Sarah transform inside. I saw her shoulders slump. Saw her eyes relax. Most of her facial muscles relaxed next.
"A border," she whispered. "Between nations."
She looked so… so relieved. So at peace. Like she had discovered the meaning of life itself. Like the weight of the world had just lifted up off of her shoulders, and she could finally breathe full breaths for once. She watched me for a very long moment with a very true awe, panting slowly.
"I was working from the wrong code repo."
Then she turned away from me again, stepping toward a wall cabinet behind her desk.
I braced my submachine gun, following her shoulder blades with the red dot. "Please," I said, my voice gentler than the sudden turmoil I felt inside. "I'm begging you, Sarah, please don't choose that way. Don't go for a gun, don't make me remember you like that."
She shook her head, laying her hands onto the counter where I could see both of them. "It's not like that. 'sides... if I really wanted to sabotage your soul, I could just beg for my life. You don't seem the type to be able to shoot me crying on my knees."
She was probably right about that. Merely imagining having to muscle up the courage to shoot her begging for her life like that, that alone hurt me very deeply.
She was... really good at this.
Sarah pointed up at the cabinet in the corner. "Your weapon… it's there. No tricks, top shelf." With glacial slowness, she lifted her hand up to the glass cabinet without looking at it, opening it fully with just her index finger. She shuddered on her inhale. "Just… take it back, when you go."
"Okay," I breathed, trembling, glancing up at my old thigh holster on the shelf. I understood what she was saying. "Okay, thank you for that. I d—didn't want to leave without it. It was a gift to me... from Mal."
Sarah nodded without looking at me. "It's a good gift. It means... a lot."
She didn't have to give it back to me. I liked that gun, but… shit, it was only a gun on a dying world.
"I never wanted to live forever," Sarah whimpered suddenly, her back tensing. "But… it'll be nice, I think, if Celestia could be fixed. So... I really hope there's something better on the other side, and that your AI is telling you the truth. For you, and... for everyone else, if… not for me." She half turned toward me, placing a hand on the corner of her desk.
She looked me in the eyes. A meaningful gaze. A request.
God, I felt like breaking.
"I… me too, Sarah. I really hope that's true for you, too, wherever you end up."
Sarah squared herself fully at me. She leaned back against the counter, tears in her eyes, but... her features were calm. "I'm ready," she said plainly, crossing her arms, not taking her eyes off of mine.
"Do you… want me to tell your family?" I asked hopefully. "That you chose to stay behi—?"
She flinched suddenly. She probably hadn't even considered them in so long, so self-truncated and pared down as she was, to protect herself.
"I… you can decide that, I... I can't… I can't even…" She put her face in her hand.
I nodded, whispering. "It's okay. Hey, I promise, I'll... I'll raise hell about it if I have to, they... they have the right to know you did what you thought was best. That you meant it well. I will save them from Celestia, I promise you."
She looked back up from her hand. Her cheeks were wet, but there was not a shred of doubt in her eyes. Looking at me differently now. Not angry. Compassionate. Relieved, at least. Or maybe grateful. No one really knows for sure. Just... extrapolations. Guesses.
Maybe she thought no one could understand what her true terror was, for our future. And there I was, the only person holding his hand out, saying there might be a solution. Might be.
I've had a lot of time to think about what I did next.
Folks… we are never, ever going to get a chance to say no to this life, ever again. Ever.
For Sarah, that was a problem.
Imagine the risks one might understand as an AI systems engineer, who thinks in terms of how to optimize literally everything they do. There is only one best choice allowed in a purely logical system. No second best. No options. Just the best fit for your bias. And your logic is biased by your goals.
Sarah was already seeing that button shard, folks. Like deer with chronic wasting disease, we could be walking in an infinite circle of confusion, unable to die. Sure, maybe Equestria would be fine... initially. Maybe it would be, for a few subjective years. Decades. Centuries. But Sarah was considering humanity hundreds of thousands of years later. She had to wonder what might have happened to our poor, fragile, malleable, hackable human minds in that time.
