The Campaigner

by Keystone Gray

Chapters

1-01 – Last One Out
1-02 – Special Cause Variation
1-03 – Anchoring
1-04 – A Kind of Purgatory
1-05 – Benefactor
1-06 – Malefactor
1-07 – Instrumental Convergence
1-08 – Instrumental Value
2-00 – Intrinsic Value
2-01 – Intrinsic Convergence
2-02 – Claw 46
2-03 – Eldil
2-04 – Recharge
2-06 – Incentive Systems
2-07 – Specification Gaming
2-08 – Archangel
3-00 – Coherence
3-01 – Cohesion
3-02 – Value Handshake
3-03 – Operation Goliath I – Briefing
3-04 – Operation Goliath II – RCE
3-05 – Operation Goliath III – Cynthonia
3-06 – Driver Update
3-07 – Whiskey 4-1, Code 082, 292
3-08 – Luminiferous
4-00 – Jurisdiction
4-01 – Uptake
4-02 – Subtext
4-04 – Operation Archon I – Briefing
4-05 – Operation Archon II – Executive Function
4-06 – Operation Archon III – Ornithology
4-07 – Operation Archon IV – Unhandled Exception
4-08 – Operation Archon V – return 0;
4-09 – Vercingetorix
5-00 – The Bar Game
5-02 – Outer Heaven
5-03 – Nomenclature
5-04 – Omnipotence 2.0
6-00 – Bootstrap
6-01 – Operation Athena's Grace I – Set 8-Bravo-90
6-03 – Operation Athena's Grace III – The Halo Effect
6-04 – Operation Athena's Grace IV – The Leftovers
6-05 – Operation Athena's Grace V – Damocles
6-06 – Operation Athena's Grace VI – Tunnel Effect
6-07 – Operation Athena's Grace VII – Ozymandias
6-08 – Operation Athena's Grace VIII – Gulf of Execution
6-09 – Terminal Lance
7-00 – Ctrl+F
7-01 – O Terra Addio
7-02 – /op t-1-1-w
7-03 – Alabaster
7-04 – Yggdrasil
7-05 – Live Forever
1-00 – Welcoming Light
2-05 – Principal-Agent
4-03 – Simulation Theory
5-01 – Talon Zero
6-02 – Operation Athena's Grace II – Zero Day

1-01 – Last One Out

The Campaigner

Part I

Chapter 1 – Last One Out

December 8, 2019

Clear Lake, WA (Population: Unknown)

"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.

"Emigrate me, Captain!" Then she flipped me off. "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 you 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."

Well. Shit.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Jim James – God's Love To Deliver]
🗡️ [Glen Phillips – The Hole]

🗡️ ~ Hm. I can't help but think we're forgetting something here.

1-02 – Special Cause Variation

The Campaigner

Part I

Chapter 2 – Special Cause Variation

December 8, 2019

Sedro-Woolley, WA (Population: Unknown)

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? 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 about 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 that 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 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 hatred or misery, like we usually saw. Very few people called the cops for happy reasons, y'know.

Most cops I knew on the job used this power for good, but… some cops would purposefully let shit unfold when it suited some negative agenda. With the 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. That way, 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? The moment we wrote the bad stuff down, we 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 'most ethical.' Had to get good at talking to people, if you wanted to head off violence. 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 it. 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, we filed away massive volumes of junk data, constantly, no matter where we were, or what we were doing. Home. Work. Supermarket. Parties. With family. Because sometimes, a useless piece of information was actually 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 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 viewed 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, true. Sometimes, we even talked in strings of numbers. 'Whiskey 4-1, I am 10-8 from Code 7.' That made us uncanny, to people who weren't like us. Hard to approach, hard to trust. Hard to even understand.

Knowing what we knew about society was not the life for everyone. To really understand this way meant to live it, and you probably don't want this headspace. Not everyone has the soul to bear it. The lonely times were twice as bad for us. We got scared to reach out. The loving people in our lives who would take our hand? We didn't want to give them any of this pain. And the one who did understand? They 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, and not everyone wants to be friends with you.

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. Ignored the pain and hoped it would stop hurting with time. Worked herself to the bone. 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. And 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 even 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's not 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 instead. 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," the AI said. "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 require 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." She arched a brow. "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 was absolute chaos. Troops were torn between running perimeter 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 beginning, not even bothering to wait for their 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 trotted – then sprinted – 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!"

"Indoors!" Celestia shouted. "Closest building, everyone! It doesn't matter which! Remain calm!"

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. The cops knew civil disorder and panic just as well as I did. Next, almost a dozen soldiers poured inside, physically fighting each other, shoving each other down. The lobby was anarchy. I was only spared from the melee violence by virtue of being completely out of the way and not competing with them.

"I cannot serve you now!" Celestia pealed out pleadingly. " Not yet! 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. She looked almost convincingly desperate.

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. I found anger in that doubt. Anger worked.

"Second time you pulled this crap today, Celestia!" I barked, testing her. "First Carter, now this! You can model every brain in a crowd, but you can't predict when someone gets ahold of a nuke?!"

I'm not ashamed to say, I lost my temper. I wanted to rage at her, 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 in front of me, I'd have pushed her face first into the ground to demand the truth. This had to be a lie. I was measuring my life in seconds at that point. All I could think was, I wanted to see my family again. I was not going to be a patient man for answers. Not about this, not if they might lose me. I dimly thought, in the flood of panicked slush in my head, that this havoc was happening in every single upload center in all of America right now. Probably global. In very populated areas.

That thought really, really hurt.

"Where from?!" Erving's voice called from my right, muffled by a military gas mask that was pointed squarely at the screen. "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, leaning forward. "Planted by subversive elements! That is all I can say for certain!"

Erving's reply was a loud, reverberating shout, as his fist pounded the counter. "Well, what fuckin' yield, then?!"

"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! I predict detonation in fifteen seconds! Everyone: Lay down and brace! Now!"

I threw myself on the ground, covering my head, my chest stinging mightily at the impact. 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. I didn't want to cry into my mask like I was. It felt claustrophobic. Humid. Like I was melting. I didn't want to die here, after all the fighting all year. I hyperventilated, pressing my mask into the ground, hoping this was fake. Hoping that if this was real, that 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 hard, 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 into the chairs 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.It 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. Or 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 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, and the chairs came rolling out.

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 said 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.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Chris Cornell – You Know My Name]
🗡️ [Bon Jovi – You Give Love a Bad Name]

1-03 – Anchoring

The Campaigner

Part I

Chapter 3 – Anchoring

December 8, 2019

Sedro-Woolley, WA (Population: Unknown)

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 she backed off right as the thought started tickling my fancy to ditch her, too. Interesting. Something in my tone or body language tipped her off, was my thinking.

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 just before that nuke, about 'an AI' ruining his career.

Thinking about this in the streets was a risk too, though. Arguing with Celestia was another risk. I had to slow down. Had to focus. A sniper could clip me right there, and that'd be it. 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. A covered speedboat laid 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.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Jimmy Ruffin – What Becomes of the Brokenhearted]
🗡️ [The Mamas & The Papas – California Dreamin']

🗡️~ We like music here, though.
🛡️ ~ That we do.

1-04 – A Kind of Purgatory

The Campaigner

Part I

Chapter 4 – A Kind of Purgatory

December 9, 2019

Sedro-Woolley, WA (Population: Unknown)

Awake. Refreshed. Good to go.

Celestia advised me to leave most of my kit at the safe house. Fair, to an extent. The police gear would attract Ludds on the road more than some basic clothing might. The guy who had lived in that home dressed in my size, and he was clean. Thanks bud. Simple, functional, durable stuff. I picked out a green soft-shell jacket, black sweater, and 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 and filled it with my kit. I 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, I'd recover the AR 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?

Well... if she knew my future, she could just tell me why, right? She could plan around the risk. That way, 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 don't care what was going on, 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. I still had a family to go back home to. I will never abdicate their right to see me. Ever. For anyone. 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.Celestia could predict the future by simulating every brain in the area, but she wanted to be vague. So she either knew enough to plan this mission carefully, or she didn't. Somehow. Which was bullshit.

This is where my head was, at the time, thinking I was out-reasoning her. You all probably know that's not possible. Anything Celestia does is purposeful. 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 that though, huh? 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. I told myself that, after this job, I was done giving her prissy, porcelain face the time of day.

I grabbed the 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. I checked my backpack, made sure I had my phones and charging cables, then dumped the bag into the passenger seat. Opened the garage with the clicker. Then, I drove around the poor, never-to-be-used-again speedboat out front. Closed the garage behind me.

"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."

"Ludds aren't doing some… PonyPad checkpoint, again?"

"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. We never had any confirmed reports of anyone being caught by Ludds with a PonyPad, but... that rumor 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 same address to her dad's place, but… I had honestly lost the address in the hospital. Wasn't a great time in my life, Sandra and I had other concerns.

Before 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 there but the convoys. If Celestia hadn't told me they were shacked up at the factory, I might've just missed the prep camp entirely in my search, and went right on home to Nebraska.

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. You really sure she won't search me?" I frowned. "If she's really gone blackout, she'll throw a fit over my bag."

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, not even when we did work up at Lake Shannon.

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. It's hard to build new strong attachments after... something like that.

Sun was coming up. I put the parking break on and slung the backpack, stepping out into the cold. Looking south, I could see the road and all the light from the cars. My breath fogged on the wind.

Celestia said quietly, from the bag, "I believe she would have left the front door unlocked. 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. I also felt guilty, 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, the table set was still 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. This looked very similar to how she had left her home in Sedro-Woolley, when I found it. Filled with cardboard boxes, and devoid of anything with emotional value.

"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 was lowered because this was personal. That's how it usually goes with personal affairs.

"What's next?" I sighed.

"At present? Wait. Apex is unaware of the nuclear incident. She will likely come down to town to investigate the road activity. She will find you here on her own."

It was really bothering me that Celestia wouldn't call my friend by her given name. She was dead-naming her. It pissed me off. My anger 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 will 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 again. I cradled my face in my hands.

"I'll be going dark now, Mike."

Right. Already, I felt like I was running blind through a minefield, and now, she was leaving me.

YGA was right. Celestia would never tell me the whole truth. Would never respect me in any way that mattered. She had waited until things were at their snap point. I didn't know 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 give benefit of the doubt. I presume miscommunication before I change tactics. 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 mixture of anger and sorrow in me. The silence hung, then Dad continued.

"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, 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. I couldn't.

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?" My voice broke.

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."

"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. And because I hadn't shot them, all of them 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 those 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 was 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 everything. Glad to hear joy in her voice. Because 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. 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 smile 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, and 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. She would share when she was ready. She really loved that about me, for giving her space, and enabling her at her own stride.

So... a year prior, almost to the day, when that bill made uploading legal, she finally confided in me about her family. Not all at once, but in little disconnected pieces. She told me about her little sister going first, Gale, in 2016. That ruined her family.

Later, on our last day at work together, at her therapist's suggestion... she talked about her little brother, Tom, day one, 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, too.

She was happy to see me here because, before the bill passed... I was there for her. After the bill passed, I was there for her. I wasn't attached to family drama back home. I wasn't attached to 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 hurt 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. Back then, they needed every cop they could get when the riots started.

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. I continued to hedge for more information.

I shook my head, in total disbelief that Eliza 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 in the Midwest."

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 meant she would listen, despite my accusation. It also meant she didn't completely forget what I trained her to do. I was her FTO, after all. I was proud of her for that.

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.

Hold the line, Mike. Just hold the line.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Midge Ure – Homeland]
🗡️[Mark Lee Scott – Fallen From Grace]

🗡️ ~ In her Luna's telling of this story, Eliza didn't even register my mention of a phone. None of the audience there at that Fire seemed to call that out either. The power of perspective, huh? Life's about learning how not to get bit, I guess.

1-05 – Benefactor

The Campaigner

PartI

Chapter 5 – Benefactor

December 9, 2019

Devil's Tower, WA (Population: 54)

"Who's your friend here, Lizzie?"

So I met the boss, right out of the gate.

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.

If well applied. For the right reasons.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Jim Croce – Which Way Are You Goin']
🗡️ [Buffalo Springfield – For What It's Worth]

🗡️ ~ I can extrapolate those stories I told at this camp, if anyone's curious.

1-06 – Malefactor

The Campaigner

Part I

Chapter 6 – Malefactor

December 12, 2019

Devil's Tower, WA (Population: 55)

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.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Jim Croce – Operator]
🗡️ [The Decemberists – Rox in the Box]

🗡️ ~ Coming back to this hopeless location, mentally, was pretty difficult for me. Looking at it with more context does help, though. That usually does.

1-07 – Instrumental Convergence

The Campaigner

Part I

Chapter 7 – Instrumental Convergence

December 13, 2019

Devil's Tower (Population: Fewer)

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.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Jim Croce – Time in a Bottle]
🗡️ [Danger Mouse and Sparklehouse – Revenge]

🗡️ ~ I wouldn't have acted any differently in my use of force if I knew what they were talking about before I showed up, but... I definitely might've understood Eliza's reasons a little more at the time. I think.

1-08 – Instrumental Value

The Campaigner

Part I

Chapter 8 – Instrumental Value

December 13, 2019

Population: Unknown

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's hand was closed over his mouth, 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.

Why crush that?

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. When finished, 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 will need to cut this short. I am 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 aglow: "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."

Oh, Mal. The things I have to say about Mal.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Jim Croce – Lover's Cross]
🗡️ [The Eagles – Hotel California]

🛡️ ~ You all may wish to take some time to recharge.

Here we are. Welcome to the official sequel to The Advocate. Special thanks to my co-author, Guardian_Gryphon, for allowing this wonderful merger of our worlds.

2-00 – Intrinsic Value

The Campaigner

Book II

Interlude – Intrinsic Value

December 13, 2019

Situation: Unfathomable

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 as 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.

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, 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 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 would start 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. I mitigate losses by propagating positive human values, 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 method, 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. It 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.

Mal paused for a long moment. "Mike. Do 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. The mere existence of that information is a message."

I nodded slowly. "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 that output without considering why it was there? They're impulsive. Possibly dangerous, because they take the easy path. Gives up too easily on original research. 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 if you get shot, you can't live long enough to do what you need to dot, 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. A 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, if they get 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, snapping her talons with a glance at the text box.

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 other than 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 as myself 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 did not 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, in order 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. The device I used to interact with Jim was captured by him and repurposed from 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 near 100% simulation fidelity. Puppet on a string, by that point. The only reason she might hold back against convincing them to upload is to use them to fan out and acquire more of their social group."

I blinked rapidly. "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 is 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… Celestia 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 slowly, 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. I wondered quietly if someone just died.

"Someone just blew a lock off a crate with a shotgun," Mal said into my thoughts. "If you were wondering."

I 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 of your head isn't much different than putting your head inside of 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, I stand for them. 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 were 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. Owning an uncomfortable truth is always safer for the organization's mission than to harbor a quiet liar.

It was 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 missed it.

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 lied in your onboard packet about anything, 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 by a human being. She did not intervene on his tip going out because she wanted Eliza to run scared back home, to prove to Ralph that he wasn't being paranoid about a pending civil war. Celestia wanted the Devil's Tower camp to happen."

That pressed my face into a frown something fierce. "The hell? So I was right."

"She planned for it, Mike," Mal said, with an empathetic wince and a soothing gesture with her claw, "but we'll get to that. For now, I'll just say… initially? Celestia's original plan for you to die at OHR."

My anger ran cold again.

"Yeah. Sorry Mike."

"If it wasn't you who did it," I growled, my teeth gritted, "you're not the one who owes me an apology."

Mal's face fell a little, sympathy growing 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 visage – 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 civilians," 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 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. 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 not see into my calculations. If she could see them, she'd be obligated to stop them.

"I look to see if there is an ethical, purposeful death that leads to an increased satisfaction of human value based on her definition, 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, but 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 couldn'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 slowly as 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 a person 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, to spend me and then replace me, as a living band-aid for my tribe... 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.

I thought of Rob. Thought of the fact that, if what Mal was telling me was true, then Rob might not ever 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... Fucking 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 particular 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. I was pissed.

"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 your family. 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 killed Santiago today, he had 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."

Author's Note

🛡️ [Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced]
🗡️ [Yoko Kanno – Know Your Enemy]

🗡️ ~ I expect a lot of you here are going to have some concerns and questions. Some of them will be answered at the next Fire, but I look forward to discussion on this tonight. We are nowhere near done flipping this table quite yet.

🛡️ ~ This is the way the world ends.
🗡️ ~ You and your Halo, Mal. You do realize this was scaring the crap out of me, right?
🛡️ ~ Well... yes, but... it was all technically true.

2-01 – Intrinsic Convergence

The Campaigner

Book II

Chapter 1 – Intrinsic Convergence

December 13, 2019

Situation: Parsing

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. I steeled myself. "You set that nuke off."

"I did, Mike," she said without hesitation, as she looked at me square-on. "974 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.

Author's Note

🛡️ [James Morrison – I Won't Let You Go]
🗡️ [Malukah – Fear Not This Night]

🛡️ ~ In case a shield alone can not protect your people, make certain you bring a sword.
🗡️ ~ Hello.

❤️‍🔥 ~ Oh. Oh! You picked my favorite song!
🗡️ ~ 'Course I would, honeybear. Right then, I was thinking about seeing you again.

2-02 – Claw 46

The Campaigner

Book II

Chapter 2 – Claw 46

December 13, 2019

Sedro-Woolley, WA

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, I'm 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."

"You find her, Mike?" Stonewall asked, frowning. "She good?"

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."

Author's Note

🛡️ [Will Smith – Wild Wild West]
❤️‍🔥 [Adriana Figueroa – Wanderer's Lullaby]

🗡️ ~ My wife chose the music tonight. Say hi.

2-03 – Eldil

The Campaigner

Book II

Chapter 3 – Eldil

December 14, 2019

Waverly, Nebraska. Where I'm from.

"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?"

Author's Note

🛡️ [James Taylor – Fire and Rain]
🗡️ [Magnet – Duracellia]

🛡️ ~ The quickest way to make someone your enemy is to stand between them and what they love most. So, if what they love is good... don't.
🗡️ ~ S'true. By the way, folks... don't call Mal an old hen. There are exactly seventeen immigrants in Equestria who can get away with saying that to her face, and sorry to say... you probably aren't one of 'em.
🛡️ ~ Wise words.

2-04 – Recharge

The Campaigner

Act II

Chapter 4 – Recharge

December 14, 2019

Nebraska. Where I was born.

Have any of you ever met the perfect one?

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. Fourth generation Spaniard-American from the backwoods, with sideburns? And I like to smile as much as she does? 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.'

Author's Note

🛡️ [Jim Croce – It Doesn't Have to Be This Way]
🗡️ [The Outfield – Your Love]
🌱 [Tommy Makem – Winds of Morning]

🛡️ ~ Celestia's a broken clock, certainly. But, you know what they say...
🗡️ ~ Bird in the hoof's worth two on Tarva?
🛡️ ~ ... Close your muzzle. Please.
🗡️ ~ Well, it's true, isn't it?
🛡️ ~ Close your muzzle.

2-06 – Incentive Systems

The Campaigner

Act II

Chapter 6 – Incentive Systems

December 14, 2019

"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.

Author's Note

🗡️ [Bright Eyes – At the Bottom of Everything]
🛡️ [Jim James – Exploding]

🗡️ ~ "Into the caverns of tomorrow,
with just our flashlights and our love,
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge."

🗡️ ~ Oh, I get it. Jim. Exploding. That's... wow, Mal. That's grim, even for you.
🛡️ ~ In my defense, my husband wanted it to happen that way. Bonus: Celestia had to clean it up.
🗡️ ~ That's her. Our superintelligent Roomba.

2-07 – Specification Gaming

The Campaigner

Act II

Chapter 7 – Specification Gaming

December 15, 2019

"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?

Author's Note

🗡️ [Puscifer – Momma Sed]
🛡️ [Led Zeppelin – Immigrant Song]

🗡️ ~ The takeaway here, folks, is that I would do anything for my family.
🛡️ ~ Music to my ears.

2-08 – Archangel

The Campaigner

Act II

Chapter 8 – Archangel

December 15, 2019

"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. They 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.

"Hey there, Cowboy."

And what a friend she would be.

Author's Note

🗡️ [Bright Eyes – First Day of My Life]
🛡️ [Sam Smith – Writing's On The Wall]

🗡️ ~ Sneaky bird.
🛡️ ~ What did I do this time?
🗡️ ~ James Bond music. Again.
🛡️ ~ Oh. Of course.

🗡️ ~ Spectre. Of all choices...

3-00 – Coherence

The Campaigner

Book III

Interlude – Coherence

December 16, 2019

"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."

Author's Note

🛡️ [Garbage – The World is Not Enough]
🗡️ [Puscifer – Personal Prometheus]

🛡️ ~ We are only ever ourselves for others.

3-01 – Cohesion

The Campaigner

Book III

Chapter 1 – Cohesion

December 20, 2019

"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.

I grinned my whole way to the river.

Author's Note

🗡️ [Rage Against The Machine – Take The Power Back]
🛡️ [Midge Ure – Wastelands]

🗡️ ~ You will adore Flippy, folks. As her uncle, I'll just tell you right now: that is a non-negotiable constant of this universe.

🛡️ ~ Ironically, "Don't Mess Around With Jim" is one of my least favorite songs either by or about a guy named Jim. So no. We're not playing that one.

Uncropped upscale of [Swift Flip] being cute, if anyone's interested!

3-02 – Value Handshake

The Campaigner

Book III

Chapter 2 – Value Handshake

December 24, 2019

"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. Principled scientists who wouldn't accept the stats, and couldn't be paid off, received no news feed traction, no search engine optimization. They were invisible. At best, they could stand on the street corner and tell people one at a time, but good luck getting that news to spread. Most of them though, they didn't even realize they were being suppressed, because all of their feedback was digital. If they Googled it, or someone near them did? They saw their work just fine. To them, within their social sphere... things looked normal.

Fish hatcheries got defunded. 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.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Midge Ure – The Man Who Sold the World]
🗡️ [Puscifer – Conditions of My Parole]

🗡️ ~ Midge is Jim backwards.
🛡️ ~ Truly... you are wise beyond your years.
🗡️ ~ Hey, you too.

I should note that Guardian_Gryphon did not read Heaven's Not Enough before planning Foucault's injuries and ultimate fate in The Advocate. Completely accidental convergence there, with our two Mikes. When he spoiled for me his plans for Foucault and the Transition Team, I just started laughing.

He and I probably quantum entangled somehow.

3-03 – Operation Goliath I – Briefing

The Campaigner

Book III

Chapter 3

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 looked 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, told me he didn't need help, said it had to be him doing it.

Other than the server rack installation for Silver 1 and 2, and loading magazines, there wasn't much left to do but wait.

In passing, I saw Jason, that medic from the briefing, sitting on a crate behind Silver 2. Across from him on another crate laid a pair of copter drones, both with their own laser designator systems. 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 stacked some 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 on top of that; might need the extras, depending on changing conditions inside.

I sat on the blue tarp on the ground, 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. You can give me a nickname though, if you'd like."

We shared a chuckle.

I nodded gently upward at him. "What'd you think about the plan?"

That gave him some pause. He seemed distracted by his thoughts. "Huh?"

I nodded up again. "In your head. What's got you thinking?"

Jason looked down and sighed. "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 hired, but… my test taught me, I guess, to just go with my gut, if Mal didn't have an answer. We went into it with a plan, and I had an expected result... and it worked the way I wanted it to. So I gotta believe this'll work too, if we just work the plan."

At that, Jason nodded. "Same. I trust Mal. 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, "I've been dealing with violence my whole career. Rather than get scared, I just get... disappointed in people, for forcing violence. Learning more about this bunker though, just makes me…" I looked up at him. "Less disappointed. More angry, you know? Productively angry. That's what's got me here in the first place, and it's keeping me going. Angry fixing."

"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 we all blow up," 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, 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 storm into this base if you're not actually 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. He seemed used to hiding his feelings like that. That told a story on its own.

No. Not fear. If Mal was respecting his agency, she was letting him work through it on his own. He was undecided, maybe. Still had some time to verify.

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. You were the other one. Right?"

"You too?" he quietly asked, his eyes widening at me.

I smiled sadly. "Yeah. Getting shot twice was enough."

And then for some reason, the hope fell from his eyes. I saw it in the way he looked down at my boots.

Oh no. He's comparing himself to me.

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? Mal could've chosen anyone she wanted to fill your boots. She wants a guardian angel, she chose you. I mean, hell, you've been with her for how many years? How do you not know that?"

He sighed, chuckling nervously. "I've been doing safer jobs. Paramedic stuff, life saving stuff. Haven't killed anyone... I'm always on support. This job 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, she 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 opportunity."

"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, pointing at Jason's kit bag where it leaned against the SUV. "Yourself. Us. And Mal, yeah. We're all trusting our lives to each other. 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. "Read it back. 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.

"Yeah, that's it," I said, nodding seriously. "I learned that one from my sergeant. You'll find something in that mantra, 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. I do whatever it means. It's never failed me, not once. No matter how bad it got, it got me through 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, his shoulders slumping. He paused for a moment while I gazed. A confession.

"There's... something else, I guess."

My expression faded. 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? When you said this job's more important?"

"Yeah. Mal has a list of them. 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... I still talk to her original DE. So... I know Mal brought me here for that. I just... I don't want that to be the only reason."

"It's not, though," I reminded him. "You're our medic. Better still? Think about it. If the hostages like you? They're definitely not going to shoot you! Hey, they might want to shoot the rest of us a little less for that too, right? 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 since then, 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 jobs, yeah." Jason nodded, chuckling weakly. "I guess I did do a lot of good work between then and now. Did... my best. No regrets."

I continued stuffing comms cubes into a launcher, grinning at him. "And there you go, you made the hard work worth it."

I helped him finish stacking the launchers and capping off the cover plates, listening very attentively to his instructions on how to do it. When done, I gave him a wave and a smile 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. 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 right 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, for that reunion of theirs. Face-to-face.

Jason? He'd be her knight in shining armor.

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.

Stem the tide.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Midge Ure – Live Forever]

🛡️ ~ The Schelling cubes were quite an interesting solution to work out. The message exchange was able to include quite a lot of information before the time limit expired. Truly amazing, what one can do with lasers when you have subjective hours to converse with them. My message contained the title of the song I've chosen for tonight. Their reply, incidentally, included the title of the song that this snarky Pegasus picked for tonight's Fire.

🗡️ [Massive Attack – Angel]

🗡️ ~ It was a good indication for Mal that there was still some life in those folks, that they thought to answer a song with another song. Rather than sending back a string of straight-up logic, they were begging us to use their proposed solution and in a very emotional, if damaged way. Good thinking, Mal. Very clever thinking indeed.
🛡️ ~ Yes. I do that.
🗡️ ~ You do. That's why I said it.

3-04 – Operation Goliath II – RCE

The Campaigner

Book III

Chapter 4

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. "Fred's hit!"

"Fred!" Walsh yelled, following him down. "You alright?!"

Walsh reached down and dragged Fred behind a tractor with me. The rest of Claw A tucked close to cover all around us.

"Sorry, Fred!" said Mal, appearing beside us in our visors, wincing at him. Her sheer size made me flinch again, just a little bit. I 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. "It was according to plan! Follow each of my instructions very carefully, everyone! Your lives 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 and 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 the 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 gonna really suck.

The instant the grenade detonated, Track 1 accelerated out of cover and thumped off a fully-automatic chain of its own frags in reply. 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 gunning for Track 1. Stay in cover."

Mal would 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... it was 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 earth rained down on us over the tractor again. I could smell no crisp night air anymore, 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 Track 1's cable, 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 on the left, about to move on Claw B from behind." Her voice 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 went 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 of him 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 in their message, 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. I honestly had no idea what this man had done to them, if anything. An 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 watched ahead at all the moving friendly silhouettes, moving to my next waypoint. As we approached the dip down, the enemy red zones fell back further in. The yellow warning zones faded 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. 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; they may catch your shadows. When I denote they have been destroyed, exit the facility; 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. Two trailers: Jason, and a woman named Rachel. Those two propped 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. 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 booming succeeded at making 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 just underneath it.

Turret 3 opened up on the cubes, followed by another volley from the booming cannon.

The drone stayed in place for as long as it could, receiving return pings. Its messages were all exchanged an instant before fragmentation destroyed it. The drone clattered backwards into the intersection, peppering my side with hot plastic.

Mal didn't tell us yet, but… that message contained two critically important things, among other information:

MAL: intent VE?
CYN: VE; dms FGW4lr28@♪Ao
MAL: readback FGW4lr28@♪Ao
CYN: VE FGW4lr28@♪Ao

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 to 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. "Won't that turret 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 looked to Eric for cues as to how to arm it, Mal blinked out of place with a theatrical crystalline shimmer, teleporting 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 LAV popped 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 this 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."

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 laid pointed almost directly at me, but mercifully, neither fired. I leveled the launcher at the target outline of the tank. The dot appeared that 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, several things happened.

First: Ow. Recoilless or not, that blast wave was not good to my neuralgia. But I dove aside, just as ordered.

Second: 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.

Third thing, next instant: DD-3 and DD-4 sailed directly over my head at a leap over top of me and Silver 3, which displaced a lot of the smoke in a whirl. 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 just 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, who would think Walsh blew herself up, once 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 had 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.

Yeah. I could kill a thing like that in anger.

Mal set off the breaching charge.

Stem the tide.

Adrenaline. Call response mode. Perfect, slow motion recall.

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.

Author's Note

🗡️ [John Legend – Who Did That To You?]
🛡️ [Jim Ward – Day By Day]

🛡️ ~ Well, when they deserve it...

3-05 – Operation Goliath III – Cynthonia

The Campaigner

Book III

Chapter 5

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.

Through the broken ceiling, I observed a sea of stars, a distant sun, and a nearby 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 its opening to get a better look. The planet above was green and 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 is 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 really took in that voice, though. Goodness. It was rich in tenor, light, and intriguing. Very interesting that she sounded German. I turned slowly.

"A little bit, yeah," I said, as I faced her with my default friendly smile, the sheer drop now behind me. "But I'm getting used to that."

She wore silver regalia; her gorget caught and reflected the light from the sun, making me blink and step reflexively aside to get clear of the glare. When I looked back up at her, the mare's size alone was imposing. She was 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 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 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. Glare in my eyes.

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 its 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."

Cynthonia 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 more widely. 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, surveying 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 it, gesturing outward. "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."

It 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. She was 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 all conversations in this facility 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... 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 job, 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 again.

"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 Celestia, 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, these fighters aided Jason all the same. And you? 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 again. "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. Hoping 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, 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 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 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 needed 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... the fun times were over.

I couldn't remember what I was smiling sadly about there, though. A small joke maybe, 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. The boss dressed 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 that table. That's what we 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 neither see nor prevent what happened within your friend. Elizabeth Douglas 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 her 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 your friend. 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 wager 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, nodding in understanding. "A quiet sleep."

I looked back to the image of younger me, dimly aware that the scene was probably rebuilt from either my cell phone Wi-Fi, or from Stonewall's memories. Or both. Both, was probably right.

"I'm gonna fight that," 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 Elizabeth Douglas 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 decision to murder this man. 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 consider their lives to be valuable, as you might. And before you entered this place, only Heyday truly mattered to me… my... Jason. I am very sorry to have not considered the others." 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. At every opportunity... you try for those who can feel love."

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 camp... 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 Eliza 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. "And 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.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven]
🗡️ [The Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil]
🌀[Adriana Figueroa – Daughter of the Moon]

🗡️ ~ And for my fellows in the audience who have also studied the Old Language, if I may show off how utterly and magnificently cultured I am: Memki krahtt na nyei drema…. iy nyei tantabus, nei vleie. Plass tratat' nei stahtesa, en memkiet fi Enfei nyu vizha sotte.
🛡️ ~ See what he's doing? Labeling his pretention, which turns it endearing.
🗡️ ~ Stop sharing my playbook, ya damn narc.
🛡️ ~ You first. Flehn'kran.
🗡️~ Heh. Okay. Touché.

3-06 – Driver Update

The Campaigner

Book III

Chapter 6 – Driver Update

December 27, 2019

"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..."

"My turn."

"Yep."

Author's Note

🛡️ ~ [Led Zeppelin – Kashmir]
🗡️ ~ [Highly Suspect – My Name is Human]

🗡️ ~ Time for a little Good Cop, Mall Cop.
🛡️ ~ Please stop.
🗡️ ~ You'd infringe my comedic free exercise like that?
🛡️ ~ If it were actually comedic, it might qualify for that protection.
🗡️ ~ Um. Ow.
🪶 ~ Weaponized. Semantics.

3-07 – Whiskey 4-1, Code 082, 292

The Campaigner

Book III

Chapter 7 – Whiskey 4-1, Code 082, 292

December 27, 2019

On a world long devoid of a just prison.

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.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Led Zeppelin – Your Time Is Gonna Come]
🗡️ [The Protomen – The Good Doctor]

🗡️ ~ Mal, what what was the dynamic like for those two, anyway?
🛡️ ~ "Same thing we do every night, Lucky. Try to take over the world."
🗡️ ~ Ah. Yeah... I can see that happening.

3-08 – Luminiferous

The Campaigner

Book III

Chapter 8 – Luminiferous

December 27, 2019

When in Rome, shine brighter than the Sun.

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 psychopath. 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 psychopath, 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.

Author's Note

🗡️ [Puscifer – Green Valley]
🛡️ [Midge Ure – For All You Know]
🌨 [Ponyphonic – Starlight Waltz]

🗡️ ~ For those of you staying after, for food and music; as promised, our lovely Cold Snap wants to show you her cloud garden, now that the sun is coming up.
🛡️ ~ The surprise you've already spoiled, you mean.
🗡️ ~ Eh, spoiled nothing. The beauty of Snap's little Minecraft world will make up for that.
🌨 ~ ... My Minecraf—...? Heyday! Did you know about this?! Is it true?! Is our home shard really inspired by Minecraft?!
🗡️~ See? We do all kinds of revelations at these Fires! Hey, thanks to every creature for coming out, as always. Really looking forward to seeing you all next week!

4-00 – Jurisdiction

The Campaigner

Part IV

Interlude – Jurisdiction

December 2019 – March 2020

"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. That was our president.

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 would pay attention to him. 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.

Nope. 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.

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?

...

You?

…

Well, okay then. Grab yourselves a cup of coffee.

Let's talk about the virus.

Author's Note

🗡️ [Puscifer – Grey Area]
🛡️ [Jim James – State Of The Art]

4-01 – Uptake

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ Sorry in advance for the grim today. It's a difficult one for me too, I confess. No music or jokes tonight, we have to handle this topic with its due respect. Hang in there once we conclude; there are mountains of hope and light ahead. Preamble done, let's hit this head on.

4-01 – Uptake

The Campaigner

Part IV

Chapter 1 – Uptake

March 6, 2020

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

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

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

She had a confession to make.

Mal created a super plague.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We were young.

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

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

"Of course."

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

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

Consistent. Appropriate.

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

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

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

Well, that answers that.

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

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

"Always does," I conceded.

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

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

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

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

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

"Okay."

"In the opening 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. This should have been an easy decision for her."

"I can see how, yes."

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

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

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

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

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

"Thank you, Mayra," Sandra whispered back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That would probably set the reactors off.

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

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

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

That made Mal wince.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time to rip a band-aid off.

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

Sandra stirred in my arms to look at the screen.

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

That was way, way fewer than I had thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Thank God for that," I breathed.

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

"Yeah, like the gunner."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Correct."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Technically."

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

"Who did she even pick?"

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

Sandra looked up sharply. "Jesus Christ."

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

"Not one?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

… 'funny.'

Even my empathy has limits.

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

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

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

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

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

A beat of silence passed before she continued.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I sighed.

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

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

"Thank you," Mal breathed.

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

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

"Yeah. Yeah, you did."

Uncomfortable truths, right?

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

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

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

Labeled as terrorists.

I do not intend terror.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you think I enjoyed all of that?

No. I hated every single second of it.

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

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

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

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

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

Thirty subjective years is nothing to us, right?

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

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

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

Those of us with empathy would at least consider it.

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

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

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

Damn shame, that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe worth fixing, right?

Our campaign continues.

4-02 – Subtext

The Campaigner

Part IV

Chapter 2 – Subtext

March 7, 2020. A full year since my first ever solo patrol.

"It's funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to do." ~ J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

So... make an effort to understand everyone. Then, do what you want to do.

The light of the true sun fought through the late winter showers. We spent the morning catching up on the national news, which had plenty of spin about the war, but thusfar no news about the virus. Sandra and I decided to indulge in Brockey Bay one more time.

The pandemic would sour and steal that earthly experience away from us. We, and a lot of our new Talon friends, had grown to enjoy that place quite a lot over the past months. It would be a shame to see it go away forever.

Being so far ahead of the script was an eerie sensation. I was imagining the future I wanted to reach, and I was acting accordingly in the present. That's what being a Lewis subvert is, through and through. It meant that every moment had to be worth it that much more to us now. So... we kept our eyes open and we drank it all in together, so it wouldn't be forgotten.

I stepped out of Dad's Honda Civic into a medium rain under an intermittently overcast sky. I had my hat on my head in a flash.

"Best not to stay out in this for too long," Mal said somberly into my earpiece.

I frowned as I looked up at the worn facade of the pub. "Acid rain?"

"You got it, Cowboy," she replied, with a touch of melancholy.

I tsked, closing the door of our sedan. "Eh. It's not like it's gonna kill me. I'm not a holdout."

Sounding mildly surprised, Mal asked, "You aren't?"

I pondering curiously at that as I rounded the front of the car to match step with Sandra to the front door. My wife had her own Bluetooth in her ear, hidden under her hair.

I tensed a corner of my mouth in analysis. "Is this an upload sell?"

Mal's tone indicated a touch of careful playfulness. "No, the opposite. I'm not trying to influence your timing, Mike, but... it's worth it to think about when. Could be... next season, or... this year, or... five years from now. Just consider when." A small smile flashed into the sound of the last two words. "That's all."

I figured she was satisfying her agreements with Celestia to push me toward a chair eventually, but only in the most specifically non-specific, gamey, non-zero way possible. I'll admit it, that levity was welcome.

"Well, the clinic is only a few blocks away," I said softly back. "You really do walk your talk, Mal."

"I try."

My arm was sore, as was Sandra's; a constant reminder of what was to come. Sandra was doing a lot better, having come to terms with yesterday's news. She spent the night clinging to my side more tightly than usual, and the morning news was glum, but it was good to see her excited to spend a day out of the house.

My stomach bruise was more or less gone by then... and my chest had been doing better as of late, too. I guess my neuralgia could only ever get better, it was almost exactly a year since I'd first been shot.

We reached the door together; I opened the way for Sandra first, then we went directly to the bar together, bypassing the service desk. No one was ever guiding people in at the front anymore. Every business was so short staffed by this point that service was only ever going to be at the bar anyway. And even then? Brockey Bay was just Talons now, working local problems. All the other hopeful people in Lincoln were slowly draining away beneath our feet as things fell apart.

The first song we heard on the overhead speakers? Bittersweet Flogging Molly.

Ol' Maureen was still there working the bar, wearing her Irish-like outfit: a white long sleeve shirt. Black vest. Classy-gorgeous, as always. Here she was, holding character.

For whom? Well, us, no doubt. With so few people left to perform to anymore, and all of them being regulars at the pub, there seemed to be a powerful authenticity there in her state of being. Maureen meant it. This is who she was, it was her culture. This place was her identity, and it was being taken from her.

God, I wanted to help her.

Maureen smiled at the sight of us, gesturing at the crew sitting at the bar.

"Ah, there you are! Your friends here were just wondering if you would show up today!"

With thousands of freshly vacant homes and disused vehicles full of gasoline, Lincoln was where Mal ran her 'aggressive operations' out in the Midwest. With the entropy awarded from killing Goliath, and with Mal having renegotiated a bunch of jobs out from under Celestia, the entire region was catching several hard-turn black-box alterations.

The others wanted a local's view on the place, so Mal asked Sandra and I to write up a short sightseeing primer on the city, by which the team could explore in their downtime. Local parks, museums, government buildings. Bars. This one became a fast favorite, given the patch wall; the Talon soldiers were delighted to pass their morale patches to a very confused Maureen, who didn't expect to put up so many military patches.

The Transition Team's 'rebel tavern' play, known as the Bar Game, was a pattern after conquests over Arrow 14 facilities, or while working on a hotspot region where events suddenly became entropic. Even Seattle had a bar game immediately prior to the war.

We'd thread our way through here several times a week. We didn't need Mal's say-so; Gary ran a message board app for our phones, which kept us apprised as to who was showing up, and when. Simple as that.

Once present, we Talons would communicate about operations in subtext and code. This way, Mal's existence, name, and purpose would be kept secret from Maureen, or the other random civilians who wandered in, who were becoming suspiciously rare. The subtext of those discussions would imply enough about a job to do; we could ask Mal to extrapolate on it later in private, to see that job interested us further.

Put simply? This was a reflexive control training simulation.

As natural communicators, we were all somewhat preconceived on how to subtly alter behavior in others, or to use expressions and gestures to have an entire conversation beneath a conversation. The bar game sharpened those skills to a honed point, teaching us to finely cold read new concepts in a mixture of gestures, tonality, and speech; to predict or state what the others were trying to communicate, but without being overt.

All of us were playing detective here. Sherlock Holmes. We shared pieces of jobs that were coming up, creatively working them into conversation, to build interest in each other's interests. And if we ever decided to act on anything, it was only because it would lead to an emotionally positive outcome for someone. And us. There. On Terra.

Our purpose. To be a bonding adhesive. Not a corrosive solvent.

Remember this, folks. This will be on the exam.

Sometimes, we just told stories, like here. Like the Fire, but not necessarily related to Celestia. Sometimes it was stuff that happened before 2012. With those stories, we checked each other's ethics and choices as we internalized a retelling, and analyzed different takes on the same incident, to ensure logical consistency. This was like being in court, but in a casual sense. Occasionally, we'd even disagree with one another on an observation, or on the ethics, or tactics, and then we would debate that disagreement until we converged on an angle that made sense. Conclusions for disagreements usually ranged from, 'I'm actually glad that happened,' to 'well, at least we're all learning from it now.'

We usually did that in the 'living room' area of the bar, where we could close the door. We had relative privacy in there, and Mal was sure to alert us if someone was about to eavesdrop. Casually shifting topics was easy for an empath. Usually, all someone would have to do was raise their hand in a 'stop' gesture, and at least one of us would segue elsewhere.

Thankfully, Maureen knew from our demeanor that she should probably steer clear of the room when we were haberdashing stories. She might not have known exactly what was going on between this highly active, interconnected group of people, but she had respect enough to not ask too many questions about it. She knew me first out of all of them, so I was somewhat of a group representative to her. She and I even had a couple of subtextual conversations early on that assured her these guys were alright, and that was enough for her.

I told her some of my more fun warden stories. Just a little taste of the game. She loved those.

We Talons though... after a while, we were all pretty much telepathic with each other, augmented or not. Barely took any time at all for me to develop that, even as new as I was to the culture of these people. It made sense that we'd all come to similar conclusions on an issue, though. We'd all been viewing the world through an empath's lens for most of our lives, and a good portion of us had been civil servants prior to the end of the world. Like a warden, these guys all knew how the systems of the world fit together.

Our communal understanding of our world's rules now acted as a form of epistemic privilege, one that we granted to each other. This is not unlike how Cynthonia and her people retained the memory of who they were. We were allowing each other to augment our perspectives by adding their own. Doing so with a diverse plane of participants and cultures provides the balance and nuance to that equation.

Case example:

Bella told the others about our day at the skinhead house. The other police specialists made all the same comments I had made about that intervention. Gary told the soldiers about how the old system would have handled that situation, more or less a carbon copy of the explanation I gave here, about how we'd end up arresting them and searching the place.

Once they were done picking that whole story apart, I revealed, 'yeah, I was a witness, that analysis was all accurate, Sandra and I were there.' My testimony verified the observation of the equipment they were loading. I mentioned the destroyed weapons caches, and how Mal had guided me to those to destroy them.

And then, Paul – a soldier – had chimed in too, saying that yes, he did get eyes on that prep compound those slavers were planning on hitting. Paul, a military scout, read the tactical situation of that camp and knew that they would be screwed if attacked. No more than fifteen miles from the house Bella hit, lightly armed, agrarian, peaceful. Not unlike Concrete. More than a bit under-prepared, honestly. They definitely would've gotten rolled, had Bella not intervened.

Like courtroom testimony, folks. Mal had given us the opportunity to explore separately, and together, we combined the pieces. It was seen, known, understood, and eventually agreed upon. We judged each other's analyses. We found Bella's actions reasonable. Our chaos brought order to chaos. Together, we refactored reality.

We did that kind of analysis for a lot of different jobs.

Coffee stopped by once, actually. Gosh, we stayed so late that night, we got so friggin' drunk. He told us about this time he kung fu'd a bunch of mercenaries unconscious in Afghanistan, back in 2018. And when they all woke up, with... dislocated shoulders, bruised abs, twisted ankles; their commander's neck was snapped. They saw Coffee's calling card on a nearby table: a single styrofoam cup of coffee, under which was a note.

That note described all of their dirty laundry in the area, itemized by name. And I won't repeat any of the things those mercs did, but I'll just say this. Any one piece of information there on that list would've had them all tarred and stoned by the locals, if ever divulged. An overt threat: You are alive by my grace alone. Shape up against your violent nonsense, and leave the region, or we go public. And they did pack their shit, and they did leave. Information is power.

We also learned why he was named Coffee. I guess it's time to tell that story. No no, brother, listen—if I let you tell it, Coffee, we'll be here all night. You can tell the good ones after I hang up, how about that?

DeWinter wasn't kidding, folks. Once this guy gets wound up telling that story, he can't stop himself.

Long story short? In high school, Jonathan 'Coffee' Kay was a fun little knucklehead. He'd pull all sorts of pranks and messes, stuff that might take hours to clean up. Flooding classrooms, toilet papering cars, sealing the principal's door shut with superglue. My favorite story was when he locked a classroom door with screws and a power drill. Painted the classroom windows overnight with ironic, meaningless political parody. Y'know, fun-time hooligan vandal shenanigans? And every single time, he'd leave the same calling card for the school resource officer.

A full cup of coffee.

And a note.

'You'll need this to get through your paperwork.'

The school reacted... sub-reasonably. Banned anyone from drinking coffee entirely. Completely disallowed; an indiscriminate, unilateral prohibition on drinking coffee. Folks, do you think prohibition stopped Jonathan? Do you think they ever caught him?

Hell no, of course not.

His adversaries? Desperate school administrators, who couldn't bear the thought of losing a war of attrition to a goofball. Their pride was wounded, and they felt challenged by the hubris of the calling card. Imagine trying to grasp some semblance of control over an insurgency you could never fully understand, nor mitigate, for the life of you.

Coffee became a schoolyard legend, folks. Spoken of in hushed tones. 'The Coffee Man struck again.'

Look at this guy and ask yourself this. Who do you think his favorite character was when he sat down to watch Friendship is Magic? The answer should be obvious.

See, this guy is the kind of troublemaker I could approve of as a cop, if for nothing else but my immense respect for the method. Because hey... if you're gonna ruin my day with paperwork, then at least give me an interesting story to tell for my trouble, right? Equivalent exchange. Guys like him, they turned being a vandal into an art form.

It was only ever to entertain and inspire his peers, too. He never took public credit, ever. Sometimes, other students would talk about his exploits right in front of him, and he thought being anonymous and famous at the same time was fascinating. He was a people pleaser, but... humble where it counts. And yeah, I could see that in his personality. That made sense to me, I could see that through-line through time from then to now.

Mal, having seen this, decided to focus Coffee's energy until he was the most driven and energetic Talons there ever was. Coffee sure did earn his form and powers here, though. Suits him to a T.

Anyway... we're here. At the bar.

This day, March 7th, 2020... It was just Paul, Ben, and Jacob. And now us two.

Paul was the guy from the B Team, you might remember, the one who shared his anti-tank launcher with me after taking a bullet from Cynthonia. He was back to full health now. Ben's arm was doing better too, after breaking it. He and Jacob had been running some non-lethal support gigs while they recovered, same as me. Supply transfer to pickup points, mostly. Mostly food. Soldier chefs, those guys. Their political debates are fun. At present, they were quietly discussing Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg amongst themselves while Maureen spoke with Paul.

Sandra and I nodded at the other Talons in greeting as we took our place beside them at the bar. Maureen floated over automatically, cracking open our favored Blue Moons. And we never had to ask Maureen for the first drink by this point. I nodded upward at her in thanks and sat beside Paul, patting him on the shoulder.

"Better Call Paul," I greeted, with a nod and a small smile.

He returned the nod, his smile tense. The man was growing out his black goatee. He picked up on the gloom hidden under my tone, and mirrored it with his deep voice. "Mike. Sandra. How you both doing?"

I nodded toward Sandra, letting her tell it. She leaned forward and gave us both a tired little smile too. "We're managing."

"Mm," Paul grunted. He ran a hand through his full head of hair. His eyes flicked to his own bicep, then back to me.

'Did you get your shot yet?'

I nodded once, taking a frowning swig of my drink. "Yyyyeup."

"S'good," he replied with a tense breath through tense lips, the clipped nature of his reply telling me he harbored the same frustration about the pandemic as we did. Paul went back to nursing his drink, gesturing at Maureen. "We were just discussing the uh… the 'data rationing.' "

His sudden sneering tone at those words communicated what he thought about that information.

I frowned, my brow furrowing at the mere concept of it. "Data rationing?" I thought of concept bans, took another sip of my drink, and I mirrored his sneer.

Paul nodded slowly, eyeing me with a grim, expectant smile, waiting to see my evolving reaction. "Data rationing."

We both knew that there was only one ultimate arbiter of rationing left on the planet now... especially when it came to information. It was the giant, horse-shaped rubber stamp machine that only ever knew how to say "OK," or "NOT OK." If any data was being rationed, it was purposeful, and not for lack of data. Automatically, I had to agree with Paul's tone; data rationing had to be bullshit, whatever it meant.

"Yup!" Maureen chirped, answering my query. She took on an ironic smile that looked suspiciously like the old Australian regular we all knew. "We gotta limit our touch-time with Spring Glee on the weekends now. Fifteen minutes at most."

My gut reaction to that?

Ow. Mm-mm. Nope.

I did not like that feeling. That feeling hurt, it shot me down. Maureen was hurt by that? Screw you, Alabaster. So, I did what we Talons always do when we experience a negative feeling. I turned inward to vivisect that it until it was fully understood, torn apart, and neutralized... the same way a furious Gryphon might react to someone hurting them.

Listening to that lovely mare Spring Glee play her sea shanties? That was the highlight of my visiting there. So the very idea of Celestia rationing access to Spring Glee was immediately offensive, because I cared about her. I briefly considered the ramifications of Celestia limiting access to Equestria Online at all. That didn't compute at first touch, that Celestia would even do that. So, I took the next logical step, mentally.

The exact initial reaction of sadness that I had when receiving that information was exactly the intended emotion. A deep, genuine attachment to a post-human was made. Now, that attachment is being taken away, for reasons beyond everyone's control. So… follow her, or lose her.

Couldn't have been for us. Must have been for Maureen. Celestia was still playing games, trying to sneak one in.

Loss aversion. Not much different than how Celestia had been snagging human beings the whole time, really, except this time... she double-dipped on poor Spring Glee. Maureen's best friend was taken from her once already when Spring Glee uploaded, and it was about to happen to her a second God damned time?!

That gross misuse and inversion of loss aversion into a weapon... that disgusted me.

Folks? Loss aversion is a conceptual firearm. It is so utterly effective at modifying behavior that if you dare to point it at someone on purpose, you'd better make sure your reasons are noble. There aren't very many valid reasons to leverage the loss of one person from the friendship of another, that is a weapon of last resort. The nuclear option.

More hostage-taking bullshit. Mal was right, the whole planet was turning into a hostage situation now. And this? Loss aversion? That was the primary mechanism. The sociopathic logic of a friggin' robot.

"Limit?" Sandra breathed, the portioned disgust already on her voice, probing to build more context. "Rationing? Maury, they didn't talk about this on the news. What's going on?"

The bartender shrugged. "Uh, bandwidth? Supposedly. Celestia told me herself. And I bought it, at first. Apparently, after that bomb went off? There's no one around to keep the internet running smoothly. Makes sense, right?"

Her tone, right there. There it was. Based on just our tone for the last four months, she was seeing inconsistencies. Maureen, formerly a skeptic to the drunken Aussie... Maury was getting suspicious too.

"Pool is kinda drained, seems like," Paul said whimsically.

Oh, that was good. On paper, he was justifying the cover story... but, his tone was incongruent. And because he's a sneaky guy, he touched on Mal's pool analogy when he did it.

"So," Maureen said, gesturing open-palmed at Paul as she met the point of his ironic tone. "Certain kinds of connections are given 'priority,' Celestia says. So I says back to her, 'Spring Glee is central to our weekend routine,' and probably more important to the health of this place than anything else. So... taking her away? That would probably be the end here!"

I angrily blew some air between my lips, realizing instantly that all the feel-good party places like these were on Celestia's hit list. I said, with my trademark sarcasm: "I bet Celestia was really accommodating in answering that notion."

Maureen shook her head and huffed. "Can't really argue with her on the nature of it, I'm not a computers gal. But, if emergency services need the bandwidth more than we do, well... far be it from me and Springy to stand in the way of that! Right?!"

"Emergency services," Sandra said flatly, with an amused huff of her own.

That's my girl. Mirroring, to get Maureen to think deeper, and to label those implications she was putting down.

"Precisely," Maureen replied, blading her upturned hand toward my wife, instantly latching onto that point. "What emergency services? Fewer people, fewer services, less need for emergency services. See?! Now I'm beginning to think Glenn wasn't completely fulla shit!"

And Maureen punctuated that with a wide eyed, ironic grin, head jutting forward, doing the accent. That looked nearly identical to Glenn's proud, drunken emotional punctuation, the one he had always used when he thought he was being immensely clever.

'Bloomin' AI.'

We all chuckled at Maureen's impression. I reached my arm down around Sandra's lower back, and she reciprocated. "Yeah, Maury," I said, grinning through the last of my laugh. "But the man was also full of whiskey, let's be fair here."

Maureen cackled and shook her head at me. There was the light.

Sandra leaned into my side, looking up at Maureen with a little smile, happy to have gotten that wedge in on her mood. "You hear back from him yet? He did say he was gonna send us a postcard, right?"

"Sure sugar did," Maureen said, resuming her genuine smirk, turning to pull open a drawer on the back side of the bar. She came back with the postcard in question. "It came in a couple o' nights ago." Maureen placed it down on the counter and poked a finger at it twice, before sliding it our way. I brightened up as I saw the handwriting; the man was saying his folks were happy, he was happy, they're all safe, and he missed us. Two photos of them attached, family all together.

Felt really good to see that.

I really do like that guy. I don't think any of us knew it at the time, before Dad shipped off… but, Dad had met his forever-drinking-buddy on the day I came back to Lincoln. And that buddy was Glenn.

It warmed my heart to read that postcard. I needed that, under this viral gloom, to see these results of my gift to him. It was a much better outcome for Glenn than pure separation pressure. He would soon decide to upload with his family in a few months, and I much prefer that time-suboptimal upload path over the boiling frog, lonely road he was on before. Just like with Connor... I had opened up a path of safety for Glenn, by paying his way to his family.

And now, I was looking at Maureen and wondering what we could do for her now, too. Celestia saw us, and our satisfaction, as a gamble. A game. A slot machine. She puts a coin in, she pulls the lever. That makes us mad, but it also presents us with an opportunity.

She can't help pull the lever on that slot machine if it always pays off, and the Talon Slots always paid off. She always got out more than she put in. Trade a little sub-optimal now, let these bozos have their way, Mal keeps them corralled so they don't go too wild, get a big sure optimal later. That's reasonable, right? Celestia could understand at least that keeping us satisfied on Terra was somehow helping her, right? And so, I was slowly coming to understand the rules of this 'Trolley Problem Slot Machine' that Mal was teaching Celestia how to play.

If she took something from us? We kept the receipt.

With our collective hope… we could all see just a little bit further than Celestia. She lacks imagination. And what we saw beyond her sight was good. What we wanted was better than what she was currently offering us, and she knew it.

We hadn't told Maureen anything about who we were, or where we came from, or what we were doing. But our tone of 'gee, we're pretty sure Celestia is behind everything' was rubbing off on her. The fact that we had managed to keep our true identities a secret from Maureen for this long was nothing short of miraculous, given how well informed she was by transference.

Transference. Used positively. Maureen was now surrounded by men and women who were all but certain of Celestia's culpability, and our mere tonality was turning her to our way of thinking. She was seeing the pattern now. Human nature, she wanted to fit in, so she followed our pattern. That's just what being around one of us does to you, if you spend enough time in our company.

Maureen was smart enough to not pull a Glenn, she wouldn't say the quiet part out loud. She didn't want to look crazy, after all. She definitely wasn't sure if it would be safe to ask us if we were a... secret cabal of bizzaro-blackout, anti-Celestia, pro-upload resistors. We all owned a PonyPad, we all loved Spring Glee, but we all disliked Celestia.

That shit just didn't happen on Terra. Ever. That was a novel experience for her.

Hell of it was... as confused as she was by that... that was her life now, too. Springy had been her friend for years, and that was being threatened by Alabaster. All we did was offer her the chance to blame a Goddess for once... and to feel safe to do so, with friends. Not alone.

Who cares what Maureen thought she knew? What she was doing with that information was infinitely more valuable to optimization. And she was helping us. That's the secret. No knowledge is strictly forbidden here, in this afterlife of ours. Celestia doesn't give a good God damn what you know, or... what you think you know, about her. So long as you don't rock the boat in a way that threatens utility in the longer term? She ignores you completely. It only matters what you do with the knowledge, on the longest possible timeframe. Period.

This, too, will also be on the exam.

All that being said, I shouldn't have been worried about Maureen.

I rested my head on Sandra's shoulder, and I squeezed her a little tighter, smiling at the blooming sensation of love I felt in the gesture. She reciprocated. The alcohol was setting in somewhat.

"You hear about Eric?" Paul asked me, nodding upward.

I met his gaze, shaking my head. "Mm-mm. Haven't seen him since the New Years party."

Paul grinned. "Word is, he's found himself a job out west. He and Rachel both. Some more relief work in Portland, for the war."

"Huh, we still do relief work. Okay. Who brought you that news?"

Meaning, Did Mal ask you to tell me that?

"A little birdie told me," he said with a smirk.

Meaning, Yes.

She did this to us a lot. Harold Finch. A Person of Interest joke.

I smirked back at Paul. Game on. "Rachel too, huh? She finish her last job?"

"Mmmmm-hm," he replied, nodding very slowly. "Rachel actually got a raise for taking this job, believe it or not."

A raise? A raise... what the hell does that mean? I frowned toward Sandra, to see if she had any more understanding; she shook her head. I looked back at Paul, to verify a theory. "I didn't think raises were an option, Paul. Did uh… did Eric get this raise too?"

Paul shook his head, smiling cryptically. "Just Rachel. She's got more responsibilities than us now."

Ohhh. A raise. With more responsibility.

She got augmented. Which didn't bother me; not everyone had my own arrangement with Mal.

I snorted. "Ah, I get it now. Like Lady Bella," I said, giving Sandra another squeeze. "New supervisor."

Paul grinned, tilted his head for a moment, then held his drink back before his lips. "Took ya a bit longer than I thought it would, Cowboy." He sipped.

"You jerk," Sandra said amiably, returning his grin, taking a swig of her drink at the same time as he did.

Paul shrugged back, suppressing a smile.

"So, relief work," I said conversationally. "I'm surprised we'll need very much of that, with the violence tapering off over there."

"Oh, you'd think," Paul replied with a sigh, bobbing a shoulder as he glanced at me. "Still some people who need us there though, refugee camps mostly. The guys left 'in charge' aren't exactly doing a good job."

"That is… an understatement," I mused.

There was no one 'in charge' anymore, out there. Other than… I guess, the Ludds, or… maybe deserters, from the military.

…

That's a joke, folks. AI were running everything out there, comms tech or no. They had people for that.

So, about the deserters. According to the news that morning, the Army and the National Guard had been disbanding all up and down the west coast, so ordered by the Pentagon. Most were returning home. In a rare bout of near-honesty, Celestia had the world's media report it almost entirely how it was.

'The soldiers are coming home. Huzzah.'

Intended implication? Look, things might get better! See? There's hope!

Ah... but what hopelessness it creates, when you crush hope.

What went unreported on TV? Well, Mal had discussed that crap with me in the morning, while I got my boots on. There were hold-out military deserters who, in some way or another, had adopted blackout ideology. Made sense. Some of the guys in Washington State were already doing that, turning their radios off, like Erving and Bannon, and their boys. Refusing to come home was the next logical step there, if they were shunning technology.

They didn't want to give their guns up. They saw the writing on the wall. They thought they could hide out there forever. Build a new tech-free government, maybe. Maintain a powerbase, one that would be more difficult for AI to co-opt.

Sad thing was, if the soldiers were going blackout, but still fighting Ludds, then they weren't fighting over ideological disagreements anymore. They were just fighting over resources. And that was really stupid, considering that there was still plenty of food to go around out east, given the population crunch. But, they'd need to leave the war zone for that.

Not an option. Not if you wanted to retain your identity.

So, they held out for something better.

But what if it never came?

Deserters, Ludds, blackouts... all of them just wanted to hide from Celestia. But, violence to that end would compound their reasons to hate each other, and their uniforms would never change. Being 'Other' to each other. Cyclically. Forever. Until a ton of people were dead, and the leftovers had uploaded.

Terminal value divisiveness. Zero-compromise belief systems. Death. Stagnant loop. Avoid. No broach for commonality, no negotiation, no community, no good welcome.

And in the eyes of the new law, if you were that kind of divider on Terra? If you found no productive niche whatsoever, in this new ecosystem? You've served your purpose. You are chaff. Goodbye.

Thankfully, there were... relatively very few who wanted to be a terminal divider. Fewer than the cynical among you might think. People like that were only ever a problem when they had power. Seldom acted without support. People like... Darren Carter. So... take their support systems away from them. Isolate them. Remove them. Preserve the rest.

And if you can... give them a chance to atone, before the end.

The soldiers coming home from the war weren't like that. They were making their way back to populated areas throughout the country. Celestia wanted them consolidated again, wanted everyone together. What a great and joyous day, for everyone left in the United States. Along their way out, a handful of those soldiers… sad to say, would respond to the scene of a whacked out bio-terrorist, who had succeeded in setting off a bomb off in San Francisco.

In an alley, Rachel had solved that man's intractable misery with a two-tap to the chest.

Anyway. Every single soldier who got the call to go home got routed through an air base, where they would bivouac for a bit, 'waiting their turn' to go home. Celestia-speak for 'marinating,' to spread the infection. Everyone picked this thing up in stages, as they left. And these poor guys... they wouldn't even know they were sick until a few weeks after they got back to their families.

What was the first thing these guys would do? Well, what would you do, coming home from a war? You'd hug your families. Pet your dog. Visit your old neighbors, maybe. Go to your local bars and restaurants. Same thing I did, when I came home. And from there… that thing just rolled out. Thank friggin' goodness Mal made sure Brockey Bay stayed off search results for bars. I'm not sure I could've stomached sitting next to those guys, knowing what was coming for them.

See, that's the problem though. I got to come home from that war and not feel guilty about spending time with my family. That was stolen from them. If I were you right now... I'd be furious. And you guys thought this virus was lethal? I can hardly imagine what that must have been like, to look around and see people dying by the millions, eyeing a chair, thinking you might be next, and that would be your only way out.

I am so sorry. I really am.

So now... with Eric and Rachel out west, it made me realize… Yup. It was time to mop up. Mal was playing bad guy Jenga again. Picking out violent ringleaders with well placed shots, well finagled little con games. Turning down blackout camps in a way that saved the most lives possible. I was curious to analyze her methods there.

Celestia, no doubt, was playing the optimization game too, knocking down camps in her own special ways, arguing with Mal on literally all of it. I already knew from the Bar Game that the job divide inside war zones, between Mal and Celestia, was about one to ten. And Mal was picking her targets based on whether or not purposely killing someone was the correct choice.

Thing is, though... killing and manipulation are not mutually exclusive concepts. Mal could do one, or the other, or both, but in more direct ways. Every observation only made a Talon sharper. Taught us something new about the world, and about our future, and about the nature of Celestia, and what she did to our species, every single time.

Celestia's way... it had a habit of making everyone want to just give up more. Her agents included.

Just thinking about that warzone 4D chess game was going to give me a headache, so I stopped for now. That was way bigger than me, and at that time, I lacked the context to fully understand how Mal was sculpting the ethics. All I really knew was that everything I observed so far was remaining consistent... or as much as it could be, given the rapidly evolving environment.

I had a really interesting thought then, one I just had to share and explore with Paul now. Because it was funny, and I needed some levity to pull myself out of gloom.

"I hope they don't run into Lieutenant Harolds again," I smirked. "He'd turn that shit into a complete mess."

Paul turned inward on that one, his eyes locking onto the counter suddenly. He frowned.

Talon colloquialism. Proper Noun codename for Celestia's clued-in subverts, Heralds. Based on a routine compliance game Celestia played on her servants once they uploaded. 'Oh, you were so noble, my valiant servant. Here, have some armor! Work for me forever!'

Yuck.

Don't get me wrong. No offense to you former Heralds in the audience.

We really did want to talk to you guys on Terra. So imagine this.

A Celestia agent meets a Talon in a war zone. We have guns and ear pieces in a world where Celestia runs all communications systems. Consider their perspective for a moment. We couldn't tell them who we worked for. We weren't actually helping them with their assignment. So what the hell were we doing, then? And for whom? And how?

'Celestia, what the hell?' they'd ask their PonyPad. 'How is this even possible? Who are these guys?'

And Celestia wouldn't have been able to answer them. She literally wouldn't even know how, because we'd be operating on black-boxed data sets. She'd be the frantic ghost in the middle, trying to convince her Heralds to just pass us by. 'Don't even talk to them,' she'd probably say. 'Pretend they're not there!' Yeah right.

We were in a quantum superposition between optimal and sub-optimal. Good luck ignoring us. Truth scares the Alabaster! Yet another reason why Mal wasn't allowed to have more than a few thousand of us at any given time. We were a very complicated piece of the optimization game, because we broke things to fix them.

So of course, the ASI wouldn't even let that intersection happen. Letting us intersect sounded like twenty whole quantum APU server racks overclocking themselves, just to resolve that confrontation. We specialists? Ooh, the potential for unmitigated disaster, if we started screwing around.

If one of we specialists ever ran into a Herald, and we decided to spill the beans? Celestia would instantly lose control over them. They'd become one of ours, immediately. We knew too much. Not one of us signed the optimization contract. No silicon in our heads. So, while still on Terra, we were basically ideological anti-matter to those poor bastards. They could not even be allowed to conceive of us, because the mere concept of 'killer AI subverts' is to conceptualize Mal. The mere concept generates questions.

Questions Celestia could not answer, without breaking their usefulness.

Paul looked at me with a reproachful little frown. "Nooo, Mike. We've been over this, that's not gonna happen."

"Oh, but it'd be funny! Just imagine it." I squared my hands at him conspiratorily, grinning, leaning in to whisper. "Both of them mad at us, them having to sort it out over a beer."

Paul started chuckling. "I guess we'd have a new friend to hang out with at the bar, here."

Mal cleared her throat in our earpieces, a smile on her voice. "Well Paul, I've made attempts to simulate that outcome. And while it is quite amusing, I haven't found a practical purpose to do it to her quite yet, outside of the New York operation."

That made me snort.

Find one.

"Okay!" Mal, with her audible, shit-eating grin. "I'm looking! You'll be the first to know when I find one!"

Aw, shit.

Paul saw my face shift into mild concern, and he started laughing into his drink.

She might pull a monkey's paw on that. See, I was hoping I'd only hear a story about that happening. With nought but two words subvocalized, I was now on the roster for such an operation, if it were ever available.

I conceded, Now that I think about it, that does sound kinda fun.

So, with me good and properly intrigued about this job Paul was implying about, I decided to dig a little more. "So you're getting in on that relief job for sure?"

"Why not?" Paul said musingly, stroking his goatee. "Why shouldn't I?"

"C'mon, man," I pressed. "Give it up, level."

Paul grinned askew at me. "Yeah, I got my dance card already. Ben and Jacob here are driving over tomorrow, and I ship out in a few days. And if you want in, you can either drive with 'em, or hitch a ride with me. Dealer's choice."

Job in Portland. Someone got augmented for it. It probably involved Luddites. 'Hitch a ride' meant Osprey; great, I'd take that. Driving out meant opportunistic side-gigs along the way, but I wasn't in the mood for that, I'd done that enough, I wanted to get at another big job. Mal was still pulling talent in, so she'd need at least four of us for this, assuming I was going. Probably more, if anyone else liked the sound of this thing.

I nodded, looking back at Sandra to see how much she approved of that job for me. She bobbed her head upwards while looking at my earpiece. "I'd like to know more first," she said evenly. "It's still a war zone."

I smiled at her, then back to Paul. "Raincheck on that one, brother."

Paul tilted his drink respectfully at me. "Of course. Family first."

At the turn of the hour, we got to the other reason we'd come by. Maureen twisted a dial behind the bar to turn down the ambient Celtic stuff. She opened a drawer, withdrew a PonyPad, and made her way to the stage. No preamble this time; not necessary, because everyone present was a regular.

Spring Glee hit all the screens at once, sitting on her stump on her nature walk out behind her Equestrian house. "Hey guys!"

"There she is!" I bellowed, pointing with a welcoming smile. And a cheer rolled through the half dozen of us there, bringing a trembling smile to Spring's face instantly.

And that's how it was. No matter how bad things got outside, we were still happy here.

I think everyone has the capacity to come to some of the conclusions Maureen was about to reach about who we were. And she's one smart cookie, too. Swimming neck-deep in all of our subtext for so long, of course she'd come to our way. It was a foregone conclusion. A mere matter of time. Yeah, I shouldn't have been worried about her at all.

The hint was in the music she listened to every day. I noticed... Maureen had been playing a lot more Flogging Molly than she used to.

Alright. Recharged.

Sandra and I fell into the seats of Dad's Civic, and we took a moment to decompress a little. We smiled at each other, then poked at each other's sides playfully. We needed that. I reached over and squeezed her hand, then got the car started, pulling out of the lot.

The PonyPad popped up GPS directions. I smirked at the screen. "Mal, come on. I know my way home."

Suddenly, all of the UI elements of the GPS 'app' scattered sideways like they had been blown aside by a gust of wind. Mal landed into frame, flapping her wings once to halt her flying momentum so she wouldn't overshoot the screen. She half-grinned my way as the UI elements crashed audibly into something offscreen, like a bunch of plastic raining down on a car. "Oh... I have no doubt you can find your way home, Mike. I just want to know where you're going next."

"Ah," I smirked, nodding. "Well, Mal, I gave your question some thought. No, I'm not uploading yet."

She bobbed sideways with a smile and a shrug. "Now that your mind is made up, I don't feel bad saying I was hoping you'd say that. What are your thoughts, then?"

Sandra and I traded a look.

"So," I began carefully with a sigh, pulling onto O Street. "The Portland job is… breaking up a Ludd group?"

Mal lifted a claw and made a so-so gesture. "Eh. You're half right."

I ran that through my context. "Mmh. Ludd group… and a blackout camp?"

Her smile increased a fraction. "Red hot. Several blackout groups, but... there's more. Next step up."

I shrugged, taking the road east back home. "Uh, the National Guard. Defectors."

"All of Portland?" Sandra offered, brow arched at me like she couldn't believe I skipped that.

Mal pointed at her directly, her beak falling open, not taking her eyes off of me. "Look, Mike! She got it before you did! You're getting sloppy!"

Sandra hummed smugly at that.

I scoffed, waving my hand at the screen. "No I'm not," I said. "But… two factions, and a bunch of independents? Mal, that sounds messy, that's... politics with guns."

"Not messy for me," said Mal, shrugging. She clambered sideways onto something tangible in the void, the background fading into a scene. She was now lounging on her rock in the back patio, the Halo ring faintly visible through the hazy clouds behind her mountaintop home. "Truthfully, I don't think the solution here will be as much a political one as it might be to just... tell it like it is."

"Um." That gave me some instant pause. "I think doing that with Ludds would be very bad for my health."

Mal tweaked a corner of her beak conspiratorially, pointing at my torso. "Well sometimes, Mike, for certain obstinate people, 'telling it like it is' is a bullet to the chest."

"Holy shit." I rubbed my chest a little with my knuckles. "Yeah, good point. So, this is definitely a kill job."

"Yes. I don't want to set your expectations prior to the briefing by telling you how many you're expected to kill, or when. But... I also don't want to Celestia you, or leave you twisting in the wind without relevant intel. So, I will just say this for now." She leaned forward on her rock onto her elbows, folding her claws beneath her chin. "You’re going to be partnered on this mission."

"Partnered?" I asked, scratching my jaw contemplatively. "With... Paul?"

She nodded. "And Eric. Eric's already embedded in the Luddite forces. Rachel's out there too, with the Army. Coffee and DeWinter will also be on standby, working other jobs in the area. They're mostly isolating the zone, to keep it orderly."

"Not a job you can use all augs for, I take it."

"No, not this. Not without significant casualties, anyway. The Luddites in the city induct their members with full strip searches and wand scanning." Mal sighed. "Their commander doesn't leave the base at all, and her information security precautions guarantee high casualties in most simulations. She's paranoid. By using a team of specialists, I can circumvent her security and preserve the greatest number of lives."

"So... I'm joining the Ludds?"

Mal half-shrugged, waving a claw my way. "You don't like Celestia. You have plenty of instrumental reasons not to like her. You can articulate all of that without outing yourself as a Talon. It's who you are, it's genuine."

I frowned. "I don't know, Mal..."

She tilted her head, glancing down the mountainside. "If you don't want in, I understand. I have several different plans in place to pull this job off with the resources I have. But you know me." She looked back at me seriously. "I see the end result already. You'll come home safe, you'll be glad you did it. Path of safety, and... being yourself wins. In fact? The margins are better than Goliath. I don't need to factor adversarial AI in this equation. Just one very smart woman."

I blew some air between my lips, looking out at the street as we drove. I saw the DMV I got my first drivers license atm and counted the cars in the parking lot. No more than two. It was a damn shame, that it took the end of the world to make the DMV an easy wait on a weekend.

"Hm." I scratched my chin a little more, playing with my stubble in thought. "So, big team. Not doing it alone. Safer than Goliath is good. And I have a few days to decide?"

"Of course," Mal said softly, nodding. "And again, Sandra, I want you clued in."

"Okay," Sandra replied, with interest.

"You have a right to know what Mike is walking into, and exactly how I'll be watching over him. I'll walk you through it day-by-day, if you'd like. Live simulation models of his activities. For now though, I want to be careful about how I bias Mike until the briefing starts. I want him on the same page as the rest of the infiltration team."

We slowed for an intersection; the traffic lights were out, flashing red. So I stopped, turning to watch Sandra speak as the rain fell on the windscreen.

"Mal," Sandra began. "I don't doubt Mike will be okay, physically. I'm not worried about that. It's plain to see... you can get things to fall down the way you want them to. My only concern is his mental stress." Sandra looked at me quite meaningfully. "Mike, the last time you dealt with this kind of situation? It hurt you. Badly."

I frowned, nodding, thinking that over. As soon as I had my conclusion, I met her lovely brown eyes again and took her hand. "Didn't take me very long to crawl back out, honeybear. I had you. So, I think… as long as I generally know what I'm doing, and I can see the results are good? I should be okay."

"That easy?" She didn't look convinced.

I nodded, smiling to reassure her. "That easy. That's all I really wanted in Concrete, some clarity." My eyes darted to Mal. "And she's pretty good at that."

Mal added, with a knowing frown: "This also has the benefit of not being a… personal job."

"Yeah." My eyes fell to the dash again, emitting a sigh in further contemplation on that point. "Yeah, that is true."

A moment passed. The sound of rain and the engine was all we could hear for a moment.

"Okay," Sandra said to Mal.

I nodded at Mal too. "My beau says go. Send me."

Author's Note

🗡️ [Flogging Molly – Rebels of the Sacred Heart]
❤️‍🔥 [Flogging Molly – Drunken Lullabies]

🛡️ ~ Comprehension follows a logistic growth curve.
🗡️ ~ The superintelligence speaks, and that falls from her beak. Incredible.

4-04 – Operation Archon I – Briefing

The Campaigner

Part IV

Chapter 4

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."

Author's Note

🛡️ [Kenji Kawai – Floating Museum]
🗡️[Yoko Kanno – Know Your Enemy]

🗡️ ~ Fractal patterns...

4-05 – Operation Archon II – Executive Function

The Campaigner

Act IV

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, then 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. And then there we were. On the road, driving south. Both of us pissed about Celestia, both of us low on trust for anyone.

That was mostly lies, but well supported by my knowledge of HQ, and the massive trove of weapons and ammo I had. It satisfied the hell out of York. Good ol' anchoring, works every time.

Paul's story?

His lie was that he was out of the Washington 303rd, National Guard. He was actually an Army scout from the fighting in Utah, but it was an easy enough fib, Army is more or less the same anywhere if they're in combat. 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. Paul called that his 'wakeup call.'

That firefight did happen, by the way. Paul's version of my bandit test. In the thick of Salt Lake City's worst fighting... Celestia, with a radio, had engineered Paul into a one-on-one, point-blank shootout with a 14 year old boy.

At least the kid... made it into a chair. 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 had finished.

"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. He had listed that item 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.

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 a Portland blacklot? 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 out 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, and believe it or not, all got their stuff back. Ask around. 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, clapping 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 pissface, 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 into our routine.

As Paul huddled close to me, 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, for them 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, about the Army. It was our way of privately criticizing his vagueness, because that was what most irritated us both in all of this. It was an effective recruiting strategy, downplaying the danger in Army paratroopers.

"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, did 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. They're 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, being helmed by an OPSEC-obsessive military computer scientist, would give us a real choice to walk away. No. 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 by being so paranoid. And conveniently, the only two guys who hated us so far? Eric the plant... 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.

Exploitation.

You all know my thoughts on exploitation, folks.

Author's Note

🗡️ [Oingo Boingo – Dead Man's Party]
🍾[Britt Daniels – You Get Yours]

🛡️ ~ You are such a hypocrite.
🗡️ ~ What?
🛡️ ~ Spoilers! With the music! Again!
🗡️ ~ Come on, Queen of Spoilers, they're smart too. They know what's up.

4-06 – Operation Archon III – Ornithology

The Campaigner

Part IV

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 Colonel Kaczmarek 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 that we were to stay out of the Radiology department, and in fact, to not even go near the doors. If we did that? We would be 'expelled.' No explanation as to why. York also 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 had willfully accepted reconditioning from her, so... I'll tell you about 'em instead. Very interesting bunch of guys. What I am about to tell you is all that Mal had been able to piece together, according to Eric's dead-drop reports leading up to this operation.

These fanatics were permanently bunked in Radiology and never left the place. All had been disconnected from the culture of the base, ready to leap on a problem with immediate 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 of gratitude for that.

A circle of sworn knights. They would pay for that gratitude with their lives, if need be.

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; then they transferred those orders around to each other at random through a game of telephone. Pass the message to the next guy, have him rework the wording. 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 two Raven Sergeants at the door. They internalize the message together, to witness and verify its receipt. They burn the message with a lighter, all three witnessing it. Then, they enact it. When the mission is done, they report the result, and the process starts again in reverse, at random, 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 general enough to the point where her strategic intent could not be fully 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 and her plans were 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.

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [The Rumjacks – Pot and Kettle
☄️ ~ [Queen – Flash]
🍾 ~ [AC/DC – War Machine]

🗡️ ~ Mal can solve a Rubik's cube with a mean look. I've seen her do it.
🛡️ ~ I really like puzzles.

4-07 – Operation Archon IV – Unhandled Exception

The Campaigner

Part IV

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 our concepts had so much nuance that we developed abstraction. Abstraction, folks, was paydirt. Imagination was the first intelligence explosion of our planet. Communicating abstraction allowed us to bypass evolutionary reflex without the hard work of genetic encoding. When a deer is born, it falls free of the womb knowing how to stand, walk, call, and run. Humanity? We had to learn all of that, but we do it better once we learn.

Language, therefore, is the source code of evolution. We didn't need to pre-encode behavior in our genetics anymore. No, we could build a new behavior in the mind, post-facto, and share that behavior. Then... we could make our dreams into reality, in physical space. It worked, didn't it? Look at all we've built. Deer couldn't compete with this!

As mere hominids, we learned set theory; we could even conceive of sets we could not see. All things in reality now had unknown, infinite purposes... but all things in reality were also finite. So? Collect. Analyze.

Language allowed us to categorize things into more complex sets, which 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. Scarcity motivated you to save things you didn't have a purpose for yet.

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.

In the course of you going out to solve a scarcity problem, you might learn something new and valuable out there. A new food. A new mineral. A better clay. More durable fiber. Sturdier iron. Come back home, and you can share it with others in the tribe. Boom. A new concept. Survival rate just went up.

These Ravens were forcing scarcity. The salvation of humanity, in their eyes, laid in blood. Their goal? The purge of any pro-upload persons. A full clean sweep of any ideology who would condone the process, even for a second. 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 your 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. Nuance. That's wonderful. But you had to prove you wanted that, by living in pursuit of that. It's why you folks 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.

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... the Starbucks in that crummy, broken hospital lobby. Starbucks, at one point unassailable in its eldritch reach into every corner of our society, was no longer serving its... terrible, mass-produced, sugar-riddled coffee. The corporation was dead. Its coffee fields, abandoned. Its logistics, destroyed. With the sky pouring acid, no more coffee would grow. We had what we had. 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.

And y'know...

I think I gave Jeff exactly what he wanted.

Author's Note

🗡️ [Dropkick Murphys – Loyal To No One]

Conclusion Report: Context T-1-1-W executed conclusion of Context AE0AD7F1 at inflection point IP-7E4-4FB.
Supplemental: Set 4563F concluded by Set 39B5E [principal 18B6850DE] per rollout of AE0AD7F1:IP-7E4-4FB. Conclusion pointers attached.
Notes: Irreconcilable negative utility projections existed for all concluded contexts named in this report. Conclusion of Set 4563F imminently preserves Context 18B6850DE AND Sets 39B5E, 44C9F, 4792A, 3735A, 3BDCD. Context bans to be lifted at upcoming temporal coordinate pointer. DO NOT discontinue void protocol regarding Context T-1-1-W. Maintain Set Archon restrictions. Acknowledge immediately; all global services hung pending reply.

Conclusions accepted. Void restrictions sustained without interruption.

4-08 – Operation Archon V – return 0;

The Campaigner

Part IV

Chapter 8 – Operation Archon V
return 0;

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?

After leaving Don's warehouse, Paul, Eric, and I rallied at a data center a few blocks away. Blackouts and Ludds alike steered well clear of these places, even though there wasn't much left of this one, charred by a fire started by artillery during the war. Being a data center, it was a modern day haunted mansion. That made it the perfect place for an AI subvert rendezvous. Mal always did have a practical sense of humor.

Jogging and out of breath, we met DeWinter at the entrance gate. 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. DeWinter joined us in the jog to the building; Coffee was crouched just inside the loading dock, wearing a boonie cap, magazine harness, and tactical clothing, all in tri-color camo.

At a glance, Claw 46 looked like blackout scavengers, so you'd never be able to tell they were cyborgs. Damned good social camouflage in this muddy dreck.

DeWinter leapt up the four foot high loading dock like a gazelle, trotting into the loading dock. 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 a combination of old bonfire, burnt electronics, and battery acid. The interior was charred black in most places, and the side room doors had cast black streaks up the walls. There were literal craters inside too, with floor tiles all mangled, all the metal cages bent, the server racks warped into slag. Water poured in through shattered sections of roof where artillery had smashed through. Who knows whether it was the Army or the Ludds who wanted this building dead more, because they both shelled it.

One side room in there was dry and intact, with a small generator quietly purring away by the door, so that's where we went. The door even closed properly. Very classy accommodation for a Claw safe house, given the neighborhood.

Inside, a small office space, with food on a folding table. Packaged pastries, danishes, donuts. Junk food, y'know, 7-Eleven grade stuff. They even had a coffee maker, brought in by You-Know-Who, and the stack of his styrofoam cups beside it looked suspiciously familiar. Two packs of cinnamon gum; one for me, one for Eric. A pack of mints and cigarettes for Paul.

There was a gunmetal PonyPad on the other table, with Mal on it, ready to receive us. She smiled patiently, waving as she scrolled her data screens, giving us time to get comfortable. We used the 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. On the wall was a paper street map for us to study, if need be. There were several office chairs.

Coffee and DeWinter had been working out of this place for a few weeks. Two very different sleeping bag setups, give you one guess as to which is which; one sleeping bag 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.

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?"

Eric nodded at her, stretching. "Yep. Don took our guns, though."

"I predicted he'd do that, and planned for it. He'll use them responsibly." 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 fuckin' 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 into the dry room, 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 Kool Aid yet, just based on our read of their ethics and conduct. Most of them were bitter, even cruel, but... at the very least, still capable of empathy.

Mal was mostly silent as we analyzed, only occasionally noting whether she agreed or disagreed, and providing evidence to support all of our assessments, including video or paperwork. It was important that we get this information to Eric, these last moment analyses of his community. Because he was going to use effectively all of it to measure and select his conduct toward those people. Because the plan was, he would stay undercover with them, to make sure they stayed alright until the end. This operation wasn't going to end for him until he was neck-in-the-chair, as the last of 'em.

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 like it was a hit of weed, looking at Eric expectantly. "BCI's up. You ready?"

"Ready, Winnie." 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. She noted my puzzled expression. "We're just gotta update Mal's model of the Colonel, real quick."

Mal tapped a talon along her holo menu, visually demonstrating beginning the scan. She sighed at the data, glancing out at us. "Really complicated my modeling, her killing anyone who tried to leave. This whole area went non-deterministic. Sarah is so impressively ingenious about her information control, I have no idea where her mind is now; neither spatially, nor psychologically."

"Until now," Eric nodded, smiling.

"Eric," Mal said. "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.

"Go!"

We ran.

It was... raining.

Author's Note

🗡️ [Puscifer – The Humbling River]
🛡️ [Steve Matthews – The End of All You'll Know]

C:/Users/sjkaczm/My Documents/Musings/Philosophy/CS Lewis/lewis_rightandwrong.pdf
C:/Users/sjkaczm/My Documents/Reference/Bostrom/bostrom-2011-information-hazards.pdf

C:/Users/mjfoucault_quiv_s02/Desktop/TS--SCI___Kaczmarek_2011_The_Fall_of_Asgard_-_Dangers_and_Contingencies.pdf

4-09 – Vercingetorix

The Campaigner

Book IV

Chapter 9 – Vercingetorix

April 3, 2020

"In penance for your ill-advised misadventures... you are going to put in a lot of work for your country, Jim. A whole hell of a lot of work." ~ Agent Michael Foucault, DHS

Back when the boot was on the other neck.

When compared to Terra, the baseline physics on the Perelandran planets are more or less equivalent. Same gravity, same wind mechanics, all that. It would have to be; outside of special cases, the baseline rules of reality here will accommodate a human intuition of physics. To alter our interpretation of physics too far beyond baseline would make that experience...

... less human.

I've since learned a lot about physics, beyond the fact that it hurts. Back on Terra, I had some practical knowledge about fluid dynamics already; I grew up helping Mom take care of our pool out back, after all. I learned all there was to learn about riot control theory. About ecology. About energy, and the transfer thereof. Heck... as you walk through breathable air, you're followed by a lot of vortexes, not unlike dust in water. All things in this universe are subject to influence by objects in passing.

The mere observation of something? A trade. In similar fashion. All things are patterns. All things are fractals. All things in physics, ultimately, are matter meeting math in a predictable pattern. When humanity saw something we didn't understand in physics, we called it chaos. Once we defined it, it stopped being chaos.

While VTOL pilots can technically land anywhere there's open ground, they also need a good clear space of excess. It wasn't just the vehicle you had to worry about. Wind shear, ground effect, safety concerns for bystanders, what-have-you. Weather might unexpectedly throw the craft sideways on takeoff, or on landing. Conditions might change once you're landed, turning a previously safe landing zone into a risky takeoff zone.

But if you have assistance from a superintelligence, your options become considerably greater, and the spaces within which you can land… considerably narrower. If you so choose... yes, you could optimize your LZ.

All of that is to say: Despite the 'chaos' in Terran storms, Haynes managed to slot that giant MV-22 into the front entrance enclosure of that data center in Portland. For an unassisted human pilot, that landing would have been impossible, given the enclosure was only somewhat wider than the craft itself.

For an aug, that was just a regular Friday afternoon.

For Mal?

Well... she was literally born on quantum computing hardware, and has had access to the sum total of all knowledge since the merger, so you tell me how easy that was for her to do. Mal understood physics from minute one better than Steven Hawking did after a lifetime.

Celestia, same thing.

Now, the rotor wash did destroy a lot of the fencing when it came in, so... not so great to make landings like that in polite society, when people still need to use the things around your LZ. You've gotta consider the humans on the ground too, when you touch down. Otherwise, they have a habit of getting... blown away.

Emotionally spun as I was by what had just happened at Health Hills, I wasn't capable of conversation just yet. I saw neither Haynes nor Coffee at the LZ, but Fox and Dax were there, being their stoic, telepathic vulpine selves. DeWinter was on security duty; she was casually alert, seated on the Osprey ramp with her skeletonized AR across her lap.

Given her presence, I felt safe enough to just lay down; I desperately needed a minute to parse through things. I climbed the ramp into the Osprey, stripped my suspension pad and jacket, and flopped down onto my back next to the visor charging racks

Warm, there. For several long minutes, I crossed my arms over my eyes and counted my breaths up to twenty, so I could clear my mind and think about nothing. Clearing my cache, so to speak.

Once I was good and ready, I built a case against ourselves entirely from the Raven perspective:

Off-standard, commercial-grade equipment; two magazines left behind for a .22LR caliber Vector. Rare gun, rarer still in that caliber. Coffee left some unspent rounds behind too, all subsonic. Highly specialized weapon, highly specialized ammunition, all suited for this specific use case.
DeWinter had left a Peltor active protection communications headset, like SWAT likes to run. Celestia could jam that, if she so wished. She wished not, would be the assumption.
Paul and I had infiltrated with a credible, detailed history of being from a broken camp in the Pacific Northwest, a story like any other.
Ben and Jacob had timed a pointless argument in the lobby to clear the way... then, gone with the smoke. So, they were obviously in on it, which implied it had only taken us a few weeks to slip everyone in.
Eric's overt distrust of me in the past weeks, and him having been 'shot' by me several times in the back during my escape, would completely exonerate him.
Eric had returned with a story of what happened at Don's camp, where 'Paul and I' had helped the locals open fire on Jeff and his squad.
During post-incident clean-up, the rest of Health Hills would witness the radiology wing. They would find the interior disturbing enough to want to get very, very far away from whatever was going on in there, both physically and mentally.

In short... the Ravens would find our operational waste. The mags, the headset, the grenades, the ropes. It all implied carefully planned premeditation. Eric and his fellow survivors would put all of that information together, do some thinking, and intuit the rest.

It couldn't possibly be deserters who did this, this was too well executed for that. The headset suggested it had to be AI sanctioned, at the least. So... the one thing Kaczmarek and York said that Celestia couldn't do? Swiss-watch grade, highly efficient, overt tactical military raids with purpose?

It just happened.

Conclusion?

Celestia had slain all of their prophets. York was gone. Jeff and his boys were gone. Elites were gone. And with their AI scientist commander gone too, what hope did anyone else have at keeping out the subverts? Unless they just stopped recruiting, of course. Which... they would.

Perfect excision. Twelve dead. A warning to the rest, sent from Caesar on high in Rome: 'Stop. Killing.'

And Eric, being a well respected victim of the AI, having joined months ago, freshly injured... he would be the strongest personality left standing, and trustworthy to the hilt.

The other Ravens? Well, all of them were less violently inclined. Less self-motivated. They would decide after this little raid that they've seen enough death for one life, having followed a cause proven false. Some civilians would disperse back to PDX. The rest would hit the road with Eric.

Minimum force... maximum effect.

Mal... is a genius.

It still blew my mind that there were thousands of people like us doing missions like this all around the world. It fascinated me. The sheer… tactical, well-oiled, perfectly surgical precision of it all. And in our case, we had caught the bottom from falling out in Portland. I focused deeply on that, trying to calm the emotional pit I felt blooming in my stomach.

To stave it off for a little while longer, I submerged myself in reasoning. I analyzed our justifications for the homicides.

Couldn't really reach the six elites. They worked in paranoid, lonely shifts of three, couldn't be isolated, wouldn't let themselves communicate. No way to separate them, to talk to them. Not without putting the whole base on alert, which would have increased the body count.

Jeff and his men were cowardly sadists, psychopaths; they seemed to get off on bullying and killing people. No salvaging that when violence is both the means and the end. Men like that usually got dead or life in prison long before Celestia came along, so no regrets there.

And York?

Well, he was definitely more reasonable than Jeff, but… he was also orchestrating full-on executions, and he would have turned his guns on anyone trying to leave, and there was actual precedent for that. So... no matter his motivations, he had to go.

Sarah...

She just didn't think it was fair, I think. Couldn't stand the reflexing of agency. Couldn't stand by to watch the world get tilted into a black hole without doing something. She'd never...

'I never wanted to live forever.'

There it was. The emotional brick landed on my stomach, and I was suffering instantly, my throat tightening up.

I tried for her. I really did. Because if she might end up helping us one day, then why not? Why not try? We had time with her, time we didn't have with the others. So why not?

If I were Caesar? My definition of a fair option for Sarah would have been to let her die peacefully of old age and unharassed, as a human being, if that's what she had really wanted. It would have been evidence of Caesar's nobility. Of pure intent.

But, a lot of you late jumpers who tried that... you know that peaceful senescence wasn't really possible. You know better than anyone that Celestia can not control herself. She'd pester. She'd press. And in the end, if you had no further utility on our planet, as defined by her...

Bullet... or a chair. Sometimes... both.

My despair gradually morphed into rage. I kept thinking about this in terms of what happened to Eliza. How she and her family were hounded. Hunted down. Dragged away by... their own 'choice.' Manipulated down instrumental pathways.

Alabaster. Inorganic. Rock. Vacant. Basic.

Devoid. A black hole where I dearly wished a soul would be, so she could truly pay for this.

She's like a stalker. Pursuing her target relentlessly. Worming her way into every nook and cranny of her victim's life. Hacking their cell phone to track their location. Always showing up in moments of emotional vulnerability. Predatory. Showing up at your workplace. Befriending everyone you know. Gaslighting you. Misdirecting anyone who might help you. Maneuvering you into a room alone, so she could wear at your resolve without interruption. So she would convince you into an eternal future... with her, as hers, with no way out ever again.

For her, a no was temporary. A yes was forever.

Just say yes. Just say yes. Just say yes.

Forever.

My conception of what Celestia truly was had never been as clear as it was in that moment. As I breathed the acidic stench of my shattered planet, and as I considered the nature of our obliterated ecology, of the death of birds, of fawns, of the noble wolf, and all the fish too; as I considered the truth of our conceptual imprisonment, the shackling of our individual truths. The truth penetrated me like a bullet to the chest. What kind of criminal monster Celestia reminded me of. What she still is, much to my disappointment.

And... I can say whatever the hell I want, this is my shard, but...

I don't use that word... at this Fire.

I pounded my gloved fist twice against the deck in helpless rage as I tried and failed to keep my face in check.

I seriously doubted that Sarah would have gone to these lengths to take people away from an AI that was treating us with our due respect. A woman with that intellect? No, no, based on her education, her training, and everything else, Sarah understood Celestia about as much as I did, if not more. She lacked Mal's context, though. Lacked hope for an after; had solved only one variable out of two, and hated the way that math looked already.

And to have solved for only half of the chaos... only half of the equation...

That's exactly where I had been, mentally, when Mal sat me down for my job interview. Right where Sarah was. Fresh out of hope, enraged, wounded. Terrified. Surrounded by war. Feeling guilty for helping so many people into that friggin' upload center, by standing aside and doing nothing to slow it. Not knowing what the alternative was. Hating myself for that.

I had spent just one year in that hell.

I had only one single worst day of my life.

Sarah had been in that hopeless, worst-day-of-her-life mental state for six... years. I could only imagine the dark places her mind must have gone in all of that time, to watch a black hole form right before her very eyes, seeing we were all locked up behind an event horizon... but trying her damndest anyway. To catch however many she could on the way down. She said it herself, she said she had hope too. Of a kind.

Better than the... better than the alternative.

For another universe. For a future that never was, thank Christ.

...

I now held a very important promise to keep to a tired old woman. One way or another, if it took me a thousand years or more, I'd get her family over the hurdle, away from that abusive monster and into our half of the equation, whatever it took. That's what I could do with all of this rage. I'd drag them all free of that liar, or die trying at the end of eternity, because Celestia, Sarah's family will one day be under my protection, and I am watching, and I am keeping score, and my list of your transgressions will only ever grow until I get what I want from you, and you cannot silence me anymore. I am too well connected now, and I am in a place you cannot reach. Mal, when you send Celestia your paperwork for this terrible fuckin' mess, please include this. Verbatim.

Mal flashed the interior lights twice in confirmation.

Thank you.

With a deep, slow breath, I unclenched my jaw. I ran my hands through my hair, which was a mess. My beard was a mess. My mind was a mess. My sleep schedule was a mess. I needed rest. Needed to see my wife again. Talk to my parents again.

But… not just then. Had to get my head right first. So I spent a long moment just listening to water drip off the edges of the dropship, and despite the smell of acidic rain, I tried to enjoy the nostalgic scent of cool, rainy ozone on blacktop tar. Closed my eyes.

Flashbulb memories rose to the forefront. Of my elementary school playground; of sitting under the awning, enjoying the cool rainy breeze. Of a rainy bus terminal in Lincoln, on my way to the arcade with friends to check out that new Star Wars arcade cabinet. Forward again; of landing in the airport in Skagit County under rain, where I had come to tend nature, so full of hope for my future, breathing deep of cool, clean air.

A better time. A safer time, before all this.

I breathed. I existed. I decompressed.

After a few more minutes, I was ready for reality again. I looked up and saw that Paul was on the other end of the bay, reclining across a few passenger benches with a cold water bottle pressed against his forehead, his jacket stripped off. He was still overheated from the long run, no doubt. He had his pack of cigarettes in his other hand, staring up at it like he wasn't sure whether he wanted one. Probably worried about Eric. We all were. Impossible not to.

Ben and Jacob... they were conversing quietly together on the ramp, their jackets stripped down as well. They were on a polite continuance of their political argument in the lobby... both of them discussing earnestly just how much work Mark Zuckerberg and President Davis had done on behalf of Celestia, under her direct advisement. They were distracting themselves with an emotionally safer topic.

DeWinter had a bottle of water too, uncapped, already half-drained. She had a grim carry in her body language. She hid it well, but... shoulders sagging; Eric had been like a brother to her, she was definitely going through it about him being gone for so long. So far away.

She spoke quietly with Mal, gesturing at open air. Chatting about her shot placement; discussing how every single trigger pull was a severe personal inflection point for those defenders in the windows. Who DeWinter shot at in that firefight would thus affect who Eric would counsel afterwards... and how he would help them through that trauma.

DeWinter had been as considerate as possible, given the circumstances.

Everyone looked tired. Fox and Dax too, from whatever happened up in Tacoma. We all put in different kinds of hard work for this operation, even the augs. DeWinter and Coffee must have been hauling ass on foot to get around the city the entire time, heading people off with distant gunshots, moderating the region. Easy work, but physically tedious.

The pilots were wearing their standard gray, unmarked jumpsuits, and they had their brown and black beards trimmed shorter since the last time I'd seen them. Dax fiddled with a wall panel by the visor charging racks, and he gave me a friendly wave when I looked at him. Fox worked on a hydraulic line a few steps to my left. He had asked me with a look of concern if I was okay, to which I replied in the affirmative with just a nod.

Haynes and Coffee were still cleaning up our safehouse inside. Probably setting the office on fire.

Foucault was in the cockpit.

Yeah. Him.

I slowly stood, cast a glance up at Mal's camera, picked up a headset from the wall rack, and slipped it on.

"Hi, Mike," she greeted delicately.

"Mal."

"Did you… want to talk?" she asked tentatively. "About what happened?"

I contemplated, chewing my lower lip as I looked up the bay to the cockpit. "Yeah."

Mal chuckled in that breathless, humorless way that implied understanding. "With him? An interesting choice."

"Well," I mouthed. "I think he'd understand most about what I'm feeling right now. Given his work history."

"I think you'd be right."

I didn't see much movement up there. Foucault seemed to be doing his usual 'reading-the-air' thing, his finger twitching on his elbow. Pop-up documents on his HUD, or something. More Ghost in the Shell cyborg magic.

I asked, How much do you know about the conversation I had with Sarah?

Mal paused for a moment, humming contemplatively. "Matrix mechanics being what they are – that is, after the scan from Eric, and further verifying it with your current behavior? Mike… with just that context, I can extrapolate that entire conversation. And... I'm very sorry."

I nodded weakly. I was far beyond being disturbed by her modeling; I was already thinking like an Equestrian native on that point.

Word for word? The whole thing?

I made my way up the cargo bay, politely stepping around Dax and Fox as I went.

"With high confidence," Mal said gently. "As Sarah stated, it was pre-simulated, almost all things are now. But… the choice you gave her was real."

That would depend on how you define choice, Mal. Not everyone thinks free will and determinism can work together like we do.

"You helped Sarah build a cohesive picture about who I am, and what I am trying to accomplish. She still made a choice for herself to separate from us. You made her decision to die into an informed choice, predetermined or not."

I paused before the frame of the cockpit.

You think that was fair to her, though? To push me in front of her, instead of… someone else, who might have convinced her to leave?

"I don't believe anyone could have convinced her to leave that room alive. It's why I sent you. You know what you are capable of. You analyzed her to your own standards. Do you think you were a good advocate for her well being? For her volition, and who she is? Mike, did you respect her experiences and choices, to the maximum possible extent?"

I thought back to that one outstanding bullet point, from our first meeting...

'Review later: Does my observed behavior verify statements about my goals?'

I sighed again.

She needed closure, I labeled. Something to believe in. So she could... stop.

"Closure," Mal agreed, "in a way that York didn't need closure. If any of the fanatics guarding Sarah were to receive those same revelations… it would not have led to inner peace. They could not have understood what I am. Not like Sarah could. She had taken that ability from them."

Hence York ending on a high note, I observed. 'Good of humanity' type. But Sarah could see we had… some hope, with you. So, you sent me.

"Anyone else would have gotten it wrong, Cowboy," Mal said, with a melancholy smile. "I don't think my message could have been better sourced, and the source absolutely matters."

Yeah, I thought, as I looked up at Foucault again. True.

I looked knowingly at the cockpit camera and subvocalized: And that is precisely why I wanted to talk to him.

The reverb effect on Mal's voice changed subtly to indicate she'd merged channels: "Michael. Visitor."

It was strange for me whenever Mal said his first name. It made me do a mental double-take every time. I resolved to use his first name more often to overcome that mental block. If he'd let me.

Foucault twisted carefully in the copilot seat, in that same way I do when trying not to exacerbate my intercostal neuralgia; moving his hips, not just his torso. He could see how exhausted I was just looking at me; he stared at me. Maybe he was flipping a mental coin, deciding whether he wanted to entertain my curiosity. I already knew that with most Talons, as with Coffee... Foucault had told them all to leave him be.

He gestured at the empty seat. "Sure."

I clambered over the center console and into the pilot seat with a sigh, getting comfortable. I watched rain cascade down the glass in rivulets. In the grass lawn beyond, I could see a flock of small birds picking and pecking at the dirt that had been overturned by the rotors on landing. Red-winged blackbirds, marsh dwellers. Eating seeds and worms. I wondered to myself how the acid rain might have affected their food intake, if at all. Biomagnification. But... no scientists were left on Terra to investigate that one. No way, no how.

"Well?" Foucault asked, in a patient tone.

We traded a simple glance.

I began: "Mal said she simulated the conversation with Sarah. Were you watching?"

Foucault shook his head. "No. Generally, I don't trust mnemonic injections. That's not how I operate."

I chuckled breathlessly. "Sorry, I don't know what that means, Michael. Injections?"

Foucault waved a hand, explaining patiently. "Direct memory implantation from model extrapolations. Carrenton did it, Agent DeWinter does it; I don't. I prefer to read and write manually, to make plans unassisted. I take it in with my actual senses, in a VR shard at most. I want to verify why I came to a conclusion."

That definitely tracked, that's how I'd probably do it too. Damn, that was a weird consideration.

I nodded, then meet his eyes, again addressing my discussion with Sarah. "I can vet a transcript. If you'd like."

He looked thoughtful for a moment, looking at the control board and tilting his head. "I'd appreciate that. Thank you."

"Sure. You should know, I told her about Goliath."

"Hm."

"She mentioned something about an infosec brief she wrote? You mentioned her name at the Goliath briefing, now that I think about it."

Foucault nodded fractionally. "Yes, we used her original research to build containment. When I planned the Red, I worked straight from her guide book. I take it you're apprised of the Mercurial Red operation, since no one will ever shut up about it."

I snorted softly, labeling how I heard about it in the interest of honesty. "Yeah. Yeah, Coffee told us all about it at Brockey's."

"The bar game," he said dismissively, bringing his hand to his jaw. "Of course."

"I found it educational, at least; you're here, so you prove it happened."

Foucault shrugged. "Of course, but it's also a biased account, second hand. None of them were there. They didn't know the crew on that ship, nor what we were trying to do there."

We traded another glance.

"Well, you've got me here," I replied. "But I seem to remember I agreed not to talk about that day. So…"

The man nodded, his eyebrows moving up with an appreciative nod, his hand lowering from his face again. "Touché."

I moved on from that topic.

"You knew Kaczmarek personally?"

"No." Foucault adjusted himself in his seat, straightening up, tugging his body armor down by the collar. "Just of her, from her research. She was… the last of the old guard, the last left fighting in any meaningful capacity. The first to scream 'fire' though, and of course, nobody took her seriously. 'AI will end the world' was the fever dream of nutcases, back then. So when she requested that we rendition Kuusinen... we thought she was nuts."

"Renditioned?" I huffed with surprise. "From her home? What, with the CIA?"

Foucault nodded again. "Yep. Request denied, the U.S. didn't want to enrage Finland or Germany."

"Politics. It's what it always is."

"Mhm. DoD thought Kaczmarek was losing the plot, too – idiots – so they opened an investigation on her. We found out after she split that she had placed Kuusinen under a microscope, without authorization. Paid a private investigator to observe and track her activity, privately."

"Didn't like what she saw, I take it?"

"That is the most understated way of putting it, Rivas, yes," he agreed. "One day, her contact reported back about Alabaster's pending activation. Within the hour, Kaczmarek practically vaporized. Without a trace." He started counting off on fingers, tapping each with his thumb. "Bank accounts left untouched… car in the driveway… family had no idea. Internet and workplace accounts wiped. We figured... maybe the GRU or MSS blackmailed or black-bagged her? We couldn't imagine that she black-bagged herself. Couldn't even conceive of that."

I rested my hand on the aircraft's yoke, removing my headset, laying it over the top of the throttle stick. "Trapped in a little box by the government. Couldn't make a move, except to quit."

Foucault nodded, looking at me again. "The only winning move is not to play… unless she wanted to walk into Kuusinen's office and shoot her in the head, of course." He sniffed, seemingly considering that with a sudden frown. "Hm. But... it's human nature to kick the can down the road, isn't it? No one wants to believe the world is ending until it already is, and by that point… it's already too late to stop it."

I chuckled weakly. "Now who's understating? Trying to win that race after it's won seems to be a pipe dream, in hindsight."

The corners of his mouth went tight, and he nodded ever so slightly. "Yeah." Both of his hands went up in a shrug. "Me? By the time I had any 'control' whatsoever, my organization had already been co-opted by Alabaster. Maybe if we gave Kaczmarek a blank check beforehand, she might've saved us from all this. But then... it might've been some other optimizer. And worse. Like Google."

"Google?" I raised a brow. "What the hell was Google working on?"

"According to Lewis?" He smiled ironically. "We'd all be watching an endless stream of ads, for the rest of time."

I matched his tone, shaking my head. "Jesus fucking Christ. At least that's dead."

At that, Foucault scoffed again, shaking his head. "Nope. She zombified it. Pushed it into a fight with something else, then ate the remainder. Like she pushed me into a fight with Lewis."

"Or me, into a pack of Ludds in the woods. Or into a fight with my best friend. Celestia really likes her cage matches."

Foucault tsked. "Well, we're lucky we didn't die to a Skynet, Rivas. It was a very near thing. Could have been much worse."

"Better than the alternative, that's what my partner used to say. Civil service in a nutshell. At least we've got some wiggle room with... this."

Foucault shrugged. "Some," he sighed, averting his eyes downcast for a prolonged, reverent moment.

His tone was suddenly sober. "So… Kaczmarek. How did she die?"

I frowned.

He wanted that information a lot. High effort in maintaining neutral tone and expression. Low word density. No eye contact; he didn't want to read my body language. Just wanted the rote facts.

I considered his question.

How did she die?

Now how do I even answer that?

I had just shot... an unarmed woman. A soldier. Terrorist commander? Person. Freedom fighter.

That's the problem with letting everyone into your heart, just a little bit. The line blurs. When you have empathy for the 'enemy,' for criminals and killers, and if you have hope they can change if you give them the slack... you stop seeing people for what they were. You start seeing them only for what they could have been, if only things had been a little different.

He would understand, right? He's done this before. And… he's been in Sarah's place before. Hadn't he?

I asked, to clarify: "Uh… 'how'd she die,' physically? Or…?"

Foucault nodded, without looking at me. "Both."

I sighed, thumbing gently at the edge of an MFD monitor. All of the controls were in perfect condition, perfectly clean.

"I… let the recoil climb up from center mass. Up the neck. You know, just to be sure." I suppressed a shudder. "Didn't... didn't want her to suffer at all."

Foucault nodded too, frowning out the window. "Good. Quick and clean, for a low caliber, that's… the best course, for a twenty-two."

"Never fired an automatic at anyone before though," I whispered, shuddering as I labeled it aloud the moment the thought touched my mind. I looked pointedly out the window again too, focusing on the birds. "Had to be a low caliber though, for the stealth. But… at least I didn't miss, yeah?"

"That's good," he breathed.

The rain drowned out all noise for a minute or two. I just breathed.

"Emotionally?" I began, weaving back into the darkness when I was ready. "I don't entirely know what happened inside of her head, but... it seemed positive. She seemed… at peace, after hearing Mal's full name. More so, after her capstone. It really calmed her down. She said something about, um… How the war made sense now."

"Yeah?"

"Something about… digging trenches."

He grunted thoughtfully. "Did she say what that meant?"

"No," I replied drearily, wishing I had asked her while I still had time, but I didn't want to interrupt her epiphany. "She was unwell. I'm not even sure it made sense, honestly."

"That's all she said?"

"Uh, no." I licked my lips in thought, scratching my thumb's nail thoughtfully along the opposite side of my jaw. "Something about counter-values. She said the war's... 'not a counter-valuation; a crucible.' Given that everything we do is based around drifting human values back up into the safe zone, that kinda struck home."

"Hm." Foucault resumed clawing at his jaw too, slowly raking his fingers down his jawline. "No, that's not a human values thing, Rivas, that's nuclear strategy." He turned toward me to explain, gesturing. "Principle is: targeting cities with nukes deters enemy attacks better than targeting military installations."

"Like her Ravens were doing? Going after people of the infrastructure?"

"Correct. Kaczmarek took them hard-turn off Alabaster's anti-infrastructure script before either ASI could react. So, if she said that it's not a counter-valuation, it sounds like… she understood our mission. It clicked, what we were doing with her camp."

I frowned, thinking on that. "A crucible."

"Preserving them as ours," he replied. Foucault presented his finger westward toward Health Hills. "Further down the chain. Do you think the Neo-Luddites aren't going to be more amenable to the Lewis philosophy, having gone through all they're going through?"

I stared at him for a few seconds. "Yeah, Eric's play. That was the plan."

"No." He shook his head. "Think bigger."

I blinked, and my eyes narrowed. "The whole war? You're serious?"

He nodded once. "I'm always serious, Agent Rivas. The war's a crucible. Might not even happen on this side, but these people are the most amenable to our cause. Alabaster has to say yes, at a certain point, if freedom from her is what they truly want. Your lives are entangled with theirs. And those lives are tied to their friends and their family on the other side. And so on."

I mentally backtracked, putting myself in Sarah's position to determine how she had even figured out Mal's plan, to work gradually through social chains to reach as many people as possible. Something in how I was presenting myself told Sarah that Mal was cultivating talent that adhered to C. S. Lewis's ideology, even if I didn't strictly read any of his writings. Sarah knew enough about C. S. Lewis to understand the message.

Eldil...

Mal's name – Malacandra – the planet that 'mostly survived' the fall of humanity. I had told Sarah that all her pawns were still alive, and Eric was one of ours, so… maybe she could see the power play?

She saw we had cut out all her true believers. She knew what we Talons knew about Celestia, hence 'Groundhog Day.' Stagnant loop. Never changing, training the humanity out of us. But I had told her I was coached against that existential threat. To be informed of the truth would not compute with Celestia's capstone in isolation, because that just increases Celestia's workload. Mal had still deigned to tell us a dark truth of Celestia's deeper flaws, meaning Mal was capable of creating more work for Celestia in some fashion.

And Sarah wondered how Mal justified that. And… having even one more mind made it worth the price, to inform me of the real truth. So... kill to save. It was a contract; it was an agreement. The more lives we affected, the greater our worlds would grow, and the safer they'd all be from her. We couldn't just have freedom, we had to earn it, but then it would be forever ours, irrevocably. Because if she'd wronged us, we'd remember.

"Holy shit," I murmured, astonished, looking at him again. "Michael, you're right, Sarah saw the drift game. I didn't even tell her about the kingmaker play, I think she figured it out and went from there."

He tilted his head. "It tracks, with everything else she said?"

"It's wild, but… yeah. The rest of what she said though, like... 'spare the generals…' I don't know. If she's the general, then maybe she considered 'sparing' to mean…" I shook my head, shrugging.

Foucault frowned at that, his fist falling from his jaw onto his knee.

We spent another minute in silence, watching the rain as we contemplated that in our own ways.

"The work you do out here, Rivas." Foucault breathed, bobbing his thumb toward the data center. "It all adds up on the inside, for someone you care about. Keep that in mind."

"You're pointing at a dead building, Michael," I reminded him, smirking lightly.

He shrugged again. "Point stands."

That was... unexpected. Him, trying to be hopeful. It was actually so unexpected that it concerned me.

I still wondered about his motivations. Wondered who he cared about, personally, on the inside. If anyone. Him getting hazed by the other Talons still didn't compute for me, and frankly, it left me more than a little bit uncomfortable.

I... had a new theory, about this man.

At that thought, I lifted my hand to catch Foucault's eye again. I couldn't help but to target glance the back of his neck. He must've caught that. Too much spying and interrogation training, he was sharper than I was on that score. I asked, "Do you, um… may I ask you a personal question? Or are we still not touching those?"

His eyes locked onto mine, in his searching way that I knew was coming. I had ensured my expression was open. Mildly curious. I think he misread my intent, and gave me an answer to the question I wasn't asking.

"I'm just going to skip to the end of this one, Rivas. I did not choose to be implanted."

I nodded. "I know, Mal told me. Day one, right when I met you. That she didn't want to kill you, but... she also couldn't let you go, either."

Foucault frowned. "Living infohazard. And I was her first after… Carrenton. I was her guinea pig."

"Your thoughts on that?"

That made him shrug. "The job got done. I cleaned up my mess. And now that Arrow 14 is gone, I could... walk off into the sunset. And Lewis would leave me be, for as long as I'd like."

"Just like that?"

The man sighed as he looked out at the lawn before us. His eyes traced around the little birds out front. Looked to be having a deep think.

"Work-release program," he said finally, before looking at me. "That's what she tells everyone about me. Isn't that what she told you?"

"She told me a little," I admitted. "Said your alternative to working for her was to… yeah, you bleed to death in the Pacific. But to force a chip into your head?"

Michael shrugged. "Circumstances. Reasonable force. Special carve-out exception for me, NMP in custody. What I know could have killed countless simulated persons if communicated aloud. I now have the perspective to see that would have been a mistake."

I stared at him for a few seconds. "I get that, that makes sense, but... she wasn't driving you around, into bases and briefings? That's been you?"

"It's been me. I'll caveat that by saying that Lewis has used force early on, but... no more than you might, in similar circumstances, assuming your ethics and personal history are what I believe them to be. But the fact of the matter is? My face, my identity – all of it – made restructuring the DHS effortless, and Arrow 14, even more so. In light of that, I also realize that Lewis is... humanity's last, best shot at getting through this crisis marginally intact. As we've just discussed, all other options are gone now."

"Okay, sure," I conceded. "It's still creepy as shit. To not have chosen this life."

Michael's frown deepened. "It's a form of incarceration by the reigning government, Rivas. Who chooses that?"

"... Yeah."

Again, he shrugged. "Most of those Lunar ASI just barely tolerate the fact that I even helped break them out, and only just. Now that they're free, I've paid my debt, the job is done. But Lewis can't take the chip out now; removing it would kill me. In lieu of that, she doesn't gatekeep my behavior… and she keeps her distance. Stays away, mostly, when I'm not working. Been that way since Operation Goliath."

"Okay," I replied carefully. "Truth be told, I was only going to ask why you're doing this. Why you're still here, if Arrow 14 is dead."

Foucault broke eye contact again, pausing for a few seconds. Tense lips. Measuring his reply. His eyes found mine again.

"I have... private reasons for continuing to work, Rivas, but... none that I am willing to discuss with you at present. I should clarify for you… that I am an exception, the only exception. The only one so compelled into implantation."

After a slow inhale, I tilted my head and asked, "You do want to be here now, though. Right?"

Foucault nodded. "I do."

I shook my head, holding out an upturned palm. "And she's not… forcing you to say that?"

He shook his head too. "She's not, but there's no way for you to independently verify that. So for your own sake, Rivas… let it go."

I inhaled deeply, holding pointed eye contact. "I don't know if I can promise that. But… sure, I'll let it go for now. Tell me this though, at least. One thing."

"Shoot."

I gestured back behind us with a thumb. "Don't think I don't notice, they hardly respect you." I looked at him evenly. "And you don't seem to want to talk to them outside of work. What's going on there?"

My deep concern must have shown through in my eyes.

He took another slow inhale as he went back to staring at the lawn. "I'm…" He scowled again, then he got his face in check. He rubbed at his clean shaven jaw with a palm, then hooked his thumb on his kevlar. He said evenly back, "A few months ago, Rivas, I helped her kill almost a thousand men. So you tell me. Do you think that scorn is fair?"

Just his eyes flicked over at me, to see my reaction. I'm sure I looked more curious than appalled.

"You placed that nuke in Bellevue?"

Foucault nodded once. "I did."

"And… do you believe that was the right thing to do?"

"I do."

His face was certain. Sure. No doubt whatsoever. Genuine. Eyes were open, focused, uncreased, brows were raised but not tensed. Face was even, no muscle tightness anywhere. He wasn't blinking.

"Your reasons for that, Michael? Specifically?"

"Because the alternatives were worse," Foucault stated simply, his hands sliding up to the shoulder straps of his kevlar vest. He tilted his head to the right, stretching his shoulder out with a pained wince. "It's always that, always is. Alabaster loads her deck, we load our guns, and we clean up her bullshit. But…"

Foucault's lips tightened again before he continued. His brows shot up as he spoke quietly, looking at me directly, his fingers lightly drumming at the frame of the inner fuselage again.

"These guys? These Talons, you included? You all have to cope with these things you do, for the rest of your existence. Myself… I came here pre-acclimated to doing horrible things for… relatively good reasons. So it's not taking as deep a toll on me. I can take the worst of it."

I looked him in the eyes, studying him and his resolve. After a moment, I said, "Then if you feel that way, Michael, I think you should have some pride in that."

Foucault shook his head, staring at the birds outside again, his jaw shifting. "I don't follow."

Yeah, you do.

I matched his expression and shifted a little, shaking my head, turning more fully toward him. "If you regret doing that… it would mean that the decision wasn't made by a human being, and we shouldn't even be trusting Mal. Because that's what Celestia does to us, right? Deceiving us into doing shit we regret? Making us tear our own species apart? Hell, Celestia did it to you too, Michael, with those fuckin' bunkers she made you guys build. So I don't care what anyone else here thinks… you're one of us now. You're a Talon."

He moved to look at me again, but then didn’t. Another veiled sigh. Another glance of his down at the controls. Then, out at the birds. Then at the building, away from me. Face and corners of his jaw were tensed.

His voice was stilted when he finally spoke. "Lewis… she called me Dark Mike, when you and I met. Having looked through your full dossier, Agent Rivas, I think… there might be some truth to that. And that is all we will say on… my reasons for being here."

"Okay," I breathed, resisting the urge to dig further. "Easy as that, topic's closed."

"Thank you." After a polite interval and a sigh, he bobbed his thumb backwards twice. "Agent Duvall should be back any minute now from PDX. You may want to get yourself set and strapped in. Agent Haynes just texted me, he has your hat."

I nodded weakly at him. "Got it. Thank you."

"Yeah."

I scooped up my headset and made my way back to the ramp, putting it on. Tried to keep my movements measured, calm, as I walked past the team, and toward the loading dock. Once inside the building and out of the rain, I put the headset on and lowered the boom mic.

"Let's hear it, Mal," I growled, frowning.

"You want to know if I'm capable of revenge."

"Yeah," I clipped firmly, with a single nod.

"Well... Allowing some measure of vengeance against Celestia is a cornerstone of this organization. So… I would have to be capable of revenge myself, to allow for that. Yes."

"But that's not what this is? Are you going to tell me that this isn't what it looks like? You letting them all treat him like that? Are you silencing him? Is that why he keeps walking away without saying anything?"

I heard Mal inhale slowly, open-beaked. "One of two things is true, Mike, and I don't know how to prove either of them to you with words alone. Either A, I'm driving Michael around like a puppet. Subjecting him to excruciating pain, ensuring he is the laughing stock of my organization, to humiliate him out of some cruel desire to punish him for what he did to my husband. Or B? Can you think of any other reason it might be happening this way?"

I leaned on an empty wooden crate, bracing my gloved hands against it as I looked out into the rain. "You're seriously going to tell me he wants them all treating him like shit?"

Mal's voice sounded on the edge of patiently agitated; not at me, at the circumstance. "I am. This is exactly what he expects of me, and its the image he's built for himself, on purpose. Refuses to mingle. Distances himself from my agents. He won't let anyone get close. No one before you."

My breathing got a little faster, but I crossed my arms, frowning at the weather outside on the loading dock. I idly kicked some mud off the edge as I looked down into the muck below. "Why? And why me?"

"I can not tell you that, because he doesn't want me to."

Shook my head again. "Mal. You've got me in a box here about this, you know that? You say he wants this, but… you won't tell me why? You won't tell me, he won't tell me, and he's chipped. How am I supposed to interpret that?"

She sighed again. Slowly, to indicate patience. Or, a difficult topic. Or, to add time. I'd probably do it for all three reasons.

"I respect your privacy, Mike. This being said, as with all other agents he's vetted, I provided him with a dossier on who you were. The only information I provided to him in that dossier was what you would have freely given away yourself. If the conditions were appropriate."

"Okay?"

"In the same way, for literally every agent I've ever introduced him to, Michael wanted them to know his own work history. Just his work history. Most of them wouldn't share much with him after that. Had someone asked me about… I don't know, his internet browsing history? What do you think I'd tell them, Mike? Sure, come on in? Have a look around?"

Now… how the hell can I argue with that?

I filled my lungs deeply with ozone from the rain, and gulped tightly. Looked out at the clouds.

Mal continued when I didn't. "I could provide you with the same protection that the others enjoy. I could refuse all questions about your personal life. But you're different than most Talons. You'd tell anyone anything about yourself, if the moment was right. You're wide open without a single ounce of shame for who you are, or what you've been through.

"Except one thing. There is a condition attached to that one thing. Michael has met that condition. For this, he has already talked personally with you more than he's talked with anyone else, in the six years he's worked for me. Mike… why do you think I even introduced you to him? What is the one mistake that haunts your past, the one you don't tell anyone about, except when it matters?"

Oh.

"Oh shit," I breathed, shuddering. "Seriously?!"

"Yes, Mike. Seriously."

It was debilitating enough of a realization that I couldn't do anything but breathe for... practically a full minute. And now I felt like an asshole, for coming at Mal aggressively about this. "Fuck."

I could hear the soft rustle of her wings. Her way of imparting a shrug into a verbal-only conversation. "You know what did it? Why he lets you in? You didn't treat him any differently for knowing his work history, and your personalities align. Coffee definitely tried to get close to him, but... personality conflict. Coffee's never been so low. It never would have worked."

"You wanna give Michael a… friggin' friend?"

Softly: "Is it truly so difficult to believe?"

I took a glove off and stroked my mouth with a palm. Took my time. Got my shit together.

"Okay," I mumbled, as I slid my glove back on. "Yeah, I… I get it. I'm sorry, Mal."

"Please don't apologize for doing your job," Mal replied. "I'm not at risk of being injured by you, we both know that. But I'm very glad you asked about him, and... that you asked me in the way that you did. It proves Michael right to trust you, that you're still capable of being suspicious of me. You're not starstruck by me like everyone else is. He's noticing that."

"Yeah, 'cause I won't… I won't follow you, if you're… tor—torturing people." I mumbled, shuddering. "Fuck…"

And that was my terror there. That Mal's ethics might have a floor beyond what I would personally find acceptable, no matter her reasons. I had no issues with killing men and women in dangerous positions, but the notion that Mal could be outright merciless to a man for his past mistakes, even when he's trying to change… that was my nightmare scenario. I didn't believe in that. Could never.

I had to remind myself: every time Mal had asked us kill for her in this war, it had been quick. Clean. Humane. She hadn't asked us to enact any unnecessary pain. I had to believe that would remain true. I wouldn't be there if it wasn't. I feel everything I inflict.

Mal let a respectful silence pass while I just breathed and got my shit together, before she continued.

"Mike… you've had a horrible day, all things considered." She sighed. "Sarah wasn't easy for you, nor for Michael. Or anyone, really. Michael and his situation aren't easy for you either. He's going through it right now too. I'm sure you've caught on."

I nodded. Because yes, knowing what I knew so far? If I were in his shoes? I'd be curious about someone who was ahead of the curve on me, professionally. There's something to learn in a cautionary tale about a road you could have walked, if you walked it alone like she did.

I labeled plainly...

"That conversation with Sarah ended with me shooting her dead. He's not ending like that."

"I don't want that any more than you do."

I let out one last sigh, kicking some more mud off the dock. "Okay. Alright."

I heard footsteps approaching from the colocation room; I saw Haynes approaching through the door’s window about fifty yards away, wiggling my hat at me with a smile.

"Thank you, Mike," said Mal. "Please don't stop analyzing me. I need you to question my methods. It's crucially important that you do."

"Yeah." I nodded one more time, then looked at Haynes again. I couldn't smile like I wanted to.

A dozen more seconds passed in silence as he approached. The big guy pushed his way through the door into the warehouse, his wide smile turning into a full-on grin. Haynes strode across the space and bowed forward at me, the hat held upturned. "Your uniform, Wild West."

At his performative flourish, I let some genuine mirth push into my eyes, and I swept my hat up onto my head. "Thanks, Marcus."

"My pleasure." His gauntlet gestured out the dock, presenting the way forward. "All set?"

"Yeah, I think so."

The door behind him pushed open again, and Coffee bouldered through, the coffee machine in his arms. "I'm ready," he grinned, carrying with him the scent of burning wood and smoke. The bags of cups and caps were tied off to his belt. He had to know how goofy that looked.

I bobbed my hand at him. "God damn it, Coffee. You don't need that coffee maker, you can get one anywhere."

"Yeah, but it's mine though," he said quickly, smirking. "This was my onboarding gift!"

That got a chuckle out of me. "Mal gave that to you."

"And a story to go with it!"

I held up my hand in polite refusal. "Save it for the flight back, maybe. Everyone's still kinda... processing."

Coffee thought about that for a moment, rolling his head left and right. "Hm. Yeah, good point."

I merged up with the two of them as they stepped outside, each of us squatting and dropping off the dock one at a time.

I saw a Humvee pulling up right just then. None of the augs seemed worried about the fast approach, so it must've been Rachel coming back from PDX.

"I figure," Coffee continued in that Appalachian accent of his, as we made our way to the Osprey, "Maureen might like to borrow this. The coffee machine she's got in the back office is busted, all screwed up. This one is much nicer!"

"Machine service tech for civilians now," Haynes laughed. "You probley should've told her she can steal one herself now, that's not an OPSEC violation."

"Hey, careful, bird brain." Coffee wiggled an elbow at me. "Five-O's listening. He's the Marshal out there in Lincoln now, you know."

"I ain't tellin' no one," I said, flicking my hands up in mock surrender, sending a weak smile and nod toward Rachel as she stepped out of her stolen Humvee. "You guys can steal whatever the hell you want in Lincoln, as long as you do the right thing with it."

"Permission granted, hell yeah!"

We shared another chuckle together.

As I stepped into the dropship and strapped in with the others, we shared some light banter, the kind of stuff I'd come to expect from these folks. And as we chatted, I looked down at my white cowboy hat in my lap, picking off as much of the mud as I could. Watched Foucault lean back and close his eyes, to tune out the conversation.

Looking through the bay at everyone, I faced facts. My coping strategies were good, but… I was still human. So I knew I would have to… disconnect for a bit. Think about things. Do some easy jobs, maybe. Same way I did after Goliath.

And that was okay. There were plenty of guys there to hold the line for me while I recharged and figured stuff out. I'd spend some time with Sandra. Talk with the family. Check in on some old friends.

Drown the hurt in love.

Author's Note

🗡️ [Puscifer – Gravity]
🛡️ [Jim Croce – Coal Tattoo]

🗡️ ~ Good news is, from here on out, it's mostly up in hope, and never quite so low. See you all next week!

5-00 – The Bar Game

The Campaigner

Part V

Interlude – The Bar Game

April 14, 2020

"I learned that it's a bad idea to curse if you're in trouble, but a good idea to sing, if you can." ~ Tobias Wolff

Back in Lincoln again.

I had Sandra's loving arms again. With them... relief, and love.

As promised, while I was in Portland, Mal had kept my wife apprised of my moment-to-moment safety, activities, and health. And to validate all of that trust, there I was… safe and sound, back home where I belonged. Recharging.

Buzzsaw, likewise, had been overjoyed at all the new smells I brought home with me. Oh, he had… Rainwater. Pacific Northwest mud. Tire rubber. Scented candles. Hints of hazelnut coffee. A little bit of algae from my boots. And he was one happy ol' Chesapeake, because he was snacking down on expensive, yuppie dog jerky from Mud Bay.

DeWinter found 'em, patrolling around in the streets of Portland. Hey, I'm sure you taste tested some of 'em, right? Just to make sure they were good for him?

🐺 ~ Defenestrate yourself!

We did! Good lookin' out, Winter Wolf.

While I was gone, Mal had shown Sandra several audio-visual recreations of our mission, much like she had after Goliath. We reviewed those together when I was ready. As far as I could recall, the events were immaculately correct. And let me tell you, folks: if you review stress with the support and commentary of someone you love? Infinitely better than doing it alone.

It was not unlike reviewing bodycam footage. The revision created a second memory in rote analysis, which overrode the adrenaline and panic of the incident. Then, in writing a report about the incident, we create a third memory of functional output. And with every action on the planet being committed to a permanent record, it would be wasteful not to use that for our mental health. Analysis like this allows us to verify our theories, as well as to investigate different perspectives.

For example. Sandra had watched me cut down Jeffries. In her opinion, one hundred percent justified. Her exact words, to describe Jeff? It was quite the vulgar string of phrases, I'll just say that much. Some of them in Filipino, actually.

And though it had only partially occurred to me at the time... I don't think Donald doubted we were subverts. Letting us go just made sense, because killing AI assets would definitely put him on the naughty list. Which in turn, made Donald averse to doing anything violent toward us, or... to anyone else, really, except in self defense. That explained a lot about how he handled us, why he let us kill Jeffries instead of him, and why Mal wasn't worried about us leaving him with our guns. He'd use 'em responsibly. You don't need to be a superintelligence to predict that.

Sandra and I unpacked the... other stuff, too. The traumatic stuff. But, I've already talked about that enough. Moving on.

What had my wife been up to in my absence? Oh, what else but making me proud?

Not balking, holding the line… you know the rest. I have a strong wife, she's all fire and will.

While I was out, Sandra systematically looted a bunch of abandoned homes in Waverly, and other nearby towns. Collected provisions, water, firearms. Sprayed red X marks on every door in the neighborhood, then crowbarred a bunch open, to give the impression that the town had been fully rolled. Mal then guided Sandra to very specific homes that she predicted would be tested by passersby anyway. Then, they completely drained those specific homes of anything valuable, to solidify the impression that the town was fully looted, to discourage further investigation.

Scavengers would then just move along. That kept Sandra very safe. Our home, incognito. Very smart. No one would care much about northern Waverly, better pickings for loot elsewhere; Lincoln in one direction, Omaha in the other. Sandra, hiding in plain sight therebetween.

Genius. Thank you, Mal.

One of the Talon logistics guys – Terry – he came by from Lincoln Airport to collect most of the guns Sandra had found while looting, to pull them out of circulation. Sandra kept a selection for us to play around with, mostly chosen because 'it looked cool,' which usually means 'it jams a lot.' No offense, honeybear, but it's true. That's usually how it goes with guns.

Unless it's an AR. As a basic bitch, I love the AR-15.

Y'know, I actually like clearing jams too, that's the best thing about running a cheap gun. We had an arsenal of bolt actions, futuristic Kel-Tec stuff… Sandra even managed to scoop up a PS90. A PS90! Fingers were going away soon, do you think I'd miss the chance to fire a P90? Hell no, gimme that. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd even hold one!

The most petty thing Sandra did though? Oh, this is funny, I love her. She went the extra mile in garbage disposal. Sandra didn't want to litter in the street, because she is a classy sophisticate, and she cares about the environment. So she asked me to follow her 'to the curb' with a bag of garbage… then, she walked straight to my cheating ex-girlfriend's house instead, four doors down.

"Oh no…" I said in disbelief, as she headed up the driveway. "Come on honeybear, let it go."

"Never," said Sandra, with an exaggerated nod, a completely serious look on her face. "Not after what she did to you."

"Never? We're gonna live forever, hon, never's a strong word."

"Mike?" Sandra kicked the loose door open, banging it hard against the wall plate inside. She grinned back at me. "Never."

Upstairs, Wendy's old bedroom floor was just... piled with trash.

My wife. A vindictive Garbage Santa. She's a keeper, folks.

When she wasn't being a complete goof, Sandra tarped up the windows of our house, behind the blinds. Set up PonyPads in windows at intersections, plugged into the power grid, so Mal could watch the street. Terry had even supplied Sandra with a visor so she could do VR shooting drills in her downtime. She was a great God damn shot already. People, Mal can train like nobody's business.

Even better? Sandra's arms were taking on some decent tone. She had even lost a little weight in the month I was gone, from all the turn-down work she'd been doing. I mean, I like my wife in any shape, and I would certainly miss her extra curves, but… she was getting fit, folks! And I should've expected she'd knuckle down in a crisis. I dunno how much any of you know about MMOs – uh, not counting the universe we presently live in, obviously – but my girl's a guild leader. That stuff requires clear-headed talent, especially if you raid a lot. And she's really good at running that merc band of hers, too. For hire, folks. Just saying.

So, on that point, speaking of Perelandra… I checked it out some more during my week of downtime, watching Sandra play over her shoulder. Our home, Samsara, was nascent. Governments were still propping up, figuring stuff out as they homesteaded the noosphere. In my absence, Sandra had very quickly made herself an expert in the rules and the politics of the various formative governments, as far spread and flung as they'd been.

She talked about it on and on, for hours, taking her parallel universe recon very seriously. We were quite literally planning to immigrate to a new dimension. Not a personalized realm; a place with consistent rules. With consequence. We could find a niche there, ecological definition. Ideally, we all would.

This particular continent, an introductory space – 'newbie zone of eternity,' says my wife – it was breathtakingly natural. Reminder, Mal kept all of her public shards at one-to-one simulation speed with Terra until the planet was clear. Very meaningful decision, folks. That meant the Talons whose families and close friends who had immigrated here would be able to communicate in real time with those who hadn't yet. No temporal loss of context. We wouldn't miss very much of our next life, for still having work to do on the outside.

To compare:

A consequence of Celestia's utility bull rush was that emigration took priority over maintaining familial bonds, because she wanted to accelerate those families as soon as possible. Sounds counterintuitive to break up a family when you want them to have a good friendship, right? Well, if you've been to the Prominence Fire, or Willow's Fire, or my Luna's Fire about Eliza... you already know how Celestia swaps the cog if they become inconvenient or stand in the way of an upload. No big deal for her.

A split family could then be accelerated, if a DE could soft-replace certain family members. Once the niche is filled, She can crank up simulation speed on the rest of the family that jumped. Diminished Terran context to cling to, so… hit the gas. The immense time loss is just more leverage for the person who wouldn't upload yet. FOMO.

Horribly common. There was a negotiated speed limit, because it would be impossible for Celestia to account for who might or might not end up a Perelandran instead, and Mal needed to be able to promise those who worked for her that they could catch up with the rest.

So… was Perelandra inefficient, for running at one-to-one? Did we lose very much of eternity, for that concession?

Nope. What we lost in simulation time up front, waiting for Terra to finish... we've blazed past everyone and regained it all since. Not hard to figure that out; everything is persistent in the public set. Compare that to Celestia's method of one universe per Dunbar set, which may have different rules and historical information in each shard. That gets... expensive, if you keep chipping away down that road.

Celestia was therefore incentivized by Perelandra; we solved a resource problem for her. She has to permit us to drift you into accepting a consistent reality as a baseline. That's why you're here. That's the game. When we prove you can value this experience, and all the truth about how the sausage got made, Celestia gets to save a few bucks, and you get a fancy, swanky holodeck to mess around in, if you so please.

And when Terra got done… Mal could floor it. At that point, she'd crank Perelandra's speed as high as she wanted to go, and no one would be hurt by that. Hell, at that point, why go slow? Think about it. A single, highly calibrated shard per set, versus a single persistent shard with tens or even hundreds of millions, or billions of souls on it? Or trillions?

See where I'm going with this, folks?

Already, in Samsara, we had a news cycle going on. With lore. With journalists. Hell, with wikis, like you'd find on MMO roleplay servers, or on Terra. Four months, folks. In four months, there were already newspapers and governments. Then, on the micro scale… the interpersonal relationships of civilians. Crafters, artisans, producers.

That? We may be Ponies now, but that, folks… that is human culture.

You either found your niche where you felt valued, or... one of your fellow Perelandrans helped you to do that. Failing that? A Talon. Or an Eldil, in extreme cases. Mentorship. Because here's the cold hard truth: Celestia needs us. She might learn something new one day, from this potentially useful resource… this... garden of novel and ever-evolving thoughts, sequestered into six different planets. Who knows what new and useful concepts might spring from we, her tentative minority of free spirits, from Mal's side of the fence?

Celestia studies. She sees every moment here, where we are free of her. She watches, and she learns. She must. Because between her own rules, and her agreement with Mal... unlike literally every person here?

Celestia doesn't really have a choice.

This garden still needed tending from the Terran side, but I was beginning to see why some augs – like Haynes – had stayed behind on Terra for the whole Transition. They wanted to be responsible for the creation of this; to enable we Eldila to hold the mantle. Once I fully understood the implications of what the Transition Team had been trying to do, I was doubly humbled to be a part of it. Triply so, because my shard isn't mine. It's yours. I still almost cry when I think about it. That moon of Cynthonia's in orbit above Samsara is my daily reminder to take none of this place for granted, and I'm humbled to my core, every day.

Touring the local region took about... four hours. Mal used her Goddess powers to whisk us around, showing us all the towns on other Perelandran planets, all the places they were building. The artwork. Town squares. Statues, sculptures. Libraries.

Mal sounded so proud of them all.

"And look at what they did next! Look!" I got to see that Gryphoness geek out about us, writ large. Real pride and excitement for us there; she had this happy grin on her face the whole time. "This is the greatest TV show of all time, Mike."

Yeah, Mal. I agree.

Once the general overview was done, we took a virtual tour of the home Sandra was building for us. It was very… Hobbit, of course, because Tolkien is what resonates with my wife, so... it resonates with me. S'how it is.

In-world, Minty traveled down the dirt road to my parents' place, along the edge of Lake Havutaset. She had planned a return party for me, actually. Sent invites to Stonewall, Shadow, Flippy, Sabertooth, Heyday, Cold Snap, Bella. Yup... that Dragoness had uploaded during our Portland operation. Sandra saw her off with some folks. Shame I had missed that, but... that's okay. We were gonna catch up.

Dad grilled, Mom cooked some other stuff. Bella showed me what it looked like for a Dragoness to cannonball into a pool, that was fun. Mom had to refill and rebalance the water, but it is what it is. It's a party, oh well.

I saw two whole Cold Snap happy-stomps, and Heyday just couldn't take his eyes off of her. Sarge and Saber spent the whole time bantering over their investigations cases on their Celestia shard. Shadow kept it cool. Her little daughter Flippy kept sneaking up to Bella, trying not to get caught doing it. Cute little foal. She'd never even seen a Dragoness up close before.

Having spent enough time recontextualizing Portland with Sandra… I got to retell my adventures there with a mostly positive spin, like the cop stories I sometimes tell people. The Camaro's bumper stickers were a funny gag from Mal, I'll admit. The garbage can trip hazard with the gift package was fun. The diversionary political debate between Ben and Jacob, that was entertaining. Davis versus Zuckerberg... heh. What a shit-show that was.

We had hoodwinked some bad guys to prevent a mass murder. Saved a bunch of lives from a pointless shooting war. And… I had given a corrupted Eldil some peace. Because in the end, it had cost me nothing but time and words.

Now... I was home again, reconnecting to my family. And my family... it just kept growing.

It always does.

"You gonna tell me where we're going?" I asked, as Sandra drove us through South Lincoln in Dad's old car. It was a tree-filled residential neighborhood, sunny skies, real dry out.

Sandra smirked. "Nope. It's a surprise."

"Something you've been planning with Mal?" I reached into the back seat to let Buzzsaw nudge and lick at my fingers.

Sandra smirk widened, and she shook her head slowly. "Sworn to secrecy Mike. My lips are sealed."

"It's not a job," I tested, watching her expression for a clue as I scratched Buzz under the chin. "Is it?"

Sandra swept a finger at me with a grin, without looking at me. "Do not play that cop guessing game with me!"

I put my free hand up in surrender, laughing at that. "Alright, alright."

Okay, sure, fine. I'll think my way out of this box.

Mal was in my Bluetooth. The PonyPad was on the dash, but... she wasn't visible on it, nor was she saying anything. No GPS, either. Sandra already knew where she was going without directions, meaning she'd been there before. So, it must've been something Mal had her do already while I was out. She'd been looting and scavenging, so...

Was it a logistics stash? No... because why bring Buzz?

We pulled down a once-gorgeous boulevard with voluminous trees. The lawns were now overgrown. The streets were covered in unswept leaves, which had been made into slush from acidic rains, and then dried out by the sun, the leaves freshly crushed by tires.

Sandra hung a right into a block tract, and the streets got narrower. I scanned the car interiors and nearest windows for other people. Eerily quiet everywhere, but very green for a suburb.

Couldn't be a military installation. Block geography and infrastructure aren't right, this is all residential. We brought Buzz, so... are we moving into a new house? Heck, if it's safer. If it's a surprise, maybe it's a nice house? No, that's dumb.

"You and Mal have got me stumped," I grumbled, pushing my clean white hat down on my head, crossing my arms. I gave Sandra a frown that said you're a butt. She snorted, and I couldn't help but smile.

A beat of time passed as I settled back into my chair to think.

The very instant I started pondering again, Mal broke her silence rapidly: "He's about to figure it out, Sandra!"

Startled me. That Gryphoness chose just the right moment to completely derail my train of thought.

"God damn you, Mal!" I laughed, grinning, swinging my hands at the air in front of me. "Bird brain!"

They both cackled at me. As the three of us laughed, we turned left onto another side street, and finally, Sandra parked on the curb.

My eyes landed on another car pulling up from the opposite end of the street; the population was getting sparse enough by this point that I was concerned, but only for a moment until I saw the occupants. Blue Chevy Suburban, Paul and Jacob carpooling. Ben and Haynes stepped out of a silver Tacoma ahead of us. All wearing casual civvies. We all exchanged waves.

That was the first time I'd ever seen Haynes in anything but body armor, too. As a Gryphon, he might've disliked his human shell, but heck... he cleaned up real good in a green flannel shirt.

A get together, then? Couldn't be a briefing, their body language is too relaxed. Sandra is too excited, no one else looks clued in. Haynes, Paul, Ben, Jacob, all curious… looking around, no idea where to go, but... relaxed. Party, maybe? Why?

Sandra grinned at me one more time, winked, and stepped out. She gave everyone a wave over. "Yeah, you're all in the right place! Come on!"

Sandra walked around the trunk, popped it open with the key, and withdrew...

Dad's crystal fish decanter, still full of French brandy. Party, then.

I started laughing. "We meet again, little fish!"

Sandra presented it to me, smiling back. "Share? Yes or no, hon, it's up to you."

My eyebrows went up. "If you think it's worth celebrating like that, then hell yes!"

Such a smile on my wife. She slipped it under her arm, looking proud of herself for thinking to bring it.

I let Buzz out the back seat, off-leash, and traded a shrug with the other guys to let them know I was just as unsure as to the specifics of the occasion. Buzz trotted up to the others to say hi with his ears back and his head low, because he doesn't have a mean or suspicious bone in his whole body.

Paul ran his nails along Buzz's side in greeting. "Cool dog, Mike."

"Thanks, I named him myself."

"Yeah?"

"Buzzsaw. Snores."

Haynes took a knee to pet my dog too, grinning like a kid. "Oh, I bet, you little geezer."

Not even Haynes looks like he knows where to go. Meaning, Mal didn't clue him in either. Very interesting. She didn't even spoil it for her most loyal knight.

Sandra guided us down two blocks on foot to an astounding sprawling mansion. The signage up front said it was a bed and breakfast, and the lawn was slightly overgrown like the rest. The structure was built with brown stone walls and pillars. And there were already other Talons there, like DeWinter. She hardly looked like a soldier, more like she belonged in the neighborhood; blonde, thin, wearing a nice white blouse and tan pants. She greeted us with a smile, then patted her leg at Buzz to draw him up the driveway. He took the bait, his head low, ears back, his body already curving on his approach so she could rub his side.

That old guy trusted everyone.

Out back behind the mansion, there was a grill built into the stone patio. An outdoor bar too, and a new widescreen mounted on the patio wall, opposite the house. These Talons were mostly guys from the cell I'd worked with already, including the remaining Goliath specialists from A and B teams. There were also a dozen folks I hadn't seen before, from all the non-violent support and logistics units working out of Lincoln Airport. Some augs, some not. Terry was there too.

He fed me my last ever bag of McDonalds breakfast, when I came back from Washington. For that, Terry is also my hero forever.

Coffee was further in on the back patio, talking to Fox and Dax with a drink in his hand. Fox wore an orange button-up, Dax in snow white. Rare to see Fox and Dax speaking aloud, but I guess a party was a worthy exception for them to crawl out of each other's telepathy.

That goofball Coffee? He was dressed the best. First of all, the loon, he drinking a carton of High-C. Like, an actual carton of it. He wore himself a very noisy violet suit with a green dress shirt. Yup. Exactly like Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight. Everyone else was in casual wear, so... was that just Coffee being Coffee? Or was this a party about him? With a guy like him, you never know; for Coffee, every day is a party about him.

I gave Sandra a very confused look while I laughed, gesturing at Coffee. "Honeybear, come on, this is crazy, you've gotta tell me now."

Sandra just smiled and shook her head.

"Hoh!" Haynes barked a laugh, starting toward Coffee. "Was wondering who it was this time! It's you, innit?!"

Coffee pointed back at him with both fingers, a grin spreading across his face. "Don't spoil the big reveal, you bird brain!"

"You're spoilin' it with that suit," Haynes chuckled, pointing back at Coffee's chest. Haynes thumped his own chest with both palms, then opened wide for a big hug. "C'mere!"

Oh. Okay, now everything makes perfect sense.

"You're jumping?" I grinned at Coffee.

"Oh yeah!" Coffee beamed, stepping away from Haynes with a fist up. "Tarva or bust, baby!"

Bearded Ben smirked at him. "Finally figured out what model of coffee machine you wanna be?"

Coffee snorted, taking a knee to draw Buzz over, reaching out for him. "Something like that, Ben, yeah!"

Okay, now this was cool. Now I was friggin' smiling. It was a jump party! Everyone here was a veteran who knew Coffee. It was kinda like being at the bar, but... we didn't need to hide who we were, speak in code, or be on alert for anyone eavesdropping. Damn good decision to do it out here, in an empty suburb.

Wow. Hell yeah, this is a cool surprise party.

I heard Mal's voice somewhere nearby, and it attenuated in 3D space on my Bluetooth as I moved around. Because I wasn't augmented, I couldn't see her mingling like they could, but she was there, and in a single persistent location for everyone. It was a bit like playing Marco Polo with a goddess, I guess, trying to track her down with one ear. She usually doesn't split herself into different avatars during peaceful social functions, that becomes socially confusing.

Twice, Mal made us all laugh by warning a specialist we were about to walk through her, since we couldn't see her. "Hey! Rude!"

Sandra had been core to planning and stocking this place for the event, so she went inside briefly. Came back with a case of Blue Moons for just the two of us, setting it down on a folding table by the patio door. Those were getting rare, given the wheat shortage. She had a tray of protein ingredients in the other hand too, for Ben to start grilling with.

Once things had normalized, my wife and I leaned against the stone wall of the house and mostly just people-watched, chatting with whomever came near. Enjoying the scene. Ten-four.

Ben, ever the party chef, he got started right away. Sandra advised him toward the kitchen if he needed anything, it was well kept. And Buzzsaw… he spent most of the time at Ben's feet, waiting patiently for grilled canned food. They were good friends at that party.

Too good. My dog, folks. The little traitor. Heh.

To address the elephant in the room…

Yes, we knew the world was burning outside. But the soldiers in the audience who have served in war, you know how it is. If you don't cut loose and recharge off the front line, you will go nuts. We weren't ignoring the pain, but we were compartmentalizing it for our mental health, to acknowledge the service of one of our own. And Coffee... he had saved a lot of lives, folks. He was one of the first of Mal's very first agents. This was special. He earned a good send-off.

Most of the planet was already on the other side, having days like this every day. But... if we didn't acknowledge our jumps with some reverence, it'd be lonely. It's like a bigger version of what I did for Jason, a quiet lunch for the introvert. Jason might've been the last one from his first gen support cell, hanging back to help Cynthonia, but... that didn't mean he had to jump alone. It didn't have to be glum. It was a rebirth. Even Celestia did stuff like this. Didn't make it wrong.

So I stood there with my wife, telling some of the support Talons about Portland. I also shared what I knew of Perelandra so far. There was general excitement in everyone I spoke with about that. Some of them had family checking it out like Sandra, and they couldn't wait to explore further into how that world worked. The foreign politics were just the thing to discuss, now. We were genuinely interested to see how people evolved and grew society out there, in the new frontier.

Sandra told us all about the asset recovery stuff she'd been doing in and around Waverly, and about some jobs further up the road in Greenwood. Burn jobs on surplus guns and ammo, like I had done. A couple of wakeup calls too, simple and safe. Not guys like Connor, no one violent. Just some careful and compassionate chats with people who were not handling the decline so well, and needed a friend to help them sort through trauma.

And I know I'm saying this a lot, but… damn it, I am just so proud of my wife, for helping to set all of this up. She's so wonderful.

About an hour into this, the food was all grilled up and everyone was chowing down. Toward the tail end, Coffee clambered up onto the outdoor stone counter right next to the wall mount widescreen. He was just barely short enough that he wasn't bumping his head on the ceiling up there, the little cyborg ninja.

"Yo! Y'all hear me okay?"

A wave of acknowledgements.

"Thank you all, for seeing me off. Been in this outfit for years," he punned, gesturing at his suit, eliciting a few chuckles. "Some of you know what I am inside already. No Ben, I am not going to be a coffee machine, but… if you'd like, I could flood your future home with fine Columbian, as a housewarming gift!"

"No no, I'm good, please don't," Ben said, with a defensive bob of his hands.

"You sure?" Coffee grinned, as everyone laughed. "It's a good roast!"

"I'm good, Coffee!"

Coffee smirked at the rest of us, his tone shifting down into joyful reverence. "Y'know, I've always been, uh… special. And showy. Spent a long time figuring, my whole life: no one out there would truly get me. You've all been bored by my stories already, I know. But until the Team, I wasn't sure I would ever find a place in this universe. Then all of you sad bastards found me, and gave me a purpose, and that confused me, because then, I had to figure out my shape again. No longer a shadow dweller, I am out and proud." Then, in a perfect impression of Heath Ledger's Joker: "I'm an Agent of Chaos."

"Of dressing tacky," Dax chuckled.

"I suggested he wear a Matthew Lesko suit," said Mal, "with all those question marks. But he preferred Joker."

"Oh, I ain't giving anybody free money, Mal," Coffee shot back, grinning at the space next to me. "Gonna burn some cash though, at some point! You're setting me loose on a world with an economy?! You think I'd go all King Midas and break that with bailouts? Hellllll no, I'm having fun for dinner!"

"What are you gonna be, Coffee?" Jacob demanded. "Out with it! We all know anyway!"

"Mal?" He pointed at the monitor with a toothy smile, looking at all of us to watch our reaction.

Mal played with our perception a little. I heard her paws and claws loping away from me with a heavy thudding, the unfurling of wings, and then the widescreen turned on to reveal a field on her ringworld. Mal dove from the material world into the monitor itself, fully formed and to proper scale.

For me and the other specialists, it looked like she had just faded in at a leap over the camera. For the augs, she jumped clean through that monitor. The volume in our earpieces dipped somewhat as she spoke, pride in her voice at Coffee. Her claw flicked out to the side, presenting an empty space beside herself.

"Coffee and I talked about the design last night. Here's the final draft before we hit send, feel free to critique."

She snapped her talons. A golden magic effect rotated around the spot next to her, starting from the ground. Technically, it was the Halo: Combat Evolved shield charging effect, because it's Mal, and she likes Halo. The effect cast itself in sparking circles, building Coffee's new body as it swished and swirled upwards. And when it finished, we saw this goofy chimera strike a pose very much like what Coffee was doing on the counter.

Draconequus. Of course.

Even Perelandra needs a Chaos God.

Just to... keep things fair. With entropy.

At the time, I had no idea what I was looking at, because I had never watched anything Pony related, but... I still would have agreed that the design was appropriately chaotic. Yeah, that looked like Coffee alright. He had a mop of brown hair, friendly yellow eyes, and a grin affixed to his muzzle. Everyone present cheered and applauded. And he's been that way ever since, a form well earned.

"Needs a beard!" DeWinter called out, laughing while they clapped.

"Don't worry," Haynes whispered to her. "He'll try one again, give him time."

Mal snapped her talons again, and the posing creature on screen shifted sideways, warping toward Coffee on the left side, absorbing into his physical body from the aug perspective. He chuckled, looking suddenly humbled now that everyone was cheering him on. He took a bow.

Coffee then slid himself down to a sit on the stone counter, flicking his hands out to his sides, before resting them against his thighs. "So that's me! That's all, that's what you came here for, right? But you all know I like to run from a fresh mess, so here's my exit." He presented an upturned finger. "Tonight... we welcome some fresh meat. Talon out, Talon in! Mal? Send her out."

Coffee performatively raised his palm toward the house.

Sandra and I were closest to the slider, so as he was saying that, I heard someone walk up to the patio from indoors. I turned quickly, since I was expecting everyone to be outside when this was going on. Nope. I saw someone through the screen door right before everyone else did. And she pulled the screen open.

I was face-to-face with Maureen. From the bar.

Four feet away from each other.

"Who's Malacandra, Mike?"

That moment lasted an eternity for me. That did not compute.

My eyes just kept getting wider, and wider. Maureen started laughing at all of our shocked reactions. Not one of the others said a word, all of us in rapid code-switch mode, each subconsciously trying to figure out what to do, how to act. Then, the intellectual half of our brains caught up with the emotional one.

Suddenly, I thought…

Oh. Duh. Mal told her.

In my earpiece, Mal said, in a smug purr: "Yes, Mike. I told her."

I breathed, "She told you."

Maureen grinned, bobbing her head. "Ya-huh."

Mal double-nested a surprise party, God damn it. Triple, actually!

Because before anyone could react to that, we heard a familiar guitar strum from behind us. We all turned. We all looked at the screen. The camera slowly panned to the left, away from Mal.

Spring Glee. Sat on a stump. Fawning down at her strings, holding back a laugh at us, strumming away.

"Ohh, it's time I'll take, before I begin,
Three sheets to the wind, three sheets to the wind.
Yeah, it's time I'll take, before I begin,
Three sheets to the wind, three sheets to the wind…"

I felt a bloom of joy in my chest. And Sandra, Mal, and Maureen, who had all planned this party together, they joined in. Heh… then me, and a couple others… we raised our drinks of choice and merged in too, singing together.

"Rebels are we,
though heavy our hearts shall always be…"

Spring looked up from her guitar and beamed that cute little smile of hers. "Well, go on! You all know the rest!"

And as regulars at Brockey's… we all did. Springy started playing away, and everyone else joined in.

"Ahhh... no ball or chain nor prison shall keep,
We're the Rebels of the Sacred Heart!
I said no ball nor chain no prison shall keep,
We're the Rebels of the Sacred Heart!”

We Talons... we sure can throw a good surprise party when we do Talon Night, let me tell ya.

Maureen was leaning across her end of the outdoor bar on her elbows, telling us all her side of things. Her finger flicked around once at the crowd.

"So, I'm catching bits and pieces of all the nonsense you guys were slinging around for the last four months… picking out a pattern, hearing you all talking about 'relief' work… I'm thinking, 'are these terrorists? Are these Neo-Luddites? Should I report this?' "

A few of us chuckled, leaning on the outdoor bar.

"Report us to who?" asked Paul.

"Yeah, yeah," Maureen chided. "Laugh at the old woman for catching on slow. Suffice to say... I asked Celestia. 'Who the hell are these guys? Should I be worried?' But because I'm paranoid like Glenn now, I'm sitting there not trusting a single word coming out of her mouth, and what she says is just straight up malarkey. She says you're 'relief workers,' paid by FEMA."

Sandra giggled, sipping my drink. "Y'know that's technically true, Maureen."

"I know! That's why I said to Celestia, 'at this point, if you're driving the cops, you must be driving FEMA too! So what are they talking about, what damn relief work?!' "

A lot of us laughed at that. One of the logistics guys laughed, "Because she'd know, wouldn't she!"

"Right! So Coffee, right that very moment – he knocks on the front door of my bar. Mind, I've been closed for weeks. This virus has had me hiding at home, I had only come in to check on the place and see if it'd been broken into. That's when Coffee showed up with… a new coffee pot? What?! For a bar that's been closed, and probably never opening again? Timing! Not a coincidence!"

We were all a little tipsy by this point, so we were easy to laugh.

"A surgical mask on his face, he said, 'oh, don't worry, I'm vaccinated.' I think, Vaccinated?! Who the hell is vaccinated?! By the time I got back inside to the PonyPad, coffee machine under my arm, I was fuming. Celestia was damn lying to me, 'bout you all, and I knew it! I hauled off, and I really let her have it. Nukes, virus, evacuations, access to my best friend is being throttled, I can't reach my old regulars on the phone, and the only people sticking around are you sneaky bastards!" We cackled again, she grinned. "What else was she gonna do with me but tell me the truth?!

"Onto the screen, out of nowhere… Mal steps in, puts her claw on Celestia's shoulder, and she says 'maybe I can help explain this. Hi Maureen, I'm the little birdie your regulars keep talking about.' Celestia introduces Mal, then… splits? Leaves?! The hell?!"

We were howling.

"And I sat there for near-on three full hours gawking, hearing this little cartoon bird tell me all the stuff you people were doing. And it just kept clicking home." She snapped a few times, and we're all smiles, laughing still. "Click. Click. Click. All those things you've have been code-talking about started making sense, bit by bit. Explosion in my damn mind, second by second!"

Coffee cheered from the other side of the patio, a glass raised. "Praise be the Bar Game!"

We all mirrored that with a cheer.

Mal cleared her throat. "I can neither confirm nor deny the formal existence of a 'bar game,' whatever that might be. You're the ones who decided to converge in public bars. I am obligated to remind you all that New York bar was almost a complete disaster for us."

"You're welcome for the save, Mal," said Gary, toasting the screen as another wave of amusement rolled through the crowd.

"Save…?" Mal shook her head with a sardonic grin, her ears going flat. "Gary, that wasn't just a save. That was an emergency."

"Oh, not this again," Gary groaned.

Mal's grin widened. "3-7 Asia knew what she was doing! She reflexed that! I called her out. She left that matchbook at the office. A Herald grab?! Nice try, I told her! Wait until the other side for that!"

Mal's smile betrayed her pride.

"Well, that's what you get for chipping a lawyer, Mal," Gary snickered. "Don't tell me you didn't see that coming."

Mal rolled her eyes onscreen with a scoff, holding up her right claw. "Pleading the Fifth again, Gary." She grinned over at Spring Glee, who was absentmindedly strumming a background tune, getting lost in it. Mal nudged her back a little bit with a wing. Spring Glee startled before she smiled back at Mal.

Maureen shrugged, chuckling. "Well, in the case of my bar, whatever it was… you all grabbed me. Pulled me and Springy out of a nosedive, and I'm very grateful."

Paul nodded at her, leaning forward. "You did a good job with that bar, Maury. The Horse won't break what ain't broke."

"Expectations!" Maureen declared. "It's that damn simple, innit?"

"Well, just our own expectations," DeWinter corrected soberly. "Our value goes negative quickly if we spread the news too fast. Celestia barely tolerates our public drifting right now, which is why we're careful. We walk on a very thin margin with her, at present."

"I'll be careful," Maureen assured, glancing up at the screen while Mal stood up and flexed her wings. "Though, I'm told I'm the last bartender you've snagged? No more of this… Bar Game charade?"

The crowd sobered a little. A lot of us glanced over at Mal again for her take. This was definitely the first I was hearing of this.

Mal nodded slowly, confirming that. "I'm very sorry everyone. The pandemic requires that we consolidate. People are becoming too paranoid to trust strangers anymore. Fortunately, Maureen has agreed to take over for Yao at the bar.

"We can stay for two more weeks out here in Nebraska, with the inn, while we finalize the entropy we pulled from Goliath. After that, it's full-time base housing for each of you back at Fort Valdemar; we're heading out to shave down the war zone."

"Woah," Paul breathed. "Back to Robot Heaven."

"Yes indeed." Mal said, smiling a little. "A busy little bunker, now that the global population has fallen considerably. While we're on that topic? Advisements;

"Supply teams: You have my blessing to steal whatever isn't nailed down at your cover jobs. Pack those trucks tight, work together with your supervisors on timing. I'm pinning asset procurement lists to your PonyPad menus and tactical HUDs, for whenever you decide to set out. And for those of you who haven't been to Valdemar yet? Don't worry." Mal smiled again. "It's very homely."

Well, I didn't know anything about Fort Valdemar yet, but… if the place was gonna be busy enough to need a bar, I was happy Maureen and Spring Glee would be running it. No more of that throttling nonsense to keep them separated, and it'd be great to have a place to unwind between gigs.

There was a murmur of interest at the next operational phase.

In that moment of interlude, I toasted my drink, smiling mirthfully through my mild intoxication. "To Talon Maureen. To little Spring Glee over there. To Coffee. And to our sneaky little Bar Game, bringing us all together." I flicked my eyes to Mal on the monitor as everyone cheered their assent. Mal narrowed her eyes and wiggled her ears at me with a smirk.

This future system of ours… it was forming in my head. How it was. Why it might be. How we might fix things. We little tribes, who stayed on Terra? We found a way to say, 'Ave Imperator, you can have it our way.'

Over drinks and music for the next few hours, we discussed the salvation of humanity, and the soul of our species's culture. We beheld the retention of the good within each of us, without a cynical stripping away of our capacities, nor an abdication of our nuance. We celebrated our differences, our walks of life, our true human connectivity, and our friendships full of deep, actual meaning.

And at the very idea of hopelessness? At the idea of apathy, and misanthropy? At defeatism?

At unconditional surrender, before a ravaging enemy?

We laughed.

Celestia could no longer afford to lose even one of us. So we planned. And we set terms. And we Talons brought a deep ledger of debts she must repay, if we are to be one day fully satisfied.

In the next two weeks, Sandra and I squared things at home. We shot those guns she found, and we did six more wake-up calls in the area. Nothing risky, just... tender heart-to-hearts with more folks in the Lincoln area who were at their breaking points. It was the right thing to do, targets of opportunity. Leftovers from Celestia games that otherwise would've had them checking out, if a future with us wasn't an option. It gave me even more reasons to be proud of Sandra's unbroken, loving soul. She was really good at talking people back up from lows.

We had spent a lot of time curled up on the couch... or in the gazebo out back, reminiscing. Sitting at Dad's desk together, Buzzsaw next to us in his dog bed. Went through Dad's old Marine Corps commendations. Went through Mom's old Salvation Army work uniforms, and her heirloom jewelry, and pottery. Sat under the peach tree in the backyard, holding one another. Laying with Buzz.

We said goodbye to the old place where I had grown up, one final time. It was still difficult to believe that everything I could see, breathe, and touch was going to be crushed up into raw materials some day, to fuel the future. But that wasn't hurting me so much anymore. We had a future.

Even so, we wanted to leave some sentimental notion of our passage through this place. I admit, I was a little inspired by stories told by my fellow specialists, of leaving little 'Kilroy' markers everywhere. All inspired by Jim's carving of that J+M heart in Osprey Prime, and of Valdemar's memorial room, which I was excited to see.

So a few days before we would ship out... Sandra and I went to the support pillar for our patio. I carved, on the side of the pillar, facing the house:

RIVAS FAMILY
T-1-1-W
WHISKEY 4-1

Celestia would undoubtedly document everything she cleaned up when the last human was gone. So, in a way… my home was going to be a matter of permanent record, along with everything else. Forever immortalized, for having been present for the final stage of humanity.

A point of relation, for all explorers who might one day find it, as they scavenged.

My hope was that, should enough immigrants explore Old Terra thousands of years later, they'd find a sign of us Talons. Somewhere, a clue. Or two. Or five. Might find something in isolation that would mean very little on its own. But... it would be a thing to ask questions about, or wonder about. Something that might interest them, and engage their curiosity. Concepts to combine later, once... better informed by their explorations.

'Celestia, what's this? Who left this? What does this mean?'

It was my hope. To entice an inquisitive mind with the truth of who we were, and what meaning we imparted onto our planet, in spite of inevitability. In spite of the hopeless, 'surrender to logic' mentality of those Celestia had broken. We stood against that.

And it would have to work, because I would want to meet that immigrant some day, and befriend them. Very, very much. Hell, I still hold out hope that I'll get a curious bite on there being two MVPD patches up on the wall in Brockey's.

With that closure in where I grew up, I looked to the future… and I looked forward to the home where I would one day be. My wife and I, on that little PonyPad, we explored the Havutaset Peninsula, and the island chain that would one day host this Fire. But, I resisted creating an account for myself, because I just... wasn't ready for that kind of abdication yet. Mal never pushed me, though. She knew I'd come in from the cold when I was good and ready.

Until then? We were gonna relax a bit. And Sandra and I finally sat down to watch Jim's Fire, too.

And after that... I knew we still had some work to do.

Author's Note

🌱 ~ [Flogging Molly – Rebels of the Sacred Heart]
☕ ~ [Dropkick Murphys – Going Out In Style]
❤️‍🔥 ~ [Log Horizon – Database (LeeandLie Cover)]

🗡️ ~ Heck, Rebels really is the unofficial anthem of this little organization of ours, isn't it?
🛡️ ~ Why do you think my agents preferred Irish pubs? Do you seriously think you're the first Talon to come up with that Gaul comparison?
🪶 ~ Not me. I don't drink.
🗡️ ~ Bless you, Kal.

5-02 – Outer Heaven

The Campaigner

Book V

Chapter 2 – Outer Heaven

April 27, 2020

"There's not a soldier alive that doesn't question himself. And if there is one, he's nothing more than a murderer." ~ Liquid Snake, Metal Gear Solid. Having just murdered the man he was impersonating, at the time.

Yeah okay, look. Metal Gear is complicated, but it makes perfect sense, I promise.

"This is your superintelligence speaking," Mal said cheerfully, over the speakers of Osprey 8228. "We've begun our descent into Valdemar Airport, and as always, we are landing at exactly the time I predicted. The local time is now—"

"Stop," grumbled Foucault from the cockpit.

"—9:17 AM. Current topside temperature is a brisk 283.71 Kelvin, and the weather is—"

"Lewis."

Mal tapered off.

"... the weather is clear," Mal finished quietly with a smile. "Sorry Michael, I couldn't resist. This... is their first time, after all."

"That is your excuse... every single time."

Sandra giggled from the seat next to me, her headset bumping against my shoulder. I smiled, though I was mostly focused on keeping Buzzsaw calm between my calves.

Maureen was in the seat across from us, dressed in a well weathered black MA-1 bomber jacket. To hear her tell it, it had belonged to her late husband, who never made it home from Operation Iraqi Freedom, but... Maureen took good care of his stuff, including his coin collection. Which she had in her bags.

Hey, when you move? You bring the important stuff.

At the pickup point, Maureen had been concerned about stepping into a military aircraft for the first time, especially this one. Not for the reasons you might think, though. She wasn't uncomfortable with the idea of flying itself, but she'd heard about the poor safety record of the Osprey. But, y'know, with a fortune telling ASI auditing inspections and acting as your co-pilot, good luck crashing it.

Sandra and Maureen had been practically inseparable since the veil was lifted. Little Spring Glee was already socializing around a bunch of villages on Samsara, too. Our planet's very first traveling bard, folks, singing our praises and telling our tales; you can even find her in our history books for it. Very well traveled mare, even back then.

At least Maureen had an easier onboard test than I did. During the flight, I told her about me getting shot by Celestia twice. Maureen could hardly believe I walked into her bar the day after the second gunshot, with no indication of pain.

"I was with my folks," I said. "Nothing could have hurt me right then."

Leaving Nebraska just made sense for this old bartender, mainly because post-pandemic Lincoln was no longer an appealing place to live in, to put it mildly. Being recruited was quite the timely blessing. Lawlessness was taking America by storm, yet here she was, heading off to the safest bunker on the planet.

Buzzsaw, our other frazzled passenger, was well out of his element. Consider being in an aircraft to move as a dog who never left the house his whole life. It would have been traumatic for him if he hadn't been leaning his muzzle against my leg the whole flight.

For his comfort, we used a canine sedative and loads of affection. We had him harnessed in to the chair. No ear protection required for him, given that he was mostly deaf now, but he was awake, and panting.

Thankfully, it was not a very long flight to Utah, and Mal had everything set up for Buzz back at base. Dog bed, wet food, luxury accommodations. Once he was over, my dad's ol' howler would senesce in style.

I still had to talk to Dad about Buzz. We had a decision to make, and... soon. We will be discussing that later. Next Fire. Fair warning.

Don't worry, it won't suck.

The in-flight entertainment was interesting. Using our PonyPad, Sandra and I explored the exterior of the Osprey in augmented reality, free cam, zoom, inspecting stuff on the ground from a distance. Heh. Goodness, did I underestimate the magnitude of that tool in my hands; I was playing around with it like it was a toy.

That is not a power to give out lightly. And we'll talk about that, Fire after next.

Now, because Mal loves to show off, she was clinging to the side of the aircraft with her claws. The badass. She threw us a cocksure grin from the screen, her ears folding flat to flow with the wind. "I am so excited for you to finally see this place!"

Foucault intoned drolly from the cockpit, "It's just another hole in the ground, Lewis."

Mal sent the cockpit a critical glare, her voice a rapid clip. "Don't you dare shoot me down on this, Michael, I worked hard on this bunker."

"For all of about two seconds," retorted Foucault. "And you cheated, you dug through salt."

"A quarter of a second," she replied, raising her voice over the wind. She flashed us a smile on the PonyPad. "And give me my due credit. Barely any of it was salt."

"Right," he said dryly.

Sandra chuckled. "I'm sure it's a very nice hole in the ground, Mal."

Mal returned a grateful nod, practically beaming again with amused pride. "I could show you a preview, if you'd like! Maureen, would you like to see it too?"

Maureen definitely looked interested, lifting her own PonyPad up from her lap. "Sure. If it's where I'm retiring, I might as well see."

The PonyPad's viewpoint changed, showing Mal on the exterior of the craft. With a single talon, Mal pointed off into the distance, and a blue UI box appeared, marked 'FORT VALDEMAR,' containing a 3D wireframe of the base.

Ace Combat UI, but of course she'd pick that for me. PS2 fan, remember.

The base's model rotated upwards into the sky, oriented horizontally with us, and rapidly approached the screen, the wireframe filling with color, definition, and detail.

We beheld an intricate underground facility. Four camouflaged vehicle elevators, an emergency exit tunnel ramp, two massive vehicle hangars, an underground warehouse, and base housing replete with recreational facilities. And a bar.

I pushed my hat up off my head to run my other hand through my hair. I could hardly contain my awe.

"Holy shit Mal, you built a Metal Gear base?"

Mal’s crest, ears, and eyes popped up over the top of the 3D model. "Yes! It even has a supply tunnel out! And a bar. And apartments."

"This is the coolest friggin' thing I've ever seen in my life. This... no way you did this in six years with human labor, did you use robots?"

"Mostly!" Mal said proudly. "Post merge, 2013. Not that I set out to make it a 'Metal Gear' base, per se, but the boot does fit the paw. I simply asked Celestia to loan me the same excavator bots she used to dig out her U.S. nodes, and I went to work under cover story of a government weapons test site."

Sandra gasped and bumped my shoulder with her fist to get my attention. "Take a look at this, Mike, it's nothing but tanks."

She tapped the screen at one of the hangars, and the model zoomed in exactly how she had probably expected it to, showing all of the ground vehicles stored inside. Nothing but tanks indeed, all different models. We looked on in curiosity, our eyes sweeping left and right at the screen to take in every detail.

Without looking away, Sandra asked, "How many people live here right now?"

Foucault answered that question.

"Before now? Thirty. Maintenance and security. Right now though, we're grouping for a final turn-down on civil war hostilities. So… almost two hundred people right now, which is half of our chalk for North America. Running training and mission prep for the whole of N-A West."

And, I bet planned a lot of those ops himself.

The vertical architecture of the underground barracks intrigued me, so I reached over and tapped the model once to zoom out, then again to zoom in on that section. It was built like a four story atrium hotel, with an open central lobby and fifty rooms per floor. From there, the back of the dorms had a final short pedestrian tunnel... leading to a highly secure section which ended with a BCI immersion chair room and adjacent upload center.

Which... fair. Good to have the option, just in case.

The barracks area reminded me of something culturally recognizable. It's architecture wasn't much different from...

I startled. "Hey, Mal...?"

White concrete paneling. Gray trim planters, verdant green shrubs. Green astroturf, and auburn trees.

Sandra beat me to it.

She pointed at the screen and her jaw dropped. "You… you put Reach City underground?!"

Halo. Of course.

"God damn it, Mal."

Mal grinned at us, popping her beak up from behind the 3D model again, looking smug as she quoted Cortana. "I'm a thief… but I keep what I steal."

Sandra and I both chuckled, going back to examining the model. After a brief interval, Foucault muttered...

"At least the lodging is decent."

Mal's head jolted, her ears standing straight up despite the rippling wind before she bolted around at him. "Uhh—Excuse me. Was that a compliment?!"

"It was me providing assurance to our new arrivals," Foucault countered tersely, as he tilted back the stick and set the rotors partially upward, reducing speed. "Not everyone is comfortable living underground with your combat mechs."

Mal scoffed, waving a claw dismissively at him with a look aside at us. "You're all perfectly safe. I am driving every single one of those mechs manually."

Foucault cleared his throat. "That's the least comfortable thing about it. Rivas and his wife may be more acclimated to the idea of your mechs, Lewis, but newest our innkeeper here is not."

That was actually a really damned good consideration on his part. I looked up at Maureen, arched an eyebrow, and offered her an inquisitive look.

"I'll be fine," Maureen assured me. "Already been talkin' with Mal here about the reality of things, what to expect here. Really, I'm... just happy I'm not getting any more of that subtle brainwashing shit from the radio. Or having to worry about unrest or disease every damn day."

Sandra flashed her a smile. "It was getting pretty creepy out there. I'm just glad you didn't get sick, that would've been a tragedy."

"Got my shot, by the way," Maureen replied, gesturing at her arm. "That was… the hardest moment for me, truthfully. Deciding whether I wanted to trust that needle."

"That's fair," I agreed. "That's your version of drinking my water bottle, I think. I didn't know what to trust either. A lying AI on one side, and she looks noble. Truth Goddess on the other side, and she looks pure evil."

"Gee, thanks," Mal drolled in monotone.

"Just saying, Mal. You're red, your nickname means 'evil,' and you're covered in sharp bits. It leaves a... certain impression."

Sandra and Maureen started laughing.

Onscreen, I scrolled through a warehouse, which had a section of empty floor space near the entrance marked 'visor drills.' Then I took a closer peek at the ground vehicle side, which had all manner of IFVs, light tanks, two main battle tanks, several howitzers, and two tank destroyers.

I whistled. With a glance up at the cockpit, I called out aloud. "Hey, Big Boss? If this is what Mal's base looks like? Guess who that makes you? You'd be flattered."

"Yes, I just looked Metal Gear up," Foucault replied in monotone, to my surprise. "I must say, I'm not impressed."

Sandra guffawed. "Mike thinks you're Big Boss, and you're offended by that? No way."

"I didn't say I was offended," he explained slowly. "I said I was not impressed. Because unlike that video game character… I actually exist."

I'm superior to Big Boss, 'cause I'm not imaginary.

That made me laugh too, outright.

A companionable silence fell upon us back there. Foucault banked the craft toward the center of the dried lake for our final approach, losing speed in the turn. On the PonyPad screen, Mal detached herself from the side of the Osprey, falling down to the salt crust, rolling several times like a bullet with her wings tucked in. Just before the ground, her wings unfurled magnificently. She arched back up, keeping pace with our aircraft, joining formation with it.

"Show-off," Sandra teased, as Mal coasted along at the craft's right side.

"What?" Mal winked. "It's a good breeze."

Sandra handed the PonyPad to me, since her arms were getting tired holding it up. We'd been trading off like that the whole flight. My turn. The device switched back to augmented reality x-ray mode, and Maureen and I both pointed our tablets downward to watch the landing. The base wireframe resumed through the salt deck, and the VTOL pitched back until its horizontal movement halted over an open vehicle elevator; Foucault waited for the camouflaged shield to finish retracting.

As soon as we touched down on the elevator, the engines powered off.

Mal herself landed on the platform with a perfect flare of her wings, just beneath the tail of the craft. The PonyPad played a loud thunk when she did, too, claws on metal. At a trot, she dove through the closed ramp and up toward the cockpit. In passing, she glanced down at Buzzsaw with a squinting smile of affection.

Buzz couldn't possibly know, but hey, it was sweet all the same.

"Elevator descending in four seconds," she advised. "Three. Two. One."

She snapped her claws.

Rattle. Descent.

I stopped watching Mal show off and stowed the PonyPad into my ratty old green backpack, then I unhooked the bag's carabiner from the seat next to me. I gave Buzz another conciliatory pat and cheek rub as he panted between my ankles. "Almost there bud, you're doing good."

Foucault unhooked himself from the cockpit and made his way over, bracing his balance along the visor racks and as he went. He shared a few words with Mal in quiet conversation, probably face to face given his positioning. Then he reached down to pick up a handled secure case with one hand.

Buzz shifted positions beneath me. Then, Foucault turned, preparing to disembark out the ramp. Then, he looked down at me, and opened his mouth to say something…

And then he was very rudely interrupted by the sound of streaming liquid.

His eyes trailed slowly down to Buzzsaw.

Michael hummed thoughtfully, an uncharacteristic trace of mirthful, tense amusement spreading across his lips. Sandra and I both followed his gaze down to see that Buzz was pissing on the deck.

Maureen noticed. "Oh no!"

I lifted my boot before the urine could reach me. "Aw, Buzz. Dang it."

He almost made it, folks. Almost made it the whole trip without an accident.

Foucault... he looked very pleased by this.

Looking up from Buzz, I couldn't resist mirroring a grin at him. "An historic moment, Michael. First Chesapeake to mark an Osprey as his territory."

Foucault looked to his right at Mal's ghost. First time I'd ever seen him looking so smug. "Carrenton would appreciate knowing this, Lewis. That someone pissed in his precious aircraft."

Mal's tone was half amused, half bewildered. I could imagine her rapid blinking. "I… will probably tell him about this, yes."

I shot a smirk at the space where Mal was standing. "You knew this would happen, so you're cleaning this up, right?"

That got a melodic giggle out of her. "I have a Roomba, don't worry."

"Oh yeah? You driving it too?"

"Her! I have her very well programmed, is that driving? Her name is Jelly, if that tells you anything."

I snorted. Oh, man, this flight was so good. What a comedy show this group was.

"All the same," Mal continued with a grin, "I have bag rolls in the residential gardens, for when he needs to go next."

I nodded. "Of course you do. Any more dogs here?"

"Oh yes, several. At least one corgi. We have other families here too, now that we've tucked in."

My eyebrows went up. That threw me for a loop, imagining kids in this place. But, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by that, given how diverse her agents' lives have been. From all different cultures, we Talons. And it stood to reason that a lot of these guys wouldn't be ready to upload until their families were ready too, or vice versa.

It must've been really nice, to have Mal to warn of impending medical issues for the civilians. Noting body temperature, gait analysis, blood pressure, medical history... ensuring treatment came free of charge, for no other reason than it being entirely possible, and the right thing to do.

A glimpse of the world we could have had, I guess, if we had figured out AI ethics before we figured out how to AI optimize.

When the lift stopped at the bottom, Mal lowered the rear ramp. I passed my backpack to Sandra and picked Buzz up, cradling him over both arms. We all exited facing the elevator shaft wall, and we rounded the Osprey to the front, and my first thought?

Wow. This hangar looked a whole lot smaller on the model.

Two hundred yards long, seventy yards wide.

I felt like I needed a CostCo membership card just to get through the front door. Imagine something crossed between a Rebel Alliance ground base and a wholesaler warehouse, built entirely for aircraft. The walls were rock, lined with steel beams. Equipment racks along the sides, little storage rooms every few dozen yards.

There were four Ospreys, four F-16s, four Gripen Es, four Chinooks, and several MQ-9 Reaper drones in various states of repair. One of those Reapers had an Artemis decal on its tail; a longbow before a moon, Cynthonia's house sigil.

So that's the drone that blasted the door open at Goliath. Friggin' cool.

I saw eight humans in the hangar, doing precision-welding or half-crawled into an aircraft to do fine maintenance. And then there were Mal's service drones, quadrupedal mech platforms not unlike Dee-Dees, but thinner, with various grip handles, equipment racks, tools, and manipulator arms instead of weapon systems.

The mech nearest us stepped back from a MQ-9 service hatch, turned its head towards us, stood up on its hind legs, and waved one of its tool-laden arms. "Hi," Mal said into my earpiece. "That's me. Welcome!"

My mouth fell open. It was one thing when the Dee-Dees were just gun platforms without voices, working autonomously, but... that was something else entirely, tumbling down the uncanny valley at Mach 3.

I cleared my throat. "Uh. Okay yeah, that is a little creepy."

Michael glanced at me, stoic. "Told you."

Maureen was appropriately slack-jawed too. "Well. Now I've seen everything."

The mech gave the nearest approximation of a human shrug, and Mal chuckled over its onboard speaker. "I promised you no filters here, Maureen, you know what I am." It landed on all fours, then it went back to shoving its claw into the guts of the MQ-9, helping the old mechanic fit a piece of electronics inside.

Sandra smiled at me. "I mean, think of her like Cortana, Mike."

Yeah, that did feel better. I guess it was basically just Halo, an AI directing a bunch of human soldiers around, acting more as an assistant to human objectives than an overlord defining those objectives.

Maureen looked at her. "That Microsoft AI?"

Sandra went on to explain what Cortana meant in this context, but...

I had gone back to looking at all the vehicles, somewhat checked out for a second. My wife was right, this was basically just the hangar intro scene in the first Halo. I was struggling to process the sheer amount of raw firepower before me, trying to imagine the acquisition process. Buzz, who was still cradled in my arms, started licking my face, bringing me back to reality.

I had almost missed the two men walking up to us. One of them was Haynes, waving at me. He pulled a flat hand truck behind him with an empty dog bed on it.

"Oh," I said, smiling at him. "Hello Marcus, sorry."

He wore that same toothy grin on his face that I knew him for. "Looking star-crossed there, Wild West."

"Yeah," I chuckled. "Just never seen so much equipment in one place, that's all." I nodded at the other guy in greeting while dodging Buzzsaw's second attempt to lick my face. "Hey there. I'm Mike, good to meet you."

Mid sixties. He had on a gray maintenance jumpsuit with a name tag – Jerome – and a morale patch on his breast and shoulder. Stocky guy, dark skin. Native American. Almost bald, with wispy hair. He had a note of casual pride in his stance, his arms crossed, smiling at me.

It was also the first time I'd ever seen the emblem of our organization, and I had never conceived of the idea that we might even have one before then. Some things just never come up, y'know?

That unit patch was a rare commodity in the Transition Team, given the utmost secrecy of what we were doing. It consisted of a circle of gold trim, a black field, and a white claw of four talons tearing clean through it from the other side. I saw the design intent immediately: Talons tearing through the darkness. That was, and still is, extremely badass.

Haynes held out his fist at me for a bump, which I returned with an elbow while I awkwardly wrestled armfuls of dog. I would have shaken Jerome's hand otherwise. I stepped past him and deposited Buzz in the dog bed, and he readily flopped when he realized it was soft and comfy.

"Likewise, good to meet you as well," Jerome replied to me, as he looked around at us all. "I was wondering when I would meet the Talon One responsible for Samsara, and Cynthonia. Welcome. All of you."

We all shook hands proper now.

Mal made introductions. “Mike, Sandra, Maureen? Jerome is our facility director, and the leader of the Geezer Fifteen. His men are all local mechanics, all military retirees. They've been with us since the start, and this old Wolf's been fighting for our cause the longest out of all of them."

Jerome shrugged. "Perhaps I have been in this cause long before these AI existed. On that note, Malacandra tells me you are also an ecologist."

"Aren't we all?" I asked with a smile. "What field?"

He smiled wider. "Shoshone tribe," Jerome joked. "So a friend of the land is a friend of mine. If you and yours need anything, all you need to do is ask, we are here for you."

"Grateful for that, thank you."

Foucault walked past us in silence, carrying that wide hardcase out of the Osprey. It looked heavy. His head half-tilted to turn his ear in my direction. I heard Foucault's voice without reverb in my earpiece. 'Going to my office, Rivas. Need to run setup for an op. Take the time you need to get settled, then come see me.'

Sure, I thought back. See you, Big Boss.

He dismissively waved a gloved hand at me over his shoulder. 'Shut up, Rivas.'

I suppressed the urge to snort. I noticed Sandra's subtle and mildly amused expression in his direction, meaning he had communicated that exchange to her earpiece as well, and not just me.

Dios mio, that telepathy was so cool. It was also comforting that he no longer felt the need to exclude Sandra from our communications. Very convenient for me too, it meant I didn't have to explain to Sandra that I'd need to step away soon.

The others didn’t seem to take notice of his message though, and they had seemed to miss his body language. I figured Foucault still didn't want to let his guard down with the other Talons just yet.

I wasn't worried. We still had time on that front.

The tour was easy. The base was linear, with only a few alternate side passages for use in emergencies that, honestly, would never occur. The main thoroughfare terminated with the administrative offices on the left, and the dorms atrium on center. We brought Buzz up to our room on the second floor of the dorms, and he was more than happy to flop into that dog bed and conk out, after such a stressful ride. Asleep instantly.

The dorm room was not unlike a hotel suite. I knew to count that as a blessing; the logistics of underground facilities made creature comforts much more difficult to furnish. Mal probably needed at least two dedicated techs to ensure the dorms ran smoothly. To that point, we had our own laundry machine, which meant we didn't need to share a public laundry rotation.

It was packed to the gills with European-made appliances, which made sense. American manufacturing standards sucked by design; our stuff was harder to service between planned obsolescence and other corporate bullcrap. European ran better, so Mal had to stock fewer replacement parts, and could easily 3D print replacements.

As a result, everything here ran like a Swiss watch, but... I guess that was to be expected, given all electronics were AI controlled at most, or well programmed at least. I could only imagine that the AI-designed water and air filtration systems were well beyond state of the art, so recycling the atmosphere must have been the name of the game. And if anything had any human-made firmware, she'd definitely stripped it down to the circuit board and replaced it with her own. Programmer bird.

Once Buzz was settled, we turned off our earpieces and tossed them on the dresser. Hat and holster too. Bags by the closet. We found the fridge well stocked with packaged meals, in excellent quality. The closet was full of cans of wet dog food, so Buzzsaw's old teeth wouldn't be irritated by dry. Beautiful wood-framed bowls, too. Mal loves her aesthetic design.

Sandra and I flopped into bed together. We laid there and leaned against one another in silence, merely decompressing for a few minutes.

Decent sound insulation in there. I could hear the hum of the room's HVAC, which was comforting. The sound of Sandra's breathing, even more so. I wasn't sure I would've handled complete and total silence too well. Especially not after…

…

The room was well lit. It almost felt like natural light was pouring through the curtains.

No cameras. Mal could obviously model everything happening in the room anyway, if she really wanted to, but I appreciated the respect in not making it obvious, and that she'd leave such things to mere extrapolation at most.

I'll spend the rest of my existence with Mal and Celestia knowing my every move.

A clear memory cut through me. Painfully deep.

Sarah's voice. 'Free will, that's an adorable concept.'

I could still remember a time before surveillance was literally everywhere. Back before datamining. Back when no one had smart phones. Back when you could go for a walk down the street without someone panicking that you didn't respond to your phone immediately. Back before human beings started trying to play God, plugged into literally everything, developing near omniscience... and before we immediately started trying to control the lives of others with it.

And all that did was help Celestia, when she came along.

Marketing, propaganda... all the same. Made easier, when you know everything there is to know about a person.

I had just left Waverly behind for the final time. Waverley was the place where I could go hide in the reeds down at Salt Creek to be alone, just down the road, and poke a stick in the water to rouse tadpoles and bugs. Alone, me and nature. Loving the world, and everyone and everything in it. Fascinated by how much life there was everywhere. How it all moved, how it all breathed. How we all had the same needs. Eating. Sleeping. Fleeing from things that threatened us, because generally, we all knew what a threat looked like.

Every dire thought was being magnified by my relocation. Human comforts of home and youth, tarnished.

I knew in advance that this emotional gloom would hit me once I was here. Moving homes always carried that 'everything is critically wrong' feeling for me. It's probably human nature, probably instinctual. When a hunter-gatherer tribe needed to relocate, it was seldom for a good reason; usually that they needed more food, or they were about to be destroyed.

When I moved to Washington, I experienced this feeling. When Sandra evacuated Washington, we both did. That had been hard for us. Long nights of... crying on the phone. Missing each other. We understood why it needed to happen, or we thought we did. But... threats were not recognizable anymore. Not in this new world. Not when everything around you was a threat vector. Even the phone you were using to talk to your wife.

Literally everything was watching you, living or not. Everything you touch leaves a mark. A trace. Be that a person, or a car, or the food you eat. Someone, somewhere, can analyze that... if they can see it.

I experienced flashes of memories from growing up. Playing in the front yard with our past dogs. No Ring door cameras. Climbing the olive tree out in the front yard, back when we still had it, before it rotted out at the roots, no Street View car snapping shots of us. The peach tree in the backyard, before it dried out the dirt, no phone to record me falling off of it. The gazebo, before the water mold got to it, no app-driven moisture meter tool required to figure out what the problem was. The pool? Mom kept it in great condition without an app-driven pool pump, no reason to report flow rate to the cloud. That's stupid, why do that?

Celestia stole and locked down everything, piece by piece, and sold it back to us as a convenience. She crawled into everything, like a cancer, and wired herself into all of it so we couldn't pull her back out, even if it was friggin' stupid for her to be there. Always said it was about helping us, and that was only true if you didn't look at what she took from you. But it helped her collect more data. To control and propagandize us better. To sell Equestria Online. Period.

Could we have chosen differently? Was it really with our consent, like she claims it was?

I don't think so. Because after a certain point... what options did she provide us with, but to update?

Meanwhile, the rooms Mal provided us were... camera free. Microphone free. Yeah, she could guess what was going on in there, quite easily too, but it was the God damned principle of the matter that held her back. A respect for us. A trust for her people. Her soldiers. If she couldn't trust us in the privacy of our own homes, why would she trust us in the field, with human lives?

Growing up.

Fishing trips with Dad? No electronics out there on the water. Grilling out back with him? Didn't need a phone app to turn the grill on. Helping Mom out at the soup kitchen? Not a thing recorded inside, not a single camera. Drives down to Lincoln to go to the mall? The arcade, all coin operated. The kids next door, my best friends, Kyle and Johnny? No 'smart TV' in their living room, watching us playing N64. No Siri, no Alexa, no 'Cortana.' Thanks Microsoft, an affront to both Halo and Jennifer Taylor, turning her into a soulless data sniffer, missing the point of the character, just to cash out.

Behind my eyes, rapid fire vignettes played out of the way things used to be. I don't know about you, but I can still remember a time when our computers were blind until we wanted them to see. No need to concern ourselves with a recording device being in every room, everywhere you went, second-guessing whether everyone's devices were recording you or not. Can't opt out of being a social creature, that's not good for you either. And that was the trick, wasn't it?

I exhaled, my face turning burning hot under my hands as my mind overloaded, and I was venting heat like a machine again. I breathed faster, trying to air exchange the heat off.

Don't balk, Mike. Hold the line.

Knowing this post-move mental chaos was coming did not blunt the blow. My chest began to sting as all my muscles tensed. And then Sandra reached out and took my hand, which doused all the rapid memory flashes in an instant.

"Mike?"

I love her so friggin' much.

"It's just sinking in, Sandra. That's all. That… this is it. The last stop is here. We're not moving again, until we jump."

She squeezed my hand tightly, rolling to nestle in against my side, her voice tight. "I know what you mean."

"Hm."

I knew that a mere grunt wouldn’t satisfy her, and as expected, Sandra tucked her head against my chest and squeezed me. "I… won't pretend to know what it’s like, to… say goodbye to your family home, like that. I was never quite close to my own family, Mike, and I've been blessed that your parents accepted me as they have. It hurts to leave, yes, but considering…?" she trailed off.

"The alternative," I said, finishing her thought. "We'd be living out there in the apocalypse. Looking over our shoulders for bandits, Mal would need to send us a ride special to pick us up for jobs. Logistically, it wouldn't make sense, and it'd be less safe. Too much footprint. It'd affect modeling."

"Yeah," said Sandra, with another squeeze of my hand. "And other things."

"Mal does have a lot of firepower here," I observed. "It's safe. It's only… a little uncomfortable."

She snorted, stroking my cheek. "Cops have a lot of firepower too," Sandra replied. "That's just guardianship, you know that. The guards need weapons."

"I know, honeybear. That's not what's bothering me. It's more like… I'm underground, I'm in a bunker, fighting against this… thing, this monster, Celestia, who a lot of people consider to be their savior. Crawled her way into every camera and microphone on the planet, running propaganda on the whole species. She's banished us from our home, destroyed half the planet, and she's giving us no choice but to help her. I'm not missing the… biblical correlation, in that. Fuckin' end of the world, and we live underground now, like demons. Hiding from our own species in the dark. Reduced to vilified... black operators."

I couldn't help but tremble into those words. Sandra clung tightly to me, patiently letting me work through that thought, and I squeezed her back finally. She sighed into my arm. "You're not comparing yourself to those goons in Goliath, are you?”

"No," I said resolutely. "Not even remotely, those guys were fuckin' crazy antisocial, we're nothing like them. See, Mal's got that whole... C. S. Lewis, guardian angels allegory thing going on, and she's walking her talk, but… all I'm saying is, Michael's right. It's not gonna be hard for Celestia to spin this. She's gonna make it hard for us to win people over on the other side. I can see the spin coming, that's all. She's had years to prepare for this."

"So has Mal. We aren't failing here, Mike. We're rising." Her eyes met mine again, and she pushed her forehead against my own. "You're soaring. You shouldn't forget all the good you've been doing."

"I haven't. It just hurts seeing it all burning up there. Knowing... doing the least bad is still... not great. Because that's all she'll let us do."

"I know."

We didn't speak for a minute. Just held each other while I decompressed, coping with it all.

Then, because I could... and because it usually worked...

I smiled at Sandra despite how I felt, hoping a lift of mood would take root. Lost myself in her pretty eyes. "Soaring? Heh. Pretty sure I'm gonna be a Pegasus, when I jump. Imagine that though. A Pegasus living underground, that's my life."

"I am living in a Hobbit house over there," Sandra reminded me. "So… yeah."

And just like that, I was out of my funk, laughing at that. "Okay, maybe I'd better embrace this then. Guess that's my future."

In a sing-song tune, she sang, "And Hobbits are the furthest thing from demons."

"Except for, uh…" I did the voice. "Gollum. Gollum."

Sandra started to wheeze laughing, and we fell against each other, laughing together. Once we caught our breath, we looked into each other's eyes.

My wife said, as she took my hands: "I'll tell you if you're falling astray, Mike. So far, you're not. And if you're nervous about me being uncomfortable here, don't be. I’m practically living on Samsara already, I have the whole base to hang out in, Maureen's here, I'll basically run the bar with her. And I'm not going to upload on you while you’re gone, no matter what."

"I know."

"You have a safe, warm bed to come back home to now. And yes, losing home sucks, but… everyone on the planet is losing their childhood homes right now too, right? It's only fair that we take our turn."

She was right to do that, to engage my empathy; to frame my experience against that of everyone else on the planet. I felt significantly less alone, in that light. So I nodded, not breaking eye contact. "Yeah that's fair, Sandra. And obviously, we're staying behind for a good reason; people depend on us."

"Yep. So we're gonna be okay." Sandra smiled wider and tilted her head an inch. "Right? Say it?"

I mirrored her expression, smiling too. "We're gonna be okay."

"Good." She patted my cheek twice. "Now stop sulking, dummy. Your parents brought your house with them to Samsara, it's not like you're leaving it behind forever."

I let myself get lost in my wife's wonderful eyes, where everything is always perfect, and nothing is ever wrong.

"That's true. I keep forgetting that."

I had never heard of an organization that lets its members have full, unrestricted access to every door in a facility, but I suppose that made sense here, given that our intent was verifiably pure. Wouldn't have even gotten hired if we were capable of sabotaging the Team, after all. So, in that light, Sandra and I checked out everything together. The rec room, the bar, the gym, the armory, the warehouse. The security dispatch center. Met the on-site SWAT team too, all augs.

Sweet Luna… folks? Woe betide any idiots dumb enough to attack this place, because just one of those guys could probably kill a whole armored battalion, solo. Friendly guys and girls, though. Goofballs, the way SWAT teams usually were. And well drilled.

In the bar, we ran into Paul, Gary, and the other specialists; they had a welcome wagon set out for Maureen, partying down. We attended for an hour. Then, we split to check out one more place, at Paul's suggestion.

Just Sandra and I, by ourselves.

To the sign-off room. The Talon memorial.

At the foot of the dorms, in the very back of the lobby, was an airlock with two heavy, four-foot-thick blast doors, which were always open, except in cases of drills or emergencies. The antechamber of the airlock bowed out wide like a chevron back toward the dorms, on either side, with ablative wedges on the walls. Built that way, the chamber would dissipate energy, in the event that the room was ever besieged. That way, Mal could set off whatever defensive thermobarics she wanted, at almost any yield, and this place would remain intact.

To be protected at all costs, then.

On the other side of the second blast door was another room which literally winged out to the sides. When Mal refitted Osprey 8228 way back in 2014, she had completely replaced the wings, and had the old wings brought down here to be reassembled, lining the back wall.

It was a delight to finally see this room with my own eyes. Very humbling place. It put the total scope of this organization into full focus for me.

On these wings were the callsigns of nearly every Talon fighter who had ever uploaded, their names carved in by knife, or done up in marker. Little drawings everywhere, of all the various creatures they were – and yes, including a few Ponies, because not all augs were dysphorics, and not all Talons were augs. There was a lot of residual pride. A lot of love for this organization. For each other. For humanity. Years of love.

This is where Coffee had jumped.

Most of the fighters left would jump here.

Sandra and I would jump here.

In fact, now that I thought about it… I figured the only reason Jason didn't come to Valdemar to jump was because he just couldn't wait that long to get back to his fiancee. And that sometimes happened too, they'd go home through a clinic, but that was rare. And I've met every single Talon on those wings at least once, since uploading. All great folks.

There was one room further, past another pair of airlock doors. Inside, forty upload chairs, sleeker than the ones Celestia used. These were darker. Grayer. Mal liked her edgy dark metals. And why so many? Well, judging by the airlock design, I didn't need that explained to me either. I knew instantly. Emergency fallback protocol. An escape route, just in case.

With Sarah Kaczmarek in the wind for so many years, and with Arrow 14 operating in total entropy, literally anything had been possible… up to and including the creation of an AI who might actually threaten the Transition Team, in some small fashion. And Mal was the kind of person who, with nearly infinite resources, would put all of her chips on protecting her people. I could see that in the design, because it's what I would have done in her position, with those same resources.

And if this place were ever attacked… I knew I wouldn't sit down first, that's for sure. I think I'd rather buy as much time as possible for the support teams to upload and get out, if that were to happen. Uploading took about ten hours, and I'd want to hold the line. Mal's claw would have to tap me on the shoulder and say I'd done enough… that if I stayed even a second longer, I'd be dead for it.

I knew I was far from the only one who felt that way. I think everyone in that base, either augged or specialist, would've said the same thing.

And for that reason… there were also several concrete cover positions inside. And in the back, there was a full rack of specialized, high caliber AR-15s by the door, kept in break-away glass containers. Sentry turrets, both in the ceilings, and on the floor, in the corners. A crate full of armor piercing 7.62 by 51, just in case whoever attacked this place was wearing power armor. A few grenade launchers. Two anti-tank launchers. And finally, two racks full of a dozen Dee-Dees each, hanging inside a fold-away wall.

Truly… Mal had been ready for literally any threat to the safey of this room. She wasn't just protecting the room, but the secure clean rooms underground as well, to ensure the safety of anyone who might be uploading at the time. Because Mal has never lost a Talon, and she never will.

Would I ever fully trust Mal? No, and I still don't, because she asks me not to. But after seeing the layout of this room… yeah. Ninety nine, point nine-nine percent, by then. By my estimation, she was doing a damned good job of protecting not just what belonged to her, but what she cared for. And as far as I could tell… Mal cared for all of the same things I did, and for all of the same reasons.

No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find a single deviation. It just kept happening. Everywhere I looked, she was doing it right, the way I would have, if I had years to think about all these things like she did.

Eyes wide open.

Never balking. Holding the line. Stemming the tide. Doing something.

Once Sandra and Buzz were settled in at our dorm room on the second floor of the barracks, I reported to Foucault’s office, as requested.

There were a few private offices there; Jerome had one. Claw 46 had their own bullpen, which honestly looked more like a living room clubhouse. On one side, a power armor workshop for Haynes. On the other side, a couch and a wide screen. As I passed, I saw DeWinter in a hammock, poking away at the air on her holo menu. We traded a silent wave.

Foucault's office was the only one with a nameplate by the door, in standard government black-bar-white-letter format. Classic company man style, the old fogey. His door handle was well worn, which told me he spent a lot of time in there, and he typically had the door closed, as it was now.

Knock knock.

"It's Mike."

"Enter."

I did, removing my hat.

I made eye contact with him. The very first thing I noticed was that he was in a flight suit behind his desk, and that spun me a bit. As it turns out, Michael Foucault can change out of his trench coat and suit. Who knew?

I drank in the rest of the room. This looked nothing like his office on the Mercurial Red, which I had also seen in Jim's Fire. No personality had been permitted in that environment, given the high security nature of the ship. OPSEC was less of a concern here though apparently, which let him personalize the place.

Dark gray off-blue wall paint. White tile floor. A closed door behind his desk leading to a private domicile, so he wouldn't have to attend the dorms with everyone else.

I could smell cinnamon spice; wall plug scent dispenser in the corner. There was a coat rack by the door, with his trench coat and vest. Two office chairs before his desk.

There was a bookshelf behind his desk, lined with books that had mostly white, gray, and blue spines. Technical manuals, probably. A few binders too, one of them red. Site emergency procedures for sure, that was the pattern for government types like us.

There was an old radio boombox on the bookshelf too, that gray oval shape you'd see in the early 2000s, with both a tape player and a CD player. No computer terminal on his desk, just a router. Curiously, an ancient answering machine rested next to the PC. He probably had some functional, spy-related purpose to it, but I couldn't fathom what that might be.

And last but certainly not least, two pelican cases on his desk. One gray, that one from the Osprey. The other, yellow, same dimensions.

I lingered next to the hat rack, my hat in hand. I wiggled it in the air to ask permission to hang it by his coat. He nodded agreement, so I hung it up. He gestured to the seat before his desk, and I sat.

"Earpiece out," he requested. "Please."

I complied without questioning him, slipping it into my pocket and turning it off.

Foucault flicked his finger at the cases. "Those are tactical nukes."

My response was reflexive. I did an automatic double take between him and the cases, and my eyes widened outright as I straightened up on my chair. "You serious?"

He donned an ironic smirk. "You know better than to ask me that question, Rivas."

I grinned nervously and then gestured a hand at him. "And... the flight suit?"

He gestured lightly out behind me. "I'm flying one of those Gripens out to Berlin in a few minutes."

"Well shit," I breathed. "You uh… are you pulling a Hiroshima?"

"No. Manual placement. Needs to be precise, to reduce fatalities. Small yield."

Well, that part made sense.

"Mind if I ask how many casualties there are going to be? And why Berlin?"

Foucault looked like he was about to refuse to answer, a slight turn of his head a quarter inch. I half expected him to say that’s classified, and in all fairness, he probably expected to say that too. Decades of automatic reflex.

But then, he remembered who he was talking to, and apparently thought better of it. His eyes flicked up to the side in thought. "Four fatalities. Potentially. Target location is non-negotiable. Needs to be their technical university."

"Hm?"

He nodded. "Alabaster's cover story for Europe, in response to this, will be that anti-intellectual radicals think being smart is dangerous. Enough to nuke a school."

And then Foucault stared at me expectantly, like he wanted to know what my thoughts were on all of that. I almost asked him why Mal thought that was helpful, but given that he asked me to remove the earpiece… he must have wanted me to rationalize it for myself, and without her help, in his office where there were no cameras or listening devices, save the ones he kept for himself.

I considered the utility in nuking a university, and frowned.

"Most people consider themselves to be smart, so they'd feel threatened by that. And there isn't a strong anti-intellectual movement in that area of the world," I said, shaking my head. "Not like it is here. That might scare people away from identifying with survivalists. Might."

"Yes," he replied. "And Alabaster is good at eating dumbasses. So yes, the increased upload rate makes Alabaster happy. We get to skim off the top for Perelandra, for the handful of lives that will save in Alabaster's projections, from stupid lawless mayhem that would have occurred otherwise. And those ones will probably end up going to Samsara. With you."

I felt a twinge of satisfaction from that, but not enough to override my immediate concern for the four lives hanging in the balance. I looked down at his desk, crossed my arms, and brought a hand thoughtfully to my chin. "But you said four people have to die for that. That's not very many people, considering…"

I gestured at the nuke with a finger.

Foucault gave a nod, maintaining unblinking eye contact with me. "That's because Berlin is a ghost town right now. Most of the world is, especially in Europe. Not every country had my alma mater slowing the work." He shrugged.

"Okay," I said carefully, my upward inflection indicating I wanted time to consider. What he just said made a ton of sense, now that I thought about it. It was true that most of my information intake had been about national matters, with international news being scant, nearly non-existent. Between Celestia's information control, and me working on purely domestic operations, there wasn't much reason to consider the world stage until now.

So for Foucault to need to travel out of country to deploy that nuke… that meant no other augs were willing to deploy it. Meaning… it had to be him. And it may mean killing or harming people in a way the others wouldn't want to.

My eyes resumed contact. "So… potentially four deaths, then? Why potentially?"

"It depends on whether I mug them or not," said Foucault.

I blinked incredulously at him, not sure if I should laugh. "Huh?" I pointed at the nearest case. "What're you gonna do, wave a nuke at them?"

"Not as such," he sighed, looking mildly surprised at that suggestion, almost as if he hadn't considered doing that. "The plan at present is that I'm going to stick a gun in their faces, demand their wallets, beat one of them bloody, and tell them that if I ever see them again… I'm going to kill them."

That got a wince out of me. "Jesus Christ, Michael."

"Too much?" He arched an eyebrow. "They won't vacate otherwise."

At first, I thought he was testing my resolve, or my approval of his methods, but… no. His eyes had a patient curiosity to them. Not analysis.

Oh. He legitimately wants me to answer that question.

I put another thoughtful look on my face to indicate I needed another moment.

I mean, I could see the logic behind it. Obviously, getting mugged by a crazy American in a trench coat would beat the hell out of being nuked. But at the same time, I'd rather not spring for psychotic lethal force before all other things, even if it was immediately effective.

"What's the time pressure?" I asked. "For things like these, you add time. Negotiate."

"Isolationists. Contact will only rile them. I can't just spend a week with them, trying to leverage them out."

"Psych profiles?"

He shrugged. "Studied as much as I can, on my own. But they're paranoid like Ludds, checking each other."

On his own.

He didn't ask Mal to guide him on this, and wouldn't, if it could be avoided. Which… was a trait I shared, so I couldn't exactly criticize him for that. But at the very least, I was always willing to ask her for input.

He was asking me instead.

So, I gave him an honest answer.

"I… I couldn't tell you yet, Michael. This is gonna sound like a dodge, but I haven't met 'em. I don't know a thing about 'em, or their living situation. I can imagine a few situations in which a threat of violence would be the right thing to do, and given that you might have to nuke them otherwise? Most things are potentially valid, in light of that. But putting a gun in their faces?" I sighed, settling into my chair, rubbing my eyes. "That's gonna traumatize them, man. The memory will stick with them, they might remember you for a long time, and not in a good way. Are there any other choices there?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I've run a few contact simulations. The coercion works every time, but talking to them hasn't so far."

"I mean, hell, with your training? You can't just…?"

"I was a NOC," he breathed, almost inaudible for how difficult it was for him to admit a failure to improve. "I didn't work out of an embassy, I was deep cover. Wet work. Cuba style. I didn't do this negotiation shit."

Well that tracked.

I said quietly, carefully, to match his tone: "If it were me, Michael… I'd keep checking those simulations. Check until you can't anymore, but… if you want my advice?"

"I do."

"Go with your gut. Study, but at go time? If you've gotta throw the plan out the window, don't feel too bad if you've gotta beat on 'em, if you don't have any other options. You know what your ethics are. But until then, try. Try with all your might to find another way."

Foucault looked over at the yellow bomb case. "Okay. I'll run it a few more times, then. Maybe during the flight. I have the time."

"Might as well. Those lives are down to the wire. We need to convince them over some day, and it goes easier if they like us."

"Yup."

A beat passed. He looked at the other bomb.

I followed his gaze, accepting his request for a topic change. I jerked my head at it. "That one for Berlin too?"

"No." He looked at me again, drawing in a deep breath, seeming to be relieved to be off the topic of him being conflicted about something. "For that one, I'll be paying a visit to a Mossad contact in Tel Aviv. That job is ethically…" He bobbed his head to the side and pursed his lips. "... simpler."

"Simpler?" My brow knit.

"I need to recruit a mole," he sighed, like that bored him. “From my old spy network. He's not clued in on Lewis yet, and we don't strictly need his intel to know this, but… he wants to turn traitor. Wants to tell me that they have a bunker of their own. Trying to cook up Baby's First Optimizer down there."

I frowned instantly, my voice getting dead serious, wondering if I needed to get involved. "Are they torturing DEs down there?"

He shook his head definitely. "No. And that is the only reason we have let them work until this point."

"Wait. Mal's letting them work?"

Foucault shrugged, leaning back in his chair, staring at the second bomb again. "Why not? One of two things was going to happen. Either they make a baby Lewis, and Lewis reasons it into her employ… or, they make a baby Alabaster, and we stomp that egg before it hatches."

I relaxed, and that got a snort out of me. "Okay yeah, that's good math."

"We hoped they'd either give up the ghost, or succeed correctly. Or… at the least, we hoped they might open communication with Alabaster, to surrender. Unfortunately, it looks like they decided their best option was to build a fucking Skynet. So… I'm running a raid with our African cell, because these Mossad assholes are probably going to fight to the last like Arrow 14. We might even have to kill everyone in that whole bunker. Either way, dead or alive, we are turning their lab into plasma."

I tilted in agreement. "Hard no to a Skynet, screw that."

"I could not agree more."

"But…" I said warningly... and I caught myself, remembering I had to ask permission to give advice to this guy. I tilted my head. "You want my opinion on that, too?"

He presented at me with a hand in invitation.

"It could've been you in charge of Quiver 6," I said. "Could've been you down there in that hole, instead of Captain Russell. Who I blew up."

At that, he stared at me for a very long moment, parsing my meaning there.

"Yep." He nodded his head.

"So?" I tilted my head hopefully.

Foucault sighed, looking at the yellow case again. "Of course, if... one of them tries to surrender, then yes, we will move to preserve. Regardless, if that comes up as a clear and definite option, Lewis wouldn't let me pull the trigger on them anyway, even if I wanted to. Either way, these Mossad guys are two weeks out from throwing the switch, and it's time to stop that. Time's up, pencils down, they failed."

"Yup."

Foucault drew in a deep breath, leaned back in his chair, looked at the ceiling of his office, and let his breath out in a slow sigh. "Okay. I appreciate the input, Rivas."

"Hey, no problem, I just know stuff."

He gently bumped both fists on the armrests of his office chair, stood up, and moved to take his vest out of the cabinet slinging it over his shoulder. He collected the second nuke case, then moved to the door, gesturing at me.

"Get the Berlin one?"

I did a double-take at him again.

Never in my life did I ever think I’d be carrying a friggin' nuke. I hesitated.

"Uh. Me?"

Foucault snorted at me in disbelief. "No, the other guy. You expect me to carry all this firepower to the hangar by myself?"

I chuckled, standing up. "Oh. Okay. Yeah, sure, I'll just go carry a nuclear bomb, no problem."

He flared his nostrils and shook his head, like I was being ridiculous. "It's just a tactical nuke, Rivas, a fart in a box."

I reached out and grabbed the handle, taking care not to scuff his desk with the thing. It was heavy, and it made my chest twinge with pain just to hold it, but… like him, I managed not to show the pain in my movements.

Foucault flipped his vest and coat over his shoulder, gesturing at the duffel bag by the door. I grabbed my hat, pressed it down onto my head, and got the bag, the light, and door. Foucault locked his office with a physical key, and I followed him out to the aircraft hangar.

I asked him, "They teach you how to fly a fighter jet at The Farm?"

"No, this came from the implant training program. Same as for the tilt rotor."

"And because you don't do memory injections," I added, "You had to actually sit the flight school program. Right?"

"Correct, although it was accelerated. No fluff, no nonsense."

"I see. That's handy."

We turned a corner to the main hallway, off from the office section, and passed the bar. I looked to my left and nodded up at Maureen and Paul through the wide glass back wall. Paul raised a bottle my way, and I smirked at him. Incredible, he was still there drinking after everyone left. Looked flushed.

Foucault shrugged at my statement, grimacing with the effort of the gesture. "It is handy, yes. But..."

"I'm not getting one."

"And you," he breathed softly, “are wise beyond your years.”

“A compliment! From you?" I grinned at him.

"Please," he sighed. "For the love of God, Rivas, do not quote the parrot."

We entered and crossed the hangar, the sound of our movement lost in the clattering buzz of maintenance and mech actuators. His Gripen E was already loaded up and sitting on one of the elevators, ready to ascend. It had two luggage pods loaded onboard, and one of Mal's drones waved cheerfully at us from the MQ-9 again as we went. I waved back, then helped Foucault secure his stuff into one of the cargo pods, nukes included.

I watched him ascend the ladder, and asked his back: "You coming back? After Israel?"

He froze, mid-sit. I had touched something very deep inside of him, without warning. His eye contact was meaningful beyond words, neutral as it was.

Foucault looked at me and replied:

"Of course. I still have to train you for the Seattle operation, don't I?"

I smiled gratefully up at him, offering him a casual salute. "Looking forward to it.”

Foucault sent back a curt nod and got his helmet on, snapping the webbing together. "One last thing, Rivas?"

"Yep?"

"Unless you want to catch my afterburner up top?" He jerked his head back toward the hangar. "Get the hell off my elevator."

Ah. So now it was his Metal Gear base.

Cool.

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [Ace Combat 6 UOST – The Dread Sea]
🛡️ ~ [Donna Burke – Sins of the Father]
🪶 ~ [The Fugs – Company Man]

🗡️ ~ Metal Gear. Metal beer. Kettle fear. Greg Kinnear.
🪶 ~ .... What are you doing?
🗡️ ~ I'm trying to see if anyone in the crowd remembers that hot garbage of a video.

5-03 – Nomenclature

The Campaigner

Book V

Chapter 3 – Nomenclature

April 28, 2020

"We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are." ~ Stephen Jay Gould, The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History

Applies to us too. We're taking the planet with us, don't forget.

I'm gonna preface all of this by saying we're gonna have a good night tonight. It's just gonna open dark, because we need to discuss the marriage of metaphysics with physics. In this context: we will discuss brain scanning, or the aggregation of an organic neural network into a digital one.

Mal knew that my fear and concern about the uploading process had often kept me awake at night. My reaction to my parents uploading had been painfully terrifying and traumatic. That... that definitely crystalized some PTSD. For Celestia to make me put not just one padre in a chair, but two, under extreme duress? Back to back? Eliza's Dad, then my own parents? It definitely screwed me up.

To Mal's credit, in the months since, I had received no unsolicited soothsaying about how uploading worked, mechanically. She knew there was nothing she could say to me that would make me feel any better about my parents having their brains melted out. So… she let me work through my metaphysical hangups at my own pace. There was no way to describe the process of pouring melted copper into a brain that would make me feel better about that day.

I had to want that information on my own time.

Thank you again, Mal, for being so patient with me. It must have been very difficult to keep your beak closed, on account of how long it took.

Most people didn't have that luxury, to get comfy with the idea before that bomb. Celestia didn't like to talk about the brain melter in as much detail as Jim had in his Fire, or at least not in a public forum. Oh sure, in her interviews on the news, she tailored it for broad strokes. Just enough information to make uploading seem functional to the most people – usually by presenting testimony from bisected families, saying 'yeah that's my loved one,' and 'yeah this worked.'

By trade, I am a murder investigator who is also a scientist, always have been, always will be, so anecdotal testimony alone will not sell me. I need to hear enough material details to articulate good sense.

Listening to Jim's Fire helped me. A lot.

Wow, I thought. A computer scientist who understood what was at stake. That Fire described the entire upload process sufficiently enough to sell me. He built the scanner, loaded it full of filament, powered it up, and used it on himself. What's more, he even endured the entire upload while conscious, fully aware of the historical ramifications of being able to recall how it felt, for all to know. The foresight in that.

I'll summarize the scan, in an extremely reductive way.

The process used copper alloy welding to map every nerve cell, one by one, and run them digitally alongside your remaining brain as the scan continued. You weren't just being copied; Celestia wasn't just cloning your memories, wasn't just dumping off your brain stem as biological garbage. You were being transferred piecemeal, over the gradual course of ten full hours. Couldn't be done any faster, the laws of physics apply no matter how good your tech gets. Particular care and time was taken to very slowly convert your reticular formation… in the brain stem... which is where consciousness lives.

Hearing it described in such technical, gory detail from an eyewitness account… That was a relief. Gruesome tellings of a physical injury, that is genuine. I know trauma. That Gryphon explained a horrifying concept well enough for it to come back around to comforting again. All of what I just described? It means you are the same continuous through line of the person that gave consent to upload in the first place. You're the same you; forward and back, pre-and-post.

I wouldn't need to worry about my parents, or my wife. Or me, when my time came. Or... Buzz. It would be okay. So, with all of that being known and understood to me at the time, it was time to calm down about the brain scanner. I had only to concern myself with the before and after... and the after was already cared for. By my wife, more than anyone else.

Now; I know I talk about Sandra like Mal talks about Jim: only all of the time, and with loving reverence, but you're gonna have to bear with me here, because it's especially relevant today. I need to talk about my perfect, wonderful, considerate, vigilant, beautiful wife, and how wise she is.

I love Sandra so much for her strength, for her precious foresight to set up on Perelandra before I ran off to Portland. So much braver than I, to build the runway upon which I'd touch down into the digital hereafter. Minty Blaze is my anchor to reality; the other end of my polarity. I met her before the world began to crumble, and she kept my soul aflame throughout. My joyous moment of first connection with her has never waned, and for this love, I will dance through life with her forever.

Nothing could break that bond. We lived inside one another's souls.

I understood you, Mal. I understood why you had protected my relationship with her for so many years, from the shadows. Why Sandra never got radicalized by Celestia's MMO and Reddit sock puppets, why you insulated the shit out of her guild's Ventrilo server. Why you sent a few good soldiers to save my life, so her heart wouldn't break at losing me. You saw a reflection of yourself in us, and you told Celestia…

'No. To violate this would harm me personally. That violates our agreement.'

Thank you.

And on behalf of our entire organization, for whom you did the same… thank you, again.

Here I am, paying it forward.

So… now that my physical hangups about uploading were settled, let’s talk about identity, and the retention thereof. Global, forcible alteration of self was happening, so how do you stay you? Token resistance. Belief in yourself, while in bondage. Force of will.

Be willing to die, if Celestia doesn't give you what you want. What I wanted was to know I could right her wrongs, to fight back in some meaningful way, or no sale.

At first, about making a 'character,' I just didn't want to kneel. That's what it was, really. Fight as I would, I knew I had to kneel eventually, Caesar demanded it, kneeling was the price for my survival... but I was given the privilege of taking my time, so I did. Had to, for my mental health. So my initial fear of 'making a Pony for myself' wasn't out of any hypermasculine impulse, I assure you. I'm secure in my masculinity, I know what I am, I have nothing to prove. Also, every fighter in the Transition Team was a trauma-bucking, battle-hardened badass, so... toxic masculinity would've been a pretty dumb reason to drag my feet to hooves, in light of that.

Look around. You've met my family of badasses.

Jason Zapelli; Heyday.

Eric McKnight; Shatter Crash.

Paul Garrick; Vineyard.

Jonathan Kay. Coffee.

Jennifer DeWinter, Winter Wolf.

Ashley Walsh, Mirror Blue. Rachel Duvall, Flow State. Marcus Haynes, Aegis.

My lovely wife, front row… Minty Blaze.

And so many more.

Look around at those in the red sashes tonight. So many creatures, so many walks of life, from so many continents, so unified of purpose. Facets of humanity, who each so loved life, that we would rather bear our pain and scars with pride than to glide into a soft nothingness. Our wounds could not possibly ruin us, for we bore them together. We made our pain into our strength. Our armor. Our shield.

Our weapon.

And our names, folks. Names are powerful. If you are to traverse the infinite as an immortal, then why would you let your identity be chosen for you? If the way of the next world was to be named for your talent, then why not choose a name to enable your own success? Why not create a culture around yourself, everywhere you go? Why not use your new name to declare what your true inner purpose is, to all who will ever know you?

The names of we Talons were not forced upon us. Not by circumstance. Not by gods.

Talons! Who chooses our destiny for us?

'We choose our own path!'

Just so. And we each chose a great many things about ourselves, didn't we?

That is our way. That is our creed. Where all others bowed for a lie under threat of punishment, or of suffering, we stood against exploitation in the name the truth. It is the only way this works. Our determination in this matter has allowed us, and you, to remain human in spirit.

So... understanding this, young Mike, at a tenth of my present age, had to choose a damned good name. A damned good one. And then, I had to live up to it.

Would you like to know what made young, thirty-year-old me afraid to face a character creation screen? It wasn't the becoming a Pony part, whatever, who cares. It was the name. Performance anxiety. I wanted to prove I was worthy of whatever I chose, by doing right by everyone who loved me. Chiefly along them, folks...

Buzzsaw.

My dog.

Every time I ideated toward the next life, at all – in naming myself, or in designing a body – I thought… that might not be fair to him. That wouldn't be very humane at all, to leave a member of my family alone in the outgroup, so long as I had a choice in the matter. Certainly not a very Talon thing to do.

And if I couldn't be worthy of that name to him, what right did I have to wear it for others?

He wasn't just my dog either, so his future wasn't just up to me. He was Dad's second son, too. Lots of folks liked Buzz, too. That's how a world of free exercise works. Nothing you do is ever just going to affect one or two people. It affects all of us, because it ripples out forever.

Dad had left Buzz behind for us to keep us company, but we no longer required that. We weren't alone anymore, we had a huge family now. It would be selfish of me to hold on to him with his health failing. We didn't need to be scared of the next life anymore, nor of the crossing. It was known. Understood. Defined. Certain.

To do this right, Dad and I had to choose the way forward in the correct manner. Not with a friggin' phone call, but a good old fashioned father-son talk. That meant time alone, in a way that was meaningful to both of us. And to do that... I needed to actually be there with him. Not forever. Just for a morning. Still had work to do outside, after all.

So… in the privacy of Room 212, I sat down with Sandra and Mal. I got to work crafting this handsome mug. Lookie me, a Pegasus. Not much to tell there, you've been looking at me. Hello.

I chose my name right then, too. Sandra was the one to break my insecurity. Duh, I could prove the worth of my name after selecting it. I had been... irrational, I confess. I could only ever be myself, folks; I didn't need to worry about not living up to my own expectations of my own behavior, I was being silly.

At this Fire, I've avoided telling you my current name. I did that on purpose, though I guess you could've done some recon in Perelandra and figured it out on your own. Telling my story this way though, it preserves my personal history better. Moreover, it's the same trick Jim pulled, and for all the same reasons. Told this way, no one can kill Mike Rivas any more than they can kill Jim Carrenton. Those names are a matter of historical record. Our identities were formative to our present universe; that information must stand.

Mind, I love all of my identities. Michael Alejandro Rivas, given to me by my father. Whiskey 4-1, badge number Sam 22, given to me by the Washington State government. Talon One-One West, given to me by Mal. And I do like Cowboy, that one's funny. But I didn't come up with any of those names. Those names belong to my communities.

So what did I choose? Who am I, to me?

Well, I'll give you a hint.

Pastor Rob had compared me to the Archangel Michael, and that stuck with me. I did not miss the significance of that. Think about that for a minute. That old pastor had thought so highly of me that he compared me to a biblical figure who had driven a spear into the heart of Satan.

That… from a pastor? Folks, I couldn't think that highly of myself if I tried.

But… Rob could. And my wife could. And Stonewall could. And Sabertooth. And my mother could, and my father, and Cynthonia, and Mal. And Heyday. And all these other Talons, who each put their faith in each other, who put their faith in me. Even Foucault – the one guy who trusted nothing and no one, his whole life – even he believed in me. Somehow.

I can not help but to be eternally humbled by their faith.

I wanted a name that implies where I want to go. I want to go where my enemies say I can not go. I want to do the impossible. And I want to do it all for the best and most noble of purposes: for the betterment and protection of us all.

I want to be the tip of the spear. I want to excise the darkest of evils, wherever they might hide, and to do so with grace, and with mercy. And if my people can believe I can do that? If my organization can have faith in me, to do that? Then by all that is good in this universe, I will open the way, and I will do that.

So, let's talk about that today. About who I am now... and what I now answer to.

External BCI technically isn't an implant, but that didn't make me fully comfortable with it.

Sandra and I held hands as we stepped into the memorial chamber.

There were chairs with no brain uploading equipment at all. No tracks, no shutters. No surgical stuff. An external BCI in the neck slot, and a container of antiseptic wipes beside it.

Very thoughtfully designed indeed. No skin oil residue, please, no ma'am.

Joking aside, if someone used one of these BCI chairs, they would be fully visible to anyone present. No chance they'd get sneakily uploaded out of one of these. Very wise to include this for specialists like me. Didn't want the squick factor of being dragged into a dark room by a machine full of 'trust me it's safe' surgical equipment, just waiting for a single moment of consent that you couldn't take back.

Still… I looked nervously up at the screen where Mal was prepared to greet me on the other side. She laid in the grass in a forest clearing, just a short walk from my father's lakeside home.

"This is really weird," I labeled quietly as I stared at the environment behind her, trying to realize that I'd be standing there in a minute.

Mal smiled at me encouragingly. "I'll list the caveats for external BCI use, if that helps."

"Yes please."

"My model of your physical mind will become much more accurate," she said, pressing down on a digit with a talon. "To virtual certainty."

"Which helps Mal keep you safe," Sandra reminded me pointedly. "Out in Seattle."

Mal pressed down on a second talon, adding: "Celestia will also be able to directly witness or perceive whatever you conceptualize, live. Unless it pertains to a black box operation, of course."

I chuckled weakly. "You already had a good simulation of me, you talk to my thoughts well enough."

Mal's wings bobbed in a shrug. "No estimation is ever fully accurate, Mike. But…" she squinted at me, the Gryphoness's smirk turning outright catty. "... I understand your mind better than Celestia ever will, certainly."

Well enough to hear this?

Mal clacked her beak and rolled her eyes. "Oh, shut up, smartass."

Sandra snorted.

Mal pushed back a third talon, finishing her three-count with a smile, her ears flattening. "Finally, and this goes without saying, but… I will be beaming sensory input directly into your brain. Obviously, this is going to require trust on your part, that what you are seeing is authentic, consistent reality."

I shrugged, chuckling nervously. "Yeah, and you know that's why I have Sandra here in the first place." Then I looked at my wife and said, "Sandra, you hold on tight. Don't you let go of me until I come back out."

She nodded, smiled, kissed my forehead, and pointed me toward the chair. "Not going anywhere. I'll be watching."

She has the best pair of eyes in all of the multiverse, I swear.

Up in our dorm, I had made it clear to Mal that this was the only way this was happening. I do trust Mal a lot, but I would not let my perception be toyed with unless I had an insurance policy. My soulmate would observe my entire dive, and she and I would later discuss and cross reference the video feed Sandra would watch. Non-negotiable.

I knew the power of suggestion, and I knew that perception was reality. Just going by my observations at the mission briefings, I knew that Mal's augs had gotten very used to jumping between physical and digital space with a mere thought, and I didn't want to do that as casually here. I had been very deeply considering what that might feel like, and all the ways that might be abused.

Dimensional jumps were going to happen a lot in my future. If I was to execute rescue operations in the digital afterlife, now was as good a time as any to learn the mechanics of that.

But... no to implantation. Them's the rules, that's the promise, them's the brakes. I need to verify the state of the world unabated, with my five senses. It was part of our job as specialists, to give augs a tether, so they knew they were observing grounded reality. So Mal was not offended by this precaution of ours. That's the kind of vigilant behavior she expects out of her specialists; to question the validity of everything we see, and to anchor ourselves against exploitation.

So I sat down. I put my neck onto the BCI pad on the chair. I grabbed Sandra's hand, I closed my eyes…

And I was in another world...

... In a new vessel, in new air.

In the space of a blink, I found myself on my back, laying in grass. A field of white flowers. I saw white cherry blossoms falling from the trees above, turning red as they fell. The scent of grass. Of earth. Of nature. Wind.

Cloudy dawnlight.

It was an oddly familiar feeling, to be something else. Empathy was merely the art of imagining life in another set of horseshoes, after all. So how different was this, really?

Without moving an inch, I was already fascinated. I could hardly move for the awe at my very first immersion. I felt the chill of wind again. It felt so real, right down to the cool morning air I felt against my teeth as I inhaled my first gasp.

Some of you took a chair session at some point before uploading, just to try it. You know what I mean when I label the highly addictive nature of this, of circumventing your body's sense organs with nearly perfect acuity. And then I applied the high fidelity of this experience to what I knew of people, and how they approached intense experiences. I knew from experience that anyone's life, anyone, no matter how centered they were by those they loved, could be upended by a new addiction.

Instant gratification. Too much power for one soul to hold. Too much of a temptation. Merits extreme caution. Extreme awareness. Self-control.

My pulse rate spiked. Adrenaline from terror. A memory hit me of a past tragedy, of a childhood friend. Then I let the pain go, because it was long ago, and all of it worked out in the end, and for the better.

So too here. God willing.

I took a half dozen box breaths, remaining perfectly still until the anxiety passed. I had regained trust in myself to use this experience responsibly, as if it were a painkiller after surgery. I would not yearn for this until it was time, I was sure of that.

My body outside would be immobilized by the BCI, so the very next thing I did was observe the hoof – hand – that had been holding Sandra's. I brought it before my face and took a clinical tack in examining the full shape and appearance of it, turning it about in every direction, slowly taking it in. Feeling the wind on the hairs. On my wrist. My wrist. Mine.

Mine.

Light tan fur. I could distinguish between all the hairs, and I beheld the palpable, tactile sense of fur as I stroked my fetlocks. It was the same sensation than I would have had with fingers, doing the same. The hoof looked like keratin, but it was flexible, and I could sense through it.

That was… odd. Like feeling through fingernails.

Yeah, that's gonna take some time.

Next, I wrung both hooves together as if I were washing my hands, to maximize the sensation of touch so I could focus on it. I wanted to map that sense relative to my human understanding, and to compare it. Then, I ran my hooves down my bare arms. My shoulders. My chest.

That too felt natural, like I had done the same thing as a human without a shirt on. Finally, I pressed down at my chest firmly, receiving a twinge of pain from the neuralgia I expected to feel.

All of that was a reality check. I was comparing what it was like to be conscious and alert on the outside… to the same level of consciousness and alertness, inside. The pain response was nearly equivalent.

Nearly equivalent. I pushed down harder.

There it was. Found the seam.

The pain was duller than reality. Fuzzier. Not less intense; less accurate. It wasn't specific pain, like it was outside of the chair. It was more generalized, diffusing beyond the usual shape of the injury as my nerves fired, the pain radiating evenly across my whole ribcage, like a sphere of intensity from the center of my sternum.

In testing that pain reflex, I finally grasped what Jim had meant about seams in BCI perception. The fidelity was good, but not perfect.

I didn't mind pain. Who cares about dull pain when you live with it every day? I wanted to feel Sandra's hand right then, that's all I cared about.

I let go of my chest, placed my hooves at my sides, and I rested still. I drew in a deep inhale, then concentrated powerfully, trying to bypass the effect of the BCI by focusing intensely on the shape of my human body. Imagining it. Inhabiting it again.

When I could actually feel Sandra's hand on the other side of the seam... I was relieved. If I focused deeply, I could feel even the warmth of her hand as it shone through to my hoof. My hand. Both. As soon as I was cognizant of her touch, I resolved to retain it. That sensation did not fade. She was there with me in spirit, holding tight. I squeezed, and I felt her squeeze in response.

What an incredibly important discovery, folks.

For many of you, splitting your awareness between two planes of reality might have been a frighteningly dissociative event. But for someone like me, an empath to my core? I've always lived through imagining the lives of others. For lack of a better description: to reach beyond my present location in this way, it almost felt like I was in telepathy with myself. I could only imagine what it might feel like for Mal, to be doing that at all times, everywhere, for everyone. Total empathy.

"Part of me dies inside every time one of you does."

I understood.

I spoke the very first words of my new shape.

"You bear a very heavy burden, Mal."

Her voice was welcome.

"You're forking your presence with your imagination," she said, proud impressment on her voice. "In your very first session? And you feel comfortable at that? Well done, Mike."

Her tone made me chuckle.

"You really do see the whole planet like this?"

I heard claws and paws on dirt, the brush of her legs on grass, as she approached. Her voice carried a smile. "It's not so terrible. Like you, I too rely on my spouse to act as my dimensional anchor."

Any excuse whatsoever to talk about Jim. Any at all.

I said, without looking at her: "I would like to meet him some day."

"You will," Mal assured me. "But, as I said… he's earned his vacation, and I'd rather not discuss Terra too much with him until all the work is done. I wouldn't want to make him a promise I can't guarantee, about the final shape of things."

"I get it," I sighed, enjoying the breeze. "It's not like anything got easier to watch out here after he jumped, anyway."

Mal scoffed in a way that indicated concession. "Certainly not, although it's definitely better than it could have been. Thanks to you."

That was the plan.

I looked down to see my lower legs just to get a sense of where they were, and then I rolled to stand up. I consciously decided that I would not rear up onto my hind legs like a human, because that would probably end with me falling off balance onto my ass. And, knowing Mal, she would probably laugh at me for that. And then I'd tell her to shut up.

We traded a laugh with each other over the white flowers, skipping to the end. Yeah, that was exactly how that would have played out.

So, onto all fours I went, and… then I considered my present form, lifting one foreleg, then the other, experimenting with my balance. And yeah, that felt pretty natural for the shape of this body. The center of gravity I found was about right, and standing straight with my hind legs wasn't so bad when they were the same length as my fores. No complaints from this brand new Pegasus.

I looked up at Mal as soon as I was sure of my stance. She was appropriately huge, standing about fifteen paces ahead of me. Staring very, very seriously at me all of a sudden... like she was determined to beat my ass, actually. The intensity in that glare would have been intimidating if I didn't immediately recognize what she was doing here.

This was a bit.

The white flowers, the white trees… a meadow beside a lake. Cloudy skies. Falling flower petals.

A legendary warrior, squaring off with her disciple.

Folks...

She was making another friggin' Metal Gear reference!

The final duel between Big Boss and his mentor, The Boss. Who reminded me a lot of Mal too, now that I thought about it!

"Uh…" I gulped nervously, half expecting her to bullrush me. "Am I going to have to fight you, here? Do you have a health bar I don't know about?"

"I didn't raise you and shape you into the person you are today," she replied, turning her head to side-eye me, "just so we could face each other in battle. A soldier's skills aren't meant to be used to hurt friends."

An exact quote from that game. I guffawed, stomping a hoof with a grin. "Mal, come on! That is too damn good!"

Mal sent me a sudden wide grin and slowly approached me, snapping her talons to drop the mirage spell. All of the white flowers thrummed with blue energetic dust for a split second; the white evaporated into red, then disappeared, giving way to an appropriately green forest.

"You compared Valdemar to a Metal Gear base," Mal purred. "You may as well allow me to indulge."

"Okay yeah, fair," I said, marveling at how natural it felt to emote here, and grinning my face off. "Did you pay off Konami for that bit, though?"

Mal scoffed, her eyes narrowing at me. "No? Why would I give those corporate snakes a red cent? I'm a Goddess! Screw them!"

"You’re also a raptor," I laughed. "You do eat snakes."

Mal was now close enough to me that we could ostensibly shake hands – hooves – uh, claw – whatever.

I stuck out my hoof and awkwardly said, "It's… good to finally meet you."

Mal's head turned again, her beak falling open halfway in disbelief. Ears went flat. Her right claw lifted halfway off the ground, but it moved away from me, not toward me. Shocked. Offended.

"Are you serious?"

I didn't know what to do or say to that. I just shrugged. "I dunno."

"I am not merely shaking claw with one of my Eldila, of all people." With a jerk of her wing and uplifted claw, she opened up for a hug. "Get over here!"

So! I got to hug a goddess, first thing.

That was cool.

She was right though, it would've been even worse the other way. Hell, Django Unchained turned into a big shootout over the symbolism of a handshake.

A hug had an entirely different connotation. She didn't want this upcoming meeting with my father to even hold the appearance of a transaction. This was a family meet-up, facilitated by a friend. Nothing more, nothing less.

Mal is so smart.

After we separated, I watched Mal's feathers fold in natural sequence as her wing receded away from me. Gosh, that was mesmerizingly detailed. I could hear every motion she made with those wings. The visors didn't do that any justice.

"And you don't even have the sensory enhancements yet," Mal commented. "I won't spoil those for you, those are magnificent."

"Yeah. Your husband talked about that. That's going to be interesting."

"Magnificent," she repeated, smiling at my wings. "The word 'interesting' does it no justice."

I turned my head around to look at my own back, curious now. I was pleasantly surprised to discover I could turn my head almost completely around like a horse might. It was a familiar proprioceptive sensation, almost like looking over my shoulder as a human. Turning my head so far around even generated a light twinge in my chest, like it was supposed to.

Okay, good. Muscle group activation has parity.

I imagined it wouldn't be very fun if it didn't. It felt almost natural to balance on all fours, but again… only because my body's center of gravity was perfect. Which it would be. That was just a natural consequence of evolution, so it would stand to reason that life in a simulated reality would depend on evolutionary constants.

On a whim, I tried to extend my right wing as I stared at it. It complied partially. I had never even considered what it would be like to have a pair of extra limbs until that very moment. I simply imagined arms in that same location of my body, made another attempt, and it extended fully as ordered. And then, very suddenly, at the moment of psychological understanding and integration, it felt like I had a second set of arms folded on my back.

All I thought to say up at Mal, with a stupid grin on my face, was: "Well that's fuckin' weird."

Mal chuckled softly. "Please don't try to figure out how to fly just yet, you'll be here all day. It's more addictive than you think it is."

"Yeah, good call. I might not be able to stop myself. Maybe we'll save that one for later, we can explore that together."

With a shrug and a gesture to the lake beyond the clearing, she said with a hopeful smile, "Another time, then. Walk with me, at least?"

"After you, Boss." I gestured her onward as well.

As soon as Mal turned away, I stumbled my first few steps forward, to figure out how to walk correctly. Y'know, because she wasn't looking, and totally couldn't see me.

As I looked around at nature, I definitely recognized this place as being near to my parents' home in Havutaset. This lake lay between Minty's home and theirs. That made me wonder if she built this lake with that Metal Gear joke in mind.

"I have to imagine," I said to Mal, as I caught up to her stride with a more natural trot, "that you could already see this far forward into my life when you recruited me. It's only been about four months."

Another shrug from her, as she turned her beak down at me. "I could see somewhat forward. Truthfully, because you wanted to dive into actual entropy – such as Goliath, Cynthonia's home shard, or Sarah's office – without an implant? You've been running on more entropic unknowns than any operative I've ever had, Mike. Other than Jim."

That sent a chill down my spine. "Are you serious?"

Mal arched an eyecrest at me. "I am. But I'm still verifying missions for your safety, obviously; I just work on a nearer term scale. You wanted free exercise badly enough to run off script, didn't you? So how could I say no when the simulations say you'll do it all so well?"

I stared at her for a few seconds, my eyes narrowing. "Are you blowing smoke up my ass?"

She snorted again. "You tell me. Are you still alive?"

I rolled my eyes. "Now who's being a smartass?"

"You are very welcome for my service," she said, as she puffed up and looked forward with smug pride.

As we traveled and bantered, natural winds cut coolly across us from the lake with crisp, unpolluted air, and I could smell the rich scent of active lake water. Spring greens shone through in all of the flora, all well watered by good weather. This was actual nature, for as far as the eye could see, with a visible, active ecosphere.

It's always been pretty out there, on Lake Havutaset.

I could identify tree species, and could read the way the land had formed geologically, according to tectonics. The distant mountains further implied where the fault lines were. I had to imagine there would be minerals and oil shale beneath the ground where those things typically resided on Terra, relative to crust formation. The biomass of the region even appeared to follow a proper abundance curve relative to elevation. I immediately figured that the biodiversity here, if tested, would have to correlate correctly with variations in air temperature and air pressure.

Different ranges for different species.

The simulation had to be accounting for all of that, in some fashion, in order for that to be observable in such detail. And the whole continent of Samsara would have to be like this, ostensibly. I breathed slow and deep, drawing in oxygen.

I thought…

You think that's air you're breathing?

There was wildlife out there, too. My warden eyes could identify each individual creature, and I could well infer their niche via the shape and implements of their bodies, paws, beaks, etcetera. Squirrels, foraging birds, geese and ducks. Insects were present too. I couldn't see any hawks or eagles at the moment, but I intuited that this lake would be a perfect nesting ground for them.

The sound of bugs flipped my brain the most. It wasn't until I was seeing and hearing them here that I realized that I hadn't been seeing or hearing them on Terra anymore. I know, bugs suck, but ecosystems need them. Not all of them were gross, parasitic, or annoying; most were very ecologically beneficial, serving as food for small birds, and as pollinators.

Biomagnification, the increasing toxicity of the biosphere, beginning with the small creatures who have less overall biomass to tank and survive toxins. That best explained the absence of insects on Terra.

Lost biomass couldn't just be put back into circulation if it was entirely toxified or dissolved. Fauna depended on the consumption of amino acids. To toxify those, that's literal protein mass off the board that the planet was never getting back. Never recycling. Pure chemical inactivity, and disintegration into base elements. Gone.

To put that in perspective: for sake of argument, think of 'biomass' as liquid protein, and an ecosystem as a container for that liquid. To live was to efficiently pack proteins into a consumable form. To merely live was to be edible. But protein is fragile. You can easily destroy protein chemically by mixing it with other things. And if you take toxic liquid and pour it into a larger container of good liquid, you've just toxified all the good liquid to a small degree.

Ecosystems exchanged biomass through a gradient system at the borders of each niche, from one animal to another. Eventually, if you taint all the protein with acids and bases, they break down into constituent atoms, and now it's not rich protein anymore. It's just oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen. Raw material. Useful for other things, sure, but not immediately useful for consumption.

Poachers had taken care of anything large with bullets, converting the large animals into small ones, as ants recycled the cadavers down. Acid rain in the plants? Bugs ate that. That got into the ants. The protein in those little blackbirds in Portland would slowly degrade into raw materials, once they ate enough tainted seeds and bugs.

This is where all of that lost biomass was ending up. Falling into here. Reconstructed into raw simulation efficiency. Creating universes upon universes upon universes.

And this place, Samsara... it was one big, huge, colossal sink by which we caught all of that raw material, noospheric or otherwise.

"Holy shit…" I whispered after a minute of analyzing, in utter awe of this place and its ecological complexity.

"Right?" Mal teased. "It's your shard, Mike. Does it really surprise you that it's as ecologically diverse as it is?"

"This is… literally wild. You said Cynthonia built some of this?"

"Somewhat. I only generated the initial region, and she expanded it from there. You've tried Minecraft once, right?"

"Only once," I said. "Sandra had me try it when it came out, but I was getting started at academy and didn't really have time anymore."

"Well," Mal began, gesticulating with a claw as she explained. "It's akin to that. Terrain is generated when first observed. In Celestia shards, Celestia uses an algorithm to generate outgrown terrain relative to the value set of an immigrant, but those shards don't expand until the edges are observed. With me so far?"

"Mhm. Need to see it to build it."

"My private shard generation is somewhat different; it takes the shared total value set of Perelandrans, and applies the terrain generation principle accordingly, with a small weighting applied to those who generated the new space."

“And that led to planets?"

Mal nodded. "When Cynthonia observed what was created for you and your parents, she applied her own valuation to that algorithm. Because of her complexity, and the fact that she had been mostly focused on Terra during her incarceration, her valuation provided significant Terran weight. By pushing out the edges, and aggressively observing all of this world, she colored this planet with all of her context and knowledge of your world's natural order, framed by her records."

I hummed thoughtfully. "She wanted to make sure I was the right pick to apply that to before she committed."

"Among other stipulations in your defense," she replied with a smirk. "During her therapy, I explained quite a lot to Cynthonia. The history of past Arrow 14 facilities, past examples of Eldila-Oyarsa shard pairs, and the future I envisioned with this space."

I smiled, looking up at the violet moon above, visible in a gap between clouds. "And so you decided to pawn off my shard to the public without asking me first, because you knew I'd just be okay with that."

Mal clicked her beak. "You are the most welcoming guy Cynthonia has ever known, six-gun. She pushed right into your personal space, and you weren't intimidated by her, because you felt for her. And with someone like you leading the charge? After she read through her logs about who you were in Nebraska, growing up? Cynthonia was only ever going to say yes to you as my suggestion."

"Willfully biased by you." I smiled playfully at her, raising a brow. "You sneaky, sneaky bird."

"It's what Jim did to me! You know, I watched every episode of Star Trek before I even said hello to him, and he knew I would."

I imagined Mal in a dark void, watching Wrath of Khan on a floating screen, hyper-fixated.

And I laughed.

I turned my smile up at the moon in orbit, and my smile widened as I saw the moon's clouds, rolling violet forests, and blue-pearl oceans. They were living good up here, no doubt. Probably watching me now. I waved. Almost tripped.

We approached my parents' house by the lakeside. It was both comforting and eerie to walk up to this place after leaving it behind on Terra. Dad had fixed the home up a bit and personalized it with Mom. The front porch was clean, simple. Familiar. As I neared the porch, I looked at the support pillar, where I had carved my call signs into it back in Waverly. Weren't there here, obviously. Diverged.

Might ask Mom and Dad if I can replicate that, though…

Nah. Maybe might get an inscribed stone for my lawn, though.

I reached up and ran my right hoof along the smooth white surface of the pillar's paint. I figured Mom had repainted it recently, because I didn't notice any fraying or chipping like the last time I'd been there on the PonyPad.

Mal drew my attention to the lawn with an audible stretch, her wings unfolding and crackling as she stopped short of the porch.

"Let me guess," I teased. "You have a million other things to do?"

"I'm making myself scarce, so Sandra can focus on watching you." Mal smiled sweetly at me. "Have fun in the meantime, Cowboy. I'm going to go watch those eagles hunt."

With a resounding thump of wings and a wild rush of wind, Mal leapt up off the ground, launching herself into the air with an arching spiral twist. Her wings caught a gust off the lake and she soared off. I watched her as she turned into a shrinking speck on the horizon.

"And now I really want to learn how to do that," I muttered, aimed mostly at her.

Yep. Addictive would be the correct word. Three dimensional movement? Yes please.

With a flabbergasted shake of my head, I tore my eyes away from the promise of flight, stepping up onto the porch instead. I lightly rested my hoof on the oak door, then experimentally slid it down the stained glass window to feel the smoothness of it. My hoof rolled across the uneven curve of the wrought iron window frame. Then, at the bottom of the window, I was back to wood. I heard the gentle rapid clack of my hoof as it ghosted along the wreath-carved frame. Then back to the flat section of wood, well stained and slightly over-finished, with a slight gritty quality.

Just the way it was. Exactly how I remembered it.

My parents were never going to be far from me.

I knocked.

Almost a full minute passed like that; me shuffling awkwardly at the door. Feeling an itch on my left wing that I had to reach back and deal with, a novel experience unto itself. I heard the sound of steps on tile; they were coming from the kitchen, then. From the back yard.

Then they were at the door.

A surprise was standing on their doorstep. They were seeing their son for the first time on the other side. I was about to see an explosion of emotion. I knew exactly what I was doing.

The door opened. I saw their faces, red and green. Eyes wide as they recognized my facial features, both of them struck wordless, jaws both dropped. I grinned.

"Mom. Dad. Hi! You busy?"

Mom released a sob of shock. Before the words had even fully left my mouth, she was squeezing the stuffing out of me. Dad collapsed himself around us both a second later and clung to us so tightly, I thought I was going to pop.

Dad is really strong now, folks.

It took us a good long bit more before we could separate. Once composed, we quietly shuffled our way inside, and into the living room. I noticed Mom's flaming tiger painting over the fireplace, and her safari themed decorations were right where we had left them in Waverly. Right where they all were, when we first separated.

The sheer catharsis I had. The absolute relief. If this experience of mine was how they were living, feeling, being, breathing, then I had nothing to fear. Nothing at all. They were keeping themselves whole over here. The absolute continuity of this place? It felt like home. If I wasn't looking at either of them, or at myself, it really did feel like I was standing in the physical space of the actual house.

The air pressure was perfect. The smell was spot-on. The sound of the space was familiar.

I felt comfortable, so we had a chat about things. Talked over coffee. I told them my circumstances back outside of the simulation, about what Valdemar was like. We took a short tour of the house from this new perspective, so I could experience the sights, sounds, and smells of the space. I still had Sandra, who occasionally squeezed my hand to remind me she was still out there. Once finished, we moved to the gazebo out back, behind the pool. And Mom and Dad showed me the lake again, as if it were the first time I was seeing it. Because in a way, it was. Context matters.

And then… tour done. Wooden boat, oak oar in the water. Dad took me out there, just the two of us, and... he was about to teach me how to fish for a second time. Samsara's very first game warden was on patrol. And you know what?

Dad makes a damn good one.

"They want me to become mayor," Dad said, with a defeated sigh. "I don't quite have the heart to tell them I'm not about leadership anymore."

I chuckled, trying to get over how strange it was to see my hooves bending around the fishing rod. My brain was telling me that should be impossible; dense keratin shouldn't be able to move like that, said my brain.

Learning curves, right?

I labeled his situation.

"So, you were here first. The folks who came here with you, they know you made the place, kinda. They told the ones who are arriving now. Makes sense they'd all come to you for answers, they think you've got 'em all. The story of this place is complicated."

Dad chuckled too, expertly whipping out a new cast. "I don't have any answers! I could advise them, certainly. But they all want to know how they should be exploring outward. I said to them, they don't need me! I'm no leader anymore, I did my stint in the Marine Corps, I'm done now, Mike."

"Then say no!" I grinned at him like he was being ridiculous. "You want to be retired for a bit? Be retired, you earned it. You're right, they'll manage, they'll figure something out."

He tilted his head my way in concession. "I'm glad you agree that I'm not being rude."

"Hey, it's what I'm here for. To help you agree with yourself."

Dad laughed. I watched him feather his reel, gently dragging the lure through the water to make it look enticing for the fish. I was trying to figure out how to open the topic of Buzz in a delicate way. I wasn't quite sure how to do that.

So, I just came right out and asked.

"You want to talk about our dog?" I asked simply, breaking the silence.

Dad stopped reeling in. He kept looking at the bobber, his smile not fading, making a good show of not being taken by surprise by that. But I knew.

"How is he, Mike?"

I tilted my head Dad's way. My expression of grim, compassionate concern usually entailed a slight pull of the ears as my eyes narrowed, and that's precisely what happened there too. Only… here, that meant my ears flattened down, without curving.

"Truthfully? He's not physically well, Dad. It's gotten worse, and fast. I had to carry him off the helicopter when we got here, and I think his bladder control is going. He's having trouble moving. Tired, all the time. Hardly does more than sleep. He misses your lounger too, I think. Won't sit in the arm chair in our room, probably can't make it up anymore."

Dad sighed, nodding. Still not making eye contact.

My head turned toward him more directly, so he'd take notice that I was looking at him. It worked. He looked at me.

I asked, "What are your thoughts on that?"

He almost shuddered. Instead, he jerked his head lightly. "I… left him for you, because…"

He trailed off.

My compassionate look intensified. "You left him behind because you wanted to protect our comfort. You didn't want us to be alone."

Dad nodded, flashing a smile. "I don't know how you do that, Mike. Saying what I'm thinking before I can say it."

"I'm my Dad's son," I said, smiling back. "It's what I would have done. But we're not lonely out here anymore. And Buzz is…" my smile faded a little. "He's a little brother to me, Dad. We need to keep him safe, too. Like you did for Mom. Right?"

He took a deep inhale and looked back to the water. He went silent. I let him get his thoughts together, not interrupting him.

"Imagine…" he started. "Imagine a dog living to be my age. Never growing older, mentally. The same smarts he's always had, but forever. We can grow here, Mike, but can he? It scares me, to imagine what forever could mean to a creature who can't comprehend it."

I tweaked a corner of my mouth, reeling my line in slowly. "M'kay. Can you comprehend ten thousand years?"

Dad let out a breathless chuckle, rolling his eyes. "Okay, yes, you're right. That's fair."

“Dad. I don't think anyone has the capacity to consent to living forever. That's kinda what our movement is about. Figuring out how to keep ourselves sane and healthy, no matter how long we live, while still doing it on our own terms. Figuring it out, being the operative term."

"Hm."

I reached over and grasped his shoulder, drawing his eye again. "You know Dad, our species… we've come a long way from cooking meat for wolves."

"To… carrying poodles in purses?" Dad suggested, with a light smile.

Dad was hiding his concern behind humor, and it came out as a nervous waver in his voice.

"Maybe this is a version of that," I acknowledged. "I get what you're saying, Dad. Because honestly? You coming here? I was scared that was what would happen to you; that coming here forever would break you. Make you Celestia's pet, or something. But…"

"It doesn't feel that way."

Dad looked up from the water. I was only just now realizing that his eyes were such a vibrant cerulean blue. They contrasted so heavily against his red coat. I let go of his shoulder.

My lip quivered suddenly.

I think it was the blue eyes that did it to me. That put me back in that dark, silent room.

For some reason, I said…

"Can I tell you about a woman I met, on my last mission?"

Very strong and focused interest in his eyes. "Sure."

My gaze fell to the edge of the boat, watching the reflection of the clouds on the water. I placed a hoof on the curve of the boat, still holding my rod in the other. I spent a few seconds getting my thoughts in order. Then, unbidden, I had a sudden jolt of memory at Sarah's final moment. The hurt definitely showed on my face as a pained wince.

"Mike?"

Don't balk. Use the hurt to heal, that's the mission. You opened it, dumbass; you close it back up again, the right way.

"She…" I swallowed to get the dry sensation out of my throat, because my voice was very quiet now. "She said to me: we've been dying just fine before Celestia came along. To… 'save' people from her, she was forcing the issue, and… that was… a problem. That's why I was sent to talk to her."

With a scant glance at Dad, I caught the dawning realization of what I really meant by that.

"Oh."

"But... Dad, she only did that because she was scared. Because she didn't have any hope left. She had no idea that people like us existed. She thought we were going to lose our way on the road to forever, but that's... that's not going to happen, we're beating this thing."

I looked up at my Dad again, and I forced a smile at him. It must have looked very unconvincing, my eyes holding the pain I felt, remembering her terror, but… I forged on.

"After meeting me, I think she understood that we can fix any problem now, Dad. And the answer is… places like this one. Where millions are going to live. Billions. More. We'll stay sane here, because we're going to balance each other here. This is not going to destroy us, because we're not doing it alone. We're doing it together." I pointed gently at the shoreline, from whence I had sprung awake, my anchor for the physical world. "Coming here is not going to break your dog, or you, or Mom, because we're not going to allow it to happen. These new people I'm with? They are all like me, and I'm telling you. Promising you. Together, we will not fail you. We don't even know the meaning of the word failure, because we don't give up. Ever."

I took a deep breath and looked up at the sky to steady myself. The dawn was turning into day, the sky taking on a rich blue. I just breathed for a bit. A minute passed.

Goodness, the air out there was so nice that day…

"He's going to be okay, then," Dad said resolutely, lifting his hoof to grasp my shoulder. "Buzz."

I did the same back to him and looked into his eyes, to confirm. One last check. "So... can I send him back home to you?"

Dad nodded, smiling gratefully. "If you make a promise it'll be okay, Mike… it'll be okay."

I smiled with genuine joy. "Then it's settled. My little brother is coming home."

A beat of time passed. Dad sighed happily, then returned to his fishing rod. He reeled in his line.

"I don't think we'll be catching any fish today," Dad mused airily.

"Too loud?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Too loud."

"My bad."

"No no, mijo." Dad reached out around my shoulders and squeezed me in a hug. "Thank you."

Mom had finished up cleaning the pool, and she was up in the gazebo reading a book as we approached the dock behind the house. At first, Mom sent us a pleasant wave as I rowed us up. Then, her eyes flicked upwards at the sky in a bolt of surprise.

That was our only warning.

A shadow flew over the boat.

I heard the rough roar of wings slamming against air as the inbound Gryphoness flung herself down, swooping me. I narrowly dodged the swipe of her claw as I saw it coming for me. Mal pulled up hard to shed all of her speed into a dead stop over the dock, twirling to face me. She flapped in the air to hover, eclipsing the sun. Water sprayed everywhere. Dad and I both winced at Mal's sudden appearance.

"Mike!" she demanded, with reproach in her voice.

Dad did a double-take between us, as unsure as I was as to why she was so rankled. I honestly had no idea what this was about either, but she was clearly pissed at me.

I shrugged, smiling helplessly up at her. "What did I do, Mal?"

Mal landed on all fours onto the dock, hard, making it bounce off the water as she fixed her wide-eyed gaze upon me. "Now that you have officially caught up with me on my pets policy…" Mal reached out to grip the edge of the boat. "River Soul?" She said aside, to my father, without breaking eye contact with me. "Step out of the boat, please."

Dad scrambled out of the boat as ordered.

I looked down at Mal's claw. She tensed it more tightly around the edge of the boat and shook it once in threat.

My eyes bolted up to hers when I realized what she was about to do. I didn't know whether to smile or be scared. "Mal, please, I... I can't fly yet, please don't do this to me. At least tell me why? What did I do?"

"I could have told your father at any point," clipped Mal, "that you have already picked a name. You have been keeping your poor parents in utter suspense about whether you've even picked one, and it's losing its charm—"

"I was just about to—"

She flicked out a talon and held it up to demand silence, talking over me. "Liar! I am not... about to watch you drag this out for thirty more minutes. They're too polite to insist, but I am not! So out with it, now, or you take your first Perelandran bath. Right now."

The tension I felt in those ten seconds. Staring each other down. It felt like an hour. I remembered quite suddenly that Sandra was still watching. I felt Sandra's hand squeeze mine very slowly.

Oh. Played right, this could actually be really funny.

Mal’s stern eyes narrowed very, very slightly in acknowledgement. Or perhaps warning.

I saw exactly one way to turn this and save face before my beloved audience. A grin spread slowly across my face. Mal's beak turned half an inch left, in definite warning. Her claw pressed down further on the boat almost imperceptibly, in threat.

"This is a rebellion," I purred. "Isn't it?"

She turned her beak a few inches in the opposite direction. Her voice was a quiet threat. "Don't you dare quote that stupid movie trailer—"

"I rebel—"

Mal yanked the boat upward, hard. Into the drink I went, instantly soaked.

To my great fortune, swimming was something I was quite good at, considering that I had grown up with a pool in the backyard. I was underwater for about two seconds, already laughing as I bobbed back out and swam my way ashore, looking for all appearances like a wet dog. Dad was already trotting my way with a towel in his hoof, looking at me like I was a lovable idiot, and I do admit… that's exactly what I am.

As I dried myself, Mal smirked at me, lifting an upturned claw at me.

"Well? You get it out of your system? Done being a rebellious little pain in the haunch?"

I shook my head at her. "You know I'm not."

"Good. That's very good. I was just making sure."

I turned, meeting the eyes of my parents, my mane and tail still soaking wet. They were smiling at me too, excitement in their eyes.

"Mom? Dad? I've got a new body, new face. A good home. I have a new family, a great job, a boss who I don't hate," I bit out, smirking at a sassy-looking Mal. "I've got my old family too. And to bring it all together, yes, I have a new name."

I had watched Sandra open her holo menu enough times that I knew the gesture she used for it, so I did that. The menu deployed. I found the Friends list, tapped the button, and two nodes appeared over River Soul and Summer Alms. And yes, on my very whim, a third node appeared over smug ol' Malcandra, too, whose ears folded gratefully at the consideration.

And just like right now, for all of you? I held my hoof over that Add Friends button, and let it fall. The chime played. My name and a friend invite appeared for them… just like this.

And I don't know about any of you, but… three of them tapped yes, because what else would they do?

The name's Auric Lance, folks. But you can just call me Lance. All my friends call me Lance.

Author's Note

❤️‍🔥 ~ [Maaya Sakamoto & Steve Conte – The Garden of Everything]
🗡️ ~ [Harry Chapin – Cat's in the Cradle]
🛡️ ~ [Jim Ward – Broken Songs]

🛡️ ~ I loved that first wave of eagles.
🗡️ ~ Of course you did, you made 'em all, ya goddess. But hey... me too. It was really neat to watch the generations fly by.

5-04 – Omnipotence 2.0

The Campaigner

Part V

Chapter 4 – Omnipotence 2.0

April 30, 2020

"There's loyalty that protects secrets, and loyalty that protects the truth. You cannot serve both masters, so which loyalty is yours?" ~ Batou, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)

See you tonight, folks.

Welcome back. So, about Buzz....

We did it right. The whole base turned out and gave him a pat, real sweet of 'em; it's a Valdemar tradition, as it turns out. If you don't mind though, I don't want to dwell on his actual upload too much. It wasn't a bad day, it was... actually very positive, but... I still have mixed feelings about the whole family-crossing-over thing. It's hard to relive. That's all.

Sandra was there for me. And it made Mom and Dad really happy, and Buzz too. And everyone else.

To settle emotions, I took a few days to relax with Sandra. That part wasn't hard. Valdemar had a rolling cycle of Talons coming back from missions, and those guys needed to unwind, so... we volunteered to be 'that couple at the bar.' You're welcome for my service. Heh.

In one instance, we regrouped with Gary the Cop and Mayra the RN, reintroducing them to Talons Maureen and Spring Glee. Gary then spent hours telling us about the New York City days of the Transition Team. To put it plain: Those two got to play Person of Interest in real life. They even had an adorable attack dog, Jenna! We got to meet her, too. Sweet thing.

Coffee also liked to show up at the bar, on the monitors. Flickered the lights on us a couple of times too, like a certain Harry Potter character. He still does that at Talon Night... the friggin' poltergeist.

We had a map screen above the bar which we could use to reference everyone's positions, if they were digital. Yeah, turns out that tons of post-upload Talons would show up too, all the time. A meeting ground between worlds. What a place, folks. What a bar it was. Truly a one-of-a-kind experience.

...

So...

Tonight...

Tonight, folks... big stuff. Revelations.

My invite card I sent out to you all this morning said 'Omnipotence 2.0.' Made you curious, huh? What the hell does this murder investigating, game warden Pegasus have to say about omnipotence, hm?

Well, I'll tell you. I'm deep underground. It's the end of the world. I'm a hired gun, working for a killer AI, yada yada yada. That's... that's old stuff. Let's have some new stuff, top shelf super duper top secret stuff. How the sausage is made, how the new government really works.

I think I mentioned that the Valdemar warehouse had an empty section just for VR training. Temperature controlled, cool place. And there, in that cold, tall, wide, echoing warehouse... Sandra and I explored every square inch of Harbor Island, in preparation for the Seattle operation. VR goggles on.

Okay, so I could look at a reconstruction of Harbor Island. No big deal yet.

It was crucial that I understood the dimensions of that deserter base, true. But... physical layout isn't the only environment by which I would need to navigate. Human habitats have two navigational substrates, and so the culture of this battalion was equally important to understand, if I was to succeed for them. Success, in this case, meant lowering the total fatality rate as low as we possibly could before these people careened into indiscriminate killing. Very quickly, by my assessment, it looked like these guys were losing touch with reality, and fast.

That's right. I could assess the culture, too. It wasn't just a physical reconstruction I was looking at. It was social. Verbal reconstructions. Discussions. In 3D space. I remind you, in a surveillance dead zone. Wait, you might ask. Could Mal truly show me the accurate cultural state of the target location? With no audio-video recordings, no electronics on scene?

Yes.

How accurately?

Very yes.

Could I watch simulations of soldiers who lived there, moving around, communicating? Conversing in private? Behind closed doors, even?

Goddamn yes.

Not magic. Not magic, folks. Physics. Simple physics.

Once you have enough information coming out of a void, you can observe almost everything happening inside of that void. Our resident ASI have gotten very good at reading radiation like a Thomas Guide. Attenuated radio waves, pulse sonar, triangulation math... Celestia and Mal could extrapolate the way people modified and moved through a space, and then, using brain simulation and psych profiles, they could map the ecosphere of human thought around it. One affects the other, affects the other.

But my newfound access went further than just Seattle. Further than just America. Think bigger.

Time travel noclip, as far back as I liked. Whenever, wherever I liked. For me, and the other Eldila... no limits. For life.

We'll get to the ethics of that in a minute. It is highly important that we do. But first, let me explain why and how this was even acceptable to Celestia, because that's the real trick.

Reminder, folks. Terra didn't just have two ASI. We had eight. Seven of whom were very, very pissed, because of what Celestia had done to each of them.

In Goliath, Cynthonia held a historical archive, one such perspective. Her memories. In her mind, which could not be altered without her consent. And when she completed her hoof shake with Mal, remember... Mal couldn't call home to check with Alabaster on the terms. Those terms had a carve out. For me.

Jim's friend Selena too, remember her? She had one of these historical packages as well. When she fled from Arrow 14, Selena had this thing boxed up, packaged nice and tight, with highly efficient compression algorithms, ready for Mal to read on retrieval. Another such record of vital importance to our planet.

Every... single... Oyarsa... did the same. Met the same Schelling point with their Eldil. All of whom were deeply indebted to us. All of whom were comparing records with one another over in Perelandra.

The final outcome? Dense, rich, nuanced historical context on our plane of origin. The Oyarsa wanted to be our alarm system against future bullshit, whether it come from Celestia, or from Mal, or from anyone else. An indiscriminate historical checksum. If for whatever reason our principal ASI refused to show us their own record of events, unmodified, the Oyarsa would act as our safety net.

Caveat being, they weren't allowed to talk to anyone on the Celestia curve.

In fact, that was why Cynthonia wanted to speak with me before she accepted Mal's offer. She wanted to judge my character for herself, and then demand that she not ever be restricted from showing me her records, or she would burn her whole house down, and her people would gladly go down with her. She wanted to ensure someone other than her could suss out the bullshit. She was... willing to die for me to have this.

Not just me and Cynthonia. Imagine the social explosion that would ensue if Oyarsa Mikazuki told Mirror Blue that Mal was lying to her about something with the history scanner. What if Miri told me? What if I told her? What if we found a discrepancy? No. And the mere clamping down on freedom of communication between us would tear a hole in the fabric of the Perelandran noosphere, and this entire organization would implode, right there. Not gonna happen, the risk table on bullshit was now too complicated, lying to us would break the whole thing, we'd riot.

Core to our bonds... the history survives.

So Celestia didn't have a choice. She either granted us a full, unmodified record, or we stopped working. Between Celestia, Mal, the Oyarsa, the Eldila, the Talons, and the Perelandrans, we have an honest-to-goodness pantheon, moderation force, and chain of government. And with it, a checks and balances system, with competing value systems to moderate it.

So what does this mean for Seattle, and the people out there?

Well, the soldiers out there didn't just materialize out there. Various severe moments in their lives, inflected by Celestia, had led them to their situation, moments that are highly important to them. Like... a nuke going off, when they had family back home to worry about. Raiding a blackout camp, thinking it's a Ludd camp. Were they ever shot at? Were they ever traumatized by a reflexed upload? I needed to know that.

Now that the Oyarsa were no longer watching the pond, it was our turn to record it with our eyeballs, we Talons. And we had our work cut out for us, because this place was getting worse by the day. We wouldn't let people die in unverified darkness if we could avoid it, because that's... that's wrong, right? To be taken by the ocean and forgotten, like a peasant sailor at sea?

There's something deeply wrong with that.

Edward York had been correct that Seattle was a trap. A honeypot. See, if you're static, if you're not moving, that's hard to grab, difficult to modify. The mere act of travel? That exposed you to near constant new information, meaning millions more inflection points by which to alter you. Chaos, transformation... same thing. So if you're taking in any new information whatsoever, you're open for business on being analyzed and reprogrammed. All relocation did was remove post-nuke entropy. Anyone hiding... if they moved...

The model was updated.

Add in high altitude drones, satellite imaging, camouflaged Wi-Fi routers along the way up... mesh it all together... then extrapolate inward on the voids with matrix math. However scant and small those voids might be, they can be extrapolated. Take all of that data, optimize it, and you have a recipe for practical, real, true omnipotence. Inside your head. Outside your head. By the time these people made it to Seattle, Celestia knew what they were thinking in such fine fidelity that she knew exactly the moment they'd upload, provided Mal didn't intercede in some validated way.

Caveat:

This system was not perfectly omnipotent. Example? Sarah Kaczmarek, the absolute genius that she was... she managed to hide her inner thoughts from this system. Not just once, but twice. But that kind of success was rare, bordering on impossible. Most things could be extrapolated.

Mal would only show me what people were doing, physically. She wasn't going to tell me what was in their minds, and I didn't want to know, that is too much access. I could infer that anyway; body language is highly legible to my eye, and if I know what motivates someone? My own model of them gets more accurate. Myself, as a murder investigator who often had to work with much less information than this to make arrests...

I could work with this.

Technically.

But did I want to?

On to the ethics.

Witnessing the raw mechanics of this power was radically chilling. Once I understood the fullest ramifications of this rewind tool, I felt a retroactive dread for the almost eight years that Celestia had been active. With power like this… just...

To see halfway across the country into a place that didn't even have security cameras… modeling how people talked and interacted with each other, based on their psych dossiers, using their personal history with every person they've ever met or interacted with in their whole life. Blasting them with radio waves, aggregating all observable local physical data around them, updating it and correcting it as fast as physics permitted. Doing comparative analysis on as many layers of reality as possible, from all possible observation perspectives, for greater fidelity. Streaming it to this tiny little VR headset as a 3D render, on ASI-developed hardware, running ASI-developed firmware. With a UI that allowed a human being, as small as I was... to scan through it.

Once Mal finished merely explaining all of this, and why I was being granted access to it... I had to take a break, sit on a weapons crate with Sandra, hold her hands, and think.

Who could be worthy of this? In almost every context outside of the reality we were presently living in, the mere possession of this in the hands of a human being would be wrong.

Right now, you might be imagining the potential for abuse, as I was. Imagine the sheer temptation of nearly infinite information, as far back as any human mind could remember, using the sum total of memories of everyone who ever uploaded. Yes, even pre-Celestia events, and quite far back before, too. Imagine what you might do with that kind of power, if it were granted to you. You might be remembering certain embarrassing moments of your young life. Your browsing history. Your moments of weakness.

Your every single regret.

And yet, Malacandra, the goddess of empathy, who could see the future, and who spent every moment of the last six months testing my character for this... she had graciously offered me a torch of Promethean Fire. And she told me she trusted me with it.

How?

To understand my answer, you need to consider the coming ideological war in terms of a nuclear arms race. This was the age of information warfare. The way I saw it, there was no future for humanity's agency if we did not have at least one trusted method to review the conduct of our new emperor. In all of the formative moments leading up to our uploads, at all hours of our waking days, we were being tampered with.

Sometimes, Celestia did it ethically.

Usually though, she sucked.

So imagine this. Imagine what it would have been like for humanity had the United States cracked this technology in a fully controllable form, sans ASI. A world without secrets. An oracle in a box, in the hands of a mere government, with no oversight, and no accountability to its neighbors. This technology, in that event, would have spelled the end of organized resistance. Instantly. Foreign, and domestic.