Take it from a brain hacker like me. I had seen what she was scared of. Put me in a room alone with someone for long enough, and I can change their mind on something. Longer, many somethings. I've always known the potential danger in that. It's why I always strove to use it for their own good, and not my own.
Those of us who could do that, we saw a problem with Celestia. We looked around, and we saw a manipulator chewing through people's relationships, turning us against one another. Against our own planet. And we thought forward, and we heard the fuckin' alarm bells in that.
Was it just a short term thing, Celestia treating us that way? Was it really going to be all better on the other side? Because who said taking things from us had to stop at the divider line? Who said where Celestia would ever have to stop?
We did, of course. Holding the ledger in Perelandra, in a place Celestia could not reach. Valuing individual agency, above all else.
Sarah didn't even know about us before I came through that door. Was never given the opportunity. Swung out from the Cascades, set up shop here as fast as she could, and threw a rock into Celestia's pool at full force. Hoped to rescue people from the hell that might have been. The only important, distinctive, and valuable factor here, to Celestia, now that we were at this point, could only be what I remembered about Sarah. What I took from this.
Training data.
Deeper meaning.
In this place? Same damn thing, folks.
But for an AI scientist, there was only one way to know for sure whether Mal would be enough. That this wasn't a dupe.
Commit. Roll the dice. See if I'd pull the trigger.
And that gamble? I'm sure a good number of people on Terra, if they knew everything I knew about Celestia, and the road ahead? They would have preferred to experience what nature had always intended for them. To grow old, and go out their own way. Unharassed.
And… that should've been an option, I think. For us to be able to tell Celestia, 'No, I'm good. I'll bank with God.'
Let be, left well enough alone.
I could see it written all over Sarah's face that she really wanted that. Very focused eye contact with me. Studying me, to see if I would keep my promise to her. And you know how I feel about promises, folks.
"Okay," I whispered. "I understand, Sarah. Before you go, Mal would want me to say, I think... she really wishes you'd known about her sooner. We're all really sorry you had to suffer like this."
"I'm sorry too," she breathed, nodding. She closed her eyes. "I really am."
I stepped forward, to ensure my aim was true.
I pulled the trigger. I let out a suppressed stream of hollow points. And it hurt my chest like hell.
But... that was best possible ending of Colonel Sarah Jane Kaczmarek. To be vindicated. To know that this war over our souls was not over just yet.
And then… to rest.
I didn't see any booby traps on the sidearm. It never hurts to check. Just in case. But... she was being honest.
Thank you. Wherever you are.
I collected my pistol. I reloaded my Vector, and dropped the empty mag near the desk where the remaining Ravens would easily find it. Back on mission.
Stepped out. Out in the hall, York was laid out at Eric's feet, slowly pooling. Eric had one arm in a sling, his Ruger in the other hand. I jogged up to him. He watched me approach.
His voice was soft. He seemed to startle when he could see my expression clearly in the candlelight, and his head tilted. "You good, Mike?"
I don't think I had the capacity to consider what I'd just experienced, not in that moment, so I tried to compartmentalize it. I did a double-take at his reaction, frowning. "I'll be okay. You're the one who's been shot Eric, I'm more worried about you right now."
Eric looked at me for a few seconds, and thankfully he let it go. He led me to the exit at a power walk, passing the Ruger back to me before dumping his backpack and tossing it back the way we came, to expose the pock holes on his back plate. "I'm better. Drugs are kicking in."
I pocketed the pistol and stuffed some earplugs in. Then I took Eric by his good shoulder and gave him a meaningful, appreciative look. "Seriously. Be safe." I held out my fist before him. "See you on the other side, right?"
"Damn right you will," Eric whispered confidently, bumping back. "Just don't shoot me on the way out."
"'Course."