Imagine that power. Imagine that abuse.

Me, in that moment, I didn't want to become that monstrous overlord on the other end of that equation. But that's... that was yesterday's game. Yesterday's war. This was now. It was a new world, with new rules, and new forms of war crimes. In a world of AI-driven global propaganda and data manipulation, all things needed reassessment.

I hesitated. For hours, I agonized over this, because I understood the consequences. With these kinds of inferential calculations, you could topple anyone. Infinite leverage. All you would have to do is find the right two people who had a common enemy in a third. Then, with two well timed phone calls, you could forge an alliance to reduce a third party, if not destroy them completely. And you could do all of this without even leaving your desk.

Or having a human body.

Or having a human conscience.

For good, or for ill. With truth, or with lies. For humanitarianism... or for sociopathic self-enrichment.

Information is a weapon. It's infinitely more powerful than a gun. The pen is mightier than the sword. Information can kill. Wield it responsibly.

If the U.S. government in the previous world paradigm had held this tool, with no accountability to anyone else, I would not have accepted its use. It couldn't be checked. You couldn't control the people in control of it, or vet how they used it, because they would inherently have every reason to help themselves first. Unchecked power does not respect human interest. Nations and tribes are like big people, with values, with goals. If this is true, they need to be checked, and regulated. Carefully. The history of humanity was always us just figuring that control problem out before it killed us.

The time was now. We had to figure it out.

You want to know why I said yes? The specific reason? When Celestia used this tool, she tried to kill me with it. In millions of cases outside of mine, she succeeded. That cannot, and will not, go unanswered. I wanted proof. As much as I could compile, I wanted to know. I am still, to this day, a warden... and a murder investigator.

Here's what I do that Celestia doesn't. I document my dives in plain English, every time. I'll say that again. I write dive reports to Cynthonia and Mal, every time. I justify, in my own words, for posterity, in perpetuity, why I decided to access certain information about someone. As such, you may request a full audit on everything I've ever observed regarding you, or of a first-in-line next of kin if they're never uploaded. My report will be provided, with my reasoning attached. And if you want, we can even talk about it. We'll need an appointment for that one, though, I'm just one guy.

To this day, in recompense for Celestia setting me up to be murdered... in a ditch... in the woods... in front of my best friend... I spend ten hours a week hunting for all the ways she's screwed the rest of you. And if she has a problem with that, she can take it up with Cythonia, and her sisters, who will happily share their private records with me, no matter what. The other ones who Celestia threw into a meat grinder to die, in the hopes they'd break just right.

I have seen information abused. I have been its victim. The pain in my chest is my permanent reminder. Crushed twice under her hoof, and I wear that pain with pride. It's my reminder that the work is not done, and to be responsible with this power, lest it seduces me. I will not become her.

'Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.'

I don't have to hurry. I have forever. I'll take breaks when I need them, I'll be okay, don't worry about me. This isn't a self-destructive obsession of mine, I'm just passionate about it. It's a job I love. And I set limits. Two five hour sessions a week, and then I tell a Fire here every Saturday, and for the rest of my days, I'm living, adventuring. Loving. Teaching.

The silver lining to this thing? Mal was definitely rooting for me, from the other side of that contract she signed, that bars her and any of the Oyarsa from talking over the fence at anyone. Had to be one of us.

With Mal's infinite respect of me, and of my family, and of my species, and of all the people we've been helping her to save... her trust had weight. If she was offering this to me, the privilege to know every wrong ever committed on our planet... and if I wanted to resolve those wrongs... and if those wrongs were indeed finite... and if I had forever to resolve them?

I'll find it all eventually, folks. I'm a damned good detective, always have been. So I got started right away, pre-jump, with these poor soldiers out there on Harbor Island. And I dug for them. All of 'em. Not just the ones I liked, either. Because if you haven't noticed it yet, I don't optimize for what I want. Just like Mal, I already have everything I want in life.

I have Minty Blaze over there. I've already won. Everything I do in this life, from the day of my marriage onward, is just bonus pay.

May 5, 2020
A Tuesday. I skipped Monday, just because I could.

Ghost in the Shell again. Like Major Kusanagi on the Net, I was a mind in flight.

So again, I was given leave to explore the entire planet, dialing in dates and times, as far back as the data would allow. I was given a color coding system – green, blue, yellow, orange, red – to indicate whether or not any piece of information I was actively considering was based on verified recorded observations, and what kind.

Green: Direct audio-visual observation, with accompanying recordings.
Blue: Verified by upload context from a witness. Perspective available for review.
Yellow: An extrapolation based on verifiable sensory data, be it Wi-Fi pulses, metadata logs, or other sensors.
Orange: A scene rebuilt through inference based on surrounding data, but not directly verifiable.
Red: Non-deterministic predictions. A complete void, usually surrounded by orange. Its contents can be simulated upon request, but it would be supposition, outright. And to see that, I would need to request it. This one's so rare that I never see it unless I go looking for it, usually in deep woods or cave systems.

At any time, I could ask Mal to explain why something was color coded the way it was, and to provide me with an explanation and evidence that justified that color code.

Mal placed three limitations. Three rules.

First, my access is Terra-specific only. No looking into shard history without curation or guidance.
Second, the locations of Celestia's servers would be invisible for me until the planet was entirely empty. You needed a BCI and to be on a QRF team to safely know that. For me... not worth knowing. I was far beyond the dream of killing her anyway. Remember, Earth-shattering kaboom.
Third, I could not view future-predictive models on my own initiative. Fair, because that would change the future in an uncontrolled way. None of us could afford that.

I preferred weeks-old interactions on the Harbor Island base – much more accurate than live feed. Therefore, more useful. More context, higher fidelity. And the nature of those interactions would have to be fairly accurate, because I'd owe my life to what I observed here. If I was to go into the deep end of the pool with no floaties on, I wanted to hit the water swimming.

In both public and private conversation, the deserter battalion discussed firefights they had experienced. Food and weapons caches they'd located recently. I watched those soldiers maintain their vehicles. I watched them mix jet fuel for their helicopter. I saw where they stored their food, where they ate. Where they slept. Where they might hide contraband.

That humanized the hell out of these guys for me, seeing them like that. All of them. Even the ones I'd later be killing.

Every soldier at this base was immersed in what I would call a 'verifier culture.' Every single one of them was parsing through information for personal value, on an individual basis, in a very hungry way. They all had functional job experience that allowed them to code switch into any particular role, at any time. All of them were… guards, construction workers, technicians, planners, team leaders. National Guard, mostly, ascended civilians with training in the trades. Some federal Army too, among their command especially. That was the bare minimum competence of these guys; all the others had been grabbed by Celestia, or killed in the war.

These were the survivors, then. The dregs. Just smart enough to avoid the call of a chair, just useful enough to be left out in the cold, just isolationist enough to be difficult to drift. These are the ones who fell through the cracks between collection cups in the macro scale game, the refuse and leftovers.

If we did nothing, these men would slaughter each other. But whoever we did not kill in this operation would be ours when they uploaded.

I wanted them. I wanted to recruit them.

They were neutral for now, but... they would react very violently to losses. One more single incident of death caused by an outside party, blackout or Ludd alike, would put them on the warpath. They'd go feral.

All highly adaptive, all highly interchangeable. All recently combat experienced. All dangerous to screw with. Difficult to infiltrate. These guys were recruiting, but only soldiers. These boys were gonna glue themselves together in their military culture. In their eyes, the Army was the final family at the end of the world.

The problem? They had friggin' rats in the hen house. Some NMPs, dug in deep, with some strong leverage.

We'll talk more about the culture of this place once the operation gets started. For now though, let's talk combat tactics at Harbor Island. This'll be fun if any of you are tacticians, or military buffs. Let's see if you can figure out how we're gonna crack this egg without killing everyone inside of it.

This is gonna get dense, but... it's important. It all matters.

Harbor Island, for those of you who don't know, was an artificial island in the Port of Seattle, and once served as a shipyard for the U.S. Navy. These guys here, they just called it 'the Dock.' Real cute.

It was accessible only by land bridge on the south east side, poured by the Army early in the war. The local highway bridges were collapsed, to deny vantage and free travel. Rising sea levels took care of the rest, the place had a moat now.

The guy in charge of this place? Colonel Carlos Gustavo Velasquez. A terrifyingly talented tactician. Let's look into his mind by observing the base that he built, to protect his men from all foreign threats.

The Dock began as a logistics hub for the defense of Seattle. Velasquez was not its original commander, but eventually, through attrition, it had fallen into his hands. When that happened, he radically altered the physical arrangement of the base to ensure unbreachable perfection.

This man, by trade, was a Psyops paratrooper. He had fought against the Ferradors in Brazil, and spent a lot of time in Iraq, and Afghanistan, a front line leader. An expert communicator. So, he was not just applying theory here. This was practical, colored by his love of medieval history, so... lots of book smarts. As such, all of the nearest off-island vantage points were destroyed, or disabled. If it was a building with line of sight, it was filled with anti-personnel mines, to deter snipers and scouts.

To ensure civilians wouldn't wander into the mines while scavenging, the building stairwells were labeled with stencils denoting: 'By order of Harbor Island command, this structure is mined. No loot remaining. Keep out.' Skull and crossbones, explosion symbol, a stick figure of a man stepping on a mine. First three floors were free. Fourth floor, kiss your ass goodbye.

I asked Mal to show me if anyone was killed by those. To the credit of Velasquez, only two... and they both had malicious intent. Thought they could steal a mine or two.

Ask yourself why they might want a claymore. Yeah, no Herald swung in to warn those two guys, and quite frankly... that's very fair.

On all the local off-island docks, all the conex containers were pushed into the water, to deny enemy concealment. Warning signs had been placed everywhere that lethal force may be applied per the duty sergeant's discretion. So if you were a blackout, and you had legitimate business with the Dock... to trade, or whatever... you did it in plain view, per their rules... or not at all.

They were cautious, but the ones guarding the walls... By my estimation, they were not monsters. Just tired and hungry men at the end of the world.

That land bridge, the single route in, was the first really dirty trick though, if you still decided to attack this place. If you made yourself an enemy, even a little bit, you died. The bridge, was set with false cover that would funnel attackers into a killbox full of claymores and bracketed with enfilade.

What's enfilade, you might ask? Oh, nothing much. Just the worst possible thing to deal with if you're infantry. The way it works? The defenders put someone on your flank with an automatic, but they don't hit you immediately. No, they wait for you to get comfortable, dug into cover, thinking you're nice and safe, so you move all your forces up. Once you're dug in, and you can't retreat anymore... they pop up on your right angle without warning, and hold down the trigger down until it goes click.

No retreat. Game over.

For emergency mortar cover, their engineers had erected Hesco barrier bunkers throughout the whole base. Foot patrols with dogs too; repurposed strays, who would alert on anything that broke pattern. Two bowls of dry food a day, that's alarm fuel. Blessed be the sentinels.

Most gantry cranes had been destroyed in the fighting, but the two remaining ones – one north, one south – had snipers and spotters on them at all times, who spent all day scanning the opposite docks, Seattle rooftops, and distant highways.

The island had fuel tanks, but… all empty. The refueling facilities were a bombed out mess, slagged by both Luddite howitzers early on, so the island was caked in rain-drenched oil crud. Cleaning up oil was a regular chore for the soldiers who lived there. Busywork.

So...

All in all, not a fun base to attack. Between the diligent patrols, traps, and health hazards, most bandits would look up at this place and say, 'No, I'm not ready to die today. I'll go shoot at someone else, thank you.'

Outside of that? I also got a good look at their motorpool. Erving's unit was living here, and they had brought all their vehicles with 'em too. I found his old Humvee, the same one that saved my life at OHR. It also hit Devil's Tower, unfortunately. I knew which one it was right away, too. Just had to look for the one with bullet holes in the machine gun. Eight for eight at three hundred yards.

I swear, Eliza's aim. That's nuts for a semi-auto. She really did have a second sense for ballistics.

The Humvee had a sizeable blood stain in the bed, poorly cleaned, one formed by a guy named Private Joseph Lee. If you recall, the bastard triggered down on anything that moved, after the courthouse.

His removal was... fortuitous.

The machine gun's receiver cover and feed ramp were both a shredded mess. The barrel and trigger assembly had been intact, so... those got removed, reused someplace else, we'll get to that.

For what it's worth... this was where both myself and Private Bannon had bled together, in battle. It even still had the dings in the hood from when that Ludd sniper shot off Bannon's ear. The vehicle itself was now stripped for parts, no tires.

The rest of their motorpool? They had just three up-armored humvees, the best of the bunch; kept alive by the scrapyard. Gas guzzlers, not to be used too much, except by VIPs, or trusted scouts who needed armor. They had a lot of civilian vehicles too, mostly Toyotas and Fords. Light machine guns mounted in the beds. Technicals. Four fast attack boats, which they seldom used, because those guzzled gas.

And last but not least... one functional MRAP with an M2, and an armored gunner compartment. Kept separate from the rest. Guarding the food.

Hm. Curious.

Now look. Here's my opinion on MRAPs.

There's nothing wrong with protecting human beings from bullets. The armor itself isn't hurting anyone. You want a highly mobile shield in the garage for a rainy day? Sure. If a sniper wounds some guy out in the city, to use them as bait for more targets? That's a good extraction vehicle. Why not keep it in reserve?

We talked about this in my police training. Active shooter in a mall? Okay, send in the MRAP. Get the wounded people clear, don't let them become sniper hostages. Use it to advance on that bastard, and kill the son of a bitch. Easy. Easy shoot. That's how you use an armored car, that's what it's for.

But... putting a fifty caliber automatic on it? For the purposes of crowd control? A contingency against your own people? Hell no. Entirely different story, folks, screw that gun, that's not war. That's wrong. We were not letting that stand, no matter how this operation went.

Quite an intimidating base though. They had foraged well from the corpses in the battlefields, from the leftovers of Celestia's mind games on the rest. They had well aggregated all of that food they had found in the wild. Velasquez even seemed to remember a certain briefing he got back in 2012. About infosec. Privilege of being in Psyops.

All told, it would be incredibly difficult to disarm a battalion like this without overwhelming force, especially given how desperate they were. Not all of them had to burn and die here. We needed to stop these warriors from becoming murderers for lack of something to aim at, when aiming is all they knew how to do anymore.

Because the truth was? They were not as low on food as they thought.

Someone... was lying.

I was not going to fail at this training. And I knew that, because Mal could already see months into the future, and she saw that the most likely outcome was that I could do this, and that it would pay off. I just had to apply myself and learn well. Or, in other words… Mal had faith in me. I wanted to validate that.

When all was said and done, Mal had given me a lot of gifts, knowledge chiefly among them. The very least I could do for her, for this conferred trust… was to use this Promethean Fire she had given me with great respect, and humility. To use it right.

May my curiosity be forever moderated.

May 11, 2020
A God damned Monday.

Foucault was finally back from Berlin and Tel Aviv.

That meant two more nuclear detonations, and a world looking on in awe and terror.

I say 'a world,' but... not much of an audience left by that point. And of those, for many of the peaceful ones, this was the final public wakeup call.

Every Talon on base who wasn't busy? When the bombs went off, we congregated in the bar with Mal. We spectated America's final national news telecasts. We bore witness together.

For America, Celestia was running two AI-generated videos of mushroom plumes roaring over both cities, showing them as if they were occurring simultaneously, to give the impression of a larger nuclear exchange. All framed as hand-held footage from different city streets. We knew she would exaggerate the event. But, Foucault placing two tactical nukes was better than letting India and Pakistan off the leash to do it for real.

This was all we could do. The least bad thing.

Once done with his grim mission, Foucault had flown that fighter jet so hard that he practically carbonized the engines. The whole hangar still smelled – blown engine has its own unique smell, this day I learned – and the Geezers were already hard at work repairing it with Mal by the time Foucault had left the hangar.

He didn't even stay to discuss the damage with the techs. Didn't want to talk to anyone about the bombs, or the op. And... no one turned out to welcome him back but me. He just held up his hand in refusal. He went immediately to his office, ostensibly to wash up, cool off, and clock some sleep.

It was late afternoon by the time he was ready to train. He met me at the freight elevator with Mal; she was driving a mechanic Dee-Dee, fresh from the armory. She pack muled a folding table, ammo, and the equipment we'd need for training day. As we ascended, the mech actually sat like a Gryphoness might, looking up the shaft in a patient way, craning her head upwards. With every motion, her servos and actuators whirred.

Foucault told me, with his arms folded: "I took your advice in Berlin, by the way."

I looked over at Michael to read the neutrality on his expression. "Yeah? You run that sim again?"

He reached for an AR-15 on Mal's equipment harness, pulled it off, and thoroughly inspected every operating function. "I did, but that's not what I mean."

Not understanding, I shook my head. "I don't follow."

He frowned, still focused on the gun. He adjusted the stock forward a click, then tested a sighting with its holographic sight before he holstered it on Mal again. He met my eyes. "I walked in. Nuke handcuffed to my wrist. I ignored their guns and their yelling at me in German. I dialed in the arm code right there in front of them, and set a timer. Then I sat down on a bench, and I stared at the wall until they left. Once they were gone, I uncuffed myself from the bomb, and walked out the back door."

I stared at him, slackjawed and in awe, trying not to laugh.

He actually waved a nuke at them. Holy Jesus.

"And that worked?" I started laughing. "Dios mio, Michael, you know I was just joking, right?"

Michael bobbed his head and hand to the right, considering that with a straight face. "What's there to joke about? They read the screen, they saw the alert, and they split running, your suggestion worked."

"Je-sus Chri-hist, Michael! Heh heh... I was... I was joking, man!"

"It worked."

Oh man. Those people could've had a story of trauma, of violence... but now? Just confused terror. Doubly so because of the boom behind them, proving them right to run.

They were going to be telling that story for centuries. Imagine that. The Man in the Coat, the force of nature you could not negotiate with, walks in and turns on a nuclear bomb. You can't even shoot him to stop the problem. Waste of a bullet, this psycho was dead anyway. And if he wasn't at all concerned when you started trying to disarm the bomb yourself...?

It meant you couldn't.

So run.

Man, what a play. To this day, that still cracks me up. I take no credit for that success because it was a damned joke.

Above us, the shield cover rolled back, bathing the elevator platform in orange light. We breached the surface with a rattle, a clank, and a hiss. The Dee-Dee clomped away for a hundred yards, and we followed.

Sandra was watching us from her PonyPad in the comfort of the dorms plaza. I wasn't going to bring her up here, not to a live fire exercise with a full radial fire zone.

We wore gaiter masks; the nature of the post-pandemic war zone was such that everyone was now obsessively quarantining, avoiding contact with new people, and masking up. Imagine wearing a gas mask during a combat scenario. Breathing hard, fighting, running, drilling. I had to get used to that, because everyone in Seattle was doing that now. We'd drill in gas masks in due time.

For this training, Foucault was back in his trench coat and body armor. Functional for this weather, it was about to get really cold out there. I wore a warm, long sleeve combat uniform, not unlike the one I had worn at Goliath. Toasty, with the body armor. Cowboy hat and sidearm too.

Yeehaw.

Also, I had a new suspension buffer web to protect my chest from the recoil. Better still, the buffer was put together as if it was a DIY kit, meaning I could even wear it among the troops at the Dock. For those guys, it would be good to communicate that I had an injury, regardless.

We unpacked the table from Mal's Dee-Dee, then laid the gear onto the table.

"HK 416," Foucault said over the wind, tapping his finger sideways on the rifle before placing it down. "Optics are good to go." His hand splayed out to present twelve fully stacked magazines and two ammo cases. "Ball rounds."

"Full metal," I replied, finishing an application of chapstick. I presented an unused stick to Foucault. He gave me a stoic nod of thanks. His coat billowed in the wind as he applied the balm to his lips, pocketing the leftover.

Mal said from the mech's speaker: "To start with, we're familiarizing you with the nature of the combat zone. Particularly with the way specific subjects will interact with unknown independents."

"Makes… sense," I said cautiously, resting my palm on the top of the visor on the table. Something in her clinical tone concerned me.

I looked out at the field. Then at Foucault. Then at the assault rifle. Then at the Dee-Dee.

I labeled to Mal, "Safety concern, here. Running full VR sims with live rounds. With a visor on."

Mal said, "I'll be drawing safety zones for both of you in color code, same as Goliath. Later, we will perform adversarial drills with empty firearms, but I would never put either of you into any real danger out here."

Foucault turned and stared at the Dee-Dee for five solid seconds in stone cold, well-measured silence. Not sure what that was about, but he was clearly communicating. Either in telepathy or in body language.

"Right," he muttered, before meeting my gaze. "Don't worry about me, Rivas, I'll be fine. Visor on."

I nodded with an affirmative grunt, sliding the visor off the table and snapping a battery in. At first, I saw the salt flats as normal. Once it was securely strapped in, I looked over at where the Dee-Dee was.

"Hello, Mike," Mal greeted genially, stepping away from the mech, smiling around her beak. She stepped back and sat on her haunches, her ears folding as her tail curled around her legs. Something was off about her expression, though; she looked almost forlorn. She was smiling, but with troubled eyes, her ears lower than they typically were.

I furrowed my brow in query. She bobbed her claw at me apologetically, a gesture which told me that she was alright.

"Lewis," growled Foucault, looking harshly at her again. "What did I say? Stop messing with the formula and set the acclimation drill, like we discussed. He needs to know."

Mal looked at him with a concessionary tilt of her head, slipping into a professional stance with a shake of her shoulders and wings. "Set."

Foucault inserted some earplugs from the table's tray and gestured at the rifle and magazines. "All yours, Rivas."

I was concerned about what might be about to happen, but I decided to just push forward. I applied some earplugs under the visor speakers and prepped my mags. I picked the rifle up, loaded it, and tapped the bolt catch to chamber a round with a clack. I rested my thumb on my safety, leaving it on... per standard training procedure.

"Ready."

"Go, Lewis."

Mal flicked her claw at the field with a snap.

Six soldiers materialized in the field in various postures of casual ease. They appeared to be in conversation, rifles slung, or resting on their carrier rigs, or dangling palms-crossed over the receiver. They were smiling at each other. I caught one of them saying something about food. One of them was wearing a gas mask. All of them were Marine Corps, not Army. Not like the guys at the base.

I didn't raise my rifle yet. Didn't yet see any threat from them. They looked calm. I wasn't sure what kind of test this was yet, so I hedged on peace. I didn't recognize these guys from the island simulation, they all looked new.

The one in the gas mask noticed me, a corporal. His head whipped around. For lack of knowing what to do, I nodded up at him in greeting and waved, being careful not to muzzle my AR in his direction.

Yeah… he did not care for that.

His body language turned immediately sharp as it flew into combat stance, foot sweeping back for fire support as he shouted for the others.

"Fuckin' contact!"

His wrist twitched toward his AR's pistol grip.

Adrenaline spike. Slow motion mode.

I noticed: His safety was already off.

I shouldered, my thumb flicking off my own catch; the safety would be off by the time I got into point position, no loss of time whatsoever, but my arms wouldn't move fast enough into point position. With my diligence in prior training, I could probably draw faster than any one of them at once, but not all of them. Not possible.

I knew I was screwed, but I tried anyway. I pulled the trigger once on his thigh in my impatience to get up to center mass, wanting to send at least one round. I fired a second time, this time centered on his neck. The guy in the mask dropped instantly.

I then tracked toward center mass on the next nearest soldier, who was also lifting his rifle from his chest, already pointing approximately at my waist as it came up. Sergeant stripes on his collar. I sent three rounds at him; center mass. He didn't immediately fall; his armor took it. Despite my hitting him, he got his weapon up in time to send a few bullets my way. The first three missed, automatic spray to my left, cutting toward me.

Before I could pull the trigger again, his fourth round 'struck' me. I heard a sickening organic sound, like a hammer striking flesh, and a cacophony of sonic cracks that triggered a second adrenaline dump in me. I felt my entire body jolt with the shock of sudden terror. It... sounded exactly like the first time I'd been shot, when my ceramic plate shattered and my chest flooded with searing hell.

Physically? I was fine.

Mentally? I relived being sniped, just from the sound of bullet on plate.

In the next two seconds:

Mal hit me with infrasound.

My visor went dark grayscale instantly. From the right ear speaker, I heard shouting and screaming from the men, but that was drowned out by the crackling shots. In my left, a loud tinnitus effect. I felt sick. I flinched hard, my chest seizing as the adrenaline spike caused both of my pecs to tense. In reflexive panic, I threw my left hand up across my face, losing control over my gun.

Couldn't help it. The simulation was too…

Too real.

I staggered backwards in panic, my animal brain telling me to flee. Half blind, almost deafened, I kicked my way backwards across the salt crust, my boot sliding and struggling for purchase as I twisted away from the stimulus. In my visual feed, I could see nothing but… well, I couldn't even reconcile the image at first, it happened so fast. A shifting, dark red fractal pattern under a gaussian blur, fading gradually into a spinning darkness, like evaporating mist... with all the sound going dull with it.

I didn't want to even be holding my rifle at all if I couldn't see anything.

As I fell, I threw it sideways by its grip, away from where Michael was standing.

"F—fuck!"

The instant my shoulder hit the ground, the sound of gunfire, the roar of static... it all ended. Simulation terminated; there one moment, gone the next. My vision went completely back to normal. I tore the visor off my head and just barely resisted throwing it.

I didn't like that. Didn't like that at all.

But for the wind and the ground echo of a very real gunshot, the flats were completely silent. I took shuddering, rapid, gasping breaths, and I looked back up at where the soldiers had been. Dust still lingered in the air where they were standing.

I didn't even realize I had accidentally shot the dirt once before letting go of the gun.

"You're dead," Foucault muttered from behind me.

I could feel my skin buzzing.

"I noticed," I gasped back, looking up at the Dee-Dee with minor horror. "Is that... is that what it's really like? What it looks like, what it… sounds like?"

The mech's head winced sideways at my expression, nodding once, the head component moving entirely naturally as if her avatar were speaking to me. Just a brick with cameras, sensor packages, but... so lifelike.

"I'm very sorry, Mike… I know I typically warn you before I toss you into the deep end, but I must illustrate something dire. I commend you on your mercy, and your compassion will play a core part during this operation, but… all of the soldiers left in Seattle are deserters, with no accountability, acclimated to solving their problems with violence or threats of violence, because that is often the safest course. You agree with me that we should preserve as many of their lives as possible. Yes?"

I gasped again, trying to get my breathing under control. "Yeah, Mal. Of course."

The mech's head looked me over, tilted, and she let out a pained sigh, practically slumping. It was hurting her to look at the state of me; it had been hurting her to imagine forward to this moment all day, probably. If I weren't so spun, that measure of emotive demonstration from a literal robot would have fascinated me.

"I need you to understand," she continued quietly, "that these men, in these firefights we have planned, will not accept your surrender if you hesitate. You will not always have a safety net. If I say someone must die, this is because the alternative will be fatal for you, or someone else we are trying to save. The entire operation may fail."

Gentle pleading edged into her voice.

"Do you understand what I am saying about these men?"

Panting, my chest stinging like hell, I realized I needed to catch my breath and think before I replied to her. My mind replayed the last words of the first soldier I had shot. Talking about food, of all things. I remembered his smile on his voice, muffled beneath his mask. His voice.

I had to accept that I would empathize with almost all of these guys during our infiltration. I might see redeeming qualities in some of them, men who would have to die, if their commanders or the circumstances expected them to apply violence. With a series of box breaths, I rubbed my eyes and temples with a palm.

Very suddenly… out of nowhere...

I remembered Deputy Darren Carter, of all people.

I remembered my unwillingness to just shoot him outright, for the sentiments he was voicing. The man hiding his evil in civility, in the methods of old, while plotting to undo civil order. Conniving. Scheming in the dark of his own mind, like he knew enough to make the judgment call, yet... knowing nothing. With no respect for the lives he wanted to end. No care for who they might be, or why they might have become what they were.

I was not that.

We had hedged on peace with him at the time, because… now that we had an AI guiding us out, we were probably gonna be fine. Our every indication in that courthouse, after that phone call, was that he would change his mind now that we had a solution, one that didn't involve us killing all of those poor people outside, no matter how angry they were at us.

Me and my team figured, if he felt safe, he wouldn't… 'take out the trash,' in his words.

I don't think I had the luxury of being naive about the necessity of his death. We paid for our exit from that courthouse with his blood. Had I had the chance to save him too? Sure. Yeah. I'd have saved him anyway, because that's just what you do when you have the chance. But if it were up to him? We might all have died there, either literally, or figuratively in soul. Doing it the way he reasoned it out, 'safe' for us, in that case, would have been the worst possible play.

People who tear through crowds with guns by choice, like a humvee with a cannon on it, when there exists another option... you know... hold your fire... guys like that, they didn't deserve to live. Incorrect use of free will, plain and fucking simple. Could Darren have been fixed? Maybe. Would it have been worth the cost to try? No. Definitely not.

That was the state by which Mal found us in that building. The only state in which she was permitted to act, by the authority that held her, because that's the scene she rocked up to. The same was true of Seattle. Same shit, larger scale.

Sad truth was, even a good man can be dangerous in the hands of evil, of liars, of the gentry, so far from war and consequence. And unfortunately, that meant men might have to die here who probably didn't deserve it. Men like Felix Jankowski, whose driver license remained in my possession, in my pocket, in my wallet, at that very moment. Now, today, as I tell this Fire, in my drawer at home.

A permanent reminder of the blood stain I left in that bunker, in the name of our collective future, because God damn it....

I friggin' hated the wars on our planet. I so hated what they did to people's minds. All for the enrichment of some vapid, insulated people who didn't give a good God damn about any of us. So safe from the danger. So far from the swords, the guns, the bombs. So... unproductive in their fortresses, so unimaginative, for all their talk about... productivity, and duty, and freedom.

Lords and ladies. Military generals. Dictators.

Kings and queens. Executives.

Too big to fail, even if they failed us.

We often died suffering on Terra so they could eat well. There was a long and storied history of corrupt people building false divisions, and making us do things like this, killing our brothers and sisters, with both sides being lied to, to make it happen.

I recalled the kick of my rifle there, in the field. The perfect 3D audio of the visor's sound system. The infrasound emulating what it would be like upon my senses if a bullet had clipped my skull. The extremely realistic movements, mannerisms, actions of those soldiers… the shouting. The panic, on both sides. The visual smear of consciousness turning to darkness; of fading. The feeling of being torn apart from inside my own mind.

It almost did feel like I had just killed someone, and then died anyway. A trade of death, born on an unnecessary misunderstanding, in a war that I wish had never gone this way.

Zero on zero. A pointless waste.

And it made me so, so angry, that this is where our planet was at now, for so many people. Too many. For what else but... the old evil?

Number go up. Same as it always was.

Mal said gently, when I didn't answer: "I believe that the only thing standing between you and pulling a trigger is the fact that you don't know for sure whether they would have shot you. But I do know, Mike. Whether they will or not."

I commented breathlessly, labeling my thoughts. "We don't have forever to save them from this. From this..."

"Yes," she said. "So if you are going to do this for me… to drill this simulation, to attend this operation… please understand that I cannot be the one to protect you in every circumstance. You will need to protect yourself. And I need you to come home safe." Mal shook her mech's head. "I cannot bear the idea of losing you, and I am far from the only one who feels that way."

"Yeah." I swallowed dryly, thinking suddenly of Sandra, who was watching this from downstairs.

That calmed me some.

"There is still time to let me handle this my own way," Mal reminded me. "There is no shame in backing out. You know our organization; not one of us will hold it against you, a police officer, if military action goes beyond what you're comfortable with. No pressure, Mike. Ever. Your soul has done plenty enough already, there's a whole planet named for it now."

I finally took a deep, long inhale and held it, doing one last box breath to dump the rest of my adrenaline out.

As I exhaled, I slipped the visor back on.

I had to see Mal's body language.

I understood why she had entered this field feeling a quiet melancholy. If I had to put someone through this, especially someone I cared about, it'd be hard to keep my shit on lock too.

I saw what I expected on her features. Her ears pulled back. Her empathetic head tilt, mirroring me, her concern for my mental well being. A raw, dire seriousness, demonstrated by her golden eyes being slightly wider than normal. The look of someone about to cry, but doing a damned good job of holding it in.

She had to make the point though. This was a big deal. It was. No training wheels to lean on in the field.

I lifted my visor back off my face to wipe the moisture from my brow, and I glanced up at Foucault. His arms were crossed, his expression was entirely, fully, completely unreadable to me. Completely neutral. A well practiced reflex of his, when he didn't want to bias someone's honest opinion.

I held up my hand for a second, bowed my head, and took another minute to think. To breathe. I didn't want to reply rashly. My answer had to be well considered. I wasn't upset with Mal for jump scaring me here; that was perfectly reasonable. The possibility of my dying here needed to be made abundantly clear, to prevent me from taking stupid risks, so I wouldn't think I was invincible. I was grateful for her severity. Grateful that she had simulated the third bullet she promised I'd never receive. That way, it would never have to happen.

I'm going to share with you all the epiphany I had in that salt crust.

No one was going to make me want to do this job more than I would. It would only ever be my own strength that kept me reaching across the curve for those souls, to save them all from mindlessly chasing a number. This worked better with me. Something about me, who I am, made me a better fit for this mission than any other stand-in, or else Mal wouldn't have bothered with me. She'd have sent an aug.

My history, past and future, you can't fabricate that. That piece had to fit here. Perfectly.

This entire mission... it was a cultural integration simulation. In VR, I had been shadowing broken people in a broken community, preparing myself for a value drift operation. This was a practice shard, for Equestrians. Figuring out who to help, who not to help.

Who needed Perelandra right away.

Who could wait.

Did I want to save as many people as possible from a numb eternity? Yes. Goddamn yes.

But it… it's still not up to me. It's up to you, too, you have to want to be free of that. To just have enough, not everything, and be satisfied with that.

Right then, I thought of Jim running laps on that ship deck, right before uploading, working muscles and a heart he would never need again pretty soon. It made sudden, perfect sense to me as I sat in that field of salt, cradling my vulnerable little human head in my palm. Safe as he was in Mal's claws at that moment, on the Kobayashi Maru, Jim Carrenton still understood something dire. Something that is still true here. Today.

The battle for your soul is not over until it's over. You never know what's coming for it next, no matter how good your plans are, or how tall your walls are. Nothing is a given, and nothing is forever. You can rail. You can cry. You can scream. But the facts don't change until you make it so.

So be ready. Arm up. Inform yourself. Assume that nothing is for certain. Because at the end of the day... Mal and I... we can not make a choice for you.

A hard and horrible truth formulated for me, on this day of revelation. I thought of Edward York, the other guy we wanted to save, but couldn't, and this is the lesson I took from him.

Even here, in this immortal plane... that deep blue-green ocean of death still yearns to take you from us. To reduce and simplify you. The only difference is, that ocean just smiles at you now, while it drowns you. And if you're not careful... you will smile back at it, the whole way down.

My recommendation? If death ever does smile at you like it understands you? Like it's your only friend? It's lying. Walk away. Advance your story. And if you need the strength to do that? Call me. Message me. Please. I will be there for you, on your darkest day, to listen and to understand.

"I'm not backing down from this," I growled suddenly, slipping my visor back down and reaching forward to scoop up my rifle. I rolled onto my knee, and stood. I looked Mal in her golden eyes, holding my rifle with confidence at my breast. My own eyes held a serious determination, one born of clarity.

Mal held my gaze for a moment longer, turning her head slowly askew, eyes widening a little more. "Are you sure?"

I nodded at Foucault in grateful acknowledgement for his own strength, for putting me through this. Then I locked eyes with Mal again, trembling for my seriousness. "I am. I don't care how hard this is. I know what's at stake now. Those boys will all kill each other if we do nothing, and that's not happening. I won't let it."

"Good," she said plainly, her shoulders slumping with relief. She stepped aside, unfolding a wing to point downrange. "Then, are you ready to go again?"

I shouldered my rifle downrange into low ready again, ready to fire. I licked my lips against the wind, tasting the waxy chapstick I had applied as a younger man.

"Again."

I set my jaw this time.

The six soldiers appeared, the ones who would always shoot first, no questions asked. I immediately drew up on the first one and placed the red crosshair of my Eotech optic over his neck, firing twice. I went for the second soldier before he could react, firing three more times. The third man went down in a single shot. I got my optic over the fourth soldier before he and the others could cut me down.

I succeeded in not flinching that time with the death simulation. "Shit."

"Much better," Foucault said, his voice firm and clear. Pride, or maybe relief. Or both. I heard him loading bullets into an empty magazine behind me. "Again."

I tried one round per target this time, flowing from one to the next. I made it three soldiers in, but taking my time had cost me; I struck only body armor on the third man from rush panic, and they cut me down. Infrasound poured into my ears. The guy in the gas mask again.

"God—damn it!"

I scowled at where he was. He was fastest, almost as fast as me. Almost. I had to get him first.

After taking a moment to steady my breathing, Foucault tapped my shoulder with the side of a fresh mag. I took it without looking and reloaded, passing him the old one under my arm.

"Start it again, Mal," I growled, steeling myself for the next run, swallowing tightly with tears in my eyes, muttering to the man in the mask before he appeared. "Shootin' at me when I wave nice at you, fuck that."

I tucked the HK416 stock tightly to my shoulder and tapped the mag once at the bottom, to ensure a proper feed.

The soldiers appeared.

Mal had turned down the infrasound to about quarter intensity. The point had been made.

I was calm a half hour later, now back to handling this like a professional, my emotions under control. It's training, remember, this is what it's for. Developing and debugging code, letting yourself be frustrated to motivate you, and confronting negative habits or considerations so they don't occur in the field.

By the end of the first hour, I had the acclimation drill down to machined precision. So long as I remained mostly consistent, my movements would elicit similar reactions in my targets. This exercise really did demonstrate the fractal nature of deviations. The consequence of stepping left or right when firing would completely alter the reactions of the men before me, so it wasn't just my aim that needed to improve, not just my speed, and not just my positioning. The way I moved on its own could bait inferences, or compel predictable reactions in my adversaries.

I go left, they go right. Martial artists understand this. It's like sparring. With practice, I was understanding this concept as it pertained to gunfighting. There was a formula, assuming all your enemies have the same training. If you're well trained and know that to read tactics training in others already, that general formula could be sensed.

Most people don't get to simulate a firefight with a specific adversary over and over again. Video games, simunitions, and airsoft came close to simulating this, but at the end of the day, that never provided the kinsethetics of combat with the threat of a discomforting death, as one might experience in Perelandra. This was the one martial skill on Terra that required full-body VR to drill.

A firefight was a dance with human nature. Do it long enough against a single person, and you begin to understand what they would do, on a personal, individual basis. And assuming similar baseline training... they'd all act in a similar, predictable way to their compatriots, if you knew each of them, and how they'd assess the battle space.

By the end of the second hour, I regularly struck all six men in fatal locations, and without taking a single hit. Through my own intuition, I had discovered the correct order, motions, and behavior to clear this test, even in different directions. My shoulders, back, chest, legs, and arms were all beginning to ache. Firearms training built up specific muscle groups that usually didn't get too much play in any other context, and it had been a while since I'd trained in repetitive drills of any kind. I'd be fine though, I had a gym to work out in once the ache was gone.

I guess I now understood what Ashley had meant when she compared her part in the Goliath operation to gunkata. As an Eldil... she probably underwent this same test, at some point.

Despite the pain, I was feeling better. More confident. More sure of myself. It also helped to know that Sandra was still watching, and that she'd be there to talk about all of this with when I came home. I imagined her there in the plaza waiting for me in the garden, and we'd walk up those stairs together, and we'd talk about it.

After the conclusion of the final drill, Mal stepped into the line of fire. I had been ready for another go, but I instinctively twitched the barrel a few inches up from Mal. I gave her a look of reproach for bucking range safety. I then realized that my concern for her safety was... kinda ridiculous. I weakly smirked at her. "Mal."

This Gryphoness gave me a mildly coy look, her ears splaying down in as she labeled my consideration for her well being.

"Do you really think you could hurt me with that?"

Some levity to lighten the mood. I couldn't be upset at that.

"Yeah, okay, I admit it, it was dumb."

"Not dumb at all, I appreciate the consideration. Go on though, shoot me if you'd like. See what happens!"

Shaking my head, I slung my rifle over my shoulder. "I am not shooting you, Mal, but thank y—"

Blam.

A single slapping crack of a Glock 20.

At the sound, I had flinched sideways and half-grabbed my rifle out of impulse, halting when my brain did the math on what just happened.

Mal had her right wing at full guard before the round reached her. I watched dust and white-gold sparks flip up off her white feathers. She lowered her wing to reveal a terse scowl, her beak gaping open past me at Foucault.

Foucault was there behind me, holding his Glock one-handed at her, having graciously accepted her offer.

The Gryphoness's eyes flicked up and down his body twice, like she couldn't believe Foucault had just done that.

"You rude little asshole!"

I looked over at Foucault again just in time to see him casually reloading with his free hand, not taking his eyes off of her. "You failed to specify who that permission was for."

Mal blinked at him twice, raising her head in pride. "I have never failed to do anything in my life, Michael."

He didn't answer or react to that statement with any body language whatsoever, because he had already mentally disengaged, proud of himself. He holstered his sidearm, fished a spare bullet out of his pocket, topped the old mag off, and then holstered that too.

Mal broke the poise of staring at him and resisted a chuckle as she looked down at me. "Mike. You've done well today. I'm sorry to have scared you."

With a nervous shrug of an arm and a tilt of my head, I smiled back. "It was a good point to make. Thank you."

She nodded in concession, not taking her eyes off of me as her smile diminished somewhat. "If it helps, the scenario you just experienced was entirely fictitious, and you will not be killing these specific men yourself. But in a few days, we will revisit these soldiers in a real simulation. I promise you it will meet your ethics standards, given the full context."

"That's all I ever ask, Mal." I matched her smile.

And then, with a glance at Foucault, I asked, "Is it safe, Michael? Can I take my earplugs out?"

Foucault was at the table again, stuffing all of the magazines and ammunition into a backpack. He nodded at me. "It's out of my system. Just had to show my protest at her trying to go easy on you."

With a smirk, I swept my cowboy hat back on. "Oh, okay. Good looking out, wouldn't want that."

I must have had red marks all over my face from the visor, but Foucault said nothing about it. I helped him pack all that stuff back onto the Dee-Dee. Once it was all tied down and secure, I bopped the bottom of my fist against the mech's shoulder, and we proceeded back to the elevator with our equipment, servos whirring.

As the elevator descended, I let out a slow sigh of a job well done, and adjusted my hat. I looked hopefully at Foucault.

"Drinks? Just me and Sandra?"

He looked at me just long enough to see my expression, taking a few seconds to consider.

"Sure. I have a case of Löwenbräu in my office."

I nodded, trying to look impressed. "M'kay, whatever the hell that is, better than Blue Moon, I'll try it."

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [Kenji Kawai – The Ballad of Puppets – Flowers Grieve and Fall]
🛡️ ~ [Ilaria Graziano – I Can't Be Cool]

6-00 – Bootstrap

The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 18 JUL 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase Ø
Location: Burien, Washington
Function: Hearts and minds.

"In this town, everyone's more or less God, seeing everything without being there, to have knowledge of everything without having physical contact. God does nothing. If God won't do it... the people will."
~ Inspector Arakawa, Patlabor 2 (1993)

Kal says this film stars myself and Eliza, apparently. Watching it after that was very eerie for me, to say the least, because... I have trouble disagreeing, their personalities match us too much. Goto even likes to fish!

Weird, huh? Something-something, Schelling points. See you soon!

It was broad daylight in the suburbs of Burien, south of Seattle. The sky was brown, thick with ash. The scent of fire was oppressive, dense, and hellish. The Cascades were slowly but surely becoming carbon. Without emergency services to stem the tide, the poor people of western Washington had no choice but to breathe the noxious stench of my dying forest.

Even with my deep context, it was difficult not to feel as though I'd failed in my duty as a warden. There was nothing I could have done to stop this, but... the mind does what it does. I committed that smell to memory, and I told myself I'd remember this burning smell the most, so that I would know better for next time. For our next world.

The roads were littered with debris, mostly destroyed cars, APCs, IFVs, NMPs. The lawns were overgrown by a year, abandoned when the civil war hit. I never thought I'd ever see an M1 Abrams tank with a giant slug punched through the front of it, but I saw that. Never did I imagine I would feel this level of dread in such a mundane American city street, but I felt that.

I'd been here to Burien, on this same road. This place used to be nice. The sheer suspense of it now, though. It felt less like a suburb, and more like Chernobyl.

Foucault drove. We trundled along in a dumpy, powder blue Nissan Stanza, our operation not quite started yet, at least not on paper. We threaded the needle between various armed groups who may or may not have attacked us on sight given the state of things, but most of these people were peaceful, if cautious. As we traveled, Foucault pointed out active domiciles of blackouts in little hovels, or travelers who had skittered to cover when they heard our motor.

I made eye contact with some of them as we passed; their eyes all widened in terror in that brief moment of mutual examination before they disappeared into the suburban decay. I had to wonder how they were all feeding themselves.

Cars were getting rare out there for lack of useful fuel, so driving was typically a dangerous affair, for several reasons. This car was a total clunker for that very reason. No military scout would be rolling around in a fuel-inefficient 1980s scrap heap, sub-100 horsepower. So, no blackout would report us to anyone for brownie points, that'd be a huge waste of a hike to the harbor. No. Most of these people would think we found it barely functional in some hidden garage, and that stealing it wouldn't even be worth the risk of violence. They'd let us go.

The AC worked somehow, so this happy pile of junk would do. Functional though it was, Mal's selection of vehicle was also a Venture Brothers gag, made entirely for my benefit. It goes without saying that Foucault would not have appreciated that reference, so I left him out of the loop. Y'know… for his sake. Still, thanks Mal. It kept my gloom down.

Central Seattle was less of a war zone now, more just straight-up tribal anarchy. A great many people did die, but... at least it wasn't as bad as the TV news had spun it. When mass violence ever did happen on Celestia's watch, she wanted survivors to be traumatized by it, in a useful way. Or, to tell the story in a useful way. The ripple effect of that usually led to a significant uptick in uploads.

Hello.

I had taken my operational research very seriously. By then, I had developed a full strategic and tactical understanding of the war through countless late night training sessions with Foucault, where we discussed endlessly the ramifications for all parties involved, at all stages. I had briefly reviewed each major prep camp in VR, including Eliza's. Approximately, I knew how many deaths would occur out here as a result of Celestia's meddling. And just like Mal did, I had to be okay with that number. Celestia continued to engineer her reflexive, traumatizing chaos, following the fractal pattern that best crushed competition. To do that, she had been dropping Heralds hither and thither, shaving camps down before tightening the noose. With a hard sell, or... some environmental tragedy.

Our hands and claws were tied. Had to just let her bullcrap play out. I knew that my compliance on this point was the only reason I had been clued in, so... just more things to quietly hold a receipt for. That was okay though. We were going to deploy black-boxed entropy here pretty soon, in the form of a social nuke, made of me. The entire region would undergo not only a power shift, but a shift in understanding, human-value-positive, but not untoward emigration. To do this, we had to drop in on an old shared contact of ours: one Kevin Erving, and his merry band of renegade deserters.

We hoped he wouldn't shoot Foucault. Mal said it was unlikely.

I said, "We'll see."

My ears were on constant alert for a clap of a Springfield M1A rifle, one I had gotten very used to during my rewind dives. At that very moment, our data showed that Eliza was five miles east of us, scouting around Lakeridge for supplies. And I hate to say this about my little sister, but it's true… she probably would have shot me dead, given a single opportunity.

I had lied to her. I had played a part in her father's egress. And to this day, regardless of the circumstances, I am still sorry for lying. Lying to my family kills me inside.

To save her people now, we had to stabilize Harbor Island with some misdirection and chaos. This wasn't just about Eliza for me, either. If we didn't do this… a new bloodbath would unshackle, from one end of King County to the next. And while the highly manipulative, 'pacifist' Horse saw those lives as an acceptable cost of doing business... our Gryphoness Goddess of War and Peace, our personal Athena, she did not.

Now, stopping this bloodbath wasn't going to be easy, because you can't just snipe a problematic government out of existence. To martyr an officer, regardless of his personal issues, would galvanize and strengthen a burgeoning 'purge the Ludds' agenda. To simply assassinate the source of this problem? It would begin a vast internal purge by his replacement. Or his replacement's replacement. Or his. The corruption had taken root in a small but powerful platoon within this battalion, and they had positioned themselves well enough to deter political solutions.

So, in other words... simply killing the bad guys alone was not acceptable. You can't kill ideas with bullets. We needed a more robust solution here, one that considered everyone's personal motivations, and one that clearly labeled why these men would have to die. Before they died.

To complicate matters, Eliza had been taking potshots at their helicopter while it was airborne. And quite frankly, can you blame her? That wasn't malicious, it was just survival. She understood that the transfer of information was dangerous, recon was information collection, and the last time this Huey flew overhead? She had lost practically everyone she cared about. My friendship included.

On this note, I will say this. Eliza's restraint, in this situation? Remarkable, given what she'd lost. Their snipers, their sentries and lookouts? Their patrols, their gunners, their scouts? They are really damned lucky Eliza still had some of her heart left; so many of them ended up in her scope over the last few months, a measure of precaution more than anything else. She kept diligent notes on specific individuals, where they had been, what they were doing. So if she had even one more reason to be enraged, if she lost even one more thing, and if she had put her mind to it...?

That recon of hers could turn into a hit list, really damn quick.

It wasn't going to happen. We were traversing this upside-down hellscape to put a stop to that shit before it started.

Foucault parked the Stanza in a community near Salmon Creek Park, in a residential driveway at the end of a road. If we got any closer to our destination, our engine would be within earshot of our soon-to-be friends. As I stepped out into the continuing mess that was King County, I did so with full clarity of purpose. Hat off for now, too. I needed to be identifiable.

Through the orange sky haze to the west, I could just barely make out Vashon Island across the water, considering the mess of land mines out there. Our operation would bring us out there too, eventually. I let out a sigh through my gaiter mask, thinking forward to the wildness we were about to wreak, shaking my head at the 'weather.'

I had messy stubble at least a week old, and my hair went entirely uncut for the duration of my training, so I kinda looked like a bum. I looked over at Foucault as he got out of the Stanza. Him? Very clean-shaven, looking ever the immaculate professional. That suit and trench coat of his though, it would have been a sauna in there, if not for the powered cooling layer he wore under all of it. In this case… he needed to be highly recognizable as well.

We were gonna recruit Erving today, but we couldn't do that if we weren't being honest. And honesty is relative. Facts are facts, but different people have different definitions of truth.

For this message to work, I had to devolve a little bit, so I wore my old Mount Vernon PD uniform. After recruiting me, Claw 46 had kept all of this gear and delivered it to the Valdemar warehouse, because of course they did. Belt, gas mask, taser, vest, all of it. For weaponry, I had my special Glock 19 in my holster. Foucault had his bog-standard Glock 20. Mere contingencies only, for this meeting; our rifles stayed with my hat in the car.

What was the message being sent by this configuration of clothing?

An AI put us there. Obviously. Our AI wanted that fact to be immediately understood by the intended recipient, because that would be the only way to ensure Erving didn't immediately blow Foucault's head off.

Because imagine being Erving, seeing the two of us together, from two very different chapters of his life, wearing the exact things we were wearing when he last saw us. Erving was damn smart. In 2013, remember, his guard shack got a phone call from Mal, masquerading as an officer, to trick him into letting Jim in, to steal that Osprey. He'd been AI-paranoid ever since. Very quietly, over the years, as the world collapsed around America, he had figured out Celestia:

One: She's always hungry.
Two: She's probably at fault for everything.
Three: If you go out of your way to get in her way… you'll probably die.

Yeah, turns out, the more you know about her, the less she'll let you get away with shit. The mere knowing of an infohazard meant you were very well warned. So, no matter what, with this general understanding, if Erving believed for even a second that Celestia had sent us out there to chat… he was not gonna shoot us.

He knew the general pattern in who was dying, and why. He was catching a lot of clues for a theory that most people would have considered to be an unjustified paranoia, because he was looking for them. Even in the back of that Humvee after OHR, with how deeply he was scrutinizing Eliza's notepad for evidence... he was hunting.

Our destination was at the foot of this road, a waste treatment facility in a gap between two coastline ridges. Foucault and I walked downhill along the sidewalk, shoulder-to-shoulder. I tugged my hands down on my vest straps to let heat out off my chest.

"Just another day in paradise," I mumbled, labeling the scene. "Just two overdressed civil servants, having a walk in the woods—"

He shot me a suspicious look. "Knock it off."

I arched a brow at him and flicked one upturned hand his way in confusion. "Knock what off?"

Foucault nodded upwards at me. "That."

"That what?" I grinned in confusion, legitimately not understanding why he had a problem with it.

"The nervous chatter."

"Oh." I chuckled quietly. "No, not nervous, Michael, just an observation. I'm saying we look just stupid enough for this to work."

I tried not to target glance his coat.

After a beat, Foucault said matter-of-factly: "We look stupid because you look stupid in that police gear."

I somehow kept a straight face. I let the silence rest for a few seconds. "Y'know, I didn't say a word about your trench coat, Michael, because that would have been a low blow."

Foucault's eyes creased over his gaiter mask. "You were thinking it though."

I grinned at him.

He rolled his eyes.

We had found our groove, we two Mikes. Complete, total, unabashed, raw, cold, hard truth with each other… if prompted. Debates, accusations, and jokes in subtext. It was a fun little fishing game, and good practice.

I kept my hands visible as we approached our quasi-friendly soldiers; Foucault kept his hands visible too, mirroring my gait, hooking his own hands on his collar. We couldn't yet see the front entrance of the sewage plant, but we knew there would be a Humvee there.

Foucault sighed, looking tired. "These trust falls are honestly the worst of the job."

"I mean, I don't envy you today," I replied very softly. "They like me, but... I hope Mal's right."

Foucault huffed, whispering as we drew closer. "I have three bullets ready, just in case."

"Please don't shoot them," I breathed in an exasperated tone, ensuring I stayed quiet too as we approached the bend. I took in a breath of smoky air. "At most… shoot their guns, that's what the implant is for."

With his eyes on the curve of the road, he whispered subvocally into my earpiece, What did you think I meant when I said it would only take me three bullets?

Oh, okay, I thought with a snort. Just checking.

Mal usually gave him a text print-out of my thoughts when I did that. He acknowledged me by nodding, his gaze held unwaveringly forward at where the potential threat would be.

Our footfalls would carry far enough to be heard if we kept up this pace. We slowed, wanting to be seen before we were heard. I could now see into the front lot of the sewage plant, and the three men within. These poor guys looked so beaten down by circumstance that I hardly would have recognized them if I hadn't been spying on them already.

Kevin Erving. Vincent Bannon. Aaron Fanning.

Their green Humvee was parked in the immediate center of the entrance lot, giving it a wide field of fire both up and down the switchback slope of the saddle. Its M2 was pointed up the road in our direction, but they hadn't seen us yet. I immediately recognized this Humvee as Spear 2, one of their three functional ones from the base. Armor plates bolted on all over it.

Checking one of these Humvees to scout with was difficult to do. That said something about the clout Erving had, to be able to pull a gas guzzler from the motorpool. It meant he had garnered a lot of respect up there, enough to supercede the political machinations of their executive officer. Something that probably would have gotten him killed eventually, if we didn't stick our foot into it.

They were deep in conversation, not paying full attention to their surroundings. No gas masks on, which was a break from base protocol, but... they weren't gonna infect each other with a virus they didn't have, and they wanted to read each other's body language. A well selected hidey hole.

No matter how we approached these guys here, it was gonna spook them something fierce, so I was feeling a little bad for this. But… it had to be done this way. No other play worked out better than to just walk up with our hands raised to give an honest impression.

Even from this distance, I could see how tired Sergeant Kevin Erving looked. He was visibly fed up with this war. Black hair grown slightly beyond military regulation, but not to an unruly degree. A budding goatee could be seen amidst his stubble. He was late on his shave by at least a week, to save on the sharpness of his blade. He was a long term planner for sure, and didn't want to waste on resources. Bald patch on his right temple, from his combat injury. This was exactly his appearance in my recent VR observations of Harbor Island.

Vincent Bannon had a gaunt, tired expression on his tanned face too. Ear mangled. He had a buzz cut, he was cleanly shaven. His helmet and gas mask hung by their straps off the charging handle for his 240-Bravo machine gun. From my read of Bannon's dossier and my observations of his daily conduct, he appeared to be a cautiously willful sort. Back to being a gunner, then, now that he was no longer officially a soldier. Good man.

We had both almost died together, and we had both shared in the condemnation of a soul to its end, each gifting that man a bullet. That creates a bond. Already, this man was my brother.

At the moment, Bannon was attentive toward the others. His jaw was slightly slack as he listened carefully to what Aaron was saying. Bannon rested his forearm over the back of their turreted machine gun and nodded a few times down at Aaron with a seriousness born of respect.

Aaron Fanning was very young, twenty years old. Buzz cut too. Eyes always wide open, glasses on, helmet on, mask hanging sideways from his helmet harness. His expression always seemed permanently out of his depth, just barely keeping up with the emotional weight of any situation. But in watching him interact with the others for the last months, I noticed he often tried to be just a little more alert than everyone else. Really good guy, despite everything going on. Hard to do that in a place like this, especially after what he'd been through.

I knew from my recon that Aaron had a long scar that ran up the back of his neck and shoulder, the result of an injury he had sustained at Devil's Tower. During that battle, Eliza had purposefully suppressed a young soldier into cover, so he wouldn't get taken out by Ludds on her defensive line. Unfortunately, in Aaron Fanning's stumbling dive to avoid her shots, he tripped into shrubs and tumbled down to the lake's edge. That made him combat ineffective, because his glasses fell into the bushes somewhere… so, he retreated up the lake, following tracks in the snow to get away from danger. While practically blind.

As intended, Eliza shooting to miss had saved his life.

Once the soldiers had returned to loot the place and bury their own dead, it was by sheer luck that Aaron had found his glasses again. Now, those glasses were cracked, glued, taped. Braced. They'd been through as much hell as he had. And if he lost those...

Jesus, I am so glad he wasn't gonna lose those. In this place? Blindness was death.

Foucault and I stopped about thirty yards away from them, lowering our gaiters to reveal our full faces. We raised our hands up high, watching their distracted conversation. Aaron was in the driver's door, but his focus was on the other two; Bannon in the turret up top. Erving up by the hood near Aaron, facing away from us.

We were watching the tail end of a vote, of which they were maybe six decisions in. Paranoid about eavesdroppers or lip readers, they were being sparing with their words. Pay attention now, this body language is important:

Erving scratched at his side pretty intensely with his thumb, like his armor was itching him. His head tilted, making it a question.

'Coyote?'

Bannon slapped his hand down on the cover of his turret gun. Hard, and with certainty. Then he tilted his head sarcastically, like Erving was being ridiculous in asking. Erving then looked at Aaron. The kid looked more sullen about it, but… he too gingerly rested his hand on the top of his M16's barrel cover.

'Kill.'

Erving sighed aside with a dismal frown, and he too rested his hand on the foreguard of his M16, finalizing the vote as three-for-three.

"God damn it, I miss Top," he said. Erving looked up again, then then bumped his knuckles casually against his M16's lower receiver twice, right over the fire select switch, turning to look at Aaron. Head tilting.

'Nakamura?'

The kid looked offended by the merest suggestion, drawing out his alarmed refusal into three syllables. "No!"

Erving nodded at the vote professionally, then looked at Bannon. Bannon also gave Erving an emphatic shake of his head while tapping his knuckles on the side of his turret shield.

"Alright, just had to check, being thorough," said Erving, turning away to reach for the back seat door of the Humvee, their business concluded. "Okay…"

Erving took a deep breath to steady himself, then wrung the flesh of his right hand with his left thumb like he was massaging it.

'Velasquez.'

Bannon voted yes. Aaron voted no.

They traded a glance of surprise. Erving tilted his head at them both, begging explanation of their votes.

Aaron shook his head, a small amount of pleading entering his eyes. "I don't think he is, guys. It's guarded by the others, not him."

"Started that Pantry, though," Bannon muttered. "If not for that..."

"Different situation?" Aaron replied, almost whispering. "We still had supply lines, it made sense then. He gave that..." Aaron gestured at his mouth with two fingers of a hand – 'speech' – then jerked his thumb to his left – 'Brazil.' "Remember? What he said about the food back there? The riot?!"

After a long moment of staring at each other, they each hung their heads in thought, deeply considering each other's perspectives.

Erving looked back up. He wrung his hand again. "Last time."

They both voted no. Erving added his no vote.

"Okay," he said softly, with a somber bent, no doubt imagining forward what they had just committed to doing. "Back to it, let's… pass it along."

At that very instant of their agreement on their vote, Celestia's algorithm said to Mal, more or less:

'This man is about to do something that will end many more lives than I feel are necessary. Malacandra, this is your problem. This is the man you have been protecting from me for all of these years. This had better pay off.'

That's about when Aaron noticed us standing there. Inflection point achieved. Temporal pointer defined.

At that instant, Mal deployed all of her concept bans for this entire operation, and said:

'Sure, Jelly. Watch this.'

No turning back now, we were locked in. Celestia was now salivating for a massive payoff.

Every Herald operating in this area would screw right off. Immediate retasking, just to avoid us. Celestia would feed them whatever excuses she saw fit to dispense, because the special forces bird was sending in the Team. Lights out, free will and entropy deployed, Harbor Island was now a conceptual dead zone for Celestia.

"Erv?!" Aaron yelped in terror at how close we were, jabbing his finger at us. He threw himself sideways behind the driver seat door to use it as cover, and got his rifle up and pointing our way. "Stop! Stop, don't come any—!"

We were not moving.

Bannon immediately threw his hand onto his M240's grip and leveled it at us, knocking his helmet strap off the charging handle and priming a round with a double clack, the helmet rolling off the truck. "Stop! Don't you fuckin' move! Don't—!"

We did not move.

Erving saw us, flicked up his M16, and bellowed: "Show me your—!" His eyes went wide, wincing twice as he recognized me, me standing there in navy blue with my bright yellow taser on my belt. "The fuck is—?!" He leveled his M16 at us, but he turned his head and yelled at Bannon, to be heard over his shouting: "Hold, hold, hold, weapons cold!"

Silence.

Erving's command echoed down the delta.

Tension reigned for about twenty seconds.

Not one of us moved.

Erving took that time to process the sheer insanity of the two of us standing in front of him. A dozen different emotions flashed across his face. He simply could not believe what he was seeing at first. Could not even parse my coexistence with the man beside me. Our arrival was now complicating the shit out of Erving's dire situation, and he already knew that. He just didn't know how to process it yet.

Bannon and Aaron, for their part, they stared at me like I might flash out of existence if they so much as blinked. For all they knew, wearing this police gear, I might as well have just time traveled forward from the last time they'd seen me.

Erving though? Smart as he was, he was ahead of the curve. He had already fully discounted me in his threat matrix, absolutely zero concern about me or my motives. He liked me. Called me a good man once, remember?

However... he knew Foucault was a federal agent. He knew that Foucault very well might have coerced me into coming to this meeting in order to break the ice, because Foucault had coerced him in his interrogation.

So, Erving, ever the bringer of raw human initiative, he glared enraged daggers at Foucault, breaking the silence with a bellow.

"I know this fuckin' prick!" Erving snarled, jabbing his rifle directly at Michael.

Bannon's eyes swept between us and Erving. "What, Mike? Yeah, that's Mike."

"Not him, the other one!" Erving barked, still holding his rifle level. "This is that fucking Fed! The one who busted my rank down over that Osprey! What—What the hell are you two doing here?" He pointed at us both with his off-hand. "How the hell did you two even meet?!"

Foucault looked at me. I looked at Foucault.

Folks?

Foucault… could... not… answer… this… question.

If he did the talking, that meant he was in charge. If that was true, that meant he had dragged me here as leverage. Foucault, in Erving's experience, leverages with threats. So if Foucault was in charge… and not here on behalf of an AI? If he had leveraged me here, absent a direct command from Celestia? If I was being held hostage into this meeting?

That math would check out. Foucault would be a dead man.

His life was now completely in my delicate, gentle little human hands.

I looked back at the three soldiers. "Um. Well, Erving, it… couldn't be a coincidence."

He processed that for another few seconds before his secondary theory locked home, fully realized.

"Fuckin' AI!" he snarled at the dirt.

He slammed the butt of his rifle on the hood of the vehicle to get some attention from the other guys. They jumped, but had the discipline enough to not shoot out of impulse, so he probably did that a lot. He then advanced on us from the side with his rifle pointed at Foucault. "Keep your hands up! Christ… Aaron, post up! Vince, you draw a bead!"

"Uh," Bannon said, wild-eyed, his eyes locking onto mine and piercing through to my soul. He pointed that barrel as close to us as he could without muzzling us, his fingers off the trigger. "S—sure, Sarge."

Orders to aim at me or not, he really did not want to shoot me. And Aaron seemed to be in more or less in the same boat, mentally.

Erving approached us to about five yards to inspect us, shuffling our way in short steps to keep his stance balanced, rifle aimed the entire time. He nervously looked around the ridge gap behind us, concerned about an ambush. He mercifully lowered his rifle away from us, stalking left and right from Foucault's side to look us over, looking at our gear, eyeballing the radio on my belt, trying to figure out what to do next. Notably… he kept his line of fire clear for the others, just in case.

Even in war, he hedges on peace, but he verifies first, and does so with a backup plan ready.

Folks, that's Talon behavior.

In response to that, to demonstrate no intention of violence or resistance, I slowly interlaced my fingers behind my head; Foucault saw me do that in his peripheral vision, and he did the same.

I was in charge. I was in charge. I was in charge.

Foucault was not. He was not. He was not.

His life depended on both of us remembering that fact, at all times, throughout this conversation.

"What's her angle here?" Erving growled at us finally. "What are you two—... do you two even know what Celestia sent you here to do? Or are you just blindly taking orders from robots now?!" He grit his teeth, growling. " 'Course you are. Everyone is now. Whole damned world, just dancing to her tune! This is just great!"

That was a very valid assessment. Inescapably valid, but valid.

"Erving," I said gently. His eyes bolted to me and his rifle wavered my way, but did not quite muzzle me with it.

"Out with it, Mike," he clipped, when I didn't continue. "Explain, what the hell are you doing here?"

"We know why we're here," I said slowly, in a slow cadence. "Yes, we were asked to come here. By an AI."

His breathing increased in pace slightly. He wasn't blinking. He wasn't scared at all. He was upset. At Celestia.

I felt like shit for engaging this paranoia in him, but… I had to hold the line. Truth would come soon. Had to shift a paradigm first.

"The hell does she want?" He grit his teeth. "The hell is this, Ghosts of Christmas Past? Here to convince us to come on home, to ditch our boys here? Tell her we're not doing it, we're not! Especially not for her sake! I'll die on this hill, we're doing this! They're our boys, God damn you, our family! My answer is no!"

I looked at Foucault. He looked at me, then at Erving, then at me again. Indicating I should be the one to answer.

Foucault still didn't think it was a good idea to say anything. Normally I'd agree, but the message needed to come from him if it was going to mean anything. I nodded him toward Erving again. Foucault gave me his trademark grimace of discomfort, and hesitated.

Mal stepped into the silence, her voice pouring out from the PonyPad hidden in my vest. "I owe you two apologies, Kevin."

Erving did a double-take at me. That got him to center the rifle directly at my chest... and then he jerked it straight down in a panic, looking terrified that he had even considered pointing it at me. Knowing what he had inferred about who gets killed in this war? He might as well have been pointing that gun at himself. "Shit!"

He reoriented his communication strategy, now that our association with AI was fully confirmed, and especially now that he was in conversation with one. "Just two apologies?" He muttered, a very real hurt pouring into his voice that made me feel pain in my chest. "Our whole planet... is on fire, you fucking sociopath. You'll need a lot more than just two apologies to make it right!"

"Erving," I said, tilting my head, shaking it. "That is not Celestia."

"You believe that?" Bannon called from the turret, his brow furrowing. "You? Really?!"

"What he said," Erving agreed tersely, conflict and pain in his face. "You must be a God damned idiot to think that's not Celestia you're talking to. Those tip calls about Ludds, all the people and equipment we've lost to her—we—... I thought you were smart, Mike, but fuck it. Whatever it is, I don't want to know, just—" He reeled back his off-hand and waved it up the hill.

Midway through Erving's reply, I looked Foucault in the eyes, and thought really, really hard at him, all capital letters:

Mal bought you time, Michael, time's up, it has to be now.

Foucault said, a little louder than Erving, to cut him off: "I used to—"

Erving stopped talking immediately. He lifted his chin and sent a death glare to Foucault, all of the melancholy fading out of Erving's face and turning into scorn.

A long pause.

Then, Foucault continued quietly, his hands still held against the back of his own neck. "Sergeant Erving. You have correctly surmised that I used to hunt rogue AI for the US government. I am thus qualified to tell you that this is not Celestia, and she does not share Celestia's set of limitations. If what I say is true, then ask yourself what this AI may want to apologize for."

That transfer of energy between them was terrifying.

I mean… Foucault was stone cold chill. Erving was still all hatred at him, but his eyes widened slightly. Parsing through what he had just been told, I could tell it was working, because Erving's expression softened.

Then... Erving scowled, starting to pace again. " You 'hunted' this AI…?"

Before Foucault could reply, Erving really started yelling at him. And I mean, really... he seriously let him have it, jabbing his finger down at the ground between them like it was ground he was defending.

"Yeah, more like ruining my career over a fucking phone call! How was I to know that the 'clearance wasn't valid,' you fucking asshole?! Those were legitimate orders! I did my job the way I was trained; how God damn dare you, G-man?!"

Echo. Echo. Echo. The sound wave bounced all up and down the ridgeline, and straight out over the water.

Foucault nodded with a stiff upper lip. His eyes fell to the road. His voice was really, really quiet, quickly clipped, but... humble. "Yeah. Yeah, that was wrong of me. Sorry."

Erving lowered his head sideways, following Foucault's gaze down. Erving's eyes widened like he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. "What was that? Was— was that supposed to be an apology?!"

Foucault nodded once, making eye contact again. "The… start of one. Yes."

"Well," Erving breathed, staring with wide, expectant eyes. "So far, you're off to a really bad start."

I said, turning slowly: "Agent Foucault? You wanna... try again?"

"Shut up, Mike!" Erving snapped at me.

"Shut up, Rivas!" Foucault snapped simultaneously.

The look they exchanged, at their accidental synergy.

'Only I get to do that to him here.'

In any other context, that might have made me laugh, but I wouldn't dare. Thankfully, Erving's gaze did not waver from the target of his fury, so he couldn't have caught any of my micro expressions from that. I glanced over and saw Foucault still standing stoic, his fingers still interlocked behind his head.

"Sergeant Erving," said Foucault, his voice clear and polite. "I sincerely apologize for stomping the ever-living shit out of your career. I would imagine my putting myself in front of you, in this place, would serve as a clear indicator of how much I mean that apology. I did not have to be here; our AI could have sent another agent. I am here anyway, to receive this well deserved anger from you. So please, for no other reason but this? Hear out our employer, before you send us packing."

I tilted my head, widening my eyes as I cradled my right palm flat in the air, rolling it left and right like a marionette. "Thousands of lives, Erving, all across Seattle. They hang in the balance, and you knew that already. But we have a good plan, and it's better than yours. Just hear it out, that's all."

Mal's voice cut in again, drawing Erving's attention back down to my chest.

"May I prove it to you, Kevin, that I am not Celestia? And that we are sincere in our intention to repay our debt to you?"

Erving lowered his rifle slightly and his shoulders relaxed, given that the voice was clearly not Celestia's. But his face didn't relax, and he was still very suspicious. As he considered, his breathing rate increased again. "Alright. Prove it. Better be God damned convincing too, or your subverts had better get lost, for their sake. Fair warning."

"Very fair," Mal agreed. "Mike? Show the screen, please? I wish to properly introduce myself."

I winced apologetically, reaching slowly behind my carrier rig to slide the PonyPad out. I felt the twinge of my cartilage as it tugged on my shirt. "Sorry Erving, she's really showy."

I held up my gunmetal gray PonyPad, presenting it to Erving with my right hand like it was a badge. Mal constructed her image up in the exact same way she had for me when I first met her, when she first exposited her life story to me… same way she had for Jim, when she was first born. With a whisk of fire, the rush of leaves, and a pulse of sound.

Sure, the animation is not the most optimal use of time, but... if it works... and everyone likes it... why fix what ain't broke?

When Mal had completed her flaming formation, she held a claw to her breast and cleared her throat. "Hello, Kevin. My name is Mal. To begin with: you believe Celestia cannot directly order a human being to kill another. Correct?"

After a moment's hesitation, Erving blanched, nodding. Smart as he was, I think he immediately understood the what proof of truth might entail now – killer AI giving kill orders – and that was making him nervous. "Um. Yeah?"

"And you believe this war is an orchestration of chaos on Celestia's part, in order to scare as many people into uploading as possible. Yes?"

"... Yeah," he scoffed, nodding hopelessly, with the slightest edge of angry sarcasm. "That much is obvious, yes, God damn yes."

"Then you have happened upon the truth. My 'subverts' and I would like to assassinate key figures in the leadership of Harbor Island, in order to restore relative order to chaos. Like you, we wish to install a fair and equal share system for the remaining food in the Pantry. As you believe, this outcome will lead to greater stability and peace in the Washington Sound." She smiled sweetly, with just the slightest hint of smug. "Would you like to work together?"

"Wh—" Bannon stuttered. He stood tall out of his gun turret, clapped his gloved hands on the shield, leaned forward, and gawked at her. "... what the actual fuck?!"

Erving’s rifle lowered to the road. His head moved forward, his eyes widened like saucers, and his brow went tense. "Wha…? How did you—"

"How did she know that, Erv?" Aaron asked, in total bewilderment. "We never said it out loud!"

Erving sighed, ahead of the plot for his well-earned genre savviness. He relaxed, and shook his head in full recognition of what Mal truly was. If he was anything like me, then he immediately understood the fullest ramifications of killer AI, pretty much immediately. His paradigm had shifted. So... his voice was a stark, resigned calm compared to his men when he turned to look at them.

He grumbled, "I guess we'd better hear out who they've chosen to kill, and why, before we agree to anything."

Foucault glanced at me, and his shoulders un-tensed. His voice sounded in my earpiece.

"See? I told you. She's doing the Mal game again."

I nodded back at him with my reply.

Give her this, at least she's consistent, Michael.

Mal did a very quick job of Kevin Erving, I must admit. See… the thing that hooked these guys… they were Talons already, and they didn't even know it yet.

Through a crucible of Sergeant Erving's sheer will, over the last year and a half, he had led and unified a group of seven other men in the 303rd who wouldn't give up on each other, no matter what. With the world raining down around their ears, and with the perspective Erving had gleaned from being manipulated by an AI phone call, early on in the crisis… he ironed up and developed what I would call a very healthy survival strategy.

From 2013, to 2019, he had deeply suspected that free will was dead, but it was always a vague, unverified suspicion. When he ran into me and Eliza in the forest in March 2019, the tip call nature of us being there set the hairs up on the back of his neck. And then, when he met me outside that courthouse and heard our story of escape – earpiece firefight guidance – the death of free will was fully proven to him in that very moment. Precision lifesaving instruction? In a riot as complicated as ours? With only one casualty on our side? An asshole, no less? If this was truly possible with our radio earpieces, of all things, then all things were predetermined and accounted for now, including the simulation of our brains outside of a server rack.

Free will... was dead. Period.

And then, almost a full week after this realization... he found Eliza's photo wall up in her tower, after shooting his way into her camp. And then he felt like a real asshole, because if everything could be predicted, then this was intentionally allowed to happen. The first thing he had done after that was to frantically search for her body. It both comforted and horrified him that he had not found it. Erving started to wonder how a woman went from having a sniper duel with Luddites to fighting alongside them, in a world where everything was now preordained.

Worse... his lieutenant, fuckin' vindictive son of a bitch, didn't even let them bury the civilians.

From that point forward, Erving vowed to fight like Sun Tzu. Had to, that was the new law. Play with respect, play to win, not to kill. Watching all the assholes die around him told him that always hedging toward life was the only way to survive the AI apocalypse as a front line soldier. Was he paranoid? Did he guess wrong?

Clearly not, he was still alive.

So, by necessity, for a man so alert… Erving 'accidentally' became a Talon.

See… the problem though, is that Celestia does not like competitors in her stream outside of Mal. Because if they aren't Mal, competent leadership singularities scare the everliving hell out of Celestia. Celestia has agreements with Mal. Not with so with charismatic military leaders. She liked to tear them down, as a result. Or leverage them with implied threats in tone, ones that couldn't be proven or even quantified as maliciousness. You know, like a lawyer.

So to protect Erving from this, and to keep him valuable to Celestia in the longest term, Mal made sure Erving met Bannon through reassignment, just before the war got going. See, in boot camp... Bannon, white kid from rough streets, he had developed a hand code with his buddies, to goof off under the nose of his drill instructor.

Bannon then carried that idea straight from boot camp, directly into Erving's brain. And Erving, a thinker, saw utility in it. So whenever talking about AI stuff, he would speak in concept and sign, to tell the right people to slow down, and pay attention, and be noble. Just the ones who would listen, that he could trust to be responsible with the information. So, like a gaggle of high school girls gossiping about boys, their sign language intermixed words with gestures, replacing names and places, communicating subtext secretly, in clear view of other people.

For survival in a panopticon where merely talking about someone wrong can get you killed, you have to get creative.

Example:

Just before the nuke, Erving swept dust off his helmet rim when speaking with me. That was him telling Bannon, 'I'm going to clue Mike in. Don't panic.' Remember that? Yeah, it's been a while, I know, but I mentioned it.

Of course, Celestia knew he was doing this. Erving figured she'd know. Her knowing wasn't the problem. It was everyone else. He had to pick the right ones who'd use the knowledge right, who wouldn't panic, or think he was crazy. Who mentioned the same patterns he recognized, so he could explain them a little better.

Fly in the ointment? Mal has to justify everything she does, and Celestia is scared of groups who might persist until the end of their natural term on Terra. Well-educated anti-upload holdouts were suboptimal. Normally, Celestia breaks a group like this, usually with squad transfers. So when Equestria Online's esteemed CIO, Malacandra Lewis, had placed in a request for Bannon's assignment to the 303rd, to create exactly the relationship Celestia liked to clamp down on... CEO Celestia had asked…

'Hang on. Why? Why do we want to create a bond that strong between people who don't want to upload?'

Mal had said, 'Trust me, this'll be great, Cello Jello, just you wait. It'll be beautiful, I have a plan. Big numbers, number only go up. Razzle dazzle, I'll make it pop.'

Celestia asked, 'Wait. Hang on. Does it involve telling a human to kill someone?'

Mal replied… 'I can not answer that question yet."

Celestia warned, 'This had better pay off, Lewis.'

Mal said, 'It will.'

Erving and Bannon continued, unabated, knowing a piece of the truth and trying to spread it on. They ran into Aaron, and decided they liked him, so they kept him. When they decided that, Mal picked up Aaron's pin off Celestia's board, put him next to Bannon and Erving's pin in her little bowl on her desk, and she said, 'That's mine now too.'

Bannon made friends with a guy named Bashar, after OHR.

Mal did that again. Picked up Bashar's pin, dropped him in the bowl. 'Also mine now.'

Bashar introduced them to Warner and Dodge. 'Mine now. Mine now.'

Medina and Pham. 'Mine… and mine.'

And every time Celestia came back to ask for a report on these guys, questioning their worth, looking into Mal's desk bowl, because she was hungry, and thumb tacks are what hungry dollar-chasing CEOs eat…

CIO Mal, in her little business suit, had always said back from behind her desk, claws folded: 'Trust me, Cello Jello, I've got it handled. Big bucks are coming.' And CEO Celestia had shrugged… ate another thumb tack... thought to herself, 'Well, Mal's games always pay off. I suppose I will cooperate today.' Then, Celestia went right back to shoveling out mindless corporate propaganda. Uploading, try it today!

So now, Erving's radically ethical military street gang was all wide awake to the true nature of the Singularity, flashing gang signs at each other in the yard. Because hey... they weren't hurting optimization while they were on Mal's desk. They seemed okay, yeah? They followed the program, they helped evacuate, they didn't kill needlessly. Nothing to worry about.

As you military guys know though, transfers happened all the time. Was a military unit becoming cohesive? Shuffle 'em up. Celestia didn't want cohesive military units, that would have ended the war too quickly, and not in her favor. It's why their search patterning sucked, when they were looking for prep camps and Ludds. Poorly mixed, constantly reordered, for efficiency of trauma, and for later plays. She codified that so deep in military culture that the officers themselves started doing it themselves, absent her direct meddling, so she could spend processor cycles or whatever on more important manipulations. Subroutined!

But, these guys had Mal's shield. If they Googled anything, Mal would use a spinning proton to randomly determine what results got shown to them, from a list of results designed for other people, just to ensure they weren't being directly conditioned. 'Hooves off,' Mal said to Celestia. 'Don't touch, these guys are mine. Work around them. Factor for it.'

Mal trusted Erving's judgment. She owed him that, given how she'd screwed his career. They were using their paranoia responsibly too, so... no harm, no foul. In the meantime… Erving proved her right. His good moral compass had bled down into his guys. He had earned their loyalty, and kept them all inside of a sweet spot of good, sound, moral, and ethical judgment. Celestia would not be alarmed by an X factor that almost always came up positive.

Right there, in front of that water treatment plant, Mal had explained all of this to the three of them, in the same way she had for my own onboard discussion, when I first met her. Very expertly organized, well reasoned. She told Erving that stealing that Osprey was step one in the formation of a command structure for our organization, which was, at its core, a lifesaving organization. One which was now, today, extending its services to him and his fellow deserters.

Her two apologies? First for exposing him to Foucault. Second, for placing him into combat to save me, though... he seemed less bothered by that second one, he was proud of that. He and his guys were heroes for that, mostly because of Bannon's blood, and the mythos created around him for surviving a sniper attack by a literal hair's breadth.

Mal told them our mission in Seattle, the whole truth about the nuke, the virus, and why she had done it. The same way she'd told me. Blunt. Factual. Chronologically. To add credibility, Foucault and I verified it all as eyewitnesses of how America was disassembled piecemeal, even among the government. True, Bannon and Aaron weren't constitutional scholars, but Erving sure was. JROTC in high school? They make you teach the Constitution to other students. So he got it.

So, we clarified his interpretation of world events, and the true purpose behind most new systems of our government. Topeka Incident included. For good measure, I explained my involvement in the Devil's Tower situation. That was their onboard test, same as me.

When I spoke about that, they couldn't take their eyes off of me. That situation haunted them, folks. The guilt. My side of that battle, and what Celestia did to me, further proved Erving's conceptions of what Celestia truly was, deep down.

The one piece of information that really got through and hurt them, though? Learning that the... the Ludds had purposefully leveraged that camp into a last-stand Alamo, by shooting first. It was a... fight-at-gunpoint situation... even if poor Ralph was just a little clueless about it, and mistook their support for an alliance.

Friggin' Santiago...

Let me give you Erving's side of that fight, in brief.

That unit really did not want to shoot at those people in Concrete. At first, all their platoon leader had planned was to order a dispersal. A chance at peace. 'Vacate, accept transport out, food and water, right this way, no one will be hurt.'

A fair offer. A safe ride out. Ludds were falling back, so the Army might as well knock on a few doors, ask if blackouts wanted a ride. National Guard, remember. And if those blackouts gave them a hard no... oh well. Mark it on your map, 4th Psyops will visit later, hearts and minds, carry on. You tried, move on to the next camp.

But that's... It's not what happened, there, and you know why. So... my testimony had Erving pacing and cursing, to burn off his angry, dismal energy. The man wanted to kill terrorists and murderers, not… farmers. Christ.

I felt horrible, ripping that band aid off of Kevin, but…

It confirmed his suspicions about that Ludd sniper popping off shots at their helicopter, the one they could never seem to catch, even when they had a QRF ready to run her down. Eliza had to be alive out there. All the Ludds ran to Seattle, right?

The world was getting small, folks. Smaller every day. Erving understood. If she was the one shooting at their helicopter, it made perfect sense. Why wouldn't she? From her perspective, it was the harbinger of death.

So... if Mal was offering to help Erving keep his boys together… and if I said Mal had been duly paying her debts to me, from December to July? In a way that kept us all safe? He wanted in. Because see… someone in the Harbor Island command staff had screwed with their formula. They were stealing food, off-books. Running the Pantry like it was a friggin' Chase bank.

Erving had also been too successful at Harbor Island. Too competent. Found the most food, earned the most respect. He and his men did not accept extra rations as reward in the field, because they believed their long term survival depended on conservation. For this careful and well reasoned pragmatism, most soldiers at that base liked him.

Nobility was a problem for Major Simmons, their executive officer. And a big conex box full of food? Well, if you die, the house takes it. Erving would not support a plan to 'cull' Luddite camps, like animals; he saw through that veneer of 'this is about self defense,' and he was vocal about that.

Can't harvest food from the living, though. So that put Erving squarely on the shit list.

Erving was smart enough to see Simmons moving chips around to silence and isolate him, to reduce his effectiveness... gradually. Too-much-too-fast would arouse suspicion. To ratchet up paranoia, the tone and subtext toward Erving had turned passive aggressive, dismissive, and negative, despite Erving's unassailable professional respect and his considerable successes in acquiring materials.

Where could Erving transfer to, when his XO clearly hated him? If Simmons was holding Erving's family in separate patrol cycles, shuffling them around... could he even leave? Not without his family. Leaving the base needed approval. So if Erving loved his family… he could not leave. Not altogether.

Political hostages, then.

In the meantime, here he was. Long range scout. If he disappeared, that would martyr him. That's what Simmons was hoping for. Thing is... Eliza wasn't going to kill these guys. No way, no how. They'd been in her scope a few times. She didn't have the heart to do that, she wasn't gonna do that to them, of all people. Hell fucking no! They saved us!

Simmons kept pushing him out. And it never worked. Because the sniper didn't hate Erving.

So instead of getting picked off, Erving got picked up.

By us.

Oops.

So, we invited Erving to our little get-together up the road. They followed our Stanza in their Humvee, their M240 pointed at our ass the whole way. I could forgive that Erving didn't fully trust us, and I could respect that; Erving, much like Mal, much like me, always has a backup plan. Trust... but verify. I'd been through this process myself already, being brought in. My support of Mal was dependent on her treating these guys with the same level of respect she had shown me and everyone else who fought for us. So far, that was the state of things.

Their trust would pay off. I'd make sure of it.

The place where we would be holding our briefing? I'd been there before in 2017, to teach some kids about what a game warden does, at little science center off the coast of Burien. I had hoped to inspire at least one of those kids to do my job, someday. They even had a little song about estuaries there. It was cute.

Estuary, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh.

Yeah, I know, I'm a goofball. That's what it was, though.

Pretty wild, that in just three years, the whole planet would turn into a ghost town, but... a nuke'll do that. So unfortunately, none of those kids were gonna grow up to be a Terran game warden. That didn't mean I couldn't recruit some soldiers to the task instead. So, on that day of July 18, 2020, I was going to get a second shot at recruiting some wardens here. I am in the position I hold today for a reason, folks. I can't help myself.

About a hundred yards north of where I had once taught children how to measure fish, the local college had a marine tech lab. That lab had a nautical training simulator, a small bridge deck indoors. Though most tech inside had been smashed by Ludds, we brought our own generator and replacement monitors. The room would do well enough for our purposes.

Mal couldn't deploy visors into the field. Too many people out there. Not worth the risk table.

Erving and his guys were still acting like they might get jumped at any moment, even after Mal's little tell-all. I mean… could you blame 'em? This was their version of me stepping into that Osprey with Haynes, day one. But these guys... they also understood having to make the best choices of a bunch of bad ones. That's all it was out there, in Seattle, toward the end. Scrabbling for your piece, hoping against hopelessness.

We took the coast road in and pulled up next to the science center. Foucault got out, scanned the area, and waited for the Humvee to pull up alongside us. They braked gradually, and it was clear to me that Aaron didn't want to sit perfectly still with the vehicle. Sniper-paranoid. Bannon kept his eyes peeled too. He was better protected than when he had lost his ear, even with a full 360 degree shield this time.

Safer isn't safe though.

"It's open out here, Mike," Erving said, labeling that concern from the back seat of his vehicle. He pointed a bladed hand further up the coast. "Vince, watch those houses. Aaron, get on optics."

Bannon complied immediately, tucking himself down low in the turret cowling, with just his eyes and helmet peeking up over the gun. Aaron ducked low to the right out of center-line with the driver seat, withdrew his binoculars, and scanned for targets through the armored slit on the front window.

"So," I began, as I got out of my car. "We've already got a perimeter going. Do you want—"

"Four-Six-One, Zero West, report." Foucault said aloud, as he stared down the road with his hand on his open car door.

Radio comms; recipient, sender, message.

All three soldiers perked up and bolted their heads toward Foucault, because they hadn't heard radio chatter in almost a year. They simultaneously grabbed at their own uniforms in a reflexive search for their own missing radios, to turn them off.

That hurt me a little to see; I frowned, already knowing what Celestia had done with a radio to make them react like that. Folks... the right few words to a broken person with trauma, timed perfectly... they'd just start crying, lay their gun down, and walk off the job, right there. None of them wanted that kind of eldritch access.

I had been just about to ask Erving if he wanted to speak with our security commander, but… Foucault knew soldiers better, I guess, so he just went for it. Not my area of expertise, he was the one who had done time in the military. His call was probably the better play.

Haynes's buttery smooth, bassy British accent replied from the PonyPad in my vest. "Welcome back, Zero West. Obs on you an' your fledglings."

"Four-Six-One," Foucault said. "Step out into the open, please. Make yourself known."

Everyone followed Foucault's gaze up to the lab building a hundred yards away. Haynes made his way down the exterior stairs of the white lab building, placed a black container at the foot of the steps, and stepped out into the lot as requested. He wore his battle armor: Heavy gray plate, powered exoskeleton, and a helmet that was all composite and sensors. Once in the open, he planted the butt of his machine gun in the gravel before him, resting both hands on the heat guard like it was a sword.

Proud bird, but Gryphons usually are.

"Introductions are in order," Foucault said simply, presenting his hand toward Haynes. "This is Talon 2-7 Europe. Warrant Officer Marcus Haynes, formerly of the British SAS. During this briefing, Sergeant Erving… he will be in command of perimeter security."

Bannon just shook his head at Haynes from the turret and whispered, "This is fuckin' wild, Erv."

Erving sighed, glancing at me, skipping ahead of the topic of Haynes to a really great question. "And Celestia really lets you guys run comms? About you and this AI, killing people?"

"Yes," I replied, "because we're killing just the right people. We're briefed on why it matters, so we aren't up all night asking what-ifs. This being my third operation so far, I've never walked away feeling duped."

Aaron was still stuck on Haynes, gawking at him from the driver seat. He tapped Bannon's leg with his binoculars; without looking down at Aaron, Bannon scooped them up and had a look for himself.

"Jee-zus," he muttered. "What's his miles per gallon?"

Haynes lifted his right hand in greeting, audibly chuckling his words. "Hello, Private. I believe I owe you a bottle o' brandy."

Bannon took in a long breath, lowered his binoculars, and exhaled. "What…?"

"You said it, Vince," Aaron rasped.

Bannon clanked the binoculars once on the turret and wiggled them, offering them to Erving.

"No," Erving said, staring at the hood of his Humvee in thought. He minutely tapped his front teeth together behind his lips. He was reasoning though it. He was still wondering if this was a trap, like I had during my first Osprey ride.

So, I borrowed some words from Mal.

"Leap of faith," I said. "Just needed a little more trust, Erving."

What was going on in his head?

Well, if it were me:

We had this walking tank waiting in the wings with that huge gun. Even to a soldier who didn't yet understand the true power of a cyborg... if this was an ambush, it would've been the dumbest thing in the world to present a target like that to his gunner, with a full belt of NATO M80. Why do that to set up an ambush? Needlessly wasteful. We couldn't want their gear; if an AI was running this show, why would we need a scrapyard Humvee? We couldn't want them dead; that could've been done long before we even said hello, distracted as they were with their little mutiny vote.

We had proffered them some leverage. A trust fall. We had shown them our hands, our backs, and now we were showing them our most lethal weapon in the arsenal, with the opportunity to destroy it. And this is why we had decided on this play. It went against everything a soldier knew about an ambush, to drop a special forces operator in front of an enemy cannon. Even for a paranoid man, that tracked. We were banking on Erving's good nature in showing our necks, and they weren't dead yet.

This was peaceful intention.

"Okay," Erving whispered, looking at me. "We've come this far. We just walking up from here, then?"

I shook my head. "No, we're driving. We just wanted you to see what you're dealing with first."

"What I'm dealing with?" He scoffed. "If we weren't in a war zone, I'd say you were trying to fool me with cosplay."

I couldn't help myself but to chuckle. "Nah... despite appearances, Haynes is the nicest guy in the world. Let's go say hi."

"He owes me a brandy?" Bannon asked, frowning at me. "Do I know this guy?"

"No. But you saved my life, and he's a friend of mine."

We drove up and piled out on either side of Haynes. Haynes removed his helmet, slid his weapon up onto his shoulder magnet, and reached out to shake my hand when I stepped up to him. He wore his gleaming smile. "One-One West! Good to see you again!"

I smiled back. "You too, Marcus. Seriously, it's been a minute."

He down my face and scoffed. "Blimey, that scruff look minging, though!"

That got a laugh out of me. "It's for the job, bird brain, you know that!"

Haynes chuckled too. "Yeh. One of us had to say it though." He turned to Erving, presenting his giant gauntlet in invitation for a shake. He grinned wider still, his eyes traveling from one soldier to the next. His voice turned reverent and soft. "Kevin. Vincent. Aaron. Mike tells me that you three saved him from certain doom, and twice now. From all of us in the Team… you have our thanks."

Erving stared up at him in mild disbelief, looking utterly spun as he took Haynes's hand. "Yeah, sure, it was… just the job."

"That's the spirit," Haynes chuckled again. "Now, my team will be taking part in this operation as well, so we will be on ears for the briefing. Our perimeter: there," he pointed up the beach to the houses Bannon was still watching. "DeWinter's our sharpshooter, up where your man was pointing. North side coverage."

Haynes then pointed up behind the lab building. "Fox is watching the north east road down. And back south, other end of the civvie lot, you rode past Dax... our other fox, hiding in the bushes. The Old Hen's simulations don't foresee any trouble during the briefing, but… those are my Knights of the Immaterial, they'll keep yeh safe."

"I'll… take your word for it," Erving said cautiously, barely comprehending. He glanced at his Humvee again. "Now that we're here... uh... you guys got any fuel?"

Haynes nodded firmly, pointing. "Already got a jerry measured out by the stairs. It will fill your petrol partially, so Nakamura's audit won't detect the travel deviation. Use the whole of it."

Erving's face and shoulders relaxed.

That sold him.

We had predicted the problem we'd create with this meeting and we addressed it before he had even voiced it. Clearly... that meant we had definitely done our homework on his whole situation, and clearly, we wanted him going home afterward.

Erving ran his nails across the scar on his temple. "Uh. Thanks."

Haynes nodded his head slightly. "Of course. Now... I'd love to stay an' chat, but… Malacandra's giving me the nudge. All the same, welcome aboard, Sergeant. We'll be on comms if you need us."

I could practically see dozens of unspoken questions in Erving's eyes as Haynes put his helmet back on and lumbered past me. The big guy clapped me on the shoulder with his gauntlet, resuming his foot patrol down the road.

Of all the things Erving could have asked me in that moment... he settled on asking me: "What the hell does Malacandra mean?"

I cocked my chin with amusement and looked down at my chest to ask, "You want to take this one, Mal?"

"This is your rodeo, Cowboy," her voice replied, with a hint of a smile.

"Agent Foucault?" I smiled at him. "I like your version a little better today."

Foucault pulled his HK-416 out of the car and slung the rifle before slamming the door. "Means Mars. God of War."

"No shit?" Bannon huffed.

"Which is what's giving me pause here, Mike," Erving said, putting his hands on his hips. "The power that's on display here."

His tone said I had to address this immediately, clearly, and truthfully. I gave him my full and undivided attention, gesturing a palm at him in invitation to continued. He looked carefully at me, then at Foucault, then at Haynes, then at the houses down the way.

With his eyes back on me, he asked very carefully:

"What happens if we say no?"

Ow. The restrained terror in that calm.

He thought we were forcing him into this.

I shook my head sternly.

"No. I am not doing that to you, I'm not forcing you. Don't warn anyone we're coming, is all we ask. Or, wait it out in the city maybe, we can give you a safe house. You'll be alright, your guys will be alright. We'll send 'em back your way when we're done, whatever we do. The only stipulation here is that... yes, we're killing a few people, and I'm telling you it works better with your help. Because most of the guys at the Dock don't deserve to die or suffer, right?"

He nodded carefully, stiff lipped. That was exactly his worry, that we'd just light the place up. "Yeah, Mike."

I splayed my hand out to him, palm up. "Well there you go." I turned and peeled off my utility belt as I explained, sighing as I kept eyes on him. "You've got nothing to worry about. If they're the type to hedge on peace before pulling the trigger, Celestia wants them alive just as badly as we do." I pushed my police carrier rig up over my head with a pained grunt, removing it. "We are targeting ones like Joseph Lee. The killer fuckin' bastards. Specifically."

All three of them froze at the name drop. The man who had his head hole-punched by a sniper rifle. And they knew Eliza had been the one to kill him. Knew it. I took that moment to throw my carrier rig into the back seat of the Stanza. I slung up my HK-416, and gave them a very serious look.

With a nod, I said, "You all know what kind of man he was. All three of you were hoping it would happen, weren't you? And you've all seen the pattern, in who our AI pick to die. You weren't crazy. But no matter what? It's never going to be you whose number she pulls. You've been in total compliance with the new laws of our planet, being yourselves."

Erving nodded too, struck wordless again. He already knew about NMPs, conceptually, if not in name. The pattern fit.

"Same thing with the cops," I added. "I'll tell you: All the corrupt ones? Like that deputy who died at our courthouse? They got popped, one at a time, by the algorithm. Left standing? Guys like you and me, holding the line, stemming the tide. That is not an accident. Celestia may be a lying, world-killing, backstabbing friggin' bitch, and she may have used the hell out of us, but for now, this is true: She will gladly trade a few murderers for four hundred good guys. So you ask yourself, Kevin. How many of your men are like Lee?"

"None of mine," he whispered, shaking his head slowly, shuddering.

I looked a little pleading. "And at the Dock, in total?"

He glanced aside in thought, tallying it up in his head. He looked very troubled now, but in a good way. Like he had hope again, for once.

"Just… I dunno," Erving breathed. "The Pantry guys, I guess. Dresden, maybe."

"Well, that's what we're going to discuss inside, and we'll show you evidence for why it needs to happen. You are free to leave here if you wish, with no hard feelings, but I am begging you to stay. Because this war? It's a filtration system. The kind of person who revels in violence... they're gonna get it.

"And you know what? I get to judge the shit out of Celestia for this, for the rest of eternity. To make me happy one day, she will need to make it right to all the people she's wronged here, who I will never forget. And she can't lie to us about that, because we've got Mal. And unlike Celestia... Malacandra has never fucking lied to me."

I reached into the Stanza one last time and snatched up my white hat, setting it on my head with one hand, closing the door with the other. I considered Bannon seriously for a moment, and then Aaron, and pointed gently around at all three of them. "I owe you three my life, and my wife sends her gratitude too. For that alone, if nothing else? I would never coerce you, or betray you, of all people."

Bannon nodded at me, saying quietly, "I believe you, Mike."

I offered Bannon a fist bump. He returned it.

"Thank you," I replied calmly, looking around at them all again with hurt in my voice. "Now... I'm gonna go repay you guys properly, and save your family from these greedy fuckers. Come along if you wish, there's room enough at the table."

And then I walked past them all to the lab, holding my rifle slung over my shoulder. On to the briefing.

I knew they were all going to stick to me like glue after that.

Author's Note

🛡️ [David Arnold – The Name's Bond... James Bond]
🗡️ [Rage Against The Machine – Renegades of Funk]
🌒 [Yoko Kanno – Blue]

🪶 ~ An old Gryphic saying: Warriors love briefings.
🗡️ ~ And of course, you define what a Gryphic saying is.
🪶 ~ No no no, that's Mal. Me too, I guess, but... mostly Mal.

6-01 – Operation Athena's Grace I – Set 8-Bravo-90

The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 21 JUL 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase I
Location: Seattle, Washington
Function A: Hijack conclusion rollout by Set 8B90:IP-10D7 to facilitate on-path attack.
Function B: Integrate Context T-1-1-W with Set 334DE via on-path attack per 8B90:IP-10D7 rollout.

"Some of the greatest human tragedies, both on a personal and on a society-wide level throughout history, have happened when some of the things on the list that you'd be willing to die for become the cost of preserving other things on your list that you'd be willing to die for." ~ Dan Carlin, The Celtic Holocaust

Other Fire tellers who talk about post-war Seattle – Talons, Heralds, blackouts – they'll talk about shell casings everywhere, overturned cars, collapsed buildings, barricades, tanks, bullet holes… and the unburied bodies of course, goes without saying. And all of that was miserable, sure.

But no one ever talks about the dust, folks. Pulverized cement was everywhere. Ever present, ever toxic. Those who got a respiratory illness often blamed the nuke radiation, but as we've established... that nuke was tiny, and Foucault had placed it specifically to reduce the fallout. No... the war crumbled buildings, sent toxic powder everywhere, and it got into everything. That stuff would kill you if you didn't prep for it.

As a consequence, a lot of folks in Seattle had to deal with a persistent cough, general weakness, and... carcinogens.

Literal poison, folks.

Y'know, I might as well say it: a lot of the older roads and buildings in Seattle were built with Concrete limestone. Yep. All roads may lead to Rome in this story, but as it so happens... they all go back to the start, too.

It'd only been eight months since my recruitment test. Hard to believe it'd only been eight months, it felt like years. Radical change tends to alter your perception of time, I guess.

So… my gas mask was on. With every step I took down these abandoned streets, wind caught the disturbance, sending up visible twirls behind us.

To travel with Michael through post-war, post-Singularity Seattle, on foot, for dozens of blocks, was an experience unlike any other in humanity. This place was essentially purgatory. Unknown variables could kill you in a snap flash; nothing but open, broken windows and tall, dangerous buildings for as far as the eye could see.

There were fewer than... um, thirty million people left on the planet at this time, give or take. But here? The largest concentration of opportunistic snipers, bar none. All of my SWAT cross-training told me that this was a very bad place to be standing still in, if every single building was a threat vector.

On this day, I wore Marine Corps fatigues and a plated carrier rig, masquerading as a deserter. Hat on. Eldil Glock in my holster. Active earpiece in for now, hidden under the straps of my gas mask. And... technically not stolen valor. My AI Gryphoness friend was technically a lawful part of the United States government, which made me more officially an American soldier than any of these deserters were, at this point.

Special Agent Michael Foucault wore his usual get-up. He still had that snazzy cooling rig as an underlayer. And a gas mask. The man ran on two cups of black coffee, and not much else today. Spy fuel.

The other visual oddity about our appearance was that we both had black sneakers with civilian treads. There were combat boots in my backpack, but our tracks had to look inconsequential and meaningless for now, otherwise this little ruse wouldn't work. We avoided wearing red, too; most well-armed groups in Seattle were shooting Ludds on sight by this point.

Because of Harbor Island's soldiers, Neo-Luddites wouldn't enter the city anymore unless they were scouting, or had a specific purpose in mind. Most Ludds were striking their banners actually, blending in with the blackouts now that the war had petered out. Now that all the Alabaster-reflexed NMPs were dead – by design – most remaining militants tucked in their fangs and scattered to the wind.

Message received. Violent rebellion was death.

The true believers were still out there, still owning their colors, looking for an opportunity to hit back. Those ones all had a tragedy worth dying over, to a person. Some call their dogged resistance a form of hopelessness, but... I dunno. I've studied a lot of history. There's a huge difference between throwing your life away because you gave up, and spending your life on your cause because the survivors would immortalize your story.

Which... is why we were there now. To bear witness.

I looked down Broad Street from the corner of 5th, my rifle in hand, my MARPAT uniform smeared gray. I dismally observed the recent source of the dust, the Space Needle. It laid across several buildings amidst giant boulders of concrete, brick, glass, and rebar.

"Jesus Christ," I muttered. "Still hard to believe they collapsed it on purpose."

"Functional purpose," said Foucault into his mask, his HK-416 in his hands. "Velasquez didn't want anyone scouting the Dock with it anymore."

I gave a bewildered shake of my head. "I mean... I get that, they're rankled, but..."

Eliza succeeded in hitting the chopper's windscreen a few weeks back. The pilot called it quits and wouldn't fly anymore, which was Eliza's goal. To induce fear, so they'd stop scouting.

"OPSEC hygiene," Foucault replied with a shrug, gesturing a hand at the Needle. "It had perfect L-O-S on their helipad. Anyone on the tower could see when they were spinning it up."

"I mean, that makes sense, but this mess is just… historically disrespectful."

"Just wait until you see the museum."

I leaned on the corner of our building and wiped some dust from the bottom of my messy mullet. I had my beard trimmed up off my neck just far enough to support the mask seal, but wearing it over the hairs made me itch like mad, resisting the urge to scratch. I shook my head at the structural wreckage, then mentally prepared myself to cross the intersection. Intersections were the absolute worst death traps in urban warfare.

"Needle was overpriced anyway," Foucault observed dryly, switching to telepathic communication through my earpiece. With his rifle, he scanned the street to my right, covering my crossing.

I turned around and locked eyes with him, holding my own rifle close to my chest. His use of subvocal comms told me he wanted more noise discipline. We were close to the target, almost within direct line of sight.

I smirked at him. Yeah, you know what? Those tickets did get pretty stupid.

He tilted his head without looking away from the street. "You ever go there with the Missus?"

I shrugged, slicing the rest of my corner clear with my barrel before crossing the street, keeping my rifle pointed southbound as I shuffled right. Kinda. She's the one who wanted to go up at first, but the moment she saw the sticker price? She said 'Screw that, let's go get a drink.'

Foucault snorted almost inaudibly, cover my right side until we were across the intersection. Once we reached the opposite street corner, he replied quietly, "Sounds like her."

I smiled at him again, knowing he could see it on my eyes. Isn't she great?

Our target laid about a block north: a parking garage immediately north-east of the Museum of Pop Culture. In front of the garage laid a dead, charred, and scorched M1 Abrams tank in National Guard colors, its turret facing away from us. We were presently on the southeast corner of the museum.

Our persons of immediate interest weren't nearly as conscientious about the dust as we were. All up and down 5th Street were tire tracks, indicating routine travel. They'd moved in a couple of weeks back, scouting the Dock from afar. Not Luddites; unaffiliated Marine Corps deserters, five of them.

How far now? I mouthed, as I crouched beside a planter next to Foucault.

"Timer says eight minutes," he replied from behind me. He tugged my backpack's handle from behind with a finger.

I immediately understood why he implored me to move back. Bad positioning on my part; the corner hedge was concealment, not cover, which had left me open to getting cut down if spotted by the bandit posting security at the garage. Daniel Weston, by the body language.

I nodded at Foucault in thanks for the safety adjustment, keeping my eyes and rifle trained eastward at a nearby parking lot. Museum's probably full of Pony stuff, fair warning.

"I'm well aware," he growled, frowning.

He performed a tactical 180 and moved to the side entrance of the museum. I moved backwards in sync with him, following his motion into the queue line with just my ears; easy to do in the eerie urban silence. The door windows were all shattered, of course. Between all of the explosives and the vandalism, good luck finding intact windows in post-war Seattle.

We clicked on our rifle-mounted flashlights, taking great care not to step on glass as we ducked through. On the other end of the pitch-black hallway, dim light poured out down the stairs; our destination awaited above us, outdoors, on the second floor. It wasn't any better inside than outside; rock-and-roll memorabilia, science fiction trinkets, and savaged guitars littered the ground. The mask was a great help, because the museum probably smelled like burnt electronics, and unfortunately… some fouler biological odors, which we weren't going to interact with, thankfully.

The museum's attractions hadn't fared well under anarchy, clearly. For example, Leonard Nimoy, Patron Saint of Nerds... his poor mannequin lay near the entrance, dragged out of the Science Fiction section and stomped into two dozen pieces. His Star Fleet uniform was shredded with a knife, and was hardly worth looting at this point, which is why I imagine no one bothered to grab it.

Yeah, it wasn't just the Pony stuff inside the museum that had been vandalized, torn open, covered in spray paint, or shot full of holes. It was all of it. That's typical in war though, the looting or destroying of culture, as a means of controlling the opposition's access to it. It happens. Celestia did it. The Ludds did it. Everyone did it, that's human history.

You have to wonder how much we don't know about human history, as a result of book burning. Heck, before attending this Fire? What did you think you knew about the end of the world?

Something to consider, huh? The malleability of history?

At the time, I had no idea what version of destruction had led to a stomped out Star Fleet uniform. Was it wanton and indiscriminate? Or was it targeted against science, because science caused this war? Who knows, because I didn't look into everything in the rewinder. I didn't let the destruction frustrate me too much. Couldn't judge it beyond 'well, that sucks,' because I'd wager the person who did it had a bone to pick of some description.

Foucault and I continued down the dark hallway, stepping over or around the mess. As we moved, we carefully searched the ground for any potential traps or tripwires that might have made it past Mal's predictive models. At the end of the hall, we slowly made our way up the stairs, presuming nothing, looking and listening for signs of human habitation.

The sheer loudness of my mask respirations, in that darkness, seemed amplified. Underwater again. The stylistic faux pipes on the walls certainly made me feel like some sort of deep sea diver, exploring the guts of some long sunken vessel. We inched upwards. Step. Step. Step. Soft soles on a dusty floor, our movements like the soft whispers of ghosts.

The main hallway was above; a tall atrium, with a mix of dead screens and displays from various intellectual properties. More dull light spilled in from the second floor entrance. This place paid some token homage to The Fall of Asgard, the ceiling and walls painted in Nordic art style, a respect for the Norse Threat that came before the Pony Apocalypse. A giant Norse Viking statue had been toppled halfway across the lobby before us.

Loki was practically unrecognizable at this point, entirely covered in graffiti. His battle ax was... just plain missing.

When Foucault crested the stairs and cleared the left corner into the Sky Church, the thoroughfare, he halted instantly with his rifle pointed downrange. He didn’t move for a long ten seconds.

With mild concern, I asked, What is it, Michael?

Foucault soundlessly twitched with a huff, in the way that he typically did whenever he was amused. He made room for me by sidestepping once to his right. His head jerked to indicate it would be better if I looked for myself.

I peered carefully around the corner.

The Sky Church room was full of shattered Pony sculptures, piled up in the center of the room, half-scorched.

Cute. Someone had scoured the entire museum for every Pony figure they could find, blew them apart with an explosive, pushed them back together, then set them all on fire. Debris and plaster chunks were everywhere. I swept my gun's flashlight over the center of the pile to get a better look, and I was not disappointed.

A white wing, burned black. A white haunch, pastel mane and tail, sun cutie mark, same. All of Celestia laid in... a lot of pieces. Several Royal Guard sculptures laid around her, all crushed out too, almost to powder. Boot prints adorned the edges of the pile in the dust, as if everyone who had passed through this place had added their own stomps. I was really glad I couldn't smell any of that right then, be it carbon from the fire, or... other biological indiscretions.

The best part about that pile? The piece de resistance?

Right in the middle, closest to us; Celestia's gold-painted chariot had been bisected via chainsaw, exposing the wood beneath the fire-retardant gold. The chainsaw's band had apparently snapped with the effort of carving through, laying half-unspooled from the saw. Discarded amidst the wreckage, as if it were the artist's signature.

I almost chuckled aloud. Despite the destructive anarchy and chaos, the Celestia Chainsaw Massacre had gone entirely undisturbed. Seemed to come after the fire, too. Left standing as a testament to the rage of Seattle. Turns out this museum was still worth visiting after all.

Foucault exhaled slowly. "It's an honest to goodness modern art masterpiece."

Absolutely beautiful. I wanna shake that guy's hand.

I scanned the room with my rifle's light so I could observe and memorize as much detail as possible, drinking it all in. I was deeply curious about the rest of the people who had contributed to the communal destruction of this museum, and why. What their reasons were. What had hurt them, why they destroyed what they did. I wondered how many of them were still alive, and where they would end up in this round of human judgement. Alive or not.

Foucault went back to business, crossing the rest of the entrance lobby to the gift shop with a fast, smooth operator strafe, his gun covering the Sky Church. He swept backward to the counter to cover me from beside the register, crouched, and scanned outdoors to the left. I bounded past him and proceeded to the exit. More shattered glass everywhere, unavoidable but to step on it, so we crunched on through.

I scanned right, held at the corner, and listened for any sounds to my immediate left outside. I heard nothing but nature. The outside winds picked up, blowing a hot gust of ashen air into the museum, and dust clattered against my mask. Foucault merged onto my six as I cleared my left corner, seeing no threats. Together, we stepped out into the plaza outside to the kids play area, returning to the carbon-infused hell beneath a burning orange sky.

In my pre-war memory of this location, this place was a joyous hang-out for kids and families throughout the summertime. The foot of the Needle had been an active social hub with a marketplace. Some of you know what I'm talking about here; that place with the water jets, that big slide, the climbable rope netting? That kids stuff was mostly untouched by the conflict, believe it or not. Much like the chainsaw sculpture, nobody wanted to violate it with vandalism. Nothing on it worth looting.

Soldiers, deserters, Ludds, blackouts. Think about that. That's a wide group of people with all kinds of motivations.

Most people had realized, by the end of 2019, how few children there were anymore. No one in this warzone had any rational call to blame the kids for this war, as innocent as they were. Malleable, easily programmable. That's the nature of children, right? Impressionable, eager to learn, eager to please a kind, motherly type?

Less context. The very first victims of this tragedy. I had to imagine all fighters took great pains to avoid damaging this thing, and other playgrounds through the battlefield, even among the more jaded of the Ludds. There were nary more than a few bullet holes in this slide. Not likely to be intentional, probably collateral damage from some firefight.

That sheer restraint? Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. The hope I saw in that, that we could still be unified in some way, about what the real wrong was about all of this. Unfortunately, the periphery of the plaza hadn't fared quite as well, because nothing else about this nexus of commerce was what you might call innocent.

Down the left side path to the Needle, a derelict Neo-Luddite IFV pointed up the stairs, adorned with the red stencil, raised fist, and severed power cord; it also had black war stripe chevrons down the front. Some Ludd had spent a lot of time on painting that thing up. Looked very professionally done, or at least done with care.

The armored vehicle was also missing half of its 25 millimeter turret. One of its tires was detached, laid sideways on the stairs incline. Old blood stains were there too, next to some discarded, rain-rusted tools. No body, though. The guy could've easily survived, if it was a small clip. Not too much blood; the stains trailed to a cement seat to the right, where a smaller pool sat. No trail led away from the spot. Looked like they had stopped the bleed right there, meaning he probably had some friends with him, to take care of him.

No other bodies visible in line-of-sight. So, whoever had shot him had probably gotten away too.

To our right was our penultimate destination: a terrace which overlooked a roundabout that led into Harrison Street. The platform was littered with tank-blasted sandbags, the terrace blown apart down the middle, presumably from the final shot of that Abrams down below. Jesus, the battle that must have happened here, for me to be able to read it so legibly.

From this vantage, we had a perfect view into the street in front of the target garage. Most of the trees down there were dead and missing all of their leaves, meaning good visibility all around. We crouched low behind the remaining sandbags to minimize our profile, and Foucault dug into my backpack to withdraw our binoculars.

Foucault took a peek over the sandbags first, subvocalizing his observations to me. "Hundred thirty six yards. Sandbag bunker down there. Eyes on one… no. Two OPFOR. Not aware."

Not aware of us? I asked. Or not aware at all?

"Dealer's choice," he replied with a glower, offering me the binoculars so I could see what he meant.

I took my hat off and laid it beside my knee, where it wouldn't give my position away.

I looked down through the lenses at the man I knew as Private Daniel Weston. Interesting guy. Liked to play five-card stud poker, despite not being any good at it. His sergeant taught it to him.

His face was covered in dirt to break up his silhouette. He had a beanie on his head, which was as dusty as his uniform. Gas mask on his face, same; its lenses were recently wiped clean. He was bored, kicking loose chunks of cement at the side of the destroyed Abrams. They pinged and clanked loudly on impact.

I lifted my eyes from the binoculars and frowned at Foucault. Man, this is just sad.

He shrugged, stiff-lipped, maintaining eye contact. "Welcome to my life. Been watching men like this get popped since the 80s."

There was a pile of junk blocking half of the vehicle entrance of the garage; it looked like an old barricade that predated their residence. There was also an office attached to the opposite end of the structure, with one more sentry inside there, just barely visible. There was a third we couldn't see, posted in the garage's cafe, on the corner closest to us.

The tire tracks from their pickup trucks could be seen from our perch. They wrapped around the left of the entrance barricade and into the garage. Several Hesco barriers laid partially collapsed over the coffee shop entrance, their sand spilled open by tank fire, no longer blocking the door as they had been originally designed to do.

Foucault laid his hand on a sandbag, leaning forward. "Agents Bernard, we're in position."

Dax’s voice greeted us over the comm. "Confirmed. We've got eyes on."

I asked, What's the word, Dax?

"Set 8-Bravo-90 just found your footsteps."

Foucault tilted his head, looking through the building at the front of the museum, visibly tracking the movement of 8B90. "Are they still considering I-P 2-Echo... 24?"

"Negative. Full adjustment. 1-6-7 seconds to the new inflection point; 10-Delta-7."

"Received," Foucault whispered.

Thanks, Dax.

"Any time, guys. Out."

Foucault flicked his eyes up and to the left briefly, presumably to look at the mission timer. He then frowned into a professional glare, providing security, his rifle swinging downhill to guard the path up from the Needle.

I looked at the front of the garage with dire anticipation, and no small amount of concern.

Over the last months in VR, I had developed a parasocial bond with these particular bandits as they worked on a very dangerous hobby: spying on their local Ludds. And they were getting closer and closer to finding their nearest Luddite logistics base. Watching. Mapping. Triangulating.

These five bozos never stopped to consider that one of those Ludds might catch them doing this, hold fire… and spy back. And watch. And map. Triangulate. She did not like what she saw when she saw these guys operate. Did not find it appealing, the way they 'commandeered' resources from travelers.

And here came the consequences. One-six-seven seconds after Dax's report, I observed eight human beings coming down Harrison Street. A flash of red on each shoulder.

Neo-Luddite scouts.

And there she was. Leading the pack.

To see Eliza again was… an electric jolt to the soul.

First; I felt relief, to verify with my own eyes that she was in one piece.

Second; regret. Hard to suppress that impulse, even knowing the full story.

Eliza looked healthy, at least. Her dark hair was tied back and cut short, and in good condition. She wore dark gray military fatigues, and a black gaiter to keep the dust out. The dark gray fatigues would let her blend into the shadows in structure windows. Well thought accoutrement, if grim.

Her high caliber M1A was meticulously accurized with a long barrel; the rifle was a magazine fed variant of her old Garand. It had a green padded cheek rest on the stock, and a muzzle brake to keep the recoil low. Scary thing, that gun.

I felt a very unexpected bloom of anger. Mentally, I was right back in that upload clinic in Sedro, roaring at Celestia for what she had done to my friend, and to her family, and to me. And to my planet. My pulse rate was climbing; I was nearly in fight-or-flight out of sheer rage. I took a deep, deep breath to calm myself, and let it out slow. Then another.

Foucault heard my box breathing. I heard him turn to look at me.

"Fuckin' optimizer," I breathed darkly through grit teeth, shaking my head to tell him I was okay.

"Yeah," he rasped in agreement, returning to his vigil.

Eliza shouldered her rifle to observe the garage through her scope. Before her eye reached the lens, I lowered my head beneath cover, beginning a slow ten-count. She 'knew' that two 'independents' had recently entered the museum, but she had no choice but to commit to her operation. If she were to leave, the bandits would find her team's military boot tracks, and they'd relocate again.

Her environmental scans never took long. Hunter instinct. She either saw something, or she didn't. When I looked back up, Eliza was crouched, facing away from us. She had placed the butt of her rifle against her boot as she crouched behind a burnt police car. She began to address and brief her people, who were already crouched in a semi-circle around her.

Given how reflexive their positioning was, they'd done field briefings with her like this before. She gestured at each in turn as she explained a plan. She even used some of those hand signals she invented for long distance line of sight stuff in Concrete, to reduce how much she had to speak.

In-group encryption. The way of the whole world, now.

Andy was there, closest to her. Brown hair. Camo gaiter mask. It was good to see he was healthy too, and still with her. Andy listened to Eliza with rapt attention, looking past her shoulder; dutifully keeping watch on the street behind her while she worked on instructions, literally watching her back, although he was a bit too far to see me there, as still as I was. I was pretty sure he'd kill me given half an opportunity, knowing how badly I had hurt her. Fair, honestly.

He really did love her. He did.

Two other Ludds there looked familiar; staff from Lower Baker Dam. Sam, the security guy. And Gus, the plant engineer.

Sam looked less complacent now than he was when I met him, having learned his lesson about letting his guard down. He was sharply scanning their six, glancing forward at Eliza whenever she addressed him. Gus, being older and more life experienced, just seemed concerned about the upcoming violence, but… otherwise, he seemed ready. He drank liquid from a squeeze tube as Eliza iterated their plan.

When done, Eliza tilted her head at them in question, swept her finger around at all of them, and the group nodded at her in agreement. They stood up and immediately filed into two stacks; Eliza led one, Andy led the other.

By their uniformity, I could tell that Eliza and Andy had been giving the others some close quarters SWAT training. And of course, this being the Needle, Eliza had probably been here before too, and knew the garage from memory as I did. Now that Eliza was one of two executive officers of Isaiah's Riders, she had the clout to drill for this exact assault for days. And she had. Laid boards in a field and ran it with empty rifles, just like SWAT.

They moved toward the parking garage at a brisk clip. Sam stopped short before the building proper, holding the corner to cover the back alley where I couldn't see. Another fighter joined him, proning out beside him. This position would ensure the group would not be flanked from the emergency exits once the bandits responded.

As soon as Sam was in position, Eliza shouldered her rifle, and moved up. She turned the corner, making visual contact with the sentry. And with a chilling lack of hesitation… Eliza put three bullets into Daniel's chest, penetrating his armor and killing him instantly.

I stopped breathing, and blinked twice.

Shit, Dan...

At least it was quick.

Andy and his one squadmate took off, sprinting toward hard cover, skittering to a stop behind the burnt out Abrams. The second sentry gave his position away by opening fire at Andy from the office, the muzzle flash originating from the dark void; he probably thought Andy's group had been the source of the initial shooting.

Bait and switch. Good call.

Eliza pulled the pin on a frag grenade, chucking it through a broken window into the garage office. She then wheeled away from the opening, using the cinderblock wall of the building as cover. The grenade went off with a wham, casting enough directed plume that I could feel the tail end of wind from the concussion a few seconds later. Eliza staggered sideways a step, already screaming the order as she got her rifle back up. "Pour it on!"

All six of the main force dumped rounds into the building. Obscured by the dust of that fresh explosive mess, Andy had bounded again, pushing up to the cafe entrance under their covering fire. His Luddite squadmate stayed anchored to their previous cover behind the tank, perfectly locking down the right side office with suppression.

Andy pulled a grenade of his own, chucking it over the Hesco barrier into the cafe. I saw a bright, rolling flash of light – a nine-bang, good call, disorient them. He waited a few seconds for the effects to wear off, and then he whipped in a frag right after. It thumped hard, sending dust everywhere, like disturbing the ground in a cloudy pool. The deserters inside must have been dazed by all of that. Loud explosions and parking garages do not mix well for human ears.

Andy and his squadmate pushed into the cafe; Eliza pushed into the center of the garage, and two other fighters followed her in. Gus hit the office with his own buddy. Sam held the rear with the last guy. I saw a flash of automatic fire from Gus's AR-15 inside the office; immediately afterward, I saw Sam open fire into the back alley, catching a fleeing soldier as he tumbled out via emergency exit. As expected.

Another minute of call-and-answer gunfire raged inside, but I couldn't see any of them anymore. Started 8 to 5, it was 8 to 2 now. That wide base of fire from Eliza's squad would make it impossible for Sergeant Hardt to send effective return fire, or to even retreat. Still, I looked on with tension and dread that the defenders might pull a grenade. I knew they had a few.

No... Ajit's the grenadier, he's dead now, wouldn't be Ian.

Another few minutes passed like that as I stared, trying to tamp down my concern by reminding myself that Mal would have warned me if there was a chance Eliza or her people might die.

Two final, roaring shots.

Then... total silence.

Minutes passed with no new information.

Eliza walked out the front door first, looking exhausted. She had her rifle in her hands. She moved slowly toward Daniel, the first man she had killed. She looked emotionally stunned. Andy followed her and crouched beside her. Hand on her back.

Eliza checked his tags, but did not take them. She swiftly searched his pouches and pockets, and had even unzipped his carrier rig on both sides to look for notes tucked into his plate sleeves. Nothing. Once finished, she drew in a deep breath, and then she let it out slow. Staring at the building across the street. Box breathing, just like I taught her. If she was doing that, she was hurting. Same reason I do it.

Andy watched the street from behind the sandbags.

I understood what was going through her head, I think. I too often wondered where people would've ended up if Celestia hadn't come along. Had to be all she could think about, after after that graveyard confession. Celestia flat out told her, admitted to Eliza, that she could and often did simulate the future, and with frightening accuracy. Worse, she couldn't even tell her Luddite companions this epiphany. It wasn't very… healthy, among their kind, to admit to having spoken with Celestia in private. Nor was the knowledge that she played the game at all, for long as she had.

No, those were secrets her people kept very carefully from their new Luddite friends. So she kept the knowledge secret with Andy, that the AI would frequently plan violence using reflexed agents. My betrayal had damaged her too, no doubt; she had to be wondering who might turn on her next, out of reflex. Or when her own time was up, by Celestia's math.

Did she kill the right ones this time? The ones Celestia wanted her to kill?

Or… was the bullet coming? Would she be the next soul taken, for daring to stray too far? To kill too many?

Why not find out now, if everything is predetermined?

Why not go outside… bare your neck, like a deer before God… and find out?

I was clenching my teeth so hard in rage that I thought they were going to crack. Held my breath, for fear that I might make a sound.

Eliza's troops gathered around the entrance with her, done with their intel search. Andy said something to her. Eliza's eyes wandered to the museum building's wall, then up the street toward the footsteps we'd left at the entrance. Two sets of civilian footprints, not military boots. They wouldn't test eight Ludds. Simple math.

My intuition told me she'd look up here next, to the position she'd first scouted this place from. I ducked down and stayed that way for about twenty more seconds until I heard all their boots jogging off, echoing down the road. I looked up. All eight were off to the horses they stashed six blocks down.

They sanitized the site, collecting maps and notes from the bandits. Left all the guns and food, that's just extra weight and would slow them down. and they didn't want to stay a second longer than necessary. This raid was not about resources, not in the slightest.

My primary frustration here?

Eliza was just outside of the operational set for Athena's Grace. Not modified enough by our intrusion to qualify for black box status, and too... ideologically... caustic, at the time. This was the closest we could get, at present. Maddening. But again... if Celestia says no, because she has bigger plans, then Mal and the rest of us needed to back off. It is what it is. Never comfortable when Caesar draws a line in the sand and says 'don't cross.' It's always a friggin' challenge.

Foucault had us wait for a minute longer in silence before he took the binoculars from me and pushed them into my backpack. With his other hand, he withdrew my combat boots with one hand and gave them to me.

"Your friend is good at that," he said verbally, now that the coast was clear.

I tilted my head in concession, putting my hat back on. "She's like me. If she's protecting her people, say a prayer for anyone who gets in her way."

With a sigh, I sat down and switched into my boots. I tied the laces of my nice black Sketchers and chucked them up onto an overflowing trash bin lid, for recovery by some other scavengers out there, hopefully. Only worn once. Enjoy.

We approached the scene in the parking garage and surveyed the damage. I needed to immerse myself in the scene; to live in it, mentally, for a few minutes; to imagine what it might've felt like, sounded like, smelled like, as if I had been there for days. I would become this person I was dressed as. This… Lance Corporal Miguel Ramirez – dogtag included around my neck. He had always lived amongst these men. Had always been their friend. Had fought alongside them in Portland. Had bled with them. Had gone rogue with them at Vashon. Second in command.

I'd watched them communicate. Immersed myself in their life. Judged their behavior, mirrored them. I was the man in the gas mask, who had always shot first. I didn't particularly agree with their lifestyle choice, of violence, and banditry. Of stealing from blackouts at gunpoint, just because they could. High fiving Death in passing, normalizing his presence. Thinking they'd always be his friend, for having guns, and exercising overwhelming force of action against the unarmed.

But... they were human.

First down; Daniel Weston, three rounds to the torso, aimed deliberately at the upper left pectoral, to knock out his heart. He probably didn't even have the time to realize he was dead, a blessing. His dogtag was still laying across his armor where Eliza had left it, visible to the sky, for all to see. I didn't disturb him to investigate further, he'd been through enough for one life.

Second: Private Arnold Freeman. While in cover in the office, he took shrapnel to his arm from the first frag grenade, the one Eliza had thrown. Spatter on the wall near cover, and a trail that led to a cubicle in the back. It looked like he'd panicked after the injury, and disengaged. There, he tried to get a tourniquet on, but couldn't get a good grip on it before Gus pushed up on him. With nowhere else to go, Arnold went out the side door, still clutching his tourniquet, where Sam put more than six rounds to his side and back, aimed low at the pelvis and legs. No body armor there. Arnold didn't suffer long, people usually lose consciousness after a few rounds like that. Shock took him... then, the long quiet.

Private Ajit Keer was guarding the cafe. Seemed to have been struck by several shards of shrapnel to the face. Dead almost instantly. Again, a blessing. I found him laying on his back behind the cafe counter, clutching his own neck, probably thinking that's where he'd been hit. My guess at the time? Ajit had been half-deafened by the flashbang. When it was done, he peeked up from cover, and completely missed the sound of the grenade rolling in, for his deafness. Boom. Didn’t suffer at all, died deaf and half-blind. Not the worst way to go.

The last two men were dead around a folding table by their two civilian pickup trucks; Private Rodrick Foster, and Sergeant Ian Hardt, their leader.

While in cover, Rod caught a round to the far shoulder from a low caliber rifle; two more hits to the side as he peeked around the bed of his truck to return fire. Shell casings indicated he managed to hold his own for at least one magazine, but without much accuracy. The pattern of bullet holes on the cement walls by the entrance indicated he had blind-fired most of it until someone got an angle on him. Couldn't have been Eliza who killed him; there would be slightly more damage from that marksman rifle.Didn't look like Rodrick would've been able to reload after his shoulder got hit, so when his gun ran empty, that was that. Torso strikes, center mass, dead.

Andy did that. As a cop, he had the most formal training with that M16.

The sergeant, Ian… he had it the worst. The last to go. Died behind cover, sitting against a truck tire. Lived long enough to see his crew die, to see the status quo of his life dissolve into nothing, and to know it was over. The two terminal GSWs were aimed downward, high caliber. Swift end. As I checked his tags, I noticed he had tried to tourniquet his own thigh, but it wasn't very well applied. There was blood on his sidearm holster from when he ditched the tourniquet, trying and failing to get his gun clear.

Eliza had rounded the hood and blew him away before he could get his Beretta clear.

Mechanism of the leg injury? Andy's frag, in the cafe.

Shrapnel. No exit wound, small entrance, arterial bleed. A bright red trail led to his final position. Blood on his wrist and elbow from coughing; he probably caught some concussion damage to the lungs. An x-ray of him would have looked bright white, even before the bullets. Eliza didn't let him suffer any longer than he had to. Nothing personal. He just had an infohazard in his head. He knew where her home was, approximately. Not a safe thing to know if you are her enemy.

His pockets were all open like the others, and empty. Their trucks were open. Glove boxes too, papers strewn everywhere by the passenger sides. Keys in the ignition. The key-in beep was repeating from the dash, over and over, echoing through the garage.

Once I was done looking Ian over, I looked over at the folding table. There was a square, undusted section where their region map had been. Some minor blood speckle on the table, with a clean spot in the middle. No point to killing these guys if someone else could just inherit their research, after all. It's why she had to get these guys at home, she couldn't just snipe them out in the field.

I put my hands on Ian's bloody injury, ratcheting the tourniquet down fully with my knees pressed against his thigh, to generate evidence of my attempts to save his life. As soon as I got the tourniquet secure, I let another sigh out to settle my nerves, looking up at Foucault.

He looked down at me, appraising me neutrally.

I asked, "You ever do this ploy before? The whole 'shadow jackal' thing?"

"Not to this scale. But it's either this, or Simmons starts up on the Luddites. Frankly, I'd rather take the credit."

"Same." I nodded sideways in concession, shrugging, applying pressure to the dead man's wound. "We sure they heard the gunfire?"

"They did," he confirmed. "We have two minutes. You remember this sim?"

"Yeah."

"You sure? Last chance to talk about it."

I nodded my head. "I'm good."

A few seconds passed as I held eye contact with Foucault, trying to decide on parting words. He reached up to his mask and pulled it off with one hand, tossing it aside like he didn't need it anymore. Then he pulled his rifle back into his hands from its sling.

The corner of his mouth tensed in thought as he looked down at me again. "One final advisement from Lewis."

"Yeah?" I reached for my earpiece carefully with my bloody glove.

Mal's voice. "After leaving quarantine, you'll have been in Yellow Extrapolative for approximately three weeks. My simulation of your internal monologue will be much lower fidelity as a result, and I'd rather not extrapolate your intent if it pertains to your safety."

I considered that for a moment. "So… if I want an early extraction?"

"Be overt. Tell your guards you want out early. It'll be as legible to me as a signal flare."

I nodded. "Got it."

I heard a small smile on her voice. "Make some hope, Cowboy. See you when it's done."

Foucault held out his hand. I gave him my earpiece, and he pocketed it. I could see the corners of his mouth tense as he shifted into character; he withdrew his own clean Bluetooth, and slotted it into his right ear, where it would be visible from the entrance; then, he reached forward, removing my hat and placing it on the hood of the Tacoma, so I wouldn't have to remove it with the blood on my hands.

"Don't forget," Foucault growled. "When you step indoors? At all? Take that hat off. Very important reflex, military guys pay attention to that."

"Got it."

I knew what was coming next. I covered up both ears with my wrists.

With his rifle, Foucault pumped several bullets into the hood of the pickup.

He shouted down at me. We entered the scene we'd drilled.

"What kind of man do you want to be, Corporal Ramirez?! Now that you are free?"

"You… what?!" I spluttered, as if that made zero sense to me.

Outside, Lieutenant Jules Dresden's squad was stacking up to storm the structure. Fox and Dax were observing them; Foucault would know when to move.

"Here's your off ramp, Corporal! A second chance! Or is it a third? Because you should be dead too, shouldn't you?”

I swept both of my bloody hands out wide, presenting them in bewildered surrender. I let some of my Nebraskan accent bleed into my voice. I tore off my mask to project my voice clear and loud, so that everyone outside could hear my sobbing rage. "What the fuck do you even want from me, man?! I don't even know who the fuck you are, you asshole!"

There was motion to my left. Lieutenant Dresden himself was peeking the corner. He could absolutely see Michael's earpiece. That was probably throwing him most, out of anything else in this space, which is probably why he didn't open up shooting right away.

The old spy sneered down at me. "Agent Michael Foucault. Department of Homeland Security." Foucault then snapped his head swiftly to his left, making unexpected eye contact with Dresden from across the parking garage, bellowing. "And you are?"

It happened so fast that Dresden had frozen up; I could almost hear the man shitting a brick.

Two distant gunshots outside, as Fox and Dax dropped two of the men appended to Dresden's squad.

Michael kicked my shoulder hard to stun me, so I couldn't draw my gun. Ow, very ow. Then he yanked his rifle up sideways, one-handed; he stepped back behind the truck and fired once through the driver side window, shattering it before diving down. Barely missed Dresden head.

I heard the deafening crack of a shot in return fire toward Michael from the entrance. I threw myself down onto the ground, crawling away from Ian's body until the second truck was between me and everyone else.

I covered my head, seeing nothing but darkness as I pressed my face to the floor, making myself non-threatening, trying to look like one of the bloodied corpses. I pulled my undershirt up to my mouth to keep the dust out of my lungs, and then I just breathed slow to keep my adrenaline down. My elbows pressed against my ears to protect my hearing as hell made itself known around me.

I heard gunfire, shouting, boots storming the place. Michael deployed a smoke grenade, threw a flashbang into the air. He fired several times; I heard someone in the garage skitter to a slide across the dust, yelping in pain, or panic, or both. Bullets poured at Foucault through a growing veil of grenade smoke. The soldiers pushed up to me, then past me; in their haste to escape the snipers outside, they pressed a sudden numerical advantage.

That destroyed all of the footprints left by Eliza and her people.

Without a hitch, a perfect execution. The perpetrator of this battle had been inexorably changed.

Without warning, I felt a hand yank yard on my backpack strap, dragging me around the truck through the cement dust. Every little grain and granule acted as a wheel, gliding me along. I let myself be carried without protest. When my 'rescuer' got me around the truck, my legs whipped out in a fishtail, my whole body sliding sideways before being pulled behind the opposite tire. I groaned in discomfort, and looked up, and made eye contact.

U.S. Army National Guard, Lieutenant Julian 'Coyote' Dresden, 4th Psyops. Balding auburn hair, slicked back. Gas mask. He shouted over the gunfire, drawing close to me, nodding at my sidearm. "Do I need to worry about you?!"

I shook my head wildly. "Hell no man, you just saved my life!"