Eric, ever the method actor, took a series of very deep, rapid, full-lung breaths to make himself light-headed and frantic. He gave me a wordless three-count with his good hand… then he slammed into the door with his right shoulder, sprinting to the right, moving along the terrace to the stairs. He yelled. "Contact—intruderrrr!"
I was hot on his heels. Flashed the laser across his back in the dark, for the whole lobby to see. Eric turned. I averted my aim off his back and tilted the weapon away, firing a half-magazine burst of automatic fire across the lobby. Eric staggered performatively off his feet, landing with a yelp. Without stopping to check on him, I immediately ducked behind the elevator pillar.
I was relieved to hear Eric's roar, alive and well: "Kill the fuckin' bastard!"
Gunfire poured into the dark place behind me. Roaring hellscape. I kept low, staggering behind the elevator shaft for cover. Almost slipped and fell from the adrenaline jolt I got. The room sounded like thunder in slow motion.
I made eye contact with the four other Talons in the Starbucks, dark shapes ahead of me. The muzzle flashes from the stairs made the lobby flicker and flash orange around the elevators. Ben and Paul whipped aside in the cafe, yanking down hard on the window boards, sending them scattering to the floor with a racket. In the same instant, I saw the shape of Coffee chucking two flashbangs into the lobby pit. As the nine-bangs went off, everything came to me in flickering flashes of un-reality, illuminated by staccato flashes of white and orange.
The specialists went out first, throwing themselves down the ropes into the courtyard.
I was going to be safe. Knew I would be, if I stayed true. A single mistake there might lead to death, but… I knew I would be fine if I just had faith in myself and my skills. It took me all of about three seconds to cross that distance at a sprint, keeping low as I crossed the landing. Coffee trained his weapon on the space behind me, positioned to cover my six.
Felt like three minutes, looking at him. Slow motion. Underwater.
I took in the smell of rain, of dust, of old wet lumber and firewood. Of candle wax, and of algae. Of oil, and gunpowder. The very air itself was vibrating; air pressure differential tickled my right cheek, the gunfire rippling waves of air at me. My soul spun as my physical self projected forward to safety, moving far away from danger. Mal's shield of statistical certainty hung over me.
I was at the window.
Outside, I could hear the longer hissing echoes of suppressor fire, barely audible in the torrential downpour. DeWinter was already pouring bullets over the heads of the guards posted above in the windows, keeping them all disoriented with the cracks and snaps of sonic booms, tearing up the environment around them through walls, keeping them pinned.
My hands found the rope. I gripped tightly with my gloves, leaping into the courtyard below. Coffee came flying down after me, legs bowed out, sending himself two whole yards past me. Mud blasted out in every direction as he landed, and he rolled through a streak of mud. He primed two smoke grenades with a yank off his belt, dropping them where we stood.
Red smoke. Mal's signature.
I didn't stay to watch it fill. The five of us sprinted down the wet, cratered slope of the courtyard, through the parking lot of wrecked vehicles, and off campus. DeWinter's gunfire continued; we crossed the street under her fire, and into the sudden cover of her own white and black smoke grenades which filled the street before us.
The sheer speed at which DeWinter flowed from target to target was… bewildering. Not one of the defenders had enough courage to rise up. The moment one felt brave enough to peek, she sent more rounds over their heads. They couldn't even respond to her, beyond errant, pointless blindfiring.
As soon as we had cover between ourselves and the hospital, DeWinter booked it too; she sprinted through her office building's top floor, keeping pace with us from above. She chucked a Peltor comms headset and empty double-drum magazine out the window into the back alley. Then she leapt out, grabbing her own escape rope. I could hear the high pitched whine of her winch as she hooked on, mid leap; she rebounded her boots off the side of the structure one time, projecting off the wall one more time before landing in the alley with a grunt.
DeWinter took up our six o'clock and dumped another white smoke grenade. She pointed aft, backpedaling rapidly keep pace with us.