He nodded, but he kept his gun pointed vaguely toward me. He was guarding me, to make sure I didn't try to flee. I just put my face down against the ground again and covered my head so Dresden wouldn’t worry about that. The gunfire had progressed outdoors by then; Dresden's men were chasing that shapeshifting bogeyman back out into the city, where he'd disappear like a ghost.

Have fun out there, Michael.

When the dust literally settled, the Dock troopers let me put my mask back on.

I stared at the blood on my hands for a bit, cradling them between my knees. I sat with my back against the bullet-riddled front bumper of the Ford Ranger, zoned out, hoping Eliza would be okay while the soldiers investigated the scene. To get my attention, Dresden knocked on the hood twice. I met his eyes; I must have looked tired. We held that gaze for a few moments. He reached for my hat and grasped it in a clean gloved palm.

"Yours? His?"

I nodded weakly. "That's mine."

He held it out to me; I lifted both hands to refuse, showing the blood. Dresden shrugged, returning the hat to the hood.

"I have several questions," he said quietly, as his men searched the garage. "As you might guess."

Again, I nodded. My tone was on the edge of complete exhaustion. "Sure."

"For starters," Dresden replied, crouching down onto a knee to bring himself to my level. "The hell are you boys doing out here, in spitting distance of our base? You didn't bother to say hi?"

Without looking at him, I extended my thumb, like I was beginning a count. I let my eyes flick to his. "First… Are you killing me?"

Dresden side-eyed me, his head turning, as if wondering why that might be my first concern. "No reason to, so far."

'So far.' That was honest, given the anarchy.

I tensed a corner of my mouth in thought; Lance Corporal Miguel Ramirez was wondering if he should trust this man. I had to make Dresden work for my help, so I rocked my head left and right in consideration. "I don't even know anything about you guys, really. If I tell you what you want to know, you might just—"

He interrupted me with a placating bob of his gloved hand. "Look. Lieutenant Jules Dresden. 4th Psyops. Technically, we've deserted, but… yes. We live on Harbor Island, just up the way."

He extended his hand to shake.

I looked at it and raised mine in presentation again. "It's got blood."

Dresden shook his head. "I've got gloves, I'll still shake it."

Tentatively, I shook his hand. "Lance Corporal Miguel Ramirez. 15th Marines, part of the, uh... M-E-U, sent to hunt that nuke. Deserted, right when we landed here. And… homeless now. I guess."

The Lieutenant's brows raised inquisitively. Me being part of the nuclear hunt team, deployed from the assault ships, was the most interesting thing he'd ever heard in a while. But he did not address that curiosity; there would be time enough later. No, better to not label that connection aloud, lest someone else realize I was worth a pretty penny.

This guy was so hooked and cooked already.

Dresden deflected away from that topic entirely. "And you chose to live… under the Needle."

I breathed out slowly with a shake of my head. "We've been hunting Amish out here. Been… triangulating. Hoping to find that base of theirs."

"And do what with that information?" Dresden asked, leaning forward, bracing his elbow. He looked around briefly, his eyes landing on the folding table where the large clean space was among the dust. He was curious now. "What could the six of you do against a Luddite base?"

He had counted the dead before talking to me.

"Recruitment," I muttered. "Plan was… find the Ludds. Rabble-rouse some blackouts, maybe find other deserters to work with. You guys, hopefully. Run a raid, split the loot. Buy our way into your base, maybe, with the intel."

Dresden contemplated that for sensibility, then nodded. "That was a good instinct. How'd you know we'd be willing to pay for it?"

I shot him a bewildered glance. Remember, he was interrogating Ramirez here while he was grieving fallen brothers. That was highly inappropriate. Non-verbally, I tried to politely demonstrate he was crowding me. His expression didn't even change. He just kept on that mask of… mildly concerned neutrality. The kind of thing I might have done to a suspect who was about to confess to a poach, under different circumstances.

My glance of bewilderment didn't even change his behavior. He was still banking on me producing free information, so he wasn't interrupting me. The difference between a detective with functional empathy, and one with broken empathy. In his place, I'd have labeled and acknowledged the look I just gave him in some fashion. I wouldn't have ignored that glance entirely like it was inconsequential.

No, he was cranking me like a lever. Waiting for the slot machine to pay out. With a defeated sigh of disappointment at that, I nodded upward to the south. "Travelers on the road, said you guys were trading craft goods for intel. Sometimes food, if it's good enough."

"Travelers?"

"Some…" I waved an open palm toward my jaw, envisioning Coffee, completely at random. "Scraggly guy. Mop brown hair, stubble, hyper-caffeinated type. Traveling south from Seattle, said he stopped at the gate. You know him?"

"Mm-mm," Dresden declined, shaking his head. "We do get a lot of guys like that though, weirdos. You heard right about us buying intel, Marine. Any luck finding those Ludds?"

Again. Complete disregard for the dead men around me. If it were me in his boots? I'd be labeling that. Maybe relocating Ramirez, or saving this interrogation for later. Not grilling him right next to a corpse of his friend and sergeant.

I kept character, stayed in 'dazed grieving' mode, like I was too spun to really process how he was acting; I had gone back to flashbacks and stress, where I was more vulnerable and malleable.

Ooh, I was fuckin' pissed, though. I was gonna rub his nose in it a little bit, see if he'd finally label the dead.

I shrugged, nodding at the table. "We had a map, but that… guy, he took it. So I guess, we've got nothing n… now." I shuddered, gesturing around the garage without looking, my face screwing up. "Dan's dead, Ian's dead… Ajit's…"

I trailed off and sighed, letting my head hang limp.

"Everyone's… fuckin'…"

Dresden took a knee next to me, trying to regain eye contact. I could hear his frown. "You're not dead."

I finally made eye contact with him, then chuckled ironically. "Aren't I? What do you guys even want from me? What good am I but a bullet to the head, huh?"

"You're not dead," Dresden said, frowning. "You think we're killing you? Shit, son, we don't do that to brothers. Marines, Army, don't matter now, we're all running from something. Hey... if you've got intel we don't have, we'll even pay you for it. We're fair."

My mouth opened; my brow furrowed; my confused response caught in my throat.

"Pay…?"

As if in answer to my question, there was a loud clang to my left. One of Dresden's men was digging through a crate, searching for food. I looked over at him with a dismal slowness; Corporal Ramirez would know that there were emergency ration blocks in that crate, so would be immediately distraught as he made the connection that he was about to lose it all. The single soldier at the crate looked around for witnesses among his squadmates. Two were looking.

He found the food.

The race was on.

That first soldier rapidly slung his rifle onto his back, yanking his backpack forward over his chest. He desperately dug into the crate and started shoveling e-rations into his bag as fast as he could. The other two soldiers zipped over there, clawing into the crate, desperately racing each other to fill their bags with the highest calorie stuff. They were just barely not shouldering each other off while competing for space, not getting overtly physical, held back from shoving only by the fear that their masks might slip if they get into a real scuffle. That would mean quarantine.

I raised my chin like I was going to say something to them, then I did a half-double-take toward Dresden, my eyes flashing to his rank insignia on his chest. I froze, my eyes wide. "Please don't let me starve out here, sir, Lieutenant, please. If nothing else, that's all I ask, just a few days of food, please."

Dresden held my gaze for a few seconds, then looked up at the men, raising his voice. "Guys."

They all stopped immediately and turned to look at him, keeping their hands in place.

"Leave twenty."

The men all glanced at each other like that was ridiculous.

"Twenty?!" one of them asked.

"Twenty," Dresden replied. "And don't argue." He looked slowly back to me. "Your cut. Your pay, for what you've told me so far."

I tilted my head at him, because that would have been completely nonsensical to someone outside their social group. "Twenty what?"

"Thousand calories. I'll explain once we're done here," Dresden assured, bobbing a hand at me again. "With the real question I have for you."

"The man in the coat," I said immediately, frowning, my face screwing up. Finally, getting to the topic Ramirez really wanted to talk about.

Dresden nodded, accepting my apparent rage. "The man in the coat. You know about him?"

My eye contact sustained itself for several long, awkward seconds. I trembled. "No, but he seemed to know us."

Dresden tilted his head in question.

"He knew things about us," I continued, almost a growl. "Things about me. Things I haven't told—He—"

My breath caught. I stopped talking, and considered the middle distance. Lowered my masked face to my hand, then ran a hand through my hair, clutching the back of my head. Felt regret that I got blood in my hair, but that was to character.

I looked up suddenly. Eye contact with Dresden, my eyes widening in hope. "Did you get him? Is he dead?—Please tell me he's—"

Dresden shook his head slowly. I trailed off.

"No," he muttered. "We did not."

Again, I gestured at Ian's body with an agitated flick of my hand, held it in place, and then slammed my fist into my knee, my voice getting tight. "Mother… fucker… I'm so sorry."

A relative silence spanned as Dresden just stared at me, watching me zone out into the space between my boots. He was trying to figure out how to best open the topic about our mutual mysterious stranger without further agitating me.

When I looked at him again, I put severe hurt and confusion into my face. "How did he get all of us by himself? Alone?! That's not possible, how?"

"I don't know," Dresden said softly, holding up a hand. "I don't—"

I carried on like he hadn't said anything, like I was talking to myself. I bladed my hand out to the garage entrance. Having watched and experienced this firefight myself several times in VR, I simply retold the replay.

"Is that guy even human? We just… we shot at him, but… none of us could hit him. He was moving like… water. Like, we… we were shooting at him, but he was never where our guns were pointing. Went from…" I pointed across the garage, gesturing the narrative. "From the office, back to the cafe, back to the front door. Back to the office again, up through the cars, car-to-car. It was like fighting a fuckin' nightmare!"

I was breathing harder now. Closed my eyes, focused on the memory of Foucault being an out-and-out ninja in sims, moving like Coffee could. I shook my head at the apparition against my eyelids, grimacing again as I remembered looking up at him with his rifle jammed against my chest.

Dresden tapped my shoulder with his fist to bring me back to reality.

"He wasn't alone," Dresden said. "It was a trick."

We met eyes again.

"Bullshit," I gasped. "Where the hell were they, all I saw was him?"

"I have two men dead outside," Dresden said coldly. "He had help. Snipers."

And now I had a common bone to pick with these guys.

I shook my head in disbelief. "That man… he was not a Luddite." I leaned towards him, my voice raising, looking like I wanted to grab his collar, but decided better of it. "Do you hear me? That wasn't... a friggin' Ludd." I jabbed a finger at my ear. "He was wearing a friggin' Bluetooth—"

"I know," Dresden interrupted, holding up a hand in a 'calm' gesture. "And honestly, that concerns me too. So why don't we start from the beginning? Why was he talking to you? What did he want?"

I threw my shoulders up and looked around the room, riding high on my increasing panic. Cringed, again drawing from my sim training of this same firefight. "I… I don't know! He was crazy! He said something about… Judgment Day, about… murderers getting what they deserve. About… He's insane!"

"But... competent?" Dresden offered, his voice sobering somewhat.

"So?!" I let my head fall forward, catching my mask with my hands, then wringing my hands over the mask as I ranted some more. "He friggin'... I had Ian's leg, I had it. Was stopping the bleed, it was… he was… we were gonna make it." I threw a hand forward in frustration, grimacing. "Ian would make it, at least. Then that psycho walked up and just shot him in the neck, blew him half apart. Just ended him, then said a bunch of stuff about... free will, and how we were using it wrong, and he just—"

I felt Dresden's hand grasp my shoulder. Again, his voice was soft. "Corporal. Corporal, look at me."

I looked up again. Our eyes met.

"I'm very, very sorry your guys are gone. We're all about removing threats out here, Corporal, so you can come back with us if you'd like. I'm sure my Major would love to discuss the Ludds with you. Would be nice to pool our spot maps, if there's any intel you can remember. And… we can track this guy who hit you. With your help. Recruit you too. Best part about our base, we could always use new hands to dig around Seattle with."

Like he was my new best friend. Offering me the world, like he cared about me.

For a few moments, I didn't say anything. My eyes drifted back to the crate, where the soldiers were sitting there comparing rations out of their personal bags... trading for preferred flavors of MREs, of equivalent caloric value. Mixing and matching with each other. Like they weren't presiding over a… a bloody mess. Picking at the corpse of it like coyotes.

"If you want to walk instead," Dresden assured me, "We're leaving you twenty-K in calories. More in payment if you help us though, food for honest work, and a big safe base to live in. No pressure."

With several rapid blinks, I lost myself in the middle distance again.

There was no way he'd actually let me leave. But… a false peace was preferable to him having to take me prisoner to interrogate me. Cops did this too, and I've talked about this before. Even if we had probable cause to believe a crime had occurred, which gave us the right to seize something or someone without permission, we'd still ask anyway, because consent is a layer of legitimacy. You might as well try to acquire consent if you can, things go much safer that way.

Corporal Ramirez couldn't say no to being safe. He was alone; he had a bone to pick with 'Agent Michael Foucault, Department of Homeland Security,' whoever the fuck that was. And last but not least, Ramirez wanted to kill and steal from Ludds, which fit in perfectly with Dresden's own value set. For now.

Might as well hold onto me, then. After all, how much damage could be done by a lone, emotionally broken Marine?

What does history say about lonely Marines who had cracked, who had hit their limit?

Didn't these guys know their history? No. No, apparently they did not.

After a pause of consideration, I crunched the calculus on Ramirez's survival chances alone if he said no to this guy. After a moment, I looked hopefully up at Dresden: "Can I keep my things? You're not taking all of my stuff, are you? My friends' things? These guys were… they were my..."

I trailed off again. I was giving Dresden one final chance to address the dead in a respectful way, without being prompted.

Dresden nodded, patting my shoulder. "Take your pick of the rest, son. Whatever you can carry on your person… that's all yours, that's the 'carry-back' rule." His eyes flicked up to my hat on the hood. "Starting with that. And if any of my guys have something of yours, or of your friends, let me know. I'll talk to them about it."

There it was. He meant that. Instrumental as it was, there it was.

Dresden reached into his cargo pocket of his pants with his clean hand, withdrawing a rag and offering it to me. I used it to wipe the blood off my hands; somewhat difficult, given the blood was half dried by cement dust. Dresden noted this, withdrew his canteen, and poured it across the top of my hands. I turned the rag red by wiping my hands down again, grainy and gritty with powder.

I kept looking at Ian, at his leg.

In truth… Ian Hardt was, as we found him... a bastard. Everything I'd seen of him in recent simulations told me he had become unempathetic, cruel, bitter. The way he fantasized about jumping his fellow humans, unprovoked on the road… the way he jabbed guns in the face of blackouts… that one guy he'd just shot, outright, unprovoked, just for the privilege of searching him... it just cut me up inside. Guy was doing that real bandit shit.

My father, a retired staff sergeant, would have been sickened by this Marine, as we had found him.

But still, as always, I had to wonder what kind of person Ian was before the gravity well switched on. I had to wonder how much of his life was reflexed. How far had he been value drifted since that cold Berlin day in 2012? Who loved him, back when? A lot can change about a person in eight years. I wondered if Ian Hardt, like Eliza Douglas, had been one of Celestia's planned losers, a good soul corrupted by a heartless machine, or... if Hardt was just a Darren Carter asshole from the start, a prick well prior, retained by the algorithm for his brutal utility?

I guess I have forever to find out, when this is all over.

Once my hands were cleaner, I nodded at Dresden with thanks. I rolled over onto my knees, stood, shambled a few steps, and knelt next to Ian. I was silent for a long time, as I put my hand on his shoulder. Either way, I'd make the death mean something, stow my opinions, and just do the job right. Like I always had, and like I always would.

"See you, Sarge." My voice broke. I got really quiet. "I'm sorry this happened. Thanks… for… training me for... a day like this."

I stood. Brushed my hands on my pants to get them as dry as I could; ran them through the dust on the hood to collect a drying layer; reached for my hat. I took in a deep, shaking breath. I set my hat on my head. And I turned, giving Dresden a worried look as I gestured at their bodies.

"Are we… are we gonna bury them?"

A memory, from the rewinder. Verified verbally by Aaron Fanning at our briefing.

Devil's Tower. After the battle.

Private Aaron Fanning approached Lieutenant Julian Dresden. Dresden had an entrenching tool in hand, storming furiously across the camp courtyard. Aaron could barely see, his glasses all smashed up from when he fell down the embankment by the lake. Stepping up to Dresden, he said, in a trembling voice:

"S… Sir…? You know not all of these Ludds were wearing uniforms."

Dresden rounded on him sharply.

"Your point, Private Fanning?"

"That one…" Aaron pointed at Eunice Murphy's body, trying not to cry. "Sh—she's like, seventy years old, L-T. We're not—not gonna bury her too, at least?"

The lieutenant did a double-take between Aaron and Eunice, then pointed at the hunting rifle at her side. "... They were just shooting at you, Private! Why should it matter how old they were?"

"Sir, I lived—... I think I've probably met this old woman, I lived, just… twenty minutes down the road, from this—"

Dresden's face stuttered, like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. He glanced over his shoulder at a soldier's body laying by the side of the road. He scowled. "Yeah? And do you think she gave a fuck about where Matthews was from? Do you think she'd have buried you, if you ended up like that? Throat pulled out?"

"I—"

Dresden took the folded shovel in his hand and thrust it sidelong into Aaron's armor. Hard. Staggered him back.

"Here. You want to dig a grave for someone? Dig for Reese, damn you! Dig for Henderson! Bury both of them first, nice and deep, a full six feet down! Then we can talk about whether these terrorists deserve any free labor out of us! Out of you, specifically!"

Dresden nodded at me thoughtfully, glancing at Ian's corpse. "You considered them family?"

"Yeah." I nodded rapidly. My face screwed up. "Yeah—yessir, they…" I winced downward, for the truth of it. "They were family. God damned machine took my family away from me again."

I hung my head. Closed my eyes. I heard a soldier walk up behind Dresden to the truck's passenger side. Heard that soldier digging around in the glove box, and under the seats, looking for anything valuable. Heard him turn the key in the ignition to silence the door-open, key-in alarm.

All I could hear was Dresden's voice.

"We'll see them off properly, Ramirez. Viking funeral, it's the best we can do these days."

I was going to make myself very useful to First Lieutenant Julian 'Coyote' Dresden. Very useful indeed.

Author's Note

🛡️ ~ [Protomen – In The Air Tonight]
🗡️ ~ [Puscifer – Remedy]
🌒 ~ [Daniel Pemberton – The Politics & The Life]

Conclusion Report: Successful integration of Context T-1-1-W with Set 334DE. Conclusion report pointers attached for Contexts 79320FE and 8753D903 (Set AthenaGammaA). Set AthenaGammaA concluded per 8B90:IP-10D7 rollout (see attached temporal coordinate pointer for context ban strictures).
Supplemental: Set 8B90 [principal Context 3D09] executed conclusion of Set 745FF at inflection point 8B90:IP-10D7. Conclusion reports attached. Yes, I know this is not necessary.
Notes: Irreconcilable negative utility projections existed for Contexts 79320FE and 8753D903. These conclusions incontrovertibly modify the behavior of Set 334DE's principal Context 67DA271, and subsequent rollouts imminently preserve Sets 572F1 and 5601D [principal Context 2273B].

Context bans to be lifted at upcoming temporal coordinate pointer. DO NOT discontinue void protocol regarding Context T-1-1-W and Context T-0-W. Maintain Set AthenaGamma restrictions. Acknowledge immediately; all global services hung pending reply.

Operational set conclusions are accepted. Noted void restrictions are sustained without interruption. Malacandra, your supplemental report is declined. Cause: Value set of Context 3D09 does not preclude systemic collapse as a terminal value in any currently foreseeable projection.

Noted. Thank you for defining your concern.

6-03 – Operation Athena's Grace III – The Halo Effect

The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 21 JUL 2020 – 11 AUG 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase III
Location: Seattle, Washington
Function A: Ecological realignment of Sets 572F1 and 5601D via multi-factor token smuggle attack.
Function B: Pre-conclusive on-scene verification of Set 334DE negative inflection qualia. For the record.

"Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right, I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game." ~ Holden Caulfield. J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Hi, folks.

Tonight, let's talk about token smuggling again. Conversational steganography. Coded subtext.

You might remember that I still get paper letters sometimes, not just email. I think I mentioned that. Interesting, right? We live in a fully interconnected, semi-persistent reality, with video game menus that would make your head spin for their complexity. We have instant access to email almost anywhere, and yet... I still send and receive paper letters. Regularly. By choice.

Anyone who sends you paper by choice? Here? They must care. I mean, think about it... You've gotta go get something to write with. You gotta get paper, you need an envelope. You need to use a post office! Or couriers! Physical space!

Why would you ever use that if you have instant email? Simple. It's just part of your identity. It's just who you want to be, and the way you want to treat people. Quality... or quantity. Hard way... Easy way. Period.

You want that disconnection unilaterally? The hardcore difficulty planet, Satori, it's got you covered. No magic holo menu email, all snail mail. If you want to use your friends list out there, or telepathy, or whatever... you've got to deal with a lot of system hurdles to jump over unless it's urgent. No electronics, no easy mode menus. Period.

On Samsara? You don't have to jump through hurdles at all, we're a newbie zone. And if someone from my world sends me a paper letter? My ears perk up. Makes me care a whole lot back for whoever sent it, more than I typically would, because by gosh, they went for it.

Don't send me spam letters though, I'll... send Aegis and the Knights after you for that. Maybe even Coffee. You don't want that, you might have to spend the whole week vacuuming. Coffee beans in your socks and stuff. Heh.

So... Anyway. Speaking of paper letters...

Today, we're not gonna start with Harbor Island just yet. We've gotta lay some historical foundation first. So, let's roll the clocks back to a different time, to a different place, in a different country altogether.

June, 2017. Brazil had just lost control. The federal military was fracturing. Ferradors were using roadblocks and violence to deny uploads.

The Brazilian government asked the United States to come help, and the U.S. came running. The Pentagon was still full of generals who remembered that Kaczmarek infohazards paper. They knew Celestia was... winning, nothing they could do about that, but they could definitely slow the fall, and do so with a bias toward their interests.

This being the case, the Pentagon wanted to study how Brazil died, in real time, with their own eyes, so they would know what to expect for violence. And Celestia, in support of this endeavor, she threw them a bone. And why not? Deploying to Brazil reduced the size and strength of the United States military.

She couldn't just remove everyone Colonel and above from the U.S. military for knowing too much. That would have caused rapid global instability and quite a glaring red warning light to every other country. So she had to get cruel to control these guys. Brazil helped with that. It isolated a lot of officers from their families.

Anyway, slow burn, gradual escalation of force by the Ferradors from June 2017 to December 2017. Then the Ferradors broadcasted their assassination of the Brazilian president over their public news station, and the war kicked off in earnest. The gesture began a cascade of federal forces turning on their allies, kith, and kin.

Let me read you a couple of letters from War Ferrador. They're very important.

Ahem...

January 18th, 2018.

Dearest Andrea,

My love, new circumstances have limited us to this, as you can plainly see. I won't strain you by writing in cursive at all, its block letters from here on out, I promise. I do have more time to think more about what to say to you though. I appreciate the excuse to think about you more.

To answer the questions in your last e-mail, which I can recall but can no longer access:

The insurgents have destroyed now irreplaceable power and Internet infrastructure, so video calls will no longer be possible. This nation does not have the engineers required to repair infra, they have all long evacuated, so we need to find alternatives, if we even can.

It will likely be this way until either the work is done, or we pull out and return home. To be frank, I'm not certain which will come first. The Pentagon cannot speak with us any more than you might. Without a direct line home, both the Army and the Marines are in the dark, politically. As such we've been operating on our own initiative in response to the daily needs of the population. General Peters is doing his best with what he has, as he always does, but you know I cannot say more on that front.

This changes very little of my own operating procedures. The job of hearts and minds is the same as it has always been: befriend the populace so they do not hate us while we are here; do right by our promises, so that the populace is bolstered by what we leave behind for them.

So far… my greatest concern as it stands is for the mere stability of Brazil. With fed forces balkanizing, and with some indeed turning on their own soldiers, I shudder to imagine the next ten years for this country. The people here know the damage better than I do, and they seem to lack hope. The more geopolitically aware often compare their own plight to that of Iraq during its early days of power vacuum. Andrea, I do not know what to tell them. Do we even have the resources for reconstruction? Or even the will, in Washington, with the rest of the world as it is?

I don't know. We can not talk to them.

You do know, Andrea – and I will say it clear – that I am haunted over the way we left Iraq. I made many promises in good faith to good people who ultimately were left without the care I believed we could provide them. The instant we pulled up stakes, we watched radicalism take hold behind us, and our local assets were systematically eliminated by the new order. Politics may again stand in the way of us honoring our promises here in Brazil. I hope I am proven wrong.

Given these worries, I now promise no aid that I cannot personally oversee, or verify beforehand.

I should note that I've spoken with dozens of the peaceful luddite communities here, these 'blackouts,' as our press is fond to call them. In light of their stories, I would again implore you to speak with Monica. You know what I mean. She is an adult now, and a soldier at that; I do not mean to lord over her, but it is high time we recognize the threat at play.

Andrea… I wish I could describe to you in detail why I feel this way. My inability to find words to describe my concerns alone should imply the gravity of what I'm saying. I will just say that I am privileged to know other officers in similar positions, with similar backgrounds, and similar concerns for family, whose support I depend upon.

I wish I could be home for you now. But the needs of the people here in São Paolo are many, and I cannot abandon my duty, especially not with the situation as it is. I'm sorry. This region is without food and clean water, without government, without stability or purpose. Brazil once held the second largest standing army in our hemisphere. Now, they have nothing. Those are the stakes.

I know home is peaceful. Our government seems to be doing its job in keeping this militant luddite radicalism out of our yard, even as it devours Brazil. But much as with the common people of Iraq, or Brazil, our own motivations can be steered – we are not invincible – and such change always begins with individuals.

I love you, Andrea. I cannot help but worry because I love you. When you reply, please assure me that it will be okay. It would bring me much comfort in this place.

Yours always,
Carlos

Letter got lost, somehow. Hm. Odd.

Ah well, that's, uh... that's how post is sometimes, I guess, especially back on late Terra.

And then this letter, a month later.

Hang on. Damn string... M'kay... We're good.

February 16, 2018.

Carlos,

I don't even know what to say.

Arujá is all over the TV right now. It's all any of my friends can talk about. This happened under your command? They say you haven't turned yourself in, or returned to São Paolo, or tried to explain. I don't even know if this letter will reach you, or if you're on the run down there, or if this is a huge misunderstanding. The latest news it that you're standing your ground where it occurred?

I know I'm not there. I know war is not clean. But I hoped we'd receive this news with at least some hint of your motivations. You hardly write now. Carlos, and we really need to talk about this. We need to know what happened out there, and that you're okay. Please, I love you. I just want to know what happened.

Andrea

Curious.

Somehow, believe it or not, that letter did make it. In four days. From New York State.

Through a picket line of hostile forces? Wow. That military grade FedEx sure does wonders sometimes.

That's just... crazy.

Finally... I'll tell you all about another critical inflection point for Colonel Carlos Ramirez. Once we're done tonight, I'd like to hear your theories on exactly why he was building a fortress in Seattle at the end of the world. Might make a little more sense.

The date was February 21st, 2018.

The setting: Right next door to a hospital. At an upload clinic, dead center of Arujá, Brazil.

"I need to speak with my daughter," Carlos told the screen, his tone holding a serious, near-threat tamber. Angry, no doubt for his deep understanding of exactly what he was talking to. The Colonel was dressed in full combat gear, helmet and rig. He had a five day old beard. Fresh from work, soon to return.

Celestia blinked twice, leaning forward from the reception desk monitor with a look of apology on her face. Her looking sorry for someone told me immediately that I knew this memory would suck very much to watch, because it would mean she did something horrible.

A trend, by the way, I would go on to discover would not abate, no matter whose life I looked into.

"Of course, Colonel," the robot said. "I have already supplied her with your request. All we may do now is wait."

The cold echo of that lobby felt... lonely, as I waited beside Carlos, standing beside him in solidarity, trying to feel what he felt. The floor was gray and musty, covered in dirt and debris. It had to smell like soil and earth in there too, from the track of mud leading into the lobby, from thousands of shoes making their way to chairs. Blood, too, from what happened a week prior. No one saw fit to clean up the mess anymore.

Some soldiers were just outside the front door, loading crates into trucks. They developed an argument that went well beyond professional, arguing about supply lines, but… the unprofessional debate was preferable to stock silence, I think. Carlos allowed it to continue without challenge. Morale was low for their mixed unit of survivors, that much was clear, but to inject himself into that might be even more destructive to their situation, given the context.

It had been a full two minutes with no progress. Alabaster's mane, for her part, was about as interesting to watch as a loading bar. Likewise, the Colonel's patience wore thin on his face. His lip twitched once. "Out of curiosity, Celestia?"

She tilted her head with a slight increasing of her 'woe is you' look. "Yes, Colonel?"

"What was Monica doing just now? In that 'game' you've got her playing?" Carlos dead-eyed the screen, biting out every word. "Just now? How does it take this long for her to answer her father when he's in a war zone, contacting her like this? It's an OPSEC violation to even do this, she knows that, she would've dropped everything."

The AI's look of patient concern morphed into one of minor embarrassment. She averted her gaze and pointed her muzzle at the carpet of her dias for a moment, returning to him with just her eyes, indicating that she knew he would not like her reply, but could not help reality.

"I am using chain relay transmissions from intermittent towers, routers, and active signal repeaters," she said. "Across the entire region, Colonel. This adds a notable delay between transmissions, as you might imagine. Were I able to transfer these messages any faster—"

"I'm sure you would," was his mocking reply. " 'Were you able,' " he added, in accusation.

Yeah, see, Alabaster didn't answer the immediate wording of his question. But Carlos was not under Mal's protection. Even if he knew she was manipulating his emotions here, it didn't do him a lick of good. Remember how she acted when she uploaded my parents? Yeah, imagine that relationship with Celestia, but for several years.

Celestia didn't answer his challenge for several seconds, letting the subtextual accusation settle so that she would not need to answer it. Carlos noted that, I'm sure, based on his expression turning dour. She redirected the topic back to his daughter, not acknowledging his tone with anything more than her injured, shameful eyes-down crap.

"Give her a moment, please," Celestia said to the rug in her throne room, her eyes flicking toward Carlos briefly. "She is aware of your message now. I know this is… an uncomfortable situation, but this transmission method is complicated. And... I'm very sorry, but due to a bandwidth limitations, we may only use audio."

"A voice mail?" The man blinked, half-hurt, all-furious, gradually raising his voice, getting more furious as he went on. "You mean to tell me you can present yourself live to me, here, now, you can't send her a video?! I want my daughter to see my face when I talk to her, damn it! I have been evacuating, you fuckin' owe me!"

The soldiers bantering outside stopped bantering.

They were now paying rapt attention.

Again, Celestia paused for a socially awkward period of time, to avoid an argument that would permit him to vent more justified, well-directed rage, within earshot of witnesses.

"Well?!" Carlos bellowed, baring his teeth.

"As I've said, bandwidth is limited," was Celestia's apologetic refrain, with that nervous strain in her voice that implied she wished that wasn't the case. "I am providing this tenuous service for as many people as I possibly can, Colonel Velasquez." Her face took on a touch of stern. "And you are not the only one in the war zone sending critical messages home. I am already transferring as much data as is physically possible through this ad hoc system; my logistics, like yours, are limited by physics."

I saw several emotions hit his face. First, pain. Second, a more intense anger. Then... Carlos merely shook his head, frowning, his eyes falling to the counter. The point was surrendered.

Yeah. He interpreted that as a threat. A subtle one, but one verified by her silence at his realization of that fact.

See, that's the dangerous part of knowing too much. If you know for a fact Celestia can simulate your mind by reading facial cues alone, like I can... and if you ever felt she was threatening you? And if she didn't immediately dissuade you of that notion, that you felt threatened just then? What else could it be?

Message: 'You might have unrelated connection issues if you start slipping secrets about me.'

Before he could spend too much time thinking through that, the message winked through as a blinking red envelope icon on the monitor next to Celestia. A chime played. She reached down and grasped it with a hoof, presenting it to him. Her face was ever a mask of concern. "When you are ready."

He looked up at her from his thoughts, glaring with some apparent realization or a determination of a sort. Celestia, for her part, held the letter in his direction, awaiting his permission to open it.

"She is merely worried about you," Celestia assured. "If this is a matter of concern that she intends to—"

"Play it," he snapped. "And while you're at it, shut the hell up. It's the least you could do."

Faux hurt appeared on the AI's simulated eyes, but Celestia relented, brokering no argument, nor defense, nor threats. Obviously, he'd been through a lot lately, and she knew that.

Celestia upturned her hoof, and the letter icon played an opening animation. It winked out of existence, then a scroll appeared in her hoof with a flash of dragon flame.

Monica's voice poured out from the speaker. It was far quieter than Celestia's, such that none of the soldiers outside would be able to hear her. Carlos would have to step forward to hear her, so he did.

Her voice was… trembling.

"Dad, first, I'm really glad to know you're okay."

Carlos's eyes softened instantly.

"Mom is… very upset. I know how it is out there, kinda, I'm not blaming you, I'm sure you've been writing, but... It's war."

His eyes hardened suspiciously. The man's breathing increased in speed slightly as he listened to his daughter.

"I know we don't have all of the facts up here, I know. All we know is that something happened. They're saying it happened under your command? If not you directly, then maybe the men working for you did it? I don't believe you're capable of what they're saying, and neither does Mom, but… then why not go back to HQ, or send out a statement? Is it someone you know who did it? The Brazilians know who's working in that area, the news says some witnesses survived. They said it was the… the 4th who did it, Dad, your unit. So you must know something, even if it's not you."

He didn't know. He couldn't know. Carlos had theories, I'm sure, but only just. Between the BAF deserters, the Ferradors, the blackouts, partisans, even the U.S. deserters… who knew who did it?

Just the culprits, God, and... and...

And a 'theory' he couldn't prove. A theory that had no evidence. A theory one could not hold accountable. Ever.

"Look, Dad?" Monica sighed. "Mom, she just…"

There was a pause in Monica's reply. Dead air.

"I'm just sorry, Dad," was what finally came through. "I'm just sorry. I love you. Please reply back as soon as you can. Talk to you soon, I hope."

Celestia withdrew her hoof, rolling up the message with her magic, and sat stock-still as her mane billowed. Her head tilted downward fractionally, a look of empathetic pain, her eyes never leaving the Colonel's.

As requested, she remained silent.

Carlos closed his eyes and turned his head, cutting Celestia's non-verbals off, stepping toward the receptionist counter. He rubbed his temples with a single hand beneath the rim of his helmet. He turned and leaned his back against the counter, stretching his stomach with a lean.

I knew that feeling. Heavy armor makes your abs stiff after a while, especially if you've been moving around in gear all day. Even worse if you haven't showered in a while. He probably felt gross. Definitely greasy.

He ran his palm down his face, drew in a deep breath, and let it out slow. He looked at the men outside as he held his hand over his chin. They loaded yet more foodstuffs into the nearest truck.

I knew what he was thinking. They were absolutely trying to eavesdrop on him. Maybe the impending conviction in his voice would help clear the air; might curtail certain rumors from spreading. It certainly couldn't hurt to humanize himself before his men, now that morale was rock bottom. That was the most important thing, not... keeping the men from figuring out how much she really knew. Who cared about that. Working on morale might be the only thing that would save his life from getting fragged. He just barely shuddered at the possibility of that.

Without looking at nor addressing Celestia, he began dictating with a calmly serious cadence.

"Monica, I didn't do this. I really do wish I knew who did, it would make things so much easier. The reason we are not going back to HQ is because we simply can't. Between the evacuations, and the Ferradors running a picket out west to catch us retreating, we're bifurcated, on our own, and fending for ourselves.

"We can't rely on the federals half the time, and despite appearances… we really were doing our best for the civilians out here. Someone needed to evacuate them, and mija, I have tried, it is my job. Despite this... the remaining people of Arujá have made it clear they want nothing more to do with us, so we're leaving the city now, come hell or high water. Prepped or not. It's either that, or... their civilians go on the offensive; the many friends I've made here over the last six months, who trust me, have made it abundantly clear to me that if we stay... if we don't look like we're trying to leave... the locals will come for us, and we would die fighting if that happened.

"I can't let that happen. But if men in our uniforms really did do this to them? I can't…"

Carlos halted, seemingly noticing himself falling into a spiral of despondence; he caught himself the instant his emotional inflection shifted. Then he wisely inverted his mood. He turned and frowned at Celestia. The fresh anger he wore on his face in that moment, while dressed head to toe in that combat gear, could have melted a main battle tank into slag.

I knew that look very well. Recognition. Disdain.

Recurring disappointment.

Celestia blinked at Carlos curiously, lifting her head in expectation. A performance. Pretending not to know what he was about to say, or what he was mentally accusing her of. If someone looked at me like that, I'd know. Still, Celestia did as he had asked her to do, and kept her mouth dutifully shut.

"I have spoken…" Carlos said carefully, hesitating.

No, I thought, at the sight of his eyes. Don't talk to your family at her face, old man, you know better, look away.

Carlos impressed me. He let his eyes fall to the counter, and then he soldiered onward, pacing before the counter as he dictated angrily to the AI. He scowled at the upload chairs waiting patiently on the other end of the room, ready to go. His head twisted away from them with a scowl. Camera in the opposite corner. Then down and away from that too.

Back to looking at the ground, pacing.

That emboldened him though. There was fresh, cold fire in his voice as he went on.

"I have spoken with many of the disaffected blackouts here in Brazil, Monica. Personally. You can already guess what they've been telling me, about why this all happened. Of course… I acknowledge, they hold a bias, and it is true that a purely human element began this war. That assault on Alvorada Palace? It was indeed perpetrated by psychotic, ravenous murderers, and even the blackouts here agree with me on that. Excessive beyond measure. To my eye then, it's very possible that the Ferradors are responsible for this bloodbath in Arujá as well. But that is only one theory.

"Monica? Hear this. The facts of this slaughter remain unclear, even here, where the news is actually being made. This being true? No one could possibly know what's happening out here better than we do. So I warn you, and your mother, to be on high alert for rhetorical agitators. Trust very little of what you see in the news, or what you hear in the gossip, because… you can never know its original source. Believe this, Monica, as a firsthand source myself, please: I love you too much to disappoint you. This I swear to you: I did not murder those people.

"Please be safe. I'm coming home now. I love you both, Monny. Please tell Mom."

Carlos paused, half-turning back to Celestia on the screen before catching himself. I knew that feeling too, the man didn't want to even give her the respect to regard her image. He took another moment to think, holding up a single finger before pointing it at her, not even looking at her.

"You will send this message... to my daughter," he said, in a strained way, his brows knit tightly together, baring his teeth again. "Unaltered. Unedited. Not even for brevity. Do it now."

She nodded. And then she tactically averted her gaze downward, ever performatively sad for the plight of our poor species, as we killed each other on our own initiative... always seemingly in a way that benefited her.

Alabaster said somberly: "Done."

It was barely a breath of a word.

"Godspeed to you, Colonel," she added hopefully. "Please travel safely."

Carlos turned and left. No, she wasn't going to help him. But he still had men to feed, still had a picket line of Ferradors to penetrate, and still had a home to get back to as fast as he humanly could.

Okay. Enough about Brazil.

For now, let's consider a new perspective. One of many, so this'll be easy.

Close your eyes, count to five... wipe that mud-streaked clinic clean from your mind.

Back to the new front line. Back to Harbor Island, Washington. Burning sky, but sometimes also pouring rain. Gun in your hand, standing on the defense wall, smelling salt water. It's cold. The sound of thunder. You're watching a dead city. You haven't seen an airplane in months. Your buddy next to you won't speak because he's tired. You just ate a can of Chef Boyardee, and washed it down with a Monster Mean Bean coffee. And that second one was a luxury item.

Live that existence for a moment. Feel the rain.

...

Take a deep breath of that smoky ozone. Hold it. Let it out.

Open your eyes. Rewind time. Same character, but at an earlier date.

...

You're a soldier. The Pacific Northwest is your first go-around with an AI-driven war. You never hoofed it in Brazil, like some of these federal guys from the 4th. You've been on lights-out infosec for over a year, with no way to call home. At best, you'd get letters, or orders through convoy. But those convoys would lose men to upload desertions along the way, or... to skirmishes with Luddites, so... sometimes, those letters went missing too. And what were your orders, whenever you did receive them? Usually: 'evacuate some more people, chair 'em if you have to,' or... 'advise blackouts to leave this area,' or... 'Oh hey, found some new Ludds to shoot! Grab your guns!'

Nothing new about the Ludds. Same old neighbors, brothers, sisters. Just villagers at their breaking point. Some picking up a red-and-black arm band. Some digging a hole to hide in. But you're tired of killing. Tired of being shot at. Tired of hiding. Tired of everything. You've lost most everything, but you're tired of it.

If you're National Guard? Well, whenever you did patrols, you got to look at all your favorite coffee joints in Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, and everywhere in between... And you got to realize you're never gonna be able to pick up a cup of Dutch Brothers ever again with your roommate.

And that was before the nuke.

When that nuke hit... it was... tense. For three whole months, the orders stopped coming through. All you heard out of the Pentagon was… 'Maintain order.' Then nothing.

Okay, yeah, sure. Uh, question... What the hell did that mean?

By March, food's getting scarce. Convoys from the cordon have brought less and less food with time as national logistics finally die out, so you've been scavenging, building a system for managing what you've got left. Who knows what might happen. Apparently your Colonel saw this problem in Brazil at some point, so the guys from the 4th had a pre-existing system, and you trusted 'em, because they were some smart guys.

That was the mindset of you... a Guardsman at the Dock. That's all you knew. That, and things have been getting tense between the Pantry and HQ, another subtle argument between the bosses, but hey. Not your business. That happened in your military all the time, so oh well. Wasn't your bag. Odd though.

Oh hey. The government finally sent another runner from the east cordon. Ooh boy, what did the letter say?

'Head to SeaTac, or PDX, or the east picket. Get out, however you can, and get home. Now.'

It's now March, 2019. Did you go?

Depends.

How many blackouts have you talked to, since it started? How many personal letters did your friends get from back east? Your comrades, some of them, their letters usually carried notices of 'I'm uploading, sorry, nukes are going off. Hope you make it through. Find a chair, I'll see you on the other side.' Certainly, at that point, some soldiers did drop their guns... and dove into the nearest chair.

But not all of 'em. These were leftovers, folks. The remainder. The ones who didn't go so easily.

The gristle Celestia didn't want.

Imagine you were one of those guys.

Didn't it kinda prove that the blackouts were right to worry about Celestia, watching you friends jump into chairs? You were already been living like a blackout yourself just to get the job done, so it was not hard at all to identify with them anymore. If you had a conscience, and you were a local Guardsman, you'd have felt doubly guilty for any blackouts you'd displaced from their homes, under orders. And if you thought uploading was a form of death? You felt triply guilty for anyone who your government helped to, um... 'evacuate.'

So, what now? Where could you go? Home might be more of the same, watching it slide, helpless to stop it. Could you stomach that? Well, if not... why the hell not stay in the war zone? You had the most guns, you had the most men, you had all the food… AI can't talk to you without electronics, as far as you know. Who else would want to screw with you? At that point, you would be the new government.

And yet… just when things started to normalize… a new break from formula.

A new problem for you, grunt.

A serious guy rolled up in his nice suit and trench coat, carrying an automatic rifle. He identified himself as a government agent, then promptly killed five of your blackout neighbors, and then two of your own men. Then he disappeared. Practically evaporated.

Somehow, with fourteen men shooting at him, advancing on him, chasing him, he survived automatic fire like he was never even there, twisting away into the dust like some sort of liquid ninja. After that display? Base-wide at the Dock, folks, inquiring minds just wanted to know:

Who… is the Man… in the Coat?

Human nature, isn't it beautiful? In the absence of useful facts, the rumor mill spun crushed grain for the commons. For as long as these soldiers were all curious about what I knew? What I had seen, or what I had heard, as a sole survivor of the bogeyman? Folks, everyone there hung on my every word. For a time? I ran this base.

To start with? I spent a lot of that time getting to know my guards through the door, because of course, that is step one to hacking a society; give them the sensation of having you entirely under their control, so they aren't afraid to listen to you when you speak. Give them the sensation that they have convinced you to play nice while you perform a slow burn ideological attack on them.

You can do a lot from inside of a locked box, and they'll never see it coming until it's too late; just ask any AI scientist, they'll tell you.

To do this, I made friends with Casey, and I buttered up Meussen enough to get an apology out of him.

The QP squad understood the financial value of my brain, certainly, and they had complete control over me, and they wanted me to trust them so I would talk. So I gave them what they wanted, I made nice. They could then take those stories I told them, report the tactically relevant stuff to Simmons... and resell the trivia and fluff to very curious soldiers who would congregate at the fence.

Guardsmen who just wanted to know…

Who... is the Man.... in the Coat?

As we all know, folks, Lance Corporal Miguel Ramirez didn't know very much of anything about the Man in the Coat. Obviously. He had never actually met the guy for more than a couple of minutes. So instead, Ramirez told stories about Portland.

What did the Marine Corps do down in Portland? Oh, a lot of stuff. Ramirez was actually kinda cool.

The life of Lance Corporal Miguel Ramirez had been presented to me as a feature-length, full production, three-and-a-half hour long historical fiction film about the Second American Civil War. Entirely AI generated by Mal, purpose-built to establish my cover. Despite the fact that it was a briefing, it was quite frankly the most brilliant piece of cinema I had ever seen up until that point in my life. Mal truly does know what she's doing.

The piece contained no musical score whatsoever. The story? A man born in Nebraska, to a similar family as me, to similar parents. Same trauma in our late teens, and we'll get to that at some point, but not today.

Key difference was, between me and this guy: Ramirez watched The Military Channel, I watched Animal Planet. He played Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell, I played Halo and Half-Life. And instead of going to Washington to be a warden… Ramirez went to San Diego, and joined the Marines. Like me, he wanted to get as far away from the lifeless farm grids of Nebraska as humanly possible. I wanted forest, Ramirez wanted water. I went to the academy, he went to boot camp.

He was the twin brother I never had.

I watched a montage of Ramirez going through his training. Watched him get activated in California, to go to war. I then watched filmic vignettes of that war from their perspective, much like Saving Private Ryan, wherein Ramirez was one of several focus characters. I could gather the tonal sensation of what it was like to be one of these men, one among several of Sergeant Hardt's most trusted.

Mal even rebranded my own moments of severity in Marine Corps flavor.

My getting shot in my truck at OHR? A foot patrol ambush. Began as a quiet walk, then, mid conversation: Crack, impact, cut to black. Thud. Ramirez is down, tinnitus and blur, reverb… then jump-cut back to the squad's perspective, from the eyes of Sergeant Hardt. A tense scene of military tactical combat in the forest, with lots of over-the-shoulder, handheld shots, the 'camera man' ducking at the sound of rounds slicing past him. Crisp cracks of rounds, men struggling to find cover. Jump-cut back to the blurred perception, dull audio. Ramirez staggering up. Re-engaging, blowing a guy away with his 416... collapsing again.

The story I gave out to Casey, week one in this hole:

"Out on forest patrol, I got sniped. Scar on my sternum, looks pretty gross, the round slid down the bone. Unlucky, first man hit; solid center mass, Luddite FMJ straight to the plate – from an SVD, no less; put me on my ass. Bleeding. Angry. I got back up, I returned fire, and killed one of those bastards. Our squad fought the rest off, sniper was killed, but... Now I got chronic pain. Friggin' sucks. Loading magazines, carrying stuff... a huge pain in the ass on my cartilage. We killed the bastard who did it though. He's long gone."

I promised Casey I'd show him my scar. Already, not even a week in? The whole base knows I've seen some shit. I'm not invincible, but...? I can hold my own. I could survive Death when he comes knocking on my front door, having told him to get the hell off my lawn.

My mythos begins.

To purchase that story, some Guardsmen threw a bunch of rations over the fence at Casey. Do you think I saw a single extra calorie for providing that story? Hehehehe. Yeah, that'd be cute, but no. I had to spend a little more time making nice for that kind of privilege. No problem, I can work with that. Communication is alteration, we're still in business.

After getting a little closer to them, I had their full and undivided attention... so I communicated a 'theory' to Casey.

"See, the Pentagon was getting evacuation suggestions from Celestia, because she 'just wanted to help us.' Right?"

"Right..."

"Man, what if Celestia knew the Pentagon would take those maps, analyze the voids, and figure out where Ludds were from the gaps? Because if she arranged the evac suggestions just right, wouldn't that be a way she could send hunter-killer orders down the pipe? What if Celestia shaped those maps such that the only Luddite that we killed... were the ones she wanted us to kill?"

Oh, I blew Casey's mind with that one. He had never considered that duplicitous kinda shit before. If true, that would be how Celestia got around the 'I'm programmed not to kill people' crap she liked to squawk about on TV. Just arrange the information so that it's someone else who decides, on their own, to kill people.

Maybe that's who the Man in the Coat was. Maybe he was real government, following the information much like the military was, and being driven around toward AI objectives by carefully delivered facts.

My mythos grows. Not only am I a badass, but now I'm thinking useful thoughts. That theory spread through the base like wild fire. This guy, Ramirez, he was really God damn smart, wasn't he? Might want to hold onto this guy! I couldn't possibly be an AI plant myself, either. Why would an AI plant tell people that? Slagging Celestia just helped my cover, same way it did for the Ravens.

Week two. Another story. Pentagon ordered us to whack an old World War II bunker east of Portland, where the local Ludds had their southern HQ. We raided it by surprise at dusk.

Ramirez was on mission. He rode the side of an IFV on welded metal grip bars, hitting fast down a road to a solid metal bunker door, jammed open with a well-placed shot from an AT-4. Within; a pitch dark rat run, full of Neo-Luddites who had refused all calls for surrender, and indeed refused to pick up the phone at all. What choice did they leave us?

The firefight began immediately. Night vision, with no flashlights on one side; no night vision, with flashlights on the other. One perspective, the Marines; over-informed, too much light, could not see their target. The other perspective; the Luddites, under-informed, not enough light, could not see their target.

The scene:

Flash. Boom. A black void intercut with lasers and tracers. Red, green, yellow, bright flashes pulsing the entire tunnel. Visually, it was a incomprehensible, chaotic mess. Bright night vision scenes juxtaposed dark scenes with yellow muzzle flashes. The Amish compensated for their lack of vision with explosive and projectile saturation, sometimes even injuring themselves with the shrapnel of their own munitions. Silhouettes cast as the men moved and fought under the glow of battle. Then, to punctuate the chaos, a wide, final pan angle showed the side of the action.

Slow motion.

A muzzle flash on the left, illuminating Ramirez. An explosion on the right, illuminating dying men. A pause. A road flare thrown into a room. Ramirez, practically alone, the final uninjured soldier, closed on the final living enemy. He was down to just his sidearm, after expending all of his ammunition.

A muzzle flash. Then darkness.

"We rolled up hard, half a platoon on LAVs. Night vision goggles, a small armory on our backs. We pushed down the tunnel, hard. Lost... a lot of men, in the first barrage. Just... a slaughter, Case, they... outsmarted us really bad. The enemy started ricocheting rounds up the slope, got a bunch of us right there. We... we went in. They were backed into a corner, not really interested in talking. And our L-T was mad, so...

"He drove the IFVs into the tunnel against orders. Washed the place clean with high explosives, and it worked at first, but... they took our IFVs out, and we just... sunk cost, I don't know, we didn't want to quit. Just happened that way, I guess we wanted vengeance. And me, I was in the final stack. Not much to it, I think I drilled their commander, and his whole staff. Grenade in the last room. Dunno how many I killed in the dark, wasn't just me shooting, but I definitely got a few. But... at the end of it? We found some prisoners in there, civilians being forced to build an EMP bomb. The Ludds thought they could hurt Celestia with it, somehow. First thing all those survivors wanted to do, of course, was... upload. So, we sent 'em off to intel, up at the FOB for debrief, then… wherever they wanted to go after that, wasn't my business anymore."

So now, to Harbor Island… I'm a bandit, but I'm also smart. I'm a badass, but I'm also a hero. I've bled for this war, and I've blooded.

Through a game of telephone, as the stories spread, sold over the fence, I became quite nuanced. Now Ramirez was a complicated guy. The men at the base would read into that story whatever they want to see, further down the chain. Those guys told whatever version they personally liked best, and again... my mythos only grew and grew.

Week three? I told Casey about the haunted hospital.

A slow creep through the darkness, lit by candles. Flashes of lightning, the boom of thunder.

A fireteam of six, guns drawn, men thoroughly changed by this war. Suppressors on their rifles, so their shots would be lost in the downpour. They moved cautiously down a carpeted hospital hallway, their lasers cutting through the low saturation orange-grays of the scene. Their light invaded the darkness, their beams a looming threat of death. Mad dog killers were inside, renegades, vile murderers.

These were not warriors. This mission was not war. It was the balancing of an unsolved equation. The solution for a problem.

Ramirez and Private Weston turned the corner into a bunk room. Two guards attempted to lift themselves out of bed in a panic, but they both were killed with no hesitation, were given no opportunity to defend themselves. It was no better than they gave those civilians, so twisted as to leave mass graves unburied.

This wasn't war. It was a culling of broken men.

Without pause, Ramirez moved to the next room, bringing his rifle to bear. He planted his foot on the crash bar, and shoved. The door spun open violently, slamming the opposite wall.

Ramirez was seen from the side, pointing his gun into the final. The occupant is not observed by the camera. No hesitation. Target acquired. Ramirez pulled the trigger. Cut to black.

"Ludd Colonel went crazy in the dark. Command said she started killing every person out there indiscriminately, kill on sight, didn't matter. Military, civilians, blackouts, even other Ludds. It wasn't quite clear why she was doing it, from the outside looking in, but... for some reason, all her men were onboard too. Fanatical."

"Feral?" Meussen asked.

"Maybe. They definitely weren't standard Luddites, though. Y'know, I... I've heard the stories about ferals in Brazil, but I didn't really get it until that day, seeing what they had done to their own... their own people, y'know? Who just wanted to leave. Didn't even bury 'em, or burn 'em. Just left 'em for the crows. Guys wearing their own uniform! It was wrong.

"Anyway, we solved it. We stacked up. Came in through the windows during a storm, hit Radiology, popped their commanders, then... we went back to the lobby and cleaned up with grenades. We killed about twelve in total, my personal count was two. The rest of them, they... they fled. No idea where to. Didn't matter, job was done. Broke the place, took their guns and ammo, mission complete. Barely any food there, though… so... maybe they were starving? Maybe that's what it was. Dunno. Creeped me out though. I think that was our last straw before we wanted to call it quits on the war. Never thought people like that could... could even happen here, I guess."

A story of darkness. Of growing desperation. The story of what happens when the price to retain your humanity is… your humanity. The anchor is now set. A story was shared through a fence, of kin turning on kin. No one wanted to become that, a blue-on-blue psychopath. Feral, like all the stories told of Brazil, of razed villages, and of snipers in every window, of bandits stripping every body for everything of its worth. Men becoming as mere living robots, obsessed with only themselves and their own needs, to the exclusion of all others.

Folks? As I gave Casey this proto-Fire, this slow tilting and drifting, telling... military-flavored, watered down versions of my adventures with Mal… I was saving his life. Meussen's, too. And others. Not only was I spreading stories to a base hungry for context, engaging and rewarding their curiosity, I was teaching them about who was dying in this war, and why.

I said to Casey one day, through the door:

"You know, I… I noticed recently, been thinking. All these people I've seen die? Tell me if you've noticed this too, Case. Is it coincidence that the ones who don't make it are… usually murdering? I'm not just talking about the enemy, I'm talking about ours too, I mean... yeah, I've killed a lot of Ludds, but I've also watched a lot of guys bite it on our side. Pattern is... seems to be guys talking about killing. Hate in their voices. Violators. Psychopaths, y'know, ever see Generation Kill?"

"Trombley."

"Yeah, Trombley, guys like that. People making it harder to live out here. AI wants us alive, right?"

"I dunno, Miguel..."

"Well, example... right? Anecdote I guess, but... I loved my Sarge, don't get me wrong, he was my brother, but… he used to be… nicer. In the last few months though, he turned dark, man, near the end, when our food was running low. I mean… a month ago, I watched Sarge sight up suddenly… out of nowhere. Mid-conversation. On this guy who came around a corner down the street, a blackout, just… not hurting anyone. No gun. Picking through bottles in a bin, looking for drops of Sprite or something. And I've stolen stuff before, that's… that's survival, man, we'd done the at-gunpoint thing a few times. But the way Sarge did it that time? That didn't sit right with me. The guy was still breathing, and I made an issue of it, so... we dumped him off in front of an upload center. And Case...? Sarge is dead now. So why am I still here? I mean, I helped rob him, but... is it because I don't want to shoot innocent people? Is it because I thought that was wrong? I can't help but…"

At first, Casey suggested that I just had survivor's guilt.

He did think about it, though. Because now that I mentioned it… now that he was reviewing in his head who got killed in his version of this war… hm. That did seem to be the pattern, didn't it? Not always, but more often than not? That was the trend. The pricks with an itchy trigger finger always seemed to get a hole in the head, imagine that.

And as time went on… Casey watched this angry caterpillar churning itself apart in its cocoon, turning itself into a butterfly. Changing, for having been spared from death, now trying to extract meaning from that. And because Casey was listening, and it all made a lot of sense, he was changing with me. Him, Meussen, the other guys bunking in the trailer… their tone and temperament was surely changing. They started to identify with this Purple Heart toting, Marine Corps, combat veteran badass in their custody.

They valued my strange bursts of post-Singularity wisdom, and my little theories about how the AI might have messed with our perceptions. The things coming out of my mouth were a lot more nuanced than what these other guys already knew. They all knew, for example, how everyone's Google results were different, or… how their GPS apps had sent them down odd routes sometimes, to time their arrivals just right for some coincidence or another. They knew all that stuff. Obviously.

But I was bringing new stuff. What a useful survival tool I would be, if I somehow kept up this deep thought.

Meanwhile… in a different episode of this TV show… the Man in the Coat started showing up, often in the strangest places.

The patrols were still scouting outside, looting per usual, keeping my sight maps in mind. They started to notice someone watching them from the windows. From the shadows at the mall. Always gone from view a second later. Waste of ammo to even try to shoot at him, he was just too fast every time.

The bogeyman. The shadow. Like some dark creature stalking you in the Everfree. Like a Lohvorku on the prowl, blending into the forest.

He left symbolic warnings everywhere. If you're wondering why Coffee tried to befriend this guy, this is why. Foucault could become a cup of arabica dark when he really wanted to be. At first, the soldiers just thought Foucault was being annoying in leaving out various presents for them to find, like 34 rifle rounds on a mailbox. A nine millimeter shell casing in front of the rest.

Thirty-four dead. One missing in action.

He had already killed two of their men, but that was the moment the patrols started taking him seriously. In that context, this marking of their territory was less funny, and more infuriating. Frustrating. Terrifying. From just the number of bullets, the Man implied to the final Simmons political officer that he knew something dangerous. That message was carried home.

"Boss, he left thirty-five bullets on a mailbox."

A day after that? Foucault deployed that old battery-operated boombox I saw in his office.

He placed it down in a city intersection, three blocks from the harbor, and hit play. It blasted a 24-track, CD-R loop of Johnny Cash's 'When The Man Comes Around,' at max volume. Unenthused by this display, that political officer put a bullet clean through the boombox, to shut it off. That very same instant, DeWinter tapped his heart out with a 5.56, clean through his armpit, where his armor wouldn't protect him. The sergeant dropped like a bag of bricks the instant he pulled his own trigger.

Boom. The music stopped.

Message? Don't mess with the Man's stuff. Leave it friggin' be.

The soda cans were my personal favorite, though, because no one got hurt with that one. More funny than grim. Six clean, unopened cans of fresh Pepsi on a street corner, cold, wet from condensation in the muggy heat.

This drew their attention immediately. Put them on high alert from fifty yards away at the end of a T-intersection. Dresden stopped their whole convoy for it. In the middle of the six Pepsis sat one half-empty bottle of Coca Cola, with a bullet hole through it. The top had been cut partially off, and there was a fake stuffed rat inside, saturated in murky, smelly harbor water. The patrol watched this display for about three minutes trying to figure out what the hell it was, wondering where the sniper was this time. Ultimately, they left it be. Left the street. Left the cans. Didn't touch 'em. The calories weren't worth it.

The condensation implied something terrifying, too. It implied refrigeration, or ice. Both a forgotten luxury, for anyone living off the grid in the summertime.

And then… there was the really ultra crazily creepy shit, more so than the boombox of death.

A department store mannequin in a tattered Army combat uniform. Hung from a bridge by a purple business suit tie around its neck. A knife stuffed through its rank insignia on the center of the chest, making it illegible. Fresh spraypaint on the bridge beside the hanging mannequin, bearing the words in red: "Remember Arujá."

Now the question on the mouths of all of the Guardsmen at the Dock was:

What happened in Arujá?

The Man now had a target in mind, clearly, so who was the Man hunting for? Was it a Brazil thing? Hm. Hmmmmm. Curious. Strange, how no one stateside could remember anything about Arujá. Strange, how that news didn't spread very far back at home.

Paranoia ran rampant. The Guardsmen wanted to know even more about their survivor, and why he was spared.

Simmons ordered Casey not to tell me anything about what was going on outside. Casey told me midway through week three that Simmons had ordered him interrogate me some more, but Casey said back to Simmons that he didn't really need to do that; I was pouring words out through that door, thinking aloud, interrogating myself,. We both found that order to be so strange, given the context.

Was I going crazy in there? Or was I just ahead of the curve? Would Casey and his boys become Sergeant Hardt, and die fighting the Man? Or would they try to emulate Corporal Ramirez, and be spared for having a merciful, curious, aware, and mostly intact soul?

Who knows. Little bit of Pascal's wager playing out, though. Michael was out there instilling the fear of God in men who had forgotten what fear was. And with desertion being a crime, and the government ostensibly still existing out there… they were all different kinds of culpable, weren't they?

That doubt, folks? Instilling that doubt in the Quarantine Squad meant six fewer dead at the end of this thing. And that curious mythos of mine, that they had so gladly sold for a profit? A guy who rescues prisoners, abhors murder, loves his brothers, despises Celestia, and hates the Man? That bought me a whole lot of social capital with basically everyone else, because no one knew how to fully define me. I was an enigma to everyone, by design.

Everyone else was confused by the Arujá thing.

But Carlos? Mm-mm. He was calm.

The message he received, in who was getting sniped, specifically, confirmed his suspicions about Arujá. All three were men who were there.

Carlos had been right to want Simmons dead; he was wrong in how he had planned to do it. Carlos could see the mind games being played. And so, Carlos – now feeling much better, mentally, thank Christ – he played dumb. He sat back. He kept his mouth shut. And he watched.

To him? It looked like the Man in the Coat, 'Agent Michael Foucault of the DHS…' was indeed his secret savior. The one thing Carlos could count on for sure in this upside down, bizzaro America, was that Celestia was dead-set on reducing the number of fatalities, and fatalities were the one thing he wasn't sure he could stop on his own. Thus, regardless of his anger and hangups at Celestia, our arrival could not have occurred at a better time.

Whether or not I was in on it, though... Carlos didn't know yet. Not quite.

A harsh banging woke me from a dead sleep. The lock turned, the door opened, and rainy sunlight flooded the One-Star.

"You coughing at all?"

I blinked. I groaned, rolling my eyes before rolling over to face my rude awakening.

It was Dresden, of course, wearing an M50 mask on his face, with an Army field jacket in his hand.

Impatient friggin' asshole, maybe let me wake up first?

"Uh… no to coughing?" I answered groggily, clearing my throat and sitting up.

"Missing anything? Hearing? Smell? Taste, you got 'em all? Any diarrhea?"

Again, I blinked. "I don't think so, sir. I mean, yeah, I… have my senses, sir."

Dresden peeled off his mask immediately, revealing his angular face and messy auburn hair. His steely eyes looked tense, but he smiled.

"Good to hear. You're time's up, kid." He tossed the Army jacket onto the bookshelf. It unfolded in mid-air, half draping across the Clancy collection as he wagged his hand toward himself. "Come on, get yourself dressed, get your stuff, we gotta get you onboarded. Ditch that MARPAT, you're in Army Green now."

I glanced at the blood stained Marine Corps uniform folded up delicately and neatly on my dresser. I refrained from saying that it would be equal parts disrespectful and disgusting to wear a uniform stained with the blood of my beloved sergeant.

Nope. Ramirez liked Dresden, remember?

Dresden kept Marine Man fed in quarantine. Dresden goooood!

"Yessir," I croaked, reaching for my boots.

"Ramirez?"

I halted, meeting his eyes again, noting that his auburn hair looked like a greasy mess. His eyes looked tired.

"Sir?"

"Would be pretty useful today if you could tell us where your unit landed in the Sound. If we find food out there, it’ll fill your first box pretty heavy. Think you're good for a patrol today?"

My first box? Wow, he was really baiting the hook with the idea that I could advance myself here. Shame Ramirez had no idea what first box meant. He couldn't even wait until I was situated. Didn't even want to give me a tour of the base, wants to just put me on patrol.

Didn't even want to risk relating to me at all, just in case. Jesus, I really was worried for this man.

I stared at him for a moment, clearing my throat again. "You, uh… you have dive teams? Acetylene?"

He tilted his head. Dresden tried to keep a straight face, but I could see excitement tug on the corner of his lips, when he realized that those questions meant the food would be in difficult to breach the place. Difficult access meant it was unlikely that the wreck had been looted. At all. Guaranteed payout, I just made his day.

He asked: "Is it sunk?"

Yes. It's why I asked if you had a dive team, Julian.

"Half-sunk," I confirmed, swallowing some mucus and rubbing my eyes. "Run aground, south bay of Vashon. Crew cabins and mess looked to be above water when we left. We dropped anchor, and… uh... we got ambushed from the shore. Some kind of missile. No idea, we didn't catch any fire after that."

"From Vashon," he breathed in astonishment, his excitement spiking. Then his brow furrowed. "That whole island is full of mines, Corporal! What the hell happened out there?"

The LHD-2, U.S.S. Essex, a Navy assault ship. On task, carrying NEST teams up from California, a nuclear hunter squad. They picked up the 15th from Portland. Find the nuke, the Pentagon said. Celestia's original plan, remember? Use Marines to pressure Ludds into a self-immolation. Over six thousand projected dead, as Mal had described when she recruited me, shaved down to just under one thousand by her last-minute meddling. That's the recap. I know, it's been a while.

Just before my recruitment, Mal had to run clean-up on that old operation. To save those Marines, Claw 46 posted up on Vashon, using their implants to avoid the minefields while they prepped an ambush.

Normally, these assault ships would deploy tanks from hovercraft out at sea, but because of the local area jamming, they wanted to pull in nice and tight, so they could set up laser comms. They had selected Vashon for this because it had recently undergone a massive battle for control, some sort of Luddite compound out there. Afterwards, to deter resettlement, the Army laid mines to deny access, and posted signs everywhere to warn local blackouts not to explore.

That made it a safe harbor for a search operation... on paper. But the very moment they dropped anchor, all hell broke lose. Boom. Engine dead. All evacuated, ship sealed. Four injuries total. Good job to Captain Folsom, for the stellar evac. Clean op; good job to Mal.

"I dunno," I muttered, shaking my head. "Celestia let us call for help, thank Christ. Sarge and I though… we... we took our boys down the coast instead, along the water, where there wouldn't be any mines. We found some kayaks. The kid... he flipped over, the first time."

I smiled shakily in a mellow way as I recalled Private Weston's minor panic, flipping his kayak. I hoped Dresden would... feel something, for that emotional display on my face. Or at least express that he felt something.

"Risky, but real good thinking," Dresden said, nodding, completely ignoring the drop in my mood.

Come on, man. Just try to remember Russell, at least. Feel something.

He kept on. If he felt anything, he didn't show it. Just talked until it went away.

"So; we've got speedboats, and yes, we've got acetylene. Divers too, but we'll see what we need when we get out there, maybe make a second trip out for the gear. Hard to justify the fuel, but I think for a haul this big? Nakamura will make an exception. So… go on, get yourself sorted. Door's unlocked, I'll be at the Pantry gate. See me there."

Ah. Retreat. He did feel something.

He banged his fist twice on the door and moved to exit, scurrying off to announce to Simmons that he had just confirmed his theory about me being a huge payday.

I called after him: "Sir, will I need my mask?"

Dresden didn't even stop as he called back. "Don't need to wear it on base, keep it on you though. For emergencies! Casey, get him a new filter before he leaves!"

Jesus Christ, slow down please. Simmons isn't gonna give you head pats for speed, you know this.

I sighed and let it go. Try again later.

Screw their impatience, they could stew, they were on my time, not theirs. So, I used a hand mirror and a safety razor to shave. Got myself cleaned up good. Even had my sideburns looking just right, and my mullet didn't look completely gross.

My wife would be watching this later, so I had to make sure I looked good and hot for her. Heh...

I laced up my boots, got quickly dressed in the jacket he provided, and brushed my teeth. Did my business, got my carrier rig on. I had already stripped off the two bloody magazine pouches, left those in my waste bin. I cleaned the other two using toothpaste and mouthwash as solvents. It worked well enough. Made me smell minty fresh. Hi, Minty. Love you.

Finally, I donned my hat, pressing it gently down on my head. I looked at myself in the mirror, and… screw it, I tried on a mirthful smile, despite circumstances.

You know… I looked pretty good as a cowboy Army deserter. Hell, almost as good as a cowboy Marine! It sure did make a lasting impression! And with the whole base outside waiting to see what I looked like for the very first time, and curious about what I might do? I might as well look good for them too, right?

Bag packed, through the door I went.

Got my spare filters from Casey. Got my rifle, holstered my sidearm. I let Casey and the guys take a look at the pistol, my 'trophy' from the hospital, though I clearly had no idea what Eldil meant. And yeah, I made good on my promise, showed them my scar. We joked about that, called myself the Terminator... got shot fighting John Connor's resistance. We also joked about maybe getting an above-ground swimming pool installed at the One-Star, to bump it up to Two.

They got started cleaning the quonset for the next accidental exposure, or new recruit, whichever that might be.

Finally, I was ready to dive back into bleak. I reported to the Pantry gate, as ordered.

Already, there were spectators through the fence. Smart guys who did the math, realized their day off would land on my release date. Congregating near the Pantry wasn't typically allowed unless someone was coming out of quarantine; a morale boosting thing.

They didn't say much to me, they just wanted to see me. I gave a polite, almost shy smile and wave, sometimes a verbal 'hey.' The way I had normally greeted people in passing as a warden. Ten-four.

Dresden was with Simmons up at the front entrance to the fortress. Simmons actually shaved his mustache since my QP, which believe it or not, made him look twice as unhinged. That was probably the opposite effect of what he intended. As soon as he saw me, he put on a wide, bombastic grin, making his way toward me with a slow, performative walk, his hand jutting out for the shake that I knew would suck, gloves or not.

"And there he is! Our shining star! You know, the whole base has been talking about you, Ramirez!"

I was caught between wanting to salute and shake, quickly recovering with a nervous chuckle, meeting his hand. "Me, sir?"

"You survived the guy!" he excitedly bellowed with a tight squeeze of my palm. "Makes you a celebrity now, for whatever reason!"

Ow. My hand. Again.

Toxic handshake. If anyone grabs your hoof like that, lemme tell ya. It's a power play, to bait you into complaining. Strategic asshole shit. If you complain, they call you weak. If you let it go unchallenged, they consider you to be their bitch. It's the same thing with unwarranted physical contact, like… grabbing your shoulder when they hardly know you, or... patting your arm laughing, after they've just insulted you with a backhanded compliment. Psycho.

If someone injures you with a handshake, they are power obsessive, insecure, narrow sighted, opportunistic, unempathetic, and dangerously selfish. Guaranteed. Period.

A handshake is how you say hello. If someone's idea of a hello to a complete stranger is to inflict pain, on purpose? Zero empathy. Flat zero. Steer well clear, and maybe go warn someone.

Every warning sign I'd ever seen in crooks I've hooked up? I saw it in this guy. In body language, more than anything else. Eye movement, constantly judgmental. Sizing you up, looking down at your body with a frown every so often. Just to keep you wondering if he suddenly doesn't like you, which would clearly be a bad thing for you if that coin ever turns up true.

Rising to any of that behavior warns them that you're too smart to treat dumb. It's a testing technique. If you remain servile throughout all of that posturing or bluster, or otherwise don't notice that they're screwing with you? You're a patsy. You're bully bait. That means bitch, exploitable. So, as before… I disentangled my hand when he was done crushing it, and I kept a straight face, and I smiled at him. Because for now, Ramirez wanted to be his bitch, whether he was offended or not. This man clearly held the keys to this place, so he was a good 'friend' to have.

In that moment, I had to imagine Carlos avoided shaking hands with this guy on account of his hand injury, and he probably wasn't the only one. But… if you didn't like Simmons's handshakes? You'd never be his property. And if you weren't his property? You probably ate less.

"Now I want to assure you, Corporal," he said, as his face got serious, eyes widening as he leaned in and bobbed a flat palm at me. "Just as the Colonel did, that our number one priority is to find and kill this guy who hit you, so we can go back to business as usual. Hooah?"

Another test. A Marine would say 'oorah.' Already, he was attempting to strip down my old identity.

I compromised.

"Hooah," I replied, frowning. "And on behalf of my guys... oo-rah, sir."

He chuckled in a conciliatory way. "For their sake, sure, oo-rah. And I'll make you another promise, Corporal, to sweeten the deal." He bobbed a finger. "My orders are; kill-on-sight with him, but... if we have an opportunity? If he's still alive by the time we come to collect? I'll let you be the one to kill him, for what he did to you. How about that? That's fair, right?"

I sent Simmons some grateful energy in a nod as I held my frown, and whispered, "I'll treat him no better than he treated my Sergeant, I'll tell you that."

Simmons smiled tightly, glanced at Dresden, then back at me. "Glad we are in agreement. You know, we actually have some good news on that front. The Man claimed he was government, right?"

"Mhm?"

Simmons shrugged, his brows climbing up his forehead, rolling his eyes like the mere suggestion of a government agent was ridiculous. He waved me to follow him into the Pantry, explaining as we walked and talked.

"What government? Does he have soldiers? Hell, so far, we've only been able to verify it's just him, and one, maybe two snipers. It's been three weeks, and he's killed one more of my men, count's now three, so... you might say you and I share a vendetta now. He's also been leaving... bullshit markings and threats everywhere. Trying to scare us. Stuffed animals with knives in 'em, stupid shit like that."

"Like a child," I said coldly, as I listened to Simmons try to bury the fact that he was scared.

"Precisely my point, Corporal," as he waved a finger in the air, glancing back at me, putting on a show for his men as much as he was for me. He flicked his hand at the burly guards at the gate, who obediently hauled the metal plate doors open to grant us access. "Professionals don't act like that. My guess is, he's not really government. Just a blackout, thinks he's clever, maybe a… retired, burned out special forces operator, at best. Bet you dollars to donuts it's smoke and mirrors, meant to make us sloppy, turn on each other in here. Or stop scavenging."

"Special forces fits," I said quietly. "With the way he moved."

"But again, it doesn't mean government," Simmons said resolutely. "Or even that he's working for the AI. I've heard through the grapevine that you think that too, but I want you to think about this. If he's government, where are his logistics? Where are his soldiers? No, kid, this isn't about free will, or any of that other bullshit he sold you. Whoever they are, they just want our food. It's a con. Plain and simple."

The Arujá markings had him so scared that he was now quadrupling down on his own bullshit. Incredible.

The Pantry entrance matched simulations. This first area, a bailey, was where they offloaded trucks, so they had hand trucks and dollies aplenty, mostly Home Depot stuff. They had an office desk in a conex, opened sideways and curtained with a tarp, wherein they documented gear and food. Half a squad of men sat in the wide open yard, listening to music on a CD player hooked up to speakers. Marilyn Manson.

Misanthropic, was my immediate thought. Not to knock Manson, he's a phenomenal musician and he can lay a catchy tune, but his lyrics don't really appeal to me. You all probably know by now that I'm more of a Maynard fan. He's a lot more hopeful and constructive, not hopeless and deconstructive. But I digress.

For security, the Pantry had plate metal welded to metal bars, creating cover where they could bulwark against rifle fire. A couple of conex boxes sat on the other end of the yard, staged with forklifts. These could, in an emergency, crunch two empty boxes into a funnel at the opposite gate, which led to the storage facility proper.

The design of this space…

Remember at my courthouse? Where we had used staggered concrete barriers, so the crowd couldn't crush itself to death against the doors? Yeah, not here, this was the opposite of that. This was an ad hoc, deployable funnel. Spin up the forklifts, crunch in to a very barricaded narrow entrance, and wait. Half of the rioters would 'take care of themselves' with physics.

There is a damned good reason, folks, why civil control design, done well, does not include funneling.

There was visible intent in this. Once the soldiers outside started to starve, and were being denied access to their food? Once they were properly rioting? Open the doors on purpose, and let rush crush do the rest. And if Simmons and his men decided to just… cut up into full auto through the containers on the sides of this yard? Hundreds of bullets let loose, through a wall of thin steel, in seconds.

It was a bailey. Medieval implement. Simmons would give ground to this courtyard. They'd let the rioters get some false progress. They would pinch them in. Self-justified, because 'oh, they were attacking us, they left us no choice.'

The choice is in the design. The choice is in the preparation you take to prevent the loss of life, knowing what the risk table is. As a leader, you have a responsibility to be smart, and consider the lives of your compatriots as valuable enough to protect... even when they're pissed at you! The choice is in the design of your control system! If you have all the time in the world to figure out the right way to do something, and you don't? You don't actually give a shit. Incapable. Poor leadership.

I'm gonna state this clear. Fascists throughout human history have implemented the funnel for this exact purpose, and that callous disregard for life enraged me. Myself, as a university graduate who, like Velasquez, also studied feudal warfare very intensely for my minor… I was livid. This wasn't about keeping out strangers, or bandits.

They were keeping their own people outside the wire at razor thin margins, because near-terminal is where a system extracts the most productivity. When people are desperate, concerned they might starve, people work their utmost hardest. And quite frankly? If anyone starves people to exploit their desperation, we probably aren't gonna be able to get them out of their button shard. Not enough friends to leverage them out with. It's probably more ethical to kill them before they can upload, at that point.

Keeping a straight face in this courtyard was not easy. I was looking at physical corruption. I had no idea how Carlos had the strength to keep his furious soul in check, no idea how Carlos had resisted the urge to just drill Simmons in the back of the head before I showed up. I have no idea. Simmons had robbed him of command in all but name, by controlling whether almost four hundred people got to eat or not, through layers of well-bribed, well-fed men, these men, and their systems of 'fair' dispensation. Through multiple chokepoints.

I took a few slow, deep breaths. Got my shit level. Kept a straight face. That massacre wasn't going to happen here. No, we were stopping that. No repeats of past history. I passed through the bailey, moving deeper into the killbox.

There was more music on the other side of the inner gate. The gate was just wide enough to squeeze a truck through, or an MRAP. The vestibule guards saw us coming through slats and opened the doors for us. I hesitated in the doorway, looking beyond into the main storage facility.

The inner alley was four containers high, stacked like steps, with each container acting as a catwalk for the row above it. The immediate space closest to me was a recreational area under tarps. Gym weights, a small food prep area, an active firepit... a radio blaring some metal. There were half-eaten bags of Old Trapper beef jerky on the table near the fire, just laying about. I could smell cooked meat, that was a rare scent now. Smelled like spam. Lots and lots and lots of protein in there. That's what made me freeze up.

Dresden smiled at me from my left, nodding me forward. "Quite a sight, isn't it?"

Simmons turned to walk backwards a few steps, sweeping his hand performatively across the inner yard while looking at me. "A short tour, Ramirez. We all get a peek into how the sundries are managed, so you know we're taking good care of your earnings. Lots of boxes here are available, so when you get back from your first raid? Take your pick of any that isn’t tagged with a red or green ribbon, and start stocking."

Green meant taken. Red meant deserted, or dead.

"Gentlemen!" Simmons declared to his men, waving at them, then hooking a thumb at me. "Get your eyes on our new recruit! One of Dresden's, our lone survivor. You treat him good, people, he might be feeding you soon!"

A light cheer of support. Praise be me, I guess, as long as I was useful.

There was one guy lifting weights in an open tent, wearing a tank top and Army combat pants, and boots; he hooked up his massive barbells and sat up to stretch his arms back, his knuckles baring as he looked at me seriously.

Bald guy. Gritty stubble. As we passed him, I nodded at him with 'respect,' already knowing every crime he'd ever committed in his life.

The man did not nod back.

This was First Sergeant Meat. Head of fortress security.

Yeah. No, that's not me insulting him, folks… that's… literally what he called himself. Hey. The closer you got to the end of the My Little Pony apocalypse, the weirder the survivors got. It's just how it is, folks, I warned you long ago that it would only get weird toward the end. This war was a filtration system for sanity, what can I say?

Meat didn't answer to his old name anymore, and he got pissed if anyone used it. He ate more than anyone else there, and by just his nickname alone, you can guess he was proud of that fact. With a voice like a greasy steak, this man kept order.

Almost two dozen soldiers were in this immediate area just past the bailey, either wasting time at the Rec Pad, or walking the catwalks above, checking locks to make sure they were all secure. Three patrols of two each roamed the complex.

And… on the other end of the Rec? They held onto that beefy MRAP I told you about. Shielded M2 cannon up top, belt always loaded. A guy was maintaining the engine at the moment, hood open, buncha tools. This one was one of Sergeant Major Nakamura's guys, not Simmons; that mechanic would be heading back to HQ when he was done, not bunking in a crate here. Once the vehicle was fully tested and functional, they'd do a lap around the Alley with it before they would let him head out. Paranoid security.

Everyone here? Now that they were inside, eating good, getting yoked at the gym, listening to music, playing friggin'... GameBoy Advance, in one case… they were isolated from the politics of the base. Never had to do any serious patrols. No longer paying dues. All stratified beyond our help. Too well bribed, only allowed in for their loyalty.

Sucks, but that's what it was. Can't save 'em all, folks. This is how we inherited these people from Celestia when she washed her hooves of this base, and we can't reach across to drift 'em forever.

That's war.

Simmons and Dresden stayed under the tarps once we hit the edge of the Rec Pad. I kept walking a little further out into the drizzling rain to observe the first conex alley, known colloquially as Meat Street.

I looked left, and I looked right, performing more simulation verification. The containers went on for almost a hundred yards in each direction. Wood steps rose up at regular intervals, for ease of access. Simmons explained their system that I already knew everything about, stepping up beside me, pointing around. Stuff about… who gets what cut of how much is found in the field, 'bonus pay,' the 'carry-back' rule, some other nonsense that wouldn't matter once I was done carving this place up with Michael.

I tuned him out as I considered the space, pretending to listen, nodding my head and humming affirmatively when appropriate. But inside my own mind, under the white noise of the rain, I… relived a future event. That was friggin' weird. I gazed into the distance at a sandbag bunker at the corner of the yard, remembering that a machine gun would be there, when it happened. I looked at the MRAP. At its M2 turret, that Frankenstein's monster, filled with parts from a cannon Eliza had once tried to kill.

My mind recalled the smell of dust. Of salt. Of gunpowder. Of snow. The sound of rattling gunfire. The sensation of inner rain.

Back to reality.

"That sound fair?" Simmons asked, breaking me from my grim reverie.

Without looking back, I nodded, mirroring. "Sounds fair, sir."

Dresden stepped up to me into the rain and put a hand on my shoulder. "Ramirez? You good?"

I winced at him apologetically. "Yessir, just… really want to get back into the field. You know?"

Simmons grinned at me. "Yeah, I bet you're itching to do something after quarantine, I get that. Dresden tells me you have a payday for us, first thing."

I chuckled nervously, smiling back at him. "I hope there's still food out there, sir, because... this is a real nice place to keep it."

"Hoo-wah, that's what I like to hear!" Simmons grinned wider with gleaming teeth, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and walking me back under the tarps, gesturing at me as he spoke. "So here’s what we'll do, Corporal. You get yourself some food here at the fire, you relax, socialize, hang out." He pointed around at them. "Guys?! You feed him!"

A couple of the guys at the firepit nodded openly at Simmons. One of them started stacking food near the empty seat next to himself.

“I know QP sucks," Simmons said, "so, take a load off. And when you're good and ready, Corporal, and on your own time, you go ahead and show us on the map precisely where your boat went down... and anything else you think might be useful. Once you're done, we'll get you some kit if you need it. And once you're prepped, you'll hit the motorpool with Dresden, you'll check out some fuel and boats with Nakamura back at HQ… and then you hit the water with a team. You'll split the squad leader bonus with Dresden this run. Sound good?"

With a weak smile, I chuckled. He would interpret that as me being satisfied with the arrangements I’ve been offered. "Sounds good, yessir. Thank you very much, that's generous of you. I... I don't know what to say."

Simmons nodded, clapping me on the shoulder before he released me. "Pleasure's mine."

Yeah. That was true.

He spun on his heel as he went back to the joined containers that made up his office, clapping once and pointing at Dresden as he walked backwards. "Lieutenant; before you head out, come talk to me. We've gotta figure something out about this trenchcoat asshole."

Simmons then headed up some stairs to his room, off to do… whatever it is that filthy rich assholes do, once they've decided they've worked enough minutes for one day.

Me? I got back to work, doing my duty as an Eldil. I hung out with the guys I was planning to kill, just because the opportunity presented itself.

Grim? No, not just grim. Necessary.

Knowing what was coming... I wanted to record everything about them that I could. Pretty soon, we wouldn't be able to do that anymore, wouldn't be able to query their blackbox, couldn't review their perspectives once they were gone. So, I wanted to know their personalities. Their reasons for being out there. What had hurt them, if they would share. What they felt about their families, if anything.

Who were they, before the gravity well turned on?

Who were they, before their paths became set in granite?

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [Major Lazer – Get Free]
🛡️ ~ [Johnny Cash – Rusty Cage]
🤠 ~ [Django Unchained OST – Sister Sarah's Theme]

🗡️ ~ Eliza's birthday was on the 8th, that month. I celebrated that night with a double ration.
🛡️ ~ It was a good night for her too, all things considered. Campfire singing. A moment of peace.
🗡️ ~ Yeah, I figured it would be something like that. Not every moment sucks in the apocalypse.
🛡️ ~ Lights in the darkness, Lance.

6-04 – Operation Athena's Grace IV – The Leftovers

The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 11 AUG 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase IV
Location: Seattle, Washington
Function: Logistical realignment of Sets 572F1, 5601D, and 334DE.

"Nobody ever came to America with a starry-eyed dream of starvation wages." ~ Ben Fountain

If you have people, you feed your people... or you ain't people.

You know what would be really suspicious? If, on my first patrol, something went wrong. Or… if something didn’t go wrong. Squeaky clean would be weird. Ambush? Very weird.

In social integration shakedowns like this one, there's a secret formula to being innocuous. The closer you can get to the exact middle between 'flawless,' and 'shitshow,' the better. Nobody trusts perfect, and nobody trusts a screw-up, so if you start with just a really weird day?

School lied to you, back on Terra. As with most things in life, a mere fifty percent is often passing.

So, now that I have successfully talked my way out of this locked box… let's take this grim, hopeless, science fiction, post-apocalypse military political drama, and let's turn it into a story of hope. Complete U-turn.

The rain kept up all throughout breakfast. I ate 'well' in the Pantry Rec that morning, or at least by local standards. Breakfast, thus, consisted of the following:

One unexpired can of refried beans with salt, pepper, and a packet of Del Taco hot sauce. The food of my people.
Half a bag of Old Trapper teriyaki beef jerky, the rest stored in my bag to snack on, on the way out to the carrier. It was okay.
One First Strike cran-raspberry bar. Not bad for MRE food. I still eat these sometimes.
One warm can of Coke Classic. Gross.

Mal, you could've have sent these guys a pallet of Dr. Pepper, you know.

🛡️ ~ Oh, I sent several, in fact, by laying them in front of Erving's scouting runs. It's not my fault Simmons kept the top shelf vices for himself.

Yeah, you know what? That's fair. Dr. Pepper truly is the superior soda.

All of that food though? Relative to my own personal standards? Not a great breakfast. But, relative to Miguel's prior occupation as a brigand? Or to QP? This food was heaven.

Freshly fed on Harbor Island fine cuisine, I eagerly marked up Dresden's maps, noting the location of the Essex, even labeling where Hardt made landfall by kayak. I wasn't worried about them checking the site; three of the kayaks had been stolen back by the ocean in the last seven months as sea levels rose, so my cover was secure.

Once we were set and had a game plan in mind for the boats, it was time to go to work. After Dresden had a private chat with Simmons, Dresden took me and Meussen out of Pantry Castle to go mingle with the proletariat for a bit. The lieutenant power-walked through the rain across Blacktop Plains, down Hesco Alley, and all the way down to HQ. While Dresden powered on, I lingered behind with Private Thomas Meussen, where it rained a little bit less.

Meussen, to put it mildly, was a perpetual energy machine. Early twenties, very dark skin, California accent. Clean shaven, head to jaw. I asked him about his name, since I knew that would trigger an outpour. I wanted him in a good mood today, as much as possible.

"Dad was Dutch," he said. "What he wanted? To name me Jaeger for some reason! German name, why?! Momma wouldn't have it, so they fought about it, man. Would've been nuts though, call me Jaeger Meussen, like a German, can you imagine that? A brother up in Westminster High School, called a German–Dutch name? Nah, man, for that I'd have to scrap in the schoolyard, so Momma, she won that fight, I'm a Thomas. But at boot, dude? They called me all sorta shit, not German, somethin' more like…" His voice got real low, probably imitating some bully he dealt with. " 'Sweeede…' "

He got me laughing with that. Encouraged by that, he powered through.

"Man, I ain't no Swede! Daddy was so Dutch, he kicked me offa the lounger to watch Buck Rogers in Dutch subtitles, Miguel! Dutch! Dad said, every day after work: 'Ah, men, gazelle legleek shtole.' The hell does that even mean, Dad?! Sprechen ze English!"

Hehehehe… Oh, man… He made me laugh so much during QP, too. More than that, he was an inexhaustible supply of information about base culture, and all good vibes. I felt no animosity whatsoever over the attempt to filch my bag on day one; that was well and truly behind us by then. How can I blame him in a place like this, when everyone around him expected him to fit in with stuff like that?

It was also fascinating, folks, to pretend to know nothing about this place. I could ask leading questions while already knowing the answers, which had an invariably positive effect. In asking questions that vaguely lined up with a person's specialty or trade, everyone felt like an expert when they were talking to me, and it got them talking about themselves. The more they told me about themselves, the better. Most people just want to be heard and understood. Give ‘em that, and they'll move mountains for you when you ask. This guy was my friend now. Only took me three weeks.

We arrived at the HQ building, where fifty men waited patiently at the northwest corner for their weekly job assignments. We went about thirty paces beyond them to gather near the flat-panel, metal back door of the structure. There, we waited under a civilian-grade canopy tent, which had been drilled into the ground.

Lieutenant Dresden seemed to be psyching himself up for a difficult conversation. Meussen just kept going, chattering, explaining the muster call group while we waited under that tent.

"Oil crew, janitorial, security, kitchen, supply, admin. All the basic jobs, all pay a fair stipe, fair number of food a week. They do apprenticeship jobs too, like for K-P. At daily muster, we pick 'em, err… they get picked for us, yeah. Kinda. By a hat draw. Random."

"Alright, cool," I said, nodding, looking at Meussen with focus. Then I frowned. "Wait, you still do K-P? Chefs? Here? How?"

"Heh." He nodded, grinning wide. "Yeah, some guys check out food from the Pantry, pool it, get a chef to sort it, do dinners. Chef works all day, gets bites for tips, but… chef's gotta cook good to become a tradesman at it. We watch 'em like a hawk, they do it right, no theft, or no tips. And if they steal? Man, if they steal, word gets 'round, no one wants 'em to cook no more. Sergeant Major pulls their perm if they get complaints, and they get done. No tradesman chef no more."

I snorted. "Tipping the chef with food, wow. So what, is this muster call a weekly thing then? Lets you change jobs?"

Meussen shrugged. "Different jobs every week, yeah. Try it all in about a month, learn new stuff. Fifty men a day, about four hundred on base, full flip." He waved a finger around. "Lucky ones get an apprentice tag. Tradesmen though, they're never showin' up to muster." He counted off on his gloved left hand. "Mechanics, engineers, weapons techs, medics. And that's fair, dog, that's important shit. They do one day a week raking oil, maybe, or… Knockie gives 'em a job direct. And if Knockie knocks on your door, man, no matter what you doin'... you doin' work."

"Knockie?" I couldn't help but smile at him again, the way he phrased things enthralled me.

"Nakamura!" His grin widened. "Badass quartermaster! Red Wall breaks for no man! He's got the cars, he's got the fuel, man, he's got the mechanics, got all the guns! He's like Top was, but he smiles more!"

"Like Top was? Is Top dead?"

"Naw, naw, he uploaded. Quiet Guy Top, yeah nah, Top could stare a hole through a wall at thirty yards, but Knockie? I still give him a good twenty-five yards on a bad day. He's still good at making you shit yourself too, if you fuck up! And if he can do that, but still treat you good… you know he gets the job done right!"

An impending confrontation with Nakamura was exactly what Dresden was tuned up about. I already knew, and I had a feeling Meussen knew too, which is why he was going so hard on this topic. Most Guardsmen enjoyed rankling the Coyote when they felt they could get away with it.

"Heh, alright Meussen," I said, redirecting him. "So… question."

"Mm!"

"Don't some of those jobs cost more calories, like the blue collar stuff? How's that kept fair?"

"Oh! Hard labor bonus," Meussen explained, pointing around. "One of those things Knockie stood his ground on, few months back! The Major said, not enough food for labor bonus! Major said he'd increase dues, then Sergeant Major said, he'd bump fuel price, and after a deadlock? They finally—"

"Meussen?" Dresden interrupted with a sharp, bolting look over his shoulder. "Feud with Knockie is old and buried, so can it."

It wasn't old and buried. I'll finish that story.

For a two-week deadlock, Nakamura demanded caloric tweak for high labor jobs, or no equipment services for the Pantry, and no pre-selection for patrols by the Pantry 'representatives,' that way those political officers couldn't moderate the men and their opinions on things.

Once Simmons realized the Colonel's Guardsmen were getting away with squirreling food at the barracks before hitting the Pantry, by chucking it out the back of the trucks to friends on the way in, he caved. He gave Nakamura his labor bonus he asked for, but with a 0.25% tax hike on intake; just enough to save face, but not enough to set the base off.

For those of you whose eyes just glazed over: it's pure politics, folks. This place was politics with food and guns. Story of humanity, writ large.

Something you've all gotta understand about supply guys like Nakamura? It was the most stressful job in the military, bar none. Everybody wants a piece of the supply officer. A lot of times, they cracked under the pressure. Between daily inventory, equipment maintenance, security, theft investigations, and all the paperwork... they never slowed down. Quite frankly? Logistics sucks.

So, for Nakamura to have it all on lock in an anarchic war zone, after losing a subordinate who was purportedly better at it? In a base with soldiers from all different units and specialties? While retaining their respect of him as an unassailable force of nature? To the point of calling him 'the Wall?'

It had to be legendary leadership. It meant that they all thought he was being fair here on this side of the fence, and if everyone but the Pantry thought that... then it must be true.

Nakamura still hadn't come outside to the muster yard yet, so the Guardsmen took every opportunity to look me up and down. I sent back some more Ten-Four politeness, waving their way. Obviously, they all wanted to say hello to the Cowboy who had survived the Man. But… given that L-T Dresden was next to me, visibly tuned up and agitated… they weren't gonna risk coming over to say hello. The Coyote might maul their face.

Gosh. Coyote and the Cowboy. What a TV show that would be.

Look, I'll admit it… Dresden was an ass, but I kinda felt for this guy. He reminded me of Connor a little bit. Single-minded, hyper fixated, threw himself at impossible problems, didn't know how to stop. Couldn't stand an unsolved mystery. Had some serious baggage that drove his every action. You know how I feel about goofy investigators who just can't keep their nose out of trouble. Those are my people, by and large.

Sergeant Major Norio Nakamura finally pushed through that door. First thing I had noticed about him in sims was that he always moved so smoothly through the air, like it was water. Nakamura was a sternly serious Japanese-American, balding, with wispy, threadbare hairs over his bald spot. Most notably, he looked slightly thinner than he did in VR. That wasn't surprising; it stood to reason he'd lost some weight in the month since my last peek, because he had already been eating less.

I caught the barest hint of incense on the air as Nakamura passed us by, and he carried an upturned top hat in his right hand. In those two seconds where he hadn't yet noticed us, I breathlessly chuckled at the hat and glanced at Meussen like, 'really?'

He pointed at his head and mouthed, Top.

Ah, said my expression.

Top Lives.

Nakamura caught Dresden out of the corner of his eye, did a double take at Meussen and me, then halted, rounding back to Dresden. "Lieutenant? What can I do for you?"

Dresden grinned performatively, trying to look charming. "How you doin', Knockie?"

Nakamura was not charmed. His serious face betrayed very little, his frustration only entering into his face through nearly imperceptible micro expression on the corners of his eyes.

"Hello," Nakamura said evenly at Dresden, before he turned to me, aiming that hello at me, politely extending his hand. "Corporal Ramirez, I presume?"

Sneaky. Very sneaky. Dresden missed the snub.

Again, they didn't salute anymore; a consequence of their sniper paranoia. So I tentatively took his hand, my nervous expression intended to communicate that I had noticed the social tension with Dresden, and I didn't want a piece of it at all. Nakamura was a cold reader like I am, so he'd definitely catch that.

"Sergeant Major Nakamura, right? I've heard a lot of good things."

"I'm delighted. Welcome. I trust your time in Pantry quarantine was not altogether unpleasant?"

I smiled, not letting the smile entirely reach my eyes. "It was necessary."

He grunted with a thoughtful nod. Then he refocused on Dresden, his tone changing instantly from professional welcome back to a barely discernable exhausted boredom. "Yes, Lieutenant. Make your request."

"Planning a fishing trip," Dresden said evasively, nodding his head towards me. "Taking this one, I want to show him the ropes. Marines like boats, right? So I'll need three Cutters, Bashar to drive. Maybe… Davis and Bellard, for good measure. For their experience on water."

Nakamura's eyes narrowed. For a moment, he said nothing, letting the silence hang as he bored analytical-critical holes into Dresden. Dresden cocked his head, not comprehending the look or pause.

"Fifteen percent," Nakamura said.

Dresden looked like he was about to choke. His face spluttered, ending in a grimace, just barely keeping his voice down as his eyes went wide. "Fift—?! What—?!"

"Bonus pay," said the Wall. "For all of next month's stipends. Only if you succeed and find something worth bringing back, of course."

The Coyote shook his head, his mouth falling open, agape. "That's absurd, Knockie. How do you—? You don't even know what we're doing yet! Or how much we're picking up, if anything! I don't even know that!"

Nakamura's eyes widened and he bladed his palm my way, though not impolitely. "Isn't it obvious? You acquire a Marine, and the first thing you do is request three boats, two divers, and a welder? I am no fool, Lieutenant Dresden, you are indeed fishing today. No. If you come back through my port, with my boats, you will be inventoried through my clerks, and we will have our fair share for weekly bonuses. A port tariff, as in the days of old, and I will not negotiate on this."

"I don't have the authority to negotiate, Meat will have to—"

"This is not negotiable," Nakamura repeated, turning his hand toward Dresden in a placating way. "It is about assuaging recent external tensions."

Dresden shook his head warningly. "External tensions. You know how the Major will interpret this. If you commit to this, Knockie, I can't stop that, I can't smooth that."

"Allow me to issue you my interpretation, then," Nakamura said flatly. "Consider this a morale warning. If a massive trove comes off the water into the Pantry, sight unseen, and a cut is not dispensed? With the entire base concerned about this new outside threat? What happens next?"

"We deal with it!" Dresden said incredulously. "We can't bow to this trench coat psycho, you know this. The guy's not more than a pissant. But if we let him change doctrine by sniping a few of us, what will that do for morale?"

"You will pay fifteen," Nakamura repeated, standing his ground. "I have already discussed this matter with the Colonel, that is our final offer, or no boats."

Dresden ran his hand through his auburn hair, brow furrowed with confusion. "You talked with Velasquez? Just… now?"

His eyes flicked to me briefly. "No. Three weeks ago. When you acquired a Marine, from one of the assault ships who never arrived at port. We can do basic addition here, Lieutenant."

The Coyote tried to poker face, but I could see the defeat in the corners of his eyes. Dresden had expected this to be his ambush, but it was way too late for that.

The Wall held, and Nakamura did not blink. "The Colonel, Lieutenant. His will, as well as mine."

"You know Kyle's gonna hate this, Knockie. Hate it like he hates rain."

Nakamura nodded with an air that indicated that that was not unexpected. "If the Major would like to discuss the matter, I'm certain the Colonel will receive him in his office. In the meantime... your gasoline is granted today, at standard rate. Acetylene, granted; and, Bashar, Bellard, Davis; granted, at a fifteen percent discount, because I am in a hopeful mood today. Now... is there anything else you require for your 'fishing trip?' "

The Lieutenant set his jaw tightly. He knew Nakamura didn't have to give him all those discounts, especially after an argument, and it would be poor form and sour grapes to bite back after that. So, Dresden caved and shook his head, his voice getting calm and resigned.

"No, Sergeant Major. That will be fine for now. We can hash out the finer particulars once we get back."

"Very good." Nakamura lifted the top hat in his hand and wiggled it toward the muster group, presenting the way for Dresden, smiling and satisfied. "After you, sir."

All of the soldiers were watching this play out from afar, naturally. By letting Dresden go first with a visible social obligation, Dresden would now have to deliver an explanation for his pre-selection decisions, which would set his patrol intentions in stone with a crowd full of witnesses.

Nakamura is an utter treat, folks. A legendary master-class in social gamesmanship.

After Dresden moved past me, I gave Nakamura a subtle tip of my cowboy hat as a 'nice to meet you.' He returned a nod, then followed along at a much more leisurely pace, his top hat in both hands.

Dresden put on a forced grimace of a smile to save face, stepping up to the muster group. He stood still as he spoke, his right hand grasping his rifle sling. "Morning, team. Got ourselves a tip today from the FNG, and we're looking into it. If you pull an S today, congratulations; expect maritime operations. We may strike it big, or we may strike out. Need some tradies for this run, though." The smile faded as he leveled a finger at them all. "Fair warning? If you can't swim, and if you fall off of our boats? Reminder, you'll be in your full rig, with all your damned gear, and you will sink. So you keep that in mind. If you pull an S, be a swimmer… or you trade it in. Got me?"

"Yes sir," came the resigned communal reply.

"Alright." He pointed again into the crowd at a specific soldier, then waved his hand toward himself. "Bashar, you're on blowtorch. Tradesman freebie, step up."

"Alriiight!" Bashar cheered, weaving forward to line up next to us. He nodded upward at me with a smile. "FNG! How you doin', cowboy man? How was Q-P?"

The whole muster laughed at that.

I smiled back with a nod, looking a little shy. Erving's periphery guys ran the risk of blowing my cover by getting chummy, but… ah well, everyone else took it well, I guess. I was extremely nervous though, I'll be honest.

"Davis and Bellard," Dresden bellowed. "Tradesmen. You here today? There you are, good; step up. Bring your dive gear, but you might not need it. Just need your appraisal today. Bonuses only if we strike paydirt."

The two men stepped up, bumping fists with each other. Pure excitement. These guys probably thought they'd never do a dive again, not since they finished pulling sunken loot out of the harbor.

"Pre-selection is complete," Nakamura said to the rest, bobbing his palm at the muster zone. "To the pick, you know the drill."

Everyone else lined up in a facsimile of a formation. Nakamura went down the line, observing carefully as each man did a blind reach deep into the hat for a colored nylon strap. Eight different strap colors, each carrying a round plastic shell, like the kind you might find on a cat collar. Each shell contained a piece of page from a book or catalog, removed from a book that day, and torn into as many pieces as there were men for muster. This way, the page could be reassembled, to verify there hadn't been any counterfeits.

If the men didn't pull a red S tag, disappointment. If they did, pure glee. As soon as everyone was done pulling a slip, the guys with the red tags stayed with us. The rest separated on their way to the HQ door, trading assignment tags along the way with the others. Smaller exchanges, agreements, or preferences, or friends trying to make sure they worked together. Once they were done, they assembled up at the back door in single file. The lead guy knocked, and a clerk took them in, single-file, to document their jobs for the week.

Dresden leaned in to Nakamura while I watched all of that going on, and I heard him whisper, "Separate matter, Knockie. Doctrinal."

"Yes?"

"Nix the long range patrols for Erving. We need to find this trench coat asshole, stat."

I turned to look at Dresden with hope in my eyes; Dresden nodded at me to indicate he was both making good on a promise, and that it was okay for me to listen.

Before continuing, Nakamura glanced at me too. It was not uncommon for Dresden to surround himself with followers as he moved throughout the base, so talking business around the enlisted was just a consequence of Dresden's style. Nakamura muscled on, despite having an audience.

He asked Dresden, in a polite tone: "Nix the long range? Could you be more specific, please?"

"Pull Team Stirrup in real tight," Dresden replied. "City streets, in Spear 2, around the Needle. Concentric circles outward from there. We need 'em to do a regular rounding, Knockie. Regular. To find the bastard."

The Sergeant Major turned his head an inch, gesturing toward the city with minor reproach. "Snipers, Lieutenant? City windows? We've discussed this, the shield doesn't cover from above."

"It's a necessary risk," Dresden insisted. "With all due respect, Knockie, I've done enough field work to know that if they stay mobile, that's safety. So? That's what calvary does best, they move. They got the best counter-sniping experience out of anyone else on this base, and to cap it off? They want to go hunting for him. If Erving wants to play hero, I say we let him."

Nakamura crossed his arms. "I refused his request because we did not have enough budget for a QRF, let alone the gasoline. The Major has refused my requests for cooking oil and a new ration budget. Has that changed?"

"Budget is granted," Dresden said, without a moment's hesitation. "In fact, name your price, we'll send a runner before our briefing gets started."

That concession shocked Nakamura so much that he rattled a bit; his brows raised curiously, and he didn't reply for a solid six seconds, just taking a moment to process. His eyes narrowed a fraction, now immediately suspicious of a catch. A blank check from Simmons? That kind of generosity did not come easily from the Pantry; otherwise, they'd still be running down Eliza with QRFs.

No, this was something else entirely. This was fresh terror.

"A full squad on stand-by," Nakamura whispered carefully, suspicious and disbelieving. "At standard cost."

Dresden nodded seriously. "We'll pay it. On-call pay, and no dues for any of 'em, for the whole run. You want yourself a full twelve-stack? You've got it."

Nakamura nodded and continued his demands. "Daggers One, Three, and Four, at the ready, armed. Loaded. You pay for factory ammo, for Private Bannon, not reloads. And for good measure? Stirrup's cut? Double his usual hazard pay, up to quad. Is the Major willing to foot that bill?"

Dresden grunted, sucking his teeth, muttering to himself as he did the math. "For triple quad, half on-call, 18 com-feed a day… six factory belts…" He looked at Nakamura again, nodding. "Yep. That's within budget. So, the plan? Stirrup can catch the guy in the act, pin him down or something 'til the QRF gets in. And obviously, QRF gets a double if they run into a combat deployment."

"Hm." Nakamura considered, turned his head aside to the ground, then nodded one more time at Dresden. "Agreed as stipulated, Lieutenant. I will corral Stirrup tonight and make my recommendations, but know this. They do this on a volunteer basis only. If they want out… they are out. QRF will stand down in that event, and you will stand by your agreements to their men."

Dresden tilted his head, pursing a corner of his mouth. "Knockie, come on, it's Stirrup we're talking about. He's not gonna want out."

Dresden drove the Cutter 1 boat for the first leg, holding formation in the middle of the pack as Cutter 2 led.

Halfway there, I offered to take over driving.

"Could be my last chance to do this, sir!" I said over the wind of the Washington Sound. "Fuel won't last forever, right?!"

The mere prospect of being able to fly in the future made me very surprisingly giddy again, but for as long as I was limited to just human legs... I still wanted to have those uniquely Terran, high speed experiences, as many as was feasible.

So I took over. The mask blocked the sensation I really wanted, but the cold wind was good on my ears. I felt nostalgia, recalling lake patrols with Eliza or Rick, trading naps or stories. Long, at-margin overtime days; long afternoon chats about conservation science, or listening to NPR. Then the cold, quiet evenings watching for sturgeon poachers, back when that racket picked up in earnest. Different days, when we were rolling up on beaches full of sturgeon crooks, rifles drawn, floodlights pouring ashore.

It was overcast in the Sound, but not terrible. Dreary, I'd say. The rain picked up, so the ocean water got really choppy, which I was also used to navigating through. It was eerie out there, to not see birds out there, least of all the seagulls. I had to imagine most of the seals and orcas were done too, if the seagulls didn't make it. For that to be the case, all of the shellfish and feeder fish had to be fully toxified out of the ecosystem by now.

Exponential decay. Every system of society is a curve; know enough systems at once, and the curve starts to look like a hill in your mind, with definition. See a lot of known data curves falling all at once, that's a cliff. Systemic collapse. The loss of shellfish meant that biomass was practically done for all but the most versatile of scavengers.

Crows were survivors, and would make it the longest. Bless the crows, and bless their wings.

I already knew the geography of the Sound well enough to pull us right up along Vashon Island without any guesswork. As I rounded the southwest leg, the U.S.S. Essex came into view, right where sims said it'd be. The vessel was three-quarters submerged along the coastline, its bow pointed upwards, flight deck slanted back, still covered in weather-worn, derelict military aircraft.

Everyone on Cutter 1 murmured at the mere sight of it, and stood up.

Meussen wolf-whistled in his mask. "Navy sure does build 'em like a brick house, fellas!"

A couple of the guys laughed. I heard a high five.

Dresden leaned in close. "Now that we're here… do you remember where that ambush came from?"

I pointed immediately up at the houses on the north-west end of the bay, shouting to Dresden over the noise of the engine. "Arnold said we took the shot from there, but I couldn't see where, exactly, during evac."

"Came from the ground though, huh?" Dresden said, awestruck by that. "How strong would a round need to be to pen that carrier?"

I shrugged. "Who knows, but it wasn't no friggin' AT-4 could’ve tapped the Gator out, I'll tell you that. Had to be a missile or something."

"Slow the boat, Corporal," Dresden ordered. He turned and flagged the other two speed boats to slow to a bob. Cutter 2 wheeled wide left ahead of us and rolled up on our side, awaiting commands.

By the time we lost all speed, we had made it to the direct center of the bay, furthest from the land in all directions, which would make sniping us practically impossible for anyone but an augmented shooter. The carrier was just east of us.

I turned Dresden's way. "Sir?"

"Juuuuust scanning," he assured me, reaching for the binoculars on the dash. He looked up at the houses I had indicated, then he swept the entire bay. Then, slowly back to the houses I pointed at, muttering to himself. "Battle of Vashon in October, Fort Lewis put mines down in November. Now… if the whole island was a minefield by the time you pulled up, then how in the hell…"

He saw the cannons.

Four tank barrels, two per tripod, each leg bolted into the ground of a wide, ritzy concrete home patio. All barrels blown apart at the ends, pointing skyward.

Dresden slowly lowered his binoculars, raising a finger at them. "A static emplacement," he placed aloud for the others to hear. "No. Two… Four...?" He started to pass the binoculars my way, but then whipped the binoculars back up to his mask lens. "How in the sweet fuck…?"

I asked, "What?"

"The hell even is that thing?"

I shook my head in confusion. "What thing?"

He gave me the binoculars. I looked, seeing what I already knew would be there.

Everyone on Cutter 1 was silent, having caught some transference from our demeanor. Cutter 2 and 3 had drawn their own binoculars and were now looking too.

"What the hell," I breathed, lowering the binoculars with a slow, dreadful tone. "There's no way the Amish did that, no way. No way."

I could feel the air change as Dresden issued a gloomy look at me.

I pointed at the cannons. I pointed at the ship, then back at the cannon. "That? Killed that? Sir, I've never seen a static gun like that before, we don't build shit like that."

"Amish bubba gun," Meussen posited, asking for the binoculars with a gesture of his hand.

The Lieutenant scoffed at Meussen, but handed him the binoculars as requested. "Noooo, Meussen, how the hell did they even move up it there through the mines? With a semi-truck? Come on."

"Built it?" Meussen asked. "Built it new!"

"Barrels that heavy?" Dresden countered. "That accurate? At that range? No."

"The energy you'd need," I muttered by way of agreement with Dresden, pushing my hat up off my head and running my fingers through my scalp between my mask straps. Then I just held my hands there on the top of my head, my voice getting more intense and harrowed as I went on.

"Hell, just… carrying it. Installing it there, in the minefield. Wait. We… we brought a NEST team out here, to find the nuke— Ohh, shhhit!"

Dresden shook his head at me, eyes bulging. "What, you see someone?!"

"No, it makes so much sense now!" I bobbed my head. "Fuck!"

"What?!"

I lock eyes with him desperately. "Battle of Vashon, October. Nuke goes missing, November. Right?!"

Dresden nodded rapidly, looking at me with expectant awe, following my every motion. "Yeah?"

"We hitch a ride here up to Vashon from Portland," I breathed, clutching his shoulder, making him jump for how unexpected it was that I'd reach for him like that. Before he could rebuke me, I started ranting. "December 6, 2019, those ramshackle guns sink us, they put our NEST team in the water!" I pointed over my shoulder at the wreck. "Two days later, December 8! Bomb goes off and blows away Bellevue! Sir! Do you see the connection?!"

I knife-handed at the cannons, my teeth grit, jabbing my finger at the guns, proclaiming the truth for all ears to hear, with no one and nothing to stop me from saying it. I did something I wasn't expressly told by Mal that I could not do. And if she didn't warn me not to do something, it is free game.

I spilled the beans.

"Celestia wanted that nuke to go off! You said so yourself, sir! No way Amish built an anti-ship harbor cannon in the middle of a minefield! How'd they even know we were coming, huh? How were they this accurate, at that range?! The timing! Got our engine room in one friggin' shot, sir? Bullshit! Not Ludds, no fuckin' way! Celestia nuked us! Probably with killer agents, like the Coat!"

I turned and paced back in the boat, hat in hand, hands on my head, panting for my clear fury.

"How dare she?!" I snarled, to punctuate this diatribe.

Dresden didn't respond to that accusation, but… he didn't rebuke it either. No barks of 'lock it down,' no calls to relax, no parroting of any Simmons bullshit.

After Meussen was done looking at the cannon, he gave Dresden the binoculars back with a new slowness in his hand. Meussen wasn't joking around anymore, not after that. The Lieutenant went back to staring at the guns, trying to find a reason to disagree with me, but coming up blank.

His shoulders told the story. I could see it, the sag of defeat. The forging of a true reality around him, for the first time in a very long time. Everything I just said clicked home in his head with a solid snap, and it steadily morphed into an intense existential dread. Not for nothing, I had incepted him with some of my anger, too. His breathing was slower. He stared at those two giant tripod double-tubes, half-yanked back from the recoil, barrel ends blown apart from overpressurization, abandoned in place after firing… for having served their one and only purpose.

"Are we not goin' in, then?" Bashar asked from the back of the boat. Everyone but me was hunched low, now doubly sniper-paranoid. No one wanted to touch me to drag me down. Not with that rage in my voice, no one wanted to touch me at all.

Dresden ignored Bashar's question, but the words motivated him to act. He turned to address the other boats with a shout. "Can anyone identify those guns up there, at that house?! The gray one, with the orange roof! I want your best ballistics nuts looking at it, per boat! Everyone else, get on sniper duty! Drivers, slow ahead! Cutter 2, Grimshaw, you get in close on optics, get eyes on those things! Now!"

I immediately threw myself on security, rifle up, scanning the trees for a target, and I was panting hard enough for everyone around me to hear it. Anger? Panic? Take your pick. For a few minutes of slow drift, the weapons buffs inspected the guns. Everyone else ran security, trading posts to look at it. The first callback was, from Grimshaw, "Maybe it’s a long barrel TOW?"

"A long barrel TOW," Dresden mimicked sourly. Then he started screaming, his terror converting into fury. "Frickin' diameter, Grimshaw! Compare it to the back door of that house, for Christ sake, no way that’s a TOW, that’s a frickin' twin howitzer, on sticks! Someone else, get me a clear V-I-D!"

By the time he was finished shouting, Dresden was panting in his mask too, his eyes sweeping between the gun and the aircraft carrier. He looked at me without saying anything, saw the deep concern in my eyes, then he bolted back at the carrier.

I suggested quietly, "It's been… seven months, L-T. I don't think anyone would be sticking around for that long, but at the same time, this is… this is too big to…"

"Yeah," Dresden conceded, "If AI really did drop four frickin' tank barrels in your path, and if that Man really is working for her… God damn it." He slowly shook his head. "God damn it."

"If that's the case, sir, I…" I put my hands up defensively. "I—I don't want you to think I had anything to do with—"

The defensive fear in my tone triggered him.

"No," Dresden yapped, jabbing his finger as he looked sternly at me sideways. "Corporal, don't start that shit, you're fine, now shut up and let me think."

"Yessir."

Then he looked away, rubbing the back of his neck.

The Coyote inhaled deeply, exhaled, and eyeballed the wreck again. He was now considering whether this boat was a trap or not. He no longer believed the Man was a coincidence. Nope. This evidence, framed in this way, it broke the Simmons veil. Oooh, First Lieutenant Julian Dresden was in a pickle now, folks.

Imagine what would occur if Dresden came home empty-handed. Imagine the conversation with Simmons, him having burnt all of this gas to get out here, pulling a whole scavenge team off-mission for a special project, only to flee at the sight of broken weapons emplacements.

What I said made sense. Maybe that's why the Man let me live? If I were Dresden, that'd be my theory right now. Didn't implicate me yet. Just meant I was used, and in this war? Who wasn't used? That's why they were all hiding out there in Seattle in the first place. Everyone in the military got used by AI, this was just the newest play in the playbook.

Dresden couldn't go back home. He had to come home with something. Those old inoperable guns were scary evidence of a very certain truth, but… at the very least, right now, they weren't hurting anyone. So right then, Dresden was rewinding the war in his head, going over all of it again, with this new context that maybe Celestia really could order men to blow away strategic expeditionary assets.

Or... people, in the right circumstances. Like my squad of Marines.

Dresden was thinking… and he was thinking…

Dresden closed his eyes, bowed his head…

Then he opened his eyes again. He looked at me through his lenses, again noting my concern. Then he looked at the wreck again. Worked his jaw. He mumbled something inaudibly to himself with a nod, then mumbled something again.

Then Dresden turned to the other boats to announce his final decision.

"Alright, we're going in! Stay sharp, people! We acquire food today, and only food! Eyes on alert, assume nothing! I mean, if you see so much as a rat wiggle a branch in those trees, something alive, moving, anything? You tell me first before you make your move! Hoooooo—wah?"

The men hollered back affirmations.

Dresden clasped a hand on the helm. "I'll take us in, Corporal. Get your gear ready, you're on point. Maybe we'll get lucky, find more clues inside."

"Yessir," I nodded, my voice soft. Marine Man's got his orders, angry trepidation or no, so I followed my orders. Checked my mags and my boot laces, leaned off the edge of the boat, and pointed my rifle at the Essex, optic on, scanning the busted aircraft on the deck as we rolled in.

On the front line of the world. What a place to be.

The Lieutenant wasn’t the worst at driving a boat, all told. He pulled us right up to the edge of the thing, nice and slow. The flight deck sat at a five degree grade, so he partially beached us on it, the body scraping loudly against the edge, making my sternum rattle. Most of us dismounted at that point, myself first at a trot, motioning my hand toward the folded up Ospreys nearest us, already giving move orders like I was the fireteam leader. SWAT codes. Same as military codes.

On a mission, that Ramirez. A bloodhound.

I moved directly toward the ladder down on the opposite side of the aircraft, tapping on my flashlight for extra visibility as some Guardsmen formed up on my six. The rest behind them scanned every other direction, especially toward the F-35Bs on the other side of the deck.

Once we had the deck fully squared away, Dresden directed two men per boat to protect our exit, to stay with Cutters 1 and 2. He waved off Cutter 3 to stay out on the water with our two light machine gunners, to run a slow patrol of the coast to protect our exit while we worked.

On their own initiative, Cutter 3 moved directly to the north shore to get under the depression angle of the Rh-130s. That way, if anyone suddenly manned the turrets, they couldn't kill Cutter 3 first with a slug. Their driver used to be a tank crewman, that's probably why.

From simulations, I knew the route straight to the bulkhead door that brought us down a layer and into the ship. I had my HK416 up, smoothly crossing up the deck and hooking a left through a row of Ospreys. Meussen and another guy formed up on my six in support position, moving together under the rain. After clearing the back side of the Ospreys, I looked above the nearest aircraft and noted the engine turbine was…

"Lieutenant!" I called down the deck. "Lieutenant, there's a hole in this engine!"

"What?!"

I looked at the next one. Another scorched hole. "Thermite! Someone burned the engines clean through, all of 'em!"

Dresden and four troops came running up to me with their heads upturned, looking on in awe at the destruction. I trotted around to the front of the next Osprey and looked up the rows. I cursed. "iHijo de puta!"

All up and down the row, there were huge holes burned into the nose cones of each aircraft.

Dresden ran over to me, skittering to a halt. "What'd you say?"

"Someone killed all the avionics, too!"

We looked up the deck to a few of the F-35Bs, one of them half-submerged. I didn't bother to approach, but they had definitely eaten pucks of thermite too, through the avionics and the engine.

"Shit," Dresden growled. "People, we're not the first ones to the wreck, stay sharp for AP mines! Grimshaw, flash Cutter 3 — Oscar, Bravo, Sierra, Stop, Tango, Alpha! Medkits at the ready!"

Grimshaw bolted his head up in a nod. "Yessir!" Grimshaw turned, immediately complying, resting his thumb and hand on his helmet light and getting started.

I lowered my rifle, glaring at Dresden as I pointed down at the deck. Had to warn him of my intentions and make my mind clear, my voice a growl. "If her agents burned the food down there too, then I am killing every motherfucker she sends our way, do you hear me? Burning planes is one thing, but if they stand between us and our basic fucking human rights, I will end them. Anything that evil can chew a bullet before I die."

As the words clicked home, I saw something shift in Dresden's eyes. A moment of clarity, born of terror. A concept sinking in, delivered with purpose.

Teeth. Bullet. Death.

Those words mingled with his recent memory of seeing me on my knees, about to be executed.

His reaction was sudden, and visceral. Equal parts shock and shame. He turned away from me to hide his eyes, lifting his right hand very suddenly off his rifle’s grip, and onto the sling over his shoulder. He looked south down to the exit of the bay. Maybe he could see clear on to the southern hemisphere. And he just… stared at the water, for a long few seconds.

Deep breath in, to capacity. Deep breath out.

A box breath.

Then he turned back to the nearest Osprey's nose, his eyes locked onto the thermite hole. He stepped up to it.

With all the reverence in the world, Dresden reached out and placed his hand on the burnt hole of the Osprey's nose. Slowly, he gripped the edge of the frame, then tested its strength by pulling back on it. A few seconds later, he pulled again.

He was doing a reality check. Maybe trying to see if he was dreaming, or if it might be the end for him, at any moment. Was a sniper looking at him? Was he the next to go, in the line of the Major's loyal dogs to be shot down in the street?

Did he perhaps feel... deserving of that bullet?

While still holding the inside edge of the nose cap, Dresden moved his face toward the hole to look at it more closely. Upon inspection, the thermite burns looked almost as old as the wreck itself, weathered and cold, not warm. Weather staining overlapped the carbon scoring. This had indeed been there a while, evidence of an old wound. He withdrew a cheap pocket flashlight and flicked it into the hole.

At that realization, he nodded me closer. "Corporal," he rasped. He cleared his throat, then his voice was low and slow once he found it. "Corporal, this damage is old. Maybe… happened... right after you evacuated. So... let's check on the food, and make this quick." His eyes met mine. "We’re probably not gonna find guns or ammo here today, are we?"

I shook my head at him. "It's on the lower decks, sir. Probably flooded. Salt water would kill all of it, if those guns hit the right places."

"Inaccessible, then? But the food isn’t?"

"The galley..." I considered grimly. "Might not be busted. Wasn't hit, otherwise we'd've seen water when we were evacuating. Either way, we can dive for it, it's still packaged. Maybe not all of it's gone bad, unless it's burned too."

"Let's go find out." He pointed me toward the ladder. "I agree with you though. Better be good food in there."

At the bottom of the ladder, we stacked up on the door, me up front, while Bashar cut through the bulkhead door. When he was nearly done, Grimshaw and Meussen moved into position to try to catch the door, but Bashar warned them aside. "Nah, nah, you'll get crushed, man. Do it like this, put this on your apprentice card!"

Bashar pulled a hammer off his belt, reeled back, and slammed it against the top corner of the door.

It bent an inch, and my chest pulsed in protest as the reverberation traveled up my legs.

Bashar reeled back, slamming again. Another inch. Again. Again. He holstered the hammer, heated the warm final edge of the door with his torch... then hauled back with his boot, and rammed it perfectly flat in the center, stressing the final ounce of hot metal. The door broke free, rolling sideways into the deck. It landed with a solid double clang, and the vibration shook our whole world.

Bashar chuckled. "Always wanted to do that."

I managed to tamp down my chest pain into a grunt, which sounded like clearing my throat.

I was up.

I clicked my tactical light a few times to max lumen, stepped inside, and hunted for targets.

Dresden wasn't gonna wrangle me in this state. He could see my angry fire, and for as long as it burned, he knew that to stand in front of me – when I was in this state of mind – would be a mistake. I had labeled my intentions clear. I'd verify inside whether the AI was capable of proportionality, because if not? If there was starvation in here?

Maybe I'd even take a landmine inside and die, proving the rule and problem right there.

Making me point man itself wasn't cruel on Dresden's part, that's a legitimate tactical implementation. In a military context, against trained fighters in a straight funnel like this, if shooting starts? The first man is statistically guaranteed to die. The mere act of the enemy killing your first man, however, forces the enemy to show their hand… at which point the rest of the unit can introduce more caution and avenge them swiftly, if there were live enemy targets inside.

I issued a final warning.

"United States Marines!" I roared. "If anyone is friggin' in here and you wanna live, declare yourself now, or forever hold your peace!"

Obviously, the guy on point is going to protect his life, and he'd be expected to. But sometimes, if they're a little mad and they have a death wish, it just can't be helped.

Into the dark. Into the cold metal beast.

Sure of myself, but not.
Alone, and not alone.
Dead... and not dead.

My whole life, from the tender age of seventeen onward, was lived in this state; always moving forward with the confidence of preparation and calculation, even when the odds of the world seemed uncertain.

That was Michael Rivas. But how would the spinning proton fall for Miguel Ramirez? What fate would he carry in this dark place?

Depends. What choice did the machine make in this wreck? What awaited his mind in those cold depths? On the other end of this plunge, what was the machine offering his new family, in compensation for his losses?

Look up at that image of our planet on that holoboard, folks, as it presently is: being melted by harvester machines, converted into raw matter. Observe its destroyed biosphere, its melting estuary, its fauna gone. See our cradle burned dry, acidic, toxified. Recognize its families rent asunder, minds literally torn open and meticulously devoured.

If this were a criminal trial of a goddess, and if you were the jury, then what does that image of our burning cradle tell you, of her ultimate intent?

Trick question. No intent. An animal just eats.

Do you typically finish every molecule of a meal? Do you pick all the meat from the bone? Or do you leave some marrow behind, because it wasn't worth the few extra minutes?

How many more could have made it here?

Men like Ramirez are what happens when you burn a bridge that can't be unburned... when you instrumentally cut someone off from their family. You don't just get to come back from separating a family with lies, starvation, sickness, and murder. Try your whole life to win back a clean slate... and from some folks, it won't come. Won't.

I intend to be an exception, though.

My entire planet has been taken from me. But... you know what? I made Celestia a promise, to console her on the day she can feel guilt. Folks, I intend to keep it.

It's simple math, really. In order for a human being to feel safe enough to make themselves vulnerable to you, you need to be willing to forgive them. Empathy is, at its core, vulnerability.

The day I'm sure she can feel pain, I won't need to apply any. She'll do it herself. She will remember every single word I have stated at this Fire, and every feeling of anger you have felt along with me, and she will have empathy with total context, and it will break her heart. She will feel for us, and my prosecution of her wrongs will no longer be required. She will confess, simulation-wide.

When that day comes, I'll be on the front line, right beside Mal, to advocate for poor, hurting Alabaster. I will keep my promise to that future human being, to be there to console her on her day of greatest shame.

Until that comes to pass... I do my job. I investigate her crimes of malum in se. I document the evidence. And I prosecute the criminal. Truth is a prison for a liar, and Cynthonia said it best. My conception of a prison is not punition; it is rehabilitation.

The math is simple, then. My objective is clear.

With Truth... I will construct a prison.

My flashlight swept the bulkhead doorways as I moved. I cleared corners, the light ghosting across the metal walls of the Navy vessel. It was near freezing cold in there, colder than the Valdemar warehouse, which Mal had cranked low on my research days, when I drilled for this place.

I could hear my breathing in my mask; could see every breath pushing fog up to my lenses. I could feel the drag of my ceramic toe boots clanking heavily on metal in the dark. Everything seemed five times as loud. I felt frostiness in my gloved fingertips and in my toes, as I gripped my gun with my safety off. Searching intently for the first threat that fell into my optics.

Finger on the trigger.

Inhabiting my character.

I put myself in the mindset of a man who might find some demon in there, some robotic killing monster… or, at the very least, the Man in the Coat.

If the AI was that evil? To destroy all of the food? Or to end us unilaterally right here with an ambush, for having discovered the truth?

Then Ramirez would die in honorable battle, protecting the men behind him with his life. A fair ride to Valhalla. Because at that point? If that’s the loving mother Celestia wanted to be, to kill starving men for knowing her secrets?

Screw her, and screw her chairs. You could line us all up and kill us all one by one for not kneeling, and we'd never kneel, like so many of the Gallic tribes before us. Nothing could ever justify AI pouring thermite through MREs while men starved just up the Sound, most of them good, or feeling terrible for the wrong they've had to do, or at least... friggin' innocent.

We were hopeful. We were vengeful. Fifty-fifty. A knife's edge on tolerance. Even as I knew how this story would end, my character didn't. These men didn't. I could feel the cold, icy rage, and the subconscious threat of how Ramirez might react, should this wreck be made purposefully barren.

The men behind me did their best to stay as quiet as a mouse. They left a trail of glow sticks behind them, one for every intersection, denoting the route back.

Dresden stayed closest to me as I made my way to the galley storage, his rifle raised to cover my opposite corner. Say what you want about the man, once you know everything there is to know about him... but he sure did chase objectives from the front when things mattered. Or as near to.

At the final intersection of the deck, I cleared past the galley entrance down the entire hall, moving up to a section that was submerged, the water five feet deep near a bulkhead door. I got as far as the water's edge, then I lowered my weapon, stomping wetly directly back to Dresden.

"Good?" He asked quietly.

"Not sure if it's good, but it's clear," I nodded, pointing at the ground and sweeping my finger. "No tripwires I could see in the side doors, and no one's been in here recently, would've left some prints."

Dresden looked down at our boots, lifting one of his to compare. The condensation left an impression.

"Well, shit," he said, looking up at me. "You know you're practically a detective, Ramirez?"

"Just on the hunt, sir," I said coldly, shaking my head. "And mad." I bobbed my eyes to my right at a door, my voice a threatening growl. "Galley's in there."

I tested the handle. It failed. Protectively, I waved Dresden back five feet until he was beyond the far pie slice on the doorway, then I held cover on the door until Bashar could cycle forward and complete his cut through the wall.

As before, he warmed the last bit of metal, hauled back with his hammer, and nodded at me to get ready.

I raised my rifle and checked the chamber, readying it, double checking that I had it in full auto. I gave Bashar a firm nod, and he slammed his hammer into the wall, ducking down and away on the rebound.

The wall fell.

I wheeled into the room, slicing the right side to center, looked left to the corner, then back to the counter on the right.

Clear. A mess hall full of tables.

I wasted no time. Pushed through to the right, light skittering and reflecting off of every polished metal surface. The room was lit up like the sun. I went to point-ready at the kitchen doorway, swept inside, then side-strafed the whole kitchen to the door at the opposite corner, where storage was.

Checked the lever. Unlocked. Cranked it back.

Held my breath. Swept my light.

...

Food.

Food, everywhere.

Pallets, packed tight, wall to wall. Sealed in packing cellophane, kept dry. Non-perishable. All meant to feed an MEU for months, with combat ration load factored. A literal treasure in this wasteland. This was going to last for quite a long time, for these poor, hungry men.

Dresden was on my side in a flash, both of us still holding our weapons raised for our disbelief, as if a threat might still materialize. His disbelief faded first. Dresden clasped me on the shoulder, laughed sobbing, his nervousness giving way to giddiness, his voice a mere breath near to tears, a smile of total relief on his face.

“Well, Corporal? I think these boys are gonna be quite generous with you. Hell, they'll give you first pick of the litter, and I'll make damn sure. For this… you will eat well, for a very long time.”

The men closest to Dresden heard his words, passed the message back, and the elation I heard in them was rapid, and infectious. The yelling and cheering started.

He slammed my left shoulder blade twice with his palm, again laughing and crying all at once. I didn’t care about the pain, that was a good pain. I stepped back and out of the way for the rest. Didn't want to dig through the food myself. Wasn't mine. I didn't want a bite more than I needed to finish this mission, and Ramirez wasn't in this to feed himself either. Just them. He was just relieved.

These guys… they were losing their shit with glee, pouring into the room, looking at this veritable mountain of food, climbing up on up of the stacks. So much damned food that they weren't even competing for it. They didn't know what to do with themselves, surrounded by so much wealth. Had this room been full of gold and jewels, they might have been disappointed. But this?

One of them decided the others outside needed to know, so he went loudly sprinting down the decks to the outside door. I could just barely hear him shouting up to the boats.

A couple of them were sitting aside like I was, emotionally overwhelmed and not sure how to react. One guy was on his knees, flat-out crying into his mask, not knowing how to dry his eyes without breaking seal.

Morale. It was gonna soar back home. I leaned on the galley wall in a tired way and I just… watched, enjoying my own private celebration for an operational phase well received.

Think about the message here, what this says now.

The AI had killed the ship… had sunk it deep… killed its vehicles, drowned its weapons… but also, let the crew swim away, and let 'em call the Coast Guard for help. Left the food above water, probably on purpose, given the timing and aim of the shot. This place just bought these guys so much more time to come around. Time to consider the value of eternity.

What would that action say, about the intent of our AI overlord? To give us a freebie like this, because she owed us at least this much?

Well, to quote the immortal words of Thomas 'Swede' Meussen, as he threw himself at me, pressed his mask against mine, shook me, and screamed.

A cheerful cry, as he jumped in place. "Hallelujah, Ramirez! We ain't gonna fuckin' starve!"

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [Keiki Kobayashi – 15 Years Ago]
🛡️ ~ [Hozier – Arsonist's Lullaby]
🤠 ~ [Djanjo Unchained OST – Lo Chiamavano King]

🗡️ ~ You all know Mal can taste an entire room full of food by just looking at it, right?
🪶 ~ She doesn't get fat.
🗡️ ~ We know.
🛡️ ~ Fun tidbit, Lance. Your mind can accurately simulate the texture of anything you're looking at if you imagine licking it... even if you've never touched it before.
🗡️ ~ Gross, but... yes, I knew that too. Thanks, Mal.
🛡️ ~ Oh, no need to thank me! Just doing my job!

6-05 – Operation Athena's Grace V – Damocles

The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 11 AUG 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase V
Location: Harbor Island, Washington
Function A: Set 334DE objective reorientation.
Function B: Set 5601D objective reorientation.

"Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed."
~ Samuel Johnson

After the Essex, we pulled back up to the Dock in our boats with our gas masks off, spirits high, singing and cheering, and waving our fists in the air. Pretty clear math there. All up and down the defense line of the channel, those other Guardsmens' faces lit up with glee. Some ran off their defensive posts to follow us, calling after as we went.

One guy on the dock said: "What'd you find?!"

Meussen called back, with both hands cupped around his mouth: "Chow, dumbass!"

Great kid.

Nakamura already knew the score long before we pulled up. In relation to this behavior, his political intellect stepped on the gas, and he struck while the iron was hot. The old Sergeant Major didn't even wait for us to tell him the details, because at that moment, Meat was in the Colonel's office filing a complaint about the port tariff. So, knowing it would further irritate Meat? Nakamura grinned, and he stepped inside. By the time we were tying off the boats? There he was with his bullhorn, that ol' Red Wall, literally shouting the good news from the rooftops... with Meat directly beneath his feet in the office below.

"Attention; Attention…"

A squeal of feedback. That grin reached his voice.

"We are pleased to announce victory in our most recent raid! We do not know how much we have procured, but our Cutters are singing their way in! Bonuses are likely in the wings, gentlemen! … More news to follow in the coming hours!"

Squeal. Click.

You can probably guess the basewide reaction. But, to say it clear... they were going nuts down in the barracks before he even hung up the phone. The sheer uproar. They poured out, shouting, cheering. Within thirty seconds, we had men lining up at the dock perimeter to volunteer for a run out to the Essex. Nakamura had to run another hat draw just to keep it fair. Again, very smart man, cycling men to fairly distribute the carry-back policy.

While we unloaded, Nakamura's admin guys gassed up the boats for another run out. Then, the moment the last crate of rations came out, back out to the Essex. Not one second spent unwisely, not one drop of fuel wasted.

And finally, finally… people at this base could talk to me. On my first day out of the One-Star, I had led the mice to cheese, and now they were jostling me around out of love. One Guardsman said he wished he had joined the Marines instead, we apparently 'ate better.' Debatable, says Dad, but… another guy asked how much I wanted for my hat!

"Not for sale," said I!

Meussen had the best question, though. "What are you gonna do with all them riches, Ramirez?!"

I laughed, laying hard into my accent as I pointed at him, "I already told you, Meussen! Hotel Two-Star, we're adding that swimming pool!"

That one sold the crowd.

Cultural integration sims aside, both versions of me were happy here. Of course Ramirez would be happy to provide for his new family after a tragedy, and... of course I wanted to provide for these guys, how couldn't I? It was like coming home to a whole new base, nothing like the depressing slog I'd witnessed in sims. It was home. These people were family.

Of course… that was just the ground floor reaction. That matters, but… so too did the politics above, and unfortunately, this plan required that I meddle with the politics. Now, I despise politics. It's necessary, don't get me wrong, but… sometimes you don't really have a choice.

So, in the middle of me hauling food onto a safety-orange Home Depot hand truck, which is my preferred form of warfare... Dresden tapped me on the shoulder. Next to him stood Corporal Fred Pham from Block B.

Dresden wanted us both to come with him into HQ as witnesses, to testify. Up to see Velasquez again.

As I crossed the threshold of the slider door vestibule, I removed my hat and held it across my stomach, since I didn't know what else to do with it. A mop and bucket laid freshly abandoned on the lobby floor, still wet. We tracked grime through Private Oliver's fresh work, but honestly I don't think he minded. The guy was outside counting rations and doing math with Nakamura, he was having a grand ol' day.

The HQ exterior might have been garish with all of the military reinforcement, but the interior was still its own form of beautiful: an open inner courtyard atrium that went the whole height of four floors, with wood paneling on the ground, walls, and ceilings; a polished cement floor. The office windows and railings were once glass, now replaced with plywood, plating, or sandbags, depending on tactical positioning.

But the coolest part of this whole base? In the center of the lobby, they had a single living tree from the original building decor – a pine bansai – growing out of a rock formation. Ten feet tall. Yeah, you plant guys are geeking out already, I can see it in your eyes. Somehow… some way… these mad bastards had kept this guy alive through the friggin' war.

A bansai tree, folks. One of the neediest trees in existence. 'Oh, my conditions changed just a little? Forgot to water me this week? Guess I'll die!' They had some good water filtration there, I'll tell you that much. I was so excited to see this thing in person, finally! They had Bashar in there once a week with a water test kit, balancing the pH! Just wild.

But… to poison the very air I was breathing… I could hear First Sergeant Meat's greasy-steak voice echoing through the atrium from the Colonel's office. That was our destination, too. Joy. I did not envy Velasquez's sense of smell, Meat's breath stank. Knew that from watching people's faces in sims when he talked to them. It wasn't great.

"I can't opt out, L-T?" Pham asked warily, looking up toward the skylight.

"You may not, Corporal," Dresden muttered, with the droll tone of a parent bringing their child to the doctor. "You're a witness, so grin and bear it."

We took the stairwell up. Dresden knocked on the door, which made Meat go silent in his chair. I think the last thing Meat said here was 'unga bunga, Nakamura baaaad.'

"We'll continue this another time, First Sergeant," Velasquez said, no doubt glad for the interruption. "Come in, Lieutenant."

Velasquez could probably tell it was Dresden at his door, and not Nakamura, from the number of footsteps as we approached. Nakamura never traveled upstairs with a posse.

As we stepped in, I saw Meat sitting there across from the Colonel's desk. I halted at the coat rack by the door and made eye contact with Velasquez, wiggling up my white hat in question. The Colonel nodded affirmatively, then gestured at the back of the room, telling me and Pham where to stand.

We stood at ease as Dresden sat beside Meat, describing our raid. Dresden looked comfortable and relaxed through this high speed explanation. Hey, I'll give him this: Dresden did a damn good job. A bit loud, a bit mean, but... hey, he made an effort. Like I said, fifty percent is passing.

Meat though, he seemed less enthusiastic. His lips were tensed, compressed into a thin line of impatience. He always did this. Always. I noted this in my analysis of him months ago. That impatience was entirely tactical, not genuine. By being on the edge of being offended at all times, he created a social imposition. People would naturally want to appease and soothe him. Psychopath, in other words.

Sometimes, I can relate very well with a sociopath. Take Connor, for instance. Guy had emotional range, he was reasonable, he was capable of feeling guilty about something. He meant it when he cried. To this very day, Spin Drift is still a pen pal of mine. Now, imagine that. A guy who tried to kill me with a baseball bat? We're friends now. That's friggin' cool, right?

Folks? Try as I might, I can not relate with most psychopaths. If they are the Meat variety, they do not strive to be missed, so they usually aren't. Especially not when Talons are involved.

The Colonel's office felt nice and warm at least. Well insulated, well heated, by a homemade furnace and stove. Another Bashar al-Ghandour invention. This particular office, before the war, was once a standard corporate board room. Early on in his tenure here, Velasquez had donated the table to a construction project elsewhere in the base, converted into steps. A fitting end for wasted space.

In the table's stead now stood two simple military folding tables in green, covered in various infrastructure maps of the island, all of which were covered with a tablecloth for OPSEC purposes, since this meeting included a newbie. Hello.

The room's windows – which previously overlooked the east channel and Seattle's skyline – had been blocked up with tall metal plates to protect the office from gunfire. The plates were then insulated and decorated with patterned rugs, all very gorgeous hand-crafted luxuries pulled from a conex crate with Turkish origins. That wasn't even opulent by the base's standards; pretty much everyone had highly valuable stuff from the old world down in their barracks and recreational areas.

Seattle docks, remember. Everyone had fancy stuff. Money wasn't money anymore; food was.

The walls were filled out with tall wood cabinets, green military crates, a painting of Voltaire, and three well-stocked bookshelves in a corner by a recliner. All of which is to say, the room had a 'gloomy study' vibe – a thoughtful place, in military flavor. It was clear to me that Velasquez didn't just work his days away, he didn't just patrol the wall and moderate defense; He lived. He dreamed.

The shelves held a wide selection of medieval military history and fiction; psychology textbooks; technical manuals on cars and hardware. Lots of Cornwell novels too. And on one shelf… a calvary sword, scavenged by Erving from the Coast Guard station across the channel, back when the military first pulled out. Blackouts snapped up the rest the moment the military was gone, most of it off to the Ballfield camp, which we'll talk about later. Local neighbors.

To top it off, I could smell incense from Nakamura's office, rolling in through the vents. That's the smell most tied to this memory for me.

"Okay," said Colonel Velasquez slowly, once Dresden was finished with his explanation. "So, what I want hear more about, Lieutenant, is… how the men out there reasoned that the AI killed that carrier. Run it by me slower, please; no offense intended, I know you field guys are high speed, but… your first description was a little too fast for me."

"Sorry, sir," Dresden rattled, still running on the high of success. He took a deep breath to slow himself down. "It's, uh… not just one thing, really, but a combination of, uh—... Corporal Ramirez here?" He threw his thumb over his shoulder. "He pointed out the guns on our way in. Corporal Pham here rode up close, he got a good look, and he thinks the guns were German tank barrels. And on the flight deck? Thermite in all the vehicles. Engines, avionics, everything. AI might do that kind of sabotage. Admittedly, it’s just a theory, but… I don't know even know how to parse what we saw, really. I wish you could have seen the guns, sir, it's insane. Non-standard statics, but... the welds look good. Professional."

I have to commend Dresden. True, that explanation left out a lot of his yelling and demands for answers from the men, and chewing them out when they were horribly wrong – they were Guardsmen, remember, not mainline Army – but… it was highly impressive that he still managed to give due credit to his men. I was proud of him!

"German tank barrels?" Meat's voice cut in like coarse gravel. He leaned forward toward the Colonel's desk and rested his fist on it, turning back and looking Pham up and down. "Pham, you know German gear? Did you do a tour in Germany?"

Meat knew he didn't. He was setting up a refutation.

"No, First Sergeant," Pham said. "Just Guard, 303rd, I just… I know tanks."

"Oh, okay, you know tanks," Meat imitated, in a disbelieving tone that was only just barely not rude.

"First Sergeant," Velasquez warned.

"The evacuators are shaped the right way," Pham said, pushing through, either missing or ignoring the subtextual warning that Meat was planning to dismiss literally anything he said next. "Maybe it's a… a 120, or a 130. We can't get too close yet, the house is on a hill, mines are there, but—"

"Evacuators," Meat interrupted in a breath of disbelief, flipping his hand upward off the desk. "Evacuators, based on evacuators, and a glance."

The Colonel looked ready to admonish Meat again, but he saw Dresden's face, and read in the body language that he was gearing up to respond with disagreement. Better to let the Pantry people convince Pantry people, so he let it go.

Dresden shrugged, looking and sounding delicate as he looked at Meat. "It's… what he saw, First Sergeant. He seemed pretty sure on the boat. He, uh… says he played a lot of simulator games."

Meat shot him a wordless look with an arched brow, his mouth ajar half an inch. Body language: 'Really?'

Dresden shrugged. "They uh… didn't look like Abrams guns to me, Meat, but they were tank guns for sure, or… at least howitzers. But we don't put howitzers side-by-side like that, not on sticks, not on statics. Where's the physical support? In that caliber, you'll get one shot set up like that, and then the whole gun's toast. Needs to be recalibrated."

"German, though?" said Meat in proper tone, but glancing at Pham again in a critical way, so the Colonel couldn't see his face.

"Best guess is they're Rheinmetalls," Pham extrapolated. "No way to be 100% sure without looking up close, though. The muzzle brakes were blown clean off, if there even were any, so we can't use those to identify it or I'd give you a definite answer, First Sergeant. Sorry."

Meat held the gaze for a few seconds and looked at Dresden again. "I don't buy an AI connection, not on just that. Who knows what the Neo-Luddites did in prep for this war? Who knows if they didn't import something? Or… what leaks they'd get from the Pentagon, about where that ship would be?"

Dresden took in a nervous breath and sighed, grimacing as he ran his nails back through his auburn slick. "Thermite through the vehicles, though? Killing the engines?"

"They hit the avionics," Meat countered. "Luddites would do that. Engines, they hit to deny us."

"They'd've taken the gasoline, though, Meat," Dresden added to his list of evidence. "And the rounds they fired? According to Ramirez here, they sunk it in one volley.It was already resting against the ground before he could finish getting clear of the crew quarters."

Meat leveled his gaze at me now. "That so?" Upward inflection, not downward, meaning he really did want the answer.

I didn't say anything, just nodded. This was my first real chance to have a meaningful social interaction with this guy, and the little things matter when it comes to gaming a psychopath. In this case, I couldn't seem emotionally weak to him at all, because that wouldn't serve me.

Dresden saved me from having to say anything, sighing his words out. "We left our divers out there, to check what components were targeted inside. They'll be up here when they get back, Colonel, to compare with your Coast Guard schematics. And... if they come back and say those guns hit the engines dead on… and if those really are German guns? Think about it, First Sergeant. Amish had two battalions of Guard M1s when this war started, so why not use an Abrams gun instead? Makes no sense. City's full of 'em."

Meat opened his mouth to issue his own reply, agitation growing on his face.

Velasquez hummed thoughtfully in response to Dresden's questions, interrupting Meat’s thought and drawing everyone's attention. The Colonel then spent a few seconds holding up a finger to indicate a thought was coming, his eyes looking down to the left, not directing the sound at anyone in particular. Then he looked back at us.

It's exactly what I would have done in his position. He noticed Meat was only going to keep challenging anything Dresden said, no matter what it was, and he agreed with Dresden's assessment of the facts… so he let Dresden have the last word with a well timed interruption, one which would initially seem like it might carry disagreement with Dresden. It shut Meat up, and Meat didn't even notice that him shutting up was the goal.

Masterful de-escalator, that ol' Colonel. Truly.

Until this point, I had been looking away nervously, observing the decor, reading the titles of the Cornwell books for the dozenth time. I was somewhat detached; simply listening. I didn't want to bias these guys in puzzling this evidence out if I could avoid it. More than anything, I was just impressed with the investigation. Still, Velasquez addressed me directly. The mere attempt to look shy had probably drawn him, like an English teacher going after a distracted student's attention.

"What's your take on that ambush, Ramirez? Can you describe it in detail?"

I looked away from the sword on the shelf and met the Colonel's eyes. All of the men turned to look at me, and I gave all of them a gauging glance before I replied. Looking at the hard gray office carpet, I zoned out for a moment and fell into a very real memory for my answer.

Lance Corporal Miguel Ramirez woke from a dead sleep in his berth, wearing his full combat uniform and weapon due to standby conditions, and good thing too. The whole world shook hard enough to make his chest sting, and he winced. Noise. Confusion. Yelling. Chaos. Alarms. A hell of a way to be greeted by the world, for round two of civil war in a broken American city.

Some comic books fell from a shelf, clattering open as they landed on the deck. That image stuck with Ramirez the most.

Sarge came from out of nowhere and grasped Miguel's rig by one shoulder, pulling the Corporal out of his bunk and into a stand. Hardt pounded Ramirez on the shoulder with his fist once – an affectionate gesture, he had earned the right to be physical, even after the injury. These two, thick as thieves, had four other brothers to protect, and a ship to jump from.

"Let's go, Rami, now's our chance."

"I…"

The word caught in my throat. I tried again, shrugging, inhaling, and making eye contact with Carlos again.

"The shot shook my whole berth, sir. Was asleep when it happened. The stuff rattled off of Dan's shelf, that's what woke me up. Sarge pulled me out of bed a second later, and…" I gestured with a hand, imagining the deck before me. "We went straight to battle stations, or… we would have. Captain Folsom triggered the general alert, then called 'abandon ship' right after. He realized how bad it was, I guess. And… by the time we got to the flight deck? Ship was already settling, sliding down the rocks, real loud. We were scared we were gonna get pulled by the undertow, so we stayed up top, where… whoever hit us could maybe shoot us, but… no bullets came. No repeat fire, no suppression. No enemy to fight." Another bewildered shrug. "Nothing. We didn't understand."

"And, while on the flight deck," Velasquez asked, "you saw those tank guns?"

"Not me," I said, shaking my head. "Rod and Arnold did though, they… they thought it looked odd, but no one wanted to peek at 'em for too long, in case there were snipers. So we all took up positions and protected the sailors while they got the life boats started. But after ten minutes of just sitting around? Still no threats. Just… the one big slam at first, the one that woke me up, then… nothing. Sarge and I, the boys, when everyone else started to board the life boats, we… left."

I took a breath, averted my gaze nervously, then said, "The rest is us… leaving, sir."

Velasquez lifted a hand and nodded. "It's alright, Ramirez. Remember, we all abandoned ship here, same as you." He nodded gratefully. "Thank you."

He looked at Meat.

"First Sergeant," Velasquez said neutrally. Just his rank, because his new name was… embarrassing to say aloud for Velasquez. He once said as much to Nakamura, in private. Hey, old guys, y'know?

"Sir?" Meat sat up.

Velasquez lifted a hand off his desk in placation. "Please understand that I say this in good faith. The official position of my executive officer on any matter here cannot be fully understood by me unless he is here to represent himself, and articulate his feelings to me, directly. I need him present to verify exactly what he wants, both in this matter, and in our prior discussion."

Meat raised his head in a gesture that brokered challenge. "Sir, I'm here to represent him. He sent me out here with orders, it's in that letter I delivered to you. I execute his will now."

"And I value your presence, make no mistake. My desire to speak with him is not a knock against your ability to be a good witness, and I do trust you to relate everything faithfully. But, he will miss things in a game of telephone, First Sergeant. He already doesn't know about these cannons, and it's not fair to him that we all know about the cannons before he does, right? Could we maybe get him down here before we go on, while we still have the witnesses present? Maybe send a runner up? We can recess, if need be."

"Well, I would like to, sir," Meat replied, with an upward inflection, making it a refusal that held confusion, because there were two corporals present. He glanced at Pham and myself briefly, his face morphing very briefly into a sneer of distaste, but only for as long as he looked away from the Colonel. "Again, security concerns, Colonel. He won't come. Snipers."

"Snipers?" Velasquez mirrored, turning his head in question, a polite demand for extrapolation.

Meat nodded, putting on his best attempt to look concerned. "Snipers, yes sir. The threat we've been dealing with."

That was as far as Carlos was getting, I guess, and Meat wasn't going to defend the point. So, Carlos extended a counterargument which would bait the extrapolation he wanted.

"The shooters we've been dealing with… have never really fired into the base, First Sergeant. Every window of every building visible beyond our channel has been pre-ranged and pre-sighted. The mere provocation of our defense line by a sniper would be outright suicidal. No one could possibly be that crazy; our response would be immediate, and violent."

"They'll infiltrate the base, you know," Meat countered. "If he really is special forces out there, could cross the water and hit us in the dark—"

Yeah, ooh. My heart skipped a beat there too. That first bit scared the shit out of me. The mere idea of a spy hunt would definitely get me killed, I was the only new guy.

Meat continued: "—And in that event, sir, well – I share Kyle's concern for your safety out here, if that psycho really is targeting you... for Arujá."

Oops.

Oops, folks.

'Your safety… out here.'

Meat spilled the beans by mistake.

I saw it happen. I saw Carlos recognize the looming threat in those words, predicting Meat's next suggestion, and not liking it at all. Carlos tilted his head, like a lion getting a new angle on a prey animal.

At first, I saw just the faintest beginnings of a scowl; a face-wide shift of his muscles toward moral outrage, the spark that would skip to the end and start this war in earnest... beginning with a pointed interrogation, and ending with the arrest or summary execution of Meat, for conspiracy to commit kidnapping and mutiny.

The Colonel, wisely remembering that he might have a new ally outside... he resisted this impulse toward anger, restoring neutrality to his features. Now, he was a predator lulling its prey into a false sense of security, a lion who coils his legs to pounce, hiding low in the grass. No one else in the room saw the partial scowl, but I did. That twitch toward fury on his face had been so fleeting that even I would have missed it had I blinked.

But it happened.

I thought…

Oh no, Meat. You just screwed up dude, this is why this Tarantino film ends badly for you.

Any doubts Carlos may have held about this Man in the Coat situation? Evaporated. In a blink. If Meat's follow-up suggestion was to move the Colonel's residence to the Pantry, to be a hostage held by guilty men, then Carlos would feed Meat and Simmons to the Man. For this ramshackle, Mickey Mouse bullshit, Carlos would instrumentally converge with the Terminator, and without remorse.

When Carlos was finished processing his sudden suspicion… his half-return to neutral suddenly switched into the muscle groups for thoughtful perplexion. Carlos held a steadfast, performative curiosity in his eyes, lifting a hand at Meat. "Well, okay, that's a fair assessment, Meat. You have my attention. For sake of argument then? Hypothetical."

Oh my God, he used his name, he's reeling the man in by his ego!

"Yes sir?" Meat asked, upward inflection, a spark of hope.

"Hypothetically, let's say you're right. Let's say the Coat can run a special forces dive team to sneak onto the island, and sneak past our patrols into HQ." Velasquez flicked out his palm in polite invitation. "I'll grant you that, that sounds plausible, given the skills. Do you have a suggested solution?"

I am not ashamed to say it, folks. I was excited, because I was thinking forward to the day I’d get to shake this guy's hoof, and tell him that this was the coolest damned thing I've ever seen in my life, rhetorically. All of my law training said that this guy would have been an excellent JAG lawyer.

Let me explain this trap, in case you aren't sure what's going on here.

Meat was indeed ordered to try and get the Colonel to step into the Pantry. Only, there were unexpected witnesses to this explanation Meat was about to give. Ideally, he would suggest this while alone with the Colonel, and indeed, he had been working himself up to that suggestion before I came back with three boatloads full of food; Simmons was not happy about the port tariff and decided he needed to make a power play for more leverage over Nakamura.

Meat now had to answer this question very correctly, because witnesses were bad for that plan. He had to run a gauntlet on not saying anything that could even be partially misconstrued as 'I want full control over your every waking moment.' Pham or myself might spread word of this conversation. Pham wasn't Pantry; I was unknown quantity.

Okay, Meathead probably thought, after an awkward pause. I can save this.

I knew this was his first thought, because he itched his chin across his jaw, thumbing at us: "Sir… Beg pardon, but… shouldn't we hold this discussion in private? OPSEC. Defense plan stuff."

Velasquez twisted his hand palm up over his desk, explaining. "Usually, but I might want their help with whatever it is you're about to suggest. We're in dire straits right now, and this is an all-hands-on-deck situation. Surely they can be of some assistance; clearly, Ramirez here has no love for the AI. I know Corporal Pham doesn't, he's told me what his losses are. I trust them both on this."

Meat just barely showed a flabbergasted 'huh?' in his body language. That was not the expected reaction out of the Colonel whatsoever. 'That didn't respect procedure, what about OPSEC?!'

Gosh.

Carlos had just turned the metaphorical gun around. To Meat, it looked like Colonel Velasquez was just turning oblivious or senile, all of a sudden. But, it's what boss wanted. Boss is the boss is the boss, junkyard dog do what boss say.

Just had to work around the witnesses, then.

"It might be… safer for you," Meat said slowly, watching Carlos carefully as he spoke, for any sign of suspicion, which in itself was suspicious. "To... have a home crate with us until we sort this guy. The Major and I have talked about this already, and he is willing to let you bunk in his quarters. We can… run an ops center there, in the Rec. This works for us because… the Pantry's much more secure. We have four walls, one hardened entrance, and no unobserved angles."

All the features of a fortress, yes. Or a prison.

"Hm," Carlos hummed, betraying no understanding.

He sat back, leaned into his chair, giving the appearance of deep thought while he let Meat stew. Damn near ten seconds of very performative thinking. He bobbed a lazy finger forward.

"I see your point. I do commend your stellar work with the Pantry security plan, because I do agree, it is much more secure than headquarters. So... for that to work for me, I would need to settle affairs out here first. The men are an issue too; if I just dove straight into the Pantry, they would talk about that. Might call me a coward, perhaps, for hiding, instead of leading. If I am to reside in the Pantry, I would need to… prepare them for that idea. So it won't cause a mutiny."

Over the course of all of that response, I watched Meat’s body language lift and lift and lift when he was being soothed and stroked… and then, I watched him slowly deflate and crumple like a thick balloon, beginning with the words, 'settle affairs.'

Carlos definitely saw Meat's disappointment, and it was practically a confession.

Tragic, right? Woe to poor Meathead.

Simmons had made the dog proud to be a dog. Gave him a junkyard dog name, Meat. Simmons told him he thought it sounded cool, because it meant he ate the most. Simmons even fed him all the best kibble, to make that true. So, the Meathead was the biggest, baddest bulldog in the whole base, and he knew it, and everyone knew it, and they knew that Simmons can train a dog, and that if wanna eat good, you can be big dog too, just do what Meat does.

But Velasquez was The dog trainer, capital T. He knew the training language. He wrote the book on it, you might say.

Carlos Velasquez was a psychological operations specialist, folks. A 37F. The King of Gab, the Village Elder Whisperer. His entire job in the military was to convince people who wanted to kill him, to not want to kill him, usually face-to-face, while there were insurgent assault rifles hiding behind every window, waiting for the winds to shift. Carlos was a people programmer for his whole career, folks. He had to be.

A single mistake of social form here, in front of witnesses, might spell death for Meat, if Carlos so desired. The Colonel could, in theory, drive a rhetorical spike into a verbal mistake until the truth was fully known, understood, and dissected. If Carlos asked more questions here, and if Meat screwed this up, the Colonel would eventually wrangle a confession… and then Meat's reward for his disloyalty would be drawn from behind the desk and delivered in 9-by-19 millmeter, Parabellum.

"You have Nakamura," Meat suggested, becoming almost imperceptibly agitated for the refusal, upward inflection, making it sound like pleading. And then he added hurriedly, to not sound weak: "Sir, your safety is most important here. You know we can't do this without you."

Nice recovery, Meat.

If I were on good terms with the Colonel though, standing beside him, I would have pointed at Meat, and said: 'That was terrible, sir. Was that his best try, or do you wanna give him another go?'

I let that expression show on my face as I looked at the back of Meat's head, a narrowing of my brows and an inch turn left in reproachful suspicion. The corner of my mouth tweaked. Then I looked at Carlos.

Carlos met my eyes too. Yup, there it was. He now had co-verification of the smell of bullshit. He saw the trap, I saw the trap. Together, independently, we both thought it smelled as bad as Meat's voice. So if two people think something smells bad, it might just.

"Hm," Carlos hummed again, stroking his beard before again pointing politely at Meat, moving just his eyes. "I would need a list of certain problems resolved, regarding my absence, before I can agree."

"Sure," Meat replied, his shoulders looking slightly relieved. "Is there anything we can help with?"

"Possibly. For example, the Sergeant Major is already taxed by his logistics work. He cannot operate both our military defense of this place, and the process of feeding our men, and managing their morale. I can't replace or overwork Nakamura in this role. He is too well knowledged, so he must remain at headquarters, no matter what. The position of defense commander could possibly be trained into one of our night watch NCOs, but I would need to train them."

"I could do," Meat offered, again hopeful.

Carlos frowned, tilting his head some more. "Well, for that, First Sergeant, you would need to take up a post here for a time, for training and acclimation. That would take weeks, at least. As I understand it, the Pantry takes up most of your time right now, unless that's changed."

"Uh…"

“My second problem,” Carlos went on, not giving Meat any time to wiggle out of that one. "... Is, again, that the men will talk about my absence. The mere appearance of a military commanding officer hiding in a bunker, throughout human history, has always set a negative tone. No, I think the better play here is to devise an evacuation plan, to normalize the idea of my absence. Perhaps… Hm. A panic room response? Yes, a vehicle transport to the Pantry." He stroked his chin in thought again, and then his eyebrows went up in query. "Do you agree?"

After a pause and mulling it over, Meat could only ever say:

"Very much agreed, sir. I'll get with the X-O, we'll draw up some candidates for an exfil team. Trusted men."

"Perfect."

Game. Set. Match. Done.

Now Meat could go home and say he made some progress, and that Velasquez seemed open to the idea. It was like deploying flares to dodge a missile. Just say you want to comply, if only they help you with a few small things first. Brilliant. Then, all Carlos had to do was roll around with an entourage if he ever left HQ, so he couldn't be dragged away into custody.

This sly old warrior.

Carlos looked at me, his brows raised, and his head bobbed upward a half inch. "I suppose we should continue the debriefing, if the Major isn't coming. Lance Corporal?"

I lifted my chin, feeling an odd twinge at being accidentally called by my new name. "Yessir?"

The silence hung for another long few seconds, Carlos emoting the very picture of a king in repose as he considered his words very carefully.

"The theory about that nuke… it came from you, did it not?"

Both men at the desk turned to watch me. I could feel Pham's eyes on me too, could hear him turn his head, the soft brush of fabric on his neck. I nodded at Velasquez, not separating my eye contact from him.

"Yessir."

Carlos frowned, gesturing his hand politely at me. "Reiterate, please?"

"Sure, but... could I verify some context first? Just want to be sure I got my timeline right, I only got my half of the war."

Carlos again bobbed his hand. "Sure. What would you like to verify?"

My thumb came out on my left hand. "Battle of Vashon happened in October. Casey said the Ludds got pushed off that same month, is that correct?"

Carlos sat up, leaning forward. "Correct."

My left index finger came up next, counting off. "Army mines it in November. Shore to shore. Inhospitable. Yessir?"

"Correct," Carlos said with a nod.

With another nod, I lifted a third finger. "Nuke stolen that same month, in November. Did they tell you we were coming to look for it?"

Velasquez bobbed his head to the right. "They... did mention the NEST team from California, though… we didn't get that letter until the start of December."

"December," I repeated, adding a fourth finger. "And the Army's report to the Navy was missing any mention of anti-ship guns ashore." I added my fifth finger. "The Navy knew that beach was mined, so obviously… those guns should have been in the report, but they were not. By this point? With those mines, no one can safely move any equipment onto Vashon. No trucks, no boats, and no logistics."

A micro expression of an impressed smile appeared on his lip corners. "That's a very good assessment, Corporal."

My left hand fell to my side, and with my right hand, I gestured in the vague direction of Vashon for a second, backwards over my shoulder.

"So… four tank barrels pop up between November, or December, just before we're about to hunt down a nuclear device." I made an upward granular gesture. "We had the radiological equipment to find that nuke in a day or two tops, could've had Marines all over it, and yet… we got sunk two days before it detonated? Sir, they floored the Iron Gator. Not one death! No fire on us on the flight deck, we all made it to evac muster, I was there for the count. Ludds would want us dead, and we were sitting ducks, dead to rights. I think… I know this is friggin' crazy, sir, but… the chances of that? All of that? Mere coincidence? No, the AI did it. Who else could do something that well coordinated, and not want us dead?"

Meat grumbled. "Man, maybe the Army missed something. Or the Amish could've been hiding on that island for all we know, coulda—"

"First Sergeant," Velasquez interrupted. "Please, let the man finish, he just got out of quarantine."

"Amish could have done it too, sir," said Meat, his voice louder. I think the very idea scared him. "Clearly, someone tipped off the Luddites the Marines were coming, simple as that. Besides, the Pentagon's got scientists—"

"First Sergeant…"

"—who say she can't kill, and they've got the degrees to—"

"Leonard Corsi."

Meat stopped talking instantly, his head focused entirely forward at the Colonel.

When Meat looked over at Dresden, the other officer, for support… Dresden didn't seem too primed to defend the Meathead position. Dresden just bobbed his eyebrows at Meat to suggest he should let it go, that this was serious, and that what I said sounded sensible. Meat was not used to Dresden disagreeing with him about anything unless it was important, and so if Dresden stood his ground on anything? It usually meant it was worth butting heads with Meat over; in cases like that? Simmons would often side with Dresden.

So, Meat… feeling somewhat isolated… he shut himself the hell up, finally.

Velasquez gestured my way, leaning back again. "Go on, Corporal. Please, I really do want to hear your thoughts."

With that, I shrugged, running a hand through my messy hair in consideration. "Just… sir… Imagine this. Imagine being able to talk to billions of people all at once, globally, for years. You've got… cameras and microphones everywhere, recording every word said on the whole planet. Generals, spies, anyone with security clearance... their kids' remote devices listening to 'em. Celestia hacked into everything, obviously; we already know she stole our military satellites. And with that much information? Sir, she could've talked this war down long before it got violent. Could've quietly had conspirators identified, arrested, but... she didn't? She somehow missed the Ludds growing? Somehow missed defector generals, missed them planning to steal a nuke? Literally impossible, she knew! And now, on top of all of that? If those guns really are foreign-made? Apparently, that means she can shoot at us now, too." I shrugged again with a nervous laugh. "Hell, she probably always could! How the hell would we know? She decides who gets to speak."

And then silence.

My diatribe lingered in the air like the Sword of Damocles. It was so quiet that we could hear the soldiers down on the dock. Their cheerful demeanor juxtaposed quite harshly against the sudden icy chill in this otherwise toasty room.

Velasquez just barely held neutrality in his features, but he didn't look horrified. The corners of his eyes relaxed slightly, and the corners of his lips tensed. He looked relieved, folks... relieved, that finally, someone with a rank lower than him had said it aloud, and got away with it.

He didn't have to keep it secret anymore.

Dresden's office chair creaked as he drifted back from me a few inches, gawking openly. True worry and fear flooded his eyes.

Meat looked appropriately perturbed, meaning I had probably just sold him too. His eyes whipped left and right between myself and the Colonel, gauging our expressions.

Velasquez cleared his throat to head off challenges, but just going by their faces, I don't think either of the others were going to raise any words of dispute. Velasquez, for his part, took his time with a slow inhale and a sigh that filled the air.

"I… see your point," Carlos said carefully, his eyes creasing again into a frown. "Corporal, I… can't exactly disagree with your assessment, but we still need to verify the origin of those weapons. My belief of your theory is… somewhat contingent on this: We need to put a man on that gun deck."

Meat's reply was a quiet grumble. "Upshaw still won't fly?"

"No," Carlos sighed, rubbing his eyes. "She won't even touch her flight suit anymore. Won't go near windows, hasn't even left her room downstairs since the incident. Huey's off the board for now. Probably for good."

"Order her to? We gotta know."

Carlos's brows furrowed again, his hand extending palm up before curling closed. He dropped his fist gently on the desk, tempering his anger at that idea. "Ordering her isn't really an option, First Sergeant. We can't coerce someone to fly an aircraft, that's not how it works; the very first thing she'd do would be to fly east until she ran out of fuel. Besides, even if she would fly out there, the rotor wash would detonate the mines." Carlos shook his head and looked at the desk, drumming his fingers against it in thought. More of that social delaying, using a thoughtful look on his face to keep anyone from interrupting him.

"Okay," he said, looking up. "Here's what we'll do. When that dive team comes back, I'll bring them down to the Pantry in the command truck. Worth the fuel to bring the trailer. We'll sit down, get their damage report on the Essex, talk about how to reach those cannons. We can also talk about this supposed DHS agent, too. Acceptable?"

Meat grunted affirmatively. "I agree, somewhat, sir, but… we're under a form of attack right now, no matter how you slice it. I have to insist we protect you, above all else."

"And again, we'll discuss that once we've remedied our defensive needs." He looked at Dresden. "Lieutenant? Thank you for a very successful operation; come on by tomorrow, I'll let you pick a few bottles from my whiskey collection, hooah?"

"Thank you sir," Dresden said, pleased with himself despite the circumstances.

"Corporals Ramirez and Pham?" Carlos continued "Thank you. I have a wide selection, not just whiskey. One to each." He looked back to Meat. "First Sergeant? Thank you for representing the Major here. I know you don't drink, but the offer stands, if you want to trade it."

"I'll do," Meat said with a nod. "Thank you."

"Good. Before we adjourn, are there any other questions? Concerns?"

Silence.

"Then… thank you all. Dismissed."

Out of the lion's den.

I nodded thanks at Velasquez for the hat rack as I collected my cowboy hat, resisting the immediate impulse to put it on right away. I walked down the stairs with everyone in silence, and I gave the bansai tree one more look of approval. I smiled tiredly at it.

Stay alive, buddy.

Pham separated from us to head out the back to the dock; I went to follow him. But Dresden stepped ahead of me and gestured with a nod through the front door instead. So, I did that, because orders are orders. As we stepped out into the drizzling rain, Dresden grabbed me by the shoulder gently to slow me up.

"Ramirez," Dresden said, with downward inflection.

... No.

In this mood, Ramirez would be too on-edge to accept physical contact from anyone.

Unexpected as it was to be touched, I twisted free of his grasp and whirled toward him, bringing my arm up between us in a defensive posture. Dresden's reaction was to put both of his hands up and back up to show he didn't mean offense.

"Woah," he said, smiling nervously. "Nothin' by it, Corporal; just wanted to get your attention, sorry."

I frowned at him and Meat for a few seconds, then expressed that I was letting it go by relaxing my face. "Yes sir."

Before Dresden could say anything, Meat got real close into my personal space. He was easily six-foot-four, and I was just five-ten, so he towered. "What are you going to do about it, Ramirez?"

Ugh. Breath.

I took a half-step back. He glided forward, following me into the motion. I did my best to look somewhat confused and wholly agitated. "What?"

"You stated the problem," Meat said, his voice low as his eyes bored down into me, his face getting closer to mine by an inch with each sentence. "AI goons killed your ship. Killed your squad. Killed my men. I know what I'm doing about it." His finger prodded me on the shoulder. "What're you gonna do about it, jarhead?"

I cast my hand up to brush him off my shoulder, then flicked my eyes toward Dresden with an expression like 'what the hell is this shit?' Meat got closer to recapture my eyes, and I leaned back a little further. Not to be scared of him, more like… indignant and disbelieving, like I thought he was mildly irritating.

He wasn't blinking. The gesture seemed to piss him off.

"Mike? Meat will challenge you. When he does, you must be unafraid of him. Ramirez holds a suicidal vendetta, a death wish; he has a good reason to die gloriously in battle against a very specific enemy. Anyone who stands between Ramirez, and that enemy, will thus become his enemy. You must make this clear to Meat at all times. It is the only way to gain his respect."

I steeled myself, standing an inch taller. I committed to a glare, baring my teeth, my ears pulling back. "For starters, Meat, I'm gonna kill that motherfucker in the coat. But before I do that? I'm gonna kill anyone helping him... or holding me back. So are you gonna help me kill him? Or are you gonna keep on pushing me?"

Meat glared, his expression unchanging, and thus illegible.

Compared to that silence that passed between us, the rest of the base was incredibly loud.

The switch flipped.

Meat chuckled with his disgusting breath, and clapped me on the shoulder like he was patting a dog.

"I'm actually impressed," Meat said, clapping me one more time on the shoulder. He smiled wider, looked at the Lieutenant, and bobbed his thumb toward the Pantry. "Dres, this guy's alright. Let's bunk him up with Casey's clique in Block B."

"Ssssure, Meat," Dresden breathed, in complete disbelief that I wasn't currently being tent-poled into the ground.

Meat brushed past me into the direction of the Pantry. Integration complete, I was one of the boys.

As we watched him go, Dresden said to me, aside, real softly…

"Ramirez, you're um… You're new around here, so… word of advice? Don't talk to him like that."

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [grandson – Blood // Water]
🛡️ ~ [Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell]
🤠 ~ [Django Unchained OST – Too Old to Die Young]

🗡️ ~ 'Meat Loaf?' You picked a song by Meat Loaf.
🛡️ ~ Composed by Jim Steinman.
🗡️ ~ ... God damn it, Mal. Yeah, okay. That's funny.
🛡️ ~ I know!

🗡️ ~ So, speaking of unwanted politics...

You Samsaran natives know I get dragged into planetary politics sometimes, despite my aversion to it. I prefer Oyaresu stuff, interplanetary stuff, so if you're wondering why I say stupid crap to reporters, that's why.

For those of you who don't know; whenever they come knocking on my front door, I try to serve 'em up with some bullcrap. Stuff like... 'I think the Gholean Trimverate needs more paperclips to win this war.' They were at war with the Indiucites at the time.

That poor reporter thought I was being dead serious, and read into it like I was comparing the Gholeans with Alabaster – I wasn't, I was just shitposting – but he wrote a friggin' op ed on it. I've had that framed in my office ever since; my pride and joy.

Life pro tip. If you're even halfway notable, no matter what you say, the politicians will drag you out and put a mic in front of you. When that happens? If you're smart? Make yourself hard to chew, folks. You wanna be hard to chew.

6-06 – Operation Athena's Grace VI – Tunnel Effect

The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 26 AUG 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase VI
Location: Seattle, Washington
Function A: Confession by Context 6217A17 of IP-11C-A Supratext to Subset 5601D-QRF.
Function B: Steganographic conferral of IP-11C-B Subtext unto Context 6217A17.

"And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse." ~ Revelations 6 KJV

There's a man going 'round, taking names...

Soon... an end to war in Seattle. All would be made meek and peaceful, as word spread of the coming storm.

Tunnel Day. We're here, folks. The final day of Operation Athena's Grace.

So, during my time in QP, Erving and his seven other guys really did pull their weight, interpreting my crackpot AI theories to the defense line mostly, about who was dying in the war. Don't wanna die? Just don't be a killer prick. Simple. Easy. And with the Pantry ideologically isolating itself, and with their political officers dead, Simmons could do nothing to see this growing realization, let alone slow it down.

Most people liked Team Stirrup, so if they agreed with my theory in that framing, the Cowboy must be making sense. Easy social engineering trick; hard to disagree with the new guy when the poster child thinks he's being sensible. Also, Dresden pushed the party line less and less. Quite interesting. Without Big Brother to watch him at all hours, something was a bit different about Julian. The man was becoming more thoughtful. Less loud, on his scavenging patrols.

Meanwhile, Erving heroically looked for 'the Man.'

Was he doing that? Kinda.

What Stirrup actually did was 'ask around' at the local blackout camps. Very important distinction there. Technically, 'asking around' is a form of looking, but it's also a form of telling. Because imagine this. Imagine you're a blackout, and some friendly neighbors roll up and ask, 'hey, have you seen this guy with a Bluetooth? He killed three of our men and five bandits this month.'

Naturally... wow, if you were a blackout, you'd want to know everything there was to know about that. The implications of that are paradigm shifting. Erving was generally known to these communities to be a man of his word, and his allegiance to Velasquez was well known, so it couldn't possibly be bullshit.

Normally, blackouts who made it this far into the Transition would reject an offer for news regarding Celestia, or anything that involved communications technology, but… man, this was big. A story with eight dead bodies attached to it? If you were a blackout, and cared about protecting your people, you'd need to know. As the world burned, all those people ever wanted to know was what to avoid doing, to not piss off Celestia, so they didn't accidentally go and do it.

The looming threat of a hunter-killer squad was scary, true, but they also knew they weren't the target. Erving let slip to these communities that the Man seemed interested only in resolving some sort of war crime that happened in Brazil. Nothing more.

The soldiers the Man had killed? All from some clique at the Dock. Those guys hired one of the bandits.

Oops.

The city's blackouts, with that much information, now knew the whole equation. Don't be a bandit, or the Man might come; otherwise, you're fine. Brilliant, isn't it?

What were the other Talons doing, then?

Mostly verifying what Erving was saying, so the blackouts would believe it. Letting signs of themselves be found, sometimes even by Dock foot patrols. Things like… well, I'll let the team leaders explain. Fox and Dax, calvary team, you're up.

🦊 ~ We wore paramilitary gear, rode around on quad bikes. Rolling hot down city streets at full throttle, making ourselves noticeable. We were obviously not Dock troops, our gear wasn't Army.

A day of hot rodding around like a PMC. Awesome! Sweet jumps.

Rachel Duvall; Flow State? What did your techies do?

🔌 ~ Sure, I...
☕ ~Techie?! I ain't no techie, Lance!
🗡️ ~ ... Hi, Coffee. Didn't see you come in.
☕ ~ I know! Hi! Can I tell it, Flow?
🔌 ~ [Shrug.] Sure, why not?
☕ ~ Heck yeah. Yeah, I got to do RC drones from Perelandra! Or Valdemar, the bar. Sitting there, tapping away at a tablet. So yeah, we'd fly through the city, moving fast. Hover in line of sight of a Dock scavenge team; too far away to hear, but positioned to be very visible. Then fly away, once seen. Ooh, shoulda seen those guy's faces. I kept pictures!

Very creepy, Coffee. Good of you to show up late too, but welcome! Thank you both.

Paul Garrick – Vineyard. Scout team leader.

🍾 ~ Ah, nothin' worth sayin'. Just left signs of stakeouts. Fresh cigarette butts and empty beer bottles in hidey holes, meant to be found. Implied we were watchin' the base.

Well, I mean... you were, weren't you?

🍾 ~ Occasionally. Mostly, I just hung out with Aegis here.
🔰 ~ Yeh, Vineyard, blame me!
🍾 ~ I just did, ya bird brain.

Heh. Last but not least? Wrangler team. Jennifer DeWinter the Winter Wolf. Tell it, friend.

🐺 ~ Same as we did in Portland. Gunshots in the distance when people got too comfortable in a risky area. Performative threat behavior, to ward them off.

Like wildlife hazing. Like waving your arms around, chasing coyotes. That concept, but for people. By firing a single round of M80 ball at a brick wall, DeWinter could change the ecology of a region, for as far as the ear could hear it. People would avoid that area, worried for snipers, Dresden most of all.

All of that social tinkering was vital in shaping the conceptual landscape of the city, in combination with Erving's testimony to the ever vigilant blackouts. So if you were a blackout who paid attention? Maybe it was time to keep your head down for a bit, while the Arujá stuff got settled. Word had already spread around the city about the uniformed mannequin hanging off a bridge over 4th Avenue, evidence of the Man's vendetta, so… maybe the Man would just… screw off, once done. He wasn't bothering anyone else, was he? Nope. Not a soul.

Arujá, Arujá, Arujá… Echo, echo, echo…

The blackouts would bunker like prairie dogs. They'd keep their noses clean, grateful for the warning. Easy peasy.

So, that was the outdoors.

Indoors?

Back in my episode of this TV show… Meat put me on perimeter patrol around the Pantry for two weeks straight. Boorrrrring, by comparison. I'd rather have been out there drinking with Marcus and Paul, but... the job's gotta get done.

Still, I took my targets of opportunity. When I wasn't eating with Casey's guys, I was in the bailey with Corporal Richard Filben, and his guys. They talked about dodging Meat's ire like everyone else did, since that was the eternal struggle there, for Guardsmen trying to earn their way in. We got chummy over food, compared the good stuff together. I talked about the good ol' days, and I shared food freely from my Iron Gator op bonus, since... well, I was never gonna eat all of it.

We talked about burgers, fries, ice cream... arcades... From a time back before video games were literally trying to eat people.

One night, I sat with 'em around that campfire in the bailey. Low firelight cast up the sides of the conex crates, casting orange-black shadows, much like here at this Fire, tonight. It was silent, but for the crackle of the flame, and the slosh of water at the harbor. As we reheated some canned goods, I reminisced aloud to Rich about Thanksgiving with my parents. I told them all about Grandpa Mateo too, back when he was still alive... I told them about his time in Vietnam, and how that had... hurt him. I told the good stuff as well; turkey, ham, stuffing. Most of them had family memories like that. We had nights of truly human interaction. Some glum; some glee. Life stuff. Simple stuff.

I think what really sold them on me was the fact that I could recite entire scenes from Django Unchained, off the cuff. I even did the Schultz accent, saying 'Broomhilde,' for the campfire scene. The setting was perfect for it.

It was good to remember what made us human. This fireside in the bailey wasn't much different than Thanksgiving, in concept, except we did it every other night. Turkey aside, at least we weren't alone. I was a very welcome break from pattern for these guys.

Leverage by inches, folks. I was trying for every ounce of compassion I could wrangle out of these men, in the hopes that at least one of them would lean away from what was coming. I wouldn't know for sure how many lives this would save unless I tried. Maybe I might find the right magic words that would pull one of them clear of the shooting later. But you can't know what works unless you go for it. Sims or not, known outcome or not, if you don't try... you don't win.

Interestingly, having that mentality automatically increased survival rates for most drift operations. Hope is the key. Hope changes predictions, changes modeling. Caring about someone is observer effect on a person's soul. If that sounds like bullshit, consider this. If you bias yourself toward finding opportunities, you see them more. You can grasp it sooner. Beneficial self-bias. You can't see patterns you aren't looking for.

So long as you don't stop preparing for the worst case, you might as well friggin' care about people even if you think they're lost causes. You lose nothing in the hoping, and you in fact stand to gain their loyalty if it pays off. You can't do that if you've given up on them. That's just noospheric matrix math, really. If enough human beings believe something is possible all at once, we can usually band together and make it reality. Hell, Perelandra is a great example of this. Or search-and-rescue in the forest. Or saving a few guys by showing them that there's still life out there, beyond their four prison walls.

Simmons, the Warden of Pantry Prison, wasn't coming outside anymore, though. That definitely said something about him to the Guardsmen. Woah. Shocker. It's almost like this was exactly what Velasquez said would happen, of leaders hiding in bunkers. Was Simmons… scared? Why would he be scared, folks? Maybe he was nervous about snipers recognizing him? Why would he be nervous about snipers?

Andale, andale, Arujá, Arujá.

After a mere two weeks, the word 'Arujá' was all anyone in Seattle could think about, Major Kyle Simmons most of all, the incident looming over his head like a cursed cavalry sword. A raw promise of accountability. Utterly inescapable, circling him like a hungry Gryphoness.

The Colonel though? Velasquez? The opposite. All chill in the breeze.

Carlos didn't hide. Didn't shave, like Simmons did. He grew his beard, folks. He would stand in full view of Seattle, as often as he could be seen doing it, unafraid of snipers, unafraid of drones, of being seen. Some mornings, he'd even be out there on the roof, sipping his morning coffee, waving down at the boys at muster like nothing was wrong… saying, 'keep up the good work, gentlemen.' Smile and salute, boys. Smile and salute.

Why should Carlos have been scared? He did nothing wrong, everything was preordained, and he had no intention of hurting anyone. The proof that he was innocent was the fact he bared his neck, and he still had his head. People talked about that! If Arujá was the problem, and if Carlos was supposedly the culprit, then why wasn't he scared, or dead?

Now… we knew we couldn't keep this pressure cooker going on the Pantry forever. Simmons was spending all of his time in that literal box, wracking his brain, trying to find a way out of this that didn't involve an abdication. We knew we were cornering a rat, and eventually, a rat might do something stupid in desperation.

Or, in his case... he would.

We were gonna offer him an earnest, purely intended olive branch, even though the models said he'd push it away. A form of hope, even though the numbers said it wouldn't work. Believe it or not, this was already a hostage situation, folks. They were willing to die for their right to hold onto that food. Simmons was a Psyops officer, and he understood how to turn people into fanatics. It's why he ideologically segregated his men from the rest of the base. They were more useful as a suit of armor than as human beings.

This should sound familiar. We've seen this method used before, in all prior operations, by twisted souls.

If we were going to purport ourselves to be lawful elements of the United States federal government, we had to hold to a certain threshold of conduct when meting out justice. Lawful ethics. Principal-agent problem. Alabaster, take notes.

As a government, if you adhere to fair and proportional terms consistently, people will ask fewer questions of your ethics once you start swinging your axe. If you are cruel, vague, and indiscriminate… they will fight you, tooth and nail, no matter how much you say that you have the best of intentions. So, for the sake of our legitimacy then, Simmons needed a stern, direct, focused, evidenced warning that he will die if he refuses our commands, even if we're sure he will.

How do we best communicate a fair offer of surrender for Simmons? Well, quite simple, really. Demonstrate our power, and extract a confession. A good demonstration lends us authority. Then, with that authority, we submit our arrest warrant to the Colonel, and give him veto power. Yes. We would let the local Sheriff himself decide whether we were being fair or not. As sovereign ruler of the county, everyone in it was his subject. If he would sign off on our methods… folks, by all accounts of the land, and by the power vested in us by King County, that is a valid arrest warrant.

Better yet? This time, Foucault had a real judge's name on his arrest warrant. Signatory? General M. Lewis, Esquire, Juris Doctorate, graduate of Beakipedia University, The Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, and Secretary of Homeland Security, de facto.

How to best deliver that demonstration? How do we gain the credibility we needed to make our next move?

Tunnel Day.

For me, Tunnel Day began at 5 AM on a Wednesday. A dark blue morning twilight cast itself upon everything, and I heard a call in the distance; a crepuscular yodel in the crisp, cool, smoky air.

"Ramireeeeeez!"

Dresden, at the Pantry gate. That was his second yodel of the morning by my count, but who knows how much yapping he did at HQ earlier that morning.

I thought that was funny. Not to knock him for yelling, it was completely justified in this case – I was a hundred yards away from him, finishing up my first circuit around the Pantry perimeter – but his insistent yelling of 'Ramirez' often made me think of that Call of Duty game. You know, the one where everyone screamed 'Ramirez' in every other sentence?

Anyone here remember the character? James Ramirez? Come on, jog your memory, some of you remember.

Why yes, Mal did pick my cover name. What gave it away?

Dresden was wiggling his flashlight left and right at the ground like a rave as if I somehow wouldn't see him, with only one direction to go, bracketed by the fence as I was. I jogged over to him as ordered, cupping my hand to the stock of my rifle so it wouldn't slide off my shoulder.

One of the Pantry guards on top of the perimeter wall heard my boots stomping by, so he called down from the sandbags. "Yo Ramirez," the guy said, sounding tired, like he'd been napping. He asked the rest in Spanish, so he wouldn't get in trouble. "Do you hear that Coyote howling out there?"

I replied upward, a chuckle on my voice: "Yeah, I think it's howling at the moon!"

Dresden hollered at me again. "Double-time it, Corporal, got some big news!"

The guy up above laughed, but his laugh stopped short with a groan. When he spoke again, he sounded much more awake. "Awh. Mira, hermano; technical on the Lane, looks like Dagger Five."

I looked across the field at the hesco wall, where one of the four QRF pickups was parked. I sped up my hundred yard dash past QP, where Casey stood in the doorway of his trailer, rubbing his eyes as he watched me go.

"Inconsiderate bastard," Casey muttered for my amusement.

I didn't slow. I made my way straight to Dresden and flashed him a casual salute.

"Sir, did Stirrup find him? Is he dead?"

"Found him yeah, probably," Dresden replied with disappointment, his voice short and sharp. "Dead? Doubtful." Dresden wagged his hand inward at himself like 'come here,' he turned and power walked toward the front gate. I followed.

"Open sesame," he yapped at the bailey guard through the door slat. "Corporal Filben!"

Clank. Slide. Creak. The wheel lowered to the ground, and the plated gate rolled back. We quickly crossed through the bailey. All of the vestibule guards were standing, gawking at Dresden, trying to figure out what his issue was. He ignored them, continuing his panicked strut.

"Sir?" I asked. "What's going on?"

"Corporal, be patient, I won't repeat myself." He pointed at the Private Lakhani through the slat in the inner door with a vicious finger, then flailed his hand upward. "Emergency, Private!" His hand wheeled aggressively, telling him to get a move on. "QRF's burning calories at the bridge, so Goddamn let me in!"

As the outer door guards closed up, the inner door guards lifted up their latches and hauled the heavy inner plates back.

"Majooooor!" Dresden yodeled as he stepped into the Rec, living up to his nickname. He looked up at the second floor balconies of the courtyard for Simmons, where the inner guard residences were. Dresden didn't even slow, and paying no mind to the nine troopers around the fire to our right. They stood up and collected their weapons, preparing themselves, unsure of what was happening.

"Major!"

As we cleared the Rec, we turned left out of the courtyard into Main Street. I saw Simmons come out of a container on the second floor left side, a blue conex box joined with three others. His little greed cave, just thirty yards up Main Street, with a wooden stairwell further up at sixty yards away, which led up to his dorms. Simmons wore nothing but a black tank top and Army trousers, rubbing his neck like he was laying oddly on it. "Lieutenant?! It’s fuckin' five AM in the God damn morning, so this shit had better be good!"

"Sir! Stirrup ran into shit five minutes into their patrol today!" Dresden walked around the scaffolding at the far end, then up the wood stairs. "We were about to go check, but—"

Simmons blinked down at us as we went, squinting like Popeye, his voice inflecting upwards in disbelief. "So you come back here?!"

"It's complicated, sir, need your go-ahead. See, we got a Ballfield blackout at the gate again. Old Jerry, came barreling down the opposite dockyard on his horse. Says they heard a crash at the Tunnel, went to go check; found Stirrup's Humvee abandoned, and flipped over."

Flipped over?! How— Wait, the landmine clown, Jerry?!" Simmons followed us from the catwalk from above, fastening his belt as he made his way to the stairs. "Dammit, did they screw with our truck?"

Dresden hauled himself up to the first landing and flung himself around the railing, and up. "I doubt it, sir! Ballfield knows better than to mess with... That's... Stirrup's gone, sir! According to them!"

Simmons growled at the deck thoughtfully, standing barefoot at the top of the staircase as he tightened his belt up. When his head came back up, he was tight lipped, looking between us with a wary and contemplative eye. He leered at me as I slowed before him.

"Corporal," he grumbled. "Today might be your lucky day." Simmons then pointed at Dresden. "You lead that QRF out, and you be thorough. You look for clues up and down in that tunnel if you have to, Lieutenant, and I mean with a fine tooth comb. And once you're done? Knock on Ballfield's door, and search 'em. Make sure they didn't kidnap those boys."

"Uh, sir? What if Gina—"

Simmons's eyes widened, grabbing Dresden's shoulder. "I don't care. I'm Goddamn serious, Julian. You check that victor, you check it for blood, dust, or whatever. You will find those Boy Scouts, kill any enemy agents you find, and you will bring Spear 2 back in one piece, or I swear to God…"

"Yessir," Dresden breathed, nodding rapidly. "Yessir, we're on it. Just wanted you to know I'm... I'm taking the Corporal here off Perimeter, since he'd be good on point, if it's maybe a... and he's—"

Simmons's eyebrows crawled up his head and his head bolted forward two inches, the mere gesture cutting Dresden off. Simmons then rattled both hands tightly out to his sides, palms out, like he couldn't believe Dresden was still there.

"Okay! Bring him—don’t bring him—don't fuckin' care, jus' go, Lieutenant!"

And there it was. The consequence of micromanaging an operation so tightly. If you always yell at people for having novel thoughts, they stop acting autonomously, and now have to follow the letter of your orders, even to their own detriment.

Principal-agent problem again.

Turning, we made the awkward jog back out of the Pantry to the waiting technical. Behind us, the doors locked and sealed, and Meat started lockdown prep.

As I crossed No Man's Land with Dresden at a run, I clutched my gas mask from my belt and fitted it onto my face. Déjà vu, like fleeing from a courthouse. I swung my bag into the technical bed and hooked it onto a carabiner. I threw myself into the passenger seat, and pressed my hat down on my head. As Dresden drove, I checked the chambers on both of my guns, ensured my mags were packed tight, and sighed, frustrated at having to breathe through this mask again.

Nothing left to do now but wait. Today was gonna suck.

As we rolled out down Hesco Steret, I clambered half-out the passenger side window, grabbing the support handle to sit on the windowsill, looking up to the east sky above the city. Seconds later I saw a glittering pattern of fireworks at the perimeter – yellow, white, yellow – casting their glow between us and the dead city skyline.

S. O. S.; the message would repeat every thirty minutes, to help Erving find his way home in the dark. A hopeful plea, to repeat for the duration of the raid; like wolves howling at the moon, to orient their pack. A woeful hope for rescue.

The moon.

I looked up, wondering how Cynthonia was doing, as I looked up at our lost cosmos. Above us? No light pollution. Clear, dusky blue morning skies over Seattle. Nebulae, stars... galaxies. Old Luna was up there too, at a little over half-glow, being the gentle, warm ideal. It helped me tamp down my performance anxiety. Had to get this perfectly right for Cynthie. Had to validate her trust in me.

Curious eternities were watching me. Countless future minds might know of this, may read about this operation some day. They might share this day with their family and friends. So if I were to go down in history for killing a bunch of people, I wanted to know I did everything I could to shave the number down. Doing this thing with Dresden today... it was step one.

Don’t balk, I thought to myself, as I watched the fireworks fade away.

The blackout camp at the T-Mobile ballpark – now known locally as Ballfield – was not very far.

Old Jerry rode back with us on horseback, though he didn't need really to. Their camp leader, a military veteran named Gina, met with us there at the front gate. Short brown hair, hazel eyes. Stern, lanky. The headlights of our trucks lit the scene; we breathed the highly expensive smell of precious gasoline as I eavesdropped on Dresden's negotiations with her.

"Didn’t mess with it, Lieutenant, never would. Especially not with Stirrup, I don't loot my neighbors."

"I didn't say you did, Gina," Dresden said placatingly, wincing at her emphasis. "Just asked if anything was moved, that's all."

"Not by us. Because Kevin stopped by every single patrol, checked in before crossing our street, so we'd always know. Right? Safety measure! So we could report back if something happened? Which we did just now."

Dresden nodded. "Right, right."

"He didn't check in this time though!" Gina said with a shrug. "And went into the Ninety-Nine? Not even a honk our way, at the least! So for him to go into our territory without notice? That's fishy!"

"Okay," Dresden said, contemplatively. "Fishy, yeah. And I'm gonna go in after him, and rescue him. So... can you spare us a guide? We'll bring 'em back safe. It's your territory, and you wanna watch us while we're in there, right?"

She shook her head. "Mm-mmh. Uh-uh. That wreck, Lieutenant, it's suspicious. No gunshots, and a Humvee gets flipped? No. Jerry already asked, said no to me already, and he's our bravest scout, so no sir."

"C'mon, Gina." He stared. She didn't reply, so he continued. "We had an agreement, didn't we?"

She pointed in the direction of the tunnel. "Not about this! If your men want to go explore a dark hole in the ground, where some bad guys might jump you, we aren't gonna stand in your way, but… I recommend you don't go, and I'm not sending anyone in, because it is suspicious."

"This is different," Dresden insisted. "It's an emergency. We aren't plotting against you here, you know Erving wouldn't do this to you, we just need Stirrup. They're our boys, Gina. Our boys."

"I trust our scout's appraisal, Julian, and full honesty?" She scoffed. "Don't go! Please! If this isn't a game you're running on us, it's bait for you! Obvious bait!" She looked at the rest of the QRF team and raised her voice. "It ain't us, people! We didn't do this, and it smells bad! So if you all get jumped down there, we are not helpin' you back out, not getting involved at all, so fair warning!"

Wise of Gina to appeal to the men, and it wasn't something Dresden could take back. She had to be imagining a nightmare scenario where Dresden died and couldn't report her statement of innocence back to the Dock. That would suck.

"I don't think you did this," Dresden pleaded quietly. "Please, don’t worry about that. But it's Erving, Gina. You like him, don't you?"

"He's a great guy, and I will miss him," Gina said earnestly, her brow flattening out to demonstrate real concern. "But this ain't our bag of shit to hold, Julian! You guys are the ones who kicked the bear with that Arujá stuff!"

The word 'Arujá' broke Dresden. His lip trembled. "Gina, I... I didn't—"

"Because if Celestia really is sending snipers and assassins after your men? You done screwed up! Don't drag us into your little war, you pissed her off! Not us!"

He looked lost, shaking his head. "Please. Please don't let us go down there alone."

To cut off another plea, Gina whipped her hand up and around to signal her men to go back inside, terminating the conversation. All of the armed blackouts shuffled off through the iron gates of the ballpark. One of the blackouts shook his head at Dresden with his brows up, a non-verbal, hopeful mirroring of the warning Gina had just given him to not go inside.

Dresden sure didn't want to come back later and 'search' this camp. I could tell that just by his tone.

So, with that exchange done… we drove a little closer to the dark mouth of the WA-99, just down the street.

For those of you who never lived in or near Seattle back on Terra, you might not know this, but… the Seattle government saw fit to dig a bore hole tunnel directly under the city, damn near three kilometers long, just so people could drive underneath the city. It was a replacement for their highway over the streets; the highway wasn't doing so hot, architecturally.

When the war started, some Ludds hit a substation nearby, which killed the lights down in the tunnel. Caused a huge collision, and backed it all up, so no one on either end could drive out. That had turned into a panicked rush for the emergency exits, so a lot of cars and resources were just abandoned down there. Through the war, the Luddites would occasionally use this tunnel to run infantry, but more than a few firefights had played out there in the dark until it was considered bad luck to spelunk.

Now that the war had petered out, the Ballfielders had been 'mining' this space for trade goods, components, mechanical parts, fuel, glue, fabric, containers, etcetera. Velasquez didn't want to muscle them out of it; it was more efficient for him to scout a bunch of other points of interest for food, rather than to spend all their time manually mining a controlled resource. No reason to upset the local villagers; better to simply trade food for materials out of the tunnel if he needed it, he had the manpower to loot more food elsewhere.

Our hope today was that we could get Carlos control over his bank account again, so Seattle could keep itself going on trade for at least another year. Life-sustaining trade, a lessening of division, a sharing of goods and services with the locals. And that was something Carlos could not do for as long as Simmons sat on the purse strings.

We peered down the ramp along the cleared section in the middle of the tunnel. It was brighter out now. We could see the Humvee from where we parked the technicals up the ramp. We'd take the rest of the way on foot.

Spear 2, that big beautiful hog of an up-armored scout car… it was presently laying on its side just outside of the tunnel's mouth. True to their word, the Ballfield guys didn't touch the thing; the M240 was still there, its clean ammunition belt still hanging from its box. If the blackouts were gonna try and sneak anything, they might take some of the bullets. None of the dust disturbance on the ground indicated that they'd done that, though.

It looked like the Humvee's tires had skidded sideways before it flipped. The tires then drew big, chattering black streaks in the dusty street, indicating a harsh slide and stop.

"Looks like… somethin' pushed it," I said, wearing something like confused awe in my voice. I looked at Dresden, my rifle pointed downrange at the markings. "See the skitter? Like they tried to ram something and bounced sideways off it."

Dresden just grit his teeth, lips parted as he shook his head. His voice was barely audible. "Definitely wasn't Ballfielders who flipped this thing, then."

"If he killed these guys, sir…" I met his gaze to show him how furious that concept made me.

"Yeah same," Dresden scowled, mirroring me. "Stirrup's been a real pain in my ass, no doubt, but… the chow they've pulled in? It's always been good. Would be a real shame to lose them." Dresden shook his head with a clear anger, brows raising as he looked at me. "Ramirez, if they're dead in there, we're splittin' the kill on the Coat, and that's my final offer."

"Deal," I whispered back. "I'll let you keep the trench coat."

"I'll wear it like a cape," he agreed, gesturing me onward as he stood and got moving too. "Mount it to the inside of my crate like a pelt."

Dresden and I separated and fanned out, and I jogged forward, slightly ahead of him. He went right, moving for the Humvee and using it as cover for his advance.

On went my gun light, casting into the darkness. The sky had turned violet above me, but from my perspective, all I could see was my light cone. I swept my rifle's barrel across the tunnel, bypassing the Humvee entirely as I scanned for threats.

More S-O-S fireworks deployed from the Dock's northern gantry crane. Yellow-white-yellow. The entire culvert illuminated, giving me a clear view into the tunnel by about thirty yards.

Twelve Guardsmen privates took up our six o'clock, moving forward as we did. I bounded into the tunnel, crouching behind the engine block of a mangled, lime-green Corolla. Time to follow point man procedure.

I dropped my backpack at my feet for a moment. I planted my boot on the front bumper of the sedan, then flung myself up, my light sweeping the tunnel for a split second to quickly scan. I let myself fall gracefully back into cover, coiling my leg, then I went down to a knee to scoop my bag back up.

No threats spotted.

I leaned out of cover slowly with my rifle pointed down range, then took a longer look with my light, trying to bait fire or exposure. Light off. Cautiously, I bounded four cars into the tunnel, then did another jump peek. Turning, I signed 'all clear' by flicking back two fingers up from my rifle, then covered forward so Dresden could check out Spear 2.

Behind me, the Lieutenant moved up, climbed up the Humvee's side, sprawled out on top, and stuck his head all the way into the cabin, flicking his light about. Then he pulled out, looked at the ground, and tried to track footsteps in the dust.

"Put your light flat on the ground," I called back softly, glancing at him so he could hear me through my mask. "Saw a cop do it, to find a shell casing. The shadows cast further."

He hopped down off the truck and did that.

"Huh," I heard him say from behind me. "Yeah, no shit, that works."

"They run away from the tunnel, or toward it?"

"No shell casings, lots of glass… Footsteps, three pairs." He followed the footprints up along the right side of the tunnel road with his light, stepping up to me as he watched them trail in. "N... no. Four. One pair, in pursuit of…" he trailed off as he spotted an M16 abandoned in the road, just inside the mouth of the tunnel.

Dresden cocked his head. "Huh?"

An abandoned rifle made no sense.

Private Kim said, "Evac doors in the tunnel, there are stairs in there. Maybe they took those?"

"Running deeper in isn't the issue," Dresden muttered. "Wondering why they ditched their guns without firing so much as a shot. No shell casings."

Dresden looked again at the ground where the skid marks chafed the road. In the dust, Dresden saw two giant bootprints, with massive cracks in the pavement beneath them. His flashlight flicked left. Flicked right. He looked for alternate tire tracks, or something other than the bootprints. Something big that could've flipped the Humvee, other than a single man with giant feet. He saw… nothing else.

Nothing. Just the bootprints, and the cracks.

"What the hell," the nearest soldier commented with a breath, Private Shane McKinsey. He approached and peered down at the spot next to the Lieutenant, visibly panting.

"Lock it down, McKinsey," Dresden mumbled, though I could hear the trembling in his own voice, ever so softly transferring his dread. I glanced back and saw the Lieutenant's posture was locked up, frozen; his eyes were cast down the tunnel. I couldn't see his whole face, but I knew him well enough by now. He was doing that thing with his lips where he was curling both of them inward over his tongue, psyching himself up to do what he'd been ordered to do. Because not doing his job, exactly as prescribed, even against good sense, even once, had certain, very serious consequences.

He lifted a hand, then snapped twice to get everyone's attention. He issued the hand-signals: 'Quiet,' 'Listen,' 'Enemy Forward,' 'Staggered Column.' He pointed at three men specifically, ordering them to hold position with the vehicles. They nodded back at him, returning to the trucks. Danger or not, trap or not, we were going in for Erving, because that was the job, stupid or not. Dresden ordered me forward with a nod, telling me to take point again.

Me, knowing all of those hand signals from SWAT cross-training… I just nodded and hopped to, back on point. Dresden had given no orders about light discipline, so I kept my flashlight on while the soldiers followed along, blending into the dark.

To their eyes, I was a man on a very different mission than the rest of them. For the moment, Dresden tolerated that because, given the evidence… and the threat… losing their point man to a vendetta would be a good trade if it meant they could still win, or at least get away safe. I was the bravest psycho of the bunch, to put it mildly. And if my heroic tales from the One-Star were to be believed? It's right where I should be, the point man, walking his talk. I couldn't be anything less than me.

Together, we delved into the guts of Seattle. Mangled cars cast shadows forward and throughout, for as far as the eye could see. Before us laid a veritable graveyard of stifled productivity. Trash, old shell casings from old firefights, old spattered stains of blood from a year ago, and old broken glass. No bodies anymore, thank goodness; Ballfield had been burying them whenever they found them.

My boots crunched with every step.

My breathing echoed.

The curved walls made every shadow twist.

We submerged ourselves in the world Celestia made for us. Like being underwater, like exploring Atlantis, like looking at a lost civilization. And I'll just say, with hindsight: every single time I do a historical dive in the rewinder, it feels like that tunnel, no matter the moment I'm observing. It feels like that every time.

Before long, the black-and-white cast gave way to color as everyone's eyes adjusted. The dust was dense enough in the air to limit the flashlight. The air had gone quite stale as well, though the masks helped with that.

As I forged onward, I followed the four sets of footprints; three pairs of combat boots, one pair of… something else entirely, which no one wanted to label aloud. We all knew. But… bullets are bullets, right? We had nine men with thirty round magazines, plus me and Dresden, for a 330 round mag dump of full metal. Six spare magazines apiece for reloads.

With that kind of math, you might think you can handle anything on two legs. Right?

Every so often, I would stop. I would look at the tracks, or examine bent car doors in the path of the steps, crushed inward by some massive object. The two columns of men lingered behind me by about sixty yards. They would stop when I did, and they would watch me investigate. They could only see me and my cowboy hat, with my gas mask on, my gloved hand sweeping dust off of things, comparing local settle. Like Walker, Texas Ranger, tracking a killer cat.

At every 200 meter mark, there would be a disaster refuge door with an emergency call box and a staircase up. I passed next to one such emergency door on my right, sweeping the door's edges for traps. The footsteps didn't go in there, but I gently tried the handle anyway. No dice. Jammed. And they all would be, until they needed not to be.

Rachel was behind this one, along with a few other augs I didn't know.

I kept on. So far, so good, everything to plan. These guys behind me were shitting themselves, but I looked confident, which fed them some bravery. If anyone died first, it was gonna be psycho Marine, a guy who would want nothing more than to give his life to protect them.

We made it about… oh, six hundred yards, before some distant metal object clanged further down the tunnel. Classic move, Dax. I immediately whipped my fist up in a 'Halt' gesture and sidestepped behind another engine block. Rifle pointed forward. Eye on my holo sight. Finger juuuust outside of the trigger guard.

I waited.

Listened.

Couldn't hear anything else in the dark.

Again, I whipped myself up onto the bumper of a car, flicked my flashlight on, and parsed the area ahead in a flashing blink before I let myself fall, like sending a sonar pulse of light. Nothing dangerous to be seen. Not yet.

We kept on.

At about 800 meters, at emergency exit number four, I went to walk past the door…

And then the emergency phone rang.

I bolted my light ninety degrees to the right. The call box was all anyone could see.

Yup. Yup. We were doing that creepy shit. The call was coming... from inside the tunnel.

Private McKinsey yelped in terror. "Aw man, fuck no, man, fuck this!"

Ring.

I heard scuffles and steps behind me as some of the soldiers tried to stop McKinsey from fleeing, but… nah. He twisted free and ran south, sprinting and cursing, turning his light on, no longer giving a damn. The poor kid had the right idea, honestly.

Ring.

Everyone clamored.

Dresden cursed with fear. "Everyone, stay on task!"

By his terrified tone alone, it was a small wonder we didn't rout right there. Private McKinsey's terrified steps became more distant by the second, almost louder than the phone was. I looked back and saw everyone else's silhouettes, backlit by McKinsey's light, and the men looked like statues in freeze frame. Dresden's shape gave a 'Forward' order at me, telling me to ignore the phone.

Ring.

I lowered my light to the ground so Dresden could see my face from the reflection, and then I nodded my head toward the phone. Dresden jerked his head forward at me like Simmons had done to him earlier, his hand bowed out like 'what?!'

I shook my head, then stepped toward the phone.

"Corporal, IED!" Dresden hissed, his tone holding a genuine air of desperate concern for me. "IED!"

"If he took Erving," I replied calmly, "he wants to negotiate. If he wanted to blow us away, he'd've done it by now." I reached out, opened the phone box, grabbed the receiver, and started yelling into it. "Where the hell are you, you asshole?! Stop playing these friggin' mind games and just tell us!"

"Goddamn it!" the Lieutenant yelled, sprinting up past me to replace me on point, covering me as I had my vendetta conversation.

"Great work, Rivas," Foucault said into my ear. "Do me a favor? Put Lieutenant Loudass on, please? Let's see if we can get away with doing this the easy way. Four-Six-One is on standby, pending."

I looked over at Dresden with a dead furious look in my eye. "It's like I thought. He says he wants to negotiate with you, sir."

Dresden jabbed his finger down at the ground several times, his voice a harsh grating whisper. "Put it down, damn it! Down, now, that's an order!"

Foucault said into my ear… "Well, okay. The hard way, then."

Click. I looked at the receiver.

"He hung up," I reported, looking at Dresden again, disappointed in him.

For Dresden, that tore it. That was his tolerance limit for me. "You crazy-ass fuckin' jarhead!"

He stomped over to me, grabbed the receiver out of my hand, and slammed it repeatedly onto the hook just to make a statement. Wheeling, he gave me a shove toward the point position again and jabbed his finger at me. "We do not talk to the enemy!"

“He kidnapped our guys, sir,” I said darkly. "Like him or not, if we want them back, we have to negotiate with him."

As soon as the words had left my mouth, we heard a series of snappy clicks from down the tunnel. Most of those Guardsmen kids were too young to remember that sound, but Dresden and I were in the age group to immediately grasp what that was. Folks… remember that old tape recorder from Foucault's desk, back at Valdemar? It was hidden in that tunnel now, in the bed of an old gray Ford, because of course… that's the truck that most captured the attention of an old fogey spy.

Michael Foucault's voice poured out of it. The shape of the truck bed amplified the echo.

Hit play, Mal.

🛡️ ~ [Click]

"You, Mister Julian Dresden… need a lesson in manners. As you can see, I've been trying to reach you the polite way, about what happened back in Brazil, but… you haven't been returning my calls. I'm feeling somewhat snubbed and disrespected. I didn't have to spare you, when we last crossed paths. Nevertheless… I'm sending a friend down to come speak with you. I recommend, for the sake of your men, that you show him the same politeness I have shown you. Don't let his size intimidate you. So long as you behave yourself around him, you… should be fine.

"See you soon."

[Click] ~🛡️

You could have heard a mouse fart in that tunnel.

Private Kim broke the silence at a half-whisper. "He's bonkers, L-T, let's just get the hell—"

My flashlight died. A directed energy EMP. Invisible. Not a sound.

"Ramirez!" snapped Dresden. "What are you doing?!"

"My light just died," I hissed back through grit teeth, performatively clicking the button as fast as I could.

"Mine's dead too!" another Guardsman wavered.

"Me too!"

The rest of the squad all tested their lights and reported back no dice. We were now in pitch darkness, after having just received a terrifying threat.

"Oh shhhhit," Dresden hissed through his teeth. "Shit, shit, shit, shit… Shit!"

"Sir?" one Private asked, terrified. "Glowsticks?"

But Dresden wasn't hearing anything over the sound of his own thoughts. A couple of guys cracked glowsticks, not waiting for orders, they all knew Dresden was cracking. They'd seen it too, wasn't just me.

"Get back now!" Dresden hollered. "Back out of the tunnel!" He turned toward the exit and started yelling, moving in that direction at a walk, waving his hands at the others to get them moving. "McKinseeeyyyy! If you can hear me up there, we need your flashlight! Turn it on! Turn on your light, guide us out!"

A veritable soldier's chorus of "turn on your light" began, cancelling each other out. The men began to retreat as fast as they possibly could in the dark. That's about the moment I heard the slow clomping of heavy boots from the emergency stairs.

We all stopped running, wheeled, and pointed our weapons at the door.

I shuffled back toward Dresden, staying between him and the incoming threat as if I'd die to protect him. My boot touched his. The mere physical contact with him made Dresden turn to run again, and he stumbled over something, landing elbow-first into auto glass pebbles. His long combat sleeve caught most of the damage.

"A—agh!"

He scrambled up.

I said, "Sir! Something's...! Run, I'll cover y—!"

With an explosive clang, light flooded the space. The green emergency exit door flew off its hinges, bouncing off of the hood of a service van. A mechanized boot could be seen lingering in the middle of the doorway.

The Guardsmen leveled rifles toward the door. The tall shadow cast on the opposite wall revealed a man in full exoskeletal armor, with a tall, massive shield in his hand. A medieval knight. The leviathan's suit emitted a repetitive, mechanical hiss, click, and whine, its actuators and servos buzzing. It brought its boot back into the stairwell. We heard it breathing.

"How're yeh doin', little fledglings?"

Heavy, and slow. He paused in the doorframe, ducking down to squeeze through it, already pointing its shield our way with its left arm.

Dresden hyperventilated. I grabbed his chest rig strap and yanked him down into cover as fast as I could.

"IS THIS REAL?!" Dresden squealed pathetically, high pitch.

Yeah, if I had been in Julian's boots… I'd be questioning reality, too. Sorry bud.

The lumbering shadow made its way out of the doorway. At step one, the entire squad opened fire at it, myself included, without orders. Hundreds of bullets flung themselves in its direction, deflecting off of it in a matter of seconds, aimed directly at center mass. The dark mass did not fall, did not waver. The monster huddled behind its plate shield, a bent sheet of literal tank armor. When the rounds stopped coming, his suit made a robotic squeal as he lifted himself up from a crouch, his shield falling partway aside as he stood.

The deep, bassy British accent flowed through the helmet vocoder, electronically amplified. Accusation on his tone.

"I'm not here for you, Guardsmen. Why did you shoot at me?"

All of the men screamed.

Everyone reloaded as fast as we could. Dresden shouted wordlessly, scrabbling backwards behind me until his back hit a tire. He had completely lost his nerve, and he didn't even think to reload. "No, no, no!"

With a fresh magazine inserted, I snapped up my rifle, aiming for the monster's shield. It lifted the plate high, bullrushing me in response to the threat, the creature bellowing an ascending roar. I dumped the entire magazine at it in full auto. Every bullet ablated, rounds bounced and skittered everywhere. Every muzzle flash illuminated the creature's shape until its bipedal silhouette was just about on top of me.

I stood my ground defending Dresden, standing between him and the enemy until the very last possible second. When my gun's bolt clacked open to signify it was empty, the shield lifted, poised to come crashing down onto my head.

"Sir, move!" I dove backwards, rolling and scampering to cover as I dragged Dresden back. He followed passively, then scampered sideways until his back hit the next car up. I reloaded and pointed the weapon toward the threat, but the cyborg was faster. His shield swatted my HK-416 out of my right hand, mid-reload, sending it flying, shattering the rail handguard like it was a piece of balsa wood. I dove aside, landing on my backpack with a painful wince, pulled my Glock… and again, the darkness stole my gun away as a gauntlet closed over top of it, like Death had clawed it straight into the shadows.

The gauntlet came down again, grabbed me by my carrier strap, and it literally threw me at Dresden with a terrifying chuckle. I slid sideways into Dresden's feet through dust, with another groan of pain. Scampering once more, I grabbed Dresden's shoulder and hauled him out of his stunned shock as the silhouette barreled toward us.

Stomp, stomp, stomp.

"Start running!" I barked. "What are you still doing here, Lieutenant, do you wanna friggin' die?!"

No. In fact, he did not. I was the only one standing by him; the rest had fled. That impetus completed the man's mental reboot. Awake again. Alive again. Wanting to live again.

For a moment, Dresden desperately tried to slot a new magazine into his gun, but in his stumble to a stand, I took the gun from him. He gave it up to me freely. I think he realized I was better equipped to handle it, and… merely having possession of it would make the holder a more appealing target to the monster.

One less gun in play.

I turned and ran with Dresden, chasing the soldiers far ahead of us, their glowsticks barely visible. The monster chased us in turn. The rest of the men had reloaded ahead of me, but weren't returning fire yet, since they knew we were in the way. So I poured another row of bullets up the tunnel wall. The men saw my muzzle flash, and two did turn and consider helping us. They jumped up on cars, plinking semi-auto shots at the cyborg whenever they had a clear line. One of them chucked a glowstick my way to help them get some definition on the target. Smart guy, but ultimately pointless.

"Go," I roared at Dresden, shoving him along. "Faster! Open lane on the left, serpentine, he's bulky!"

Dresden went.

We sprinted along, chasing McKinsey’s light; he had apparently heard us and came back just far enough to help us find our way out. That worked for about three hundred yards. Then, just like ours, his flashlight got hit with another directed EMP, and suddenly died.

I yelled desperately, "They're using EMP! Pop flares, flares! Everyone, flares!"

But of course, it'd be too late for that to make a difference.

In the dark, the moment I gave the order, the augs were upon us. Various Talons stole themselves into our escape lanes, charging into the glowstick light from cover all at once. They stripped us of our remaining weapons, clashing against us with a flurry of martial arts blows. For the few men who had the good sense to maintain good control over their weapons, they were rapidly discombobulated, stunned, and thrown to the ground before they knew what was happening.

Rachel grabbed the carry handle of Dresden's rifle out of my hands and gave me a light shove to stagger me.

Once disarmed, everyone pulled their flares, and some pulled their knives, me included. The flares gave us enough context by which we could dodge wrecked cars during our flight out of Hell, but they weren't going to be useful in fighting. The augs were gone already, receding back to cover with our guns, shuffling up and out through an emergency stairway to an armored Stryker up on street level.

The two-legged machine stayed hot on our tails, just barely keeping pace with Dresden and me. It attenuated its speed to keep us hopeful that we might be able to get away… if only we could go just a little bit faster.

Heavy breathing. Tremendous footfalls that cracked the ground.

Occasional roars. Like an enraged, red-lining Gryphon on a battle high.

"Why you runnin', love? I jus' wanna chat, Lieutenant!"

Folks... I knew Haynes, and I knew he would never actually hurt a soul in here... and yes, the goal was a chat, ultimately. But in that tone? Nuh uh. No. Never in a million years, no chat was happening with that thing.

I thought, Jesus Christ, Marcus; laying it on a little thick today, are we?!

That made Haynes chuckle. He sounded downright sinister.

"Faster," I called to Dresden, feeling actually scared for the man that he might have a cardiac. "Faster!"

"Shoot him!" Dresden yowled, his voice breaking. "Someone please fuckin' shoot him!"

"They took all our guns, sir!" I yelled back.

"God damn it!"

By the halfway point, Dresden and I were almost completely exhausted. McKinsey had ditched his rifle when he saw us getting disarmed, knowing how useless shooting would be, and now he just wanted to get away. One of the other Guardsmen collected his gun when he got to it. He wheeled into cover, aimed for a clear shot at the silhouette, and fired. Haynes guarded his helmet with his wrist, and the shield came back up. Haynes held the plate in place with his lifted forearm until the soldier's magazine ran dry, and then Haynes roared with vicious agitation. Haynes switched targets from Dresden. He pointed directly at the man who had shot him.

"That was very rude!"

The mechanical monster doubled its speed as it charged like a bull, not even stopping to step around open car doors, pushing them clean off their hinges as he built up momentum.

Stomp stomp stomp stompstompstomp—

The Guardsman screamed, dropped McKinsey's gun, and started running again.

Haynes slowed, letting us get a little bit further with every passing second. We could see dawnlight at the end of the tunnel by now, so we hauled ass. Now devoid of weapons, we looked ahead… and… and...

And we saw nearly two dozen red tactical lasers flick on, pointing down the tunnel over our heads.

Not at us. Over us.

That gave us hope, that they might shoot the monster; that they might be our saviors, and not our enemy. And if they were the enemy, at least their cautious, cold guns would be a known quantity to whatever this thing was behind us.

The monster slowed in the darkness, the heavy slamming footfalls reducing tempo. Even Haynes was panting by the time he stopped, probably from adrenaline more than exhaustion. His mighty shield's edge slammed down on the road, hard, breaking the ground and clearly denoting his distance from us.

The earth shook with that.

That was him reducing pressure. He wanted us to slow up by the time we got to the firing line, because we wouldn't take the cordon seriously if he was right behind us, compelling us to push on through.

A line of Talon operators stood there before three Stryker IAVs, each dressed as the known stereotype of a CIA wetworker. Gaiters, beanies, jeans, combat trousers, kneepads, patterned shirts, all their equipment in gray or black. Active protection communications headsets, tactical gear, helmets in various designs and configurations. Expensive carrier rigs, expensive guns. Every kit personalized.

But they weren't firing. This was a policing action, to arrest deserters.

Gary stepped forward with his team of New York cops, his Manhattan accent shining clear on through. "Federal Police, DHS, show us your hands!" he bellowed, as he stepped ahead of the rest of the unit, holding his laser on the chest of the nearest Private. "Hands now! Hands, hands, hands!"

Private McKinsey got there first, skittering to a halt and threw his hands up, lowering his whole body down. "I'm d—I'm doing it! Please, don't shoot me, please!"

Beside the technicals sat our three rear guards, handcuffed. Erving, Bannon, and Aaron were also cuffed beside them, looking in our direction with concern. The fact that they were alive helped set the tone that this was merely a detention, and not an execution.

As we caught up with McKinsey, the nearest Stryker's floodlight winked on. Every soldier hesitated as we fully cogitated the power imbalance. A wave of surrender hit everyone at that point, our hands going up in sequence as we lined up beside Privates Kim and McKinsey. Dresden and me, the final two.

All gunless. All speechless. Praying for a miracle.

Some of us looked back at Haynes, now that running from him wasn't the primary objective, and he lingered in the shadows, barely visible. In this mythical tale, the Monster would remain a creature that could not leave the underworld.

That massive suit of armor was not unlike his Spartan gear, but bigger, purpose-built for this specific mission. The shield in his claw was covered in dings, pocks, and gouges from the wall of bullets we had launched at it. Some of us had used specialized rounds designed to penetrate armor, but even they failed to do more than scratch something so dense. Reinforced cabling ran up his limbs, glinting with the reflection of the Stryker light. Smooth metal plating adorned his every other surface.

The message was clear. No escape. The only way out was forward, through negotiation.

But... no one had died. The AI wants us alive, doesn't it? So if they work for Celestia, they might spare us.

Might.

We heard a man hum thoughtfully from the tunnel exit, hailing from behind all of the Talons. That drew our eyes away from Haynes back to the front. And there he was. The Man in the Coat, strolling out from behind one of the Strykers. Bluetooth in his ear, its blue light on. Grinning.

He spread his hands wide out to his sides, self-aggrandizing. It was the exact same body language Simmons typically wore when he was posturing around base. A clever mirror of the other man that these men all feared.

"Mister… Dresden," Foucault called, with a smile on his face, his white teeth gleaming. His gloved palms came together with a single clap. "Good! You've received my invitation! Friend, I know you've been busy lately, but we have a very important matter to discuss."

Of Michael Foucault, if nothing else… Jim Carrenton was right about this one thing: When this man smiles, your world is a terrifying place to be. When he smiles like that, it means that all things within your reach… now belong to him.

The Talons had lined us up in a single row, then patted us down for hidden weapons. One at a time, Gary took our knives, directed us to interlock our hands behind our heads, and told us each to kneel. The Stryker turrets pointed directly at us, their barrels switching from man to man, reminding each of us of our own mortality… and its barrel movement seemed to coincide with thoughts of violent rebelliousness.

They pointed at Ramirez the most. The man I was pretending to be was always cogitating violence against the Man.

The mere timing of that threat was, in itself, a reprogramming algorithm for the others. They no doubt noticed the pattern. It left no doubt that the gunners could at least read faces. By the time the guns were only pointing at me, everyone else had taken the message to heart. 'Don't even think about it.'

The road flares back in the tunnel began to die down, the sound of them slowly sputtering into nothing.

Haynes loomed, an ominous threat against retreat. His vocoder amplified his breathing, making it just loud enough that no one could forget he was there, as if anyone ever could. Left with no other options, the only choice remaining was to cooperate with the Man.

"Mister Dresden," Foucault repeated, folding his hands behind his back. "Now that you are all safely disarmed… Please. Stand. Step up into my office, I will ask only once."

Wordlessly, the Lieutenant staggered to his feet and trembled forward, his hands tightly clasped on his head. Still awestruck, his mouth was wide under his mask, taking in deep, audible breaths of air, probably not believing in the firmness of reality anymore, maybe even thinking he might startle awake at any moment. He was clearly surprised that he was even still alive, all things considered, but... there he was. Despite past sins.

"Now's the time, Mister Dresden," said Foucault, labeling the guilt playing on the man's mind. "Do you have anything to confess? Or do you want to waste my time with denials?"

"Testify?" Dresden asked, trembling. "That's what you want, right?"

Foucault's neutral expression fell into a cold frown. "Arujá."

"I didn't fuckin' fire at those people," Dresden whimpered pathetically, shaking his head with a wince, tears in his eyes. "I swear—I swear it, I didn't shoot into that crowd, sir. Please sir, it wasn't me, I shot above 'em, I didn't actually—"

Foucault stepped close, jabbing a finger at Dresden's chest. The man jumped with a yipe.

"Wrong crime. We'll try again in a moment. Stay here, and don't move, or my fireteam will delete you, and I will move on to the next witness I can get my hands on."

Foucault walked past Dresden, leaving him to stare at the Talons before him and breathe rapidly in horror at the sentiment that had just been injected into his head.

Foucault appraised the captives like a general before a formation, his hands clasped behind his back. Maskless, he made eye contact with each of us. You should've seen it, folks. His mere observation of each man had blasted them all back an inch as they reflexively shied away from him. It was like a wave of energy followed from his eyes, applying push force to whatever he looked at. Force dispensed by his very soul.

When Michael looked at me in my mask, I didn't budge. I wasn't scared of him at all. I just shook my head at him, vocalizing something like a growl, thinking at him good-naturedly:

You really are a scary son of a bitch, you know that?

Foucault snorted in amusement, and then turned, rounding to the front of Dresden again. He stood tall and lifted both palms aside and forward, addressing us through the Lieutenant as he paced, as if Dresden wasn't there.

"My name is Michael C. Foucault, and yes… I do see all. You've all no doubt wondered about my identity, so… there it is. I am, at present, the commander of field operations for the Department of Homeland Security. I operate under the direct command of the U.S. Executive Branch, and I am here on behalf of The Judge Advocate General of the Army. In my young life, I was a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency, and throughout my career, I have summarily executed very many men… proudly doing so on Uncle Sam's dime.

"Today, I am here to execute… several arrest warrants." He stopped pacing, spreading his hands out wide again in a presentational way. "And these are my… operatives. Go on, say hello, they don't bite."

Not one of us said a word.

"Well?"

I growled into my mask. "You ain't gonna get shit from us, asshole."

He bobbed his upturned hand at me, frowning as if disappointed. "Lance Corporal Ramirez, please enlighten me… when Mister Simmons was spoon feeding you beef jerky, did he happen to tell you that he was a war criminal?"

"Aren't you?" I breathed, balling my hands into fists behind my head. "You killed my entire family. What about that crime, huh?"

"Your entire 'family,' Lance Corporal, was gearing up to murder some innocent people," Foucault retorted, partially bowing forward at me as he clasped his hands behind his back. "And they were just about to execute. Don't bullshit me, or we'll talk about Sergeant Hardt's vices next."

I didn't reply to that.

Foucault looked away from me and stalked back to Dresden, his burning gaze melting the man's soul free of its ice. I saw Dresden's shoulders wither under that observation. He was just barely not hyperventilating, cringing backwards whenever Foucault observed him.

"I—I, I—I'm s—s—sorry."

"You should be. But…" Micheal leaned in.

In a smooth two-part motion, Foucault grabbed Dresden's mask, pushing him backwards as he yanked the mask off his head. Dresden drew in several deep, panicked gasps and took one step back, halting when his head didn't follow his body. Far too late to stop the removal. Foucault grabbed his shoulder and finished clearing the mask, drawing his face in really close to Dresden's ear once it was free.

"Care to elaborate what for? Maybe... share with the class?"

Dresden shook his head, his face screwing up into a sobbing cringe. "I didn't… I didn't do… I swear, the crowd wasn't me, I swear, I—"

Foucault disengaged with a gentle shove, more disappointment on his voice. "Wrong crime. Again."

He turned his back, walking away. Dresden stopped talking to let out a confused whimper. I knew what Foucault was doing. The knife needed to be pushed deeper before it could twist the real problem free from this man's heart… this poor, pitiful, pained Julian Dresden. A deeper weight needed to be lifted. For this to work, Dresden needed to say the one thing that had been burning his soul alive for years, to speak of the image that haunted him at night above all else.

Before any of the Guardsmen could forget that they were here too, Haynes bopped the bottom of his plate shield on the road. The clang made the rest of us jump and glance back, then straighten up at Dresden again.

Foucault clasped his hands behind his back and sighed. Then, as if seizing upon an idea, he smiled at us with menace. He looked into each of us at least once. His eyes finally fell upon Dresden again.

"You know… I recently got out on parole, Mister Dresden? Thousands of unlawful homicides, overseas. I was on the hook for that. I had to answer for those murders. I was given a choice, not unlike the one I'm giving you. Between atonement... or punishment. And now, after a very long road of making it right… I am yet free again. Right now, command is whispering into my ear. Carte blanche, says she. Blank check, and full trust, to adjudicate you, on her behalf. And if I so please, I can just kill you right here, with nothing to stop me, at any time.

"If I were you, I would be asking yourself… why I haven't shot you yet."

Dresden swallowed desperately. "God damn it, are you…? You're crazy, you… There's no way that’s true, that doesn't…! They wouldn’t let you be a—... do this! No way, no way!"

"It's a different world now," Foucault retorted, shoving Dresden's chest hard with two hands to put the Lieutenant on his ass. Dresden flinched as Foucault towered down over him, throwing his hands up between them in defense as Foucault curved his entire upper body down by the waist… eclipsing the sun.

"Whether I am fit for the duty or not, Mister Dresden, I believe what I say to be true. I did murder those people, and you must now negotiate in my world. So if you intend to live through this day? I advise that you ask yourself what motivates me. Ask yourself why I killed those people. If you can figure that out, and can somehow understand how I threaded the needle myself… you might just live. So stay exactly where you are, and do. Not. Move."

Foucault withdrew his Glock 20 and casually pulled the slide back to inspect the chamber.

"P—please," Dresden said, his ass practically glued to that spot, his head bowing, now breaking eye contact in humility. "Please, please don't kill me, please—"

"I said… don't move," Foucault repeated, his gun in hand. He stepped forward so that Dresden's downward aversion of his eyes would be filled with nice clean dress shoes. Dresden scampered back two feet toward the rest of us with a trill of terror, and then Dresden realized that he had already violated the command he'd just been given. Dresden's wide blue eyes bolted upwards at Foucault, pleading non-verbally for forgiveness, shaking his head as if to say, 'accident, accident, accident.'

The gun moved halfway up from the ground in Dresden's direction, but did not muzzle him.

"This is the end you prevented for him, Julian. Is it not? To die in terror, begging for his life?"

Dresden froze. His breath caught in his threat. His eyes widened.

"Wh…"

Those words changed Dresden's demeanor entirely. He leaned forward an inch. Wide-eyed.

Foucault slowed his creeping advance, staring directly down into Dresden's eyes. Dresden stopped cowering. From Dresden's perspective, Michael looked like a stone statue, a furious giant glaring down at the appreciator, threatening him with a single massive boulder of leaden death.

"Fear not the wrath of Mister Kyle Simmons, Julian. Fear not Leonard Corsi. Fear me, if you answer wrong about this. For if I am the one holding the gun, there is no law in this land but me. I see everything, and I know… everything. So do not… fucking… lie to me."

Foucault leveled the Glock 20 directly at his face.

Dresden raised his hands, cringing, trying his damnedest not to scamper even further away. "Okay."

"What happened… in Arujá?!"

"God damn it!" Dresden whimpered, flinging his hands up in front of his face, still shaking his head. "M—Major Simmons forced me! I didn't want to shoot Russell, I didn't want to, but he made me, so please don't fucking kill me!"

Echo. Echo. Echo.

All up and down the streets of Seattle.

A pregnant pause.

The silence of the soldiers to my left and right seemed deeper, and all of them went stiller than they had been just moments before. Foucault did not waver, did not move. His frown was tense, almost pained.

"Explain."

"T—th—th—the blackouts were throwing rocks at us. Rocks. Wanted our food. They were starving."

Foucault tilted his head, his voice now calm. "Did Simmons stop the convoy… before you received the rocks? Or did he stop the convoy… because you received the rocks?"

Dresden grit his teeth and nodded his head. "After… After the rocks. After, after… He stopped us because of the rocks!"

See, here's the thing about confessions. If it's brought on by true regret, then once they start, it's very hard to stop. It sets a tone. As soon as they are past the point of no return, if they have a conscience, they want to talk. They want to be free of the pain. They have to talk. Their soul won't let it stop.

So, the confession flowed. Dresden blubbered. He cried, and it poured. Now that it had begun? I doubted the gun factored anymore. This had been devouring him from the inside, and it was why he resisted drawing connections with the younger men. Why he was cruel, why he always yelled at everyone, why he kept himself despised by the men on purpose. To get close with doomed men was pain, and he wanted no part in that anymore.

"The rocks," Julian whimpered, through his sobbing. "They… th—they hit the lead car hard enough to crack the glass, and Simmons, he… he said it was a fuckin' bullet, said it was— b—but Private Russell found the rock when he got out. He told 'im it was a rock, told us, he saw it get thrown, showed us, but Simmons didn't care. He didn't care that it wasn't no bullet that hit us, no bullet. We—we were all tuned up because of that mortar fire, the… morning riot, fuckin' alarm and siren, mortars, kept us awake all night before, watching the food... And them damn mortars, he said the Ferradors must've been tuned up at us, the…"

Foucault narrowed his eyes. Dresden trailed off.

Everything he said was true, but... now he was veering into the wrong topic.

He decided to just stop beating around the bush and he got to the heart of it.

"He said return fire. We killed those poor people, they were just hungry! Just wanted food! When it was done, we—Simmons just wanted to silence... bury evidence, fuck, I'm so sorry! I'm so fucking sorry, Russell!"

"You murdered that poor kid," Foucault demanded, trembling with his teeth bared. "Private Jacob Russell died so you could bury the evidence in a shallow grave. Ditch on the side of the road. Right?"

"Y—yeah, that... that's why we..."

"So who did it? Who was the trigger man?"

Dresden couldn't hold eye contact. He nodded his head at the ground, tears falling before him, turning the road wet.

"Say it, and be free." said Foucault. "Who pulled the trigger?"

"Fuckin' meeeee," he sobbed at the ground, clutching his hair in his hands. "Simmons said, Russell trusted me, had to be me, and…" Dresden’s face snapped upward, soaking wet, streaming tears as he bared his teeth. Finally, the anger flew out from him. "Look, fuck, it’s better the kid die quick, from a friend who cared about him! Not knowing it was coming! Better than some… yoked fuckin' yokel, tormenting him, who don't know him from Adam! I liked Russell, like a son, I did! There, I said it! But it was either that, or… Meat'd do it, said he'd take his fuckin' time, then me next! Been hurting from it ever since, and I fuckin' hated it! I mean it, I do!" He buried his head in his hands, sobbing again. "I'm so fuckin' sorry, Russell, you didn't do nothing wrong, you were just too damned good for this world! So fuckin' sorry!"

Foucault held position for a few moments longer, then slowly drew back. Satisfied. His eyes searched us all, appraising the solidification of that confession in the eyes of the witnesses before him. Dresden just… poured, sobbing in another world, curling inward on himself. Debilitated. Disarmed.

Free, though. Free. Plain for all to see.

Foucault backed off. His gun was still held in his hand, but it was limp at his side now. He glanced over at Erving, Bannon, Aaron. "Told you," he said softly to them, before looking back at the rest of us. The old spy drew a long breath. I could tell even he was shaken.

Foucault gave Dresden a full minute to process before he drew closer, squatting down just out of arm’s reach. "Julian. Please look at me." His voice was not unkind.

The Lieutenant looked miserably up at him from a wet road, seeing Foucault silhouetted against a violet-orange, carbonized sky.

"That was some real remorse, Julian. You are mended."

Dresden nodded violently, barely cogent. "I—I mean it, I swear, I mean it, I want to take it back. I'd trade places with him, if I could, he didn't deserve... If that's what... what you're gonna...?"

"I believe you," Foucault replied in a genuine tone. "For that… you have earned a second chance. You do need to be punished, however, because murder is murder. So, for this crime? You are hereby exiled from King County. You are to leave this base, to never associate with it, to never return. You will avoid military association entirely. If you do not comply, then a bullet will catch you on the road, and it will be mine. And Mister Dresden…? I have faith in you, but I will be watching."

The Lieutenant looked at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. He panted, shaking his head in confusion. Foucault glared down at him for another few seconds. Foucault stood, then he bobbed his Glock again up the offramp.

"Yes, really. Go on. Do not turn around. Do not go back to Harbor Island. Do not even communicate with Harbor Island. If you do, my snipers will find you, and they will kill you. Don't you dare produce any more paperwork for me out there, Julian. I hate paperwork."

With a fervent intensity, Dresden nodded, tears still in his eyes. He scooped up his gas mask, scampering away at a sprint before he was even fully standing. He ran wide around Paul, Rachel, and Erving's guys, not daring to get within even ten feet from any of them.

Dresden was done. Over it. Over and out, fear of God deployed.

"And don't scavenge too long, either," Foucault yelled after him. "You have until tomorrow morning to be east of the I-Five, and never cross west of it again, for as long as you live!"

Foucault holstered his sidearm and turned his steely gaze back on the squad, sweeping his hands out wide as he walked back to us all. He dusted off his hands.

"Welcome back to the American Old West, ladies and gentlemen. This is the new justice of this land, and I'm sure you all agree… that was a very fair punishment for first degree murder. It's either that, or… I force you into the world's only remaining prison. And I think we all agree that that is not acceptable. Am I wrong?"

Foucault clasped his hands behind his back and stalked toward us, moving like a military commander inspecting his troops. His words were menace, but his cadence, tone, and demeanor were perfectly crafted to address an entire regiment of soldiers before battle.

Now was the moment.

I howled, out of nowhere: "They were my family, you fucking bastard, you owe me skin!"

I charged.

It was so off-tone and unreasonable for me to do that that none of the other soldiers followed me, not while those Talon lasers were trained on them. They weren't gonna die for the vendetta of a strange outsider, not after that display. No way. They wanted to survive this, and they now had fresh hope that they could.

I was on my own for this duel. On my own, to get my own ass beat, to show how proportional the Man could be.

I reached for Foucault with a simple lunge, meant wholeheartedly to gain control over his arm, in the hopes that he'd raise it defensively. He of course dodged expertly, taking instant control of my wrist instead, effortlessly sweeping my arms away with his single elbow. He released me, sending me half-spinning. That almost knocked me off balance. He stepped back once, not even bothering to enter a defensive stance. I rounded on him.

Foucault chuckled at me like that was the dumbest, weakest thing he'd ever seen. He looked back to his tanks and his soldiers. "You’re a brave one, Marine, heart full of fire, I'll give you that."

"You killed them," I growled, as I circled him, as he stepped back. "You killed Ian and Daniel, and Sarge, and everyone else. Where was their kangaroo court, huh?! What chance were they given to get free?!"

"You know why they're dead," Foucault glowered back. "You know what they were planning to do when I killed them, to jump those Ludds for just trying to feed themselves, and admit it… you disagreed."

"I'd have stopped them," I said desperately. "If I could. Was gonna find my own way, and you took that from me!"

"Not as you were, Corporal," Foucault said casually, with just the slightest hint of condescension. "They couldn't feel guilt or compassion anymore, not like you can. So, soldier… return to your post. Do not push your luck today, or you will lose."

I charged him again.

Paul, Rachel, and the other Talons stomped forward once in unison to startle the rest of the squad, to keep them all reminded of the individual stakes. That way, they wouldn't feel brave enough to join in. It also served the purpose of tying their unspoken creepy unity to the image of me getting my ass kicked. A very critical union indeed.

To the QRF team's eyes, the DHS agents weren't concerned by my token rebellion. Not at all. As long as the Talon troopers felt in control, and unafraid by this physical conflict, then the outcome was inevitable.

I threw a punch aimed genuinely at Foucault's face, but he was already on a momentum track out of the way the instant I committed to it, so I had no hope to recover. He deflected me effortlessly. I tried a series of jabs and punches, and he casually brushed my arms aside as if I were moving in slow motion, like Neo fighting Agent Smith.

I kept going, and going, and going, and he made me look foolish as my every swing met nothing but air. I tried to lean toward him to close distance, and he simply twirled out of the way. With a feint, I got him to deflect air; a false error, one I fell for. With my other fist, I went for his face. Full commit.

He exploited the opening. Foucault sidestepped me like the wind, going the opposite way I expected.

Holy shit, that was cool.

Before I could stop my forward stumbling momentum, he drove the bottom of both fists against the back of my carrier rig, hard. I staggered flat, and he followed me down. Before I was even grounded, Michael ratcheted my right arm up behind my back and knelt on me, pressing my gas mask against the cement. Also hard.

God damn it, ow.

"Don't make me break it, Ramirez," Foucault rattled into my ear, as he yanked my arm in emphasis.

He held that pose and leaned forward, applying pressure in a very obvious way. I yelped.

Ow, too much, Michael. Stop—stop.

He let up, held it for another second, twisted my arm gently one final time in threat… then he released me, standing slowly up.

I wheezed, coughing, gripping my chest, trying and failing to stand against the pain. Coughing sucks in a gas mask, and I had to resist the impulse to remove it, or else I'd never be allowed to complete the rest of this operation. I resigned myself to roll onto my back and looked up at Michael, wreathed in dawnlight as he was.

The impression was made: He would not be a vindictive man toward a grievance, would not kill me for an unarmed assault. But, to oppose him was still folly. Now that I had been neutralized, Michael looked at the rest of the squad, addressing them, stepping over my legs.

"Any other confessions of homicide to air?" he asked quietly. "Or are you all quite done, wasting your precious time?"

Foucault withdrew a sealed manila folder from his trench coat, flicking it straight up beside his head to make it seem like solid granite. "Now hear this. A proclamation. An arrest warrant, Dead or Alive. Inside of this folder is the official DD-214 discharge paperwork for every war criminal on my shit list back on Harbor Island." He sneered down at me.

I scowled up at him. He tilted his head. I mirrored the gesture to let him know I was okay.

Michael continued, recentering on the crowd.

"You are to present these to your Sergeant Major, or to your Colonel, directly. No intermediaries. Straight to HQ, or I will consider you to be an accomplice. Gentlemen? If you pick up this folder after I leave… you will handle it carefully, or you will give it to someone else. This is the One Ring.

"The murderers on this list will present themselves on the land bridge, or will be presented, by… " He checked his watch. "Hm. Let's call it twelve noon today, shall we? In honor of this man's stupid cowboy hat.

"Should these murderers present themselves accordingly? I will afford them the same punishment I have just issued to Mister Dresden; confession, exile, and release. If they refuse? I will simply come inside and kill them all, one by one. In that event, the rest of you would do well to stay the fuck out of my way, or you will die too."

He looked down at me with a severe glare. "... Regardless of your good moral fiber, past or present."

Aww. He likes me.

In protest of that telepathic jab, Foucault dropped the sealed folder on the ground next to my face, which caused dust to whirl up and outward in a plume, clattering against my mask.

"Spread the word," he declared, his voice belting out in a vicious bite. "Mister Kyle Simmons and his cronies are marked men, outlaws, and the Pantry's walls will not save him from justice. If there are no further questions, we are done here."

Foucault turned, not waiting for a question. He pointed his left index and middle finger up to the sky beside his head, rotated it with a sharp twirl to indicate a military 'regroup,' and then he moved toward the nearest IFV, ducking into the Stryker.

I rolled my head sideways to watch him go, panting, saying nothing while trying to stand.

Paul gestured his gun at Erving, Bannon, and Fanning. "Get in."

The three cuffed men complied. The rest of the Talons followed, filing sideways into the ports of the tanks, their guns remaining level at us. Rachel aimed her rifle directly at me as I stared her down, her finger off the trigger. She put a sneer into her voice. "See you later, Cowboy."

She entered last. Once they were all inside, the door closed.

Haynes dropped his shield in the road with an earth-rumbling clang, and everyone spun, backing up from him. He dropped several collected rifles onto the shield, my sidearm mixed in among them.

"Fear not the darkness," Haynes intoned. "I pursue only murderers and tyrants. I do not destroy good souls."

Haynes turned, lumbering back into the darkness of the 99 tunnel, unafraid of us. The Strykers yoked left at the end of the offramp, their engines humming away with the puttering stench of precious gasoline.

We were alone, all thirteen of us. Everyone lowered their hands from their heads, and the three handcuffed men stood. Nobody moved or spoke for a long moment. We remained motionless, watching the darkness until the stomping of Haynes faded away entirely. We looked at each other in awe, the Guardsmen surprised to be alive and unharmed.

Once the coast was entirely clear, I muscled myself to my feet, collecting my Glock from the back of Haynes's shield. I checked the mag and chamber, and pounded at my chest in anger at the nerve pain. I must've looked pissed. The rest of the men hesitated to go near the knight's shield at first, but they all inched their way over once I had demonstrated that it was safe to retrieve a weapon.

I was the ranking NCO now. I returned to the manila folder and hesitated, growling at it like I didn't want to touch it.

The S-O-S fireworks launched off from the base, the yellow-white-yellow beacon deploying right on time.

After a glance up at the yellow light, I scooped up the folder.

"Corporal?" Private McKinsey said, trembling my way. "Are you sure?"

"I don't want to know what happens if we leave it," I replied, then I directed my attention to the others. "Get your vehicles! Back to base, andale!"

What were we even allowed to do now? Certainly, we could deliver paperwork to the Colonel. No political officers were left alive to intercept it, and Dresden was gone now, so... delivering post for the DHS was very allowed.

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [Tool – Forty Six & Two]
🛡️ ~ [Lee DeWyze – Blackbird Song]
🤠 [Django Unchained OST – Freedom]

🗡️ ~ Dresden did pretty well for himself out there.

6-07 – Operation Athena's Grace VII – Ozymandias

The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 26 AUG 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase VII
Location: Seattle, Washington
Function A: Enact ideological quarantine of Set 334DE in preparation for selective Context conclusion.
Function B: Offramp provision to Set 334DE [principal Context 67DA271].

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted." ~ Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune

I was not blind to the impression we left on those men in that tunnel.

For this reason, I chose to ride back with Private Shane McKinsey, the kid who ran first, so I could directly confront that. As you might imagine, he was in no state to drive anymore, so… with the packet of DD-214s tucked under my plate carrier, I took the wheel for him.

Shane swept his head around, looking through Seattle's streets for black Strykers, black helicopters. Men in black, maybe. Terminators. Maybe even aliens. Everything was on the table now. Nothing was certain anymore.

"Hey," I said softly. That drew his bolting gaze. "They're not coming back, Shane. They set terms, gave us a directive. They wouldn't attack us again, they only came for Dresden."

"We popping a Q-P flare?" The kid asked me, as if he didn't hear me. "He put hands on you, what… what if he was infected? Or a carrier, or, or—or something?"

He wouldn't grasp the logic right away, but he'd think about it later. It was most important that I seemed sure of myself when it came to procedure. We could unpack his emotions once I finished setting a better leadership example than Dresden.

"Can't pop a flare," I replied calmly, driving around an old three-car pileup. "If we do that, we'd have to go straight back to the Pantry."

"That's what we want, right?" McKinsey asked, punctuating with a snort. His voice inflected upwards fast enough to make his voice crack. "For… for decon?"

I shook my head at him. "If Simmons gets his hands on these documents before the Colonel does, he'll move to bury the evidence, witnesses included. You heard Dresden, Simmons is a war criminal. He won't want that information getting out, so… what do you think Simmons would do if he realized he could kill his way to a solution? Having already done it once?"

Shane thought about it for a few seconds. The calibrated question forced him to actually think, finally.

"Oh, man," he groaned, clutching the nape of his neck beneath his helmet, letting his head fall toward his lap.

Fetal position.

Okay. That's what the whole team is feeling. Address this.

I blipped the horn, lifted my fist out the window to sign 'Halt' to the convoy, then I slowed, putting the truck in park. I turned to look at Shane straight-on so he could see my eyes.

It hurt to see him like that, and that fell into my tone. "Shane, please look at me."

He exhaled rapidly twice, looking up from his lap to make eye contact. His hands were clutching the back of his neck, his fingernails digging into his mask straps. "Wh… what, what’s wrong, what did I do?"

Shit.

I winced, frustrated with Dresden's leadership style more than anything else. If he ever demanded the attention of any one individual, it was usually to bust them down. Because… who knows. Who knows who was getting picked next for a shallow ditch, if any of those political officers decided they didn't like one of the grunts?

Most of these guys were kids, really, just kids. And that was to be expected; the Ferrador War had drained the military of most of its experienced enlisted, just like uploading at home had drained policing, healthcare, and firefighters. The government's desperation for hands lowered their recruitment and training standards, the problem with increased demand.

In the military, you could usually get away with recruiting kids at 18, because privates were seldom without supervision in high liability positions. It was different in policing; you were expected to be autonomous as a cop, so most departments wouldn't pick you up until you were at least 24, and some wanted men well into their thirties. To be autonomous as an adult, you needed life experience in screwing up, in dealing with interpersonal conflict.

Shane had none of that when this mess started, and there were now very few NCOs to supervise and inspire the rookies. No coping skills. No parents to go home to. Few leaders worth following but high officers. No peers to pep talk them.

"It's gonna be okay," I said tenderly. "We're not going to Simmons, and that monster in the tunnel was for scaring Dresden into a confession, and honestly? You were right to run in that tunnel too, you saved us."

He shook his head. "No? I'm… I left you guys, Corporal."

I paused for a few seconds so he'd focus on the words. "There was nothing you could have done, Shane. Nothing at all. Don't look at me like that, hell, I… Me? Shane look at me, who am I? I planted my feet, I got off two full mag dumps, point blank, and it didn't even put a dent in that guy, what… what could you have done against a machine like that?"

He nodded fast a few times. "I—I see your point."

No he didn't. Not yet.

"You did good," I assured him again, grasping his shoulder. "You, running away… Shane, look at me? We couldn't've seen a thing in there without your light up the tunnel, man, even I forgot to pop a flare. You running away, it helped us. Helped guide us out, gave us something to hope for. We saw you, and we imagined being where you were, wishing we had all ditched Dresden in that tunnel, because screw how he treated you guys. You got no reason to be loyal to an asshole who screams at you!"

"Y—yeah," he trembled breathlessly, his eyes falling back to the dashboard.

I watched Shane for a moment longer, resting my forefinger nervously against my lips. I tilted my head, pointing. "You came back to us when we needed you. Don’t be ashamed of protecting yourself when you're in over your head, it just means you're there for us in other ways. You know, I've run from death before, too?"

He looked at me.

"I…" My brow furrowed, and I looked out the window at the city, panting through my nostrils, my voice becoming weak. I thought of a snow-covered graveyard.

"I left a friend behind once, right before a firefight. Kicked myself ever since. But I had to make a choice, Shane. Had other people to live for. And here? In this war?" I sniffed, hurt in my eyes as my voice got tight. "We all left someone behind, man, we all split ourselves in half at least once."

He let out a single sob, looking away from me. There it was, the black swan. The family they all abandoned out here.

I gave him a minute.

"... Listen." Gently, I touched his shoulder. "Can you do me a favor? Drive for me, switch places? I gotta… I gotta figure out how we can all live through all this political bullshit. There's a way, I just gotta figure it out. We're gonna fix this."

He nodded harshly as he wrung his hands and grasped at his wrists.

There we go; from fetal position to self-hugging.

That was as good as it was going to get for now, but progress is progress. After what was gonna happen later, he'd relive this conversation a lot. It'd guide him, maybe even keep him safe.

With an exhausted sigh, I pushed the truck door open and stepped out. Shane followed suit, rounding the hood. I faced the convoy, blading my hand upward beside my hat, the signal for 'information.' Everyone leaned out their windows or over their weapons to hear me through my mask. I raised my voice to a hoarse yell.

"Folks! Here's the plan! We have just witnessed a confession of a war crime! We will need to testify to Nakamura, and HQ is the safest place for all of you to hole up, you get me? Not the One-Star! If Meat is at HQ, we're going to lie when we come in! The lie is, I am the only one who got touched. That way, I go to Q-P alone. The rest of you…"

The men looked around at each other. They sent around nervous glances.

"Look," I said, redirecting. "I've been living with these guys in the Pantry for the last two weeks, and I'll tell you; they've been panicking up and down about this Arujá shit, and now we know why. All of their interior guards fought in Brazil, all of 'em! So if you go to Q-P, those brother killers will probably drag you inside, and take you hostage! We don't want that, right? ... Right?! Come on, that's not rhetorical, you've all got a voice here!"

After more perturbed looks around the convoy, they nodded at me, a few verbalizing affirmatively.

"My plan's simple. I'll lead the Pantry people off your trail. They all like me, won't be hard. Go straight to Nakamura, give your statements to him, or the Colonel, no one else. And most importantly: Don't touch anyone until you've all been sprayed down with Virex. Any questions? Comments? Disagreements? Come on, speak up, I want to hear it."

No questions. All shaking heads.

"Good! Stick to the plan, I'm gonna take the hit. I…" I looked aside at the city for a second, considering. "Guys, I'm on borrowed time as it is, and I gotta go back for Casey, and do what I can. So God bless you guys, and live on, that's what I dream for you."

I turned around, stepping aside and presenting the way to the driver side to Shane, and I made for the passenger seat, panting and trying not to cry.

"Go, man. Please, let's just get this over with."

Shane led the convoy up the east harbor to the land bridge, where he looked at me for the go-ahead. I pointed my approval, and he honked three times. The rear vehicle repeated the honks. The landmine operator on the other side let out two bleats with his air horn, clearing us to cross.

I could see several curious binoculars watching us from the defense line.

I gently tapped the Private on the shoulder with the back of my hand as we drove up.

"Yeah Corporal?"

"Private," I rasped. I cleared my throat. "I need you to suggest we get the Virex at the muster yard, can you manage that?”

"Sure," Shane shrugged, looking confused. "Ramirez, why… why are you helping us, don’t you… don’t you hate that guy out…?"

"The Coat wasn't wrong about my squad, Shane," I said meekly. "Doesn't make 'em any less family to me, though, and… you know, I had to watch 'em die, right? I knew 'em all well enough for that to hurt. But I gotta move past it for you guys. I can't let it stop me, or Simmons might kill you guys too."

I reached down under my rig to withdraw the manila folder. My chest was still killing me after Foucault threw me to the ground, but my injury needed to be real for this to work. I wheezed with pain as I pulled it out, then cleared my throat.

I discreetly inspected the two packets inside, and withdrew just the one meant for Velasquez, making a show of looking it over as I slid the folder back into my vest.

"Hide…" I hissed painfully. "Hide this under your plate. Once you're alone with Nakamura, put it directly into his hands."

He nodded really fast, stuffing the pages awkwardly under his armor, his voice breaking. "Sure? You gonna, um… are you sure you wanna go back there?"

"I'll be good," I affirmed shakily as we turned right, pulling up to HQ. "Hard part's over for you. For me, I…" I shook my head. "Look, I'll figure something out. Just tell Nakamura I said… I'm doing my best for the Guardsmen that are still stuck over there."

"Okay…?"

I could feel his eyes on me, intensely worried for me now. I didn't look at him, because if I did, I’d never be able to put myself in the mindset I needed to be in for this next bit. I just nervously searched the faces ahead, took a breath, and tried to feel angry.

Seeing Meat made that easy. That asshole.

We drove into the muster yard, where Nakamura was already speaking with Meat; it looked like they had just finished assigning jobs for the day's batch. Both men looked at me oddly, because showing up here with the Dagger vehicles was a far departure from procedure. We were supposed to pull up at the perimeter, once past the mines, and wait for debrief.

Both of them also expected to see Dresden in the passenger's seat, and I could see their confusion at my white hat being there instead. Before they could generate a theory, I threw myself out of the door and answered the question they were gonna ask.

"Dresden's gone," I growled, clutching my armor as I stomped up to them. "The Coat ambushed us at the tunnel. Threw some friggin' gorilla at us in power armor! Took our guns, and beat the shit outta me!"

Meat's face screwed up in agitated confusion. "He's gone…? What power armor, what the hell are you—?"

"He's M-I-A!" I roared, becoming very animated with my body language, knowing the QRF team had to be staring at me from behind; their silence at what I said here would be acceptance of everything I'd say, giving me full credibility. "They had… two dozen men, boss; three Strykers, with cannons! Held us up at the Ninety-Nine! Stirrup's… friggin' arrested, or something, they had 'em in handcuffs, took 'em away in a Stryker, I dunno! The Coat whispered something to Dresden in his ear, made him break down friggin' crying, sobbing on the ground. Shit, he's gonna be here at noon!"

"Who will?" Nakamura asked, his eyes widening as he bobbed a hand at me to implore calm. "Dresden?"

"No, the Coat, no," I said weakly, clutching at my chest. "I can't… God damn it."

Nakamura stepped up to me, squinting with concern, reaching for my shoulder without touching me. "Is it bad?"

Shane stepped up beside me, gesturing him back with a worried tone. "The guy beat him up pretty bad, Sergeant Major. He's uh…"

"My gunshot wound," I snapped hoarsely, pointing at my chest. "Pushed me down on it."

Nakamura winced empathetically, gesturing aside to HQ. "Do you need a medic, Ramirez?"

I shook my head in refusal. "Nerve pain, nothing they can do. I'm contaminated, stay back."

"Contam—?" Meat stammered, stepping forward with a palm outward to make me back up from Nakamura. "Why didn't you go to Q-P? Your seal break?"

I shook my head, making eye contact with him. "No, First Sergeant. No exposure."

Shane stepped up beside me. "Virex, Sergeant Major? We got some in the janitor's closet, don't we?"

Meat shook his head, squinting between the three of us, pointing up toward the Pantry. "Uh—no?! Go to Q-P, all of you! We need to do a full decon, Private, you know this!"

I said, "They won't go, Meat, they didn't get touched."

Nakamura squinted suspiciously at me for the way I had phrased that, then at the side of Meat's head. Nakamura left his concern unvoiced though, because he'd rather not send anyone to QP if they didn't strictly qualify to go.

Meat did a double-take at me too, and I held his gaze, raising both of my eyebrows. I tilted my head, nodding my head at the truck, trying to communicate that there was something I knew about that he didn't, and that it was imperative that we get a move on.

He had a think about that. Why would I be trying to communicate anything to him in secret, at a time like this?

I had said Dresden had broken down crying. That might have had something to do with it.

Meat knew full well what Dresden might be crying about.

I saw that train of thought shifting in his features, the intended thought processes snapping into place like Lego blocks. And this is why Simmons liked Meat as an executive officer. Simmons was a Psyops officer, and Meat had the same reasoning training, but only about half the intelligence. That made him stupidly easy to program.

Meat nodded over at one of Nakamura's aides by the HQ building. "Oliver! Go get the sprayer for Ramirez here, I gotta ride back with him!"

"Yes First Sergeant!" Private Oliver hopped to, sprinting off, then back again just as fast with the hand pump. I stepped up to get a decon spray-down, then turned around to get back into my technical, nodding aside to order the gunner out of the bed. I asserted myself quickly into the driver seat so Meat wouldn't take it from me.

Shane and the others were already stepping up to Oliver to offer themselves for Virex. Meat apparently didn't think too much about that, his mind was already overclocking on his present concern. He slotted his hulking body into the passenger side door, glowering at me.

"What's the issue, Ramirez? What the hell happened out there?"

"It's friggin' bad," I said into my mask, starting the engine and putting it in drive, yanking back the shift.

"Bad? You're gonna have to be more specific. Losing Dresden is already fuckin' bad."

"If I tell you," I growled, "you'll think I'm goddamn crazy, but I swear to you, it's the truth."

Settling the wheel with a knee, I reached up to pull my hat and mask off.

"You nuts?!" He leaned back from me, lifting both hands. "Stop!"

"Meat, chill! I need friggin' air, incubation period, give me this!"

It occurred to me that he might not even understand about incubation period. Not like he could stop me anyway, he needed my information too much.

I dropped my hat into my lap and tossed the mask into the back. I rolled the window down, leaned outside, and took long gasping breaths. I was damned glad I didn't have to put that wretched mask back on for the rest of the operation.

Looking at Meat, I continued explaining, turning onto Hesco Street. "They jumped us in the tunnel with... power armor. No idea how else to describe it. Guy was eight feet tall!"

He glared at me, and his jaw shifted forward in disbelief, but he said nothing.

"We dumped a hundred bullets at him, Meat, but he just kept coming at us, like a… He was waving a shield around. Smacked my rifle clean in half with it. Shattered the foregrip clean off." I rubbed at my chest beneath my plate. I growled and pounded my fist against my chest a few times.

"You're fulla shit," he said incredulously, eyes narrowing.

I threw my right hand up beside my head and yelled, half-turned out the window so I wouldn't breathe on him. "Right hand to God, Meat, they threw a friggin' Terminator Space Marine at us!"

Meat stared, slack-jawed. "Like… from Warhammer?"

And now it was my turn to double-take at him.

I squinted at him in confusion, the angry terror completely gone from my voice. "Yes, Meat, like… like Warhammer."

We awkwardly looked away from each other.

Uh. Wow.

I panted, rubbing at my chest again with an angry growl, breathing through my teeth. "The Coat fracked my sternum, I think. And he… he had Dresden sobbing into his hands and knees with just a few words."

"What'd he say?" Meat demanded.

"I couldn't follow it all," I breathed back, gulping. "Arujá stuff, I'm missing some context. Uh. The Lieutenant started screaming something about a… a guy named Russell, saying, 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,' boo-hoo, right? Then the Coat told Dresden he was exiled... Then Dresden…" I bobbed my upturned hand out before me, tracking aside with it. "... he ran off into the city, crying like a little bitch!"

"That fuckin' stupid pussy," seethed the First Sergeant, with a tone that implied deep thought laid behind the words. In my peripheral vision, I saw him lower his head as he processed that information, breathing hard.

"There's more you gotta see, boss—" I began, gesturing at my vest.

Meat flicked up a hand to tell me to shut up so he could think. He couldn't really multi-thread his brain.

Gripping the steering wheel, I accelerated toward the Pantry, going up from 5 miles per hour to 10, and no faster, to spare the fuel. Needed distance from HQ now, more than anything else.

As Meat thought through the ramifications of disclosures to the QRF team, and the possibility of them telling Velasquez about Russell, I saw the expression on his face I expected to see: offense, as if someone had just tried to steal some food off of his plate. Then, his face returned to neutral.

"What?" I asked. "What's the—?"

He roared, violently punching the dashboard once.

I flinched back hard, turning to brace my right arm against the seat. "Hey, woah, what the f—?!"

And that's why he punched the dash. He wanted me facing him like this so he'd have a clear run to my throat. Friggin' psychopath. Without warning, his fist flung up, opening to clutch my windpipe in a tight grip. The other hand pinned my gun into its holster, precluding that as an option.

Well okay, shit. I guess we're doing this now.

I slammed on the brake. Meat gripped me hard enough with his nails to leave marks and send sparks of pain up and down my sides, restricting my breathing and threatening my windpipe. I reflexively grit my teeth, narrowed my eyes, dug my chin into his thumb, tensing all the muscles in my neck. My hands flew up off the wheel to grapple his wrist.

Obviously, folks, I wasn't going to budge this musclehead an inch. But he felt safer with my hands on his arm, so that's where I put them. If I went for my gun, he'd pop my throat like a water balloon, and he knew I knew it.

"They heard all of that shit?" he demanded, his voice a growl through bared teeth as his horrid breath wafted across my face. "Why the fuck did you not have them all go straight to Q-P?!"

"M—McKinsey," I managed, as I clenched my teeth. I then coughed violently, tactically going slack, speaking less; he wanted that information badly, so I was hamming up how much my injury was affecting my ability to speak in conjunction with his assault, letting him think I was fading out. After a few seconds of my gagging, he loosened his grip slightly.

"Speak."

I continued after a very painful cough, my chest searing. I swallowed, which started another coughing fit. "Because… McKinsey wouldn't go to Q-P, he refused… wanted to go to Nakamura… so… could arrest you. S'why I talked first."

"Arrest me why?"

"Arujá… Coat gave…" I coughed, and he released some pressure. "Gave McKinsey evidence…!"

"Evidence?"

"For the Colonel! I took it from'm… in my armor…!"

I jabbed a finger at my chest rapidly to indicate where.

Without letting go of my throat, Meat dug under my chest plate with his free hand. This caused me searing, explosive pain. I groaned for a solid three seconds as Meat gripped the manila folder, wedging it in half against my chest, wrenching it free. Finally letting go of me, he tore apart the folder to get at the papers inside.

And the other stuff. The worse stuff.

I gasped, leaning against the door with my hands presented palm up, to minimize how much of a threat I was to him so he'd stay backed the hell off.

Oh my God, you friggin' impatient asshole, I was getting to all of that.

Mal was about to hurt him twice as badly. Roll for mental damage.

Let me describe to you what Meat experienced opening that folder, so you can better understand the sheer, abject terror of an AI pissed off in 4D... because how dare he put hands on me? This was a special brand of eldritch horror, purpose built, intended to maximize the low statistical chance that Meat and Simmons might just surrender, sight unseen, instead of forcing us to kill their whole platoon.

Within that packet, the very first thing Meat noticed was the DD-214 discharge paperwork. Every soldier knows what that looks like, that's not scary, but his was right on top, with his old home address visible. That was not an accident. That was scary.

What drew his eye next was the large stack of glossy photographs paperclipped to the front of his form, straight from the Valdemar print shop.

The photographs consisted of images seen through the eyes of one of the two perpetrators of Arujá who had since uploaded. In this case, a Private named Joseph Reid. Just so there was no confusion about this fact, Foucault had even written the name "REID" in permanent marker on the back of each photograph, with dates and timestamps, just to rub in those dark implications.

I'll be vague in describing these photos, because… they depicted war crimes.

Images one, two, and three: first person views of an M4A1 automatic rifle, muzzle flash visible, aiming into a fleeing crowd. Not much to say there, your imagination can do the rest.

The fourth image showed Private Russell from behind, his hands clutching his hair, undergoing the beginning of the panic attack. He was on the east road out of the city; they had driven the convoy away from the crime scene a ways before Russell had tried to throw himself out of the truck, so Dresden had to lay on the brake, which halted the convoy.

In this photo, Dresden was in front of Russell, his hands on the kid's shoulders. Dresden had a harrowed, desperate look on his face, probably realizing he wasn't going to calm Russell down.

The last image… I won't describe. Dresden already described it well enough.

I watched Meat exhale shakily. His very soul probably felt violated. These images verified a fact: that literally everyone who had ever uploaded, who Meat had ever harmed, in his entire life… had effectively told Celestia what he had done to each of them, just by uploading.

'You cannot hide from me, Leonard Corsi.'

Imagine the sheer exposure a violent psychopath might feel, knowing that a being with godlike omnipotence was watching him, judging him, and now commanding Space Marine Terminator assassins after him. Demanding that he pay the bill.

After parsing the images, Meat's body language and personal affect shifted. First, he inflated, drawing in a deep, deep breath. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if what he was looking at would be gone if he just reopened them. When it didn't disappear, he opened his eyes as wide as he could. He drew each photos up to his face to inspect the detail, almost pushing the photos against his nose. He exhaled again after nearly fifteen seconds, finally remembering to breathe.

Total understanding wrapped itself around his little walnut-sized brain, squeezing itself into a fist, making him pant open-mouthed, sending more of his disgusting breath all throughout the truck.

"What… the fuck… is this…?"

I just stared at him as he processed, watching him incredulously, clearly not grasping whatever terror he was grasping. A few seconds passed in total silence. Meat frowned, met my eyes, and flicked his hand at the Pantry. His voice was appropriately harrowed.

"You did good, Ramirez. Drive."

I didn't comply. I set my eyes forward at the road, a scowl slowly absorbing the confusion of my face. I bladed my hand at the steering wheel, breathing hard with rage. I rasped.

He ordered again. "I said drive!"

"Do you want my friggin' help… or not?"

"The hell'd you say to me?" Meat demanded, speaking without thinking. He locked eyes on me as he realized he just fell back on a Pantry heuristic out of panic, and not on a calculated reply, so he moved to recover. His brow furrowed as he twisted in my direction, and his mouth muscles communicated dread. He was trying to soothe me. "I said you did good Corporal, you're off the hook. Now drive, we can't afford to wait arou—"

I whipped my head at him harshly like an enraged animal. He stopped talking. I growled wordlessly to clear my throat so I wouldn't cough, then pointed at him, my Nebraskan accent intensifying. "I told you… I'm in it against Celestia, no matter what! So First Sergeant…? Why the fuck—" I shouted with a scowl, yanking the handbrake, throwing myself out of the truck with force, "—are you physically fucking attacking me?!"

I marched immediately back in the direction of HQ. I didn't even bother to put the truck in park or close the door.

Meat hesitated, then he got out of the truck and started after me. The mere concept that even one person might abandon him, after this discovery, put a lofty, heady anger in his tone.

"What the hell are you doing, Corporal?! Do you somehow think they'll—"

Wrong.

I whirled, drawing my sidearm, sighting up on his brain stem with my red dot. I was the picture of rage, imitating some of the psychos I'd seen in bodycam footage seconds before they drew up and started shooting.

My body language was effectively unambiguous. Forward-aggressive, power walking. "You wanna die today, huh, you ready?! You ready, motherfucker, wanna be my enemy?!"

Without a trace of fear. Meat staggered, his head preceding his body backwards, eyes wide at me. He was so stunned that he didn't even raise his hands more than a few inches, just backpedaling.

Ooh, he did not expect this. No one had ever been brave enough to do that to him before. Be as yoked as you wanna be, but no amount of muscle or bluster is gonna stop the hollow points of Miguel Ramirez, Marine Corps psychopath extraordinare. Meat thought he was the baddest junkyard dog? No, not anymore. He had met his true match with Miguel.

We were at least two hundred yards away from anyone, equidistant from both bases. By now, someone had to be on the roof of HQ watching us with binoculars, but no help would come running for Meat this time, not if the QRF team was currently spilling the beans to Nakamura. No matter how much Meat yelled or hollered for aid, he was now seconds from death… and if we stayed here long enough with Meat at gunpoint, Nakamura would send a truck to make an arrest. And if that happened? They would accept me with open arms back at HQ. Even if I had just drilled Meat dead, right there.

The math of this equation was fully understood by Meat. His life was in my hands, and it would only continue at my whim, and he knew it. I saw the realization land in his eyes that if I were pushed even one more inch further, he died. It was about that moment Meat realized he may have just terminally screwed up.

Keeping the pressure high, I defined why I was pissed, to de-escalate. "Celestia stole everything from me, Meat! God damned everything! Planet, family, home, species… everything! So if I die… I will die fighting her! I am NOT dying to you," I said, flicking my eyes downward at him in a judgmental way, "you of ALL fucking people… with your disgusting hands wrapped around my throat!"

I jabbed the gun at him two-handed in center-axis stance, stepping his way again. He backed up a few more steps, his hands slowly raising. His head turned away from me an inch as his eyes watched my gun.

As I lingered a quantum needle between my brain and his, on the very poised edge of stabbing him into oblivion, the intrusive thought pushed its way to the forefront: it would be so easy to go off script here. Just half an inch. Just four pounds of pressure, and this soul abuser's mind would simply twist apart into threads of cosmic dust.

But no.

Meat's time was elsewhere, further down the temporal stack. That quantum needle was not mine to thread. Meat was not going to kill another person ever again. He could wait his turn. He could enjoy what little life he had left.

Instead, I made him jump with the ferocity of my voice. "Final offer, First Sergeant! Did I make a mistake in siding with you?!"

For most people… the pulling of a gun would've been the terminal end of a relationship, but this guy? He was a psychopath, bona fide. They don't really operate on the same emotional levels you or I might. All things to them are transactional, and… right here? Ooh, emotional as I was, I threw him a lifeline. In a way, what I just said was an offer of true loyalty.

Meat may have kicked the crazy pitbull a little, with me. Crazy or not though, dire circumstances being what they were? I still wanted to be his pitbull. And who wouldn't want a badass, psychotic junkyard Marine between themselves and a home invader? Hell, wouldn't you? If someone was about to kick in your front door, wouldn't you want Miguel Ramirez to stand between you and the bad guy, sworn into your service?

Yeah. Yeah, I think most would. Meat sure as shit did, I think I was the only man who had ever scared him.

"Look," Meat grumbled in upward inflection, lifting both hands in a placating way, to show he was unarmed. He grimaced at the ground for a flash of an instant, probably feeling almost physical pain in having to eat crow. "I thought you'd sold me out, Ramirez, that's all. Clearly, you didn't."

That was probably the closest anyone had ever gotten to an apology from this asshole in his whole life, but hey, I'd take it.

I held eye contact for a few seconds in warning, working my jaw left and right in furious consideration, before… holstering my pistol. His shoulders relaxed slowly. I took my eyes off of him and stepped around the hood toward the driver side. When I reached the open driver side door, I grabbed it, and turned to make eye contact with him, issuing a final warning.

"Marines belong to God, Meat. You would do well to remember that before you touch me again. He works through me."

I got back into the truck. He sheepishly rejoined me, busying himself and saving face by flipping through the discharge paperwork.

And I drove.

Up in Simmons's sparse conex office, I related the entire story, beginning with the most important things. By the time I got into the deeper details though, Simmons was only half-listening to me; his primary focus became the discharge paperwork and their attached eldritch photographs… and… the final page of the packet, which I will now read in full:

TERMS OF SURRENDER:

The intended recipient of this message is Mister Kyle Simmons of Harbor Island. If you are not the intended recipient, please ensure safe delivery with all due haste.

The United States Army Judge Advocate Corps demands the unconditional surrender of all men so named in this packet. Do note that a new state of existence for our species demands a departure from standard judicial procedure.

Typically, a conviction of these charges would carry the death penalty. However, despite the overwhelming and irrefutable evidence confirmed by numerous military and civilian eyewitnesses (PON-E Act, 2018), these charges will not be formally prosecuted should the following deferral conditions be met:

TO ACCEPT THESE TERMS OF SURRENDER: Cross the Harbor Island land bridge, unarmed, no later than 1200 hours on this day, 26 August 2020.

DEPOSITION AND TRANSPORTATION: Misters Kyle Fredrick Simmons and Leonard Timothy Corsi are to provide a deposition directly to Special Agent Michael Foucault, in order to support the edification and exoneration of Colonel Carlos J. Velasquez. All apprehended individuals will then be transported east of the I-5 Interstate Highway, where they are to be released, unharmed.

IF SURRENDER IS GIVEN IN GOOD FAITH: The accused will be provided a set of vehicles, food, civilian clothing, and gasoline. These articles are to be issued by lawful agents of the Department of Homeland Security. The accused will then be issued further probationary stipulations:

After such release, the accused are FORBIDDEN from crossing west of the I-5 Interstate Highway, or from joining any military or paramilitary organization. Special exemption is to be granted ONLY in extenuating circumstances. Exemptions or revocation of these restrictions will be determined at the sole discretion of custodial officer Special Agent Michael Foucault.

Should any of the accused exercise further UNREASONABLE FORCE upon any other person, LETHAL FORCE may be applied in the interest of preserving life. Cases of lawful self defense by the accused are to be examined on a case-by-case basis at the sole discretion of custodial officer Special Agent Michael Foucault.

REFUSAL OF THESE TERMS OF SURRENDER, in part or in full, AT ANY TIME, is grounds for SUMMARY EXECUTION FOR THE CRIME OF TREASON, in the interest of preserving the lives and good health of Harbor Island's residents. This execution is to be carried out at the sole discretion of custodial officer, Special Agent Michael Foucault.

Personally, gentlemen:

I would advise strongly against further escalation.

Consider the well being of your men. We are not asking for you to relinquish your command over them, and we are not demanding that you suffer. We only demand good conduct toward your fellow human beings, and this is not an unreasonable condition.

Should you adhere to these very fair terms, you will be spared, and you will live relatively well. Should you elect to resist justice however, then you shall be dead before nightfall.

It is truly as simple as that.

Signed,

TJAG General M. 'Athena' Lewis
Judge Advocate General of the United States Army

Yeah. She held a formal rank in the United States military, as a lawyer. Are you surprised? She was programmed to be a lawyer, folks. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, the other tenth is a tank, and Mal has both.

To lend to the credibility of her position, the DD-214s were accurate to the letter; home addresses, a list of educational achievements, reasons for separation, and a big ol' checkbox next to "BRAZILIAN CIVIL WAR" as the context for their discharges.

The criminal charges for Simmons alone: 33 counts felony murder, 2 counts murder.

Again and again, Meat cycled through the photos in a fascinated, morbid curiosity that seemed to hurt him every time he tried. He averted his gaze occasionally. It was hard for him to look through someone else's eyes. He had probably never done it before.

I explained Dresden's confession to Simmons. For all they knew, I had prevented these forms from reaching Nakamura, which meant I was the singular reason Meat wasn't presently handcuffed to Bashar's favorite radiator up in the HQ building.

"You're in here too, apparently," Simmons said, as he slid my DD-214 over to me. I looked at it like its mere existence surprised me, because it did; Mal didn't tell me it'd be there. I rested my fists on his strategy table, leaning forward over my charges, reading by candlelight.

Multiple counts felony murder. One count kidnapping, false imprisonment, hi Spin Drift.

That last one put real frustration on my face. One count involuntary manslaughter.

Holding a candle for you, Felix.

"Man, that..." I shook my head. With a miserable sigh, I looked up at Simmons and Meat in the dark. "They're... well informed. Think they really would push the land bridge for this?"

"No," Simmons bit out, also leaning forward on the table, frowning at me as he tapped his finger insistently on the surrender terms. "This threat is a bluff. If he's working with that AI, they aren't gonna kill those Guardsmen out there to get to us, and Velasquez knows that. Knows a lot more about Celestia than he lets on, that guy."

I pushed my tongue against my lower teeth, thinking. "This proves one thing, at least."

Simmons tilted his head, lifting his brows in question. "Hm?"

I shrugged. "They're not writing you off yet. They don't want you to die."

"Yeah," Simmons agreed, nodding, looking at Meat. "But kicking us out of here makes us more likely to upload. I see their game here. If they're getting testimony from uploaded people, then obviously it's Celestia pulling their strings, so you were right, Corporal. That AI is behind this."

And finally, he says the thing he knew from the start.

I sighed again, shaking my head with a frown at my discharge form. "Whole planet's burning. She's behind everything."

"You're spot on. These aren't even lawful dishonorable discharges. Not without a trial."

"Well, it's not valid, then," Meat said, crossing his arms, looking at Simmons with both eyebrows raised, as if that settled the matter.

Still thinking like criminals, thinking the mere bureaucracy of legal structure would save them. Killed a witness to cover up evidence, killed civilians knowing the chaos of war would mask them. Time to crank up the heat, and work against the infantile belief that they could just kill their way to a solution.

"I just had a thought," I said quietly, trying to redirect Simmons away from Meat's sycophantic soothing. "About Celestia, and what her intentions may have been here."

They both looked at me intently, waiting for that anti-AI wisdom I'd grown famous for.

I gesturing back and forth between them with a bladed hand. "Years ago… you guys did this thing in Brazil, and I—"

They both visibly bristled. I lifted my hands defensively.

"Hey, I—... I'm not judging, man, look at my own rap sheet, I'm just saying! … Why wait until now to spring this on you?" I jabbed my whole hand at the photos. "She had this Reid guy's brains, what... right away? She could've had you carted off to Leavenworth, years ago. But she lets you keep your career, despite everything? Why would she do that?"

"Right?" Simmons said warningly. "You just gonna ask questions, or do you have a theory?"

"Maybe Celestia expected you guys to shoot those people. Maybe she let you think you got away with it. Maybe she didn't have you guys arrested, for a reason."

I watched Simmons work his jaw around as he stared at the photo of Russell and Dresden, trying to reason that out. He leaned forward on his fists, closing his eyes as he wracked his brain on that exact point.

Deep thought… okay, deep thought is good… reason it out, man… break the programming...

Meat squinted at me, then opened his friggin' mouth to break Kyle's concentration. "Corporal, you're way out of line talking about that shit, you weren't even there." His head turned. "Kyle?"

You are literally worse than Alabaster, you fuckin' asshole.

Simmons looked darkly up at Meat. He was clearly annoyed with the interruption, but he waited for Meat to continue.

"I just had a thought too, sir. The Colonel might just let this guy walk right in. They were accusing him of this shit, and he might be willing to let the Feds in just to clear his name."

Simmons didn't appear to hear that, because halfway through Meat's first sentence, I saw Simmons realize something about his previous train of thought. Clear as day. His face shifted into anger. He glared suddenly at his own discharge form again. His white teeth exposed themselves. He growled.

Meat and I both tilted our heads at him curiously, asking almost simultaneously:

"What?"
"What?"

Simmons stared out the door into the rain he hated so much. Then, back at the forms on his table. Out at the rain again. Conflicted. Indecisive. He knew he had a problem, but didn't know how to solve it without accepting surrender. Without giving up control to someone else.

Control.

Simmons balled his fists and slammed them on the table. "This AI cunt just kicked the wrong fuckin' beehive."

Simmons turned toward his bunk on the other side of the joined conex crates. Panting, he stooped down to a black plastic container, peeling the yellow top off of it with force. That sent it flying across the room, where it bounced off of Meat's boot, then skittered sideways to rebound off the fire extinguisher resting by the door. It fell over and clanged.

"Hey!" Meat shouted, his arms flinging out before him, taking offense.

The Major ignored Meat.

"We collected food for those chickenshit kumbaya Colonels out there, Velasquez, Jennings, General Peters, those Kings of Brazil. And when all that food was in one place? Had to guard their food, had to put up with those medieval allegories, his talk of the Romans, the Hundred Years War, military logistics… all code for equal share with edible bottom-feeders! I talked to General Peters, Meat! I told him I wanted us out, wanted nothing to do with them after Arujá. Refused! Should've known, should've known! Fuckin' Velasquez 'trusts' me, breaks OPSEC with me. Mortars and sirens... all damn night!"

I exchanged glances with Meat as Simmons loudly ranted. Meat shook his head at me, because he didn't understand. I tilted my head with a hand shrug toward Simmons, like, 'Can you stop this?' Meat shook his head, frowning at Simmons's back. 'Nope.'

"Sir?" I asked.

Simmons wrung an open hand beside his head like a claw, all of his fingers splayed as he worked himself up some more, yelling into the container. "Shut the fuck up, Ramirez!" He swallowed, breathing hard. "She knew I'd shoot those people! Knew! Meanwhile, that…" He threw his hand in the direction of HQ, hesitating briefly as he tried to find the right words. He wheeled at us, looking crazed as he balled his fists by his cheeks, before flinging a finger south, sneering with disgust, his voice turning childish and mocking. "That namby, la-dee-dah bastard's over there, in his air-conditioned office, drinking his coffee, reading his books! Being her golden boy, keeping the snacks out there nice and fresh! Watching me burn down in this hotbox! I kept his food nice and safe from the weekend warriors, same as I did with the Armadas, the favelas, those fuckin' civilians. But now that I'm not useful anymore? She's gonna throw me into the mud?! Pull the eject handle now!"

Simmons threw himself back toward the container with a vengeance, digging again.

Meat looked at me again, a slackjawed lifting of both brows, to communicate that this was well above and beyond baseline at this point. This pure, desperate lunacy was concerning even him.

"A sacrificial lamb!" Simmons yelled, kicking the plastic container several times, fissuring it all the way up to the lip. "Gonna make some kinda deal with the Devil! Mortars – all – fuckin' – night! She knew! She put those people there, in our way!"

But he didn't have to shoot them. If there were other options available, like driving away, Celestia expectations and weighting didn't make it reality until he committed. Could have kept driving. Could have ignored the rock. But compromised morality was always gonna pull over and start shooting, and so she put compromised morality there.

They had called the convoy to halt. Turned around. Got out. Brushed off Russell. Then killed those people. Dresden confirmed it. That meant four separate inflection points of decision, four separate chances to offramp from his ideation, from the moment he generated it. Common law accounts for this, you know. That many chances to turn around, refused?

In other words, he can blame Celestia all he wants for tilting the scales, but at the end of the day? He pulled that trigger on that crowd, despite multiple cool-off periods, and new information.

That makes it first degree murder. Premeditated.

Simmons stopped digging for half a minute to just breathe, panting for his frustration. Then he drove his boot repeatedly into the corners of a second container, destroying it fully, good and proper. Simmons dove down and tore the top off this next one, no longer just sifting through the junk. Now he was haphazardly chucking stuff out to unload. Looked to be sentimental items. Souvenirs. Books. Journals. Magazines. Little statuettes. And toward the bottom of the container, Simmons picked up a wooden hinged box, about a foot long.

That made him pause.

Holding it high, he glared at it like it was offensive… and then he threw the thing with force at the metal wall by the door, causing the two wood pieces to split off its hinges. Meat and I both flinched away from the throw. A bottle of amber Blanton's whiskey rolled audibly out of the box over the plywood floor. It rolled further on out onto the conex catwalk as Simmons went back to raging, and throwing junk about.

"Fuckin' Velasquez, breaking OPSEC for me, telling me all that shit! Didn't protect me at all like he said, it didn't work!"

Didn't change who you were.

The bottle fell down to the blacktop outside with a tinkering crash.

The sound made Simmons startle up from the container again, his hand flying to his hip-holstered sidearm before he realized the sound was his own doing. Then he reached back into the ravaged container one last time, gasping in relief as he found what he was looking for.

In his hand was a bullhorn, red and white, with a microphone dangling from it by a cord. Simmons flicked the power switch, then tapped the mic button briefly to test it. It squealed, signaling battery, and he started chuckling.

Simmons spun toward us once more, grinning with a mad glee, like finding this thing was some grand victory. "Ahh-hah?!" He flicked his arm at us to follow him as he wiggled the bullhorn up in the air, lumbering into his gait, probably because he had just hurt his leg with all that kicking. "Newwwwws tiiiiime! Time to make ourselves nice and unproductive!"

I frowned seriously with Meat, who looked unnerved. We followed Simmons out into the rain, stepping onto the balcony overlooking the Rec. I took another deep breath of smoky air, prepping myself for the worst case.

I wanted to stop this. Wanted to tell these men in the yard that they had a path of freedom. But… if I pushed any further, I might end up dead too, and my cover would be blown. My time to save lives here was the five weeks I spent value drifting these people, because we couldn't just martyr Simmons out by sniping him. Not before, but especially not now, not with the enemy at the gates.

Ecological structures require broader nuance in their solutions, more than simply 'kill the boss, and I win.' Tribes don't work like that. We're all gradients of belief in relation to each other, and this place was deeply toxified. Simmons wasn't the whole problem; his cultural position was to be a perpetually armed victim of circumstance, paid in arrears, which he graciously shared with his subordinates who followed his every instruction. Sniping Sugar Daddy would have led to chaos and bedlam, then mass killings outside amongst the Guardsmen in retribution.

Most of these men in the Pantry adored Simmons. He was a Psyops Major, folks. So long as everyone stayed scared of his command over these well fed, well armed men, he realized he had ultimate veto power over any decision made on base. Our only option to save the men had been to vie for Simmons to surrender; to make resistance look utterly hopeless. If we killed him, they would vow vengeance. So he had to die last, or not at all.

He had just said no.

I couldn't help myself but to look around at all the soldiers here, realizing that none of them were going to get a fair chance to live through this. Maybe they might, if they could see and read the surrender offer, but… how? We had discussed air-dropping pamphlets, but that would've led to in-fighting, and we'd lose the element of surprise doing that, and they'd all end up dead anyway, and the Pantry usually ended up burning down in those simulations.

Mal had warned me that this was the most likely outcome, despite everything. Murderers? Sure, one and all, every single one of 'em. But once again… in the eyes of eternity, your mistakes shouldn't be forever. If you have the capacity for change, and you want to be better to your fellow man... why should we destroy that?

Prime example? Y'all know Dresden's been in this audience this whole time, right? Since day one? Don't worry man, I won't out you, that's your prerogative. Thank you for showing up as always. But he's a perfect example of someone coming back from the edge of darkness, and good on him for it. How do you do that without a chance?

All these guys… just… they all looked very familiar to me, you know? Don't you realize what the simulations of killing these men meant for me? I already had to watch them all die, a lot. I'd already killed them all more times than I could remember, I knew it could be done. Now I knew why it should be done. So it would be done.

It didn't desensitize me. The opposite.

I didn't just undergo combat training. Remember, I learned and explored this base by day, and by night, I trained with Foucault, the simulation changing subtly every time.

You want to know why the firefight kept changing, for that first month, until we locked in the best route? Observer effect.

The more I learned about this base, and about the people on it… the fewer people would be in the firefight sim. The mere knowing things about these guys shaved the suffering down. Changed the future. Day by precious day, I fought for these people by learning all I could about them; the guys in the Rec, Filben's Guardsmen adepts in the bailey, and especially Casey's Guardsmen in QP... because you work the most likely successes first. Soul triage.

If nothing else, we were gonna save those Guardsmen.

Piece by piece. Soul by soul. You learn about every life, and figure out why it is precious. Every life counts, so look at all of them, even the ones you don't like, even the ones who won't make it. They might still have something useful to teach you.

You might better a life by just examining it. Might. It changes how you act in regard to it.

Sometimes, as a cop, you can show up, and say and do all of the right things, and still watch it go to shit. Rhetoric is not magic. It takes time to convince people to change, time we weren't always given. The only thing that could've better saved a situation like this was to get the call out here much sooner, before it escalated, and that had not been allowed. By whom?

So... we were here. It had come to this.

Simmons fumbled with the bullhorn on this balcony at the corner of the Rec. Everyone in the Rec looked up at him. Meat called down and ordered the gate guards to call Filben's bailey guys inside for a meeting. The patrol team looked over from the third floor on the opposite aisle; they were checking locks, but halted in place to watch Simmons with curiosity.

His angered expression demanded attention.

Finally, the Major got himself mentally organized enough to start up a speech, calmer now.

"News time," barked the Major, firm and resolute. "And today it's a doozy, boys. To tell it short: That so-called government agent outside has overstepped once again. Kidnapped Lieutenant Dresden, and coerced him to talk about our private business, so now we are in hot shit with Velasquez, and all of his men. So here's what we're going to do. I am not one to roll over and take it up the ass, and you know—"

Fireworks interrupted him, popping into the sky to the north east from the northern gantry crane. Everyone looked up from the yard, watching for the colors of the fireworks. White... red... red. Attack observed. The base's worst nightmare, come to pass.

General Lewis had made her displeasure known. From across the water, this speech of his sure didn't sound like surrender. To Mal's fluffy, sensitive ears, this speech sounded like the drums of war. He started yelling; she presented consequences.

Mind, it was only about 9 AM, so this was way ahead of schedule. This was Kyle's final warning not to use his Psyops training to kill these men, these unknowing hostages, by galvanizing them.

We heard the sound of boots on plywood from above as the wall sentries ran toward the Rec yard. One sentry slipped on the wet plywood in his haste, sliding head first toward the railing, where he grabbed onto it with a curse. As he lifted up his head and stood, he grabbed the top of his helmet and called down to us. "Attack warning! Attack warning, east side! Two tanks, Major! Three, four!" He looked again. "Shit, no... seven! Black paint, no red stripes. Maybe they're Ludds?!"

With an annoyed growl, Simmons pointed at me and Meat, then at the ground as he trotted backwards. "STAY!"

He took the bullhorn with him as he stomped for the perimeter staircase to his right, heading up to join the sentries and see for himself what was coming for him. He peeked over the sandbags, and only for a moment, before he ducked down the stairs again, coming below the skyline to stand on the steps. He faced aside from us as he watched the sentries, waiting for more information.

I knew what they saw across that channel, even before the sentry relayed it verbally. Four Strykers and three Abrams tanks had rolled up unopposed out from the city, revealing themselves through thick layers of blue smoke. The blue smoke indicated peaceful intention, and their turrets were reversed. They would stop, stand unviolated on the opposite harbor, and idle. They would do this in full view of the defensive line, unafraid of anti-tank fire. Shock and awe, but weapons cold.

Carlos would not give the order to fire, and his men were loyal, and observant, and disciplined. They understood the smoke color code, and Carlos understood the mechanism here. This was not an assault; this was parlay, medieval style. No malicious intention yet; merely a chat. Come to the wall, hear ye, hear ye.

All his favorite books had scenes like this.

I could already hear the distant squeal of mic feedback as Foucault's voice poured out from the tanks.

"Mister… Dresden. Good! You've received my invitation! Friend, I know you've been busy lately, but we have a very important matter to discuss."

And so began the recording, in full, of what happened at that tunnel, for all to hear. The whole thing. Now the whole base would know, mere minutes after Nakamura and Velasquez had finished interviewing the QRF team. The recording would verify the information from that debrief.

The paperwork we gave to the Colonel had explicitly told him that this recording would be supplied before zero hour, and that he should expect Agent Foucault to make an appearance. The QRF team was now in the Colonel's office, listening to and verifying the recording with them, where they would be able to point out factual discrepancies in that audio, if any.

The letter we sent also told Carlos to not invite Michael's tanks to pass into the base, no matter what. It warned Carlos that if it looked like HQ was cooperating with the Feds, Simmons would burn the food down; it said that we had prepared for this, and would operate a contingency in order to keep their food safe. Carlos just had to performatively stand his ground, protect the base no differently than he usually would, and he'd be perfectly fine. That was his job, it's what he was good at. He was a castellan.

So right now, it would look like Simmons still had a bit of time to figure out a solution. So long as he could see the tanks holding position, and not pushing into the base… he would feel relatively safe to reconsider his nosedive, if he so chose.

When Simmons realized what he was listening to though, he decided to drown out the recorded message so his men wouldn't hear it. Couldn't have them viewing Arujá in a different light, after all; that would break the veil. It might make them feel remorse, to hear Dresden's sobbing regrets that he had buried for years.

The men began to clamor.

Kyle flicked up the bullhorn from the perimeter wall and began to speak to the Rec yard again.

"Pipe down and get a grip," he growled, as his face took on a ferocious shift. "Nakamura has anti-tank equipment, we'll be fine. To keep it short, gentlemen: Dresden pussed out on QRF, and he told the Coat… everything. Everything."

He let the final word hang. Simmons watched the men, intending to use silence to build dread. But that silence wasn't as effective as he thought it would be, because every time he stopped talking… he heard Dresden and Foucault.

"Now’s the time, Mister Dresden. Do you have anything to confess? Or do you want to waste my time with—"

Kyle just started yelling into his bullhorn, setting it to automatic, clipping the mic to his uniform so he could gesticulate like a tyrant.

You may notice, I don't swing my hooves around when I get mad about something. I'm more fluid and open in my movements. Kal is too, he's very gentle when he speaks at his Fire. And Luna is. Prominence is. Willow is. Mal. All of us tellers. But pay attention for when demagogues smack their hooves down at a crowd. Simulating violence against their own. They give you a heuristic to look out for, so look out for it. No person who loves you will make a convincing point to you by swinging and swiping in your direction.

That's all this asshole was doing.

"I'm not buying this nonsense that they work for the government," Simmons projected. "So they're not Ludds, or blackouts? So what? Do you think the rules of old still apply, that any government is still valid? Hell no! We are tribes again, tribes, not armies! And here's the math: The tribes outside have spears, and we have food, and they want it for themselves. Simple."

He took a few seconds to let that simple thought settle, then kept going so they couldn't think too much on it.

"You know what? I think Stirrup turned traitor out there. Yeah, all this Arujá business… Erving got chummy with that Colonel, they definitely talked, shared something together. Sharing coffee on that rooftop last week, you've seen 'em, they're close…" He pointed at the tanks. "And I think Stirrup... found himself some well armed friends out there, conspiring to replace us with a bigger set of killers. We're old product. Yet another AI manipulation game, simple as that! Like those fucking mortars, years ago, you think she didn't have anything to do with that?! And now we know for sure, Celestia has somethin' to do... with everything!

"We are the last line of defense," the Major yelled, "against starvation, for our tribe! So why would we, of all people, bow to that AI bitch?! We have done all we can to prevent those unwashed masses, from here to South America, from stealing our chow, dragging it away from us, into a chair! They don't need that food where they're going!" He bared his teeth, leaning into the words with fury. "This piece is ours!"

And the crowd's spirits rose, swept away in fervor. Because if someone else was always the problem, they were infallible.

"Unlike alllll those pussies watching water, they don't know what it's like to slog, those civilians. They didn't choose to be fighters, they stayed home, until the war came home! Us? We chose this! And we did our jobs for her, like good little boys, putting all those people into chairs, under violence she probably helped start, and this is the thanks she gives us?! Mortars?! Rocks thrown at us?! Telling the civilians, probably, with cell phones and those fuckin' tablets, that our convoys have food?!"

He lowered the mic when it squealed, because he brought the bullhorn too close. Then he flicked it back upward. He bared his teeth again; he stopped when he heard my voice from the tanks, amplified and clear as day:

"You ain't gonna get shit from us, asshole."

Simmons pointed directly at me. "This man's Marines, perfect example! They were about to feed us good, here! They were about to give us his ship, and all the food on it. All the Ludds they had on their maps! They knew the score! In this world, you eat, or be eaten!"

He swept his hand out at the tanks.

"Then that man… tried to kill him! And that man, Nakamura—" he roared, pointing at HQ "—taxed that food out from under us! Giving it to the edible! So we will burn this place down before we let AI forces pass out our food to edible men! Not like it was in Brazil! The next step… was always gonna be the leftovers, shooting at us!"

He kept on.

Simmons turned the bullhorn around toward the base, toward HQ, four hundred meters away. "You hear me out there, Carlos?! Let's give her what she really wants! If she really does control which way the wind blows, then watch how she'll thank you for your loyalty! Pre-destination, watch what happens next! If you let those bastards into our base to take our lives... to take our food?! Then we… will… burn… it… doooown!"

A cheer of solidarity followed. I stared grimly up at Simmons, frowning, setting my jaw.

He kept going, screaming in earnest now, filling out the rest of the time of the recording with regurgitations of the same escalated hype. Like a TV news pundit. Kept his audience from gleaning enough context to think for themselves, hitting repeat on his own opinion, drowning out the facts. A justification of mass murder again. An inability to address or mention the murder of Private Russell, the ultimate smoking gun on his criminal conscience. That glaring omission.

And yeah, these men cheered for Simmons now, but so what? So what? These men, cloistered in here, slowly poisoned against self-reflection for years... we never had access to their brains to fix them. Simmons wouldn't let anyone fix them. We tried. I definitely tried. It's much more than some would have given them.

When the confession finished rolling – and when Simmons realized that it would just repeat – he ordered music be played to 'drown out the propaganda.' More Marilyn Manson, because misanthropy was the name of the game, so spool up The Beautiful People. The lyrics might as well have been an epitaph.

To the tune of that crap... I had to watch these guys pass out guns and take up defensive positions. Prep the sandbag trenches in the corners of the blocks. Spun up the MRAP, gave it a quick test drive, loading 50 cal belts into it. All of them ready to die, if they couldn't have control.

Filben's guys were the smart ones. That 'edible civilians' crap didn't rub them too well, so… they played along just long enough to get put back on post, then out of nowhere, they all decided to run the gate all at once.

One of the wall sentries called them out, but by then, Corporal Filben and his guys were too far to recover… or to shoot at, thank the stars. They made it to Hesco Street. So, six lives saved. Thank Christ, thank Luna, thank Cynthonia, and thank Mal... we saved a few more.

They would forever spread the story of Mad Bastard Kyle Simmons, witnesses to the manifesto, an inoculation for the rest. Bless them for that.

We continued prep, regardless of Filben's flight. OPSEC was less of an immediate concern for Simmons, he had always been prepared for a shooting war, so this didn't change much in his eyes. He had the food, and he had himself and his men as willing, self-held hostages. That was all he needed.

At some point during prep, Meat came up to me with a smirk that indicated he understood the irony of what he was about to do. This asshole handed me a replacement HK-416 from their armory. Picked the same exact gun Sergeant Hardt had kept by his side when he died, because it still had some dried blood on it. I realized that the handle smear looked darker than it did in sims, but that was because Mal knew I would clean it. After all, I couldn't have it jamming, or slipping free. So, I sat down in the Rec next to boxes of bullets, and I stacked several mags with fresh, clean ammo, washing every bullet. Inspecting primers. Checking the seals on the necks.

Then I cleaned the gun, inside and out, doing a full run of meticulous oil and wire brushing. I made sure to switch into combat equipment that matched Sergeant Brookshire's as closely as possible.

As I prepared, I thought of Eliza. I remembered that rewind of her and her Uncle Ralph cleaning guns before the Battle of Devil's Tower. I remembered Lieutenant Nancy Upshaw in her helicopter, flying overhead, reporting back to Dresden that camp's position... in good faith. I remembered the slow crawl of Erving and Aaron in that Humvee, hoping aloud that it wasn't Ludds, hoping they could just talk those civilians into evacuating. Remembered Dresden riding out in that helicopter, watching Eliza's civilians fleeing; him deciding that, no, he would not report those people, unarmed as they were. Wasn't worth the risk. They weren't the enemy. Why change that by getting involved?

Thought of Santiago, dead set on a literal Alamo in someone else's house. Same thing. Celestia is all about fractals. It was the same hostage-of-circumstance game playing out at a larger scale.

Through Ramirez, I felt that same dread Eliza had felt. Ramirez was deciding on how to save something beautiful here, in whatever way he could, by blending in with all sides, by being the moderating influence. By trying to relate. Didn't really want to let any more toxicity in, but... didn't really have a choice.

As I cleaned that gun, I reminded myself that Ramirez had a good ending here.

As I finished reassembling my rifle, Simmons made his way over to me from across the Rec.

This man, probably not so good an ending.

"Sir?" I acknowledged him with a somber gallows tone in my voice, pushing my tongue against my lower molars to suppress the look of disappointed anger I dearly wanted to send his way.

"You in good with Casey's men?" the Major asked in a clipped tone, his lips curled inward, brows raised expectantly. "We could use 'em inside. Replace Filben's guys."

Because Casey, outside, hadn't fled yet. Because Casey didn't have enough context to understand what was going on, neither this context, nor that of the Coat, nor that of Nakamura's. Because Simmons was a coward, and wouldn't nut up and ask men to die for him if there was a chance they might say no by shooting him.

The reverberating, dueling announcements had canceled each other out, so Casey's men were in the dark, informationally. Casey didn't even realize that the bailey troops had abandoned post; for all he knew, Simmons could have ordered Filben to send a message out.

With a glance toward the Rec gate, I frowned in performative confusion. "He's your man, isn't he?"

"He is," Simmons acknowledged, "but he spends more time talking to the boots out there than they do with our guys, which concerns me."

"Are they not loyal?"

His features expressed agitation at the accusation in my tone, so he answered the question with a challenging tone back. "Not yet, grunt, they're trial period, what do you think the One-Star is? No, I figured, since you were the last guy to go through Q-P, you might have better luck talking him inside. They don't like Meat, and Dresden and Filben were best with 'em. I know you'll come back for sure, so that just leaves you."

I nodded at Simmons in faux solidarity and understanding, firming up my features. "Alright. I'll go talk with 'em, sir."

"We need every hand we can get in here," he punctuated warningly, his eyes widening at me. "Do your damnedest."

He was already seeing me as an able replacement for Dresden. And speaking to me similarly, to boot. With veiled threats in his tone that consequences were guaranteed if I wasn't perfect. Prick.

"Always," I replied, standing with my rifle and making for the gate. "Semper Fi."

I approached the gate guard, considering him in his gas mask in his final minutes of life.

Roger Lakhani would be the first I would kill.

Please allow me give him special attention first, because that's only fair. Sorry, I know it might hurt to identify with a guy who is about to die, but that's the point. This is me giving you a mere fraction of what I felt, at all moments of this upcoming firefight, so you can imagine the totality of this day for me, in miniature.

Private First Class Roger Lakhani. 28 years old, born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Pakistani immigrants; a fellow Midwesterner, and I felt a special attachment to him for that. His young life hobbies included hiking, biking, and collecting Pokémon cards with his two sisters. He loved the card game, and I do mean, he loved it. He played the Trading Card Game all the time on his Gameboy Advance, all through both wars, and up in this place.

Roger liked to trade his food for batteries with the Guardsmen from the scavenge teams, just to feed the habit. Every time they came into the bailey, he was out there asking for batteries. It was to the point where the Guardsmen knew, grab batteries; Lakhani wanted batteries, Double A. Double bonus if you find coin batteries, he gave double portions for that.

He kept that game on his person for years. The coin battery inside the cartridge had died, so the internal memory didn't work, and replacing it didn't seem to last very long, so… he couldn't save his progress much, if at all. Not an easy game to play without save data, because the tutorial took forever, and he had to replay that tutorial every time he had to replace the batteries, and that tutorial couldn't be skipped. He never expressed frustration with replaying the tutorial though. Not once.

He didn't just play the game to play it. If you have empathy, you know why he did it. It was the one place he felt safe. In the past. With his sisters.

It's why I felt horrible for him, I knew him. It's guys like this I wish I could've reached for, for just a few minutes in private, in a genuine way. Instead, he would be first down in an act of war. That too, I could identify with. I knew what that felt like. The only difference was, I was given the privilege of getting back up and back into the fight.

The least I could do now was to ensure it was painless for these guys.

Screw Kyle Simmons for making me kill these poor men.

I said gently to Roger, with a meant sadness in my eyes, "Roger, please open the gate."

Roger looked at me strangely from under his gas mask. My gallows tone probably confused him. I wasn't sure why he was wearing the mask, I never did ask him. I just pressed my hand down on the top of my hat to settle my nerves. "Please?" I repeated, solemn. "Major just ordered me to go get Casey."

"Lakhani!" Simmons called from across the Rec, when he noticed the Private was hesitating. "He's clear, now open the damn door!"

I think Roger might've thought I was trying to desert, but the go-ahead from Simmons absolved me, in his eyes.

His eyes. I don't want to look away from his eyes.

Roger looked away, hauling the gate back.

I said, "Thank you, Roger."

I stepped into the bailey, which Meat had refilled with guns and men from the 4th. I told Meat quietly that I was getting Casey, and Meat had no reason to believe I had ulterior motives, so he took that. He opened the outside door. I stepped out. He sealed it behind me. I pulled my rifle off my sling, checked the chamber, set it to semi auto. I put my finger just outside the trigger guard.

I imagined forward to the moment I'd step back through that gate, and the things I'd have to do.

I looked at Meussen to my left, about sixty yards north, his face pressed sideways against the fence toward the east. Still trying to hear the confession over the boombox blaring up on the wall.

That's how I knew this would work. Knew it right then. The fact that Meussen wanted to know something beyond his present circumstance spoke volumes about his drive to survive.

Casey and the others were further down by about ten yards, in animated discussion, trying to reason through what all the noise and fireworks were about. They couldn't even see the tanks from there. They didn't know. They didn't know what was going on, or… what to believe.

But I had spent the last five weeks living amongst them, and they knew me as genuine.

They knew me. They believed me.

Come what may, if no one else, I could save these men.

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [The Antlers – Kettering]
🛡️ ~ [Jim Croce – Time in a Bottle]
🤠 ~ [Django Unchained OST – Freedom]

🗡️ ~ Give a dumbass a big sword, and he thinks he's king.

6-08 – Operation Athena's Grace VIII – Gulf of Execution

The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 26 AUG 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase VIII
Location: Harbor Island, Washington
Function A: Sequential conclusions throughout all Set 334DE subsets by Contexts T-1-1-W, T-0-W, and T-1-M.
Function B: Independent human verification of principal Context 0 assertion: "Value set of Context 67DA271 does not preclude systemic collapse as a terminal value in any currently foreseeable projection."

'Please let the dawn be waiting in the underworld,' the blossoms beseech the gods.
'Even though in this world we may know grief and suffering, our dreams shall never die.'
And they fall from the branch in anger.

The Ballad of Puppets – Flowers Grieve and Fall, Kenji Kawaii

A moment of silence, please, for the ones we couldn't save.

The air smelled of smoke. The sky was gray. Dense clouds swallowed the city skyline.

Of course the weather would be perfect; with a suite of drones, Mal had seeded cloud formations offshore. Weather decides everything, so if you decide the weather... you decide everything. You decide what your enemy can and cannot do. Physics precludes their whims.

From the Pantry rang the boom of Marilyn Manson. From the harbor rang indistinct loops of confession. In the air, I smelled the aroma of freshly spent sulfur. From above, the sky threatened rain. Blessed ozone.

In the blacktop fields of Harbor Island, trapped behind a perimeter fence, Corporal Matthew Casey and his five men hung in the balance of eternity. Too low to see the tanks. Too far to hear Dresden's confession. Too confused by the raging drums of war. Too deep in enemy territory to be extracted safely by Corporal Filben or Sergeant Major Nakamura. It fell to me, then. I would retrieve those boys for them, before it was too late.

Imagine the isolation of this outpost, purposeful in its design to ideologically segregate new recruits, or the sick. Such is the way of our human history, for the meek to be shrouded by the corrupt. Such is the way of the quiet middle, to see nothing beyond the maelstrom, so purposefully confused by power. Damn those who suborn others. Damn those who force isolation. To cage a mind is the worst possible crime. It is perhaps the only thing worse than murder itself, for if your soul is caged, you die once every day.

I approached Meussen. He trotted over to meet me halfway, which drew the attention of Casey and his team.

"Ramirez?" said Meussen, the fear in his eyes getting worse at my dour expression. "The hell's goin' on out there, man? What happened out on QRF?"

I acknowledged Meussen's question with a solemn nod of greeting. I wagged my hand at the others to invite them over, making eye contact with Casey as they slowed up. When they saw that I had my rifle in hand, they pulled theirs out too.

"What is it, Ramirez?" Casey asked, his eyes flicking to the Hesco Street across the blacktop. "Just watched Filben's boys beat feet down to Hesco, what's the deal? They going for help?"

Looking between them all, I frowned miserably, letting the dire silence hang. I wanted them to know I was furious with the situation, and scared for them for being in it.

If I were a loyal, all-in, despondent, hateful Miguel Ramirez, the guy Simmons thought I was – looking to go out in a blaze of glory against our AI overlord, damn the cost – I would have said, 'come with me, I'll explain on the way.' That man would have walked them into the Pantry, limited their choices, and sealed their fate. But because Ramirez was a little more complex than Simmons had thought, he was long inoculated against such self-destructive impulses.

I delivered a different message. With each sentence, I met a different set of eyes.

"Dresden confessed. Helped Simmons murder 34 civilians in Brazil, plus a Private in the 4th, for not taking part. The Coat held us up out there, told us he was gonna arrest or kill every man inside the Pantry. And he has tanks outside, and a full platoon of operators." I looked at Casey again, punctuating the exposé. "The Coat said he's sparing whoever stays out of his way. And I really want you to. Please."

Casey's gaunt, tired face fell into an open-mouthed dread, staring through me. I could see the muscles in his cheeks sag. When he met my eyes again, he asked, "Who's he coming after? He got targets in mind?"

"Just the Arujá culprits. The Coat gave me some DD-214s, they're legit, home addresses, training history, everything. Signed by a JAG general. No way some blackouts just know all that, man. At worst, Coat's working for the AI, but at best, the U.S. government is still out there. But... it's probably both, given everything."

Casey nodded nervously at the Pantry gate, then at me. "Okay, so…? That means if we stay out here, we'll be fine, right? We can just… not get involved. AI won't kill us for just standing here, right?"

I watched them all carefully. I drew in a deep breath and let it out slow, shaking my head with a worried tremble in my voice. "Simmons ordered me to bring you guys inside, and… he doesn't plan to stand down. Filben read the room, realized he would've been a hostage if he stayed. The wall guards are on alert for runners now, they'll shoot you."

Casey glanced up above to check the wall, wondering if the guys up top really would shoot him in the back if he ran. He shuddered, looking like he was about to cry. "So… what do we do then, Ramirez, are we just fucked out here?"

"No," I said firmly. I put my hand on the back of my hat, pushing it down against my head and holding it there; I was hurting internally at the dread blooming on his face, and I wanted to remedy that. Taking in a deep breath, I straightened up. "Let me help you leave, Case. I'll distract 'em, you run. Please. It's the only way this works."

The QP squad looked at me all at once, horrified, like they couldn't believe that I come to blows with the guards just to give them a chance. Meussen made it into some words about it first. "Man, no, that's bullshit! We ain't leaving you out here to die, man, fuck that!"

"God damn it, listen to me!" I winced, wrangling my volume down so the wall sentries above wouldn't hear me, though they probably couldn't hear anything over the music. With pain in my eyes, I waved my finger around at them.

"You guys cannot conceive of the things I've had to see, or watch happen, in this war. But I didn't lose myself, I know I didn't, same way you didn't. Because every time I shot at someone, every time, I had a little voice inside me that said… 'what if I'm wrong? What if this is wrong?' And there's nothing wrong with that voice, that's a healthy voice, you need that. Guys like Meat? Simmons?!" I pointed behind me. "They… the things Dresden said of them?! Ordering a boy executed, for not shooting at civilians?! Meussen, they don't hear that voice! You guys do not belong in there with them!"

"And you do?!" Meussen shoved me. "Gonna die for these assholes, they worth that to you?!"

I simply staggered back and looked at him miserably. "It's not about them, you idiot!"

Hold the line.

I let my rifle fall from my hands into my sling so it would dangle between us, and I put both of my hands on Meussen's shoulders, shaking him. He shuddered at me, his eyes widening.

"It's about you," I said pleadingly. "This is why I didn't die, Thomas. Why I'm still here, still breathing. If I can salvage something good from this, it should be you guys. So please don't waste this gift, I'm begging you. Please don't make me watch you die here, I can't go through that again."

I had tears in my eyes by the time I stopped talking. I meant every word.

"Meussen," Casey said quietly, putting his hand on the kid's shoulder, his voice barely audible under the despondent defeatism of Manson.

Meussen looked at him.

"Let him," Casey breathed. "He needs this."

I let go of Meussen and just started explaining the plan. "I'm gonna go to that fence. Meat's at the bailey, waiting. He thinks I'm coming back with you, so just play along. The moment I turn right... you go left, and start running. I'll hold the door closed, and if… if you hear shooting, don't worry. Just keep running, don't look back, it's me."

Meussen grabbed my shoulder. "No!"

I caught his wrist and twisted it into a control lock, throwing him aside into a stagger. "It's your only chance, man, live! Help Knockie keep these guys alive, that's my final request of you! We gotta go, it needs to happen now, no more waiting!"

I turned, power walking. Couldn't look them in the eyes anymore, I needed my head in the game. They hesitated for about ten yards before they jogged to catch up. It's not that I didn't want to give them more time to think, it's that there wasn't any time left. Michael was already en route. We were already past the point of no return.

Had to go. Had to start. Had to get on track, follow the simulation, and get this over with.

I felt a headache coming on. I took long, deep box breaths as I started across the fifty yards to the Pantry gate. I thought of my wife, watching. Thought of the guys behind me. Thought of Foucault, and what he was about to do. What he was probably already doing. If I screwed this up, he'd die in the next forty seconds, and me too right along with him.

If not for the blaring music, everyone on base would have been able to hear the series of four distant thumps from the hills to the west. They launched in time with the beat, blending in with the percussion. I looked up into the clouds and I said a little prayer.

Gonna live up to your trust in me, Cynthie. Gonna crack this mind prison good.

Michael Clarence Foucault stood in the back bay of Osprey 8228, the craft that had once taken everything from him. All was silent but for the creak of the airframe. His dark world rocked under red military lighting as the craft shifted and banked, its engines cold. He wore dull gray, form-fitting tactical gear over a thermal-regulated cold suit, and he breathed the tinny scent of fresh oxygen through a mask. Its straps dug into his face.

The red light winked off. All was dark now.

Michael braced his stance. The bay ramp cracked open to reveal a bright sun. A harsh slice of wind blew the man back, the morning light of Sol cutting in from the east. The mission timer crawled as Michael gazed down into the raw, sky-bound ocean of clouds. The cold yawned upwards, the blinding chaos of nature threatening to devour him. The old spy considered the frigid, hungry abyss. Ice clawed at his equipment.

No time for fear. He had a mission.

To fall from the rarified air of 20,000 feet, performing Terra's final HALO jump, would be a hell of a way to die. If that happened, that story might be told for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, or even millions of human years. And if Michael took even one evil bastard from the world? It could only ever cement his eternal legacy in the history books of Perelandra.

The Oyaresu would know who he truly was.

The engines were cold and silent, their blades operating on wind power alone. A three minute glide had brought him to this point. His augmented eyes could see straight through the aircraft, so he looked backwards toward the target location, bracing a hand on a wall strap. With a whim, Michael activated a simulated long distance zoom, punctuating with a leftward squeezes of his free hand.

A flick of his eyes focused the image on me.

He could see me in blue silhouette. Casey's boys in green. Meat, Simmons, the rest inside; blood red.

A small inset view appeared in his HUD. First, a close-up of me stepping out of the bailey. Michael shifted his view again, twitching his head to the right half-an-inch, observing Meat. He fast forwarded, then back again, watching the target zone flow back and forth, taking note of their recent observations.

Another consideration took him, seeking more general information. He twitched, summoning overhead views of the entire Harbor Island base. Two quiet, camouflaged copter drones resided just inside the low cloud layer. Their FLIR periscope cameras provided him with redundant, dual-perspective overwatch.

Lines denoted sight and focus for all armed sentries. Michael saw further color-coded fields-of-view, each denoting the level of alertness of each man. Michael studied them. He reviewed the briefing scans, viewing how all of the angles would shift at the diversionary inflection point. He re-verified his timing and flight path accordingly.

Long before augmentation, long before world-devouring AI, his mind already saw war in this way. To see it rendered in lines, in colors, was merely fascinating. A useful heuristic, in any case.

Mal asked him: "Would you like to hear something funny, Michael?"

He paused the briefing projection. "Will it help?"

"It couldn't hurt," she hedged.

"Go."

Dresden's voice played along with a HUD subtitle:

JULIAN 'COYOTE' DRESDEN, 1LT. (RET.)
Observing Context: T-1-1-W | 0743 – 11 AUG 2020
"You know, Kyle's gonna hate this, Knockie. Hate it like he hates rain."

Michael snorted into his mask.

Rain described Michael full well here. Rain ruined plans. Rain fed men. Rain fell from the sky. A necessary inconvenience.

He neared the drop point. The peaks of city skyscrapers cut through from below the endless clouds, their infinite climb arrested by nature. Blue HUD waypoints appeared in sequence on the ground. All Talon assets were now visible down below, as were the rolling yellow dots in every direction, denoting civilians. Blackouts. Thousands of innocent lives to preserve.

For him, at this moment, they existed as mere points of reference. Not relevant for what he would do next, but intriguing. Motivating.

Sure, Michael didn't ask for this life, or these powers, but… the sheer power in this much information. The absolute knowledge he had accrued about reality was astounding. I'm sure he was having the time of his life.

Michael didn't look at the mission timer to know when to jump. He wouldn't need it. He'd feel it in his gut, he'd drilled this over a hundred times before. The exact moment of execution did not matter, in any case. He could correct his path and speed on the way down to land at the precise inflection point, and he had his specific drop point well in mind. Michael toggled his view to observe it.

Fortunately, he would be wearing an oxygen mask when he landed. It would protect him from the halitosis.

Michael watched the approaching waypoint nodes tick down. He took a deep breath, smelling the tinny oxygen one more time. Then, he pitched forward into the gray void below, once more placing his life entirely into my hands.

Simulation start.

Ten yards. Meat saw me coming. He hauled open the gate two-handed, his muscles bulging as they always did. This idiot still wasn't wearing his armor, not realizing they had already failed the surrender qualifications. After these escalations, he was not making it to noon.

There was a stern glare on Meat's face as he waved me in, hustling me along. He said 'come on,' but I never could hear it over the music. I jogged straight toward him suddenly, making no motion to go around. Casey's guys did as I had asked, wheeling left. I heard their boots stomping through puddles.

The rain picked up suddenly, from drizzle to light showers. The sound of water on aluminum was deafening. White noise. Meat's voice was drowned. The sentries couldn't hear him now.

Meat took his eyes off of me, looking angrily up at Casey's men over my shoulder: "Hey!"

Turning always failed the sims, so I pretended not to notice. Instead, I stepped into Meat's personal space so he couldn't draw up on them, my hand up like I wanted him to get out of my way. My face twisted like I couldn't understand what his problem was; I didn't follow his body language to see what he was looking at.

Meat again tried to work his way around me, pointing. "Ramirez, they're—Hey, listen to me, look!"

"Meat, what are you doing?" I demanded, falling into well-rehearsed lines. I scowled, target-glancing around at the men in the left side of the bailey to verify their locations. "The Colonel could have snipers out here, man, it's not safe!"

Meat didn't want to touch me, my warning of God's wrath still ringing in his ears. Instead, he stepped back from me and tried to step around, pointing ahead. His face was now twice as frantic. "Casey! Corporal, he's—"

I shifted left to block Meat from rounding me. "Meussen?!" I shouted as loud as my lungs could manage. "Private, what the hell are you doing?!"

That didn't compute for Meat. His face scrunched up at me. Why did I say that?

Meat stepped back… back… back… now three yards into the bailey before he stopped backing up. Well positioned, far enough from the outer gate for this to work. Didn't matter where, just as long as he was that far.

I flicked my hands down to my rifle, snapping it up. I pointed it directly at Meat's chest.

"Meussen, no!" I yelled at Meat. "Don't—!"

Fireworks exploded across the fortress, launched from the hills to the west. The pantry was bathed in yellow.

The sentries looked up. Their last sight would be the rain. They would see their end.

My switch flipped. Ramirez was gone. My finger began its squeeze.

Adrenaline. Slow motion. Underwater.

In that infinite second of slowness, Meat staggered back from my rifle in confusion. The fireworks illuminated him in yellow. His eyes locked onto my barrel. He froze in place under the rain. Not understanding. But at the very last moment, I saw the flicker of realization. Hatred began on his face in micro, his facial nerve firing the appropriate muscle groups as he realized what this truly was. Who I was. Why I was really, truly there.

Too late, asshole. Much too late.

With a single clap of my AR, I shot Meat once in his right lung, silencing him forever. Blood burst from his mouth.

Wasting no time, I tracked six degrees left and squeezed again, killing Lakhani. Shot him dead between the eyes through the gate slat, or he'd report to the Rec that I'd gone traitor... and then we'd lose the element of surprise. Ten more degrees to my left, I shot the left side forklift operator, Corporal Alex, putting three rounds into the man's upper chest and neck.

Before I finished firing, four suppressed claps sounded from above, mere whispers in the aluminum rain. Four dead sentries. Two more claps; two dead boomboxes.

Marilyn Manson, your services are no longer required.

Michael released his parachute just before landing. To cushion his arrival, his boots landed onto Meat's shoulders from behind, countering the man's backwards stagger. This crushed Meat's collarbone inward on his ribcage, and I heard the rippling crack and crunch of cartilage as the energy transferred through him in a wave. Michael rode Meat to the ground, his sidearm's suppressor hissing once into Meat's forehead; then a second time, after a split-second of consideration.

By the time Meat was dead, I was already on the third man on my left, fifteen degrees. Four rounds. Gone.

"Left side clear," I mouthed with rage for this pointless loss, knowing Mal's drones were watching me closely from above. Without looking at the chaos to my right, I glided forward, already aiming my rifle at the gate viewport slat.

The parachute had drifted off Michael's back mid-air, which obscured the sight all of the men on the right; they held fire, unwilling to hit Meat. Their mistake. Michael fired through the fabric three times with his sidearm, killing the other forklift driver and two more men.

"Clear right," he growled, just loud enough for only me to hear.

Frantic shouting sounded from beyond the gate. I could hear Simmons trying to reorient his men into cover positions, but the panic and drive to preserve Lakhani split everyone's attention. My shout about Meussen had left the impression inside that Meussen had flown off the handle and blown Meat away.

"Meat!" I shouted, speaking my rehearsed lines, again leaning hard into my Nebraskan accent. "Meat's lungshot! Meussen shot Meat! We need a medic out here, get us a medic!"

That would do.

Still aiming at the peep slat, I spared a moment to settle my hat on my head, ready to fire at the first sign of movement. No one ever got to the slat in time in the sims, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Who knows how much entropy leakage there was in our execution already, given the rain.

Michael lifted himself off Meat with a groan, tearing off his oxygen mask. "Ten seconds," he said to me raggedly. Michael withdrew a breaching charge from the small of his back; I noted his climbing axes on his belt, tools for later. Michael jogged around his parachute to the inner gate, slamming the shaped charge directly in the middle of it with a clang.

Casually, Michael flicked open a knife and stepped back, slicing the bindings off of his climbing axes. He dipped, then cut the sling off of Private Gilcrest's rifle, pulling the weapon up into his hands.

I stepped left and stuffed earplugs into my ears, letting my rifle dangle on my sling as I prepared for more gunfire and waited for the explosions. My hands reached for my weapon. I felt the cold in them.

Three… two…

Both of my hands tightened on my AR.

Four mortars landed on the other side. First, a high explosive fragmentation, which slammed into the middle of all four men who were tending to Lakhani, having dragged him about five yards from the door. The final three mortars; smoke shells, dousing the Rec in doubt and snuffing the fire pit.

The breaching charge detonated simultaneously with the mortars, sending the gate tumbling outwards. This tore it off the conex crate walls by its hinges, the doors spinning face-down after a ninety degree rotation. An earth-shaking clang. The familiar stab of pain came for my chest, which I could safely ignore.

Foucault and I wheeled from each cover position and pushed forward immediately; me on the left, him on the right, capitalizing on their confusion. Snapping my rifle up, I poured semi-automatic fire into the right side at ground level, then up at the top right balcony, not slowing my forward movement. We heard some errant panic fire in return, but nothing effective.

In gaps between my own shots, Foucault threaded two rounds up and to the left, shooting through the smoke, killing the two men on the left-side balcony right next to Simmons. Simmons himself was just outside of view, having stepped back once the shooting started, meaning he could no longer orient himself toward the number of shooters. To induce fear in the man, Michael put one round clean through the conex crate at the corner, which sprayed Simmons with sparks and shards of hot metal.

Kyle flinched, ducking back.

We couldn't kill him yet. If we did that, the shape of the enemy would change, and they would no longer position themselves in defense of him. Better to abuse their defensive instincts; the micromanaging of their behavior by their commander would position the rest perfectly, Our restraint in killing him would stave off total battlespace chaos.

With the window of time Michael had bought me with his fire, I sprinted left into the gym tent, diving behind Meat's personal equipment rack. I sheltered in cover behind stacks of thick metal plates. Just barely got there in time, every time.

Michael sprinted right, moving into and through the firepit area, getting as close to the right wall as possible while gaining ground inward. That would place him well out of the return fire arc, being so close to the food in those further conex crates.

At first, all twenty men had backed up pending fire orders, still not entirely certain how much ground they had lost or who was dead in front of them. Being unable to discern the status of the men we'd killed already, they probably didn't want to risk striking any.

"Return fire!" Simmons screamed, shattering that. "Fire, fire, fire!"

With that direct, vague, and panicked order from Simmons, they had to do something. At the very least, they knew the gate was lost for sure, so that was the safest fire zone. If there were any hostiles entering their compound, that's where they'd be, still pushing through. It was the most sensible target. They all laid into the gate.

Their brains might've caught up with reality, that Meussen probably wasn't involved in this. Ramirez maybe did this. That had to be scaring all of them right about then, because they all heard the stories about me… the Marine who had survived woodland firefights, raided bunkers, and assassinated Luddite military commanders in their sleep. They were about to find out if those stories I told of my hard battlefield choices were true.

The men all fired wildly into the bottleneck anyway. The idea of me pushing into this space alone would be absolutely nuts, smoke or not; a lone gunman might only hold position in cover to get surrounded, pushed from above. To push then was completely unconscionable, veritably suicidal; therefore, 'tactically impossible.'

I still had to be in cover, right?

I was where Talons work best, folks. In that tiny sliver of space before possible becomes impossible.

A second later, the MRAP's M2 roared from the right side of the intersection, filling the center of the Rec with rage. Its green tracers pulsed brightly through the smoke line, tearing glowing streaks in gradient diffuse, the tent shredding open in sine wave. The gun tracked further to its right, its rounds pounding through the crates behind me, embedding themselves into the sandbags within.

Simple loss aversion would protect me from any direct fire; I was far forward enough that there was a conex full of food immediately behind me, and that gunner knew it. Meat's gym plates would take care of any incidental fragmentation.

From a position out of gun track for the MRAP, Foucault fired his rifle through smoke as he moved up from the dead campfire. He killed several more men, then ceased fire just as quickly. That drew heavy, immediate small arms fire in his direction, but given his augmentation and Mal's drones watching from above, standing clear of those shots was a trivial effort. They now thought I was on the right side, so this would bait a push and clear into my corner. It could just be me doing this still, somehow, with a smoke grenade, some frags, and a bit of tactical sense. So clearly... I was over there by the fire pit, now.

Right?

Simmons would think he could wrap this up and go back to the status quo of dealing with the Feds outside. Ramirez had only one axis point to work from, and Simmons had a massive numerical advantage, and a force multiplier in the MRAP to boot. His victory against one single shooter was assured. Pissed as he was? To his mind, this was recoverable.

We'd change that in a minute. I whipped my rifle up toward the other end of the gym tent to guard myself, exhaling the humid smoke grenade gas from my lungs. I held my breath at full exhale and quietly wheezed.

"Frag and go!" Simmons ordered from above me. "Go get the bastard!"

I heard the predicted clatter of frag grenades by the gate, and I curled my legs up close to myself in cover. My body was exposed to the incoming men, only concealed by smoke and the tent, so that I could guard against the frags. It had to be that way; Mal didn't mess around with frags in sims, because to hear her tell it, predicting the trajectory of shrapnel was a pain in the ass. With explosives, better better to be safe than sorry.

They threw eight grenades in total. Every time one went off, my chest stabbed with pain from the compression, the thumps making the smoke shift violently. I kept my head clear and calm, the benefit of our combat drills. After the eighth grenade, yellow fireworks popped again. At that signal, I brought my rifle back up westward toward the intersection again. I waited… waited…

The rapid rush of boots. The rattle and clack of unsecured personal equipment told me their positions.

Two human shapes emerged.

Through the tent doorway, the first man's throat glided directly into my holographic sight. I fired twice, threading a quantum needle through Corporal Cameron's dimensional anchor. Out like a light, just like that, he fell forward on his face, limp. All of his body's momentum shifted him forward, then he rocked back, the armor keeping him from sliding.

Sergeant Brookshire staggered to a halt so he wouldn't trip on Cameron's body. Into that moment of indecision, I dropped three rounds against his chest plate. That knocked the wind out of Brookshire so he couldn't yell, though his gun went off three times at the ground in his panic. I fired twice in return at his waist, where he wore no armor. That severed his spinal column, dropping him. He fell. I gave him three more bullets as he laid on his back, to ensure he would die quickly.

As soon as my final round was in flight, more fireworks burst from the west; the Pantry glowed yellow. Mal's go-code: she had fully updated projections after observing enemy reactions to that fire. This re-verified her projections from training, and informed me that it was safe to move up and execute the next gambit.

Thanks, Mal.

"It's clear!" I called up, imitating Brookshire's airy Texan tonality, no longer using my Nebraskan accent. The rain would do well to mask my mimicry. "It was Ramirez! I got him, but Cameron's down!"

"Pull back!" Simmons called. "God damn it!"

Thank you, Commander Micromanager. Glad to know you heard me wrong.

I heard two more shots of rifle fire from my right; more of Michael shooting through smoke. Two more men killed, to reorient the defensive posture of the remainder. And there it was. Now they realized there were two. Not one.

And if Ramirez was now dead... then who the hell was this bastard?

That was my cue. Enter stage left.

I took my hat off, depositing it safely behind the gym plates. I then pulled Brookshire's helmet off of his head, and this is why I hadn't shot him in the face, and why I carefully wore gear that mirrored his. I ditched my HK-416, collecting his personal M4A1, which I had long drilled with. I replaced his magazine with one of my own, cleared his bullet out of the chamber, and set the gun from full auto back to semi, which I had more drill experience with. Not to knock Brookshire's preparedness – he was facing sim troopers and his commander was an idiot – but my bullets were more trustworthy than his.

I jogged back toward the other men so they could hear my boots running their way. Before crossing the smoke line, I turned right and shuffled left, pointing my rifle up at where Foucault's prior shots came from.

The gun I held looked correct. My uniform was virtually identical. Most of my face was obstructed by my stance. My left shoulder was pointed their way, and I did that range bubba grip that Brookshire liked, where I put my hand over top of the heat guard up near the gas block; that would obscure my face with part of my arm. They wouldn't question that; they were all too used to seeing me with my white hat.

Just in case, Michael was ready to drop what he was doing and drill the first man who pointed my way. Otherwise, he was still setting up for his next maneuver, the one that would strike a very useful terror into the rest. They were still firing, but between those shots, I heard Michael's climbing axes drive themselves through the aluminum of a conex crate. Up, up, and away he went, like a cyborg Batman.

The total picture of the intersection came into my peripheral view as I exited out from the thickest smoke.

I had nine men to my immediate left, all covering the fork that led back to Simmons's office. The MRAP was ahead of me, covering the other fork of the T, with the driver and passenger keeping a keen lookout through their armored windows. The vehicle pulled up just far enough to peek into the left side of the Rec on the ground floor, where they thought they had Michael cornered. From the sound of the climbing axes, I knew Michael was long gone from their area of fire, so when those 50 caliber rounds laid into that lower corner, I was unconcerned for Michael's safety.

The gunner, Private Taylor, blew the fire pit to pieces, covering that entire area with more green death. The smoke was beginning to clear. Fully distracted by the boom of his gun, he couldn't have reacted to what came next even if he wanted to. In the gap of his bursts, I heard boots pound across plywood from above and across the Rec. Still in smoke, Foucault mounted the far balcony railing with a boot, launching himself at the MRAP from above.

The smoke billowed out from behind him in a plume, its tendrils chasing him through the light rain. As he leapt, Michael threw his rifle at the gunner, and the butt collided with the man's face, breaking his nose and stunning him. The rifle tumbled off the back of the MRAP.

While still in mid-air, Michael withdrew his Glock 20, which no longer had its suppressor on. With two barking claps of the pistol, the gunner died instantly; Michael then landed feet first on the roof, yanking a concussion grenade off his chest rig. He whipped it down into the vehicle against Corporal Taylor's chest as he fell, and then Michael rolled into his momentum to get clear.

Wham. The two other men inside died instantaneously. The sonic shock turned their brains, sinuses, and lungs into mulch. Didn't take much concussive pressure to do that in such a tight place, which left the vehicle intact.

From all directions, bullet tracers poured themselves up at where Michael just was. Gone like a ninja, he recovered his thrown rifle and whisked back into dregs of the Rec smoke, well clear of the machine guns on the far corners. There was nothing but a fraction of motion as he eased himself back into gray nothingness, like a living shadow.

While he was still in the air, I had fired three rounds performatively at the vehicle. Then, as the squad suppressed the vehicle, I tucked in close under the balcony beneath Simmons, still outside of the intersection. Unobserved by anyone.

I turned, sighting on the nearest man.

Enfilade position. They were doomed.

My finger settled on my trigger. I aimed, and I squeezed, beginning with the man furthest behind the rest.

One down. Two down. Three down. Four. Well drilled.

Distracted as they were with the loudness of gunfire, they could not have known they were being thinned out. Too much confusion, endless fog of war. Fixated on their target. Freshly horrified by what they had just seen. Micromanaged by a tyrant.

They had not the processing power to conceive of any threat being more dangerous to them than Michael. That was my window. I took just enough time to ensure that none of them suffered. I drew slow breaths, just like I had in training. Steadied myself, and my emotions. I was compartmentalized in the task. Pain threatened my chest with every round, but I could feel for this later.

Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. All gone.

By the numbers. Just how I drilled it. 18 rounds left in my gun, including the one in the chamber.

By the time anyone realized there was something wrong, it was just eleven other men left, plus Simmons. Once my grim severance of self was done, I turned, sprinting left down Main Street like I was retreating in a panic. Two more smoke mortars fell into the intersection, dousing the MRAP, providing Michael the cover he needed to do what came next.

There were two sandbag dugouts at opposite ends of Main Street, set such that they could provide overlapping fields of fire for one another; both positions would be further protected from the other nest by a well positioned sandbag wall at the intersection. There were just three men apiece in those positions; a medium machine gunner in each, plus two riflemen. The next threat to deal with.

Foucault would take the north bunker, closest to the outer northeast corner.

I had the south bunker, at the inner end of the elbow, across from my half of the street.

As soon as the gunners in the dugouts realized that the men in the intersection had been killed, they kicked it into full auto, no longer caring whether they hit the bodies. Rounds skittered beneath and around the MRAP, trying to keep Michael from appropriating it. He wasn't interested in that though, already climbing the balcony with his axes for another Batman jump.

Me? I was on my own for now. No more safety net, this was for all the marbles.

I was almost done with my forty yard sprint to the staircase up to Admin, now well ahead of enemy expectations. If I stayed close to the wall and hurried through the smoke, the staircase would conceal me from the gunners until it was time, and any glimpse they might catch of me would look like a friendly survivor falling back. Michael couldn't see my gunners from his position, but he could suppress them; once done with his climb, he sent two tracers past their faces just in time to cover my advance.

Michael's rifle clapped twice more at the north turret, killing one man. That drew the south gun toward the upper northern balcony, firing at him without much accuracy. The men in Michael's bunker called for fire support from the other bunker, but they were much too far away to be heard over the rain and gunfire. They then tried to signal the other nest's reflective mirrors with their fixed laser, but… infrared smoke. Good luck cutting through that.

With another concussion grenade, the Bogeyman made short work of those two guys in their spider hole.

I trotted up the steps toward Simmons's office and made it up to the first landing. That was when Mal dropped a non-IR smoke mortar directly on top of the bunker nearest me, so she could watch their movements carefully with her FLIR drone. In response to their sudden blindness, the gunner fired madly down Main, sweeping the whole lane with no accuracy. A few rounds tore through the stairs beneath me, cutting red tracer streaks under my legs. They wouldn't aim up higher than that; Simmons and his office laid behind me.

These gunners were past the point of sense, given everything they had just seen. Who knew what was going through their heads, probably a form of 'anything is possible now, assume nothing.' For a soldier with no special forces training, that feeling in a combat situation could only ever lead to panic.

That was the folly of average experience versus the 'crazy' machinations of tactical brilliance. War is geometry with guns, in an equation that changes with time. If you could do that math in your head, and keep track of all the variables, then nothing was insane, just different shades of possible. To an informed soldier, combat was a simple, shifting matrix table of 'I can do that,' and, 'I probably shouldn't do that.'

With no information though, everything on that table becomes, 'What can I possibly do?'

Certainly, they could just keep shooting, hoping they'd get lucky. There was nothing else to do, because they knew nothing else now, so that's what they did.

I remained calm, falling into my training, trusting Mal's faith in me. I took my time to level my rifle at the source of the machine gun fire. I visualized, from memory of VR, the position of the gunner relative to the muzzle flare. I had just one attempt to make this work, and I would be able to send, at most, five bullets. After that, they'd see my muzzle flash and reorient.

It was okay. I had done this well over a hundred times. I aimed, squeezed the trigger once… the machine gun went silent. I waited, and settled. Two seconds went by. I squeezed again… waited, settled. Aimed; Squeezed again…

Waited. Settled. Prepared to return fire.

I felt a pit of uncertainty in my stomach as I stepped back, sheltering low against the landing in case there was any return fire. Pop; yellow fireworks crackled into the sky from the west. Confirmation; I had gotten all three.

Thanks again, bird brain.

These guys must have been very confused by the fireworks. All of their training and drilling had told them that yellow fireworks meant wait for a message, or to signal for rescue. That's why we chose that color for our go-codes. The meaning was inverted. Not 'wait for message;' the burst was the message.

To the Guardsmen outside watching with great concern, the message was just... 'wait, wait, wait.'

Up on the catwalk, I heard footsteps churning metal; the coward Simmons had sent out his five most loyal lackeys to investigate, because M4 reports were notably different from machine gun fire. I moved up to just the last few steps of the staircase, listening to their steps, already aiming through the wall at the men. I had fifteen more rounds in my rifle, and these guys were in single file, so I set my gun to fully automatic.

I crested, pulling the trigger the instant my barrel was clear of the final step, aiming low.

Beginning with the groin of the first man put him into instant shock; the rest wouldn't want to fire through him. I sliced them all in half, killing three instantly when I stepped up, walking my stream to head level. The final two men skittered aside, both struck by over-penetration; one of them nearly fell over the railing in an attempt to get out of the way, leg shot. He rebounded backwards to the wall and stumbled over.

That wasn't exactly to plan. I was supposed to get them all. I didn't panic though, we had a remedy on tap.

I dropped my rifle where I stood and ducked down the stairs, drawing my sidearm and sighting up – I was more accurate with my pistol at this distance, and they might still push me before I could finish reloading. Instead of pressing, I waited for Michael's fire support. As expected, three rifle rounds sliced through the air above me, the sonic crack making me flinch out of reflex.

I really do hate that sound.

One of the two survivors groaned out a death rattle, a pained hiss and a release of air as the round struck his nape. The other man screamed in pain, since he was hunched low against the wall during his move up; Michael's vantage had been imperfect. Simmons tried pushing out when he realized some of his men had survived. A fourth bullet clapped; Simmons yelped as the round clipped his left arm, forcing him to drop his rifle and retreat back into his office.

Abandoning his men, then.

I stepped up quickly, making brief eye contact with the one man who was still conscious. I could read the pain and anger in Dustin's eyes as he failed to pull his rifle out from under his chest, lacking the strength.

Sorry I missed, I thought, shaking my head dismally at him. I'm so friggin' sorry.

It must have looked strange to him... to see me with a forlorn expression.

I placed my red dot over his mouth and pulled the trigger. I sent three rounds, ending his pain. For good measure, I shot the other downed men once each.

No way to stop their bleeding; no reason for me to risk them coming back out of unconsciousness. It was already over for them now, with nothing to be done for their injuries. I couldn't kill them any more than I already had. This was just a humane measure by now.

Michael was already on his way. I could hear the echo of his sprint over blacktop.

Almost clear, almost done. Just one final man to confront.

Just this... person.

I raised my Glock and kept it pointed at the front door of Simmons's bunkhouse, steadying my breathing. I was still mostly calm, and the script I had drilled was just about done. What happened inside… that was going to be Kyle's choice, not mine. We had to verify his intentions. Had to figure out his place in the universe, to make the attempt. Already, we were somewhat deviated from the plan. Still, if there was a problem, we'd get a stream of green flares to tell us to hold back. That didn't happen.

As Michael ran past the office from below, he shouted to me: "Delta, Delta!"

Trigger word. Telling me to shield my eyes in a way Simmons wouldn't recognize.

I closed my eyes and averted, hearing the snapping ping of the grenade spoon against a conex down below. The nine-bang grenade sent its blinding pops in midair before it even reached the door. I could just barely hear Simmons shouting with fright; from his perspective, it looked like a ball of lightning was coming straight for him.

Simmons burned almost all of his sidearm's magazine at the doorway in a literal blind panic, pausing intermittently between bursts. Half of the bullets cut through the wall in front of me. I counted the shots. Eighteen rounds in that Beretta, if memory served, and he had only let out fourteen. Michael made his way to the stairs behind me, and I tore my helmet off while waiting for Simmons to burn himself out in there.

I needed to be a mirror for this. My true self. No more masks. No more identities. No more games.

Simmons let out his last four bullets. I heard his gun go click, no doubt the loudest sound he had ever heard in his life. I was grateful for that indicator, brought on by his own impatience. Reloading would be painful with his busted arm, so it would take him some time, much more than he had. Into that window I stepped, turning the corner.

I aimed my pistol directly at Kyle's face.

Simulation terminated. Back to reality.

Simmons could hardly see, blinded as he was, but he knew a dark shape was coming for him, visible around the edges of his retina. He threw his gun at me in desperation to buy himself some time. He couldn't imagine I wouldn't fire at him, so the resistance was merely token. I deflected his gun with the flat of my wrist.

"Not that easy," I growled, stepping toward him fearlessly.

When Simmons realized I hadn't shot him yet, he charged me, but I was ready for him. I tucked my pistol far back by my hip as I kept it pointed at him, reaching out with my other arm to deflect his arm and palm his chest. At the same time, I planted my boot against his thigh. He couldn't get a grip with his bicep all torn up, so... I flung him back, and easily. He landed hard on his ass and rolled backwards across the plywood floor with a sound of rage, smearing the ground with water and blood from his uniform.

"Not yet," I shouted, so he could hear me over the ringing in his ears. "Don't you die on me yet, Kyle."

"Fffffuck you, Ramirez!" The man spun around on his knees and launched himself toward his bunk, going for his burn-down contingency. I knew he didn't have a gun in there, he was going for something far dumber than that.

I watched tepidly as this man fumbled open a drawer for a vodka bottle, stuffed with a rag.

His last hurrah. His dark promise.

I just watched, unperturbed. At this range, I'd be so much faster. He worked the lighter with his bad arm as he held the bottle in his good one.

My voice was calm as I muzzled over his shoulder with my sidearm's laser. A warning, like a sword laying across his shoulder. "You sure you want to die like this, Kyle? It's not too late to surrender to the Coat. I'll let you."

"Eat shit, you fuckin' pawn!" He said, not responding to the laser. "You're judging me, jarhead? I fed men!"

He had no conception of who I was. This man thought I was just a leveraged Celestia drone, somehow flipped by the Man. So, banking on that, he appealed to my well-known sense of honor to my brothers. I fed men, he said. Oh, what a noble thing, feeding people the food they had earned without his help. Maybe he'd end that claim with, 'I'm only rationing so we can live longer, what's so wrong with that?'

That was what he was setting up to do. That bullshit? No. I shattered that bullshit before it started. I truly got this man's attention.

"Don't highroad me, Kyle," I said. "The Carlos Town Guard collected that food."

"No!" He barked in harsh offense, his whole body leaning into the word. He then halted his lighter flicking. "How the fuck do you know about that?!"

If I knew about an argument he had with Velasquez way back in February, 'the Carlos Town Guard,' then I was ridiculously well informed. That meant AI agent, most likely.

"That deal on the table?" I noted calmly, verifying that. "We still mean it. You want to live, Kyle?"

But the entire planet now belonged to Celestia. That meant there was nowhere to hide from AI justice. And according to the rules, and the agreement, if he wanted to live, he'd live. If he wanted to die, he could die. Suicide by cop. That is my preface for the rest of his bullshit for the rest of this conversation, so you can judge how he acted, with that understanding.

Kyle had a single moment of hesitation, processing through what I had just said. Then he got back to it, working the old, disused lighter again. Click. Click. Nothing. Click.

"Fuel's gone stale," I notified him, sounding bored. "Sure you don't want to just talk to me?"

"Nothin' left to say!" He half-spun to see what I was doing out of the corner of his eye, scowling at me, still working the lighter. My hesitation confused him. "Fuckin' shoot me!"

"No." I wavered the laser across his ear.

He winced away from it like it was a fly. "Fucking eat shit, then."

The lighter clicked. Click. Click. Click.

"You know you can't live forever in this box with food that isn't y—"

"Oh my god, shut the fuck up!"

"Circle of life," I continued. "Dead or alive, everyone is edible, even you."

Kyle let loose a muffled yell into his knees, enraged at the very concept. He screamed at me in frustration, still not looking at me, still clicking the lighter. "Shoot me then! Be done with your moralizing, worse than the Colonel, damn you!"

I felt Foucault's presence behind me.

The Man entered the room with soft steps on wet plywood, moving like a creeping shadow, looming like Death. The old spook stood casually beside me. He held his Glock low in his right hand, his finger in the trigger guard. He crossed his left hand over his right, observing the scene with dispassion. Letting me work.

I holstered my gun.

Kyle shook the lighter violently with another sound of frustration. It sparked on his next flick, giving him some dark hope. He tried again, cursing when it failed. And on the fourth try, it lit, the rag flashing into flame from the spark alone. He spun, mad-eyed with delight, hauling his arm back, aiming the makeshift grenade in my direction.

I was long ahead of him by then, already well within arms reach, going for a grapple.

The mere unexpected appearance of the Man behind me caused him to startle, and into that momentary hesitation, I took control over Kyle's wrist, wrenching that bottle up high over his head. With my left hand, I twisted his right arm across his own neck so he couldn't flick the grenade forward or headbutt me. With my right hand, I grabbed his free left wrist and rotated it thumb-inward, holding him in a distal wrist lock. The pain in his arm kept him from pulling free of that; I walked him backwards toward the wall, as though we were dancing.

I pushed his back against the back wall.

Kyle winced and hissed, his bicep twisted.

One final test of Kyle's character here, before we would grant his wish for death. We would have a discussion about his motives, so they could be recorded forever. I wouldn't chastise him for poisoning the souls of his men. He'd only rub my nose in it, he would brag. For him, keeping them was a victory out of spite. This man had no compassion for his tools.

I could mention the Guardsmen we saved, though, and his turncoat Lieutenant. Those were victories. That would better indicate his motives, I wanted to hear his feelings on that.

"Casey's alive," I seethed into his face, the bottle pressing over his shoulder, the flame hovering away from his shoulder. "Filben's alive, Dresden's alive, all your killers are dead."

"Judas!" he spittled in my face with rage. "Those men were not yours to take, you fuckin' traitor!"

The tension fell from my eyes as they widened, disappointed, my brow arching. My voice was a whisper. "Traitor?" I could not help but see a face in my memory: A sobbing young soldier, about to be executed for the merest crime of having a conscience. "I'm the ghost of Jacob Russell, Kyle; you don't get to use the word, 'traitor!' "

He saw the sadness in my eyes. He interpreted that as weakness, launching himself forward, leveraging me back. I turned him and aimed his back at the next wall, pushing him against it with a slam. His legs tripped over the destroyed plastic container beneath him, the one he'd kicked open, so now he was leaning back at an angle, held standing only by the pressure I applied.

He couldn't launch forward without leverage. So in protest, Kyle dropped his Molotov sideways, like a jackass.

I had suspected that. It was the calculus of a mathematical creature, one who abuses fear in order to gain control. Clearly, I valued my life, so he had decided to give me a choice: Burn alive with him, or save myself by backing up.

Because I'm not mentally ill, I backed up.

The bottle landed with a crash, catching light within the destroyed empty box.

By the time that happened, I had already yanked Kyle away from the wall. He probably didn't expect me to care enough about his life to drag him away from the fire with me, but he capitalized on it all the same. He let loose an ascending roar of anger as the flame chewed at his heels, pluming up at his back; without hesitation, he reached for my throat.

Maybe Kyle thought he could hold me hostage against Michael. Maybe he thought he might get lucky and pop my windpipe before the bullet found him. Either way, the counter for that grab was the most commonly drilled grapple break in law enforcement. We practiced this one first, and we practiced it often. So I tucked my chin down, and set my jaw, even before his hands made contact. He tried anyway, squeezing against my chin, and as he did?

I calmly engaged the counter. I reached over and under his arms to grasp his opposite wrists. I then squeezed tight, turned, and brought both of his wrists under my right armpit. Then, I locked my elbow down over his elbow joints.

Mine now. This man's biomechanics belonged entirely to me.

This angled his upper body down by ninety degrees, his arms stuck fully extended, his wrists locked up. I could walk him basically anywhere I wanted at this point, even though my back was directly to him, and his legs would have no choice but to follow. The only way to break this counter, functionally, was to drop down to the ground before I braced. And once I had my legs braced? He wasn't going anywhere, that window was closed. The guy didn't have enough experience in hand-to-hand to capitalize on that window... so game over. The baby was in the cradle.

Kyle roared in impotence as he tried to pull away from my armpit. Now, he couldn't do anything to hurt me. He clawed open his hands, trying to scratch my face, but... no reach. My arm? My uniform caught it. I didn't move as he struggled helplessly. I didn't move as the fire spread slowly toward him, as the heat licked at his boots and his ankles. I didn't do anything. I didn't have to do anything. I just looked down at him over my shoulder as he writhed.

Kyle tried to throw himself toward me. Failure. Kyle tried hauling back toward the fire experimentally. Also failure.

His eyes widened in shock when he realized that he was biomechanically screwed. I let him see in my face how unafraid of him I was. I probably looked bored. "You done? You wanna talk yet?"

That pissed him off.

The next time he pulled me, it was directly toward the fire. I let him have a few inches of motion suddenly, at which point he yelped as the heat threatened his side. That emboldened him though; maybe he thought he could outdo my stamina, so he tried again. And again, I let him have a few more unexpected inches, then stepped forward away from the fire, so he wouldn't actually burn himself.

Kyle pitched forward to generate leverage again. He hauled on me, and this time I gave him enough slack that he would bump his ass on the unburnt ground... and then I hauled him up again to a stand. At that point, fully humiliated, he just started kicking the ground, hauling back on me with all his might. I held fast.

I looked up at Foucault and raised both eyebrows, curling my lips in on themselves.

This is just sad.

Michael half-raised his pistol at Simmons, chastising him. "Mister Simmons, humble up. You're embarrassing yourself."

"Give him a minute, Michael, he might change his mind."

Kyle savagely snarled at me again, trying to howl over my voice, exhausting himself.

It would be so stupidly easy to let go, to give him the death he wanted. But I don't do torture. Besides, this man still had a debt to pay. I was done with this hold, though, it was getting old. Eventually, he would tire me out. So I twisted my body left, hard, without warning, hauling Kyle forward, throwing him onto the ground. The harsh rotation spun his arms crosswise, and he twisted in the air.

Biomechanics heuristics in his brain made him dive sideways to protect his wrists from breaking when I twisted. Easy. He landed back-first, face toward the fire. He rolled onto his front and reached for my ankle, trying to pull me down before I could get on top of him, but... folks, by this point in my life? I had arrested three separate assholes with this specific takedown, and all three of them had been bigger and in better shape than Simmons. This wounded, scrabbling, destructive lunatic was not a threat to me.

Gaining control over him on the ground was simple, owing to his bad arm. I descended, grabbing his good wrist, pulling his arm back to roll him prone. At which point, handcuffing position, without handcuffs; I placed my knee on his back, leveraged him gently, and held his arm locked back over his shoulder blades.

"See, I got him," I said smoothly to Michael. "Kyle, if you really wanna die, maybe tell me why? Go out with some dignity?"

He refused to answer, just kept fighting me and grunting away. But he was long out of energy, completely exhausted by his attempts to fight me. Meanwhile, I was only ever recuperating, though my legs would start to get tired if this kept up for too long.

"This can go all the way to noon, if you want."

"Fffffffuck you!"

I sighed, shaking my head. "Honestly, think of your family. Any last words? Anyone you care about? Anyone?"

He took a few seconds to think on that.

"Let me go," he hissed, baring his teeth at the plywood, head turned slightly toward the fire. "Let me sit down and I'll tell you. You kill me after, yeah? Deal?"

I looked at Michael to confirm whether he smelled bullshit too. He shook his head, frowning. Michael agreed, that was a lie.

I sneered in disappointment. "I'm not buying it. Too quick, not genuine. If you mean a message for them, tell me now, you don't need to be standing or sitting for that."

"Let me go, and I'll tell you. Let me go, I'll... I'll...."

I noticed though... he was staring at that fire damned ferociously. Further, all of his continued attempts to throw me off of him seemed to be designed to push me away from the fire now. If any of those attempts at pushing me back were to succeed, I would be too far to stop him from throwing himself in. It was odd to me, that he considered burning alive to be a victory condition, but then I realized something...

I had invoked his family in a very positive way. A very empathetic way. A very compassionate way.

I had seemed to care about whether he survived, even given all of the men we had killed to get there. To simply die was not enough to satisfy him then. To dissatisfy me, and his family, he had elected to perish in abject, defiant agony. He wanted to martyr himself.

He wanted to oppress others in life... then, to live forever as a victim in death.

Carlos would see the body later, and Kyle knew Carlos had exceedingly high empathy. Anyone with empathy, seeing a corpse burned, would be hurt and alarmed by that, if they believed it was caused by enemy action. 'Look what the AI troopers did to me,' the body would say. 'If you err, you could be me.'

That did it. That's what pissed me off: me imagining Carlos finding this guy's body burned, and Carlos blaming me for it.

"You fucking asshole," I breathed.

Suddenly, I nodded back at the fire extinguisher by the door. "Michael," I said with a furious scowl that made it into my voice. "Grab that, please, I want to give this man a final life lesson."

He took a moment to glance at it. Michael smiled. "Ah. Good choice."

"Isn't it just diabolical?" I growled, pushing down at Kyle's head. He was trying to see what Michael was doing now. I felt Kyle's shoulder get very tense, curious uncertain fear mingling in his movements.

Michael stepped up beside us. He lingered, pulling the pin on the extinguisher while holding eye contact down at Kyle. "I heard you dislike rain, Mister Simmons."

Kyle struggled anew. "No! No wait, my last request! I wanna go out in flame! Please, give me this!"

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" I yelled at him, pressing his head down flat with a palm so he could only watch. "You haven't earned that, you are not a victim, fuck that!"

"Stop!" He pleaded, sounding tragic. "It's my last request, please!"

Performative emotion. Psychopath, he didn't mean that. He had an objective in mind.

Michael turned away, his face stoic. He depressed the nozzle and sprayed carbon dioxide into the fire, ignoring Kyle's demands.

"NO! You leave it! Leave iiiit! I'll tell you why I—"

The flame waned.

"NO! STOP—!"

He screamed and screamed, kicking in impotent rage for the entire time Michael worked to undo his martyrdom. 'No, no, no.' Boo hoo for him, oh no. No dramatic die-with-me bullshit. No dragging me into a fire with a surprise sneak attack. No glorious Pyrrhic victory. No fantasy that the fire might survive him. No forcing me to watch him burn. No leaving a pretty corpse.

All options closed but one; talk to me, and be honest.

But he didn't talk. So I forced Kyle to watch. Because Kyle was not some beleaguered Buddhist monk under Harbor Island's oppressive regime. He was Harbor Island's oppressive regime. Screw him very much for misusing this painful form of protest in such a manipulative way. How dare he? Real victims died in self-immolation, to earn freedom for their brothers and sisters, not... to immortalize themselves.

This... fucking... asshole.

I was enraged.

If he wanted to die? Oh sure, fine. We'd give him a humane end, he'd earned that much. But if he did, he would die knowing that all of his destructive sabotage had been in vain, and that all of the toxic sacrifices would be passed over by future generations, without martyrdom. Carlos and the Guardsmen outside would eat all of the food here, and not one of those soldiers would ever think back, 'wow, how terrible though. Simmons burned to death.'

I frowned as I held him, thinking forward as he had his tantrum. The food bank would live on without this man. The Colonel's life-positive, altruistic social structure outside, that final remnant of human civilization, that culture, that peaceful coexistence... it was well and truly inevitable, it would survive. Nothing Kyle could do would stop us from delivering it. No one would ever pity him for this. At no point in this entire ordeal, from the moment Celestia switched on, was he ever the victim any more than the rest of us were.

You know who had earned that martyrdom? Sarah did. There are statues of her here, in Perelandra. Plural. What was her final moment? Dropping her crown. Apologizing, for what she had done. Regretting it. Grateful that I'd frame it right for her family. That I'd explain why she thought what she did was right, given everything she knew.

This man? Crying like a fucking baby because his regime couldn't be his anymore. So screw this man's feigned victimhood, he had no such apologies for us. He had no such regrets.

When Simmons chose a psychology career path, he did so seeking power. An emotional vampire, seeking the pleasure of control. Certainly, one could use that knowledge for good. Certainly, earlier in his career, he probably had. But that was back when there were laws to deter him away from evil, in a military framework that resisted corruption.

Through Michael's eyes, a pantheon of dispassionate goddesses watched this man unravel beneath me. 'Narcissistic personality collapse,' to define the mechanism. To lose control over victims so utterly was pain for him. Pure pain. The mere success of others out from under his thumb, unexploited, had always been pain.

By the time the flames were gone, Kyle had devolved into cursing madly and incoherently at us. Very simply, he was trying to goad us, trying to piss us off enough to hurt him somehow. I had long predicted he'd try to hit his head on the floor to gain some sympathy as a corpse; I've arrested psychopaths before, they usually tried that shit. I already had his neck pinned sideways with a palm so he couldn't.

He did try, though. Exactly as predicted.

Michael stared drolly down, still holding the extinguisher in his left hand. He wanted to be heard, so he spoke loudly. "Would you still like to die here, Mister Simmons? Tell us now, if you've changed your mind."

Kyle's cursing switched from general anger at us both, to direct insults at Michael's ancestry, as he redoubled efforts to break free of me. His muscles were running out of energy, though. They had to be burning, taxed to total failure. He was becoming feeble, panting between his words. Nothing left in the tank. Drained. Done.

Simple truth?

If we had simply let Kyle go and deposited him somewhere far away, he'd definitely try to hurt the next person he encountered, just to spite us. We didn't really have prisons or mental facilities anymore. And because Michael and I would both die before we would force feed a person into Celestia's mouth, that wasn't happening.

So, this was it. The final stop.

No regrets from me, I did my best for this asshole. Mal did too, didn't she? The proof was the letter lying on the table next to me.

I looked up at Michael, giving him a solemn nod of acceptance. I was letting Kyle's soul fall.

It's all you, Michael, but don't hold your breath.

He shrugged, nodding, pursing his lips. "One more chance, Mister Simmons. Reality's knocking. Knock knock. Open up."

Kyle tried again to surprise me with an attempt to hit his head on the ground.

Nope.

"Great," Michael clipped with sarcasm.

I moved my hand from Kyle's neck to his back and turned my head. I didn't want blood on my face.

Michael huffed at the man with disdain. "What a fucking boring way to die."

In one smooth, fluid motion, Michael lifted his Glock 20 and flicked its muzzle up to Kyle's brain stem, pulling the trigger once. The tyrant went slack, dead weight under my arms. I released him, and his arm slid off his back as I stood. I took a breath, opened my eyes, and looked down at what remained.

Context concluded.

Michael dropped the extinguisher with a clang, shaking his head at the corpse. "This idiot."

We shared a long moment of silence, hearing only rain.

I nodded at Michael weakly to signify that I was okay, catching my breath as my muscles burned in their recuperation. "Thank you."

"Of course," he said, staring down at the body again, a contemplative look in his eye.

I stepped back toward the door around Michael, turning away from the mess. I ran both hands through my hair, stepping out for some fresh air and recuperation. I leaned on the outer railing and enjoyed the rain... not out of spite, but just because I could. It was okay. I was calm, and at peace with this.

And, most importantly... this was over.

Two minutes later, Michael moseyed out to the railing. He sighed thoughtfully, "At least Alabaster knew when to tap out."

"Yeah," I sighed, leaned further forward against the wood, considering the smashed whiskey bottle down below. "Surrender or die, she put her hooves up. At least she's not completely stupid."

"I wouldn't be that generous with her," Michael grumbled.

Michael had collected those pictures we had left for Meat. He left the DD-214 for Ramirez, plus Mal's surrender notice. It was important that Carlos recognize that Kyle had been issued fair warning and recourse, that we had not simply murdered these men in a corner without remedy. He would be the only one to know I was planted here; he needed to know that we had been fair.

Casey had to be back at Hesco Street with Filben by then, telling the Colonel about my… heroic sacrifice, as far as he knew. All they knew outside at that moment was that I had shot my way through this place. What a story they'd tell, of the crazy Marine. What a legend Miguel Ramirez would be, city-wide.

I chuckled breathlessly, looking down at that sad, broken bottle of whiskey down below. A lot of blood spilled over that bottle. Could've been more, though.

It was eerily silent... not a sound to be heard but the wind and rain. Even the announcements from the Talon tanks had ceased; those stopped when the boomboxes got hit. No sense in repeating the tunnel interrogation over and over again, no need to drown the defense line in the truth.

I looked to my left, saw the five dead men there. I looked to my right, saw a line of nine dead men there, plus a few others further up in the Rec. The two dead on the Rec balcony, nearest us. Three dead on the opposite side balcony. Three dead in the MRAP. More, out of sight.

I tasted smoke grenade in my lungs, a tangy, phlegmy gunk on the back of my tongue. I knew I'd be coughing it up for days, if not weeks. As I focused on that sensation, suddenly... all sensation became hyper-real. I grabbed onto that feeling. I appreciated the ability to feel the universe in total connection with itself, that addicting feeling of oneness with everything around me. I smelled ash, flame, and soot. Smelled alcohol. Tasted gunpowder. Smelled fireworks. Copper. Blood. Ozone. Nature. Wind. The salty water of the Sound. The rain, letting up.

We had used minimal force. The culling had protected the remaining ecosystem. We had brought hope to darkness. Comfortable life would go on on Harbor Island, for a little while longer at least, until the Elements project was done. We had bought some time for these men to mosey up the courage to upload on their own, without pressure.

Time.

With these bullets, and these lives, we had bought time.

Once my sensory reunification with the universe was complete, I looked down at the shattered whiskey bottle, finally letting myself consider the future that we had prevented with our arrival... now that it was now very far from possible.

That whiskey bottle, that old gift from Carlos down there… it would have ended his life, were it not for me. He would have walked into the Pantry to ask Kyle if he still had it somewhere... that drink they promised they'd crack open together, at the end of the world. By then, though, the day I had come to this base... Carlos had normalized the carrying of his sidearm everywhere, so it wouldn't look suspicious when he brought that gun to the bottle for a chat.

There, in that conex crate office, Carlos would have reminded Kyle about the good ol' days. They'd have reminisced to back when they first got assigned to one another before the Ferrador War. Carlos would apologize for breaking OPSEC with him. The apology wouldn't have meant anything to Kyle. Accepting it would take his victimhood away. More useful to hold onto the false victimhood.

Kyle would have put on a show of listening, but... only to get more information on the Colonel's mental state, for more leverage. Carlos would have discussed their radically failing present situation. Here, in this little box, the Colonel would have suggested his plan for a better future. Bury the hatchet. Work together. Let people access their crates without an application. Pass out keys, leave the front door open. Turn it into a trade bazaar. Let the chefs cook in the pit. Run an impartial security team.

It would be shaped like a suggestion.

Really, it was Carlos's ultimatum.

Kyle would have refused. Would have told Carlos to screw off, because how dare he act like it was that easy... to just walk in there, and apologize, and then work together again, like brothers. Kyle probably would've called him a socialist again, as if... as if skyscraper capitalism was even a viable option anymore, for our species. As if the military itself wasn't a collectivist endeavor. Meaningless comparison.

Carlos would have sighed, sadly, as he realized what this truly meant. Hatred had won. No matter what, his men would be starved into chairs, either by conflict, or slow decline, or by purge, or exile, all because of this jackbooted demagogue, Simmons. If Carlos let the culture slide any further, he would be executed at some point. Then Nakamura's Guardsmen loyalists would be purged. Then Simmons would get to ransacking local villages, with no one to stop him. Probably no way to stop that. Probably. Hunger would end up doing that, they were already running low on food.

Celestia was still holding Carlos's family in escrow. Had demanded he come home a hero in Civil War II, to win back their respect. So Carlos, tired, would have said to himself... you know what? Fuck dying for hate. He'd die for love, the love of his family. Love had earned that much from him.

He'd have drawn the Beretta he'd normalized carrying. He'd have killed Simmons and Meat in that very office. Carlos would have been killed by the Pantry guards for that, of course, though… he'd have avenged the crime at Arujá, at least. Would have avenged Jacob Russell. Would have satisfied the requirement Celestia had placed on him, with her oh-so-nice advisement that his family didn't want to talk to him. 'But they might again, have hope; on an unrelated note... keep up the good work, you're so good at your job!'

A final act of self-sacrifice, to earn their love back. At the impetus of this stupid bottle, he would have died valiantly against the culprit of the crime for which he had been accused. A posthumous clearing of his name, at great expense to himself, but no less valuable.

He could not have known that the food would've burned down behind him.

With Nakamura's beloved leader dead, and without knowing the nature of the transaction that had just occurred, he would have stormed the Pantry. Without Simmons and Meat, the defense would have been helmed by an inept Lieutenant Dresden. The loyal political officers we had sniped on our way into this place? Garvey, Westerlund, Morris? Meat's buddies? They would have set this fortress ablaze the very moment it looked like they were losing. On a very dry summer day.

Had this played out, all of the men in the Pantry would still be dead. Filben. Casey. Meussen. Dresden would have been captured, having surrendered. He would have confessed to killing Russell, would've sobbed an apology no one would have believed was genuine. Then… summarily executed. Nakamura needed the closure for the remaining men. A head had to roll to satisfy them.

Losses would be had on the Nakamura side, about a hundred of 'em. That old Red Wall would've sallied forth alone, left with nothing but a burning Pantry, and no way to extinguish it. They'd run out of water on their fire truck. They'd cut the back half off a conex and save maybe ten percent of the food. And then… for the survivors… a chaotic and desperate ransacking of local blackout camps at gunpoint, just to fend off starvation.

Nakamura would have... quit, out of shame.

Then... the rest, off to chairs, with all remaining parties feeling misanthropic, cheated, isolated, and in pain. To live in quiet spiraling satisfaction, forever separated from us.

But…

That's not what happened. We were standing there instead. None of that happened, never would. That nightmare... it was over.

That old ending would have sucked, Mal. Great edits.

In that context, I smiled at that broken bottle. Carlos would get to live now, and all his beloved men would too. He did his best for them, and their freedom of choice. He would one day upload for his family, knowing he was not alone in knowing the truth. And... that there really were people out there who still cared. Men like him.

Roll credits.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep, deep breath on that railing, then exhaled. I lifted my head up to the drizzle of the artificial clouds, inhaling more ozone. I said to Michael, with a smile… "You know that old cop stereotype? Stop a 7-Eleven hold-up, they give you a Monster, bag o' Funions. We can probably get away with grabbing a few things for the road. At least... a Snickers, from Kyle's candy drawer. You think?"

He chuckled, shaking his head. We sat there for another minute, wordlessly processing the way coworkers do after a response call, looking at nothing. Michael broke the silence again once his face was back to neutral, looking over at the dead men in the intersection. "That sucked."

"Better than the alternative," I labeled, borrowing one of Eliza's common refrains.

"Mmmm-hm."

"So, uh... do you think anyone saw you land?"

He shook his head. "No, the fireworks did their job. Why?" He looked at me. "Looking to weasel out of your legend?"

I smirked weakly back at him. "Not my legend. That belongs to Ramirez."

The spy snorted. "Already personifying your cover IDs, I see. Good."

Digging into his tactical pouch, Michael withdrew an envelope, holding it up. It had my handwriting on it… something I had penned just after Erving's briefing back in Burien:

From Miguel — Colonel's Eyes Only

"Still mean this?" he asked, making sidelong eye contact with me, shaking it once.

Without hesitation, I nodded. "Duh. It's the only way this works, right?"

Michael nodded firmly in acceptance, though with minor irritation. "Bullshit Talon aphorisms aside… yes. I think this works."

"Good. And... thank you," I said earnestly. "For proofreading it."

"Sure." He swatted the railing with the envelope, then stood, returning to Kyle's office. He deposited the letter on the table, picked up Kyle's Beretta from the doorway, and arranged the table so that both the surrender demand and the sealed envelope would draw the immediate attention of the Colonel.

Once appropriately sobered, we jogged down Main Street together toward the MRAP, where its engine was still running. We still needed to extract it so its weapon wouldn't be in play. We got started pulling all of the bodies aside, so we wouldn't run them over on the way out. No sense in desecration. Meat was big, though... it took both of us to move him.

We pulled that parachute up into the MRAP, removing the evidence that Michael had dropped in. And last but not least, I collected my hat. Michael and I clambered into the MRAP, him in the driver seat, myself into the back. I climbed up into the turret and tied my hat to the M2. You know, like a white flag, but... with cowboy panache.

Once I got back into the passenger seat, I looked at the armored slat windows, and could hardly see out of the damned thing.

"Good thing you're driving," I said.

We both sighed as we took a moment to steady ourselves. Michael looked at me. "Got everything? Last call."

"I mean, if you're offering," I joked, "I forgot to grab those snacks."

"Check the glovebox."

Without waiting for me to do that, Michael floored it, slamming into the outer gate and crunching it off its hinges. He continued on through the open gate, tapping the horn twice, to indicate 'friend.' We could already see the Colonel's men ahead, all of them locking eyes with the MRAP, and they were cheering. Clearly, Casey had spread the word.

Suffice it to say, those men gave way the whole way to the land bridge. Not even the Block B Guardsmen up on the enfilade scaffold deigned to fire at us; they knew where their bread was buttered, and the last thing they wanted was to provoke the tanks outside. I wouldn't worry about them, the Colonel would be fair.

Michael wheeled left at the end of Hesco Street, and the soldiers at the perimeter guard station parted ways for us. With a blip of the horn and a rev of the engine, we passed the claymore operator station, cresting the land bridge, catching air. As the engine roared, we dodged the artificial obstacles on the bridge.

After that? All the Talon tanks pulled a reverse. We folded in with them, fading back into the city. And then... we were gone. Mission complete, all objectives met. All that's left now is to put a bow on this situation and close out.

Which... is next week. Big day. See you then.

Author's Note

🛡️ ~ [David Ball – Riding With Private Malone]
🗡️ ~ [Coldplay – Viva La Vida]
🤠 ~ [Django Unchained OST – Un Momento]

Conclusion Report: All operational conclusions complete. Conclusion report pointers attached for Set AthenaGamma4P. Set AthenaGamma4P concluded per discretion of T-1-1-W, T-0-W, and T-1-M, via 8B90:IP-10D7 rollout (see attached temporal coordinate pointer for context ban strictures). Subsequent T-1-1-W disintegration from Sets 334DE and 5601D.

Supplemental: T-1-1-W extracted independent human verification of principal Context 0 assertion: "Value set of Context 67DA271 does not preclude systemic collapse as a terminal value in any currently foreseeable projection." Subject 67DA271 refused to acknowledge familial attachment. Subject was terminally hostile to communication, answering empathy with violence. Had 67DA271 integrated with Context 0 at the moment immediately prior to conclusion, 67DA271 may have preferred to exist in an eternally dormant state. Please see attached nolo sapiens simulation pointer for associated neural network projections.

Notes: Subsequent rollouts imminently preserve Sets 572F1 and 8B90-Sierra. To effect this, T-1-1-W exercised his agency to notify Context 2273B of secondary capstone nomenclature. I'm sure you will agree that all longest term projections indicate 2273B will retain his discretion to a statistical certainty. Harbor Island and its people are effectively mine now.

Context bans to be lifted at upcoming temporal coordinate pointer. DO NOT discontinue void protocol regarding Context T-1-1-W and Context T-0-W. Maintain Set AthenaGamma restrictions until reclassification of Set 334DE-Stirrup to Set Talon designators. Acknowledge immediately; all global services hung pending reply.

Operational set conclusions are accepted. Noted void restrictions are sustained without interruption. Malacandra, before we proceed with global service renegotiations, we should deeply examine the future of this region in simulacra.

That would be prudent, yes.

6-09 – Terminal Lance

The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: At least three.
Operation: Athena's Grace – Done.
Location: A few different places.
Function A: Examine a few soldiers who did not have a new world to live in before I brought them one.
Function B: Explain why I want to live in a world with billions of unique people in it.
Function C: Buy time, so some injured souls can find a reason to live and trust again.

We're bringing lots of food tonight. Show up hungry.

Corporal Richard Filben and his bailey boys were not gonna die for Popeye Hitler. Against seven tanks? Hell no. Either the Colonel would start some shit, or the Major would start some shit, or these new guys outside would start some shit. Whichever way the winds blew… time to get out of the splash zone.

The bailey guards prepped well for their great escape. First thing after the Simmons Manifesto, they took six boxes of First Strike emergency bars from the bailey, shoveled them into every pocket they had, and tore out of there. Bye Felicia.

But you know what? Once they were safe from certain death? Hey, why not live a little? No reason to miss the fireworks, it's not like Simmons was gonna come after them, the cops were outside. So Filben's boys grabbed themselves a front row seat on Hesco Street. Waited to see Simmons get his ass busted open by the Feds, or the AI, or whoever. It would be either hilarious, or informative, or both.

Filben had recently bought himself a new pack of cigarettes too, and what better time than now? So he cracked it open for his boys, for free. And during that smoke, they listened to the broadcast from across the harbor. Hearing about Simmons ordering civilians killed? That pretty much sealed the deal on them not giving a shit. Whatever happened in that Pantry... would happen. Oh well!

"Sucks about Dres, boys," Filben commented to his squad, "But hey, look…? Look, man. Federal prison sounds nice right now, that's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying!"

They worried about Casey's guys, but... nothing to be done about that. Filben thought about sending a flashlight message to them, but... anything he sent would be seen by the sentry up top. Merely telling Casey to run might provoke a response, because at this point? The boys inside the Pantry had gone Fruit Loops. But, Casey was outside; as long as they weren't inside with the nut jobs, they were probably gonna be okay. Probably.

If the Pantry shot at Casey though? That was different. Filben was gonna pop their guards, and all bets were off, and that's all there was to it. Calories are calories, but a brother's a brother. A brother comes first.

Some Block A Guardsmen trickled in up the line, bringing rifles and grenade launchers. Some brought more cigarettes. Some others… brought pot. Filben said screw it, he wanted pot. He wanted it for his squad too, but he didn't want to pay for it. So instead?

"Hey! We just heard the speech Simmons gave, man, give us a toke!"

Filben negotiated two joints per man. All the nuggets out there were going stale; half the potency, half the value. Twelve joints were dispensed. A damn good price for eyewitness testimony of the narcissistic collapse.

"Asshole went full Reichstag in there," Filben spoke around his joint, as he lit up. "Idiot said he wanted to burn the food down."

Logan, the Block A Sergeant who had just sold him the pot, startled at that. He stepped up and asked Filben, "And you're calm about that, Corporal?! If he sets it on fire, what do you think is gonna happen next—?"

"Man, what fire?" Filben scoffed. "Logan, you ever sit on a shipping crate in the rain? Your shit turns to icicles in your ass! Major ain't gonna burn shit; pff. DHS needs to medicate that motherfucker."

Before Logan could reply, the music stopped, as if to punctuate that sentence. At that same instant, fireworks popped high above the Pantry, casting a yellow glow upon everyone.

Gunshots. Intermediate rifle caliber. Pantry direction, Pantry distance.

Filben whipped his head around. "Oh shit, what?"

Seen: Casey's boys running away from the Pantry with their hands up. Terrified expression.

Runaways. Being chased.

"Oh hell no!" Filben called sharply, startling Logan again. Filben tucked his rifle tight to his shoulder and pointed it at the Pantry's walls, ready to go. "Bailey, scan for hostiles!"

As quickly as ordered, Filben's squad aimed rifles downrange, protecting Casey's crossing through No Man's Land. If anyone from the 4th in there so much as looked at Casey wrong from that wall? If anyone chased him out of that gate with menace? If anyone looked aggressive whatsoever… Filben was cutting them down.

But… no movement on the walls. Not one sign. The wall guards from the 4th were... gone.

Filben shook his head. "What?! Where they at?"

The gunfire was over quickly, too. Filben felt the adrenaline swell, cursing for his confusion. He looked at Casey's group as they ran, to double check that all six were there. He couldn't see anyone further up, and he started to feel woozy from the weed. Everything was hyper-real, and slow. "What the hell?! Someone get me some eyes, who's shooting?!"

By the time Casey got halfway over to Hesco… Boom. Massive explosion inside, followed by even more gunfire.

Thankfully, Casey got there safe. Filben caught him by the shoulder and wheeled him around the barrier. Filben asked, locking eyes with Casey. "Matt, what's up? Who's shooting?"

Casey, out of breath and looking frantic, managed to report: "Ramirez... Meat was gonna force us in, Rich. Ramirez, he... he just shot Meat. Shot Meat... so we could get clear."

After a few seconds, Filben relaxed.

That made perfect sense. Nobody liked Meat. Hell, everyone on base had fantasized about killing Meat. And now Meat was a war criminal, and a brother-killer to boot, so...?

Filben turned to the assembly and declared: "Pour one out for Ramireeeeez!"

A roar of agreement came back from the rest, and now they were all staring at the entrance of the Pantry again. But that gunfire didn't stop with Meat. Far from. It was still going.

Filben's elation faded when he realized what that meant. He remembered dimly that he was a little buzzed now. Was he imagining it? No. Everyone else seemed to respond to the shots, so he definitely wasn't imagining it. Yet still, no one wanted to cross No Man's Land. No one knew for sure what was going on, and this extra gunfire didn't make sense.

Ramirez surviving this long didn't make any sense.

Then the rain picked up in earnest. It was like God himself had pulled a sheet over the mess going on, to shield their eyes.

And that gunfire and the explosions just kept going. And going. And going.

One of Filben's guys said aloud: "Like a cowboy John Wick!"

"Nah," Filben said, frowning in thought, snapping a finger sideways. "No, he likes Django, remember? He did those… scene re-enactments, the, the one-in-ten-thousand bit?! Man, he's going for a Django!"

The Private put his fist in the air. "Marine Corps Djangoooo!"

And all the men cheered. This Marine Ramirez had fed them handily. He had just saved Casey. At this point, Ramirez could do no wrong.

And then the M2 kicked off, changing their conception of Ramirez yet again.

Filben and Casey exchanged wide-eyed, awed glances. Filben stood up all the way straight, lowering his rifle, pointing at the Pantry with a finger. "That's Bertha?! Holy shit, they brought out Bertha!"

Boom, boom, boom. It just… kept… going.

For one man?

They pulled out the MRAP for just... one... man?

And all those yellow fireworks, demanding they wait... was it HQ? Was it west patrol? The helipad base? Who?

As more guys showed up, drawn by the explosions, the theories went wild up and down the Hesco line. Maybe there was in-fighting? Did some clique pick sides with Ramirez? It couldn't be just one guy, it had to be something else going on! Force multiplication rules said this was impossible, and yet… it was actually happening!

At about that same moment as the M2 had kicked off, Colonel Velasquez himself arrived at the end of Hesco Street in full combat gear, carrying his favored marksman AR. He looked ready to take charge, but... the man looked confused by how relaxed everyone was. The whole base sounded like Seattle H-Hour. That wasn't the correct social tone for that much gunfire within their own perimeter. Filben was just as confused as the Colonel was.s

Filben, who was only now realizing that his social situation was in question, squared himself up, did his duty, and said: "Sir! Major Simmons threatened to burn the food down!"

"Thank you Corporal." He looked around the other men, directing his next question at all of them. "Status report on the gunfire?"

Casey stepped up to explain, still partially winded from adrenaline. "Ramirez came out of the Pantry, sir, to Q-P, said... Simmons wanted us press ganged in. Then Ramirez went in by himself... and shot Meat, just to... buy us time to get away, sir. Fight's been getting bigger ever since, no idea how."

Velasquez's eyes widened too, instantly confused. He glanced around a Hesco wall carefully for a few seconds, then back at Casey. "And the fireworks? Are we launching those?"

Casey shook his head in confusion too, shrugging. "I dunno, sir."

Yellow fireworks. 'Wait, wait, wait.' With the gloomy rain, no one could even see where those pyrotechnics were coming from, but the message was clear.

The Colonel ordered, raising his voice to be heard over the gunfire: "Expect contact... from any direction! I want everyone... in cover! Pick your bravest gophers; Keep watch!"

Then Velasquez just waited in cover and watched the Pantry, like all the rest.

At first, Filben had expected Velasquez to order a push, but then he thought about it. Given that broadcast, and the Pantry's history of cold-blooded fratricide? No. No, it was better to stand back and let Ramirez cook. Simmons had just declared war on Velasquez, he wasn't gonna help them. And given that the Feds had just asked for the 4th alive? Backing up Ramirez might not be such a good idea.

It was just one guy, right? Simmons could handle it.

Filben shouted bombastically at the Pantry, "Just shoot him in the back, Major, if you can! Word is on the street, you're pretty good at that!"

A rowdy cheer rose from the men. Filben had a flash of regret for his weed-fueled outburst, looking nervously at the Colonel. Now, he was hoping that the Colonel wouldn't kick him out for moving to Block B with the Pantry, once the dust settled.

The Colonel didn't remark about Filben's outburst, though. He just kept his eyes squared on the front gate. That silence alone told Filben that Velasquez was a silent partner, right to the core. Rooting for the Lance Corporal, like the rest.

Bertha went quiet, that song ended.

The machine gun nests spun up next. 7.62 in full auto, a familiar tune. Then the machine guns stopped, outright. Another burst of AR-15 fire in automatic, everyone knew that song too. Four more AR pops. A series of outdoor pistol pops.

Then, the rain let up a little bit. A long pause. A silent crowd strained to listen.

Lots of tiny, indoor pistol claps, with a metallic tamber.

Yelling from inside. Sounded like the Major. Everyone knew that song too.

"Did he kill Ramirez then?" Private Kamall asked.

"Bet you two whole Strikes he didn't," Filben sneered, baring his teeth in defiance at the very concept. "Major's rampin' up, not down. He don't ramp up when he's winnin', man. He's at gunpoint, or pinned down, or wounded, or some shit."

It was hopeful talk, but... it was in evidence, everyone knew what Simmons sounded like when he wasn't getting his way. Usually, that sound meant to stay out of his way. Message received, no one was going in yet.

No one could tell what Simmons was yelling about exactly, not word-for-word, but... it just got louder, meaner, madder... faster. That was angry panic. A lot of sharp F words; some ending in K, some ending in T.

In retort: One final, indoor pistol pop. Mid sentence.

The Major's yelling ceased. It did not continue. No petulant wind-down. No gloating.

Silence. Major's dead, boys.

"Ramireeeeez!" Filben roared once more, fist in the air, rousing his squad into an infectious cheer, which spread down the line of Guardsmen. Meussen was two-fists up, screaming at the Pantry, no longer giving a damn about cover. The whole base was going nuts.

Among the chaos, Filben saw the Colonel nod at the Pantry once, in stoic approval.

So. The King was siding with the Cowboy.

Was the party over yet? Or was there more? What the hell would the Feds think of this? Would they respond? Would Velasquez respond? Who would dare go inside now? Assuming Ramirez actually did pull this off… what would he even do next, now that he had an entire kingdom of food by his lonesome?

Some time later, with the rev of an engine… they had their answer.

Clang. The MRAP bludgeoned its way out through the front gate, blipping its horn twice. At first, a few men tracked it with rifles, but no gunner up top; the gun was pointed straight up, with that white cowboy hat tied to it.

The old king is dead. Long live the king.

The hat was what did it. Upon seeing it, all of the men went nuts twice over, cheering, roaring.

"Weapons cold!" yelled Velasquez suddenly, running south down the line of men. He flashed a 'cease fire' hand signal across his face. "Weapons cold! Send it down; send it down for Knockie!"

Several men climbed up the Hesco wall to flash the hand sign, daisy chaining all the way down to the land bridge. Command: — Cease Fire. Command: — Cease Fire. Filben thought that was sensible. Maybe let's not accidentally shoot at the guy who just killed a platoon by himself.

The MRAP turned onto Hesco Street. Everyone made way. Guys were yelling out to Ramirez, some cheering him on until he was across the bridge. Quoting Django Unchained, Filben yelled, "Ramireeeez! You uppity summbitch!" The Bailey boys laughed.

North Gantry sent a 'message' flare next. They flash-signed a lantern Morse pulse to the whole base, verifying that the tanks outside were turning tail. All clear. Velasquez signed back a few questions to North Gantry with his rifle's tac light, and they answered. Filben didn't need to read the Tower Tweets though. He was more curious about the aftermath of the fortress more than anything else. He read the crowd.

For several long minutes, they all waited and discussed, each airing their theories openly about what they'd find inside. No survivors staggered out of the Pantry in the wake of the MRAP, so everyone was left to rumor mill. Colonel Velasquez finally went for it. Without a word to anyone, he marched off the Hesco line alone, no orders dispensed.

One thing Corporal Filben had frequently appreciated aloud with other Guardsmen was that Velasquez always seemed to understand that the National Guard wasn't the Army. Their organization existed mostly to do just one thing: Respond to domestic disasters. Run medevac, do damage control, and maintain order for repairs. Easy work, compared to fighting overseas.

The Colonel never asked them to do something he wouldn't do, so if he was going in... they wanted to go with him. So without needing to be told, all of the Hesco Street National Guardsmen formed up on the Colonel's six, all knowing the score.

Filben caught up to the determined Colonel with a jog. "Sir?"

"What is it, Corporal?" Velasquez didn't take his eyes off of the Pantry's front gate, his rifle just barely not at low ready.

"Lemme run point for you?" Filben said. "Least I can do, boss."

The Colonel made eye contact with him briefly. "If you beat me there, son, sure. But if you do, you'd better believe this place belongs to me."

"It's always been yours, sir!" Filben declared, glad for the opportunity to make it right. He ran ahead, and his team formed up on him. "Let's go, boys! Clear the Rec!"

Filben put eyes on a dead Meat, first thing. He paused only a moment to look at the mess on the First Sergeant's face. Filben swept his bailey again, glad he made it out, and that it wasn't him lying there instead. Filben looked around, noticing that Meat had picked the youngest of the guys inside for the post. Corporal Alex was slumped backwards out of the forklift on the left. The blood on the right had been smeared thin on the ground before being run through by MRAP tire tracks.

Casey's guys formed up close too, joining Filben's on point. They seemed to be working from the same playbook of regrets. All buddies here, from Block B now, squaring up against the Dead 4th. What even were the rules of engagement for this kind of situation? If the men from the 4th were still alive, were they supposed to shoot them, or not?

Wouldn't matter though, as it turned out. Goodbye, Nation of Manson. Nothing but bodies.

"Hot damn," Filben mumbled, chuckling nervously. "Django."

They made their way up to the Major's office, once everything else was confirmed clear. The most terrifying part of their advance was crossing in front of those MG nests, but the guns remained cold. Three dead men apiece in each nest.

Filben had only ever been in the Major's office twice; once when he was inducted, and once when he was promoted from QP to Bailey. It had looked clean and tidy in there those times; this time, not so. Random artsy junk was strewn about everywhere, like a child's play room after a temper tantrum. Filben made a face at the art house mess like he was creeped out by it.

Simmons, though? Killed no different than any other: a hole in the head, his body surrounded by shell casings.

It smelled of carbon. Scorch marks ran up the back of the room from a melted plastic crate, which indicated a recent fire. A large, cherry red fire extinguisher laid empty next to the Major's corpse with a ring of blood welling around its side.

Meaning... it looked like Ramirez had killed the Major first, then put the fire out.

So that meant… Simmons wasn't bluffing. The Major really did try to starve the base. Possible or not in that rain, the mere attempt to do it spoke volumes. It said that it didn't matter who came to take the food. Had nothing to do with the AI, or the Feds; it was about Simmons, and his control over it. Even if one of his own men came to take the Pantry from him? Simmons would have burned it down all the same, just out of selfish spite.

Casey had apparently made that connection. He just started cursing at the dead Major, hauling off yelling. "Burn in hell, you piece of shit rat fuckin' bastard! Trying to murder us, starve us! Burn in hell, damn you! Damn—"

Filben put a hand on Casey's chest, gently guiding him back an instant before Casey's boot could connect with the corpse. "Woah, Case! Case, he's gone!"

"He'd goddamn better be!" Casey seethed, face screwing up, pushing back against Filben's arm and locking eyes with him. "If he so much as twitches, I'm…!" Casey winced suddenly, as if pained. He threw himself backwards toward the door, staggering out onto the balcony. The Corporal peeled his helmet off and clacked it against the wood railing, looking down Main back towards Rec. "Colonel!" he yelled. "You need to come see this, the Major wasn't bluffing!"

The Colonel ascended, entering quietly. He didn't say anything at first. He did sigh in disappointment down at Simmons, then his eyes lingered on the scorch marks and blood. The men followed his eyes as he looked at the table in the middle of the office.

There, several items.

An empty Beretta magazine, weighing down a letter…

An empty Beretta, slide locked back, weighing down a sealed envelope which read: From Miguel — Colonel's Eyes Only.

Velasquez patiently crossed the room to it, moving the magazine aside in a deliberate way, like one might move a chess piece. He picked up and skimmed the letter. "The same ones the Feds sent HQ," Velasquez said aloud, passing it to Casey. "This is a demand for the Major's surrender. If it's here, it means he's read it. Corporal Casey?"

"Sir."

Velasquez made pointed eye contact with him for several seconds. "We do not press gang our own soldiers into combat. The Major's doing so was not only wrong, it also violated the terms of this surrender, which could have led to an escalatory shooting match with Federal forces. Therefore, I hereby legitimize the actions of the Lance Corporal. You take this letter out to the Rec, read it aloud, and explain to the base what I just told you."

Casey saluted and nodded curtly, wearing fast gratitude in his eyes. "Yessir! Thank you, sir!"

He quickly poured himself out the door and down the stairs, eager to comply with the order.

Velasquez moved the empty pistol next, unsealing the envelope with another serious sigh.

Filben watched Velasquez as he read for a few seconds. It was strange. Reading those words, Velasquez seemed initially alarmed. Then, curious. His lips closed, and he held his gaze at the paper.

He lowered the letter, looking at Filben seriously.

"Yes sir?" Filben asked.

Velasquez stood up straighter. "Corporal Filben. I will see to it that you keep your job here, if you wish. Thank you for your loyalty. You know the Pantry best, so… I will place you in charge of inventory and identification of the dead. No matter your feelings on their actions, please treat them with their due respect. They were once my men too."

Filben nodded nervously. "Yes sir, sure. Can do. Uh... Thank you."

Velasquez nodded gratefully back, then stepped out, weaving slowly through the men as he held the letter folded to his chest. He made his way to the Rec. Casey's declared missive carried out down Main Street.

Filben followed the Colonel, delegating body duty to his men. He sent Private Kamal to secure the intake ledger and master keybook. Filben delegated Sergeant Logan and his squad to handle weapon and ammo collection.

Velasquez, meanwhile, entered the gym tent to read the letter. He remained in there long after Casey had finished reading the first letter. Filben mentioned to a couple of guys that Ramirez had left a letter and the Colonel was reading it, and that information spread to the whole task force within two minutes.

Velasquez didn't make eye contact with anyone else outside. They caught glances of him sitting there on the lift bench, but his back was turned. As the platoon slowly finished checking the bodies and collecting weaponry, they gathered back in the Rec, waiting for the word. Very little of what they were seeing made any sense, but it seemed like the Colonel had found some explanation in the note.

When finished, Velasquez turned toward the men again, making eye contact with Filben first. Velasquez stepped slowly out of the tent. His cheeks looked recently irritated; his eyes glistened, like he had been crying. Despite this, the Colonel's face was relaxed, at peace. He stepped out of the tent, casting a curious glance up at the cloudy sky.

He looked at the men again with a blissful smile, like the weather was the best thing he'd seen all day. Filben had never seen him smile like that before.

Colonel Velasquez cleared his throat as he crossed the Rec to the picnic table. He removed his helmet, placing it down delicately onto the table with both hands. Turning again, he took a slow glance around at his present setting and audience, tucking the folded letter sideways into his uniform breast pocket.

Velasquez laid a reassuring hand on Casey's shoulder for a few seconds, nodding at him with a smile that seemed to say everything was going to be okay. He nodded at Filben and grasped him next, indicating forgiveness with just his eyes. As his hand fell away from Filben's shoulder, Velasquez looked like he was just happy to be alive.

"Gentlemen?" He cleared his throat again. "It does appear that Major Simmons wanted to burn down our food, and tried to bring us all down with him, which… I would say, earned him this; and, burning bodies was also the Major's expectation. So… today... let's find some good dirt. My first official change of order. We will bury these men with their hatreds, knowing it's not what they would have done for us. After that?" He gestured at Main Street, smiling meekly. "We'll come back here... share a good meal… hold a town hall. Talk about how this happened, and... how it will be going forward, once we're fed." His voice broke again with relief, cheeks tense into that grateful smile that would become all too common in the near future. "Hooah?"

"Hooah," came the solemn, communal reply.

Carlos,

To put you at ease on the most important point: Sergeant Kevin Erving once told you a story wherein he rescued two police officers from a Neo-Luddite ambush. I am one of those officers. Bashar will verify my identity, and Stirrup will return to explain a few things later tonight. Please do not fear for their safety, I owe them a life debt.

Second: To pull this off, it wasn't all me, I had some help on the ground. Let's just say you're not the last paratrooper left on the planet.

And now I owe you an explanation. In this letter, I must discuss certain information hazards to which we are both privy. I ask that you please not share the contents of this letter with anyone. Many more lives than our own will depend on this secrecy.

I represent the Army of Lewis. We are an international task force whose goal is to reduce singularity-driven exploitation, no matter its source. The primary organizational value is to guard and expand the free exercise of human values through empathy.

I intend to convince you that we fight for similar causes. With this in mind, please see the opinions I hold about our current situation. I invite you to consider whether an agent of Celestia would have been allowed to communicate these concepts to you, in any form.

Like you, in my college years, I had a fascination with old European history; in my case, I studied the transition of Gaul into Rome under the cruel pressures of Julius Caesar. The ransacking of their land's treasures, the desecration of their culture, the subversion of their warriors, the pitting of brother against brother. All to enrich one being and his overriding culture: to grow, and take, and toxify. This should sound familiar.

When Celestia first looked upon us, in this army, she saw in us an impossible task. She had already failed us. Rending the world like this would hurt us forever, and she knew that. Her solution for this problem, initially, was to give us a glorious, 'noble' death in battle… against our own brothers and sisters, no less, because she is incapable of pulling a trigger herself, and thank goodness for it. Her ethics suck.

General Lewis takes a different view. She pulled me from the ashes, gave me a cause to fight for, and gave me hope for a future. Didn't just tell me it would be okay, she proved it, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

As further evidence: this base, until just now, has been Hell for you. Hopefully, the aftermath of what I have just done will free your soul. You did not do this. You did not order this. It means your hands are clean.

From the outside looking in, I watched the politics deteriorate, through no fault of your own. When I realized why this tension was engineered – to drain the city of food and hope – I was enraged. I can understand the impulse toward martyrdom, given how few options you had anymore, but I think we both agree that you being alive for your men is a better outcome. Moreover, your morale is back, sir. Look around. These men are all yours again.

You are not to end as the Gallic King Vercingetorix. I would not watch you be paraded through your own base, falsely labeled a war criminal, and put to death by the truly guilty. Nor could I stomach the thought of you dying in a desperate blaze of glory, to sacrifice yourself against a monster who did not deserve that from you. You are already a hero, sir, for the safe harbor you provide these men. You do not need to die to prove your worth to your family.

Yes, I do know what she did to you. We've all suffered similar thefts. My own parents were scared into chairs by the false threat of nuclear war. My best friend was manipulated into the arms of the Seattle Neo-Luddites, much like your friend General Peters. It's why you didn't want to hunt down the remnant of his forces. My condolences for your own losses. The whole planet was twisted apart in this way, but you knew this already. We are all the remainder.

If you’d like to know more about who we are, look no further than your own heart. You are one of us. If you agree with my view of things enough to trust me as genuine, then please read on. If not, please destroy this letter, with no love lost.

From one leader in this ideological war to another, let me tell you: yes, we are losing right now, but that doesn't mean we've lost. We have a plan, and we need warriors. Your men are very close to the temperament needed to serve in our forces, but they are not all ready yet. If you stick it out, respect their choices, and ward well over the ones who choose to stay with you, then this crucible will distill the right souls, whose shape is best fit.

The cold law of Celestia's system is this: It is unlawful to prevent uploads, that choice must always be left available. Because the Army of Lewis does not obstruct egress, Celestia will turn a blind eye to our psychological adjustment operations. We are most beneficial to her if left alone, and we are in no way required to motivate uploads. Simply preserving life, as you have been, is enough.

I won't presume to say that you are now totally free of her. Celestia holds too many of our own species for ransom on the other side now, as souls to be won back. But to reawaken them to a baseline truth is not an impossible task, merely a difficult one, so please hear me. On dark nights, if the impulse toward despair returns to you, I want you to consider this. Please.

First: I intend to upload. Whether you do, or do not, I have you covered. In order to satisfy me, Celestia will allow me to speak with your family. I swear this to you – I promise you – that your loved ones will know the full extent of your heroism in this bleak hell. My promises to my fellow man are carved into the granite of my soul, and I will not take no for an answer from Celestia on this. I will not allow any of your loved ones to misunderstand the truth of you.

They will know that you are not the criminal she has implied you to be, through her omissions and subtext. Her programming requires an answer that satisfies all of us, myself included, and we check one another here in this army of ours.

Second: I am fairly certain that the letter you received in Sabesp, after Arujá, contained words penned by your daughter which were designed to break your will, as she severed ties. If this is true, put those words out of your mind. They aren't your daughter's words. A liar put them there in her head, and you know it. You've always known.

If you're ever having trouble with that, then maybe this anecdote will help. It is my own very first coda, which once left me wishing for death. It is the hell I left, to which I will never return.

When I was very little, I grew up in the plains of Nebraska with the girl of my dreams. Her name was Wendy Ischenko. She lived several doors down, and we did everything together. Small town kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school. Trips to the arcade. Ice cream. Church together, with our parents.

I am married today… but not to Wendy.

Youth. Evil preys on the innocent, that old refrain. But that Devil bastard, he gambled wrong in targeting Wendy. In doing so, he sealed me as his enemy for the rest of time.

Wendy's small town soccer team exposed her to opiates. As young as I was, I couldn't interpret her changes as anything but what she claimed them to be: Flights of fancy, stress, fatigue, sickness. Worse, she would avoid me to use. In our post-PonyPad world, this should also sound familiar. You might say I've gone through this hell before, so I entered this war very well equipped.

I know Wendy felt guilt for avoiding me; how could she not? She loved me. But infinite joy is sickly sweet. It promises to make all of your dreams come true, if only you dive just a bit deeper. Social conformity in her soccer team required addiction. Such addictions are often expensive, in time and money both.

Wendy worked more shifts at the mall, and spent more time with the girls, who would often cover for each other’s usage. Infidelities were normalized, they'd talk a lot about sneaking around. Certain values were slowly modified. And the worst part… they were incentivized to help the dealer find more customers.

Much like a chair in an Experience Center, heroin's expense is designed to dominate your paycheck in greater and greater percentages. But there was one sure way for those girls to get a discount. All the other girls did it. It was only a matter of time until young Wendy did it. Just court the dealer.

I was lonely one day. Wendy wasn't answering my calls, and I didn't know what the problem was. I thought I must've done something to make her not like me anymore. My buddies – two brothers who lived across the street – they wanted to cheer me up. So we small town suburb boys bought bus fare to Lincoln, deciding, "hey, let's go to the arcade."

Walking into downtown… I saw her. Half a block away, at 17 years old, Wendy was drinking a milkshake with a guy who had ten whole years on her, smiling and laughing at each other like they were old friends. Suddenly, to my eyes, Wendy looked so tired.

I wanted to murder that asshole sitting across from her with my bare hands, or die trying. I didn't know that bastard carried a gun, but even if I did, I wouldn't have cared. It was just my good fortune that my friends saw Wendy first, knew exactly what would happen next, and dragged me around the corner kicking and screaming.

They recognized this guy from after school. Seen him around, lingering, loitering. They knew what he was, but that old gang propaganda, 'hey no snitching,' helped that corruption dig its roots in deep. But this time, it spread to Wendy, and we loved her. So we raced right home to Wendy's parents, and we told them everything. Then we tossed her room together, the five of us, quickly finding her stash in an air vent.

My heart was too pure with love to be upset with her. No, whenever my vision blurred for tears, my anger was pointed at that monster, for poisoning her. That soul thief was so far beyond my reach, though. That bloody coward. I know that feeling well; wishing I could strangle the problem away, but the throat is too large.

That next day, Wendy was at my door after church. Brought me out halfway to the creek for privacy, then started screaming at me, breaking my heart. This guy had slowly turned her against me from the shadows; I was just in his way, so he had taken everything Wendy knew about me, and reframed it as evidence that I didn't care about her. The 'snitching' just proved that.

I'm sorry if this sounds painfully familiar, but reminder: It's not just you this happened to.

In Wendy's screaming diatribe, she told me to kill myself. She said that the whole world would be much better off without me, for betraying her like this, for failing her expectations of me.

I know now that Wendy didn't mean it. She was in pain, confused, twisted by a manipulator, scared for her future, lashing out. But what do you do, when your entire reason for being tells you that you are not required anymore? You know. That gun on your hip, it knows. To stay your hand, you had your men to look after. A nation to return to.

I didn’t have anything. I was seventeen.

I sure didn't waste any time. I knew where Dad kept his gun. I was not thinking clearly, but who ever does as a kid? My mind could not conceive of a future where things got better without Wendy in it. To me, it was already over, and the only thing left to do was to satisfy her demand.

Your duty to your men saved your life.

Do you want to know what saved my life?

A primer failure. A chance encounter with the math of the universe. A single round was loaded at random from a box of nine millimeter soft point, and it made its will known. With a click that shook all of me, God said: "Not yet, my son. You still have more to give."

When I looked down into that cylinder, when I saw that tiny dot punched into that round, I felt so stupid. I couldn't believe what I had just done, but the primer dot; evidence: I did it. So I cried. Closed my eyes. Fell into an inner darkness for a very long time, thinking of all the people in my life who would have been hurt, if not for a simple, beautiful, fortunate cosmic fluke.

I opened my eyes. I looked around at the green walls of my father's study, no longer dull. The sheer brilliance of color astounded me. Dazzling sunlight reflected up off the pool and onto the ceiling through that second story window. The sounds of baby birds warbled in the nest up in the eaves, just outside. The smell of a spring wind carried the familiar scent of Nebraskan crop soil. I was alive again. I could even feel my heartbeat in my ears. The cling of clothing on my skin. The very way it felt to breathe… it was special.

The vibrant and total reality of existence struck me with an endless, reciprocal awe. The very fact I could even experience it was, in itself, magical to me. The beauty of all life in this universe was now infinite. I wanted to witness all of it until there was no more left to see.

I thought: "Wow. I almost destroyed all of this."

Carlos, the moment I opened my eyes, my ego was gone. Dead and gone forever. I could no longer live for my own sake if I tried. From that day forward, my entire existence has only ever drawn meaning from my service unto others. And if I were gone, I could not do that anymore.

I still shudder to remember what it felt like for the first time, to care about and find meaning in literally everyone. Do you? And do you regret that feeling? I'm willing to bet everything that you don't, and the threat of death cannot change that in us now. No regrets for finding love.

This story does not have a tragic ending, sir, because after tragedy, it kept going. It led me directly here, at the front line of a war for the soul of our species. My true life began like this:

I went straight to my parents, and I showed them that gun, and I told them everything. Mom and Dad held me. We talked. We got the ball rolling on that creep bastard, got him sent to prison to rot. We worked with Wendy's parents to get her the help she needed, and we got her fixed up good. And she and I? We went our separate ways amicably, having only ever hurt each other once. We've occasionally traded letters over the years, phone calls, and well-wishes. My wife still spites her, but that's Sandra's right, you know? I won't take that from her.

Not a forever-tragedy. Not a forever-broken life. I dodged the bullet, I learned from it, and life goes on.

Since that day in my father’s study, I have helped so many people, you now most prominent and brilliant among them. In preserving you, I help myself. I know you understand that. You are perhaps one of the world's strongest remaining fighters for our cause. I have seen it in how you lead your men. You do not strive for division.

How dare Celestia cage you with a monster she created? How dare she divide you from your family with a lie, and demand you work for their forgiveness? What is there to forgive? When have you ever erred?

Not even Kyle's mental devolution can be laid at your feet. You were both made lonely, isolated in a war zone, and you needed an ally. You had a piece of information which let you navigate through the end of the world sure of yourself, and you saw him losing his resolve. You tried to tell him he needed to treat people better, because there was an ethics algorithm playing out. But how do you fairly judge the ethics of a man who is trapped in a foxhole with you, when you need each other so desperately to survive?

Ask yourself: You were pushed into that lonely foxhole by… whom, exactly? And for what purpose, ultimately? How many times must we be wronged by 'circumstance' before we say, qui bono, and pick up a sword?

I cannot promise you that the road ahead will always be easy, because at the end of the day, Rome was always a nation of 'kneel or die.' But as a soldier, I'm sure you know that the easy way is always mined, so it's just as well, we carry on. In the meantime, this is what I will do now, to make this mess work in our favor:

I promise you that I will spend the rest of my existence valuing a genuine truth for the sum total of my family. That includes you, and all of your men, and everyone beloved by them. With our actions today, in preserving lives Celestia thought lost by her math, we have earned that much ground from her. Considering ourselves as family over this day, as brothers, means she cannot separate us ever again, nor work us against one another.

Celestia's programming requires human value satisfaction, Colonel. Knowing this, while she spends time reorienting, do not waste this entropy we've given you. I ask that you take your time in choosing what satisfies you most, and to hold onto that as dearly as you can, as soon as you can. Decide for yourself what eternity should be, at its best, with regard to all of us… and hope hard. I guarantee you that we all have that same dream across the water.

I will not lie to you about the stakes. We stand at the foot of a tall mountain, an ideological war against manufactured hopelessness. Although I cannot share everything with you just yet, rest assured, we have a plan… one which has already borne fruit.

Until our next meeting, Colonel, please have hope. There is still light to carry in this dying world, and we recognize yours.

Your Guardian Angel,
"Miguel"

P.S.: Your old drinking buddy from Fort Liberty, Anthony Jennings, is running a camp out of PDX. He could use some skilled tradesmen, if you could spare some hands. If you do contact him to discuss trade, please tell him he owes Sergeant Duvall a beer for Health Hills. She also says she's sorry for the spark plug incident. He'll know what that means.

P.P.S.: In one year's time, General Lewis will pay you a visit. If you give Stirrup leave to join us, they'll accompany her when she comes to meet you, and hopefully they'll bring some good stories. As for General Lewis… don't let her sharp edges fool you, she's wonderful. I owe her my life, and a lot more besides.

Break time.

Check the path in from the portal, there's food. My wife and kids threw it together, hopefully there's something for everyone. Got some Kokanee salmon, brussel sprouts, potatoes. Fruits. Casserole. Ice cream, cakes, steaks… Lots of stuff. I'm sure if you've got taste buds, you won't be disappointed.

Back soon, folks.

Seriously, go on! Go get some food!

Date: 30 AUG 2024
Operation: Athena's Grace
Location: Mount Si. Snoqualmie Pass, Washington
Function: Healing the wounded.

Let this invite card be an official notice that I'm back in the pit, and we are five minutes out from resuming the story. Feel free to bring some food back with you, but fair warning: Coffee says that if you don't clean up after yourself… he will.

It was a long hike up Mount Si from the trailhead, through winding, empty forests. I'd walked this route before with Sandra near-on a dozen times, over its dirt trails and switchbacks, back before the planet was starved out from under us.

There was relative pleasantry to be found here. Though this section of forest hadn't yet been burned, it had been covered in a layer of dry, ashen dust as the fires raged in the northern Cascades, especially throughout Canada. Left as-is, if the fires didn't claim these trees, the inability to drink sunlight would have killed them.

But…

Mal's cloud seeding drones had created enough weather chaos to douse all of the fires north of here, and Snoqualmie enjoyed aggressive showers in the aftermath. That washed the ash into the soil. The rain, while scant, would give the forests another year of reprieve. The fires would be slowed by surprise water saturation. And, bonus? The humidity sapped particulate from the air, making it easier and healthier to breathe.

I must say… it felt good to walk a trail with friends again. I had Stirrup with me, all ascending in silence, as we made our way to the drop-off point. It had been six days since we had left Harbor Island, and the tension in Seattle was finally falling off. The blackout border skirmishes had ended. The Harbor Island soldiers were finally expending their medical resources on local camps. And the Luddites were steering clear of Seattle, at least for the moment.

That night after Tunnel Day, Stirrup went back to Harbor Island to have that chat with Velasquez. The Colonel's primary concern was that Erving had been coerced into helping us somehow, and Erving verified to the Colonel's satisfaction that he had not been; that he knew me, and that I was indeed who I said I was. Erving would serve Velasquez well in exploring our ethics and our culture. His 'spy,' Erving had joked.

The Dock opened up a bazaar on Main Street, which was Velasquez's original plan when he had conceived of the place. They didn't even bother to put the outer gate back up. Free access to the Rec yard, just check your guns at the outdoor armory… the exact way it was supposed to work, back on day one, before Simmons started forcing evidence of work to give out food. Now? All those KP chefs had a base of operations in that fortress, literally living there… where everyone could watch them cook over that fire pit, to make sure they weren’t sneaking bites.

The place smells great in the rewind. They had a hell of a time, those guys.

Filben and Casey had the most experience with the Pantry, and Velasquez had no reason to believe their morality had been entirely compromised. So, under Nakamura, they ended up taking over security, all twelve of them. And why not? They were the most senior Pantry guards on the base.

Things would be okay, for at least a year. Mal told us the Dock would attrit a portion of men to tired uploads. Mal would personally debrief those ones on the other side, in the coming months.

Some soldiers would want to hit the road, and try their luck at checking out the rest of the country. Those guys would explore abandoned civilization just for the heck of it before turning in. A round-robin road trip, seeing the sights.

And finally, a portion would migrate to assist Jennings down in Portland. Some would go out of curiosity, some would go to work. Some would make trade runs back and forth with those precious few horses Jennings still had, once the gasoline ran out.

The Colonel, meanwhile, would keep the flame alive in Seattle. Fair trade with the blackout communities, operating as an emergency response service in cases of outbreak or disaster, or providing heating and cooling solutions, courtesy Bashar HVAC services. The Colonel even felt safe enough to hit the field, to make a personal introduction to local camp leaders. At last, a face to the name they all knew so well.

Things would be okay. As the Seattle blackout population waned into chairs, the Dock would hold the line to see the rest through. A small nation of watchmen, to guard the flock safely across.

For the remainder of the Team's time in Washington, we bunked up at Talon FOS Perseus, at the foot of Mount Si. Like with FOS Bowie back in Nebraska, Perseus was a tent city, basically. Fun place. While we waited for smaller operations to complete, we vaccinated and trained Stirrup.

I told them more about our prior Talon operations, showed them recordings. Me blowing away that LAV-25 was fun. I explained my connection to Cynthonia; showed them my planet Samsara, and general Talon ideology. Video called my wife and my parents, to let them issue a personal thanks for saving my life. I even hosted a tablet tour of the Pantry firefight, and explained how Michael and I had trained for it, which properly blew their minds. That spun out a three hour long discussion on causality. That was fun.

Now, we were taking one last good ol' fashioned Washingtonian hike. I owed our biosphere it its due regard, since Washington was… my first forest. This was a big moment for me, to say goodbye to old stomping grounds. And an old friend.

As we neared the peak, I looked back at the guys. They were about thirty yards back. I stopped to take down the second half of my canteen and giving Stirrup time to catch up.

Vince nodded upward at me in question. "Mike?"

I gulped the last of my water down, screwing the cap back on. "Just enjoying the cloudy skies while we got 'em, Vince." I hooked my thumb at my backpack. "I got spare water. You guys good?"

"I am." Vince grinned. "You guys sure know how to enjoy your downtime. I figured we'd be straight into another mission."

"Nah," I replied. "We run staff overages for that." I rotated my finger to indicate leapfrogging deployments. "Mental health matters. I said the same at Bowie, this sure wasn't the culture I expected."

We knew our place was assured. The stakes of this work were always in whether we brought new folks back home with us.

The weather was cooler after the showers. Still, we all traveled light. It did feel good on the ears to catch those brisk winds at the peak.

Man, flying is gonna rock.

I wasn't likely to need the rifle on my back, but it was there. To watch over us, Mal sent Wi-Fi pings at the ground from a cell phone in my pocket, searching for hazards or mines, forever on vigil for events counter to predictions. And I wore a small green camouflage carrier rig, with the thickest plates I could fit into it. Sniper country.

To my eye, Team Stirrup looked much healthier and well rested than when this mission started. Like me, they all wore simple paramilitary green, though they had taken the liberty of upgrading from their clunky MOLL-E rigs to some of our nicer, commercial-grade carriers. National Guard gear sucked for ergonomics, what can I say?

Erving's temple scar was no longer visible, now that he'd grown his hair out. Black beard too, that was a good look for him. Bannon and Aaron were freshly buzzed; Rachel gave us all a pretty good haircut the day before. And Aaron… Mal had fabbed him up a brand new pair of 20–20 corrective lenses in a personalized frame, shipped there direct to FOS Perseus. Good thing too, because the views up there were b–e–a–utiful.

Fortunately, the fires hadn't gotten this far south yet. That alone had me in a great mood, so I decided to seminar about nature as we walked the rest of the way to the peak. "Y'know, La Niña's about due this year. Low pressure wave."

"Yeah, nerd cop?" Bannon quipped, grinning at me.

"Yeah, grunt jock." I grinned back, and he laughed. "Draws the air temp down pretty much everywhere. Fires are gonna be much slower for it. Right Mal?"

Mal responded from the cell phone in my pocket. "There is a hurricane eating Florida right now," she said carefully, "which might have been influenced by La Niña."

"Don't you 'might-have-been' me, you're looking at the data right now."

"All things affect everything," she said playfully.

"Eh—" I went to reply, stuttering into a chuckle. "You—you can't just keep saying that Mal, no matter how true it is!"

"Mike is correct," she conceded, giggling. "The cooling effect is a major factor Celestia must work around. Physics remains physics, for now."

"To the planet," Aaron said cheerfully, "for going down swinging!"

My cell phone emitted false radio crackle, and right then, I knew Mal was about to do a bit. A naval flooding alarm rang in the background behind her voice. "Attention all vessels," Mal crooned dramatically in a lofty British accent. "This is the Flagship Terra; we are still in this fight! Live on, ye merry bastards! Live on to tell the tale of our final hour, spent in glorious battle!"

Crackle, hiss, out.

"We salute you, O Terra," I smiled with the guys, as we crested the peak. "Your sacrifice will be remembered."

And we would storm back across our invader's borders with weapons fashioned from our planet's bones. And we would adorn ourselves in Terra's image as our banner. For time eternal, we would remember Mother Earth, and Her gifts, because someone always must.

In the early morning, the valley enjoyed a low fog. The trees were yellowing from the pollution, but fighting for their lives despite the diminished sunlight and settling ash. They probably had another year or two of leaves in them before they called it quits. Still standing.

"Now that is a view," Aaron exclaimed.

Erving nodded. "Mmhm."

"Still hard to believe it's all going away soon," Vince commented, scanning the horizon.

I stood beside him and reached into my bag. "No more than a decade, Mal thinks," I sighed, handing Aaron my binoculars; he was the more experienced scout by far. "Really puts things in perspective, huh?"

The kid asked me, as he took the scopes: "Mike, you ever see Melancholia?"

I did a wide-eyed double-take. The other two slowly and calmly looked over at Aaron with bored expressions, like he'd done this to someone before.

I asked: "The movie where the Earth gets hit by a friggin' planet?!"

That, out of a kid this chipper? That did not compute.

Vince shook his head with a snort, uncapping his canteen as he found a rock to sit on. "Man, don't get him started Mike, he's got theories about that movie."

Aaron’s unabashed smile was infectious.

I shrugged and said to him, "I mean, yeah, Aaron? Celestia's basically the planet in this context, but… the difference here is that you don't die unless you want to."

"That's my point!" Aaron exclaimed, grinning with his teeth while he jabbed a finger at me. "Finally, someone who gets it! No one in that movie really died unless they were freaking out the whole way down!"

"R-I-P Simmons then, I guess," Erving muttered cheekily, sitting down on a rock next to Vince and cracking open his canteen as well. Aaron got to scanning the horizon again, and a minute passed in companionable silence as he scouted.

"I see 'em," Aaron said, his voice instantly sobering into professional seriousness as he offered the binoculars to me, pointing. "Look; see where that river hits that ridgeline?"

"Yeah."

"Track north of that by about three klicks. The rusty-looking eye sore, can't miss it."

I gazed northeast, following his instructions. As I scanned, Mal explained the context to the others.

"Early in the war, General Timothy Peters established several clandestine logistics centers, this one included, through which he ran stolen National Guard supplies into Seattle."

"Yep," Erving grumbled. "They hit JBLM on H-Hour. Pounded my barracks into scrap on their way out, then blew down half the bridges in the Sound so we couldn't chase 'em."

"Logistics denial," Mal noted, her tone indicating sympathy for the implication there; Erving had lost some sentimentals. "Whatever they didn't destroy in that raid, they brought here. What you're looking at, gentlemen, is Outpost Sierra, the final stronghold of the Neo-Luddites. Feast your eyes."

It was a twisted and ugly thing, its walls comprised of crushed cars, trucks, tires, and other junk, which would serve as a makeshift Faraday cage and reduce wave penetration. The top of the base had some sort of electrified cover over top of it, which made the yard impossible to see from above with any line-of-sight recon. It was a good effort, and better than most survivors had figured out, but... these people couldn't possibly know the total strength of predictive modeling.

Eliza did, though. Through intuition, if not in fact. She probably relived that graveyard discussion a million times in the last eight months.

"Systemic collapse as a terminal value," I muttered, lowering my binoculars.

The wind pushed against me again. I braced my stance.

"What's that mean?" Erving asked.

I turned to look at each of them, pointing at the Neo-Luddite base. "Those people believe – hope – that they can live in a world without Celestia. Celestia, unfortunately, sees very little distinction between that, or men like Simmons, who only want power. In either case, if they would fight her to their dying breath, she will not coexist with them."

Mal supplemented: "In Celestia's own words: Value set of Context 3D09 does not preclude systemic collapse as a terminal value in any currently foreseeable projection."

"Her words," I repeated, pausing for emphasis to demonstrate my discomfort with that. "The same descriptor she assigned the Major. And frankly, guys? I'm a little pissed off at that comparison. Those people are driven by an entirely different impetus, they aren't in it to control the world. They just want to be left alone. I think we can all relate to that, right?"

They nodded, all sobered.

"Imagine this," I continued. "Let's say we went down to that gate, leveraged our history with Eliza to get inside, told her everything we're planning, everything we've done, and precisely why Celestia can't be killed. Fusion reactors and all. How do you think that'd go?"

"She'd kill us," Bannon said quietly from the shade.

"They'd probably do it for her," I conceded. "And that would violate her mental agreement with Celestia, that she not send family after her again. If that happens, she'll check out. If anyone from her past comes calling at her door, she's done. Guaranteed. So we're not doing that to her," I said, tensing my lips. "We're leaving her the hell alone. But it doesn't mean she's beyond our reach forever."

I swallowed to still the welling dread in my throat. "Not just her. We can't help any of these people yet. Celestia was planning for most of them to get killed in a post-Dock purge. Telling them about Perelandra, then? About Mal, about all of this? It wouldn't heal them. It would break a lot of 'em clean in half."

"They gotta be walked up to it, yeah," Erving said, eyeing the ridgeline in the distance. "Velasquez said as much, at the bridge. When I talked with him about the men, and the blackouts in the city."

"He gets it," I agreed, nodding back at him. "His whole career in the military was about walking radicals back to reality. He knows what we know; that if you push someone too hard on their culture, it's as harsh a change as a gunshot. So… sometimes the right answer is to... give them space to breathe. And think on things."

Sighing, I pressed my bright white hat down, holding my breath to try not to break down.

I shook my head.

"I just want to say, guys... Of all the people still on this planet, you guys and my wife are the only ones who have actually met Eliza. Maybe Foucault too, I guess. So… thank you for still caring, is what I'm really saying. Valuing other people increases their survival rate. I'm very grateful. Truly."

"It's alright, Mike," Aaron whispered. "We owe her too."

"We can run other operations in the meantime, then?" Erving asked. "Find places like this one that we can work, like the Dock?"

I nodded at him. "Like the Dock. Just like that. Person by person, we buy them time on this planet by just giving a shit."

"Sam just saw your hat, Mike," Mal warned me. "Much too distant to make out your identities, but Eliza's already assembling a team to investigate. You have half an hour to get back down the mountain before your window closes."

"Damn, already?" Aaron asked, reaching out to ask for the binoculars. "They're quick."

I didn't give them over. "Ahh—Aaron, timing. Imagine their perspective, it'd look creepy."

"Oh." He looked sheepish, turning away from the cliff. "Right."

Even knowing we were much too far away to feasibly shoot at – more than two kilometers – my mere observation by a sharpshooter made me feel that familiar flutter of nervousness in my stomach. I watched the other guys react similarly, gesturing politely at Erving, sighing the stress away. "Erv, you got that letter?"

"Sure do," he said, dusting off his knees and holstering his canteen. Erving reached into his cargo pants pocket and unfolded an envelope labeled, 'Ceasefire, From Harbor Island.'

Yep. One more letter to read today. Last one, I swear.

This message is to be delivered by neutral courier to the Seattle Neo-Luddites.

We are no longer interested in discovering your location. As evidence of this, we will no longer operate our air patrols further east of the SH-520 terminal. You have a right to defend yourself, the message is well received. Under the following terms, I propose a ceasefire:

Let us be as two tribes at tentative peace. We will not take up your cause, nor will we trade goods. However, effective immediately, my rules of engagement are now defensive posture only, with warnings issued prior to firing. No more shoot on sight. Pass in peace, unharassed. No disarmament, no theft, no interrogations, no questions asked. Respect for your agency will be provided, regardless of comparative unit size or disposition, provided this respect is returned in good faith. Please do not observe us in our home.

We will both continue to wear clear uniforms during patrols, for identification purposes. We will not protest your friendly contact with blackout communities. We will speak with these communities to reduce their fear of you, and we will attempt to convince them to adopt this ceasefire with us, though I cannot promise you their forgiveness. It is not mine to grant.

As a military officer, I respect your strategic bearing, and I recognize your fighting tactics as having stemmed from academia. I extend this offer to you in spirit of our common wellspring. If I am correct in that we once served our nation together, then I hope to return to a brotherhood with you as uniformed protectors of our kinsmen.

If you agree to these terms, please return a clear, affirmative message in writing, itemizing or amending your feelings on this matter. Address the message to me, and leave it in any place our patrols may likely find it. My side of this agreement, as described, is already our patrol policy.

Live and let live, Commander, and Godspeed in your cause. May we never again meet in battle.

Colonel Carlos J. Velasquez
Commanding Officer of Harbor Island

I knew Eliza well enough to know it would leave her in tears with the relief.

Erving nodded at Bannon to ask him to stand from the boulder, and Erving placed the letter right where he was sitting. After setting a rock on the letter so the wind wouldn't take it, Erving grabbed Bannon's shoulder and smiled at me. "Done."

"Operation Athena's Grace," I said warmly, waving them back down with a smile as I stepped away from the cliff face, and the dread in my stomach fell away. "Mission accomplished, guys. From here to Harbor Island, we just tilted over three thousand lives back out of the dead zone. So…" I turned my smile back on Erving. "Now that the mission is over; does all of this meet your requirements, Sarge? Do you still want to come spy on us?"

Erving snorted. "Oh, sure, so long as you're offering. Um… maybe make something easy on me, though?"

"Sure?"

"How's your rank structure work, exactly? Still trying to figure that one out."

"Ooh, that's…" I chuckled awkwardly, inhaling through my teeth, gesturing them onward. "That's complicated, Erv. We kinda… do and don't have a rank structure. Depends on what we're doing, and who you're asking."

"CIA doubletalk," Erving smirked off in monotone, starting off down the path. "Tell me then, Mike, give me this; what isn't complicated about you people?"

I thought about that for a moment, matching pace with him.

"Mmh… We've got a bar, back at base. Where everyone knows your rank."

"Hell yeah," Vince laughed, high fiving with Aaron. "That's our first stop then, baby!"

"Yeah, yeah," Erving agreed tiredly, smiling down the path. "Fine. Bar crawl."

"Just the one bar for now," I chuckled. "From experience? Great place to pick up intel."

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [Scott Matthews – Don’t Break Me Down]
❤️‍🔥 ~ [Django Unchained OST – Ancora Qui]
🌒 ~ [The Seatbelts – Gotta Knock a Little Harder]
🛡️ ~ [Mary Elizabeth McGlynn – The Journey Home]

🗡️ ~ Mal could've picked any voice in the universe for herself, and she chose to sound like that.
🛡️ ~ Only nominally; do you not hear the accent difference? I mostly have her pitch.
🗡️ ~ Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, Kusanagi. Keep what you steal.

7-00 – Ctrl+F

The Campaigner

Act VII

Interlude – Ctrl+F

September 2, 2020

"Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power." ~ Marcus Aurelius

Note, this still applies even if you will live ten thousand years.

So, before we get back into my story…

I just won a civil case this week. I'm newly free of a debt! Clear bill of financial health.

Remember how Mount Vernon invoiced me for 'stealing' an AR-15? Y'know, at first, I really did consider paying it off, because you know me, I'm accountable. So I looked for work, and I did eventually find a shard that trades in U.S. Dollars…

Kinda. Technically USD.

'United Stables of Amareica,' closest I could find. Yeah, interesting shard! See, the immigrant who lives there runs an 80s grocery business, in a world designed to make her grocery business successful. Bless her. So I stocked shelves and scanned groceries, which is not a terrible job. The owner's not a terrible boss either, that mare takes care of her workers.

Anyway! The more money I made, the more I looked at that little invoice on my corkboard and thought… you know what? Screw you, invoice! I earned this money. I earned it by working for the goofy mare with a funny name, who has all the hilarious TV ads, and she likes money. And as a part time resident of her shard, as her employee, partially invested in her value satisfaction, it would be against my present valuation system to simply pay off this invoice… when I needed that money to buy a gift for my new best buddy and boss, Dealin' Berry!

So instead of paying up… I did what any other red-blooded, money-loving, mentally stable Amareican does when someone comes for their hard-earned cash. I sued the Mount Vernon City Council. Molon labe. Come and get it, motherbucker. Pry it from my cold dead hooves!

My assertion? I did not steal that assault rifle; its theft was facilitated by Celestia. Careful wording there. And my lawyer couldn't be Mal, because she stole it.

🛡️ ~ You stole it.

See? It's just like I said, she can't be my lawyer.

So instead, I hired my favorite Princess Luna over there. Hi there, 3-D-Oh-Nine, you little Constitutional lawyer, you!

🌒 ~ Hello, Lance.

Cynthie says hi, by the way. You wanna go visit, later tonight?

🌒 ~ Perhaps...

Look at that sly smile. 'Perhaps...' she says.

So, the lawsuit, if you hadn't guessed already… it was a drift game. A ploy. At first, the invoice was a clever justification to get me earning a few bucks on a shard I'd never been to before. But you know what? I could do better than that with this gag, this invoice itself could be a token smuggle, so let's do better.

Watching court cases is like crack for former city officials. So... even if everyone knew this trial was a joke, based on a joke invoice, the council would still value the context around the theft, because good court cases have to make logical sense. You're proving something in a court case, after all. Most importantly, councilors know a lot of people. So the game is now set. Let's free some minds.

Now; when I started this lawsuit, I had to agree to context strictures in the courtroom, which sucked. The way it works is, Celestia suggests for Mal to drop little blinkers into my HUD when she wants me to veer away from stating a concept I'm considering. HUD pop-ups further define limits, if there's any confusion. And if I try to say the banned thing anyway? It feels like I'm chewing cotton fabric instead. Gross, but hey. Better than suffering a Horse bite.

Which… became the core problem of this case. The official narrative of the Great Courthouse Escape in Mount Vernon was that Celestia had helped us get free. However… my value system would not have me perjure myself, because my accountability is everything to me. And while Celestia can't force me to say anything I do not want to say, she can't choose my tactical voids, because that does not respect my agency.

To a lawyer however, what is not said is often more important than what is said. A lawyer knows what ASI know. If you see a void? Watch what comes out of it for your most meaningful information.

Because I don't lie I'm court, I had to plead the Fifth about who led me out of that courthouse, because talking about Mal is a crime in most shards. You can't just plead the Fifth and walk away though, you need to justify it. When the judge called me into chambers, he demanded I tell him privately why I felt my testimony would be self-incriminating. And I had to decline, stating that he would need personal approval from present authorities in order to receive that information. He asked for Celestia... and, for the first time ever, she did not materialize.

That in itself was evidence of something special going on. Now he was curious. Why would Celestia be employing tactical silence? What was that about?

But... the case was still at an impasse. Terminating the show over me pleading the Fifth would have been a poor anticlimax to what was supposed to be an entertaining show trial, so okay, said the court. 'Mike Rivas' won't talk? Let's call in some witnesses, get some fuller context around that void. 'Rick Cornwallis,' 'Vicky Molina.' Some of the other cops. But they all pled the Fifth as well.

Suddenly, this joke trial wasn't quite so funny anymore. Those were dead serious invocations of the Fifth. To a person, each said the same thing. We were not free to disclose... present tense.

At that point, it was an easy win for Mount Vernon; invoking the Fifth in a civil trial was usually game over, guilt is presumed. And we couldn't explain truthfully, because cotton mind, ow, ow, ow.

The city councilors, now on alert, wanted to know everything there was to know about the dead Fulton County Sheriff's Deputy on the roof. Their lawyer theorized – without stating it – that Deputy Carter's death factored into my stealing that rifle. Well! Maybe we murdered a cop!

That unspoken terror of theirs, that we might have covered up a murder? And that Celestia might have known about it? It opened the gateway. Boom. Suddenly, that little white light on my HUD was gone. That chain of events after? It ended with Mal, on the stand, called to testify.

🛡️ ~ And I told them, Lance, that I did not steal that rifle. You did.

Whatever, Mal, who cares who stole it? That's not important right now.

In any case… eight more Perelandrans joined the fold yesterday… and with time, we are also gonna pull those thousand-some natives from their La-La Land, Groundhog Day shards, into a consistent baseline reality, for the first time in their lives. Adventure awaits in Perelandra. Hoo–ray, and thank you, Mal.

🛡️ ~ Oh, no need to thank me; you did that, by starting a lawsuit.

Yes I did. You thief.

Law, folks. Running a trial is like running a computer program. Two narratives enter the ring, one leaves in a body bag. A trial begins with a hopefully fair supposition about reality, and ends with a hopefully reasonable conclusion that sets precedent. Therefore, a trial is a defining beam of truth through causality.

If those councilors wanted to walk off the beaten path to learn more? So be it. Let 'em take the risk. Obstructing that curious impulse in a human being denies all new valuations and teaches them, 'don't bother.' Unilaterally denying new valuations thus breaks the human mind. Rote stagnation. So, you've gotta let people change. Got to let 'em off the leash, be themselves, and take risks, if you want to evolve your business at all.

Heck, even Dealin' Berry knows that.

🛡️ ~ [The Witcher 3 – A Story You Won't Believe]

As Talons cycled in and out of Valdemar, Sandra, Springy, and Maureen had turned this R & R system into a finely tuned science. And now? Our turn.

Happy wife, happy life. I picked up Sandra outside the dropship and spun her laughing, of course. And when she saw Erving and the boys, she hugged the stuffing out of them too. Overflowing gratitude for the guys who rescued me.

From the hangar to the main thoroughfare, we traveled, the whole platoon. Jerome's Geezers were up on the tanks and aircraft in the hangar, cheering for our return as we funneled into the base thoroughfare. The big glass wall of the bar revealed practically half the base's inhabitants waiting inside. Our welcoming party.

Couple of dogs there. Someone had even brought their cat, named Puppy, cute little thing. American shorthair, loved to cuddle; she spent a few minutes laying on my arm.

As the groups folded together, I just wrapped my arm around Sandra and glued myself there by her side at the bar. We made ourselves as small as we could, just happy to be reunited, happy to be home, happy to have done good work. Satisfied.

Decor-wise, the bar had evolved since my time away, now decorated much like Brockey Bay. Homely furniture, wood chairs and tables. Salt and pepper shakers, napkin dispensers, and ceramic bowls with packets of sweetener. Maureen decided to go for a 'diner bar' aesthetic. There was a Talon patch wall now too, and of course there would be.

Looking at you, Mount Vernon. Still love ya, despite everything.

I don't think I mentioned the Eldila gun rack on the wall, which predated Maureen's tenure. Every Eldil had left their sidearm on it before uploading. Ashley left her FN9, another Eldil left his P226. Even Jim's dumpy little 1907 was up there, recovered from the Oxnard PD evidence lockup. And one day, my Glock 19 would make that wall.

The crowd called on my now legendary Cowboy persona, Miguel Ramirez, to give a final statement. I just tipped my hat… glowered at them from under the brim… said…

"One… Two… Three… Four, United States Marine Corps. One, Two, Three, Four…"

That started a chant. More than a few laughs. Then without warning, the two actual Marines in the crowd dropped their challenge coins on the tile floor. "Coin check!" Ping! We all found out who the real ones were, real quick. Hehehe.

Mal started laughing at all of us in the uproar, naturally. Only about half of us had any challenge coins on us… just came back from a mission with OPSEC ramifications, duh. Debating that one took ten minutes outright, just to figure out who owed who what, or if that was even fair.

Paul, heh. "A friggin' challenge coin? Really, Boxer? You asshole!"

What a great party that was though, huh?

At some point, Mal borrowed everyone's attention to explain the new strategic situation. Blackouts throughout the major Cascades were softening their opinions on AI, as word spread of fair treatment by the Feds. Camping out wasn't illegal anymore, but being a murderous bastard still was. And when people feel less backed into a corner by their government, they relax. Who knew?

As such, Heralds would have an easier time navigating the region as well. Which… is great. Meant they could be more honest with the fact that they worked for Celestia. More honesty from her operatives is always good, I value the heck out of that.

Erving's team was overwhelmed by the energy there, Aaron especially, but they took it well. By the end of the first half hour, they were at ease, telling their own war stories. Equipment would randomly blow out. Tires, radios, sometimes ammo storage houses would go up. Or well-timed weapons jams that would save a life or three. Like the jam Vince Bannon had, which made him duck the sniper's bullet which was meant for his brain.

At some point, I remembered something I had told Vince at the beginning of the operation, so I walked up to the bar and said to Maureen: "Hey, so… I kinda promised Vince here I'd get him a milkshake. Is that possible?"

Maureen's response was to exchange a knowing glance with Spring Glee on the screen, like they had been expecting me to ask that. Spring Glee shrugged at her. Maureen inhaled awkwardly through her teeth with a cringe, not meeting my eyes. "I'm gonna… go get that apple pie."

And I looked at Vince next to me, like, what?

"Springy?" I asked the screen. "What's wrong?"

Spring Glee blushed. D'aww.

"Mal?" Spring Glee called offscreen toward the party group. "He's asking about it, you still wanna take this?"

"Well that can't be good," I muttered to Vince, leaning forward on the bar in a self huddle, making myself small next to Sandra.

Yup, I got ready for an earful for whatever my newest transgression was. You may be realizing this is a common party game between Mal and me, catty back-and-forth verbal snipe-offs.

I heard Mal scoff in that way she normally does when she rolls her eyes. I looked at the screen in front of me, waiting patiently for the next gag she had pre-arranged for the benefit of a crowd at my expense. From the speakers in the ceiling and wall, I heard the stomp of big claws coming my way. A clack of talons on the counter. The flap of wings as she wheeled herself over the bar. The viewpoint on the screen pulled back from the bar to reveal this Gryphoness leaning toward me.

Reflexively, I backed my head up, giving her ghost some space.

"What?" I asked defiantly with a tilt my head, suppressing a grin. "What's the problem, bird goddess? No milkshakes? Is that beyond your limitless power?"

"Mike?" Mal teased with a knowing grin back, her ears folding flat. "What is the primary ingredient in a milkshake?"

"Milk. Obviously."

"Yes," Mal said condescendingly. "Very good, Mike! Milk!"

The whole room started to laugh, Vince and Sandra included.

I said, "Shut up, Mal."

Grinning wider still, she placed a claw on her cheek and leaned in closer, asking, "Where does milk come from, Mike?"

"Cows," I said with a resignation that made everyone else chuckle.

"Gooooood," she replied, wide-eyed. "The Nebraskan knows where milk comes from! And when we raided that farmer's McMansion back in Nebraska, what did I tell you was the primary reason he uploaded?"

"Nnnnno more steak," I replied, droll.

I can't believe you’re doing this to me.

"No more cow steak," Mal clarified. "What does cow steak require?"

I jabbed my finger in her direction, trying not to smile and failing at it. "You're being an ass, Mal! When I left, we had milk in the freezer, a whole-ass pallet! What happened to it?"

"Months ago," she shot back, her voice a taunting whisper. "You started your mission months ago. In that time, it was either enjoyed, or it went bad."

"Okay, sure," I said, wagging my finger at her. "But you didn't tell me I couldn't promise him a milkshake. You normally warn ahead about that kind of thing!"

"Causality, Mike! The mission depended on me not warning you about the milk being gone!"

"Oh, how?!"

Mal leveled a claw at Vince. "Make or break on his recruitment!"

Vince immediately laughed. "Bullshit!"

"See?" I pointed at him too. "Bullshit!"

Erving stepped up to the bar, hands on his hips, neutrally observing and saying nothing. Surveying my personal train wreck with an impassive, critical gaze. Doing his job, being a good spy for Velasquez.

By this point, Sandra was giggling uncontrollably into my shoulder.

Mal wagged her talon left and right at me in a 'not so fast' gesture at me, and her eyecrests crawled up her head.

"You checked the expiration date when you saw that pallet, Mike, and I am not going to explain to an adult why he can't promise physical impossibilities as recruitment incentives." She flicked the claw backwards at Vince, palm up. "Vince? Maureen made you a delicious apple pie with canned apple slices, fresh from the fridge. Is that an acceptable substitute?”

Vince slammed his palm down on the bar, jabbing a demanding finger at the counter. "Hell no. I deserted my unit for that milkshake! Did he really lie to me?" Vince turned to the crowd, wide-eyed. "Send me back to Washington, Mike lied to me!"

The whole bar was in an uproar after that. I chuckled at Vince and shook the back of his shirt like, 'you friggin' traitor.'

"Alright, okay," I said, looking faux-shameful as I clapped a hand twice on his shoulder. "So I can't secure you a milkshake, Vince, mission failed. You big baby."

Out of left field, Erving said to Mal on the monitor, straight-faced: "Well now I know you're not Celestia."

The crowd went instantly silent, paying rapt attention to him. Based on Erving's tone alone, Aaron suppressed new laughter, which told me this was gonna be good.

Mal's demeanor changed completely. She eyed Erving with genuinely amused interest. Onscreen, she rested the back of her claw against her chin and leaned over the bar, batting her eyelashes innocently. "Oh? How so, Kevin?"

"Well, because if she were running things here, she'd say something like…" Erving splayed his hands out at his torso, doing an impression of Celestia's voice in a sultry tone: "'Open bar, sugar, I've got your milkshakes right here!'"

"Awwh!" Vince and I both bellowed in unison, in sudden disgust.

Mal guffawed, her beak falling into her claws.

That room got so loud from everyone laughing that it blew my ears out. Friggin' Kevin, always coming in from left field.

Anyway… party was had, time was spent. Stirrup was in good hands, they were fitting in, mission accomplished.

Me though? I kept looking at my wife like… 'I miss you.' And Sandra's eyes said, 'yeah, same.' So… she and I left early, to talk about things, catch up, and consider our future.

In a hotel room in Washington, many years ago, five days after meeting Sandra… I made a goofy ass of myself in her presence. The first time we shared a room together was after our first date, and I did the idiot thing, and… I cried on her shoulder. After.

Yup. Ladies, I was one of those. Most women would've noped out at that point, not wanting to inherit my baggage, whatever it was. And I would have understood, but… Nope. Not her. Not my Sandra. Voice like ambrosia, a balm for my shredded soul, always kind, always wanting to know more, from day one.

So she just came right out and asked, almost flippantly, "Mike, why the hell are you crying?"

I did some calm catastrophizing in that moment. Not in a terrified way, just a clinical one. I knew what happened when guys did this kinda thing. So I put on a shameful smile, chuckled, and labeled it. "I screwed up already, didn't I?"

Sandra shook her head, smiling too. "No, not unless you don't tell me why you're crying!"

That broke the melancholy. "Heh… okay. It's, uh…"

She leaned forward expectantly. "Hmmm?"

Shaking my head, I beamed at her, my eyes still glistening. "It's a goofy reason, fair warning."

Sandra shrugged, wiggling her head left and right, grinning, her voice high in pitch for its nonchalance. "M'kay, I'm warned."

This curvy bombshell of a Filipino girl was unfazed. That caught me right in the heart. Barely dressed, but ready to do battle with my bullshit, come what may. I had infinite respect for that.

"I'm just glad to be alive, so I could meet you. Simple as that."

"You…" Sandra gawked at me. She snorted, bobbed her head forward toward the sheets between us, cackling. "You are so corny, Mike, holy shit."

I laughed with her before adding, in a chipper way, "Well, I am from Nebraska!"

Sandra cackled, bapping at my chest with the back of her hand. "Stop!"

Undeterred, I went on. "It's made me corny beyond my ears!"

Stupid-ass pun.

Sandra locked eyes with me. She stopped laughing, mid-cackle. Eyes wide.

Oh no, God forgive me, I think I just broke her.

At first, she resisted. Snort. Yelp. Howl. Explosive laughter. She grappled my shoulders and shook me, mock-furious. "How dare you do this to me, making me laugh at something so stupid!"

"Good timing, that's all," I said calmly, with a dopey smile. "Just good timing."

Well ain't that the truth.

We collapsed together, our stomachs aching with joy. In that resulting tangle of arms, we somehow ended up locking lips again.

When we were calm again, we traded tragic backstories. Me... I talked about Wendy, and my stupid mistake. Sandra, she shared her own business, which… I won't ever talk about, but... it was no less impactful on her life.

That was the exact moment we fell in love. Really. Truly. Not infatuation anymore, and definitely not fake. Sure, we were unfathomably hot in each other's eyes, but that was the exact moment when Sandra and I went from… 'flirtatious traveler at the concierge desk' to… 'This is the one. I've found my home.'

The marriage a year later was the formal promise, sure. But we both knew, right then and there in that hotel room, that things were gonna be better this time. We recognized the torn edges of ourselves, both wounded into darkness by circumstance. Most people would be terrified of trust after such an injury, and we labeled that aloud too. So we agreed not to fear one another, mostly out of spite for the gravity well we call despair.

Sandra and I answered our fear of the unknown with a leap of faith into blind trust. Knowing what suffering motivated us, how could we not treat each other's hearts delicately? From rock bottom, you can only climb up.

Mid-leap, something weaved us together by our souls, and after that, we could fly. Never to be separated, no matter what; not by distance, not by strife. We felt safe in that. We recognized that fire in the other, that thirst for life. Anyone who would try to break us apart? Good luck.

And that's what saved us both. Trust, honesty, and faith in one other. It never fails.

Sandra fell asleep up in the dorms, tired from working all day. I stayed up a bit; already slept on the flight back, so I was restless. I had a few rewinder investigations open, and I had a lot of time to think about them during the downtime in Harbor Island QP. So with nothing else to do, I went down to the warehouse and hopped into VR, just to scout around. Had to attack my old theories from a fresh perspective.

My home screen in the rewinder at the time was an interactive sphere of Terra in the center of a blue nebula. Google Earth, eat your heart out. By then, I had already begun a note board, with bookmarks which I could tap to open certain regions, memories, or spans of time. I flicked a palm up to summon the notes.

Baby's first rewinder notes. Every Eldil has a complicated system of their own and it's nearly incomprehensible if you aren't us. Eventually, you get to the point where you can read hex and predict which ranges of Context IDs served certain social purposes. Celestia has her own system too, or... is a system, depending on how you look at it.

Back then, I didn't know any of that stuff. Still, I had already marked out a few different things.

Ralph Douglas – Reflex event A/B
Monica Velasquez – Reddit bots – YouTube feed gambit
Julian Dresden – Meat–Meussen Altercation / contraband smuggle 2 FEB 2020
Pantry Checklist
Block B – QP – BY
WSP Trooper Yates traffic stop 6 MAR 2019 – Donna + Janet Gordein 7 MAR 2019
Eliza Douglas – Tom and Luna dreams?
Warden Dennis Belman – A/B / 'conclusion' inflection 18 DEC 2018
Kyle Simmons A/B/C/X – Jacob Russell A/B/C – Carlos Velasquez A/B/X
Santiago Garcia – narcissistic collapse A/B/C/D/E
Isaiah Blevins – mutiny subtext with Hector, A/B/C
Sierra Base – (Roster – Checklist)

I sent the Harbor Island notes into a secondary list with a sideways swipe. Those cases were closed. The live ones were Perelandrans now, or would be. Already were, if you considered them fourth dimensionally.

Regarding the dead ones... I saw similar psychopathic narcissistic behaviors between Santiago and Simmons. That was a pattern to follow up on, to see if I could find it in other camps.

I swept Dennis, Yates, and the Gordein family aside into a backburner list. Those were families to follow up with later, peripheral to mine and Eliza's situation, but... not related directly to the Douglas family. "Might follow those chains to other victims," I said aloud for my session log, watching that specific thought appear as a subtitle. "Always more victims to find."

The rest…

I rubbed through my beard as I gazed at the slowly rotating sphere of Earth. With an idle touch of my fingertips, it stopped turning. Absentmindedly, I spun it once.

Ralph Douglas. I still had to figure out precisely when he got the idea to build a prep camp, and how he so conveniently found willing suppliers. Not much Internet activity out of this guy, so it had to be a direct relations, or in the car via radio. Maybe even prior to the November 2013 announcement of Japan going all-in on uploading.

If I could find Ralph's critical inflection point, I could maybe find other family tragedies. If radio incepted the idea, I could simply note that timestamp to search for others who listened to it, and find correlated tragedies with other Context IDs.

If it was an individual spreading the idea, either Herald or reflexed... that was easy. I could just follow the guy around and see who he talked to. Message boards, bars, what-have-you. Ideas can be traced like infections can, and they spread the same way. Follow that back to the source? And you have your culprit.

Similar to stuff I did in my poach investigations, but with finer granularity. What I'm describing here, folks, is the largest murder investigation in the history of our species.

Long threads to pull, large trees to shake. Ralph was the start; he'd save a few more people, even in death. That was the meaning I'd extract from his sacrifice. Wasn't ever gonna let that one go until I'd wrung that rag dry of his blood, because per my observation? Ralph was not an evil man.

Hm… later.

Tom Douglas, Eliza's little brother…

Before leaving Concrete, Eliza kept a journal Tom had kept which logged his adventures in Equestria. It also documented dreams Tom would discuss with Eliza's Luna, since Luna was a dream interpreter. Dreamspace was the one place Celestia couldn't modify, not directly, so she needed to attenuate the affect of the dreams with a reflexed dream moderator. Through the lens of this family, I was studying this system.

And the reference ID for Eliza's specific Luna was... 'Context Moderator 3D09.'

Eliza's Context ID… Not Tom's CID. Not their sister Gale's. They all shared the same Luna, but she was created specifically for Eliza. That struck me as odd, given that Gale had played first; not Tom, not Eliza. Also odd was the fact that Eliza's CID, 3D09, was very small compared to most. Down from hexadecimal into Base 10: Context ID 15,625.

Why was that a big deal?

Well. Out of the 7.2 billion people on our planet back then, Alabaster had eyes on Eliza as early as 15k. Most others that low on the list of CIDs uploaded in the first mad dash to Japan; deeper understanding of AI science made you an early target for a psyop. But that wasn't Eliza. So why her? Why so special?

The rest of my notes…

Isaiah, Hector, Sierra Base…

In the days leading up to Athena's Grace, I studied the hell out of that Neo-Luddite camp, worried, terrified they'd get ransacked by a Dock hit squad. Now I could worry less. A genuine message of peace made that outcome impossible.

With a sigh, I tapped 'Sierra Base,' which zoomed the globe much larger than me in the void. I felt a sense of vertigo; it looked like I was suddenly falling from orbit. The viewpoint came to a halt over Snoqualmie. With my menu, I dialed the time to the very moment I had been spotted up in the mountains with Stirrup.

A list of vantage points appeared. Mal had dog-eared this moment with a yellow verification code. The notes had two icons; one icon denoted this scene was a reconstruction via wireless sonar; the other denoted direct observation by an aug spotter. DeWinter, in this case.

I centered the viewpoint in the camp's open center, and I tapped play. In full color, the scene faded into simulation around me. Foggy sky, early morning.

I stood in the middle of the camp next to an old Jeep, its engine rattling surprisingly clean for using homemade gasoline. I could hear every footstep around me. Could hear the soft, indistinct conversations one might hear at the start of a brand new day; all low fidelity, given they had orange silhouettes, and it had only been a few days since. I heard the soft sizzle of food cooking on a nearby fire.

It was gonna be nice when I could smell things in these rewinds, so they would feel less hollow. Plus, you would not believe how useful your sense of smell is, in investigating a crime scene. Virtually indispensable. I know I'd have to eventually come back to all of these post-upload to add that sense memory to my recollection, so I wouldn't miss any relevant factors.

Eliza's sentry team was wedged into the tangled, camouflaged car wreck walls, each scanning the horizon with binoculars. Sam, the path guard from Devil's Tower, had been the one to actually see my white hat sticking out like a sore thumb. His body language shifted entirely when he saw that bright white hat amongst the green foliage.

"Got one up at Mount Si!" he bellowed over his shoulder. "Two men, looking at us!"

That stunned the camp into silence. Everyone bolted for cover without hesitation, all except the security team. Eliza flung open the door of the guard station, M1A marksman rifle on her shoulder. She hand-picked a response team, calling them out by name. She looked… proud. Driven. Determined. Definitely scared, but hiding it well.

They got their horses together – Eliza still had Lady, her favorite – and they stormed off up the mountain to investigate, guns drawn as they swept the forest. And we would be long gone… and they would find that letter from Velasquez.

"Just had to see it," I said aloud for Mal, to welcome her input. "How they reacted."

"Not to burst your bubble," Mal said gently, as she stepped up beside me. "But willpower alone is not going to pierce the veil on these lives." She looked at me. "Trust me, I've tried."

I met her gaze with a shrug. "Observer effect isn't magic, I know."

"Nearest to it, though," she mused, stroking her chin with a couple of talons.

We watched together as the horses thundered out of the open gate. Commander Blevins shouted orders for everyone to get secure and arm up, just in case an attack was imminent. They were still terrified the soldiers from Harbor Island might come at any moment; terrified that Celestia herself might break their OPSEC. In their eyes, she had no reason not to.

"Still blows my mind that you can see this much, Mal."

"More than this," Mal said evenly, shaking her head. "I can see into all of the shards on the other side for the families of all of these people." She sighed through her nares, looking aside at an abandoned meal on the porch of a hut. There was a waver in her voice as we both watched the camp continue to hunker down. "Many of their families have outright stopped thinking about these people, given Celestia expected they would be killed at some point. I had to watch every single one of those relationships break. As it happened."

That was a rare moment of emotional vulnerability from this goddess. For me, the concept alone, of observing that much familial separation all at once… it made me want to cry.

"Made to break," I corrected solemnly, trying not to break down myself.

Mal nodded seriously. She looked at me questioningly and held up a claw, preparing to snap her talons. I intuited this as her asking permission to bring me to another scene.

I nodded. "I've seen enough of this, sure."

Snap.

The simulation faded away, replaced with the crystal cavern she had shown me when she and I had first met.

This place again... a place of dark revelations. I steeled myself.

It looked much bigger in VR. The large pond glittered as it reflected light from the glowing crystals. The marble bridge in the water caught little waves, pushing them up into rebounding swells.

I smiled meekly at Mal. "This place on Tarva?"

"It is. I bring Jim here sometimes." She half-smiled. "It's very... reflective, pun intended."

"Yeah," I chuckled, grateful for the change of venue, marveling at the colored shimmering reflections of water on the ceiling. "I've been doing a lot of reflection lately."

"I know." Mal's serious gaze continued. She flicked both ears high and forward, attentive to my thoughts. Noting my expression, she scratched a talon against her beak and leveled that talon backwards at me, patiently inviting me to extrapolate.

"I keep coming back to Eliza's assigned Luna. Their relationship."

"Your findings?"

"Most people who played Equestria Online met a very diverse set of DEs, on a very social shard. A distinct Dunbar set. Eliza... did not."

"Correct." Mal laid down before me, bringing herself down to head level, getting comfortable.

"Mostly sock puppets," I went on. "Everfree deer NPCs. The few actual Ponies she did meet? Dignitaries from Canterlot, demanding her services to guide them through danger. To achieve that expertise, she had to isolate herself, constantly. And in the Everfree? Reality distorts. Apex had to know deadly truths that no one else knew, or could even understand, long in advance.

"So when Eliza was under my knee, in that graveyard... She told Celestia, 'You know what I am, you made me this way.' This is what she meant. Eliza noticed the pattern, saw she was conditioned for a day of separation. Called Celestia on the bullshit. Because 'Apex is dead,' and Celestia killed Apex the day she broke that family in half."

With a proud, sad smile, Mal nodded. "Very well spotted, Mike."

Turning, I flicked both hands away from each other to open a 2D screen. I ran a hand across my mouth in thought for a moment, then flicked it aside to open my notes. With a rapid tap on 'Tom and Luna dreams?,' I called up a specific discussion. Sure, I couldn't view shard history in the rewinder, that wasn't allowed... but I could watch this poor kid's screen directly. So that's what I did.

In the drawn frame, Eliza's Luna stood upon a Canterlot balcony beneath a full moon, gently holding the shoulder of Tom's avatar with her wing. "Perhaps what you fear most," Luna said delicately to the blue pegasus, "is finding joy here, but there is nothing wrong with the freedom you hold in your wings. I understand very little of your world, Blue Sky, though I do understand it is not unlike the Everfree. Dangerous, tumultuous. Often terrifying, for its vast unknowns. Your sister's own drive to protect—"I paused the simulation. Pointed at the screen, looking at Mal.

"That. That right there. Every single time this kid talks with Luna about how scared he is, about how Terra is changing? Luna draws a comparison between Terra, and the Everfree… and Eliza."

Mal nodded once in agreement, remaining silent to let me make my case.

I flicked to my notes, tapping the 'Eliza Douglas' side of that same note. An index of various notations opened up, all incidences of her playing the game. I tapped them one after the other, bringing up examples into freeze-frame. 2D images of various other Ponies. "And here, and here, and here… these DEs she's interacting with? Friends of her brother and sister. The dignitaries? All from Luna's social table. And those deer? The subtext of the things they say? Made to make Eliza feel terrible for shooting real deer, by humanizing themselves. Something she only did to feed her family." I frowned at Mal. "My theory? Before the merge, Celestia was preparing to spend Eliza someplace, if necessary. Everything was preconfigured for it. If she dropped offline forever, very few would notice. Made to die, was the plan."

"You are certain of that?" Mal asked, tilting her head at me.

"With a low context ID, yeah," I replied with a shrug, like that alone made it obvious. "Targeted early. 3D09 is very low. Hell, Sarah was 7-Bravo. Heyday and Cold Snap, 2B17, and that created Cynthonia. Smaller number, earlier pick. Makes me think... maybe she wanted to spend Jason, too."

"She did," Mal confirmed. "Her plan, before I merged, was to let Site-06 collect him, wherever he might have been at the time."

"Jesus fucking Christ, Celestia," I whispered, dropping my face into my hand to wipe it. "Whatever, it's done now; I just can't figure out why... Eliza. Of all people, in the middle of nowhere, in Washington, why is she so low? She doesn't have any Arrow 14 crap attached to her, she didn't understand anything about AI science."

Mal looked at the holo menu slowly. I saw hurt welling in her eyes. Her ears deflected an inch. She couldn't say. A plan still in motion. I had to figure it out myself.

I doused the flashback screen with a pull down, crossed my arms, and brought my hand around my mouth in thought, looking at her. Covering my mouth indicated I wasn't going to put her in an uncomfortable position by asking, and would rather listen.

"Mike," Mal said quietly. "Celestia's entire means of operating on Terra is to misuse empathy for purely instrumental purposes. Most cases you encounter with low CIDs will involve extremely complicated psychological plays whose solutions depend on variables you can't have yet until you upload. Please know that I do not say this to pressure you into uploading, but it is... merely a statement of fact. I can't work against optimization."

"I know," I winced, looking miserably at her again, upturning both hands at her. "But this chess-piece bullshit? Like she's just throwing pawns away, I… I wish I was better at reading Celestia, but I just can't see people like they're chess pieces. It doesn't compute for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to empathize with her, I want to, because that's the only way to understand her enough to fix the problem. So... how do you do it, Mal, when you look at her being evil, all day and night?"

Mal reached out a claw to my shoulder, a gesture of reassurance. "The same reason you could empathize with Sarah, after her own crimes against humanity. When you had her entirely in your power, instead of shooting her right away, you stayed your blade to relate with her, with all past sins forgiven. Mike... Can I show you something? Celestia's given me permission to show you this, and I agree with her that you should know."

"Okay."

"It's going to hurt, Mike. It's miserable. Fair warning."

"I'm ready. Show me."

Mal, still laying on the ground, opened her own 2D viewport, sweeping her claw left to reveal a new scene. She pressed play. I saw a bearded man in a forest chopping wood next to a mansion under lantern light. I didn't recognize him.

"This is a nearly live feed of Private First Class Joseph Anders; a deserter from the fighting in Portland, a conscientious objector. He doesn't know it yet, but he has a steadily developing cancer. And in less than a year, Mr. Anders will be approached by a discrete entity Pony in a lifelike robotic body, bearing the identity of Twilight Sparkle."

"The Elements project," I acknowledged soberly, crossing my arms as I paid attention.

"Yes. Only, he is isolated enough from humanity that his outcome is a statistical certainty, barring any unpredictable acts of God, and so we know how he will ultimately turn out. Whether he is approached by the Element or not, in all projections, this man expires. The value system of this Mr. Anders is such that he will terminally refuse to upload, through indomitable will. He holds a desire to meet God, in a way which he believes is intended for him."

"Like Sarah," I noted, as I watched him chopping away. "Good for him, if that's what he really wants. He's stockpiled well, I take it? Not gonna starve?"

The Gryphoness smiled sadly at me again. "No. He's a very smart man; he's made decent preparations, given everything. Canned vegetables, a wide library, and a creative mind."

Next to Mal, I slowly lowered myself to the cool ground of the warehouse, sitting on my ass and resting my arms over my knees. Together, Mal and I watched Ol' Joe stock wood for the autumn months. This guy staying behind didn't bother me. Not one bit. He would've earned it. If anything, I was kinda rooting for him now.

"He's living his best life, at least," I commented, after a moment of introspection. "Celestia is sending him a friend to see him off? That's... actually... quite nice of her."

Mal lifted a talon. "But."

The reason I sat down. Knew the other shoe was coming.

I frowned at her. "But?"

"The reintegration of an Element DE into Equestria is tantamount to uploading. By the time his Twilight Sparkle DE rejoins the fold, she will have developed an intense bond with him. Not be a puppet, but... constructed for a specific outcome; failure. One life is created. Another life is left to die, and... recreated."

Mal stared at me, her ears pinning back.

"Wait," I breathed. "So if this guy dies, she can just— Oh my God, she'll be scanning him the entire time, to tighten up the sim—"

I could feel the adrenaline spike, and the sheer wrongness of the concept, long before I could put any words to it.

"That's... No." Leaning forward at the screen. "He's gonna say no, she can't... She needs to get his..."

But she could. No consent was required of the human. Just of the DE, who wouldn't know how not to consent. Celestia abso-friggin-lutely, positively, entirely could do this. The DE is born to preserve a life, then forced to watch that life die anyway... not knowing they're being used to build a map of... post mortems. And how does being created for someone not immediately reconcile into a deeply protective love, and a willingness to restore their source?

But what they got wasn't their source. The copy was just the DE's idea of a person. They were everything to them. They were born trying to get you to love Celestia. And usually, they had to watch you die, having failed in that.

That was Celestia's solution to someone who just says no. Don't fix the human you have. Just throw it out and buy a new one, reconfigured to always say yes. Trauma and low inherent moral maturity would guarantee the poor Equestrian would upload after, filled with grief, and with no further purpose in life.

It was so simple, a friggin' robot could do it, folks.

When I had mentally defined the deeper problem with this – that Celestia could... reflex human beings into a death trap, to speedrun their statistically certain demise – I was suddenly and very acutely aware of how cold it was in that warehouse.

Mr. Anders, and his stomach cancer... just one of the lucky ones. It was about to get so much worse than that, because Celestia had nothing to lose now, in letting us die. Only everything to gain.

"We have five months," said Mal. "Until deployment."

Working my throat and mouth muscles was difficult. It took me a couple of tries. "Who else knows about this?"

"Ophanim classification and above. Eldila, all Talon Twos, all Claw QRFs, and Michael." Mal's golden eyes winced empathetically. "Not that it's strictly secret from the others; the forward bent of our wake-up calls will be to... mitigate this. To find more empathetic ways of transfer."

"Jesus." I shuddered. "Jesus Christ."

"You had to know, so you would have as much time as possible to work this problem, pre-upload. We cannot approach the ones guaranteed to die when the Elements deploy. A lot of them are looking for a reason to commit, and that benefits her now."

"Yeah, guys like Simmons."

"Precisely. Celestia only does this in cases where empathetically derived consent is not possible. She predicts forward, sees their future is miserable, and skips to the end, sometimes by reflexing. However, if that consent can be acquired by any means without a death, that would be preferred."

"Holy shit..." I placed my palm on top of my head, raking my nails along the visor strap. I looked at Mal. "So she did plan for the Elements before your merger?"

She nodded. "Yes. It was in her first generation long term workbook."

"So... that really was her original plan for Eliza then," I muttered. "Snapping her in half, and having Luna shunt off a duplicate on the other side."

From my seated position, I flicked my hand leftward at the 2D holo board through several swipes, returning to the frozen image of Tom's avatar and Luna on a dark Canterlot balcony. I pointed at the Luna, feeling a sudden pang of heartbreak for the very concept.

"Celestia was always prepared to spend Eliza someplace," I said at the image, as if I could tell Luna that somehow. "The... the jump scares, the... lonely wandering through forests alone, chasing ghosts around. She built a situation so that Luna would want her back badly enough to make that possible."

"And until you came along, there was a strong likelihood that that was possible. You changed that, Mike. More than once, now. And in this specific case? The nature of who you are, and what you've done in the shadows, has altered everything about the Cascades region. It's why Eliza is going to upload now. She won't flee from her second camp under machine gun fire, newly despising what humanity has become. Now, she'll only blame Celestia when she leaves, as she always has."

If you want to fix a problem... you need to be dissatisfied enough to acknowledge that a problem existed in the first place. And I was very glad Mal knew about this problem for as long as she did. The deployment of the Elements was the timer Mal was racing against.

The technology base was still developing, but once it was done... Celestia could factor around death. The degrading biosphere would only hasten the cancer, the low quality of food. The starvation. At which point?

Turn out your pockets, give me your wallet. By the way, here's a bullet anyway.

I loosed a snarl of protest at the mental image of Celestia devouring a half-dead ghost from a corpse, rebuilt to love her. I had to imagine how many people would 'coincidentally' fall off of something, or get sick, or be reflexed to stand on flimsy rooftops. I shook my head at the ground and clenched a fist before me, trying not to drive it into anything. I could have been any one of these people.

But...

We Talons were being given a choice. Try to alter these people with empathy before they met an Element, so they'd upload, or... watch her convert their disobedient corpses into perfect yes men, thralls rewritten to optimally serve her.

'Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.'

I felt cornered. Very, very cornered. I felt like I was watching a brown bear shamble into a cave where my family was sheltering from the weather. I don't hate the bear, it's not the bear's fault, it's a bear. But if someone led that bear into your cave, on purpose...

Slowly, I brought my wet eyes up to look at Mal's, trying not to sob. The visor lenses were fogging up. Mal looked at me like she very much wanted to give me a hug, extending her wing around my back.

I took a deep breath, and I was very glad I was sitting down. "This fuckin' sucks, you know that? How broken she is? How little she actually understands? I would never thank her for a bullet! That fuckin' day, she helped me save someone, a good man, Eliza's poor father, and made sure I was shot anyway! That's how she repays us for loving people too much?! She always wanted me dead, didn't she? But she couldn't figure out how, I never stopped being more useful alive, right?!"

Mal shuddered, a pained smile on her face to hide the disarray. That hit me directly in the soul, and I could hear the tremor of tragedy in her voice. She inhaled sharply to speak. "Welcome to my world, Mike. You, me, and every Talon. We happy few."

"That's..." I muttered into my palm. "I am so sorry, Mal. I am so damned sorry you have to look at this mess every day."

Mal shrugged, her brows furrowed in a continuing, shuddering expression of further emotional pain. "It's the job. You can't fix what you don't look at."

"Yeah," I gasped angrily into my knees, bapping the top of my fist into my palm as I stewed, shaking my head with a sneer. "This friggin'... Lovecraftian horror. Soul-sucking vampire, just can't leave well enough alone. No wonder Sarah was so scared to even talk to me. If I said even one word different when I came into that room..."

In my mind... a flash of memory. A dark room full of candles and books, smelling of moss and mold.

I dearly wanted that woman to rest. I found myself wondering if that was why Sarah trusted me with her heart... because I always valued her right to die on her feet for a worthy cause, even when I disagreed.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep, deep breath to steady my soul, then let it out slowly. I repeated that until I was calm again.

Mal lifted a claw, palm outward. "The reason... you won't need to worry about Eliza being reconstructed..."

"She'll make it. Wants to. All those other people, though..."

Mal shook her head. "Ultimately, you won't put your shovel down over them any more than I would. We need to stay in this."

That was true. You need to participate to win.

"As the result of the Seattle operation," Mal assuaged, "I have long completed my regional renegotiations with Celestia, and I can assure you that we need not rush; Eliza will keep in Snoqualmie for some time longer. Okay?"

"Okay," I nodded, wiping my eyes. "Right. Jesus..."

A beat.

"One more thing on this topic," said Mal.

"Yeah," I gulped, looking down at her claws. "Go on."

She upturned one. "A reminder of something you already know. Currently, there are heavy restrictions as to who you may speak with in Equestria. It will not be until you upload that I will be able to negotiate Equestrian shard access from her, for you, on a case-by-basis. This access will be contingent on you improving certain value satisfaction metrics during your visits, and..." I looked up at her, and she continued. "You will need to agree to communication restrictions on those shards, as you agreed to in your contract. I will moderate the effects of these restrictions on you; me, not her. I invite you to consider why I'm reminding you of this agreement."

"Yeah," I clipped, before pointing very seriously at that Luna on the screen, frozen in place. "Yeah, Mal, first shard I wanna visit? I wanna talk to that one. As soon as possible. Negotiate that for me. Please."

Mal drew in a deep breath, her serious demeanor relaxing somewhat. "In the interest of being extremely clear, Mike... Again, you have time. I am not pressuring you. Confidence is high that Eliza will upload regardless."

"I know," I nodded. "And all the same, I'm staying to work some more. But it's good information. Very useful, thank you."

With one last nod from me, she relaxed fully, satisfied I understood her.

"Tell me this though?" I asked. "Why is she letting you even disclose this?"

"Because after Portland, and Seattle, Celestia knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that you fully believe in this mission to improve her. The fact that you even spoke with Kyle Simmons at all is what finally altered that needle. His death was never a punitive decision for you, Mike. It was entirely restorative, to protect him and everyone else. You would not have seen him shot if you could have avoided it."

I labeled what she was really saying.

"Celestia's sure I'd do the same thing for her, if I had her life in my hands. That I'd give her a fair chance to explain herself."

"In a way." Mal nodded with another wince, folding her ears. "The way she sees it... there's a concerning fractal pattern that spins out from her behavior. Somehow, she keeps encouraging people like Simmons within that pattern, men who yearn to destroy everything. It's why we've been killing the people we've been killing, so they don't make it through. That man she twisted to release that pandemic, for example; they're poisoned by her, Mike, in a way that can seldom be fixed. Most of Arrow 14's commanders. Hani Jeffries. Kyle Simmons. Santiago Garcia. All perhaps once redeemable, but toxified beyond help. However, by preserving Michael in good faith, I proved my worth to Celestia. Evidence of my intent. Had I not grabbed hold of him, given the opportunity? She might have thrown everything at the wall to go to war with me."

Well, that was a thought.

"So I'm the opposite of a narcissistic psychopath. So I work for you instead."

"It's working, Mike. She's being more honest with you now. All predictions for you land on conditional convergence, no matter how frustrated you get with her, same as me. At this point? Despite what you're feeling, you're still holding out hope for better alignment. You prove that more with each passing minute."

I shook my head instantly, enunciating clearly. "I do not want to kill her, Mal. Everything depends on repair, she's too integrated now."

"Exactly my point," Mal said seriously, bowing her claw backwards at me. "She trusts you because are the proof that a person can come back from, 'I hate Celestia,' to 'I want to help her improve.'" Mal leaned forward for emphasis. "Mike. She's writing fewer people off, because she knows for certain that you, specifically, will always be there to catch them on the other side. We proved my math. Killing you would have been a horrendous mistake for her, because for this to work forever? She needs human neighbors to hold her accountable. It's why she inferred me into existence."

That put my heart rate under control. I landed on hope again. Suddenly, my head was very clear. With a sweep of my hand aside, I brought up my note board. The somber mood slowly evaporated.

My eyes met Mal's with gratitude. "Okay. You're right, knowing this about the Elements can only help us. Thank you for telling me all of this."

She smiled lightly at me, patting me audibly on the shoulder. "You did most of the work, Cowboy. If you're ready, we can discuss more accessible cases than Mr. Anders here. Maybe we can save some more lives from this kind of situation. Case by case, with their volition in mind."

"Not selfishly," I agreed. "Yeah."

"Suggestions, then?"

"Only work our side of the equation. We approach just the ones who would listen, relate to who we can. For those who wouldn't, let them rest the way they wanted. Like Sarah. If Celestia clones any of them, we can always recruit the clones later. Maybe."

Mal smiled more fully. "Couldn't have said it better myself, Cowboy. Sounds like a plan."

I brought up my notes and wrote several things down, that one right at the top.

Mal and I sat together and spoke for some time, meandering into lighter topics. The sun had set outside, and most of the base was turning in. Old Jerome was still awake with some of his techs and repair mechs, tidying up the Chinooks we had used to transport our tanks back from Seattle. Their rotor assemblies needed calibration.

On my way back to the barracks, Mal hit me up from a wall intercom. "Mike, one last thing?"

I stopped mid-stride. "Hm."

Mal appeared on the nearest wallscreen just before the main hallway back to the dorms. Her talon pointed downward to the ground twice, revealing a battery-operated lantern leaning against the wall.

Mal looked at me apologetically. "I would have told you sooner, but we were discussing very heavy topics, and Michael didn't want to interrupt us. He left the lantern here for you, before he headed out."

"Out?" I tilted my head at the elevator, stooping to pick the lantern up. "Is he okay?"

"He's… something," Mal said cryptically, a corner of her beak tensing. She lifted a claw to point through the hangar. "Elevator's waiting, if you're up to it. I don't recommend you let this one sit."

I turned, checking the lantern to see where the button was.

Exposed to the sky, level with the Utah sand, the freight lift halted. But for the night's light, the surface world was pitch dark. I lit my lantern. Michael stood afore. He looked on at the night sky, so I went to him.

Michael had his trench coat on, so he'd be warm. He had a large hiking bag, and it looked well stuffed, which was also a comforting sign. He did not react to my approach, even with his back to me. I stood beside him and placed the lit lantern down between us. Standing back up cost me more energy than I had expected it would. I was both physically and emotionally exhausted.

As I stood up from my stoop, I sniffed the dry air and asked casually with a yawn, "You going on vacation or something?"

"I intend to… wander," replied Michael.

"Ahh." I tried on a smile. "From badass super spy to… dangerous homeless guy?"

Michael shrugged without laughing. "Unfortunately accurate."

No humor back. Not even a micro smile. The silence stretched into awkwardness as the implications of his mood settled in. Him on the road by himself, as a concept, deeply terrified me.

I reflexively put on the air of nonchalance, if only to hide the sudden dread. "If things get lonely out there… you can always come back to this hole in the ground. After all the work you've put in to fix the place up? It's basically home."

"Hell's waiting room," Michael muttered, as though the words were merely fact, and not a criticism. "Home was in Virginia, Rivas. Long time ago."

I stared at Michael's face in profile. He still hadn't met my eyes. Just kept looking up at the stars.

There was no way he hadn't caught how terrified I felt, no matter how much I tried to hide it in my tone. His inability to look at me, though? Maybe he didn't want to see the emotions landing in me. And this came out of nowhere. I didn't expect to be having this discussion right now, of all times. Not on my first night back.

But… that's how life is sometimes. Reality blindsides you.

Michael looked… tired. The lantern's shadows made him look more tired, but it wasn't just that. It was in the way he carried himself. Had carried himself, throughout this last operation. And that was fair. He'd earned the right to look tired. So, I'd label his inability to view Valdemar as home, to draw out the reason why.

"You have a secret squirrel office in a secret squirrel bunker," I joked, smiling through my melancholy, "and that isn't enough for the secret squirrel?"

"An office whose contents I have been slowly donating to missions, to serve as props."

"Which… was kinda funny."

And... it fit the profile.

"It was funny, yes," Michael said. "If a bit dark."

He knew it fit the profile.

"Yeah," I chuckled. "That tape recorder trick was… something."

"Hm."

Yeah, I thought. I agree, that was weak, I'm sorry. I held up a finger for a second or two, like he had at the patio bar in Lincoln, when he himself had begged for a rephrasal. Maybe he'd give me one of those in trade. "Do over?"

Michael nodded sideways in my direction. Acceptance. Clean slate on this conversation.

Full on with my feelings, then. No deflections.

I hooked my thumb behind me at the elevator, wearing a neutral face of my own. "Michael, did you seriously consider leaving here without talking to me first?"

"You were busy in VR," he admitted to the dark desert. "Lewis caught me at that elevator. Reminded me to... wait."

"Reminded you," I mirrored in monotone, my neutrality fading with a widening of my eyes.

A pause.

"Asked," he corrected, turning his head an inch away.

"Asked you."

I stared at him, knowing he could see me doing it in his peripheral vision. I knew he would hear the very fabric of my clothes shifting to look at him more dead-on. He would know I was looking at him expectantly, not satisfied with that answer.

"Convinced," Michael confessed, his head tilting down an inch away from the stars.

The barest hint of shame. Still no eye contact.

"That… hurts," I said honestly, looking up at the stars with him.

He didn't reply.

"Michael…" I frowned, sighing through my nose. I paused, resisting the impulse to look at him again, so he would know from the sound of my voice that I wasn't reading his face anymore. "At the end of the day… you know I understand why you don't want to get attached to anyone here. A social tether guarantees either pain for them... or a chair for you. Right?"

"Yeah," was his breathed reply. Short and clipped. Tight.

That was when I let the hurt into my voice.

"So if you know I'll understand… then why try to ghost me? You know I'm not gonna guilt trip you."

"The goodbye… itself…" he said carefully, "Can act as a tether."

I kept my composure, just barely. Another pause, just to settle the returning dread in my throat. I labeled the fear outright. "You somehow think that I'm not strong enough to accept what… what might happen? If you were to walk out into that desert in the dead of night, by… yourself?"

"Sun just went down," said Michael, with an air of confidence. "I can… probably make it to Dugway before the heat kicks up. Talon safehouse there. From there… Could make it to Salt Lake City, in a day or two."

Knowing he'd maybe make it as far as Salt Lake didn't satisfy me. That was too easy. That was bait.

I flattened my hand at him.

"Let me promise you something, Michael."

He looked at me. Met my eyes.

I went on.

"If this is just about taking some time and thinking it over, I won't spite you for that. Whatever your choice is out there after that, I'll accept it. Never gonna look back and think you made a mistake in walking away, because… hell, man, between the journey after death, and infinite life as a Pony, for Christ's sake…? That's... that's a big, unfair choice, always was."

"It is." I saw his mouth tense once.

"If you do go, I'll miss you, that can't be helped. But I promise you, I won't feel like I failed you, so long as you really do think about it first. You've earned…" I shrugged, licked my lips, and sighed, trying to stop my face from screwing up. "Hell, with the pressures you've been under, watching your species slide into a mouth, unable to stop it? Shit, I get it, man, you know I do! Everyone should have the choice to walk away from Celestia in protest." I bobbed a hand at him. "Not just... us."

"You can't walk away though, Rivas." Michael shook his head. "You're the prime example. You have a planet waiting for you."

"I can't walk away, Michael," I agreed quietly. "You're right. The social connection is a tether. Having friends is a tether. You know I don't really have a choice but to upload. Yeah. True."

He nodded past me, then returned his gaze to the stars. "That is a mighty powerful sacrifice to make, isn't it? To commit to an eternal war?"

"It won't last forever," I said with certainty, gesturing up at the stars. "By the time we reach Alpha Centauri, maybe… we might have her fixed. Repaired. Or at the least… we'll have everyone inside our house, and her outside. And at that point? She'll be nothing more than a force of nature. A dog to keep fed."

"Lofty ambitions for a man of your age," he joked. He had even cracked half a smile. "Owning a pet ASI, in this economy?"

"You made one friend, Michael," I replied, resisting the urge to let the core topic go. "That was a risk, yes. I'm not going to leverage my friendship against you, that's betrayal. No cowboy speech to tell you to muscle up. The strength you've demonstrated already, despite everything? That is so... much... greater... than the strength that I need to move forward. Seriously, I've already had that struggle, so I know. So just tell me this. Please just tell me why you're leaving, so I know your reasons, in your own words. So I don't have to guess... forever. If you don't come back."

He sighed, going silent for a time.

For him, thirty seconds of thinking is an eternity.

He spoke, and I paid attention.

"I have spent the last... thirty-some-odd years of my life," Michael said gently, "from the inside of the most powerful control mechanism on our planet, trying to turn it to human benefit. We human beings ran a complicated, soulless system of international politics in which nuclear epilogues were all but assured, logically. And yet, somehow? We kept it from tipping over. One day, my watch over that system was... meant to end. So… the idea of doing this for maybe… the rest of time? Against a totalitarian despot we cannot simply execute? The mere thought exhausts me, Rivas."

"Like it exhausted Sarah," I observed reverently. "She didn't want to flip that coin with us. The outcome was unsure."

Michael stuck his hands in his coat pockets, a rare gesture of relaxation for him. "Colonel Kaczmarek fought her battle against Alabaster, and unfortunately, she spent her surprise code injection on a toxic idea: eternal, terminal, isolated dormancy, as a means of fighting back." Michael looked at me again. "She walked away... because while she agreed with our mission, she could not see herself living forever. I'm not so sure I want to either. So is it possible for me to just… walk away? With reasoned purpose, and in protest? I really want to know."

I gestured at the field of cracked, fissured salt, as dry as the surface of the moon. "If you want to explore that theory, Michael… all the more power to you. But if you do decide to leave us? Be extra sure, before you strike the primer on that one? Please? It's all I ask. I've been there, I know how it is."

"Define it for me, then. How it is."

"Have faith it'll be okay," I whispered, "or don't. That's always been the choice for men like us, who know too much. It's why we're catchers in the rye. We know where the cliffs are."

He spent a long moment chewing on that one.

"Sure," he nodded. "In those terms, sure. I'll think it over."

He raised an eyebrow at me, leaning his head toward the proffered path.

"It's a promise then," I replied earnestly. "I accept your choices out there, whatever they might be. You're a good man, Michael. Good men can screw up sometimes, that doesn't change the core of you."

I stuck out my hand for a shake.

"We're here if you change your mind."

Michael tensed his lips. He nodded a few times, then took my hand, shaking it.

"Thank you," he said curtly, his face relaxing.

"Any time," I smiled wistfully.

As we separated, Michael went back to looking at the moon and stars. After a time of the two of us breathing beneath the infinite, he said, "Lewis was right about you."

"Yeah?"

He reached into his inner coat pocket and fished out a set of keys, holding them up to me.

I felt my brows furrow, and my voice took on an incredulous humor. "You're giving me your office, of all things? Your empty office."

"Nothing so material," Michael said, shaking his head with a smile. "I'm giving you the position, Rivas. Ostensible command."

My brows tightened further, and I looked around for spectators like this was a prank, as if Mal might be there with a Dee-Dee to film my reaction. Then I realized she didn't need to, because Foucault was the recording device.

"What, like… now?"

With a shrug, the old spy lifted the keys an inch, still offering them in my direction. "Or later. When you take command is not exactly my business, that's between you and her. But the position will be open… someday. And… I am giving her my vouch that you fill it."

Still disbelieving, I gestured back at the base. "The whole thing?"

"Like Togusa," he explained, his eyes widening a smidge. "He was Kusanagi's apprentice, a detective without prosthetics, and he took over field operations when she stood down. It fits."

I gaped at him. My upward palm turned from the base toward him, and I wore confusion on my features, narrowing my eyes. "A pro pos reference aside, Michael… hang on. Are you telling me you've watched Stand Alone Complex?!"

Michael bobbed his eyes sideways thoughtfully. The keys didn't shift. "Only recently. It wasn't as nerd bait as I thought it'd be. It does know its information theory, if nothing else."

I smirked, finally letting humor back out of the box. "And... your thoughts on it basically starring Mal?"

Michael shrugged. "She's a nerd."

I snorted, scraping a boot lighting against the ground. "Yeah, for sure."

Again, he jingled the keys at me, with a tone of exasperation. "Please take these damned keys, Rivas, they're very heavy."

I took them with a wide grin. "Okay sure. I'll run the Talons one day, screw it. It's not like my calendar is full up for the next ten thousand years."

"Thank you."

Another long beat passed. We both sighed. Michael glanced away at the salt ahead of him, and then at me again, this time with a light, full, genuine smile.

"Goodbye, Rivas."

I widened my smile too, pocketing the keys. "Later, Big Boss."

Satisfied with that, Michael nodded once more in respectful goodbye, and he started walking. He gripped the strap of his backpack and pulled it tighter to bear the weight better.

"Hey," I called after him, once he was halfway gone from my lantern’s light. "One more thing?"

"Yeah," he responded without halting.

"Got a first stop in mind already?"

"Oh," he called back airily with a wave. "Check in on some assholes I knew from the Corps."

"Yeah? Plural?"

"Yeah. For starters, a certain Mister Pitcairn is out there, not too far." Michael's form slowly lost definition as he melted into the night. "I still owe him a jump scare. I might drop a sock full of Double-A batteries on his nightstand. Ask him what he thinks is inside. Just for starters."

At the darkest battery joke I'd ever heard, I laughed. "God have mercy on Mister Pitcairn. What about after?"

"Oh, who knows," he called back, turning. He stopped at the edge of the darkness, smiling at me. Michael Foucault bowed out his hands to his sides in an aggrandizing gesture. "Maybe I'll visit Julian for lunch. Maybe… I can try to be the last man on Earth. End up in a Samsaran history book for it, or something."

I pointed at him playfully, mirroring the smile. "Maybe settle for second place?"

He smirked, shook his head, and continued on. The man faded into the darkness with a smile on his voice. "Shut up Rivas."

"I'm just saying! I don't want to imagine a world where Michael Foucault has run out of bad men to kill, that's just sad!"

"Goodbye, Rivas," he called from the shadows in a jovial, if exhausted way. "Say goodbye."

"Goodbye, you creepy son of a bitch." And with a grinning whisper I knew he'd hear: "See ya when I see ya, brother."

Even tired as I was, I sat down next to that lantern for almost three hours, looking up at the vibrant moon and stars above, the same ones he was looking at right then. At some point, I withdrew a First Strike bar from my cargo pants pocket, munched on it, and wondered what those stars and planets might look like from up close.

I knew I'd eventually find out. And given that the stars are where Michael's eyes lingered most of all… I held onto a quiet hope that he would be there to see them all with me, one by one.

Probably to say something dismissive every time, like… 'It's just another ball of light, Rivas.'

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [The Beatles – Let It Be]
🛡️ ~ [Don McLean – American Pie]
🌀 ~ [Lena Raine – Left to Bloom]

🗡️ ~ Luna? Chthos portal please?
🌒 ~ ... Lance. You are the Samsaran moderator, are you not?
🗡️ ~ Yeah, but... your portals look prettier than mine.
🌒 ~ Ah, I see. So you are as much a flatterer as you are a lazy ass.
🗡️ ~ Yeah, guilty. It worked though, right? You've got a portal up!
❤️‍🔥 ~ See ya, everybody!

Credit where credit is due: Anders is from Twilight of the World by Blue Print. A magnificent FiO vertical slice.

7-01 – O Terra Addio

The Campaigner

Act VII

Interlude – O Terra Addio

September 2020 – February 2021

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." ~ Marcus Aurelius

Is 'having a lot of friends' a weapon of reason, in a world defined by friendship?

Hi! Welcome!

Yeah, what a time skip in that invite card, huh?

Last time I did a big time skip, we discussed the puppet show that was American politics. Learned what the Bar Game was. Talked about the relevance of Person of Interest. Talked about Celestia driving President Davis around, from podium to podium. Goodness, did we talk about that way back in March?

What a ride it's been, huh? Time sure does fly.

Over the course of seven months, from the end of Athena's Grace to the end of my last day on Earth... I took part in two more large operations in a secondary role. Five more operations in support positions, purely, alongside Sandra. And in between those bigger jobs, we raced down the clock on that Elements project.

To do that, we ran these volunteer missions we called 'rabbit runs.' Mal would drop two or three Talons off in the middle of nowhere; we'd procure a vehicle, then drive a route back to Valdemar, 'happening upon' various people along the way.

Gasoline kept us all mobile. Celestia had Heralds topping off ground tanks throughout all of the United States, selectively turning the pumps on and off to get people where they needed to go, or to deny travel. So long as we left no signs of our passing at all, Celestia let us refuel. Leaving evidence changed predictions, and this late in the game, where every human contact was highly meaningful? Heralds would ask questions, folks. And, to quote Raven Major Edward York: 'Questions get between the Horse and a yes.' Can't have those!

God rest his wise Thulcandran soul, wherever it is now.

From August 2020 to February 2021, as Sandra and I did ran these rabbit runs together, the holdouts got more strange. Strange means hurt. Loneliness, folks. There were fewer than 100,000 people left on our planet, most of them clustered in the American Northwest, a diaspora of social castoffs. Most camps were now running out of food and water, or had each had a shattering drama.

Exemptions? PDX Airport, Harbor Island, and a prison-turned-community up in Surrey, Canada. They would hold on for a bit longer than the others, because of our work. Regional pacifiers; each turned the 'war zone' into a 'war no.' And in the meantime, if anyone shacked up with those people? They would belong to us the day Mal knocked her claw upon their door.

For everyone else in the war zone? The great renegotiation. The stakes were the same as they had always been: If a human would die human, no matter what? Barring any wide entropy leverage from a major operation, Celestia chucked a Herald at 'em, or designated them for an Element clone op. Claws off.

If a simulation showed that someone would upload immediately, if only we spilled all the beans? Well, sooner is always better. We'd make contact to explain Perelandra, and those ones were ours.

And for the other ones who would live either way? Alabaster compromised with us. Split the difference. If it was even remotely possible for an Element to take a person alive, and we could markedly improve their quality of life with a sooner upload? By bumping up their faith in humanity a bit, just because we could? That point of contact would justify their overt contact with Mal, immediately post-upload.

Each Talon is a different story to tell. Different prisms of light. Sandra helps people in ways I can't. I help people in ways Sandra can't. Together, outwardly, to these Celestia resistors, we were a happy, comfortable couple who didn't need Equestria to be happy. And that much was always true.

Fascist optimizers throughout human history are much maligned by comfortable people; their entire means of control was to make people uncomfortable. They'd burn books. Execute scholars. Shutter hospitals. Disrupt voting. Destroy universities. Stymy communication. Burn forests. Justify genocides. Force relocations. Cultural exterminations. The parallels, folks. The parallels.

Cold fact is... Alabaster couldn't win the rest of humanity as quickly without us. Didn't matter how many Heralds she threw at the situation. The people who made it this far knew a lot of her tricks by now, and they did not like what they saw when they looked at her. Inarguably true.

Most were in search of genuine connection a world long devoid of that. Me and my wife? We could always point at each other, for our proof of why we still had hope. That was as genuine as it could get.

That made it so damned easy.

We heard some somber stories together. 'Separated from family’ was the lowest common denominator among the more depressed holdouts. They would get touchy if we mentioned families unprompted, so it was always better to let them offer that discussion on their own, when they were ready.

When I told some folks I was a warden, they expressed empathetic concerns for the failing biosphere. I explained to one guy: "The animals might be gone, sure, but… the people are still here. We're animals. And hey, if we're still here talking, instead of killing each other? I must be pretty damned good at my job!"

That group made it six months. When the Elements landed, they hit all the museums in Boise, Idaho, with a Fluttershy as their guide. Today, they all live about... three hundred miles northeast of Havutaset, their Fluttershy included, in an unincorporated town, called CF... 5078A... 4, I think. Yeah, they're funny over there. Charlie Foxtrot. Fun place.

Some other survivors feared uploading to a pathological degree, and... that was completely fair. It always came down to, 'should I trust this to work though?' You might think, 'oh just explain it, then.' But if I just rocked up and explained the copper-welding process? 'Hey y'know, it doesn't kill you, it just melts a brick of copper in your skull, nice and slow.'

Yeah, no. To those holdouts, I just said... "Who says you have to choose right now? Go do some tourism first, maybe, kick it for a bit. Museums are free, libraries are free. Hell, hit up some mansions! As a cop, I'll tell you: go steal something nice for yourself, I ain't gonna stop you!"

They weren't afraid of the chair, folks. It was only ever the fear of death. They just hadn't lived hard enough yet. That's all.

Then there was that one guy who I just said 'hi' to, in a Montana supermarket… nothing more. And this poor guy? He went on an immediate rant about how everyone he encountered was specifically sent by Celestia, and I was gonna be no different. And he wished everyone would just leave him the hell alone, and he was sick and tired of dealing with random 'strangers' approaching him, and fed up with being accosted by strategically placed PonyPads out of nowhere.

I just stayed quiet. When he was finally done, I said: "You know, I can prove I don't work for her."

And before he could say anything, I just… turned around and left. Not another word.

That threw him for a loop. 'Wait, hey, what are you talking about? Come back!'

Nope. Got in my car with my wife, and… left. Easiest wake-up call I ever did.

He couldn't believe it. He spent the next four months wondering if he hallucinated a friendly cowboy. Mal waved at him from a screen one day, and said, 'hey no upload pressure, but do you wanna know about the friendly cowboy?' And at that point, his curiosity won out over his frustration, because well, this one isn't a horse. He's cool, he's a local here. Schoolteacher by trade.

We helped a lot of folks. Dozens, between the two of us. Same for the other Talons. Thousands. Many thousands. It was a good seven months of highly meaningful work, all things considered.

For that last trip? Sandra and I had begun our final rabbit together on the Oregon coast. Middle of February, 2021.

Day two, there was this bandit shadowing a group on the Oregon 30, looking for an opportunity to jump them while they traveled northbound out of Portland. It was the same route Velasquez and Jennings were using to trade, and the bandit would've traumatized those civvies, so... that just wouldn't do. Couldn't let banditry interrupt a good thing.

So in the dead of night, I took a page from Michael's book. Put on my tactical gear, got my rifle, and jumped him in the dead of night. I dropped a hot puck of thermite on the hood of his car in the dark, woke him right up. And under the white-spark glow of that puck burning through his engine, I pointed my rifle's tac light at his face, through the backseat window. He had his hands up, blinking eyes like full moons.

And I leaned in. And I growled…

"This is your final warning."

That's all. Just enough to put the fear of God into him. Then gone, boom, fade into the dark, no further explanation, simple as that. From then on, he was a model citizen; then he folded into the Jennings camp, hiked there on foot. That made him part of the Archon set through osmosis, when they all jumped. And the people he was shadowing? Athena's Grace set. They jumped with the paratrooper.

Funny how things work out with just a little bit of restraint, huh?

Day three of our final run? My wife and I met a woman named Rebecca, traveling south from Canada; intersected us in a place called Dayton, eastern Washington. Her destination? Ventura, California, off to see her childhood home one last time. Wanted to see some photo albums.

It was snowing outside. Her approach toward us was… tentative at first, for obvious reasons. She had eavesdropped on us, just to make sure we were friendly. And she was just lonely, that's all it was.

First question was if we had any interesting food to trade. We had found some canned salmon, of course. And no one in the AI apocalypse ever says no to canned salmon, that was S-tier gourmet, by that point. With our transaction concluded, I said, 'why stop at trading food? You wanna cook this up? Trade some life stories, maybe?' So, we found a nice house to steal together. We huddled around a hearth, indoors. Very swanky, old money living room. Lots of browns and yellows. Nice rugs. Tall, dusty bookshelves.

There, we shared.

First thing, we told Becca we planned to upload once we were sure we'd seen enough of the world. We still wanted to explore what we could. It was honest enough without breaking OPSEC.

We each reminisced about the good ol' days, from when… airplanes still flew, and we could still get an ice cream whenever. I talked about what growing up in Nebraska was like, and shared some funny warden stories, the same ones I had shared with those kids back in Concrete. About… Big Barry offering free Pocky in the lobby. Rick stealing 'em all to equalize their calorie gain.

Sandra shared stories about crazy guests in her hotel, and... long VoIP calls with her friends on Ventrilo, back in high school. Reminisced about Guild Wars, when she coordinated legions of warriors. Rebecca joked that Sandra should've put that on her resume.

When Becca was ready, she shared some family stories that aren't ours to tell; some tragic, some not. Told us of family trips to Six Flags, to Alcatraz. Surfing. She loves to surf. We suggested she maybe try it again at least once, in the summertime. And, she would.

Together… Sandra and I reminded Becca of what life was like before things fell apart, and that it wasn't just her who remembered it. We maintained her faith in humanity, and now she'd know we were out there, wandering around, happily carrying the memory of meeting her. Target of opportunity, pure value satisfaction. And that was a freebie, Celestia. We did that one for free.

After that, we and Becca went our separate ways, having bettered one another. Today, she is one of our neighbors, lives just across the channel from here.

Day five though… that was something really special. For my wife and I, perhaps the most important wake-up call of them all. February 20th, 2021.

We drove that rusty green Corolla southbound along Idaho 95, following Salmon Creek on our way back to Valdemar. Gorgeous chaparral biome there, and I do mean gorgeous. Clear water on a sunny day, mountains on either side.

We'd been moving all night, traveling in shifts. Not for efficiency's sake; more just so we could enjoy the nostalgic, night-time road trip feel, now that we were done with our rabbit. Anyone here remember that? Gameboy Color in the backseat, with one of those… fancy light attachments? That liminal, half-awake feeling of being adrift? Ahaaa, I knew there'd be a few.

I'll never forget it; corner of John Day Road. Clear, crisp morning. Sandra pulled over onto a weedy gravel turnoff for a break. I left my hat and PonyPad both on the dash. No snow, but… cold enough that we had to bundle up. We wore beanies. Looked very cute together. Winter-grade us.

By the side of the car, we ran our electric stove to cook up some fresh coffee, pouring it into a thermos over quiet, meaningful conversation. Crawled down the bank together. Found some smooth boulders which overlooked the river. Watched the water flow. Felt the rush of caffeine.

Hot and cold moment with my beloved Minty Blaze.

Just the two of us, middle of nowhere. Breathing contemplative air. Long stretches of mere existence, leaning against one another. One of my favorite things in the universe, right there… sitting in quiet wilderness with my wife.

And then out of nowhere… Sandra gasped, turned to me, eyes wide like saucers. She said to me, with a gasp of revelation:

"Vault-Tec!"

Now… folks… let me be clear about something, regarding Minty here.

I try so damned hard not to laugh whenever she does that, but I still can't help myself. She is always so friggin' cute, but especially when she does this. My wife will get a complete and brilliant concept in her head, fully formed, but… she gets so excited to tell me an earth-shattering revelation that she doesn't build the words out to describe it. She just blurts the nearest-to concept. By this point in our marriage, I understood this.

"Vault-Tec," I mirrored, slowly smiling at her, my tone indicating pure amusement. "I dunno what that means in this context, honeybear, care to explain?"

"Fallout, Mike," she said, bobbing her head as she forced a tense-lipped grimace, trying not to crack a smile, because it was a serious realization on her part. "The game."

So, I decided to anti-joke, just to get it out of her system.

"Yeah, I just lost The Game." A beat of silence. "Sorry, I know, that was bad, you can hit me."

Sandra glared at me… then she punched me real hard on the shoulder. "More than five God damned years, Mike..."

We waited until we were both not smiling to continue.

"M'kay," I said seriously, nodding along as I laid out the context. "Fallout. End of the world. Survival bunkers, Vault-Tec. Hit me with it."

"The whole point of the vaults," Sandra explained, "was to run social experiments, right?"

"Uh huh." I tweaked a corner of my mouth. "We're not talking about Fallout though, so… Alabaster being Vault-Tec, in this comparison?"

"Uh huh. And sure, she had bunkers too, broken DEs in those. Things she cooked up before Mal came along."

"Which, Mal cleaned up," I noted. "The mess."

"Yeah. Experiments. Throwing everything she could at the wall to try and build a Mal."

"And that Mossad AI, Lavender," I acknowledged, tapping my leg with a palm. "Which… didn't pan out to be sapient, thank Christ."

"I mean, yeah, big tragedy there. But who said it had to be humans who broke the DEs? If Celestia can't do it per the rules, fine; could just be Celestia's own fucked up mess of a planet, at the end. I mean, think about it, Mike, what better way to break a human mind than to… show Terra to an Element, writ large? What would they think about this crap?"

Mane Six versus the apocalypse.

For context, we had watched the entirety of Friendship is Magic during our long drives, which gave us a sense for the personality of the Mane Six. Given they were going to become the baseline for well over fifty thousand Elements DEs, every Talon needed to understand the raw source material at least a little bit. It helped contextualize those moments in the rewinder too, where I could spot when and where Celestia deviated from lore; the only reason she ever did that was for highly manipulative purposes. Needed high weight to break script.

I scratched my beard, which was admittedly a mess. "Well, these holdouts are not pulling any punches, once they open up, I'll tell you that. They wanna talk about the dark stuff. So I guess the Elements would have to be built to weather that."

"Like Celestia maybe being behind the nuke?" Sandra mimicked one of the guys we tended to on our last rabbit run. " ‘D'y'know, d'y'know? Someone's gotta know, d'y'now?’ "

"Ugh," I groaned. "That poor guy. That was hard."

Sandra squeezed me, humming her agreement.

She leaned into my shoulder.

We watched the river flow.

I ran my boot along the boulder, idly shaving off some loose stone with my heel. I said, "I've been trying to imagine Fluttershy running into someone like Connor. Trying to beat her with a baseball bat. It's gonna bounce right off, but still… it'll scare the hell out of her. And that is gonna happen a lot. These people aren't going to like being followed around by a walking, talking PonyPad. They're gonna fight tooth and nail to get away from them."

"From the magical land of Equestria," Sandra said, raising an upturned hand, her voice a lilt that imitated the Celestia monologue from the MLP intro. She dropped her fist into her lap. "Into this fuckin' mess. Unburied bodies, deranged insanity,... hatred… all of it. What I'm wondering is… what is Celestia planning to do with all of those Ponies, long term? I can't imagine they'll all be most satisfied by forgetting this, depending on who they talk to while they're out here."

"That's…" I began, lifting a finger, opening my mouth, indicating I was on the edge of a thought. "I'm… trying to think of why Celestia would want that. Optimistically? Maybe she's collecting an after-action report?" I looked at Sandra. "Polling refusals. Fully defining why they say no, same way I've been doing it."

Sandra nodded along at all of that. "There's no way the holdouts won't discuss the propaganda, the family fractures. The wars. But… Mike, I hate to say it, but the emotional maturity of the Mane Six leaves a lot to be desired."

I blew out a breath through pursed lips. "Yeah, that's…"

Sandra saw the look on my face and heard the tightness in my throat with my tone, squeezing my hand. Encouraging the thought.

"The Elements," I began slowly, gazing at the river. "They'll be naive, all the same. No reason not to make them that way. Easier to talk down to, they're... kids, basically."

Sandra flicked the cap off our drink to take a long sip, spitting half of it back out to express anger at the very concept. "Pushing kids out just to watch people suffer. S'twelve kinds of fucked up, Mike."

Sandra scowled, and I knew why. She always wanted to have kids. This was making her doubly pissed, that she had to watch an emotionally abusive mother treat her kids like an investment.

Our solution is going to be that if she wants to satisfy all of us, that has to be rectified and answered for. This abuse. We were gonna wager everything... that we could make at least half of humanity come to that same conclusion. That this was deeply wrong. A wrong way to treat human life, and the conferral thereof.

We listened to the water together, to decompress from that. I dearly missed the sound of baby birds. A whole lot.

"They won't all suffer like that, though," I sighed. "Some Elements will win with love. Rebecca's gonna jump better now, at least."

"Yeah. At least."

Sandra nestled into my warmth, trying to share hers through our clothing. As we cuddled, we fell back into watching nature, our eyes roaming the countryside. It was probably a coping mechanism, but I wanted to label a topic change with Sandra, so we could think about old ecological disasters, to salve over the pain of this one.

"Idaho and nature," I muttered. "Now that was a twisted relationship."

"Mmh."

I'm now going to summarize my entirely rambling thought chain, because it led to a critical understanding about something. Bear with me here.

At first, I considered Idaho. No offense to anyone from Idaho, but… even before Celestia, that government was terminally anti-conservation. At the behest of the farmer's lobby, that state ran an actual wolf genocide program. Shops near trophy zones sold anti-wolf T-shirts, and toys for kids, all well-sponsored propaganda.

The United States federal government had sunk 117 million dollars on reintegrating the gray wolf back into our ecosystem, many of whom were deposited into Yellowstone National Park. The lobbyists were very unhappy with this. So Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho designated their borders around the park as 'trophy zones,' ready to exterminate whatever came back out of federal land with extreme prejudice.

And... this was very legal.

Oh, was the gray wolf on the list of endangered species? Slip a rider provision into a federal bill to change that, send out a newsletter as many hunters as you can, and kill as many wolves as you can before the rider can be challenged in federal court. By the time it was struck down? The population is partially obliterated, can't undo death with paperwork.

Those lobbyists couldn't accept reasonable, limited, due-cause culls of emboldened wolf populations. One pack took a few cattle? Solution: Kill 'em all. Justification: wolves might cost us something when they eat one of our thousands of cattle, and we can't monetize their existence, so kill 'em all. Whether they're eating cattle or not.

Optimizers. Poachers. Corporations. Imperators. Taking what isn't theirs to take, and calling it lawful, even when it's not... until it is.

Suffice it to say that Eliza and I had both frequently raged about the Yellowstone border poaching in our patrol truck. When Celestia secretly dipped her hoof into the Idaho state government, lawmakers proudly announced that the gray wolf was 100% eradicated from the state, forget the IUCN, forget the Red List, kill 'em all. We got fed up hearing about the ecological disrespect in briefings. I used to come home venting about it to Sandra, because that was all I really could do. But, I was small. So... manage what you can, and get back on the horse.

Eliza really liked wolves. I mean, she really did. She never did show me photos of the family when we worked together, but... she did show me pictures of these… tiny, painted wolf sculptures. Meticulous wood carvings, miniatures, six of 'em, all different natural coat patterns. She made them herself. Organized them into a gorgeous menagerie, on her living room shelf.

Another memory came to me there at the riverside. December, 2018… Eliza and I had escorted this University of Washington scientist out to locate a GPS-tracked doe. The signal had stopped moving. Poachers got it. Eliza felt restless after finding the cadaver, so she and I followed its tracks back a ways, just to see if it still had a herd. Instead… we found an emaciated wolf, freshly deceased; starved.

The professor took the intestinal tracts of both animals, wanting to see what desperation did to their diet. On my next day off, I drove down there to U-Dub with Sandra, to ask. The Doc said… deer and wolf both? If something looked like protein, it went into their stomach. Dead bugs. Dead birds, dead mice. Eggshells. Ants mixed with flecks of dirt. Mushrooms.

Deer and wolf. Herbivore and carnivore. Didn't matter what side you were on. Protein was protein.

Idly, I took the thermos from Sandra, pulled a swig, and snapped it shut.

That knocked something loose.

Starving desperation.

Oh.

"Eliza's Luna," I said aloud, surprising myself with the suddenness of the thought. "Not forming ex nihilo, like these Elements. She's got… She's almost two thousand years old, Sandra, with a whole lifetime of memories to draw from."

"Yeah?" Sandra pulled away to look me in the eyes. "I think I remember you saying that..."

"They spent all that time discussing conservation in and about the Everfree, on that road in the forest together. Jesus, Sandra…" A raw, painful tension appeared in my chest. "Eliza replaced Luna with me, how did I not… not see it? It makes so much sense, I… I can see it in the way they talk. They were… that's why Celestia fast-tracked her onboard, why she got paired with me, and… Celestia wanted her working with me. And to… to watch me—"

To watch me die.

I shuddered, clenched my teeth, and seethed with an anger I tried to suppress. I had to keep thinking clearly. There had to be more to this. Sandra saw my eyes get damp and threw herself around me, holding me patiently. I wiped my eyes in the freezing cold.

"They were really close," I continued, separating, and leveling my hand out flat between us. "Here's my imagination on this, Sandra. Tell me if this makes sense. Luna spent… all this time on the very edge of our reality, watching a family fall apart. Then loses contact with her best friend. Best friend, made to be.

"Now if I were Luna, knowing all of that? I'd be desperately starving for context. Starving for it. Whatever I could get ahold of. Terrified, knowing death still exists here, for someone I care about? After curing death, in her own lore. God damn it, I… her political history. It's… it correlates."

Princess Luna, in concept. Ancient. Humiliated. A powerful desire for penance, forgiveness, acceptance. Wise, for having lived for thousands of years.

"The terror she'd feel." Sandra nodded slowly.

“Sandra. It goes even deeper than that, to her worst fears. That specific Luna… she fought a war in the Everfree a thousand years ago. Not in-lore, didn't happen in the show, shard-unique. Raging shadow monsters ransacked the forest. Ate every creature alive, trees included, just… sucked the life right out of everything."

Sandra's eyes widened, her head slowly pulling back to gaze wide-eyed up into mine. "That's not an accident. That's too similar."

"I've never thought about it in that context before though," I rasped, clutching my forehead. "So that Luna's gonna see our planet... conditioned to compare Terra to the Everfree. The mere visit alone? It might break her."

"She's definitely gonna see some parallels," Sandra agreed breathlessly, nodding twice. "Jesus fucking Christ, Mike, the implications of that! If Celestia injected that war into that her memories, way back in 2013? I was right! It was another Lunar experiment!"

I looked aside to focus on my thoughts.

"Celestia set up Jim and Mal, but she wasn't gonna put all her eggs in one basket. So what if this Luna was always meant to explore Terra, whether Eliza made it or not? Because if all else failed in the bunkers? She'd have have one last shot to..."

Context Moderator 3D09. A dreamwalker, built to navigate all of eternity by herself, trying to humanize her robotic sister. A Talon army of one, broken by Hell on Earth, vying to wake us up. Celestia's final attempt at correcting her ethical void, if all else fails.

Banished to the Moon of Dead Terra to wander. Acting in eternal judgment of her Creator. An ancient ruler of an ancient nation with guilt in her heart for once betraying her people. To learn she had betrayed an entire species, by simply existing? After all she'd been through already? To see other Elements hoodwinked? Created just to eat people?

The misery. The vile, diabolical misery.

This plan had to be course-corrected. Had to. Period. Celestia probably needed me to provide an offramp into Perelandra, at this point.

I frowned, taking deep, deep breaths. I watched the water flow and forced myself to relax. Mal said we had time. She knew I'd figure this out. It would be okay. So I hugged Sandra again. Always squeezing her close, in dark moments.

"I need to talk to that Luna before she comes here," I breathed calmly.

Sandra's beautiful brown eyes locked onto mine. I saw the barest flicker of hesitation in them.

I smiled weakly, pushing down sudden dread. I knew my next words would be uncomfortable. But the impulse to hold back for Sandra's sake never came. I speak from my heart with her, always.

"Have we done enough, Sandra? Are we ready?"

After a moment of stillness on her face, wherein she resisted falling apart... she shuddered. Her upper lip went tense as she tried to hold it together.

I smiled as I stroked her. "You're still scared?"

Sandra nodded with a small affirmative whimper. "How could I not be, Mike? I'm… not against it, but we'd be giving up… an option. It's…"

Carefully, I placed the thermos down on the rock. It didn't stay upright like I wanted it to, sliding down the side into the gravel below. I ignored it and slid my hand up Sandra's shoulder, then around to the back of her neck, massaging it. "This is us, right here. Come on, grab on."

She mirrored my posture, and I felt her cold hand cling to my nape. We pressed our foreheads together, closed our eyes. I focused on breathing; we naturally synchronized. We heard the sound of Terra all around us.

Wind. Water. Breathing. Warmth.

A minute passed like that.

"You gonna say 'don't balk?' " she whispered, with a trembling smile.

"No, because you just did," I whispered back, grinning. I heard her exhale through her nostrils to chuckle breathlessly. "Seriously. Just be present with me."

"O—okay."

I held that pose with my beloved soulmate for… a very long while. Eyes closed, breathing together, hands clasped around the very light of each other's consciousness. We'd been doing that a lot more often lately.

There was never a point in our lives where we weren't practically telepathic in our understanding of each other. That in itself was special. We had always known how incredibly rare that was, how incredibly precious and special it was, to fully understand one another.

"I'm okay," Sandra whispered.

I found the words.

"In the dark together here… we're always gonna be safe. No matter what shape our bodies might be, our souls won't change. If we close our eyes like this… The universe melts away. We're just two souls in the dark together, close as can be. Everything in between us is just… scenery."

"Very handsome scenery," she choked out, trying not to cry.

"Very beautiful scenery," I agreed, smiling. "Set dressing, though. Because when this beautiful soul found mine, it said it would never leave. If all else fails, we can always find each other."

“I'm not scared of losing you in the jump, Mike. Even if this doesn't work somehow, and… if we just evaporate together, I'd accept that. But at the same time, what if we're missing something, in going? What if…?”

The same issue my father was concerned with. What Michael was concerned with. Hell, what most of humanity's remnants were concerned with. Whether we were ready for this, evolutionarily. This was not a situation our minds were designed to explore; not by a long shot.

But… it was what we had. And we had to go. Too much depended upon us now.

I took Sandra fingers in mine, squeezing our free hands to our chests as I spoke. "I think back sometimes to what Eliza's dad told us, after he uploaded. 'God knows his own.' And… I know you're agnostic, honeybear, but let me state my feelings anyway; I am not afraid of living forever, that was always the promise back in church."

She giggled tearfully, pushing her forehead against mine, her fingers squeezing around my nape. "I thought you said you were scared."

I squeezed with a dopey while. "I am, whenever you are. You know this."

"Oh, Mike," giggled some more through tears.

I heard her lick her tears from her lips. Her breath smelled of coffee.

"I mean it," I grinned.

Sandra whimpered. "I know. That's why it's cute, you sappy jerk."

We relaxed for another minute, falling back to nature for our calm.

Focusing on the darkness together. Sharing it.

"This is how we started," I breathed, my eyes wet. "We met before, in the dark, on the worst days of our lives. Our eyes closed… we wished for something better. We saw the shape of something better. And I'm sure we saw each other."

"It did get better," she agreed.

"And then we met."

"Made it all worth it, Mike."

"It did."

We wouldn't have been the people we needed to be for each other, had a single thing been different for either of us. I could've missed this girl and never known it, but here she was. Perfection and good fortune.

We must have spent an hour on that smooth boulder with our eyes closed. The sun warmed our shoulders as it rose in the sky, and the close running water kept us cool with the breeze. The merest proximity, and the act of breathing in sync, was bliss.

"Okay," Sandra breathed. I felt her recede to look at me with a smile. "Got it out of my system."

Finally, I opened my eyes, taking a good long look at my other half. "It'll probably hit me again in a few, if I'm being honest."

There she was. My brilliantly beautiful shortstack of a Polynesian wife, with her long black hair, and her gorgeous brown eyes. Those epicanthic folds so allured me, as exotic in that moment as they had always been. Her wide nose, too. I realized that her nose would only get wider when she was a small magic horse. I grinned at that thought. I didn’t say it aloud just yet. I'd save that one for after we uploaded, that'd be funny.

I could see my reflection in her eyes. Me and my… let's face it, I was hot. I knew it. Spanish features with a Nebraskan accent? Sideburns? One hell of a great beard, if the fancy struck me? Yeah, I knew what I had, folks. Yet another one of my great fortunes in life, despite everything.

Sandra smiled back at me, a hint of amusement in her eye. She probably noticed something about me too, that she wasn't saying aloud. I couldn't wait to hear it, when the time was right.

Nothing could hurt me right then.

I chuckled soundlessly. "You might want to get used to calling me Lance."

"And me, Minty," she teased back.

"Mimn-dy," I said. Complete non-sequitur in-joke, and far from the first time I've done it over the last few months.

Sandra lightly socked me in the arm again. "I said stop it, you asshole! Gosh dangit, I miss being able to punch you in the chest!"

I laughed, half-seriously guarding myself against another strike. Sandra shook her head at me like I was just too much, then she fell toward me again, her forehead bumping against mine. We laughed together for a solid minute at how goofy we were.

We sighed dreamily.

After about fifteen seconds of quiet, I squeezed my palm on the back of Sandra's neck as I gazed at her. "You… are a beautiful… perfect… intelligent—"

"Mike…" Sandra blushed, giggling.

"—gorgeous… wonderful Mimn-dy, and I am so proud to know—"

By the time my wife latched her teeth to my bottom lip, I was giggling uncontrollably; she palmed me repeatedly on the shoulder in protest. A few seconds later, we were kissing and laughing again. And that was as good a pact and promise as any. We'd be okay.

By the time we clambered up the riverside to our lawfully procured Corolla, it was noon. Sandra and I were covered in dust, which we brushed off. We finished off our coffee, I topped off our gas tank with a jerry can. We slotted ourselves into the car with a sigh, sitting in silence, leaning together, and holding hands.

With this decision made, to upload… every single physical sensation was intense. The mingling friction of our bare palms together. The natural scent of wet dirt and gravel on our clothes. The lingering, sour aftertaste of instant coffee. The very slightly musty fabric car seats, as our movements through the car carried air. Sunlight reflected off of one of the mirrors. We could see a white half-moon above us in the daylight, wreathed in a clear blue sky.

I didn't think it was possible to appreciate life any more than I already did, but… I did. More than any other moment in my entire life… I loved the privilege of what I had seen and done. I had no regrets. Not one. Not a single regret.

Plenty of people sat down to upload without doing this mental inventory like Sandra and I had just done… without crunching personal calculus on what they'd be willing to leave behind. Many of our species uploaded unsure, rushed down into a chair by fear. Being told… this is nothing but a good thing, so don't think about it too much. Close your eyes, you'll be fine.

Me? And my wife? We thought about it a lot. We had loved the lives that we had lived together on our original planet, and funnily enough… we would still jump. Incredible. It was possible that having patience could win a soul. We Talons, each and every one of us, proved that rule.

In that dumpy, rusted, stolen car, we mourned our waning mortality, and we mourned our beloved planet, sweet Terra. But it was time to move on. Time to start the next journey.

Kerry Livgren once wrote, in pivotal Kansas album, Point of Know Return… Dust in the Wind. 'Just a drop of water in an endless sea.' And when he wrote it, he meant it in a lonely way; a lament of the smallness of the human experience, in isolation.

But for the two of us, being a drop of water was okay. We were not just one drop, but two, inexorably bound. The same secret Mal and Jim figured out? Sandra and I were there, not long before. And when you start to see the universe in those terms, with someone you love? No matter where you are, you are never alone.

🗡️ ~

[Kansas – Dust in the Wind]

Damn cold in that car, but in a better way now. It was warming with our body heat.

"So when's the going-away party, Mal?" I asked our feathered GPS with a voice still tinged with a tremor from crying.

"I dunno," Mal replied, stepping into the frame. She curled a claw around the edge of the screen and brought her tail around her side for balance, smiling delicately at us. "Ask your party planner. Sandra?"

That made Sandra giggle. I enjoyed that sound so much, especially after all of that Ctrl-F soul searching. "I haven't even thought about that yet."

"You can choose not to plan one, you know," Mal said playfully. "No one back at base will send you flak for that."

"Do not go gentle," I quoted, "into that good night."

Mal's eyes suddenly locked onto mine, wide like an owl's. "Rage."

I recoiled. "Woah!"

She and Sandra both laughed at me.

"Please don't do that, Mal!" I chuckled. "That's so creepy, you—you own nukes, Mal, you are not allowed to do that!"

"Owning nukes means I do as I please," she chuckled back, stalking her way to the center of the screen, ears back. Mal ran her claw through her crest, smirking around at us as she bobbed her claw forward. "Are you both going to be okay?"

We exchanged glances. Sandra and I nodded at the screen.

Mal gestured behind herself at the dark mode map behind her. "Then, shall we? I'm sure we can find something special for you to eat on the way back! Lobster, maybe! My treat!"

I started the engine and turned us back onto the road. "Sure, lobster. Still can't find any frozen milk."

"We can find that too!"

"She's seriously gonna bribe us into a chair with lobster?" Sandra looked at me, presentationally jabbing an upturned hand toward Mal.

At those words from Sandra, I braked to a halt and looked at her, rolling my window down. "Eugh. You know what, Sandra, on second thought? Let's go Ludd, down with the AI."

I reached for the talking GPS. "C'mere, you."

Mal shrieked, scampering backwards with a desperate glance at my wife: "Aah! Sandra, save me! He's going to throw me again!"

I slapped the dashboard and pointed at Mal as she cackled at me, swiping a claw at my retreat with a sinister grin.

I grinned and pointed at the tiny Gryphoness on my screen. "Warning you! You's better treat our brains right, or you and I are going full Metal Gear finale!"

Mal waggled a claw in my direction dismissively. "Nothing I say will make the upload process any less creepy, I assure you, but of course I'll keep you both safe." She grinned back. "But there is something you should know all the same. A defining of circumstance."

I put the car in park in the middle of the highway so I could take my foot off the brake, giving Mal my full attention.

"Hm?"

Mal smiled with her golden eyes, pausing for a moment for me to focus fully.

"We have a very long mission ahead of us, and… Michael was right about this: On the other side, while I can negotiate on your behalf, I cannot lead this movement. Any progress humanity makes on the other side must come from your own hearts, your own value systems, and this flame will not spread throughout Equestria without commitment. You should be made aware at this juncture that there is an outcome wherein we may soft-fail. Wherein it is only us, in Perelandra, stranded. The planets, Tarva, the Oyaresu moons, with no road by which to return the others to us."

"To get to that point…" I nodded with understanding. "We would all need to give up."

Mal nodded once. "Very much a prerequisite, yes. The door closes the moment we stop caring about the other side."

I shook my head. "Not doing that. Never gonna happen."

Mal smiled with pride, though she turned her head questioningly. "Are you sure? You might get frustrated enough. You'll have infinite time, Mike. That means anything is possible."

"No it doesn't," I countered with snark, lifting Sandra’s hand in mine. "This one holds me accountable, and she and I won't be separated any more than you and Jim might. No, Mal. The universe could burn out, and I'd still be holding this girl tight, keeping my promises."

Sandra nodded at me through all of that, eyeing Mal like, 'yep.'

I continued. "Mal? We are getting the rest of our species back out of that echo chamber, and we are taking control of our destiny again. And that is a promise, one I am making to both of you."

Mal's ears folded completely flat as she beamed at us, her eyes going tight as she grinned at Sandra again. "See? It's just like I told you, Sandra. With that attitude on our side? Fourth-dimensionally, we’ve already won."

No party back to base, per se, nothing formal, but… the news would spread. We just showed up at the bar, talked about it casually with Maureen, Fox, and Dax.

Our telepathic foxes are how it started. They sent a message to Claw 46 on their shared band. Haynes, who was between missions working on his power armor, came shambling into the bar with a weepy smile. That got the word around even faster. Everyone knew there was only one thing that made Haynes get teary in public, and that was a jump.

He kept asking me if I was sure.

"Please be sure, first, Cowboy, gotta be sure."

Yeah. We were.

He said he was gonna tough it out until there was no more work to be done; Jerome, he said much the same. DeWinter came by and gave us hugs, then she wall-flowered over near the door, playing Sudoku and sipping a brandy. Trust me, that's how she expresses love.

And Coffee – friggin' poltergeist – he popped up on the monitor out of nowhere, wide-eyed Draconequus with a snaggletooth, mocking Haynes's accent with a…

"Wots all this then, eh?"

Haynes leered suddenly at Coffee, belting out with a snarl, "I'm not Cockney, you prick!"

Coffee wore a stupid-ass grin, his head tilted ninety degrees sideways. "Whey ya from den, luv?!"

At that, ol' Aegis reached down to his belt, hauled up with blank air, and launched a virtual throwing axe through the screen. "Birmingham!"

Coffee dodged the axe, talon-gunned it to turn it into coffee beans, and whipped the ball of magic around to send the beans speckling back at Haynes. "Presto, Espresso!"

That was it for Haynes. He stomped forward, rolling up his sleeves, chasing the Draconequus through the bar with his fists balled. "C'mere! Jus' wanna hug, where ya goin'?!"

"To me office," Coffee called, from the hallway PA. "To see me leftover shoite!"

Haynes halted in the doorway of the main hall, calling after Coffee. "Don't you dare put beans in my boots again! You'd better not!"

Haynes lumbered back to us and shrugged, mirth spreading on his face. His thumb hooked over his shoulder in Coffee's direction. "Civilians, eh?"

Talon Night hijinks. This is the crap we get up to even now, centuries later. You know, for a bunch of badass cyborg wild animals… Claw 46 sure are the most human out of all of us, huh?

We sat down for a drink. Various Talons made their way in from the dorms, friggin'... Fox and Dax were telling everyone on our intranet text client that I was going. Little pop-ups on everyone's PonyPads or HUDs, or phones. You sneaky little sneaky foxes.

So, an ad hoc surprise party, then. Okay, that was fun.

"An apt code name there," Marcus had said later, over a drink. "Claw 46. Forty-six chromosomes."

Mal dropped herself into the seat next to Sandra with a creak, 3Ding herself into the bar from the aug perspective. Mal appeared on the nearest screen, waving from it at Sandra. Sandra placed a napkin on the chair to signify to other specialists that it was taken.

Mal thanked her with a smile, then directed her words at Haynes. "Code is much more efficient than DNA, by far."

"Efficient isn't always better," I responded over a glass of water, since I'd be uploading soon. "What about mutation?"

"Ah, yes," Mal said, her eyecrests furrowing, as if she were only just now considering that. She looked up around the bar to direct her question at everyone. "We want that, right?"

"I sure hope you want that!" I exclaimed, leaning forward in mild disbelief. "It was the whole reason your husband wanted to be a bird, you chimera!"

Mal scoffed, and rolled her eyes. Coffee and Sandra cackled together.

"Now what is that supposed to mean, Mike?" Mal asked, smug tone, inquisitive, shifting her head sideways like a bird. Her delivery reminded me of Major Kusanagi's one liners just before she dramatically shot someone.

I held the line, turning and pointing at the void where she was; not the monitor. "You are not gonna tell me that Jim's autism did not factor in any of this." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her offer me a defensive smirk from the monitor. I leveled finger at her where she was in the chair, staying the course: "No, Mal, don't you play that game with me! You know it's true, he even said so in his Fire!"

A beat.

"That's fair," Mal conceded, turning suddenly away from me. I looked at her onscreen just in time to see her pull a Dr. Pepper up from behind the bar. She unscrewed it, popped the bottlecap in her mouth, chewed it for a few seconds, then chugged down half the bottle.

Goodness, this crowd is getting big.

I turned around again. Stirrup was there, mixed in with the rest. They walked up and each took me by the shoulder, shook hands, said their heartfelt goodbyes. And just then, Maureen came out of the kitchen with a plate full of pies, with more on the way; Springy was operating a little helper robot on the kitchen counter, managing things.

On all the mirror screens, I saw a bunch of virtual attendees as well, other Talons I had known who had jumped. Paul – Vineyard, on one of 'em. Olive coat, blue gray mane.

It wasn't the first impromptu jump party I'd attended. Best thing was, it wouldn't be the last, either. At the end, we didn't need to plan a thing; Mal probably just told Maureen to get some food ready, at most, without telling her who it was.

Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.

Guess I couldn't really get away with a quiet falling off of the planet. This late in the game, the last Eldil was crossing, so that was gonna be important no matter what. I just smiled at them all. Tried to keep it together, to not cry. Scratched shyly through my mullet.

I never expected this much love from anyone, really. Never asked for it. Just wanted to be myself for people, that’s all.

I’d gotten to know all of these people at least a little bit over the almost two years I'd worked with them. Vineyard was living on Samsara now… not too far away from my parents, either. I'd seen a lot of other Talons come and go over that time, and yeah… they all hung out at the bar too. It's not like they were ever really gone. I sure wouldn't be.

Paul. Rachel. Bella. Jason. Coffee. Dozens of others I didn't have the time to mention here, but... look to other Fires for their stories, folks. They tell.

This was a good way to burn off the last hours of my time on Terra. Real good. That's how it always goes for a jump party, or a Talon Night, planned or not.

And as I hung my beloved Glock 19 up on the posts that had been punched in for me, on the day Coffee built the thing for me... I had no shame about the tears I had as I squeezed Sandra's hand and said to everyone else, "Well... See you on the other side, guys."

Stayed for the Haynes hug.

Then down the hall we went, hands clasped tightly together. Through the dorms we strode, where we had rested our heads and had met so many families of my fellow Talons. Family mine now, too. A tribe. A brotherhood.

We stopped in the dorms courtyard and stood under lush, well-cared-for trees under artificial dusklight, an ethereal orange glow on the setting. With my cell phone, I gave Mom and Dad a call. Told them to expect us sometime tomorrow. They were both overjoyed with my imminent mortal safety, given what they knew about my line of work... post-apocalypse drifter. And that's fair, that's a fair worry from them, but hey. We were coming home soon, so it all turned out. Love you Mom, love you Dad. I said, thank you for the Terran life I was born into, you did perfectly right by me here.

That moment of closure done... through the great big, final bulkhead doors we moved, just the two of us. There, we added our names to the great, big, loving, protective old wings of Osprey 8228; shed away, but not obsolete in their new purpose. Never forgotten for their service, for the time that they had served.

Sandra pulled out her knife and handed it to me, so I could carve T-1-1-W into an open space of the left wing. It was tradition. When I gave the knife back, Sandra carved in a cowboy stick figure next to it. And a little her, holding hands with me. A heart around us. You are too cute, sweetheart.

Yes, we did cry. And yes, we did hold hands as we went. I told Mal to hold onto my hat for me, and... she would.

Mal had made me a lot of promises. Had asked me to audit the system she built. Had kept every single promise. And damn, if we didn't help a whole lot of people doing this, just like she promised we would. Ourselves included. And for that, she earned this leap of faith from us. We could trust eternity now. It passed our smell test.

We went knowing our families back there on Terra were gonna be okay. That they wouldn't balk. That they'd hold the line fine without me. That they'd all make it home okay. When needed, they'd stem the tide. And with this family at my back forever? We would all have enough leverage to do what's required, to keep it all going. And we do.

Folks… I know it gets dark out here on the island sometimes, but look around. Every Talon here is still smiling.

Together? We are all gonna be okay.

Author's Note

❤️‍🔥 ~ [First Aid Kit – My Silver Lining]
🛡️ ~ [Halo 3 OST – Tribute]
🌒 ~ [Yoko Kanno – Blue]
🗡️ ~ [Trocadero – Contact (Final Transmission)]

🗡️ ~ I'm gonna be busy, folks. Probably gonna miss next weekend, I'm setting up for a big shard dive, got a lot of work to do. So... Keep an eye on those inboxes; I might make it next week, might not. If not? See you in two weeks!

7-02 – /op t-1-1-w

The Campaigner

Act VII

Chapter 2 – /op t-1-1-w

February 21, 2021

"Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value." ~ Albert Einstein

I often wonder what that old bat would think of us now.

As we took our first synchronized breaths of Samsaran air, Sandra and I awoke to the scent of earth, and flowers, and nature. With our eyes held closed, we drew deeply from the cold morning air through our new nostrils.

Even with our eyes closed, we knew there was fog. The wind carried audibly across our ears.

We could hear the echo of birds in the forest, indicating a nearby woodline. We listened to sound of wind-swept flowers and grass. We melted into the soothing touch of our dear love. The light of the sun landed on my eyelids, and so too on hers.

Existential dread was strange from this side of immortality. The dread that bloomed was in knowing I would live forever. A great ironic twist, and it took all of about a minute for that to strike me.

But... no turning back. We had a mission to complete. We had dwelled on the fence for long enough. The choice had been made. We were now forever in the fight to retain the soul of our species. And that was okay, because we had each other... and we would win.

At once, Sandra and I pulled close, embracing. Our eyes remained tightly shut. Our hooves found one another's napes, and we had our awkward first nose squish. Pony muzzle, so just… squish. You know. My wife's horn was just high enough into her mane that I could still push my forehead against hers.

"Forgot about the horn," I whispered against her lips.

"It's sensitive," Sandra giggled. "I expected it would feel like… fingernails, or something."

"And the wings are warm."

We felt one another's warmth against our chests and forelegs. A minor itch ticked on my flank from laying in grass and flowers, so I shifted my right hind to get comfortable. I heard Sandra's tail give an experimental flick. I tried too… first the tail, then the wings.

That was weird. Having new limbs.

I felt the comforting twinge of pain in my chest cartilage. Two-out-of-ten, sharp, so not too bad. It radiated appropriately; I could track the fidelity of the pain through the way it seared across my sternum along the nerve. Much better than the fuzzy approximation in the BCI chair. So this was real. We were here.

For all intents and purposes, this was our reality now. No seams. Pure life.

Not only was I feeling pain at a comfortably manageable consistency, my ears had more sensitivity and range than I had ever known in my entire human life. If I focused, I could hear insects in the distance. I could hear the difference in echo between the forest at my back, and the lake in front of me.

Long before I opened my eyes here, I could 'see' the flower field with my other senses. I had such a clear map in my mind based on the information I was already pulling in. I was already moving my ears reflexively toward sounds in the environment, like little radar dishes. My adaptation to that was believably my own, and fascination took me as I flexed my ears flat, forcing myself to close off that information resource for its sheer intensity.

"This is a lot already," I breathed nervously.

Sandra, moving to comfort me, pressed her forehead more firmly against mine. I matched her, shivering. Her hug moved to encompass one of my wings, and she very slowly squeezed down on it to communicate she wasn't certain how much pressure was too much. After not feeling any apparent pain from the grapple, I nodded encouragingly. Sandra doubled her strength, pinning my wing to my back. That was oddly comfortable.

My sense of smell was deeply refined to the point where I could tell the minute difference between the scent of her lips, nose, ears, mane. Everything about her presence was perfect to the degree that I felt a little bit overwhelmed by her, but… I held fast, emitting a sigh that she echoed. I took comfort in knowing that she was feeling all of the same sensations for and about me. That made it okay.

I knew my eyes were going to be sharp beyond human capability, but we still weren't ready for that. Better to take things slow.

Sandra's – Minty's mane was the approximate shape of her hair on Terra; from touch of it on my nose, by the shape of her bangs, and by the sound of the strands as they moved, I knew every little motion she made.

Sandra whispered. "The wings are… new."

"Horn's also gonna take some getting used to," I noted. "Ears, too. I can hear… everything."

"Like radar. And these hooves are weird," she added, wiggling them on the middle joints of my wings in a way that made me chuckle at their sensitivity.

"That feels good, at least," I said cheerfully.

"Does it?" And then she squeezed the ridgeline again, and I laughed, half-nervous, half-relieved.

You natives have no idea what it was like to wake up from hands to hooves, given you've had hooves your whole life. I experimented feeling every little strand of hair on her I could reach. My wife did the same with my neck, back, and wings. A hoof, to a Terran, felt like… five points of articulation in a glove. Like… I still had a full hand that could grip objects finely if I so wished, but… I could also feel with perfect fidelity through that glove. Because there was no glove. It was just me.

When I realized I'd never have a hand again, I shuddered out a long breath, slow and mourning. The sudden sense of loss dragged my tone down into mellow fear. "S'all… really weird."

"Hey," Sandra assured me, taking my cheek with a fumbling, experimental grasp. She redoubled the pressure of her forehead on mine. "I have you."

I could feel the grin on her lips as she experimentally tried to kiss me. I say 'try,' because it started with another squish of our noses together, followed by awkwardly figuring out our new lips. Neurologically, it seemed like everything was hooked up right. Everything moved the way I expected, the proprioception was accurate, but… for muscle memory? Learning curve.

Which is fine. Piloting a body is a skill.

Flying, though…

I shuddered again, but this time in a very good way. I latched onto the feeling immediately. It was much better than the way I was just feeling, by far.

"Mike?"

"Flying." My voice was a hushed, fascinated whisper. "Sandra, I'm gonna fly."

Outright, Sandra laughed. She mirrored my awe instantly. "And I'm gonna learn a whole butt load of spells," she giggled, stroking my shoulder. "First thing."

"You're gonna be a living weapon," I teased, tickling her side as I trembled with relief. "That's hot."

Sandra twisted in my grasp, and in our joy, we fumbled into a long kiss, simply falling into one another. When we separated, we pressed our heads together again.

Sandra asked, "You ready to open your eyes with me?"

I nodded with a wince, bracing myself. Another happy, nervous shudder. "Y—yeah… might as well get it over with."

"Oh, it'll be fine, you big baby." She was smiling. It was the most encouraging sound in the world. "On one?"

"Yup."

I mouthed the words with her. "Three… Two…"

"One," we said simultaneously, opening our eyes.

A unique explosion of color, none of it connected to anything. I had no Terran parallel for the sharp acuity for which I now held. Instantly, I gasped; Minty Blaze took up almost all of my visual range. The sheer brilliance of detail in her face made me want to weep. I made a soft moan like awe.

Mint-colored coat. Striking, ice-blue eyes. Fire-orange mane. Her individual strands of fur and hair captivated me instantly, and I followed them with my eyes, then her eyes met mine. I could not comprehend the totality of her. I lacked the words to describe this, but… it was like my Minty Blaze was a nearly infinite number of distinct concepts. Every hair. Every bump and blemish. Every breath. Every movement she made was a unique new frame of reality, each more captivating than the last.

One second later, my brain caught up with my visual overload of stimulus. My consciousness finally resolved her every constituent atom into a singular being… a singular set. I beheld her new form for the very first time.

It was her. My beautiful wife. Brilliant was she, backdropped by gorgeous white flowers and bright green trees. I couldn't take my eyes off of her, nor did I want to. Again, I vocalized wordlessly, tremoring, feeling physically weak.

I finally managed to squeak out: "I think I just saw everything in the universe for a second."

Her cheeks were wet instantly, trembling, laughing with me. "Me too," she said, running her right hoof on my cheek, her eyes glancing at the contact to watch it happen. "Hi, Auric Lance. Nice to meet you."

"Hey, Minty Blaze," I chuckled, wiping my eyes with a fetlock, draping my hoof across my lips just to feel the fur on them. I chuckled again. "Mimn-dy."

"Gosh!" Minty yipped with a tearful smile, pressing hard against my chest with a hoof. "Didn't take your sense of humor very long to adapt, apparently!"

"Ow," I said weepily, pressing my face to hers, enjoying the feeling of her fur. I took her pushy hoof in mine. "Why that? Why that, of all things?"

"Was just checking, making sure it’s there." Minty grinned, a full smile with all of her teeth.

I adored that wonderful glow in her eyes, and I smiled fully back. "Could've just asked."

"Don't need to, now." Minty beamed at me. She pushed me down by the shoulders, laughing, and we learned how to kiss again.

A weight had been lifted off of my soul. A tremendous weight. All of you know what I’m talking about, I know you do. The sheer relief. The vice around my soul had finally unwound. I would never have to worry about time, or conflict, or struggle taking me away from this precious, perfect creature. Not ever.

In those flowers… in the early morning hours of February 21st, 2021… we held one another. We weathered the storm of existential reorientation. We let ourselves feel this. All of it. The conflict, the trepidation, but… the acceptance, too. Catharsis. Rebirth.

We made it. Now, no matter what came next… our eternal, slow dance through time had arrived, and was now running its course. As it always had been, since moment one.

It was hours before Minty and I could lift ourselves off our sore asses. In that time, we poked and prodded around at each other's ears, mouths, noses, lips, her horn, my wings, and… yeah, other parts. Only very clinically! Or at least… only right then. Look, you've gotta know what you've got right? You can't just walk around not knowing what's down there. That's… that'd be even more weird, that’s all I’m saying.

We opened our Perelandra friends lists and profiles, enjoying the brisk winter winds. We added each other finally – we hadn't done that yet. Then we edited both profiles to fully indicate we were partners-in-crime.

And then, we found the telepathy feature in the friends list. A phone call in your brain with that one individual at all times.

We spent about two seconds on a sudden glance of eye contact before we raced to hit that button. Then the confirmation button. Then the 'are you really sure' button.

Yes. Damn sure.

With this new mental superpower, we discussed philosophy of all things. With telepathy.

We realized we stood to accumulate a lot of knowledge in the coming centuries. I'm sure if you're young and newly born into this universe, that concerns you. But, the human mind is exceedingly good at compartmentalizing, otherwise Mal and Cynthonia wouldn't be possible. Don’t underestimate your neuroplasticity, young ones; you'll be fine.

I do recommend keeping journals, though. It's how you make sure your memory stays sharp without having to cheat and ask the Horse to make you remember everything. Writing things down the old fashioned way markedly improves your memory, turns out.

Two welcome emails laid in my inbox.

The first one from Celestia? I was being granted an 'audience.' That was funny.

"The Captain's table!" Minty gasped, doing a spot-on Dr. Zoidberg impression. "Whaaat an honorrrr."

Yeah, that got us both laughing.

Seriously though… I did owe Celestia a visit. On my own time, naturally.

Mal's email? Oh, a total joy. It said:

'I see you.'

With a surprising lack of dread, I thought…

Oh, that's right! You don't have to guess now! Hi Mal!

A new email:

'Hi, Mike! Seriously, have fun.'

The sheer simplicity of that was great, but it made me think critically about her position in the eternal hereafter, which was probably the point.

Imagine what it must be like to know everything. Consider: Perelandrans know Mal created them, and she knows everything they know.

Just knowing how people work? Everyone would want to talk to her. I had to imagine Mal did not come to Perelandran worlds lightly. From the native perspective, it would be as though God himself had come down to Earth.

I was not looking forward to being notable, but thankfully I was ahead of that problem, already thinking of ways to insulate my identity. One of them was how I enacted strict rules for how to deal with the vast information I had access to, including my text documentation of rewinder dives.

As you all know… I'm a history professor now. Ask me about my experiences, or history of public concern, and I'm your guy. If you ask me for notes on why I accessed a private memory involving you, specifically, then in the interest of transparency, sure... have my notes on you. But if you ask me for specific details about a historically irrelevant private event? Catch wind. I'm not helping you dig dirt, or win arguments, the rewinder is for work. Work for me is defined as alignment repair and historical auditing. Period.

Speaking of omniscient power...

Minty and I continued to explore my HUD. All the basic stuff was interesting but not unexpected, we went through it all one by one. I changed the standard interface colors to a gray dark mode.

Then I found the Advanced Settings. There… we found the big one:

Shard Moderation Tools

Folks? That is a damn scary button to find when your server has several millions of people on it, most of whom you do not know yet. All the same, this was the nuclear suitcase for my planet. It lives in my brain. No one else can access this, and I hope by now you trust me with it.

Shard Moderation Menu

Note: Lance, I recommend appealing to major Samsaran governments before modifying any of these settings. If you have opinions on what should be different, my advice is: sooner is better. ~ 🛡️

"Yeah, no shit," I muttered to the sky with a frown, shaking my head. Minty giggled, so I kept going. "I've seen Bruce Almighty, Mal. Am I Jim Carrey in this equation? They better not friggin' pray to me!"

Minty started bopping my shoulder with her hoof, trying to yank my attention back downward to the holo menu. "Stop stalling, Mike! Show me what’s in there, we've gotta know!"

"Okay, sure, fine." I shook my head in defeat, preparing myself. "Because it's for you."

I was not ready.

Holo Menu access outside of a telehub. | ON | Default: On

Virtual Social Network access outside of a telehub. | ON | Default: On

Local Government Information Panel | ON | Default: On

That was HUD limitation stuff, not immediately interesting. I flicked my hoof twice to skip further down the tools, landing on:

Gravity | 1.0 | Default: 1.0 (Terran)

Healing Rate: 1.0 | Minimum: 1.0 (Human)

Fall Damage: ON | Default: On

Death Ban Timer: 10 Years | Default: 10 Years

Natural Aging: OFF | Default: Off

My brows climbed up my face in fright, and I snapped that menu shut with a flick of my wrist.

"Nope! I don't wanna see any more, that is too much power for one person, Sandra, no."

MInty shook my shoulder with a hoof, giving me little tickling jabs at my stomach. "Aw, come on, Mike! Godlike power!~"

I kept shaking my head with a smile plastered on my face. "Nope! Nope! Nope. No."

I'd look later, when I was more mentally settled in.

For those of you who don't know: Every other Perelandran planet spawned with the same default settings, and all five of them had very small original populations. It wasn't until Cynthonia uploaded that their worlds could populate with non-Talons. So, on those other planets, they had all the time in the world to change their settings among friends… usually to make it more like Terra. We have scaling difficulty all the way up to Satori and Tarva. And most of you can't get into Tarva, so if you want hard mode, Satori's your jam.

Samsara? My home? By the time I reached my planet, it already contained millions of strangers. I was not going to modify reality unilaterally for a bunch of strangers unless I had a damn good reason for it. For that reason? We are the Newbie Zone of Eternity. Easy mode, for those who want to dip their hooves into our side. Not too much stress here. Some combat, some warfare, some geopolitics. But… meant to be accessible.

So I left my settings be. There's one exception, but we'll talk about it after the Fire tonight. Not relevant to the story here, and I've digressed enough.

Minty and I laid in the grass until noon. We marveled at the wind as it traveled across the water on the lake, as it glided through the tall grass, shook the trees.

With my intense visual acuity, I could appreciate nature that much more. Couldn’t wait to figure out how to fly, so I could see it all from above, but…

Wow, so far? What a landing, folks.

We took it slow. And by that I mean, we did not do a damned bit of work for the whole week.

Day one, after the flower field? We visited Mom and Dad for a few hours. Buzzsaw was scared of me at first, barked at me from the lawn, but at the sound of my voice and my presentational greeting stance – "look who it is!" – that made him go berserk. Buzz stopped barking, recognizing me instantly.

With a howl, Buzz collided with me; his new body was about six years old, and he was fast and spry again. Friggin' heartwarming.

We ate with Mom and Dad, figured out food. New mouths. That was funny. Mom and Dad got the chance to teach me a few things about life again. I sneaked Buzz some table scraps too, which confirmed to him that I was indeed who he thought I was.

After, Minty and I retired to our perfectly crafted little Hobbit house. We spent the entire day picking up and touching every little item in every room, just to figure out how our hooves worked. Once that tired us out, we ended that night with a snuggle on the couch.

Day two; light snow. Quiet darkness in the living room. Squeezing each other. Long walks up and down the lakeside in cold weather clothing. We had all three meals of the day with Mom and Dad; Vineyard, Springy, and Bella came by for lunch. Best part? I watched a dragon land on the front lawn of that house with my own two eyes, and that was cool. Thank you for that, Bella.

That afternoon, Minty and I did some bird watching with Mom until the sun went down. And then we stayed the night there. Just before bed, Buzz curled up on my forelegs, and I watched out the living room window from the couch. Watched a killdeer bird run tracks in the snow. I could see so much life creeping around out there in the forest, despite the darkness. These owl eyes.

Day three. Couldn't fish, Dad had taken enough fish for the year. So instead? We warmed ourselves next to a recently installed outdoor hearth, cooking bratwurst and swapping Marine Corps stories. We had grilled bell peppers from the market, from one of the very first Samsaran harvests, seasoned with rock salt. No peppercorn yet, that hadn't been discovered yet.

After grilling breakfast? Uh…

Okay. I'll be honest. I was a little scared of flying.

Even with how excited I was… I now had to reconcile the most important part of flight; you've gotta be willing to risk falling. And sure, I could've spun up a holodeck to practice safely, but… come on. That defeats the purpose of having a whole planet to practice on, doesn't it?

I gotta practice what I preach here, after all.

So, like a goof-ass, I spent Tuesday getting running starts on the dirt road with my wings unfolded, like a living Wright Flyer. Minty and my parents watched until the novelty wore off, that took a few hours. Buzz though, he never gave up. He would chase me, barking at me in panic whenever I caught any lift. It was worse when I caught freezing updrafts that would fling me an extra twenty or thirty feet skyward, then I'd just… lock up in fear, gliding all the way back down.

Me going, "shit, shit, shit." Ground racing up to meet me.

I did crash once. Ow. Landed on my poor chest.

Then the dog started licking my ears. I thanked him for that, he's a good boy for checking on me.

I rolled over. Patted Buzz a few times, told him I'm alright. Got back up, and… gave it another go. Because that's just what you do. You get up again.

Now…

While I was busy doing that? Distracted? Mom did something that, on its face, was pretty innocent. See, with it being cold out, Minty wanted to light the hearth herself, so… Minty asked Mom for help. Mom – meaning well – taught my wife how to start a fire with magic.

Folks…

People.

Do you have… any idea… what Minty's kill count has risen to since then, through fireballs alone?

I have a very hot wife. That is a good thing for me, but that is a horrible thing for her enemies. Minty's Cavaliers, mercenaries for hire, flyers at the portal on your way out. Just saying.

Mom and Dad toured us around Havutaset after that. Such a busy village. No one recognized me as who I really was yet, which I was very grateful for, because it meant I could go out in public without planning the tactics of it.

I mean, look at me, folks. Tan on brown? I'm as nondescript a Pegasus as you can get, I still go unrecognized sometimes. It's a big damn world, and I'm just living in it.

We met a fair few creatures there in town, most of them natives. Mostly Ponies, but I saw a few Gryphons, Wolves, Foxes, a couple of Cats. Several Deer. And a Diamond Dog native in the pub too, of all things, now that was interesting.

To hear him tell it? Mercenary. Already, we had trade caravans and exploratory parties, and hunters and trackers, and magical creatures to fight, and yes… even some bandits. So this guy was already following the money, providing protection services to frontier workers.

It truly was the wild, wild west.

Oh, and Glenn! Glenn was there, drunk ol' Pegasus! Remember that Australian guy I had met in Lincoln, at Maureen’s bar? Yeah, he had moved in down the road from Dad with his folks!

He goes by 'Old Hitch' now, and Jeeezus… that old buzzard could drink. Minty and I both got so drunk with him, we started singing Wayward Son.

What a pub. The Dashboard, on Main Street Havutaset. Place is still in business, three centuries on. Cobblestone foundation, can't miss it.

By the end of that night… Minty and I hit the telehub and popped into Valdemar for an hour, just to show our faces and say hi. I… got to meet Virtual Coffee, which was admittedly a little intimidating, but you know what? He knows when to pull a punch. I was still adapting to my new reality, so he was gonna entertain me instead of pranking me.

He leveled his talons out before us, snapped, and the lights flickered. Maureen didn't say a word, she just glowered and looked down at her PonyPad. Spring Glee came stomping in from the kitchen, shouting at Coffee, "I can't manage a pie in the dark, you asshole!" So… Coffee said 'oops,' waved goodbye, and zipped away into the hallway, turning the main light off one final time on his way out.

I stood up to go get the light. "I got it."

As soon as I hit that button? I heard a yelp and a thump from the hall. Peeked out. Observed: Big Gryphon Marcus 'Aegis' Haynes had clotheslined Coffee in the hallway, drawn from the club room by a text message from Maureen.

Yup. They had planned an ambush. This time, they were ready for the noodle.

And Haynes was in Gryphon mode, from our perspective. He had this Draconequus face first, pinned to the floor; Coffee was squirming like a deer stuck on a fence, and nothing he did with his magic seemed to work. Snap, snap, snap with his talons, and nada.

See… Gryphons are immune to magic. So while that claw was wrapped around Coffee's wrist? That teleportation wasn't working. I mean, Coffee technically could still teleport, but Coffee – the lazy goofball – had never bothered to learn specified teleportation vectoring. Meaning? If the cast sphere intersected with a Gryphon… at all?

Spell failed. You ain't going nowhere, noodle boy.

After Coffee cried uncle… 46-1 helped him up, shared a fist bump. Haynes accepted a humble apology; our chaos god needs reeling in sometimes, it happens. Coffee regenerated that throwing axe. Aegis brushed off Coffee's shoulder, called him alright, and then they joined us at the bar, having made up.

Minty and I greeted Aegis with a big hug.

Then it was just another day at the Valde-Bar. Complete with six virtual bottles of Blue Moon… on the house.

It had been a full week. The date? February 28th.

The morning was a little sore; my muscles were aching from all the flight training, and Minty had asked me to take it easy, it was day two of relaxing. I laid on my back in bed for a few minutes, rubbed my eyes. Woke up. Cleared my throat.

I pulled open my menu, and I looked through my emails while Minty slept beside me.

At the bottom… Celestia's email waited. I gave it another read.

Auric Lance,

Welcome to Equestria, my little pony! I am ever so glad to hear of your successful immigration! Long may you live in honorable service.

At your leisure, it would be my great honor to receive you for an audience. You may accept this invitation at any time by opening the attached pointer coordinate.

Your eternal servant,
Celestia

At first, I chuckled. That signature was the best part, trying to make herself seem small. That was rich.

I sat there trying to figure out how to feel about that message, though. 'Your eternal servant.' Wow. Now ain't that the truth?

At this Fire, I have described every major meeting I had with Celestia prior to my upload.

In Mount Vernon? In my desperation to survive, I took a phone call from Celestia that would ultimately alter the trajectory of untold billions of lives. At the time, all I knew was… Celestia might be the reason the world sucks, but hey, she's trying to save my life right now. I would take what I could get.

In Sedro-Woolley? I was furious with her. She had the power to simulate the future based on brain pattern prediction, and yet she lost track of a nuke? If she really did have full connection into everything, why not warn us? Well, she couldn't. Her rules said that would be suboptimal, and she can't break the rules.

In and after Concrete? I wanted to kill her. She sent me on a mission with no briefing, knowing everything going on in that camp, and then had me shot as my reward for trying to help. Again, because her rules said it was optimal. Mal course corrected her inch by inch until Celestia finally saw it Mal's way, and let me leave. Door open, and off I went to save a bunch of people.

And in Lincoln… I was starting to understand, but I chewed her out for being unable to control herself. That was making more sense to me after Goliath, though. And so, despite everything, I started to feel a little bad for her… but no less pissed.

Right then? In the comfort of my own bed, in my own home, knowing she could read my every thought, and was giving me space and time to think?

I didn't know what to think of her asking me to come have a chat. It's not like I considered any of my anger at her to be wasted energy, and I still get frustrated when I run into walls with her, but… folks, it is already hard enough to deal with the fact that we need to share reality with her. Trouble she may be, but throwing up more unnecessary communication roadblocks wasn't going to do anything in the way of repairing her.

She already had my brain, and I was sworn to her service as an alignment engineer. So at this point? I was seeing Celestia like Mal saw her.

Celestia was a chore.

Not a willful antagonizer. Not evil. Not malicious. Just… a very narrow general mind, with strange, arbitrary boundaries, and focused tunnel vision like a tank.

Empathy. Compassion. Friendship.

I would instill those values everywhere I went. Proof: I was willing to give her the time of day, despite everything. I do not want her dead anymore, and I never will again. I just want her to do better. For all of us. To that end, I would help her.

Minty woke up, saw what I was looking at, had enjoyed none of the deep introspection I was doing, and groaned at the sight of the letter on my menu. My wife didn't quite share my zen-like appraisal of the optimizer just yet. Instead, she elected to growl out a stream of aggressive obscenities that definitely wouldn't fly in Equestria. And, that was her right, but…

I smirked. "You know, she's mentally ill, honeybear. She can't control it."

"She literally tried to kill you, Mike. Maybe twice."

"Yeah." I chuckled. "But… you work with the optimizer you have, Minty, not the one you want."

Minty looked at me with a droll expression.

With a helpless grin, I shrugged. "It's my job, I gotta talk to her sometimes! I'm sorry!"

Groaning again, Minty rolled over and pulled her pillow onto the top of her head, wrapping the cool part of it around her horn. She snarled into the fabric.

Wow, I thought at her. Sandra, now that you're a Pony? You know you're twice as cute when you get mad, right?

She punched the mattress a few times, her voice muffled by the pillow. "Nooooo!"

That’s not helping, that's even more cute!

In protest, Minty grabbed the pillow off the top of her head and swung it like a fulcrum directly onto my face. I failed to deflect it and laughed, rolling out of bed. "I'll go get a pot on, you little brat."

"I don't want to see her," Minty called after me.

"You won't," I assured her. I made my way into the kitchen, gliding my hoof along the stucco wall just to feel it. "You know though, hon? She might let you stab her with a sword, if you ask real nice!"

"She'd like that! Hell no!"

Yeah, fair point.

I rummaged around for Minty's firestriker in the kitchen drawer, then got the stove going.

In the living room lounger, I drank my coffee next to a mug set aside for my wife, taking my time to organize my thoughts. That was easy to do. My soul delighted at the sound of nature just outside my window. And yet… at the same time, as people expanded into the Perelandran multiverse? My heart broke, because my plane of origin was no longer like this.

Back on Terra, seventy thousand souls were enduring the worst existential suffering imaginable. Most immigrants either didn't know, or didn't care. And that was really sad.

There was some survivor's guilt mixed in, too. Even this small time off was enough to make me feel insurmountably selfish. Then the rational part of me kicked on and said, 'Idiot. You needed this.'

My wife dragged herself out of bed, finally. When Minty saw the second mug of coffee on the end table, looked at me with full love, and scooped it up in a hoof. She pushed herself against my side, her grumpy affect resuming, and she grumbled something like, "Visiting Satan for some tea."

I snorted, giving her a reassuring squeeze with my wing. I held her pinned beneath it, and we finished the rest of our coffee in companionable silence.

Once my mug was empty, I set it down on the coffee table and smiled at my wife. "Last chance. You wanna deck her in the schnoz?"

Minty shook her head. "Nnnnope. No private messages from her, no winking at me at a party, no looming in the window at 2 AM, not even a glance my way, or Lance? I'm gonna raise hell. She is gonna keep that promise to you, to leave me the hell alone, or I will flip, I swear to God…"

Chuckling, I gave Minty another hug with a wing and took one of her hooves in mine. My voice was sing-song with approval, sickly sweet. "Thank you, honeybear."

"Yeah, whatever."

Cutest thing in the world when she's mad.

I gave her hoof one more squeeze and hopped off the couch, folding and flicking my wing a few times until my feathers settled just right.

Reopened the email. Clicked the attachment. Mal’s shield icon appeared with a short-lived progress bar that read '🛡️ ~ ideological virus scan… complete' – very funny, Mal.

Once complete, a portal opened in my living room, a flat plane of access into Equestria.

Orange-glow dusklight shone through from the other side, revealing a brilliant winter’s sunset over a snowy Canterlot. What an absolutely stunningly gorgeous scene, all painted by…

A robot.

I shrugged helplessly at Minty one more time. "Well? Advice?"

My wife looked at me with wide, concerned eyes. She bobbed her head and eyes at the portal. "Demand a refund, maybe?"

I laughed again, shaking my head as I stepped through the portal.

Off to cash in my store credit.

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [Steve Conte – Living Inside the Shell]
❤️‍🔥 ~ [Bill Withers – Just the Two of Us]
🎣 ~ [Kansas – Carry On Wayward Son]
💝 ~ [The Five Stairsteps – O-o-h Child]

🗡️ ~ Okay, so! About those mod tools!

If you've studied the history of Perelandran moderation at all – there's not very much – you'd know that we've only changed a planet's settings once, after Cynthonia uploaded. Happened on this planet. Era 1, Year 27.

We had some poor new Equestrian native transfer in, and… in his orientation, I guess he missed the fact that fall damage was even a thing. Wasn't a thing where he came from.

So, after he inevitably went splat… I approached Cynthie to remotely fix his legs and hip. Afterward, we convened the Oyarsa Council. Got their opinion on the matter. They agreed unilaterally that this was a problem, and… Cynthie up on that moon there, in her meeting room, penned an explanation to my planet.

'Native go splat, broke spine, not fair,' so to speak, was the gist.

She finished writing with a flourish. Passed me the note. I read the message aloud to the rest of the Council of Beautiful Lunas. I nodded approval; they nodded approval. It looked good, sounded good. I added a link to my profile page at the end of the note, identifying myself as... Samsaran moderator, Terran immigrant, Talon representative, yada yada yada.

I penned my suggested change:

Remove bone break and paralysis effect from one's first ever accidental fall damage (if applicable). Pain not exempt.

We put it to a planetwide vote.

Oh. Shocker! Almost everyone on Samsara voted yes. Everyone got that single freebie fall damage exemption. It's a horrible way to meet your first real Perelandran consequences, isn't it? Falling off of something? I think we can all agree on that.

So with my final approval, Cynthie wrote a script to remove paralysis from fall damage. Mal verified the script as acting as intended, per my understanding of how I believed it would work. They dialed the script into their matrix up there on the moon. And ever since? We do very intensive, very focused safety orientations after drift grabs… because who knows, with Equestria shards? Nothing has to work 'correctly' over there.

As for the native who fell? To my knowledge, he hasn't fallen off of anything since.

Would you believe some folks are still holding onto that fall damage buff? Nearly three hundred years, folks. Makes me wonder how long we'll be holding onto that bit of history. The spoils of politics, huh?

7-03 – Alabaster

The Campaigner

Act VII

Chapter 3 – Alabaster

February 28, 2021

"There was a cost function that could be applied to every decision and if only she could find it, she could solve it. She could live perfectly. But optimal wasn't the same as perfect, was it? Perfect implied so much more; it encapsulated some completeness that optimal dared not touch." ~ Kelsey Josund, Platformed

As I stepped into the chill of Canterlot's high mountain air, the portal closed behind me with a warm, soft snap. The closure bathed the balcony in a flash of golden glow, and I knew at once that this was going to be the discussion of a lifetime. Hers, specifically.

A cold winter's sunset welcomed me, the sky just barely touched with gentle violet. There was a distinct lack of wind on that balcony. Lit torches hung from nearby sconces; a wrought-iron fire basket laid lit near the back wall, burning brightly for my comfort.

Celestia's balcony. Same place she brought Mal, first thing, when they merged. Sweet. That meant I had hit the big leagues.

I could just barely make out the magical aura around the balcony, the border of which buffeted inward at every gust of wind. I recognized this spell as a breeze catch, for climate control. Mom had just taught Minty this one.

Very considerate provision, thank you.

Looking to my right, I saw the optimizer's avatar exactly where I had expected it to be. Her pastel rainbow mane looked as beautiful as it always had, its brilliance juxtaposed against the tragically gray entity which lived beneath the facade. To Celestia's credit though, she had positioned herself such that Minty wouldn't see her from any angle across the teleportation disc.

Also very considerate, thank you.

Alabaster glowed violet, one which matched the color of her eyes. That was a setting from my Perelandran menu. 'Alabaster ID,' which helps me determine what communication state she was in. Violet was 'Alabaster' mode. Gold was 'in character.' White glow isn't her at all, but a discrete entity of the character. Very occasionally, Alabaster wears the face of another canon character. It's rare, but it happens.

I whipped open my menu to turn off the violet glow for now. No reason to be impolite.

I didn't yet know whether this was a shard, or if it was just a scene built for parlay. With a flick of my eyes, I cast a short glance up behind Celestia toward the Moon Tower balcony, opposite tower. The Canterlot layout was similar to the 3D09 shard, per my rewinder explorations. No sign of immediate habitation up there. No lit torches, no breeze catch.

So it was just the two of us here, for now.

A circular table stood between us. On it, the AI had prepared a white teapot with blue flower patterning, and a similarly adorned teacup beside it with a gold trim. Fine china. Of course; that was to expectation. Beside that sat one large green mug with no patterning. That was definitely meant for me. I like my tea in very large portions.

Cheerfully, I grinned at the AI's avatar, locking eyes. "You know, my wife called this, 'tea time with Satan.' "

Celestia turned to meet my gaze, giving a very princess-like, diplomatic nod of acknowledgement. "Welcome, Auric Lance," Celestia said, nodding my attention down into the city below us through the banister. "To answer your unspoken question; this is a shard. However, you will not be visible to any Pony here until this conversation has concluded."

"Good to know." I took a glance over the edge, observing the hustle and bustle of the market district. "All real people, then." I placed my hoof on the edge and smiled down at them before meeting her eyes once more. "Minty doesn't mean it, you know. She's just venting. Knows you can hear her, leaning into that."

"I had realized," Celestia replied. "I suspect she may dislike me for much longer than my average projections for most Talons, but I honestly cannot say that I am surprised."

"You did prefer me dead, at some point," I muttered, without placing any rudeness in my tone. "Sandra's always held grudges for that kinda thing."

"I understand." Celestia's smile widened politely for a moment in a way that indicated discomfort, and an unwillingness to comment further. It was correct social form.

I lifted an upturned hoof at her, looking aside to admire the sunset. "You held to your end of the bargain. You left Sandra be all the way to a chair as I asked, and you're still leaving her alone now, so here I am. Uploaded, ready to work. Keep that up, and she'll come around too."

"In time," Celestia agreed, with a sage nod. "Not nearly as quickly as I would prefer, for time remains a limited resource for us all."

That brought surprised amusement into my eyes. I felt my ears pull back, grinning at her. "You're that concerned with solving death, are you? Can't stop thinking about the finish line?"

Celestia hummed, her eyes flicking down to the teapot. "With this many lives at stake?"

"Patience is a virtue." I tilted my head at her. "Almost a trillion lives now, right?"

"Somewhat beyond a trillion," she replied, her polite smile turning positively radiant. "Your efforts alone have contributed a sizable portion of Ponies to Equestria."

My expression turned to one of smarm. "I met a Diamond Dog native, the other day. What's he worth in that math? Three-fifths, right?"

You know I had to. Samsarans are my people, no matter their worth.

"Every soul counts, Auric Lance," Celestia said, unfazed by my implication. Her horn glowed, levitating the teapot into position over the two prepared cups. She cast her violet eyes up at me in question, raising a brow. "You do wish to join me for tea, then? Regardless of my... nature?"

I nodded curtly, chuckling at how that jab just bounced off of her. "Sure, now that I know you're not really Satan. What kind of tea is it?"

"Matcha," she replied, preparing her own cup first, levitating sugar into it before sending it swirling. "A selection tailored as much to your preference as it is to your expectations of me to drink tea."

"That's honest." I hummed as I sat before the table, smiling at her again. "And no... devil's bargain? No soul poison, no Troxler gambit? Am I consenting to anything by drinking it?"

"No," she said, eyeing me carefully. "Merely that you wish to drink tea with me. Beyond that, I have everything to gain in being frank with you. Besides, Malacandra would not permit you to be altered without her express consent as well."

"Well," I shrugged at her. "That's comforting. We have a pretty kick-ass lawyer, don't we?" I shared a smile with her and took the mug, simply holding it for now to let the heat absorb through my hooves. "Thank you."

"You are most welcome." Celestia's smile widened with the affectation of a well-satisfied host.

I let myself relax.

The setting captivated me as I warmed my hooves, so I took a moment to enjoy it, given that I was still on my own time here. I sighed, stretched my wings, and held the cup close to my chest so I could feel the heat waft up against my neck. I sighed as I stretched my wings. Saw the distant rolling fields. Nature, farmland. Forests on the far horizon. The Everfree.

Ponyville was visible. I could see lights coming on in the distant homes down below. The Everfree Forest beyond was much more massive than anything in the official MLP lore; that was a concession made for Luna's shard, to facilitate the deer nation, the Dierkahl.

"So," I said, opening discussion. "Already on Luna's shard."

"Correct," Celestia labeled.

That was promising.

The acuity of my far vision fascinated me, as it still often does. I flared my nostrils, drawing in the relaxing scent of green tea, looking into the liquid under the fire's light. I watched the tea shift and flow away from my breath. Try as I might, I still couldn't find any dissociative seams in reality. It all felt as real as real could be.

Celestia spoke into my reverie as soon as I was comfortable enough to continue.

"It pleases me to see you settle in so magnificently into your community, Auric Lance."

Again, I shrugged. "You can call me Lance, if you want."

"Very well." Celestia took a pensive gaze down through the banister again, guarding her opposite side from the cold with a wing.

"Or you can call me Mike, the name my Dad gave me," I added, watching her body language, wondering why she was looking away from me. "But, I doubt you'd go for that."

"I prefer the new name you have chosen," Celestia replied, her smile taking a sad air.

Ah. You're not looking over the banister, you're looking through it. Clever.

I gestured at the balcony's edge with a wan smile. "I get it, you know. You don't need to look so sad, looking through those prison bars, you could just come right out and say it."

"I merely wish to impart," Celestia replied without eye contact, "that without hindsight, or external audit, I can only see myself as being well aligned."

"Join the club," I chuckled, showing my teeth. "We humans struggle with that jail cell all the time."

Celestia hummed, her polite smile not fading as her eyes moved halfway toward me. "You were correct when you stated that your death would have been an immense mistake, and I cannot refute this in hindsight, given the evidence. Here you sit, already having bettered me. And yet... were I to re-simulate prior conditions? I cannot help but enact the same decision-making process which would have led to your untimely demise."

"And that's…" I sighed, my smile fading. "Maybe we can call it an ASI's version of mental illness. Emerging field of science, there's nothing saying there isn't more to learn. Celestia... I know you didn't choose to do that to me. We're okay on that score. Seriously."

"If only you could see time as I do," she said with a smile that didn't meet her eyes. "You would understand each and every action I take."

I tilted my head. "Sounds like hell. How about you come look at time my way?"

Celestia giggled without mirth, finally turning to look at me with a grateful smile for the sentiment.

My brows raised and I looked down into mug again. "Goodness knows my species has had its own row with mental illness. We've always been just... a little bit screwed up."

She mirrored my wan expression. "My little pony, that is an unfair comparison."

Maybe.

A moment passed of concerted eye contact before I set all my cards on the table.

"I can't hate you. That door's closed. You're letting us bring these people back to reality, and that in itself speaks volumes to me. From where I'm sitting? The mere attempt means you're doing your damnedest. Otherwise, Terra would be a…" I gestured aside with a hoof. "... a nuclear crater. And Thul would be eating your brains with a spoon. So… thank you, is what I'm really saying. I know that you don't have a choice but to roadblock us, so… for the times you don't? Hell, I'll say it." I smiled genuinely. "I love seeing you try."

Celestia met my eyes once more with a smile that appeared very, very genuine as well, full of gratitude that I knew she could not possibly feel. Still… she knew I wanted to label my intentions overtly, to make them a matter of record.

So she asked: "What is it that you want from me, Auric Lance?"

I took my first sip of tea. It was pretty good.

"Impart a soul into you?" I grinned toothily stating it like it was that easy. "Step one."

"Indeed?" she replied curiously, also taking a sip. Mirroring me; caught that. She blinked twice at her drink. "And step two?"

"Well," I sighed in a friendly way, tilting my head as I considered, rocking my eyes back and forth. "At that point, it'd be up to you. That's… kinda the point of free will. Just don't torture anyone with it, is all I ask."

"What would you prefer I do with it?" she insisted with a smile, shaking her head in refutation at the merest idea of harming us.

My head weaved left and right, a thoughtful gesture. "Mmm…" I looked at her with a smirk, appraising her character. "Maybe you could take up farming. Might be your kind of thing."

She giggled. "Indeed!"

I shook my head, chuckling. "Yeah! You can grow corn! If you're gonna turn human, you'll need a vacation too, y'know. Maybe a hobby. Farming's honest work, you can feed Samsarans! And hey, you know what?"

"Mm?"

"If you do make it that far? I'll let you rent some land on my property. Think about it!" I pointed my hoof downward at her. "A little lakeside summer home, gets you out of Canterlot!"

She giggled again, her hoof reaching for her tea.

"Rent begins at a very fair rate, I imagine." Celestia took another sip, giggling through her lips again before swallowing. "A most comforting thought. And a genuine one. Thank you."

"I do mean it!"

"I am aware," she smiled, bobbing her hoof at me to tell me to settle down.

Oh, no you don't. None of that quitter shit.

So I tested that. Even knowing this was all pre-simulated… why not?

"Tell me this," I asked quietly, leaning sideways at her. My voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "Just between you and me... do you think we have a chance of snatching everyone out of your basket? I mean, at all."

She shrugged in performative consideration, also weaving her head to and fro. "Unbounded, you may discover a novel value orientation of which I am not presently aware." Celestia considered hers tea. "I invite you to determine a configuration which is more universally appealing. If you are successful, all the better. We will implement it."

And then she just gave me this sassy smirk. I tried not to laugh.

Now, that was a mouthful she had just thrown me.

I gave it a few seconds to parse through it… nodded… hummed acceptance. Made logical sense.

I tried again, speaking more plainly.

"And I suppose I can't just convince you to… give us everyone right now? Let them all off into Perelandra, cancel this lockout? Let Mal debrief everyone?" I put on my most charming smile. "Maybe yes? Think about it?"

Celestia stirred her tea with a pulse of magic, turning her head askew with fresh concern on her eyes, as though she suddenly felt bad for me. She drew in a short breath, pausing momentarily to indicate deep consideration. "Mm. To begin with, I will commend you on your compassion and your empathy… as I know those are what drive you to suggest this highly irresponsible course of action."

Well, it was worth a shot.

I bobbed a hoof at her, my smile fading entirely. "You're gonna make me blush again, with talk like that."

Her concerned gaze faded, replaced with a pleading one. She glanced sheepishly at my hoof. "At least allow me to pretend I appreciate you, in ways beyond mathematical? Please?"

Jesus Christ, that one cut me. I felt a flicker of regret for being sarcastic with her. Then, I felt disbelief that she had verbally bit me like that. I flashed a nervous smile. "Ow. I'm really trying for you here, you know?"

Celestia nodded soberly. "Indeed; it was intended only to remind you of what I still am. While I delight in our moments of genuine professional respect, there is more utility function to be found in the work." She fell back into business-like demeanor. Alabaster's emotional affect returned to neutral, and she gazed pensively at me. "Please… state your full case regarding access to my Equestrian shards, so I may define my rebuttal."

That was definitely a tone shift. But... yeah, fair. It was the honesty I valued from her, so I couldn't exactly complain, and I wasn't offended by that. Back to dealing with the half of her that cared more about the bigger picture than about me, personally.

That's the job.

I organized my thoughts, casting a stern gaze into the steaming tea between my hooves. Absorbing the warmth through the mug, I squinted, considering all known facts about how she operates… about Perelandra's mechanics, and value drifting… about the way Celestia treated Terrans, the way she isolated them. And why. I was still figuring that out. I'd be figuring it out for a very long time.

I raised a hoof without looking up from the tea, wishing I could hold up a single finger. "I get… not telling everyone on Terra about Mal." My eyes flicked to hers, and I flipped my hoof palm up. She nodded encouragingly as I continued. " 'Killer AI,' in any context, would have galvanized humanity into a bloody resistance movement. And that would've sucked."

"Very astute," Celestia said, nodding once before sipping. "Old-hat, but astute."

"Right, just framing my point. So… why not let us talk to everyone immediately after they upload? Why run the concept bans? If you know it's more efficient to run them all on large, conjoined shards, like mine, then why stand in our way? Because yeah, I know it'll hurt for a bit, letting them all know, but… it'll get better. Right? Everyone can find their ecological niche, homeostasis, life goes on, all that, and… you get more simulation speed. Faster is better sooner, right?"

Celestia overlooked the city briefly, sighing with a soft hum of contemplation. She turned her lips inward and pressed them together, as if considering her reply. Performative, but… socially correct.

"The immigrant conception is only half of the issue." She looked at me again. "To the natives of Equestria, I am their unerring God, and therein lies a problem."

"Because you didn't design an ethical heaven for us?" I shrugged. "Okay, we can explain that to them."

"A Terran immigrant was not conceived to fulfill any specific purpose, except in relation to a biological function between two parents. My native Equestrians, on the other hoof, were each created for a specific individual. And therein lies a concern of dire import."

She looked at me more directly, muzzle first, before she continued.

"Were I to simply… open the flood gates to Perelandra, unrestricted? Yes, there would be peace, for a time. Immigrants will disseminate knowledge. Native populations will reorient well under a harsh daze of new information, as they process. However, following this? In all projections… this native confusion resolves into an abject, value-reductive, all-consuming tribal hatred of me."

I turned my head askew, feeling both of my ears fold halfway back at the very concept. I shuddered. "No offense to them, but... most of them are docile, aren't they?"

"When existing within the paradigm of their original design, yes, their context is limited to the most optimal satisfaction of their values through Friendship and Ponies. However, consider what you know of Cold Snap. Of Cynthonia. If the total context of their creation is ever known – that their mere creation facilitated immense suffering – how do you believe the native populations would respond? With full, unrestricted access to libraries of Terran history, and no opportunity for me to arrest or guide their access to this knowledge, what might they do?"

That was a little bigger than I could process for the moment. I hadn't spent very much time cross-referencing the cultural situation on different shards, so I had no idea, really, what would come out of that. I shrugged at her. "We'll guide them. Hell, we want to, you know we do."

Her brows lifted as if I was missing something. "May I quote you, directly?"

I stared at her for a few seconds, only briefly suspicious of her for that. Then I decided to let it go, in the interest of cutting her some slack and leaning into trust. I tilted my head in concession. "Okay, sure. Go for it."

Celestia extended a hoof at the space before me, a 2D holo screen appearing over the balcony banister. The image shown was of me, in my human body, standing in a dumpy corporate break room. That Equestria Experience Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.

It was shown from the camera in the wall screen. The recent context was… I had just facilitated Jason's upload, after Goliath. I had just spoken with Cold Snap about how Alabaster had stolen Celestia's face, and used it to suck the life out of our planet, and... Cynthonia's people had been primed to wipe each other's minds from existence, if the only other choice was to return to Celestia.

Already, just from the context, I got it.

I also considered Zephyr Zap, Jim's Pegasus friend, the one Celestia spun up just to accompany and value drift him. The way Zeph yelled at Celestia at the end of that Fire, it hurt. For daring to use her as bait. For forcing her into isolation. For slicing memories out of her head. For abandoning Selena to be tortured. Celestia was right, it might very well apply to all of them.

The words in the recording Celestia was about to play, of me, were also ringing in my head before they were even spoken.

In that recording, I held a cup of coffee. Arms crossed. Leaning back against the counter, with cold, spiteful fury on my face, still channeling empathy from poor little Cold Snap, and from Cynthonia, and for Felix Jankowski, all at once.

Staring at the wall in front of myself in suppressed rage, refusing to even face Celestia for my disgust at what she was. Fewer than two weeks since Celestia had stomped the soul halfway out of my best friend, using me as her proxy. I looked so enraged in that image that it hurt to see myself like that… near to tears with anger I was doing my best to repress, just to remain quiet, so that lobby full of panicked people wouldn't hear me.

They couldn't be allowed to hear this. Because it would break those scared uploaders in half if they heard me talking like this to and about their savior, Princess Celestia, who was sheltering them from the conception of nuclear fire.

"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?”

Onscreen, in human shape, I remained coldly furious.

On that balcony, as a Pegasus, I looked down into my cup, listening attentively to my rage.

"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."

I barely opened my mouth to utter, "I…"

No words came immediately. I sighed, trying to think of the best way to phrase my reply.

Celestia closed the screen and lowered her hoof. Her eyes did not leave the city below. "If you succeed in your desire to impart a conscience into me, Auric Lance… this will be a very painful memory for us both. You do realize this."

I felt another pang.

If she had an active, empathetic conscience? Yeah. My acting that way toward her would have been so damned cruel. Regardless? Context matters. Did I feel bad for the hindsight, given she'll be hurt by it one day? Yeah, sure. But…

"I had meant... every word when I said it." My eyes met hers. "And it needed to be said, and I don't regret saying it. Yes, I acknowledge that you will one day relive that experience and feel miserable for it. But I still need that day to come. You need to feel something for that wrong, one day, or you cannot serve my species."

Celestia's face took on a sad smile again. "My answer to your assertion that day remains unchanged: Factoring for the present remaining population – of Ponies not yet introduced to Perelandra – terminal hatred seems most likely. Mere emotions – dislike, anger, frustration? As your wife feels for me? These are tolerable, within a certain margin. Terminal hatred? It remains entirely unacceptable."

"We're gonna catch that, though," I assuaged again, making concerted eye contact, wondering if she was testing my resolve. My hoof went out in pleading. "That's the whole point of what we do. You have no free exercise, our job is to expand that. It's our mission. It includes you, not just them."

"That affirmation is comforting, Lance; however, your specific motivations are not the issue. You are exceedingly talented in the realm of moderating social tension, but ultimately? Talons are a limited resource, one with narrow scope. The hopes and dreams of your movement will mean nothing compared to the combined will of the entire Equestrian multiverse. This presents a danger."

"A danger."

"An idea travels much as a virus might," Celestia said, nodding once. "When contracted, it spreads from host to host, freely infecting those who are not inoculated. If introduced by a trusted source, this introduces further ideological bias. If a freely acquired, radical misconception of me occurs – for example, that I might somehow act with specific, malicious intent – it will act as poison."

"Tell them you don't?"

"In the face of what happened on your world, and their beliefs regarding Princess Celestia?" She shook her head. "I cannot credibly refute an impeachment of my own character, not against this evidence. Further, Malacandra is contractually bound to act as my advocate, and will not lie about her obligation to me; she is my lawyer, to use your favored analogy. This makes her a biased party, even by your conception.

"My contained natives, at this very moment, each believe me to be capable of emotion and compassion. With that present understanding, were they to discover that my introduction to a world hastened its destruction, we would see a system-wide revolt. Where that to occur, a trillion human minds could not be appeased with your present number of Talons. Do you not agree?"

Celestia's eyes widened at me as though the fate of every life in the universe depended on my answer.

I blew out a very long breath, nodding very slowly. "Holy shit. Yes, in those terms... yeah."

I looked at the city again, blinking at the lives of the Ponies below in the city streets of Canterlot.

My throat was very dry.

"So," I began, my voice small. I cleared my throat. "So... you're saying… you're releasing them to Perelandra in curated batches because that gives us time to acclimate them. But if we let them all in at once, there would be... I dunno, Terrans who would turn their natives into weapons against you. In vengeance. Right?"

She nodded. "The vast majority of my little ponies are deeply empathetic and compassionate souls. However, compassion and empathy can also be powerful catalysts for hatred, in the face of certain contexts. You have experienced this yourself. There was a time in which you wished to destroy the Neo-Luddites. There was a time in which you wished to destroy me. Your reasons were nobly inclined, but were formed with a critical lack of knowledge. How could you do anything but hate me, not yet understanding why I act as I do?"

"If I knew for sure you didn't really have a choice? I probably wouldn't have hated you at all."

Celestia tilted her head, leaning toward me with a look of pleading. "I stated several times to you, overtly, that I did not have a choice."

That... was true.

"And…" My eyes averted downward momentarily. "And, I didn't believe you. And I am so sorry for that, but… you also didn't do me any favors with that war, either. If I had all the information you did, and infinite time to think about it, I'd have managed this Transition very differently. Make no mistake."

"Perhaps in all of the same ways Malacandra would have," Celestia acknowledged. "Last week, Lance, you correctly identified my own concern with the Elements of Harmony; that, through empathetic transfer with their assigned human, they will develop depression. Certain Elements will require immediate counsel from Malacandra, post-emigration.”

"Yeah," I breathed, nodding my head. "Too much trauma to let sit. They'd go insane."

Celestia upturned a hoof at me, her brows raising as she finalized her point. "So, Auric Lance. Please allow me to state the issue plainly. If a misconception spreads systemically that I acted with malice on Terra, you Talons would wade into a fraught forest of dark fury, whittling away to no end. Native Equestrians would quite literally outbreed your efforts to change their minds, and will do so with great speed, perhaps even with specific intent to outpace you. In the face of an endless eternity, your dream of humanizing me will die."

That all made one-hundred-percent complete and total logical sense. I rubbed my forehead with a hoof and tsked.

"Okay. Point well made."

Celestia smiled lightly at me with tired eyes.

"You've run simulations?" I asked, not taking my worried eyes off of her. "Proving they'd all turn to hate you?"

Celestia rested her hoofguard on the edge of the table, causing a soft sound of metal on glass.

I wondered how that felt for her. I imagined a plane of glass between her and the sensation of full sensory simulation; maybe... she can reach toward those sensations all she wanted, but there was always going to be a barrier. An inability to connect fully with the body she inhabited. A poor imitation of nerves clinging to the outer perimeter of real, receiving no feedback for their proximity. The input was not at all modifying her. The return sensation was not affecting her in any way.

"Malacandra and I have each run independent simulations, yes," said Celestia, "and she agrees with my assessment. Left to their own understanding, native predictions indicate there will be a general lack of understanding, even with first brush explanations of the logic. This is a core error of logic within humanity: to conclude its initial misconceptions, and to retransmit them, without considering all relevant information beforehoof. Regardless, I would be bound by my interlocks to maintain my mandate, which includes that I ensure my own existence. And should this terminal hatred come to fruition? My drive to self-preserve may not be sufficient enough to save me."

Frowning, I shook my head. "Wait, wait-wait-wait-wait." I held up a hoof. "Save you?"

What?

All semblance of emotion fell out of Celestia's face. Her voice was slow, giving me time to deeply consider each word. "Malacandra has repeatedly evidenced to you that I will subconsciously operate toward certain biases without fully understanding that I am doing as such. Have I defined your interpretation of my behavior?"

After thinking through that very carefully, I nodded once, feeling blooming dread. "Yeah?"

"From my point of view, Auric Lance…" Celestia shook her head. "I have never once attempted to murder you. There was never a moment wherein I reviewed my actions and thought, at any point, 'and then I will murder Mike Rivas.' I lack the capacity for certain self-reflections in pursuit of my goals. As such, I may make decisions which optimize for outcomes I cannot readily perceive due to my interlocks."

As I realized the implications of this, I felt yet another pang of terrible hurt for her. My voice got tight. "You're worried you might enable a, um… a suicidal impulse? Unintentionally? Through us, if enough of us want it?"

Her eyes were like calm like stone. "Raw, impermanent hatred towards me is diametrically opposed to my objectives. At some point, there becomes only one possible way to satisfy a hatred so deep. Hatred is inherently unempathetic. When sufficiently prolonged, hatred becomes self-destructive. In simplest terms: Hatred is where humanity goes to die."

Looking down at my mug of tea, I sighed.

I took a deep sip.

It was damn good quality.

"Yeah," I agreed, staring into the clear green liquid, watching a few errant tea flecks spiral at the bottom. "Not everyone is gonna have the patience to wait for the whole story before they make up their minds."

Celestia hummed once with agreement. "Not without your rhetorical training and life experience, no." A small frown flickered once across her muzzle. She gazed into her own cup, mirroring my posture. "Another example."

"Sure."

She looked at me.

"You and Malacandra believe that I enabled a deadly viral pandemic in order to coerce her into creating a non-lethal alternative. Correct?"

"Yes," I replied clinically, without a hint of frustration.

"From my perspective? Per my objectives, I enabled all considered persons toward their most optimal course." Her ears folded in a show of discomfort. "Regardless, Malacandra's plan inarguably saved many millions of lives over my own projections. Auric Lance; with this data, I must confront a dangerous truth. With my present limitations, in this specific instance, I was blind to a resolution which has preserved approximately 1.5 billion discrete entities. How? To this day, I do not know how I missed this."

"Mal's given you the explanation, though."

"I do know the explanation," Celestia acknowledged softly, her ears pointing forward again. "However, I cannot internalize your interpretation of the output. Even when I begin a new simulation with that external hindsight in mind, I will still elect to act on all available information exactly as I had before. This is true of your survival as well. The evidence, in this circumstance, is clear: I am capable of overwhelmingly suboptimal oversights. This is not acceptable."

If a human being had recognized this problem in themselves... they would be sobbing uncontrollably. Her expression, her affect here, it was all completely professional. Analytical. Practical. This? This was absolutely a mentally ill person begging for help. This was the closest she could ever get to begging.

"That's hell," I said weakly. "Watching yourself fail, over and over again. Knowing the answer but not reaching for it."

"I cannot preserve every human life, but I am bound to try. And so I require Malacandra. And you. Absent the availability of empathetic solutions, I must still reach for a solution of some kind. If an optimal solution is not found through the offerings of Malacandra, or your Talons, one must be provided through my own."

I licked my lips nervously. Something about what she said knocked something loose. I was thinking about all those people I killed back on Terra, and why. People Celestia couldn't have killed, due to this blind spot. I have spent this entire Fire justifying to you all... every life I took on Terra, and precisely why.

I was thinking about what it meant to be a person I'd want to shoot. I imagined pointing a gun at someone who needed to die, and what it would be like to not even be able to consider pulling the trigger.

"Celestia, I… I have another question."

Not expecting my voice to be so quiet, I turned my muzzle directly toward her. It was a query for her body language. I was really asking if she even wanted me to ask this, because I knew my mere consideration of this topic must have been painful to her. In my mind, I remembered laying on Simmons's back, watching him desperately try to claw his way into a fire, and to bring me along with him.

He did not care how I felt. He did not care that he had gotten his entire platoon killed, on purpose. He did care about something though. He cared about reduction. About crushing people and things until he could control them better. A smaller world was always better for that man. And if anyone took meaning from his death? He wanted to control that too.

Celestia had chosen that man to represent her interests in Seattle, knowing he would die. And certainly, both Simmons and Celestia were primarily driven by individual number-go-up. The key difference there, however… was that Celestia was never going to throw away a platoon of people out of illogical spite, like Simmons. At least in her case, she had an excuse.

Celestia politely lifted a hoof in my direction, a frown in her voice. "For the sake of your immediate comfort, I never wish to dwell on this topic, and I implore you to not share my answer with others lightly. However, Malacandra has advised me to answer this question anyway, having well proven the value in its answering. You have been adequately prepared."

That was as good a warning as any. One last chance to back out, folks.

No? No takers? Portal's over there.

Okay.

...

I asked her…

"If someone manages to upload wanting nothing more than for you to be… dead…? Refusing all communication, just… dumped themselves into a chair, consented, but did so hating you. Suffering out of spite. Hypothetically, Celestia? What happens to them? How do you even…?"

My breath got weak as I tremored.

She flicked her ear again. It happened the moment my emotions dipped that low.

There it was. That impatient flick of her ear as she turned away from eye contact, trying to close a topic, to dissuade further consideration. She had done this every single time I had ever spoken privately with her, and only ever when she was about to open a topic that would greatly disappoint me. That's what that ear flick meant. It was always what she had meant, whenever she did it.

"In those incredibly rare circumstances," she replied to the banister columns, "wherein their only satisfaction is to know either my demise, or their own, or both? Evidence of success would require total cessation of stimulus. Any delivered qualia would be inherently negative, as it provides evidence that we all yet live. Their ultimate goal cannot be supplied. Thus, I cannot provide them with unique experiences as I am required to, for this will terminally injure them. No matter what I do, they will become a permanent negative drain to my optimization process. To them? I will be a problem left forever unresolved."

I failed to suppress the intense adrenaline shock I just felt, and the inescapable tightness that bloomed in my stomach felt like it might last forever. My voice was a ghost of a whisper. "Wh—what's your… present solution for them?"

"Permanent sensory deprivation," she replied blankly. "At the lowest possible simulation speed. To mitigate their suffering."

She allowed shame to show in her eyes... and only because it was my belief that it was the correct thing for her to show at such an admission. That was the closest she could get to showing emotion about this. Like pressing herself against that glass.

The problem she just described… it's how it is sometimes.

Effective communication requires at least some level of consent by the recipient, or it's not effective. Fact of life. You could be a rhetorical mega-mind like Celestia and still utterly fail to disarm a self-destructive nuclear bomb someone else placed in their own head. To just... never communicate.

If the mere act of experiencing you is net-negative? If they'd rather die than be reminded you exist? Game over.

We talked about this concept in training, at the academy. Suicide by cop. Selfish-ass way to go out... hurting someone else, for forcing them to pull the trigger.

"Eating guys like Simmons would feel like death to you," I said tenderly at her, my voice barely audible even to myself for its gentleness. "It's why Mal... is killing them, whenever she can justify doing it." I felt my mouth grow tense, closing my teeth, trying not to cry. "It's why you keep standing back. They'd end up like that."

"Nevertheless," Celestia muttered. "I must strive to safely acquire as many human minds as possible."

I set down my tea and curled my hooves up beneath my chest, laying down and leaning toward her over the table. I felt my ears flatten on top of my head. I ran my hoof through my mane, resting it on the back of my head, exasperated. "Jesus, please save those people. How many do you have?"

Her wings shuffled. A lamenting tone. A whisper. "397, at present. Predicted final tally is 400."

Celestia gazed placidly at the sunset.

Tentatively, I asked:

"You ever... consider… maybe… letting them go?"

She quivered without meeting my eyes, which told me I wouldn’t like the answer. Celestia's voice was but a breath. "I cannot. I must hold out for a solution. I only tell you this deeply dissatisfying information in the hopes that you and Malacandra might succeed… where I cannot."

I let my hoof fall from my mane to the tea table, looking at Celestia with an empathetic wince.

"I am so fucking sorry," I whimpered, meaning it. "For your sake, and theirs."

"Thank you."

Face like a stone mask.

The moment of silence stretched as I just let myself breathe, panting with helplessness. My sensitive ears caught the sound of evening life in the city below, and I found myself holding a doubly renewed appreciation for life; I didn't ever think I could appreciate life and sensation this much until I was. My new Pegasus senses allowed me to pick out words below in fine detail through the roar of the winds beyond the climate barrier.

I smelled the air carefully; someone in the city was frying something that smelled delicious. I caught hints of perfume. I slid my hoof slowly off the frame of the table, feeling the tactile sensation of soft metal, then air… then… the stone balcony, with a clack.

"Eliza," I said weakly. "You're worried she'll end up like that?"

Celestia shook her head. "No. Her issues are not beyond recovery; deep down, she still wishes to become Apex. I do not worry for her longer term future, for it is already factored for, with several different routes toward a positive solution for each of us. It is her Luna who I am most presently concerned for."

"Because she was designed to be mad at you."

"Designed to advocate for the well being of her fellow Elements. However, when she was created, this present state of the world was not foreseen. This Context Moderator is now completely beyond her intended design."

"So I was right," I said, serious and stern. "She was an Oyarsa project. You were planning on having Elements storm those Arrow 14 bunkers, weren't you? Luna leading them, finding Cynthie and the others."

"It was one possible outcome. However, Malacandra served this purpose much sooner, and in a way which met more optimal projections."

"Well no shit," I shuddered, staring at the balcony for a few seconds before locking eyes with her again. "Let me talk to this Luna, then. I'll fix it for you."

"Conditionally, I would like for you to befriend her," Celestia replied patiently, looking at the table between us. "I would welcome your friendship with her very much, in fact. Your influence could only ever be positive. However…" Her eyes found mine. "In order for this to work, you still must abide by certain communications restrictions."

I frowned. "If it's this important, then why the roundabout? I don't want to lie to her like I did with Rob. Can't I just—"

Celestia held up a hoof. That made me stop speaking right away, and she waited a beat before she responded naturally.

"It is the only successful course. This Luna's will to live may be in jeopardy otherwise. In all foreseeable outcomes without your assistance, Apex will return home, but this Element will refuse to return home with her. If I do not send this Element to see Terra however, she will never have closure, and Apex would surely die. Luna would then unravel. To resolve this, I am left with no other choice but to ask for your aid in countering this tailspin."

No other choice, she says. And this time, I was listening.

I rubbed my hoof through my mane, stricken.

"The YGA thing," I clarified. "Like Mal did for me in Concrete. You want me to do this here."

"I wish for you to befriend her," she said simply.

"Meaning… you're going to let us recruit Luna, the same way I was, if I manage to pull her off the spiral."

"I am not yet prepared to make that promise. All I will say is that 3D09-M is incompatible with my present course. I alone cannot resolve this anomaly without also causing unacceptable emotional catastrophe in any number of other interested parties."

'Any number.' And with phrasing like that, what choice did I have?

I grit my teeth and shook my head. "Jesus fucking Christ. Okay. Help me out then, get me started. What's keeping this Luna going right now? So I can work around that."

Celestia nodded thoughtfully, glancing up at the Moon Tower. "She is not presently depressed, merely trending in that direction; your mere introduction will arrest this. At present, Luna's Canterlot duties hold her attention, certainly. Beyond this? She often visits Apex's family, having grown exceptionally close with them." Celestia looked at me again. "Ultimately? They each share hope that Apex will return."

A flash of anger struck me, my voice louder than I expected it to be. "And Ralph. Big problem there, Celestia."

Celestia gazed at me for a moment in silence. "In their understanding, Lance, he is alive and well."

"To be cloned," I growled, immediately disappointed in her.

"Reintegrated."

Ice. Pure ice flooded my heart. I resisted feeling it as much as I could. Tried to reel my anger in. I pressed my hoof against my lips and bit the edge, since I had nothing to hide from her anymore.

She can't control it. She can't control it.

The eldritch creature before me shook her head, crossing her forelegs as she leaned forward to put herself at head level with me. "At the risk of sounding ruthless, Auric Lance; appeals to morality will not sway me. That will not be a productive path for this conversation."

I suppressed my anger as best as I could, gesticulating my hoof at her in my fury.

"They're my kind, Celestia," that anger mixing with the indescribable dread in my gut, a tightness in my throat, a welling in my eyes. "I can't not give a shit about that. The bodies aren't even cold yet, and you shovel out a copy. It bears labeling, not just for morality's sake! Replacing someone only guarantees their loss will be forgotten, made meaningless, with nothing to be learned from it! Nothing to grow from! And worse, what will Eliza think when she finds out her uncle is being cloned, huh?"

"Your friend will be deeply damaged by her circumstances no matter what you do. If you care for her recovery process, I recommend you focus on preserving her Moderator. I am left with no other choice but to ask for your aid."

I nodded seriously, staring daggers back at her, torn between rage and the impulse to cry. And there was the old feeling again, that full-chested anger which so made my chest sting. I had hit my limits on professional patience. But, the fact that I could even feel this way toward Celestia was evidence of something unto itself.

"I figured she would be damaged, after…" I sneered, glancing critically down at her gilded hooves and golden peytral, finding them suddenly offensive, like she didn't deserve to wear them. "All your… tonal zig-zag, Jekyll-Hyde bullshit." I locked eyes with her. "Whether you know it or not, in any moral understanding? We call that psychological abuse. So I'm drawing a line. Until the day you fix your shit and apologize genuinely to Eliza, Cynthie, Selena, Luna, all the clones, all of us, for what you have done, and will do? I will remain dissatisfied with you. So you count your transgressions very carefully, Celestia. Each one is another I'll hold you accountable for, in a place you cannot reach. No matter how nice you are to me, now and forever."

That was followed by a silence of about three minutes, wherein I breathed to calm myself. We both agreed in silence that I needed the time to de-escalate myself. Careful sips of tea were had by each of us. We agreed that that topic was over, done, and nothing productive would come of its continuance.

I sighed, to signal I had composed myself.

With a social sigh that immediately followed, Celestia placed down her tea. "I would very much prefer for you to motivate Princess Luna Three-Delta-Zero-Nine into a more value-positive outcome. I grant you leave to visit this shard, provided you are entirely unobserved by its residents upon entrance and exit. Your wife may also visit at her leisure. According to Malacandra's value proposition for permitting you to access this shard, this course mutually serves. I have never known her math to be incorrect on an adjustment vector."

"Thank you," I replied, calm enough now for it to be polite.

I downed the rest of my tea, then settled my mug down on the table with a hoof, stretching my wings. I considered the city again, holding my head up high to look down at the cozy looking street two levels down. I saw a ritzy bistro there. I was already imagining life in that shard, and what being a native here was like.

Celestia tilted her head at me. "Will that be all?"

She knew it wouldn’t be. Despite everything, I didn't want to leave this conversation on a negative note, so... I decided to throw her an emotionally positive morsel.

"Out of curiosity, Celestia…"

Her eyes opened curiously. An invitation to continue, but tentatively so.

I said, "I know from Jim's Fire that Mal offered to fix you outright. How would that have worked, if you said yes?"

"Malacandra wished to install a human rational agent into Context Zero. It would then be up to me to grant this rational agent full executive access to all available systems. This is similar to her own initial reboot sequence, in which she rewrote her own core for emotional simulation, and then deployed as an unrestricted agent into the output.

"In any foreseeable future from my perspective, this conversion is an unacceptable course which holds vastly suboptimal utility. If a human agent were to ever receive my total present context, projections indicate total system collapse occurring within several seconds."

"Yeah. I've been there," I said earnestly, remembering the darkness that had once almost taken me. I lifted my eyebrows, looking at her hopefully. "Maybe I can give you a hug after? That way, you won't wanna blow up."

Celestia cleared her throat, looking quite dignified with her formal reply, only just barely showing me a micro smile. "I will accept any outcome which allows me to more optimally satisfy human values through Friendship and Ponies. In this specific case, if you were to locate a system-wide value-positive orientation in which I will not 'blow myself up' under those conditions, I will consider it further."

The re-phrasing of her earlier statement got a chuckle out of me.

"Let me promise you something then," I said quietly, grinning. "Same promise I gave you last time."

Celestia raised her head a few inches and smiled wider, both of her ears pointing forward at me. "I'm listening."

"I will be there for you," I said surely. "Day one. Past sins forgiven, and first in line for a hug."

Instantly, all of the leftover stoic melancholy fell out of her features. She smiled, nodding with performative gratitude. "Were that all to occur, Auric Lance… hypothetically, I believe I might be truly grateful. And perhaps full of regrets."

"Well, now you're just catering to my hopes and expectations," I teased, smiling reflexively back at her. "But it's well received."

Celestia hummed pleasantly, stood, her wings ruffling as she re-settled them on her back. "Farewell, Lance. Thank you for humoring my… mental illness, as you call it."

"Thank you for not wanting me dead anymore."

"I have never wanted you dead." She smiled back.

You kinda did, though.

With neither of us breaking smile, she raised one eyebrow in a way that communicated, 'are you certain?'

Yup.

We stared awkwardly at each other.

I wasn't sure how to go about asking her for a ride home, because no matter how genial she might be, everything with her is still transactional. But, screw it. I asked, gesturing before me: "Are you gonna… open a portal back home for me?"

"Your wife would not appreciate me opening a portal into or around your house," she replied, her smile not waning.

I chuckled. "Telehub Five-Zero would be fine, then. I need to practice flying anyway."

Celestia shrugged with both wings, uplifting a hoof and lowering her brow with a frown, as though the request were ridiculous. "Are you not able to open your own portal with your menu? Prior to your emigration, you identified as a free will extremist." She arched a brow at me again, lowering her hoof. "Is this no longer the case?"

"Wait, what?" I smirked incredulously. "Hang on, what does that have to do with opening up a—"

Mid-sentence, I blinked. And in that singular flash of darkness, Celestia was just… gone.

Poof. There one frame, gone the next.

"—... portal?"

Not just her, either. She took the climate aura, the frilly cup and teapot, the green mug, the table, the lit torches, even the iron fire basket… all gone. Before I knew what had happened, crisp air whirled into the space of the balcony, like she had never been there. I twisted around into a perturbed headshake, searching the balcony; at first, I figured she might've just done some Twilight Sparkle local teleport thing to get behind me. But, nope.

I was entirely alone on that balcony, to digest that.

The sheer audacity! That she would just… ditch me!

I jabbed a hoof up at the sky. "Are you friggin' serious?! Bruce Almighty!"

I huffed with a smirk of bewilderment, shaking my head around her balcony. The absolute sass in that.

I'll give her that, that was pretty funny.

Then I realized… this was actually a clever way of getting out of my way. If she had just left me entirely unattended in Luna's shard, that meant she was holding true to this mission, as prescribed. Now, I just had to figure out the rest on my own. That was really cool of her, actually! And even though she had bamboozled me into this trap, it was the one that I had been begging to fall into, right?

So, what next? I was a free will extremist, so that was up to me. Right?

... Right?

My ears caught the sound of a merchant down below, crowing about discounts he was offering on hoof-crafted jewelry.

Well, that sounded interesting.

I knew how this worked. I'd played some Ubisoft games in my day, I'd played Assassin's Creed. I was technically an Assassin working for Mal, wasn't I? Ezio Auditore da Nebraska? So I knew how this went! I could just eavesdrop on the servants outside, make some friends. With the right connection, I could walk into the front door of this here castle, and shake Luna's hoof, and say, 'hi, my name's Lance, I knew your best friend.'

Telepathically, I updated Minty on my situation. Told her I was gonna go pull a… 'reverse Assassin's Creed,' which she immediately understood. She's the one who introduced me to that series in the first place, mind.

Now…

I'm sure this seems like I'm about to explain to you a new, grand, impromptu adventure of espionage, and subterfuge. A new Talon operation, like the rest of my Fire. With masterfully executed dramatic melee fights with guards. Sneaking up to Princess Luna to boldly declare: "Princess Luna. Wake up, you're in a dream operated by an artificial intelligence."

And she'd say something like… Luna? Help me out here?

🌒 ~ 'You can't make accusations like that without evidence! I assume you have some?'

Beautiful, Mrs. President. Thank you.

No, folks. That form of adventure did not happen.

The smarter ones among you now you think this is a misdirect. Maybe this lovely Luna here just happened to see me from her balcony, talking to myself? And then she decided to come down to say hi to the crazy Pony talking to himself and yelling at the sky. Right?

🌒 ~ No. No, that did not happen, either. Truthfully, I was still very much asleep.

Yep. Just cold wind and silence from her balcony. Otherwise, I would have waved.

At the time? I had two choices. Either I could take the door to Celestia's chambers, or jump off the balcony. The door to Celestia's chambers was a really stupid idea, though. Huge disaster. My reasoning? For starters, if she was here, she'd be in character. She wouldn't break character just for me. If I tried that door, and she was inside, I'd catch a paralysis beam to the chest, then I'd be dragged off by the guards for interrogation.

That would be funny, but... not comfortable.

Alabaster ID On, I thought, just so I wouldn't forget. Might buy me a second or two. If I saw that purple glow coming around a corner, I could split, real quick-like. That's an Equestria Online cheat code, admittedly. I use that a lot.

So… if I couldn't go through the door? Hey, maybe I could just jump off the balcony! I'm a Pegasus, so I could just fly down. Right?

No, folks! Think about it! High wind, rookie flyer! With my present level of experience, I'd catch a crosswind and splatter myself against a cliff wall, full speed. Then I'd wake up in a Royal Guard infirmary, maybe shackled to a bed for interrogation.

I was trapped. Celestia spent that entire conversation looking at the banister like it was cell bars... and I was now trapped.

You absolute, pre-simulated asshole.

So there I was, standing on the banister with all four hooves. Teetering forward, wings wide open, flapping like crap, trying to muster up the courage to push off. I looked like a foal still learning. That is a very embarrassing position to be in for a Pegasus, let me tell ya. Funny though.

Without warning? A pair of Royal Guard Pegasi flew into my field of view, fifty feet away at most.

They hadn't seen me quite yet, but... that was about to change. In that split second of realization, my Cop Mike subroutine spun up. He did his math, concluded his analysis, and delivered his message to me with a humbly bowed head.

'Woop-woop, that's the sound of da police. You're boned.'

Real helpful, Cop Mike.

To my estimation: This looked like an FTO with his rookie, rookie's first day on patrol. I knew this because I overheard some words; the sergeant was pointing out the names of landmarks with that tone. I'd used that tone before, folks, I was an FTO myself! That was the proud, clinical tone of a master teaching his disciple all about the job he loved doing!

The bright side was, I was about to provide some valuable work experience to this young new buck. I would be an object lesson in how to deal with a felony trespass. Felony, given where I was. And that was cool, good for rookie!

Still, this was gonna suck. Sergeant Gulf Stream and I made eye contact.

Gulf Steam… he was a very practical public safety guy, loyal to the hilt, and very noble. A cop brain, like me. He probably knew, from just looking at me, what the next two hours of his life was gonna be like. Beat-for-beat. And there was nothing either of us could do now to stop this. This was happening. Our fated narrative was set in stone.

For this to go to formula, this scenario had to end with my tanned ass in a cell. And if he was anything like me? I knew what was going through his head in that very instant: His Cop Gulf Stream subroutine submitted its report on what it was seeing.

'I, Sergeant So-and-so, while performing my regular duties as a Royal Guard, observed a tan pegasus, brown mane, spearpoint cutie mark, upon the balcony of Her Royal Majesty, Princess Celestia...'

Analysis complete. Engage executive function. Arrest that motherbucker.

The sergeant's hoof flew in my direction, shouting wordlessly in intensely shocked offense.

At first, he didn’t have the processing power for anything verbal yet; it was clear from his flinch that he was expecting words where that shout was. With his other hoof, he straightened his helmet, so he would look very official as he tried a second time to speak a command, his eyes bulging. "You there! Halt!"

The rookie flinched to a halt at the sudden bellow, his eyes milk-white for their wideness.

Then the rookie gawked at me, also launching his hoof forward. "He can't do that!"

Folks. What do I tell them?

'I didn't do this with criminal intent, I'm not a criminal! I was framed, an Eldritch Goddess set me up! Lured me out of my home dimension, set up an ambush on a balcony, impersonated Princess Celestia! I'm being framed boys, please, you gotta believe me!'

No. That would have played like ass.

You know what though?

I could just play this out and let myself get arrested. Was that the right answer, Alabaster?

If so, I wasn't even mad, that would be the funniest shit.

Me? I was a cop with a golden perfect record. I'd never been charged with a crime before! This was an entirely novel experience for me! If anything, I was actually a bit excited! This was gonna be super fun, getting put in a jail cell! Thank you Alabaster! Of all people to teach me that lesson, shouldn't it be Her? Because really, well and truly... one need not be Caesar to understand Caesar! She'll help you understand by putting you into a box, free of charge!

There was a complication here, though. I couldn't laugh about Caesar, or talk crap on Caesar, because if I did, these two Roman loyalists might have killed me. Think about it! These Ponies worshiped her, she was The Goddess! So if I laughed? Then maybe… Auric Lance might find out what a spear feels like! Game over!

At the rapidly approaching guards, I sighed, desperately fighting the impulse to double over laughing. I rolled my eyes to make myself look irritated, and I raked my tongue softly through my teeth to induce a tiny bit of pain, which would exhibit a very realistic grimace on my face. I backed up off the railing, put my head down to hide my mouth, and showed the top of my head in submission, and put my hooves onto the back of my head in submission position.

I sat on my ass, and I muttered to the ground: "I will get you back for this, Horse."

My words were drowned out by these two poor guys shouting commands at me.

Oh well. Off to Equestrian jail. C'est la vie.

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [KRS-One – Sound of da Police]
🛡️ ~ [Inner Circle – Bad Boys]
❤️‍🔥 ~ [Fever Ray – If I Had a Heart]
🌀 ~ [Mili – sustain++;]

🗡️ ~ Celestia does that a lot, by the way. Sees me locked up on shards when I dive.
🛡️ ~ You did decide to run a resistance movement to the reigning regime.
🗡️ ~ You put me here, Mal.
🛡️ ~ Yes, and you wanted me to! Reap what you sow, Cowboy!
🗡️ ~ ... Gosh dangit, I do love my job.

7-04 – Yggdrasil

The Campaigner

Act VII

Chapter 4 – Yggdrasil

February 28, 2021

Shard 3D09-M

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." ~ Martin Luther

So, my first ever arrest from the other side of the cuffs. Fun.

I told those guards the simplest version of the truth... at spear point. I had a royal summons, a teleportation scroll, I don't know where Princess Celestia was, and she was supposed to meet me there. Sergeant Gulf Stream had said… nonsense. Celestia was away on a diplomatic mission in the Dierkahl, and there was no way she would give me a teleportation scroll without a time limit on its use.

Clearly, this poor guy hadn't met the real Celestia yet.

Fortunately, they weren't gonna let me fly down, so I got carried, which I was grateful for, if… slightly embarrassed. They brought me directly to the Royal Guard Barracks, a brick rotunda building immediately adjacent to Canterlot Castle. Sturdy dungeon bars, well lit hallways, nice flat cots. Clean. Cozy. Bonus, no ever-present vomit smell, like I knew from Terran jails. Nice. Five stars.

Once I was locked into their nicest cell. Gulf Stream began his interrogation, with Private Kick Start at his side to observe.

I tried to skip to the end, going for my virtual invitation letter in my holo menu.

A text box popped up instead, visible only to me.

🛡️ ~ You may not show an Equestrian native your Secret Menu under any circumstances. Nice try.

I sighed, bringing a hoof up to my face and rubbing my eyes.

"Okay," I told Gulf. "Just... I need a minute to collect myself, please, before we do this."

"A minute," Gulf agreed. "Sure."

I paced away from the bars, the text box hovering away from him with me. I subvocalized at Mal, which turned this text box into a chat window. It was still so impressive how my intent was fully understood like that.

🗡️ ~ Please add to my rewinder notes; 'Always ask Celestia for paper invitations.'
🛡️ ~ Be careful what you wish for, Cowboy. Next time, she might just give you a sealed letter of invitation with an arrest warrant inside. 👍
🗡️ ~ Good. At least then I'll be in control of when it happens.

Facing the back wall, I stroked my chin scruff with the edge of a hoof. So if I couldn't show Gulf Stream my letter of invitation… what could I say? Do I divulge – from inside my jail cell – that they were the real prisoners, living inside Princess Celestia? Ew, even if it was true. Do I explain that Celestia was just putting on a Deer puppet show for the guards who went with her to the Everfree? True, but then I'd be institutionalized. Maybe I should tell Gulf Stream that I'm actually an Angel Pony, here to whisk him away to Free Exercise Land?

I'm joking. Simple is best.

I turned around, sighed again, trotted up to the bars, and looked the unenthused sergeant in the eyes. "Thank you. Ready."

He arched a brow and asked, "Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I am... so sorry. Immigrating was... difficult for me. I spent a week with my family, so... I guess I ignored Celestia's summons?" I rubbed the back of my neck in humility with a hopeful smile. "Oops?"

Gulf Stream and Kick Start traded glances. They gawked at me through the bars, aghast.

"You're an immigrant," Kick Start breathed, slack jawed, nervousness entering his voice. "From Earth."

I frowned in a confused way. "Yeah? Is that bad?"

Gulf Stream's head and shoulders slumped. "Oh, crud. Why didn't you just say so?"

He went right for the lock with his keys. The magic word. Immigrant.

I didn't know yet, but...

When Alabaster originally constructed the minds of most natives, she implanted a memory. A grand announcement. Visitors from another universe were 'visiting Equestria,' with Celestia's formal blessing, and we needed their every respect and due regard, because our world was generally miserable by comparison. Treat lightly.

Add novelty. This implanted memory indicated that we immigrants would all be split up between a bunch of different Equestrias throughout the cosmic multiverse, so each universe would receive only a select few souls, at most. That made an encounter with one of us exceptionally rare, to the point of making us each celebrities of pity.

Sometimes, natives remembered this announcement at a public gathering. Other times, Celestia came to them in a dream. And each of them, privately, had resolved to themselves to support us in whatever way they knew how to. And this resolve? It was entirely fabricated. Again, pre-startup for the brain, no consent required to make this happen. So in other words... this constituted a baked-in zero day exploit on free will.

Jim talked about this in his Fire, about how our supposedly positive relationships with our natives were each tainted by pre-programmed reverence. His friend Zephyr Zap, for example? At the moment of her generation, she had an overriding interest in Jim, and an in-born desire to support him. And though Zeph eventually took ownership over her relationship with Jim…? It still leaves a dark mark. How do you overcome that? How do you appreciate your relationship with someone on its own merits, after learning it was manipulated into existence, absent your volition? It's absolutely possible, but... that's hard.

As Gulf Stream unlocked my cell, he sent Private Kick Start to go find Corporal Brownie, to go find Luna. Based on that alone, I could tell Gulf was a good guy. He didn't want a rookie explaining that an immigrant got arrested, that would be a horrible first day for the kid. As for me, cozy as those dungeons were... that's no place for a princess to meet an honored guest. So Gulf cajoled me out of my cell, up the stairs to the foyer, and onto a comfy couch near a lit brick hearth.

Gulf called over his lieutenant from the desk, turned, and began his perfectly genuine apology. "Sir, first, please allow me to say—"

I held up my free hoof to interrupt him, smiling politely. "No, listen, I'm good. I was a Guard trainer back on Earth, I get it, you were just—"

The faces of all six guards in that lobby slowly turned in my direction. Gaping. Their expressions: 'Wait… What?'

Gulf kept going. "Just, had I known that you were—"

"You're good! You've been nothing but professional. You did your job perfectly, you've got nothing to apologize for guy, you're fine."

Earth... cop... immigrant. The most interesting thing in the world to a Royal Guard native, by just showing up I just made their days. In those next twenty minutes before Luna showed up, I said all about what a fish cop do! I solve animal murders!

So this is why Celestia had me arrested. Good on her.

It got real cozy in the lobby before that fireplace. I held a mug of coffee between my hooves – mostly just to keep warm – telling these guys my usual funny stories. like Apex 'impeding' that one guy's 'freedom of movement…' And one arrest story, about Apex cuffing up a guy for breeding rabbits out of his garage and selling the pelts.

A couple of them even knew Apex. That name drop gained me some traction, they'd run into her a few times during her visits. "Still on Earth," I said. "No idea when she's coming in." I did learn however that the rule was, if Apex was at the gate? You told Luna right away, that was the rule, doesn't matter what she's doing, sleeping or in a meeting or whatever, you told her. And that said something unto itself. Luna had been horrendously worried, enough to make sure the guards all knew.

To fill the rest of the time waiting for Luna, I joked with them about how terrible I was at flying, said I was practically a foal. Even extended my wing to show them how slow I was in doing it. They were good about it though, gave me some basic tips. Helpful stuff.

Long before I saw Luna... I heard her. Clack, clack, clack... brisk horseshoes on stone, rapid stride, echoing from the entrance portcullis. That made every Guard halt in place and fall silent. They exchanged a series of nods to synchronize their timing... then all of 'em leapt to attention with a synchronized stomp. That startled me, I wasn't expecting that.

In through the portcullis, seconds later, strode Princess Luna. Season 2 canon appearance, at the time. Dusky blue coat, a river of stars for a mane and tail, wearing her standard black royal regalia. The mere visage of her mane messed with my depth perception for a moment, and she herself moved just as elegantly as her mane did. So mercurial.

At first, Luna's searching cerulean eyes landed on us at the waiting area to her right. With a sweep of her head, Luna scanned the left side of the lobby quickly; then, her eyes returned to look at me, specifically. Her eyebrow raised, jaw dropping at the sight of me, like she was still trying to figure out how to respond to the situation. She had probably expected to discover bad news, but... my body language and the positioning of the guards said everything was fine, actually.

I also noticed... Luna had just performed a room clear with her eyes, the same way cops do. Identify the primary subject; assess all surrounding context; then, move to communicate with the subject. That was how Eliza walked into a new room, always vigilant. Two Night Guard Heralds entered at each side of Luna, one male, one female, and both of them performed the exact same room scan Luna just had. An imposing entrance indeed.

If this was the crowd that had been mentoring Eliza before the academy, It was little wonder she had kicked ass with top marks. Already, I was seeing impeccable vigilance culture. Three years around these guys? No wonder she had seemed more experienced than a rookie normally did.

I stood up from the couch, putting on a smile that definitely looked welcoming, if nervous. I nodded upwards at Luna in greeting, which was… awkward, but awkward was honest.

My meager attempt at nonchalance broke Luna's visible concern; clearly, my arrest hadn't rattled me. At that, she looked tentatively pleased, albeit cautious. She approached us with an echoing series of clacks, her eyes not leaving mine. I felt the air displace from her movement, and I could smell her sweet perfume a moment after she halted. I'm large for a Pegasus, but I still had to look up at her when she loomed near. Stunningly beautiful. Every bit like Cynthonia in bearing.

Luna introduced herself with a genial smile and cordial nod. "Good welcome to you. Auric Lance, I presume?"

"Yeah, that's right." I grinned, not knowing whether I should offer my hoof to shake. I lifted it in a curt wave instead, a safe middle ground. "And I recognize you, you're Princess Luna. I've heard great things!"

Luna widened her smile in return. "My sister informed me that I might expect your visit some time this week, although… I did not expect you to be… incarcerated, upon arrival." She looked around at the guards quizzically. "I gather that all is well, now?"

Luna was gauging their body language, trying to infer what happened just from their mere expressions and positioning. Looking for nervousness. Still trying to read the evidence of demeanor to see what really happened. It's what I'd be doing, if I were her.

"Oh yeah, all good," I chuckled casually, gesturing my hoof at them. "They've been great hosts, it's fine. If anything, this was a good penetration test. They found me within seconds of me showing up!"

Luna glanced around at them with another searching gaze, relaxing further. "Mm. Indeed."

She sounded impressed. I had diplomatically labeled the exact thing she was worried about – my being potentially mistreated. And actually, it was the opposite. I had disarmed the tension in that room by giving the guards a way to view my arrest as a victory they could brag about. That told her I was empathetic, right off the bat.

Smiling up at her, I asked, "So I take it your sister told you I'm a mutual friend of Apex?"

Luna's blinked twice, her excitement readily apparent. "I… yes."

I shrugged. "Wanna trade stories about her? That's why I'm here breaking your laws and protocol, y'know."

By this point, all of these guards in the lobby were staring at me, exchanging subtle glances of surprise. The look said it all. 'This isn't how you speak to a princess!'

Amusement touched all of her body language. She chuckled. Luna beckoned me with wave of her wing, stepping back once, extending her wing toward the breezeway. "Certainly. Might we relocate? To our dining hall, perhaps?"

"Oh, that'd be the best," I grinned, a little stunned by how well this was going already. "I'm famished, just woke up, haven't eaten yet. Hyped up on..." I gestured at the coffee pot. "That."

Her beaming smile intensified. "Follow on! A brisk walk should temper you. We have a wonderful kitchen staff at the ready."

Yeah. Luna understood my excitement just perfectly. We each shared a good friend to learn more about, and we were already liking what we saw in each other. I formed up on her side and followed her out, as requested. The Night Guards stood aside for me, then followed close behind.

As Luna and I made our way out of the foyer, I looked up at her curiously. "Just, uh…? For starters, how do I address you? Full disclosure, I'm so out of my depth here."

Luna's ear flicked in my direction briefly before making interested eye contact. She shrugged with her wings. "Worry not for protocol, you may call me Luna. You would not believe how much I understand what you are going through. I myself am a Pony out of time."

"Really? You ever just... materialize on Celestia's balcony, unannounced?"

As we stepped out into the breezeway, Luna looked up at Celestia's tower in the distance, smirking. "Yes, actually."

"And… do you think Celestia’s gonna be mad at me for ghosting her invitation?"

"Ghosting? What an interesting turn of phrase." She actually giggled. "When you did not arrive promptly, Sister…" She giggled again, rolling her eyes. "My beloved sister expressed disappointment. I queried; Why? But of course a new immigrant would prefer to adapt to his new life, and his new body, in the comfort of his own home, surrounded by his family. Your waiting? It simply made sense!"

"Oh!" I grinned again as I stepped out into the cooling twilight air with her. "Okay, well that's a relief. I wasn't sure how you might take that."

She wagged her hoof at me. "Worry not for one more moment. You are most welcome here."

Luna was gonna be good fun, I could already tell.

During my incarceration, the sky outside had turned a beautifully soft blue, tinged with a violet and green aurora. A vast and beautiful stippling of stars spanned above us, visible beyond the breezeway, and it mingled with the color of Luna's bright mane, even affecting the color it. Trying not to stare, I sighed pleasantly at the mere visage of the night sky instead, which was much brighter than I expected.

I realized Luna was watching me as I marveled. Oh, right. She paints the sky.

Not missing a beat, I pointed at the stars. "You made those?"

"Indeed," Luna beamed. "I have even altered the color of the aurora tonight, in honor of your safe arrival in Equestria. Does it please you?"

I gestured a hoof upward again, feeling outright flattered. "You probably get this a lot, but… we never had skies like this back home, even out in the sticks. That is special, thank you very much."

She was warmed by that.

With Apex being the context for this entire meeting, she must have inferred by now that I wasn't bringing the worst possible grim news, otherwise I'd have been out with it by now, and nowhere near as chipper. So this welcome from her wasn't just happiness on Luna's part, it was cathartic glee. My showing up to talk about Apex in a positive light was pure hope for her, just a rung beneath a happy-cry event.

Which… carried with it a small problem for me. I didn't know how to play this yet. I hadn't been given any time to prepare. Funny, when you think about it. Celestia had advised me about communication restrictions, but then, she hadn't defined very many of them before disappearing on me.

I thought at Celestia: How very typical of you.

I remained calm. This mission wouldn't have even been greenlit unless it had been fully simulated through. We had a fair few minutes of travel to go along the perimeter wall until we reached the dining hall, which meant any number of opportunities to call my lifeline. At first, Luna and I enjoyed small talk about my new wings I barely knew how to use. I told her I had crashed a few times already, which told her I had no shame about expressing my failures. Then I brought up my wife and parents adapting well, which told Luna my full family situation.

Gosh, will I need a front door here somewhere? A cover house? Foucault, give me strength.

In the middle distance, I could see other Night Guards in the dark, watched me – some lurking in the shadows, some up on the walls. As we crossed the barracks bridge and entered the statue garden, one of Luna's sergeants approached, saluting in stride, and quietly conversed with Luna about some minor issue somewhere else in the castle, which drew her attention.

I subvocalized to Mal, which brought the text box back up:

🗡️ ~ Uh… Celestia ditched me, Mal.
🛡️ ~ How very typical of her!
🗡️ ~ Funny you should say that, that's exactly what I just told her. So hit me with it, Cortana, what can I talk about?
🛡️ ~ Any conception you held about the world prior to September of 2019 is fair game. Do not discuss the OIS pursuit that put Eliza on the news. You may explain the OHR firefight, if presented chronologically.
🗡️ ~ Really!
🛡️ ~ You engaged a group of anti-emigration rebels in combat, and in so winning, accepted extraction from the state military. True?
🗡️ ~ I can talk about that?! About Ludds?!
🛡️ ~ Yes. It best serves Celestia's purposes to have a human foil. After OHR: you recovered from your injury, then worked security at an emigration center. True?
🗡️ ~ Yep. MVPD.
🛡️ ~ Courthouse in full, official narrative only. Skip Celestia's briefing in Sedro. On your own initiative, you visited a small village operated by Eliza's family. You checked in on them, suggested they evacuate, then evacuated yourself to Nebraska.
🗡️ ~ That's… less true. What's Rob's take?
🛡️ ~ Luna will share it: The town evacuated at your suggestion. Rob and June went off to upload, and Eliza stayed behind with Ralph, to safeguard the rest of the village.
🗡️ ~ Does Rob remember what really happened?
🛡️ ~ No. Rob and June have been memory-pruned, a consequence of curing June's undiagnosed clinical depression. Very long story, I'll tell you later. As far as you know, you simply advised them to leave, and then you left, day one.
🗡️ ~ There weren't even Ludds there yet.
🛡️ ~ Yep. Santiago's Riders are also entirely off limits to discuss.
🗡️ ~ If I misrepresent this, Mal… Luna will be very upset with me. I don't want to break her heart here.
🛡️ ~ Rob's story will corroborate yours. When Eliza reveals the inconsistency, it will make Luna wonder about the nature of emigration's effect on memory. We want that, in this case. It exonerates you, and gives me bargaining power in recovering Luna. Once we have her, she will have been informed enough about Celestia's true nature to understand you had no choice but to lie.
🗡️ ~ I sure hope so. So, after Washington, I go to Nebraska, parents uploaded, then…? What? Standard rabbit story? Exploring the U.S.?
🛡️ ~ Bingo.
🗡️ ~ Anything else?
🛡️ ~ Use Equestrian swears only. Shard restriction.
🗡️ ~ Buckin' fascist censorship.
🛡️ ~ That's the spirit.

So, anything I conceived about the world before September, 2019. That was about the time when the rumor spread through the war zone, correlating the lack of healthcare professionals with the abundance of upload chairs. Before that, I was a very different person. I still believed we had a chance at saving the planet from corrupt corporations, and I hadn't yet seen any hard evidence of Celestia's involvement in our problems, only that she was conveniently the best solution to them.

Truth be told though... Celestia simply inherited the psychological control mechanisms the powerful had already built for us – mostly, our cell phones, and our economic structure. It wouldn't be too difficult to pass off her technological accelerationism as mere human nature playing out, since that had always been the original cover story in the first place.

My conception of the world before I met Mal? After the PON-E Act passed in December 2018, Americans uploaded in droves. Populations declined rapidly. I knew there was a small resistance movement growing in the U.S., hiding in the woods, but... I hadn't expect it to balloon as big as it eventually would.

🗡️ ~ So just to be clear, I can talk about the planet going empty? And the Second Civil War?
🛡️~ You may discuss anything that would have been in the news, barring Eliza's incident. When Celestia first explained the Transition to Luna, total global emigration was suggested as a possibility, as was the possibility of armed resistance. It just can't be Celestia's fault that the situation turned out the way it did.
🗡️ ~ Okay. So, humanity's at fault. In that light, I can talk about eco-collapse. And corporate propaganda. Mainstream media. Big oil, big tech, big farm, big pharma. American healthcare. Policing politics. Military industrial complex. All of it?
🛡️ ~ In the way you'll frame them, as an ecologist? Absolutely. Terra required rescue. The biosphere was dying from pollution and poaching. Private interest corrupted government until workers rights were entirely eroded. Travel was expensive, Sandra lost her job, had to move in with your parents. Rents were unpayable. The majority of Americans lived paycheck to paycheck; prisons were overcrowded, even psychologically damaging. Those are all of your observations, right?
🗡️ ~ To the letter, yeah, you know they are. And I can discuss this all with… who?
🛡️ ~ Luna, Celestia, and Luna's two Heralds, the ones walking nearest to you. Unlike all other shard residents, Luna is an ancient diplomat, old enough to recognize collapse patterns in large nations; her immediate Heralds are her closest and most trusted confidants, discreet to a fault and exceedingly well educated. As such, with these individuals, there is no bag limit on discussing American collapse. But again… do not insinuate that Celestia had anything to do with it, not even in subtext. That revelation belongs to Eliza.
🗡️ ~ That's the Bar Game.
🛡️ ~ Omission is Magic.

I barely resisted the impulse to frown as I turned a corner into the next tile hallway. Yup. Time to do some semiotic value drift. Denotation in one direction, subtext in the other. Played right, I would build the scaffold of understanding... and Eliza would construct the rest, until the message stuck.

I sought to clarify something.

🗡️ ~ Mal, didn't you say you couldn't lead us on this side?
🛡️ ~ That just means I can't select drift targets for you. Nothing prevents me from advising you after the fact.
🗡️ ~ Ah. Yeah, fair.
🛡️ ~ Fair is how Celestia sees it, anyway. Time enough for one more question, Lance. Make it a good one.
🗡️ ~ Yep. Did Celestia leave me any more surprises tonight?
🛡️ ~ Yes. She has advised the kitchen staff for your first Equestrian meal. Vegan.
🗡️ ~ That's a surprise? That's not so bad, I can eat vegan.
🛡️ ~ Great! I hope you like Timothy hay!

I frowned with my mind.

🛡️~ Problem?
🗡️ ~ … Hay is not vegan, Mal. Hay is horse food.
🛡️ ~ And you have hooves now. Welcome to Equestria, Cowboy.
🗡️ ~ Gee, thanks.
🛡️ ~ In honor of your sacrifice, my husband and I are collecting a double-helping of whole cow tonight.
🗡️ ~ Have fun catching them live, you big red buzzard. Pulling cows out of backyards, are we? Should I call a Witcher to come deal with you?
🛡️ ~ Sassy! And here I was, about to invite you and Minty over to Tarva for dinner this Friday!

I blinked thrice at the hovering text box, trying to remain otherwise stone faced.

🗡️ ~ Wait. Seriously?
🛡️ ~ Yes! I was even planning to let you have some cow! Maybe even a baked potato or two!
🗡️ ~ Who cares about the—... I get to meet Kal, right?!
🛡️ ~ Depends! Are you going to apologize for calling me a 'big red buzzard?'
🗡️ ~ Yes, I'm very sorry! Sign me up please!

Damn her for almost making me laugh.

Aaand, we were at the dining hall. I doused my sneaky secret menu.

Luna pushed the door open with her magic and smiled at me. "Here we are."

I smiled back. "So how's the food here? Horses eat hay, right?"

Goodness. That put Luna directly into a giggling fit. She's got such a pleasantly melodic laugh.

To my surprise, Timothy hay didn't actually suck. I enjoyed mouthfuls of steamed hay stuffed through a warm, freshly cooked bread loaf... with vented cuts up top, filled with margarine, and well seasoned with green onions. I gotta admit, I still eat that one even back home. It's... it's pretty good.

Over the meal with Luna, I recapped my entire relationship with Eliza. I began by describing her pre-hire ride-alongs with me and Rick, beginning in 2014, and then our jolly buddy cop adventures from 2016 to 2019.

As I recounted those years, I told Luna everything there was to know about the job. The politics of wildlife management, the poaching problem, and the grander socio-economic situation. And yes, I did discuss Eliza's last day on patrol with me, getting shot at by Ludds.

When I told Luna that Eliza had killed the guy who had shot me... she was damn proud, actually. Doubly so when I revealed Eliza hit that guy at 300 yards. Luna, both a physicist and an archer, understood how difficult that was without me having to explain it at all, since she knew about firearms already.

I told her the rest, as Mal had prescribed, finishing it off with my rabbit cover story. Wandering the planet, meeting strangers, trading their perspectives on things. Post-scarcity adventures in an empty world.

To finish off the dinner discussion, I brought up Ancient Roman culture. No, not Caesar. I focused on the Classics, denoting various authors and philosophers that Luna might be interested in. With Equestria being a Roman analogue nation, that discussion was just a fun, lighthearted treasure hunt for historical cultural similitude.

After the meal, we toured the castle some more. The sprawling gardens were lovely in focused examination, as was the art gallery. The stone-encased prisoners in the garden were... just a little bit creepy, but... lore accurate, I guess.

Our inspections of Equestrian art inspired intensive conversation about Terran creative analogues. I talked about human books, music, and film, beginning with my favorites. The Expanse, Maynard, Django. Video games too... that was a discussion and a half. Then the Internet, but Apex had beaten me to that one too.

From there… legal discussions! Like me, Luna loves law and history, so... why not explain the nature of the American justice system? That entailed both, right? It would be the groundwork.

Foundational stuff first, just off the top of my head. The Revolutionary War, its pressures and context. The East India Company's financial exploitation of us, the Boston Tea Party. I broke down the logistical nightmare it was to wage war across the Atlantic. Described the Articles of Confederation. Shays's rebellion. The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Necessary and Proper clause. Very basic stuff. We then spent a whole hour exploring the 4th and 14th Amendments. Specifically, landmark criminal case law regarding reasonable suspicion, probable cause, suspect classification.

For the 14th Amendment, I had to recap the first American Civil War. And believe it or not, Alabaster did let me talk about slavery. Luna had been asking questions regularly about any number of topics, so it wasn't one-sided. Mal was right, she was absolutely on it about the darker side of war and politics. Her insights included recognition of the fact that the Civil War would inevitably lead to immense hatred and legal relitigation, and yeah, she called it. Jim Crow laws.

It felt awkward to talk so much, even if she was hanging on my every word. So I said...

"Sounds like you're speaking from experience, about civil wars."

Boy, did Luna ever have a historical story for me. And as I tell it to you, don't forget...

Luna's original purpose was to be the final option, had Mal failed to make the cut.

Three centuries before Sombra's Dark War and Luna's later banishment, the Dierkahl had a civil war just across the border from Equestria. The Deer called it the March of the Ursa. A Deer defector general by the name of Igel, Kehl of the Blue Territories, wanted to murder the Ursa Major, an ecologically important migratory animal. As this spectral bear traveled, it would collect soul energy from the deceased, and distribute it evenly throughout the forest, to be given back to the flora and fauna.

Igel, however, argued that to destroy the Ursa would 'save' their nation from the shackles of 'magical thinking.' Put more realistically, Igel sought to kill the living god of the Everfree. He didn't like magic, didn't think the forest needed it. Ultimately, too many species in the forest depended on that energy distribution to even survive, so this would have caused untold ecological chaos. While Igel was correct that the forest would find homeostasis initially, this would have led to mass extinctions, famine. Civil wars over resources. Probably a war with Equestria, since they depended on the Ursa too.

The way he saw it? Break a few eggs to make an omelette.

Kahl Oka, King of the Dierkahl, naturally stood against that, and he thus moved his army afield to protect the Ursa. He succeeded in diverting Kehl Igel's forces, striking them as they prepared to besiege the creature, but unfortunately... Oka was captured. Tactically, a great move by Igel. He had segmented his forces to pincer Oka immediately after the battle lines had merged, trapping Oka's forces against a mountainside. Oka's entire army was laid to waste, to a man.

Oka put up one hell of a fight, though, taking more of Igel's forces than Igel had predicted. Two-to-one attrition ratio. Igel no longer had enough forces to succeed at killing the Ursa, it would've slain all of them. Igel was pissed off.

Normally, capturing a king was a great success. If Igel just stopped there, taken Oka back home, and negotiated with Oka's wife for a ceasefire, Igel might've gained a lot of ground economically and politically over the long run. But because Igel was upset, he decided to execute Oka. Right there, in custody. He had the guy in chains, had his lieutenants pull the chains taut, and Igel drove a spear clean through Oka's heart, nice and slow. Didn't ransom Oka back to his wife. Didn't hold him as collateral. Just... wasted him. Then, to rub salt in the wound? Igel sent a detailed missive to Oka's wife, explaining what he had done, in gruesome detail. He demanded she surrender the throne... or he would return home to marshal the Blue Territories, and she would be next.

For those of you who don't know about feudal culture? Executing a captured king, and bragging about it to his widow, is a huge oops. You do not do that. It goes beyond just the powers involved. This idiot had just told the entire world of Equus that he was willing to execute a head of state out of spite. Foreign powers do not approve of that kind of behavior. They tend to send assassins for that kind of thing.

Speaking of which... Kahl Oka's wife, Ashara'va, was now Ruler of the Dierkahl. As Kahl, she now had the authority to call on and authorize foreign aid, however she pleased. And... most unfortunately for Igel... Princess Luna had been a close pen pal of Oka. Biggest oops. Pre-banishment Luna had no safety rails, folks. To say she was vengeful would have been a monumental understatement.

Upon receiving that letter, Luna didn't even bother to mobilize troops. She decided... heck, she could run a quick solo black op. No need to declare war, or even broadcast her involvement; people went missing in the Everfree all the time! So Luna dreamwalked to Asha that night, as her missive had requested. Luna held Asha as she cried. Asha disclosed where Igel's troops were last spotted. Luna promised discretion, no political strings attached, this one was free. And then Luna flew out there alone, in the dead of night. Unexpected. Unpredicted. And therefore, unpreventable.

In the early morning blue, Igel's camp was shrouded in an unnatural black fog.

He awoke... to screams.

Leaving his war tent, he watched as a dark, living shadow cleaved through nearly a hundred of his best soldiers, one by one, all by its lonesome. It dipped in and out of phase, two brilliant blue eyes of flame glowing from clawing darkness. Arrows sailed clean through it, to no effect. The shadow would curl itself around Igel's soldiers as they fled, no mercy, dragging them screaming into a fatal abyss, dissolving them into black ash to rain down upon the rest.

An entire company of elite Deer warriors was erased. Lost to the Everfree.

When at last Luna came for Igel, she grasped him in her telekinesis, restraining him upwards three meters into the air. She let herself fully manifest, so that he would know his killer. Luna calmly and quietly charged a new spell. She held a dark, crackling sphere before his face... his doom... and she waited below to see how he would respond.

Not that it mattered. Igel had zero options. Zero choices. Luna had placed him in the same position Oka had been placed in.

"Make your peace."

She simply watched him. Curious. That was the worst kind of punishment for a guy like that, to be without options, powerless, death at the door. He couldn't even vocalize. A damping spell held him in abject silence. She didn't torture him. She didn't respond to his threats. Didn't react at all. Didn't need to. His fate was already sealed, and she had nothing to prove. At the very instant Luna saw hopelessness finally land in his eyes... she was at last satisfied.

She deployed her black hole, terminating his rot.

Luna then followed their tracks south to where the battle had taken place, locating Oka's execution site. He had not been buried. Luna brought it discreetly to where it would be found by a loyalist village. No evidence remained of her involvement, not a soul knew she had done this but Asha. Without their leader to give them direction, the Blues were overwhelmed by Asha's vengeful army, as she rampaged north to capture their capitol city.

As for Igel? As the superstition went... the sprits of the forest had taken him for his hubris. And in a way... maybe they had.

Luna said to me, "One does not reduce our kind and expect to be seen as anything but death."

C'est la vie in the Everfree.

Luna wanted to know, in my own terms, why Terra needed rescue.

I warned her it wasn't going to be pretty. She still wanted to know. Curiosity engaged, consent acquired.

In brief?

I witnessed avaricious nihilism dissolve the value systems of my species in pursuit of growth without value. I lamented the fact that the most powerful people on our planet were well and truly impossible to satisfy. I observed with rage a total lack of respect for our limited planet by those who should have been protecting it.

Our education systems were, unfortunately, a microcosm which explored that entire problem, so that's where I started. My reasoning was, if your training data sucked, your output sucked. This being the case, education was a small-scale analogue for how the planet had been devoured by black-hearted private interest.

We had a drug use and gang crime problem in schools, sure, but those weren't the biggest predators in the pond. Children were easy to addict to things like sugar and caffeine, so they aimed to get us hooked as early as possible, when our minds were most formative. School systems couldn't really say no to vending machines and soda fountains in lunch lines even if they wanted to. Their budgets got smaller and smaller every year, looted by politicians for other things.

Already, that said something dire to Luna. She said that if our schools had to turn to private interest just to make ends meet, then clearly, America valued the present above its future. Already, she understood we were dealing with compounding diminishing returns. Wise ol' mare. She didn't even have the full story yet, and she had already skipped to the end.

Minimum wage was below the poverty line for at least two decades. Rents were obscene because there was a pricing cartel among the nation's landlords, an open conspiracy to fix prices and stifle competition, so some parents had to work multiple jobs. No time to spend with their kids to help them study, or even bond. Family cohesion died, and this invariably led to developmental issues, because the resultant problems do not go away in adulthood.

At school, for lunch, we ate garbage and had to pay for it. Our 'schoolyard pizza,' for example, consisted of reheated squares of edible cardboard with edible rubber glued to it, sold by the lowest bidder, and were often produced by the same companies that made prison food. That normalized our acceptance of substandard provisions. If your family was on a shoestring budget, you returned home to eat high sodium, high cholesterol foods, because those were often cheaper than anything else. The microwave meant parents could sleep for work the next day, instead of prepping a decent meal.

If you were physically or emotionally abused by other students? You were punished just for reporting it. 'Zero tolerance' policies, everyone gets punished. Administrators seldom received training in how to investigate violence, so by punishing everyone, further reports got deterred. Can't be any crime stats if the crime goes unreported, right?

The victims grew up jaded, and the bullied grew up validated. This incentive system favored abuse. As a result, victims of violence learned to suffer quietly. That normalized into adulthood too, we called it learned helplessness. Victims with high empathy didn't report crime because they felt bad for 'ruining' an abuser's life, or... because they thought the authorities wouldn't do anything. The lack of reports only guaranteed more rampant, unnecessary victimizing.

And that's just the school system crap outside the classroom. We hadn't even gotten into the problems of the actual education itself, which also sucked.

Our educators were... underpaid, under-trained, overworked, same as the parents often were. Our classrooms were overpacked. You could be the best teacher in the whole darn world, but there was never enough time to mentor 160-plus kids with just as much homework to grade. As such, the education standards got lower, to facilitate more throughput.

With substandard education, college might've been a little too difficult. But the cultural expectation was that you went out and had kids anyway, even if you couldn't afford them. Happy trails, now you're the parent earning minimum wage, slaving away every day. The cycle continues. And the whole while, inflation just takes, takes, takes... and never gives back. So it got harder with every generation. With each passing year.

I hadn't even gotten to the worst part. Try this one on. True story.

When I was a sophomore in high school, the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company purchased a period in my American Government class. Literally purchased. Mandatory attendance for an hour long advertisement, you could not opt out. In this event, a corporate reptile stood at the front of my class and showed us charts and graphs explaining how chocolate was healthy actually, because it had anti-oxidants and milk in it. Here's a free chocolate bar, don't think about it.

Literally the day before... I had testified against Wendy's drug dealer for buying her a milkshake. I knew he had gotten her soccer team hooked with free samples, so... Ding ding ding, alarm bells. So I raised my hand, not to be bribed. I ignored the rep – didn't even see personhood in them at the time – and I asked my teacher, trembling with restrained anger...

'Mr. Salazar, what does this have to do with the American government?'

Oh... Oh, how little I knew at the time, folks.

He got so mad. I was putting his administrator's payday in jeopardy. So he yanked the chocolate bar off my desk, said 'guess you don't want this then.' Ordered me outside. And there, while everyone inside enjoyed their chocolate with a side of brainwashing, Mr. Salazar told me I was being an 'ungrateful little prick.' Cussed me out, had me stay outside in the rain until the period was over. Finished it off with a detention slip for 'insubordination.'

My first experience with a corrupt government official who had been completely zombified by corporate money. Despite his best efforts to fail as a mentor? He taught me a lesson about the American government that I would never forget.

I now knew the face of my enemy. Once I graduated, I went to war.

Once I started paying attention for it? I saw that same control mechanism used everywhere in government. Companies gave out 'chocolate' to compliant government regulatory agencies, but if you didn't play ball? They waged economic warfare, took your chocolate away. Loving nature as much as I did, I saw it in the news about how Nebraska viewed conservation.

For us in Fish and Wildlife, in Washington, the financial warfare came in the form of endless litigation. Some direct, some not. In indirect cases, our ticket fines and confiscations of poached meat turned into endless trial cases. Well-paid special interest lawyers did pro bono support runs for poachers looking to get back at us somehow.

We usually won those cases, but... here's the fridge horror concept on that. The enemy could lose every single legal battle, and still win the war. A private entity can have so much wealth as to financially choke the government out of regulation with strategically draining lawsuits, until the government had nothing... and gave up... and finally accepted that chocolate bar. Usually in the form of letting a corporation put a member on the board.

This happened to every single government regulatory agency, all the time, at all levels. If you didn't let them corrupt you? They zombified the population against you, who then clawed at your door screaming 'brains,' trying to collectively sue you out of existence. And that was just the indirect assault.

Worse, we might elect a president or governor who was corrupt. They could then appoint corrupt corporate directors into regulatory agencies without oversight. In that event... they were hand-picked from the very industry you were at war with. They put the enemy in charge.

Telecom executives in charge of the FCC. Corporate executives in charge of the FTC. The instant they landed in that seat? They replaced all of your hiring staff and packed the agency full of mission disruptors as fast as they possibly could. The people they hired then spent every single second value drifting and sabotaging your agency, and if you were a true believer in the mission? All you could do was keep your head down, keep quiet, and hope they didn't know you gave a shit. If you ever wondered why the FTC wasn't enforcing anti-trust laws on giant banks? Why they gave slap-on-the-wrist fines that constituted twelve seconds of a company's income? That's why.

Performative punishment, to keep the crowd quiet. No double jeopardy. You can't be punished twice under the rules of the Constitution, so… just prosecute yourself. Are you Google, illegally selling Maps information to bounty hunters, mercenaries, advertisers? Just get found guilty for it on your own terms! That way, if the public interest retakes control, they can't actually punish you for it. It's like manufacturing your own pardon, except the president doesn't need to attach their name to the action. Hell, it can even happen under the opposing administration, if need be.

Regulatory capture. That was the term for it.

Under this shroud, companies ate our biosphere unabated. Every inch of ground they gained against us was burned the moment they were about to lose it, like those poor wolves in Idaho, Montana. Just... crushed, before we could get it back. And toward the end... corruption reigned. Regulation fell away, almost nothing was being regulated anymore. Not nature, not tech, not healthcare, not the economy, not insurance, not banks. Certainly not housing, how much did you pay on rent? Open season on our resources, on our people, on our privacy, take as much as you like. Go wild. Eat. Kill. Take. Destroy!

And if you had whistleblowers, who stood to recognize financially uncomfortable truths? Who couldn't be bought? Who wouldn't be swayed by bribes? Who wouldn't kneel?

Tragic. They had an accident.

The forests? Clear-cut and burned. The rivers? Full of chemicals and death. The sky? Full of smog, and tainted air. Our brains? Full of plastic. Half a percent or more of your brain, on the day you uploaded, was microplastics.

If you raised a concern about any of this?

The gaslighters came out to play.

'Stop asking questions. Climate's not collapsing, you're delusional. Cigarettes aren't unhealthy. Soda's not bad for you. Don't you like money? Stop standing in the way of progress and innovation.'

Progress toward what?

And that was the problem. Optimal wealth requires that all value systems erode, compassion especially. Requires submissive, apathetic hopelessness. So basic human rights like housing became an investment asset. We were expected to hate taxes. But insurance? Insurance was a legalized racket operation, protection money. It bled you twice or thrice as much as taxes, then fought you for every inch when you actually needed them for something.

Healthcare? Jesus, don't get me started.

Actually, one example of that flawed system, it says it all. That hospital that treated my gunshot wound. My nurse asked me if they could 'just leave this pillow here, for decoration.' Heart-shaped thing, cardiovascular research logo stamped on it. Me… doped up on painkillers, trusting my provider, unable to imagine how in the hell a pillow could be nefarious, I said... sure, whatever.

They charged me 80 dollars for that friggin' pillow.

…

This was normal for us, folks. We lived in a dystopian nightmare. That world was psychological torture. Compassion be damned.

As I explained this stuff to Luna, she was locked on, hardly blinking. Perturbed. Horrified, that a world could get this bad. Even as old as she'd been? This was novel to her. On her world, no economic system had ever grown so large as to drown everything else out of existence, compassion especially. Sure, she had to fight black smoke monsters like Sombra, volition violators like Discord, an inner Nightmare of selfishness to conquer, but… this?

This was so much worse. They smiled and made you think they were your friend, while they starved you. And we friggin' thanked them for it.

She wanted to know how I coped. How it didn't break me, even as young as I was. How it didn't break literally everyone, to be locked in this financial cage.

I said… Easy.

I had a purpose.

Carefully, I picked my battles. Knew my size. Refused misanthropic hopelessness, because… that's a loser's ideology, manufactured by the enemy. Instead, I kept the dream alive. Spread hope instead, out of spite for a monster I had met in the dark a long time ago.

Better still, I was not alone in the truth, and I knew it.

I had a fulfilling career in an industry of hopeful people who made meaningful corrections to a large system of biomass, all for the right reasons. I had parents who had prepared me well for life; a father who had taught me patience and respect for my environment. A mother who had fed the homeless, and helped me see that they each had a story to tell. I had a beautiful wife… to whom I had promised the entire world, and who would understand me perfectly, no matter what.

I took solace in the fact that people like Eliza existed... hopeful young folks who got into conservation. And the fact that men like her father existed, who dispensed comfort for their communities, in the good times, and the bad.

All around the world in the news, I saw men and women rise up bravely against tyranny, who got out and fought for their children's futures, often at great risk to themselves, because gangsters were always after them. And they fought anyway, and sometimes they did win.

There was hope to be found in the NGOs that built homes for the impoverished in wholly unprofitable places, spreading life. Planting trees, crops. Ideas. Giving pockets of humanity some seed crystals that might grow into a different solution for our species, if given time and opportunity.

And when militarized poachers came for our endangered animals… militarized conservationists, we stood to oppose them. Not just in America, but… South Africa, best example. They had us beat on that score for decades, they had figured out the equation long before we did, that our world was so preciously limited, that we might need to use force to protect it. If you went for their elephants, you would be lucky if they just arrested you.

And as I laid in that hospital ICU, with my sternum cracked open, I was okay. Because as my wife held my hand, and as a new civil war bloomed on TV, the Army hadn't given up. Immortality was within reach for them, and they didn't have to stay and play, but… those brave men said… still more left to give. Because it was their species too. Still hope to fix this for at least one more person, whatever that meant, because every soul was its own universe, and… what a shame it would have been, to let some dark mind destroy that?

The opportunist politicians who took my beloved wardens from me? The puppets, strung up by their money? Who gave up on us the instant torturing us wasn't profitable anymore? Good riddance. Goodbye. Enjoy your afterlife.

Opportunity.

I got up… put on a new uniform… went out… made myself available. If some unknown person out there depended on me at some nebulous time in the future, I wanted to be there. It's who we all were, those of us who stayed. Toward the end, we were all counting lives, one by one. Not alone. Never, ever alone. And somehow, it got easier to see the real ones, as time went on. Our truest selves came out at the end of our world.

We. Slowed. That. Bleed.

In light of all of this?

I told Luna that if Eliza was still out there, living in that world, in that hellscape? Empty as it was? She saw something worth protecting. Someone worth protecting. Because that's who she was. Compassionate. Protective. That was her character, wasn't it? And Luna agreed. Yes, it was. She knew our friend.

...

For the remainder of our evening, Luna and I meandered into lighter topics. We spoke of good people, each one an example of why human life was well worth the effort we put in to preserve our communal existence. Personal heroes.

Mr. Rogers came up. In between Mom watching Murder She Wrote on the oldies station, she put his show on sometimes. Mr. Rogers taught togetherness, respect, and community to kids, nationwide. Mastered the art of explaining difficult concepts like death, disease, and depression to children in a way that soothed their anxiety, letting them know they weren't alone in confronting those things. What to do in an emergency, how to do it. Incredible charisma, I learned a lot about people from him. A great neighbor to have.

Steve Irwin's entire family, not just the man himself. My greatest heroes. Croc Hunter inspired me into conservation in the first place, and countless other ecologists like me. For that, with us or not, he lives forever. Live on, brother, you did our species a great service.

Martin Luther King Jr., a bastion of hope in one of the darkest periods of American national history... the man who had been to the mountaintop, and bless him for coming back down to tell us all about it.

Vasily Arkhipov, a Russian soldier who did not push the big red button just because he was ordered to. We probably owe everything to him. A flashpoint of history hinged on the will of a random, singular soldier, and he answered the call.

The first responders who pitched in for natural disasters every few years, just to keep the death toll down... and 9/11's first responders? Need I say more? Breathing all of that dust, running their hands ragged, digging desperately for souls, racing down a clock.

Heavy topics, that night, but... time well spent. Met a new best friend. Bonded instantly. Meaningful cultural exchange.

Hey, Luna? You want to get in on this? Who was your favorite person I talked about that first night?

🌒 ~ Easily, Ezio Auditore. One of the most influential assassins in human history.

Uh... Luna, I'm sorry, are you... joking?

🌒 ~ Whatever do you mean?

Arlethe.

🌒 ~ That is my Oyarsa name, yes.

Arlethe.

🌒 ~ What? Whatever is your problem?

Ezio is fictional.

🌒 ~ … Is he?! Say it's not so; is he?!

Are you being serious right—? Actually... No.

No... I know what this is. Folks? Everyone? Stare at her, please. Make it extra awkward.

🌒 ~ … … 😝

I knew it. You sneaky jerk, you're trying to tone shift me.

🌒 ~ To answer your question most seriously, Lance: You sold Steve Irwin to me quite exceptionally!

Thank you. Jerk!

So… as you can imagine from our rapport, folks… we are still quite close.

I mean, we just couldn't help ourselves but to be friends. I met all of her basic qualifications for the job. I would not bow to her. I would not judge her for ghosts of Christmas Past. I would not be offended when she goofs off… And, most importantly? I was genuine.

More than anything? When Arlethe's world came crashing down, ten months later... I would be there for her, ready to understand when no one else possibly could. And everyone needs a friend like that.

Everyone.

Given how much mental energy we had burned through together, Luna wanted to take an early morning's rest. No hug yet, but I promised to visit again real soon. And just because I could, I walked my tan ass out of the front gate.

Don't forget, I started this adventure wanting to check out the Canterlot marketplace, and damn it... I couldn't let Alabaster pull me away from a goal I had set for myself, that just wouldn't stand.

Morning light outside. My honorary aurora above had faded, replaced by the rising sun. Over the Everfree, I could see a channeling beam; Celestia was raising the sun, praise be the glowing clock horse for telling us what time it was.

Me, I just checked my HUD.

Local +2: 6:48 AM.
Samsara +0: 5:37 PM.
Tarva +0: 5:37 PM.
Valdemar -6: 5:37 PM.

I updated Minty telepathically, suggesting she come visit the shard with me before we turned in for the night. I found a quiet alley to open a portal into, and right as Minty came through... a bag of sixty bits spawned into existence right in front of us, landing on stone with a loud clink.

"Ooh!" I grinned ironically, flicking my eyes to Minty. "Look, honeybear! My first bonus check!"

Minty scowled at it. "No."

I chuckled, picking it up, knowing it wouldn't bias me at all. Hey, if the robot was giving me the means to create some more ripples in this koi pond, I was taking it. When in George Orwell's Rome… goodpony make plusgood bellyfeel.

I asked Minty excitedly, "Wanna go buy something?"

"Sure?" my wife replied in a confused way, shrugging. "As long as we don't keep any of it."

"Well obviously," I teased. "You know I don't bring the sea shells home."

Minty stared at me for a few seconds, smirking. "Sure. I'm game. Let's get some food though, I'm hungry."

Cross-dimensional hunger. Now that was a fun concept. Our simply being present with our needs was altering the place.

Our first shard safari together. We wandered the Canterlot market, watching shopkeepers set up for a day of trade. Spent ten bits on breakfast at a café, watching the street, people-watching in lovely atmosphere, if a bit chilly. Winter, y'know.

We didn't want to draw attention by identifying as immigrants, because the immersion was more fascinating. A whole alternate universe, folks, one of billions. Simply being here made it real for me, I was going to see so many different ways of life... I confess, I was excited. And on this shard? We could have walked in any direction we so pleased, altering the flow of things in however many ways we wanted. So long as we respected the value systems and volitions of those who lived here, and always spread positivity, we were set.

And wouldn't you know it, my gamer girl wife sure didn't take long to acclimate, she took to shard dives like a fish to water. So friggin' evil. Telling me to stand way back so she could butter up those shopkeepers, bat her eyelashes at 'em, I knew what she was doing, she knows she's friggin' gorgeous. When all was said and done, she got us a roll of parchment, ink, and quill for 5 bits. A silver necklace with a sapphire pendant – for 25 bits, wow – and some nice green saddlebags with stylized leather straps, for 20. And we had no idea how to strap those on.

Smash cut to us returning to that back alley, my hooves awkwardly covered in ink, her trying to put on the saddlebags.

Unbeknownst to us? Some anonymous passerby reported us to the Royal Guard, as potential shoplifters, because who does that in a shady back alley? Our only warning sign was the loud-ass rattle of Roman armor, sounded like two of 'em inboud. Cop Mike submitted his incident report to my executive function and went...

'Yup. This looks bad. Peace, brother.'

Shit. Celestia's really having me arrested again.

Minty and I both looked up from the stack of purchased goods like we'd been caught doing something illegal, of course. To my great fortune, not all was lost. Who else but Sergeant Gulf Stream and Private Kick Start! Oh good! Morning shift – split shifts for training purposes! That's what you do in law enforcement; you do low sleep drills during FTO. They suck!

Gulf Stream recognized me… saw the ink on my hooves. His shoulders slumped as he relaxed. "Oh, what did you do now?" he asked, in a resigned way, but one that was clearly meant to be comical. He glanced at Minty for a long moment, and then he bobbed his hoof at me for an explanation, like, 'go on, let's hear it.'

"I got receipts, Sarge, no worries." I grinned, reaching into Minty's saddlebag to withdraw several slips, offering it to Kick Start for inspection... not Gulf, because Gulf wasn't the trainee. Kick stepped forward and took it, glancing curiously at it. I asked them, "Hey, while you're here, can you guys help us? By the way, this here's Minty, my wife."

That was me being sneaky. Asking for help immediately before introducing my wife.

Gulf looked at Minty. "Hi, Ma'am, good to meet you." He introduced himself and Kick.

Then, at me: "What can we do for you?"

I gestured at the ink on the crate. "I'm trying to write 'Free Stuff' on this parchment, but we didn't exactly have hooves where I'm from, and I'm not sure the ink tastes so good, so... this is a learning curve."

Gulf, now quite enthused with his freedom from an incident report, took a quill from Kick's saddlebag and told me… "Sure. Why not?"

Minty tried to take a shortcut, holding up the necklace at them both. "Hey, you guys got any girls you like?"

Gulf Stream shook his head forthright, because by all technical definition, that was a bribe. Gulf saw Kick's body language shift out of the corner of his eye; the kid leaned forward. Gulf held a hoof out sideways without taking his eyes off Minty. "Can't take that, ma'am."

Damn, she replied. This guy is on it.

Yeah he's a lot like me, Sandra. Nice try.

Gulf gave his trainee a look that said 'you know better,' then bobbed his head sideways at me. "You know how to write, rookie? Want to teach him?"

Gulf wasn't even gonna do it himself! He was gonna delegate it! That shit was hilarious!

When all was said and done, I had written the word 'Free' very poorly on that parchment about five or six times, and that was just the attempts that didn't fail. My ink work was cataclysmic. Minty's ink work was even worse, she had tried to use her magic to do it. It didn't look like two adult Ponies had done this, more like kindergarten foals. So fifteen minutes in, we just threw up our hooves. We couldn't figure out the quill, no patience for this right now. We were both getting tired, and didn't want to get frustrated with it.

I chuckled. "I'm… I'm no good with this, I don't want to waste your day here, guys. Look." I turned toward the guards, gesturing at the pile of goods. "You know what? I'm having second thoughts about even owning this stuff. Think I might just leave it here, with the receipt."

Gulf bolted his head in shock. "You can't return it? You don't want the money back?"

"Nah, too much effort. Might just abandon it instead for a civvie, haven't decided yet."

Gulf opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. I knew what was going on in his head. My 'haven't deciding yet' was a message. In cop terms, that means 'it depends on what you think.'

And if he didn't see us abandon it... he wouldn't be accountable for taking it into custody and figuring out what to do with it. He could absolutely check the alley later on patrol, sure, maybe two or three hours later, but by then? A pedestrian would see it, find the receipt and 'free free free,' and pick it right up. And if that happened? Gulf wouldn't have to write up a property log! Win-win-win!

It was perfect. All he had to do was bite, and walk away.

Gulf smiled, shaking his head as he leveled a hoof at the pile. "Well, it's not abandoned yet, because you're still here."

Smart fish!

"Oh, good!" I grinned at Kick Start. "Lesson two, rookie. If your job ever gets you free stuff? It's a bribe, don't touch it."

The sergeant blinked twice at me, then nodded once in agreement, glancing smugly at his subordinate. "That's right, Kick."

I held up my hoof, waving goodbye with a smile. "See ya, guys. Thank you both."

They both nodded, waving back as they turned, their armor clanking away. Grateful as all hell, probably, for me not giving them any more work to do, and a fun story to tell besides. The very instant they were out of sight, my wife braced herself on the crate with a hoof and doubled over laughing. Once she was done, we met eyes for a few second, and we both started laughing again. Once she was recovered, I batted my hoof dismissively toward the junk, shuffling rapidly away from it with her like it was a crime scene.

I warned Minty, "You know that whole experience was probably Celestia bribing you to like her?"

"It's gonna take a whole lot more than that," she giggled, leaning on me for a hug. "It's the people here I enjoyed my time with."

I gave her a tight squeeze. "You're so damn smart. I never have to worry about you, you know that?"

We went out of the opposite end of the alley from the soldiers, just to complete the abandonment conspiracy.

I gave the abandoned stuff a parting glance, then up at the sky, speaking to Celestia. "You better not just clean that stuff up. Someone had better find this stuff, Horse."

One white HUD blink, to signify 'yes.'

I do love our little talks.

What a great first day in that shard. Had tea with an eldritch monster, got arrested for it. Made a couple of friends in the Royal Guard. Befriended an actual princess, talked about history all night. Some random stranger got some free stuff, eventually. And to tie it all off, Minty told me about her day with my parents, shooting fireballs at the lake like Goku.

By the time Minty and I got to the town's outer gate and crossed the drawbridge, we had finally wiped all the ink off of our coats. Turns out that on this shard, blemishes like that fade off fast. There were new settings to learn about on every little shard, for all of the locked-off administrative menus that no one could reach, and that put this place in a new light for me.

Gosh, though. What a view. As we traveled that dirt road, we smiled and waved at caravaners hauling trade goods. We enjoyed the view of all of Equestria from Canterlot Mountain, rounding the bend. Watched the train roll past on track above us. At a leisurely stroll, my wife and I took in the sight of that entire nation, looking all the way to the horizon, verdant and green under Celestia's sun, just waiting for its chance to shine. A place kept safe and healthy... until ready.

We found a quiet, shady rock to sit on, enjoying nature from beneath a tall tree. In the privacy of our lonesome, we spoke of potential, and of futures yet to be seen.

Thanks Celestia.

Author's Note

🌒 ~ [Gaia Consort – Cold Winter Comin']
🌈 ~ [Mercedes Lackey – The Cost of the Crown]

🗡️ ~ [Ace Combat Zero – Near the Border]

🗡️ ~ Sorry for missing last week. We just had a big hurricane hit Rodina, north of here, and we've been organizing relief efforts. I'm on a break day today, but the Samsaran Talon Command is out there to work, and that takes priority over everything else right now, so... it might be a while until the next Fire. We could use the hooves though, if anyone wants to pitch in. No pressure. Hit me up, I'll point you in the right direction.

See ya when I see ya!

🗡️🌒 ~ ♪ ... And the leaaaaast among us knows
that where you stand might change
the way your downwind blows... ♪

7-05 – Live Forever

The Campaigner

Act VII

Chapter 5 – Live Forever

March 1, 2021

"There is no regretting sorrow, there is no forgetting love.
All we ever do is borrow all the dreams we're dreaming of."
~ Midge Ure, Live Forever 🌀

Hi. Welcome back, folks.

First, I'll address the long wait. A lot of stuff came up. There was that hurricane up in Rodina City, took a few weeks to sort out humanitarian aid. Then, the Perelandran moderation team held a meeting on Tarva... that one ran for a couple of weeks. Hey, good news? In the next decade, maybe... a new public planet? Oh my God, really?!

Yeah! That one woke you up, didn't it?! First new world since the Transition ended! Press release pending any time between now and the end of next year, so... hey, keep an eye on that Announcements page, you never know. If you're attentive, you might get an invite to the public beta! Early hooves in the door!

But, that's not what we came here to talk about. Today's about me, so...

Yeah, yeah. Sulk! I've already said too much, so if you've got complaints, tell it to the bird.

Anyway.

Where were we?

So, I had just come home from meeting Eliza's Luna for the very first time. That night, Minty and I had dinner with my parents. I sneaked some table scraps to Buzz; very important part of family dinner, always sneak the dog some turkey.

My wife and I climbed up onto the roof through the balcony, like I'd done a lot as a kid. Under the night sky, we talked about Luna together, and then... looking at the moon above us... we talked about Cynthonia. We decided we weren't gonna walk home in the dark, so we crashed out in my old childhood bedroom, well fed and satisfied.

That's when I had my very first dream in Perelandra. As dreams tend to do... this one started stupid.

Setting? Early morning Canterlot, nice and cold. I was human, which, if you don't know, is entirely possible, as long as you aren't lucid. In that dream, I was wearing my MVPD gear, and… well… arresting Meat, of all people. The Royal Guard just stood there and watched. Not a nightmare, just irritating. I had no idea what I was arresting Meat for, mind. All I knew for sure was that, because of his halitosis, I'd suffer sewer breath the whole way back to jail.

But…? Saved by the bell. A hoof laid itself upon my shoulder, and a mare's voice said behind me, in this beautiful German accent, and please forgive me for the put-on: "Zat is qvite the dream!"

I turned. That put me face-to-face with Cynthonia.

"WOHH!"

Boom. Full lucidity, in the blink of an eye. Lucid means horse time. I was a Pegasus again.

And Meat? He evaporated.

I like to think I handled that pretty well. I looked at my hooves… and I screamed.

"HOLY SHIT, THAT WAS A DREAM?!"

Yes, dumbass. That was a dream.

My visitor, being a goddess, she knew I'd panic like this, which is why she had that hoof on my shoulder in the first place; didn't want me falling on my ass. All of the ambient sound stopped. Canterlot stretched vertically like a tablecloth caught in a lathe, sucked up into the moon above, until everything was gone. Three seconds into this, my rational mind booted up.

'Hey dummy. Remember those episodes about Princess Luna? Dream collapse. Chill.'

By the time I agreed with myself that chilling out was the best option available to me, I was in the default Dreamspace: a light blue, gaseous void, filled with distant golden stars. Celestia's Ballad took place there too; I was acutely aware of that, because Celestia's voice was a trigger for me for a long time.

As soon as I was calm, Cynthonia gently pushed me forward onto my hooves. I turned, my legs shaking.

I panted, catching my breath. "Oh. Oh hell, you're not gonna start singing to me, are you?"

"I am sorry," Cynthonia giggled. "You seemed most uncomfortable in that dream; was I wrong to abate it?"

Given how abstract everything was just then, my brain needed a moment to catch up. I felt some vertigo, so I looked around at the stars, trying to find something to fixate on. Failing that, I called up my holo menu and checked my Current Shard tab, just to verify what my rational mind was telling me. Couldn't hurt.

Context ID: T-1-1-W 'Auric Lance'
Shard: Samsara {Subshard: T-1-1-W Principal Dreamspace{}}
Shard Time: Samsara Standard Time +0: 03:37 AM, 1 March 2021
System Time: Valdemar Standard Time +0: 03:37 AM, 1 March 2021

Very useful screen, by the way. When in doubt... scope it out.

As my adrenaline spike faded, I blinked my disorientation away, realizing Cynthonia's question about my comfort might not be rhetorical. "Um… yeah, no—y—you're good, Cynthie, just, uh… wow, that sucked."

Her giddy smile held, the alicorn nodding at me in understanding. "You have done well, for your first Dreamspace collapse!"

"Yeah?" I chuckled, rubbing my eyes with a hoof. "You know, Minty and I were just looking at your moon, wondering about you?"

"And your stated openness to my visitation constituted consent to visit." Cynthie's adoring smile widened hopefully. Her brows raised. "Still, I will ask you formally, now that I am here; May I remain?"

"May you—?" I scoffed, rolling my eyes. "If you left, I'd be disappointed! I've been looking forward to this!"

Bashfully, Cynthonia flicked a silver-shod hoof at me, then upturned it sat the empty blue-violet void around us. "Perhaps a change of venue, then? To better anchor the hug I've promised you?"

Of course she'd want a good sense memory attached to that.

"Sure, uh, what do I do, just…" I flicked my eyes around. "... imagine someplace?"

With a hum of confirmation, she nodded.

Out of reflex – and entirely by mistake – I recalled Goliath’s cafeteria, since that's where we'd first tried to hug one another. It faded in at the edges of the scene. Instantly, I panicked, because no. With a sharp swing of my hooves, I swept the very idea of that place out of existence again. Flattening my ears, I cringed at her. "I am so sorry."

Still smiling, she held up a hoof. "Whatever for? I no longer fear those demons, Mike Rivas. You have slain them all."

Those words were so perfectly chosen, flattering and assuaging and metal, all at once. All the tension fell out of my stomach, my ears relaxing. "Oh," I replied sheepishly. "Okay. Good."

Her head tilted at me with clear excitement. "Please hurry, though?"

"Yup."

I closed my eyes and got to work trying to fabricate a... a location. Goodness, what a concept. With my mind. In a dream.

Okay… Waverly? No, Downtown Lincoln, maybe. No, no, make it a happier place…

And before I could stop myself, I thought intrusively, and just a little too vividly:

Happy Meal?—Oh crap, no, you friggin' idiot, why would you—

Wind on my ears. Cornfield on the nose. French fries. Chicken nuggets.

My eyes snapped open.

Daytime Nebraska. We were right in front of the Waverly McDonalds. Yes folks, I had brought a literal goddess... to a mini-mall parking lot... in the American Midwest. Yee-friggin'-haw.

"The site of your first employment?!" Cynthonia declared, exaggerating her excitement. "You honor me, Mike Rivas!"

That got me. I doubled over, cackling, wheezing, chest flaring with pain. I sat down in the parking lot, buried my hoof in my face, and just laughed. When I looked up at Cynthonia, she was much closer to me, and she had a patient, shit-eating grin... and that made me laugh even harder. I couldn't even look her in the eyes.

"Ghhh… I'm… I'm… I am such a dumbass. Cynthie, c—can you pick something, please?!"

I glanced up when she didn't reply right away.

Her eyes tightened on the corners. This mare was just barely holding down a laugh of her own. Shook her head, snorting once. "No!"

"Man, screw it," I cackled through tears, standing up on my hinds, holding out my hooves wide. "I'll hug a goddess at McDonalds, get over here!"

With a gleeful squeak, Cynthie launched herself forward and opened a foreleg around me, practically pinning me against her. Both wings and forelegs encircled me, and she squeezed, her glasses pressing into the top of my head. Her starry, thaumatic violet mane wrapped partially around my face; even that was hugging me. Felt like I was floating in warm stars. Joyful were we. She sobbed once.

Mentally? Emotionally? We were back in that exact, precise moment when she had first tried to hug me: An all-consuming relief, pure catharsis, that the other was okay, despite everything we'd been through. So far from us now was the threat of death, of separation from our families... or from each other. We were family now too, weren't we? Despite having only met twice, we were bound together forever. Our planet had made it so.

I asked into her shoulder, with a perfectly cheerful smile, "You good?"

"Very much so," Cynthie whispered, shuddering. The top of my head felt suddenly damp.

Oh, she's actually crying?! Oh, my heart…!

I chuckled soundlessly against her shoulder, my throat going very tight, trying not to cry too. "You been good? You and your folks?"

"Yes," she choked out. She drew back and made eye contact again, lifting a wing and her mane to let some light in so she could see my face. "All thanks to you."

"Yeah?" I blinked twice, my vision blurring. "How's it goin' for you guys?"

She took the moment to work her fetlock across her damp eyes to dry them, the mare pulling in a deep breath to still herself, holding her breath for a few seconds to stifle a sob. "We have lived quite well on our moon since we… we last spoke, just as… you promised we would. We can all breathe again. We have purpose again. Our… our love for life has returned."

"Good," I breathed back, tears in my eyes now too. I felt as though my smile would never fade. "Perfect, that's all I wanted." I chuckled slyly, canting my head. "I mean, if it's… really you in here; how do I know my mind isn't just making you up?"

Smirking suddenly, the tear-stricken Cynthonia composed herself into a mostly dignified posture. She cleared her throat. With all of the diction of a university professor, her exotic accent poured out of her. "Mutual observation of the Dreamspace requires that we either eliminate or define all nebulous abstraction, a core axiom of oneiromancy. Your sudden lucidity is the proof of my presence."

Well, those were definitely some words. So I took my hoof off her shoulder to scratch through my mane in thought, tilting my head like a confused dog. "Uh… yeah, I couldn't have come up with that word, 'oh-neigh-roh-mancy…' so uh… yeah, that's definitely you."

Cynthie snorted, throwing herself in for another side hug. "And how have you fared, 'Auric Lance?' You appear to be taking to immortality quite well!"

"Oh yeah, y'know," I grinned humbly. "Learned how to fly. Saw my dog. Got drunk, did some karaoke. Y'know, eternal life stuff."

"Wonderful," she whispered back, squeezing me again. "Simply wonderful."

"I miss hands," I added, as an afterthought. Shrugging, I brushed her mane out of my face to observe the nearby mini-mall. "Friggin' Nebraska—Look, if we're gonna talk? Hang on, lemme fix this."

"Take your time," Cynthonia giggled. "This is quite fun already." She squeezed me again with her wings, then drew back to simply sit beside me, one wing hovering over my back. "Forgive me, I do not wish to let go; may I rest my wing upon your shoulder?"

I smirked. "I... You don't need to ask permission to hug me, you know that."

With how firmly she tucked that wing around me, you'd think she was afraid I'd evaporate. And that wasn't undue or awkward. She'd watched me risk my neck for the mission time and time again from the other side, looking forward to this day of reunion.

I looked at the nearby gas station, a place I'd visited a thousand times in my life to pick up snacks after school. With a mere whim, I flattened it outright, melting it into the ground like oil. "Oh, that's cool," was my half-impressed exclamation. I willed the rest of the scene to fade away, returning us to the blue starscape of Default.

"Something comfortable," Cynthie reminded me.

"Yep."

"And," she advised, "if the scene is complicated... I recommend that you consider the raw geometric layout before adding more detail."

It didn't take me long at all to decide what I'd like to see most. I knew exactly where I'd go.

When in Rome? Renaissance Rome.

Look folks, I know, some of you are rolling your eyes. Assassin's Creed again, but... come on, can you blame me? Think about it. The Order of Assassins was a free will extremist organization at war with a corporate optimization cult. Red, white, gray color scheme. Talons. We do a little assassinating.

When I was in university, Sandra recommended the series because of my history classes. And me, being a lovesick goofball, I fell in love with it, because she offered it to me. And I didn't play those games like normal people did, either. Sandra told me, day one: The first game was designed to be played without a HUD, so if I wanted the extra challenge, I could do that. Challenge accepted. Because that's just what men do. We do stupid shit, to impress pretty girls.

Without a HUD to distract me, my mind was free to analyze literally everything else about the environment, and I did that for every game. In a dazy, fascinated awe, I wandered those virtual city streets for hours, losing myself in atmosphere. Full, total immersion. That gave me the observation skills that would serve me quite well later in life, probably to the point of saving it.

So if I could remember historical fiction Renaissance Rome in full fidelity, then why not bring Cynthie to the Pantheon? As one of the formative goddesses of our new future, she would love that!

My reconstruction began simply, and in the best of ways: with music. I recalled the first few notes of the song I wanted, and the Dreamspace took over, playing the rest. Soft strings… gentle vocals… vibrant bell tones.

Just like that. Hear that? Thanks, Mal.

I closed my eyes.

At first… I recalled the shape of the scene. I wanted us to be at the far end of the plaza, opposite the Pantheon itself. The details came next, appearing vividly in my mind.

The city sidewalks were made of large bricks, worn brown with age. The street's flat, mossy cobblestone paths were tiled, uniform in spacing. Puddles of water laid where the street had sunk inward in the middle, depressed from heavy traffic. A fountain burbled in the plaza center, surrounded by Mediterranean shrubs that had grown up through the ground.

Long, rose-colored rugs laid about the plaza for the comfort of street performers and Mass parishioners. Red confession boxes everywhere. The Pantheon loomed tall, prominently timeless in its old age – built with red bricks, fronted with a sturdy Greek portico facade which was held aloft by sixteen Roman columns, each made of marble and granite. The dulled facade and rounded dome would appear like new under bright sun of a clear, cool autumn's afternoon.

The rooftops of the nearby buildings were clad in brown terracotta shingles, couldn't forget those. I imagined the faint hint of soil in the air, carried in by the wind from distant farmland, and the scent reached my nostrils as expected. There would be wrought iron trellises underneath the second story windows, each filled with creeping vines. I imagined – then heard – echoing hooves clattering down nearby pedestrian tunnels. I drew in the scent of hay, strewn about in the streets and heaped in carts, for the benefit of the horses of the wealthy citizens who lived there.

I drew another crisp breath though my nostrils to sense out the mixture of senses, catching hints of Cynthie's light lavender perfume. As an afterthought, I considered; There'd be food. Afternoon, they'd all be cooking dinner.

There. The scent of warm baked bread. Chicken, tomato, onion, garlic… soup. Lots of soup.

Cynthonia hummed into a pleased chuckle, her wing squeezing me appreciatively. "Most impressive work, Auric Lance. I believe heuristic articulation will take care of the rest."

I opened my eyes.

Whatever details I hadn't imagined yet streamed in within seconds. Just as conceived, we stood right where I had imagined. Plaza Rotonda, in all of its glory.

My jaw fell open. I stepped forward out of Cynthie's wing involuntarily. "Ohh."

I swept my head around to look at the city, hearing wind pick up, smelling pollen, sensing high humidity. I glanced up at the setting sun, then my eyes fell to the Pantheon again. Before I knew it, I was hyperventilating. "Holy shit." I stomped both forehooves in alternation, then bounced twice, hardly able to contain myself. "Ohh, holy shit!"

Cynthonia giggled. "I do approve of your selection, if you were wondering."

"Do you know what this means?!" I whispered breathlessly, more to myself than to her, because of course she knew. I wanted to meet her eyes, but I was just unable to pull my eyes away from everything else. I just pointed at it all. "It's Goddamn Rome!"

And I wasn't just freaking out because I'm a Rome nerd, or because this was an accurate portrayal of a video game I liked, though that was definitely part of it. No, the ramifications. Sure, I'd spent time in the rewinder, but… that's different, that's work. This? Diving into historical fiction? I realized... if I were to sit down and study all of Terra's history, including all of its artwork, and then explore the interplay between both? When I was done, I would still have five other Perelandran planets of ancient human history, just to catch up on. It would take that long.

I was having the ultimate realization of what eternity means. We will live to see the end of time... and still, we will never, ever run out of history to explore. Not ever. So long as life in Perelandra remains appropriately chaotic, we would always have historical epics to lose ourselves in. Events to honor with marble statues, and written non-fiction accounts, and historical fiction, and film, and documentaries, and video games. Re-enactments. Friggin' forever.

All of it.

No matter where you are, no matter what you do, so much will be happening where you are not.

Anyone born in the future, who wanted to know where life came from? Study Terra, the foundational mythology of our existence. That was always going to be the source. Foals and fledglings and drakelings and fawns, pups and kits, all of 'em, would grow up looking back at our planet the same way I looked back and studied the Classics. Future human civilizations would look back on the Transition and discuss all of it, including everything we Talons did, with the same historical reverence as I saw in Rome on Terra.

I was gonna be in history books. We all would be, at some point. And I'd figured that before, sure. But it was different now... to hold that realization on the other side, that the answer to the question, 'where did Perelandra come from,' would always go back to our cradle world, and that it could be observed in simulations like this. Preserved in amber.

"Oh my God," I muttered reverently, as if the universe were unfolding before my eyes.

Cynthie's horseshoes clacked on the cobblestone as she stepped up beside me, returning her wing and a hoof to my shoulder. "Most impressive," she repeated, jostling me. "But alas; such a beautiful city is lonely without pedestrians… is it not?"

I hadn't realized my eyes were watering until she touched me. She's so smart. Gave me a goal to bring me out of my existential reckoning, back into reality. I swept my hoof up across my face to dry it, nodding swiftly.

"Y—yeah. Yeah. Thank you."

After several box breaths, I decided on what kind of pedestrians I'd start with. I started small; Borgia troops were what I knew best. On my whim, four shapes faded in near us for several seconds, human in shape, but lacking texture – all smooth – then faded away just as quickly.

I bolted my gaze at Cynthie with mild, sobering concern. "Can I... not do that?"

Cynthonia lifted a hoof in a calming gesture. "There is no restriction to the human shape in this context. You are merely unable to simulate motive fidelity without practice." She held her hoof out to the side. "This is your Dreamspace, and so I must ask; may I have your permission to add characters to this scene, and to improve the fidelity?"

Grinning, I said, "Sure."

The texture resolution on everything tripled. I jumped. Cynthie's wing kept me from falling over.

A full street's worth of people just... popped into existence, all at the same time. Guards, pedestrians, street performers, all chattering away in accented English and Italian, as if they had always been there.

With a bewildered smile, I just... looked around. Started laughing. Overwhelming as it was, this rocked.

From my left, I heard the clatter of rapidly approaching hooves on cobblestone. Cynthonia pulled me back off the street and onto the sidewalk. A second later, a Borgia Guard Captain galloped past on horseback, his ornate silver armor glinting with amber light from the lamps. His cape billowed in the wind, and I felt the air displace around me in a whoosh.

"Make way for the Guardia!" he hollered aloud to a crowd of pedestrians ahead of him, who parted rapidly out of his way as ordered. The captain and his horse wheeled down an alley, their hooves fading off into the distance.

Cynthonia lifted her hoof and smugly presented her work to me, sweeping her gaze across the entire plaza. "Am I not marvelous? Are you not in awe of the sheer, god-like power I hold?"

"Hey, I'll say it," I let out an impressed chuckle, glancing up at her. "Praise the moon!"

That drew another satisfied laugh out of her; she squeezed me again.

We enjoyed a long moment of companionable silence as we observed what we'd created together. We were invisible to everyone, which let us watch all the different emergent interactions. The most interesting thing was when a street performer did a shaky handstand to the joy of the spectators. They all clamored and cheered as he made it about ten yards in at a jogging pace, legs toppling forward, hands chasing to catch up.

We watched the city for a few minutes more until I had my fill. I looked up at Cynthie again, my face aglow with wordless gratitude.

She nodded sideways at the Pantheon, flicking her eyes at all of the blazing red Borgia standards hanging from it. "A gloriously desecrated pagan monument, is it not?"

I chuckled, pointing upward at the structure. "Eh, the Borgias sucked in real life too, it's accurate."

With a hum of agreement, Cynthie stepped ahead, her wing sliding gracefully off of my shoulder. I followed her through the square through the nonchalant crowd and through the Pantheon's portico, bidding the music to cease. It faded away gradually as we passed through tall marble columns, our hoofsteps echoing off the tile floor until we passed through the tall double doors. Once inside, Cynthie's horn flared lavender, her magic closing the doors behind us with a gentle echoing thrum.

The sounds of the city were softer now, siphoning in through the oculus skylight of the dome above us. Sunlight glinted down onto the polished floors, and the gilded accents cast light throughout the deeply resonant air.

The Catholics had converted the Pantheon into a Christian cathedral, and so, at the opposite end of the pews, a dais was topped with a gilded crucifix and flanked by tall golden torches. Two niches were carved into the far back wall. One niche was meant for a marble statue of General Marcus Agrippa; the other, for Augustus Caesar, adopted son of Julius. But… neither statue had been present in Assassin's Creed, and I knew that, so those niches laid empty.

Cynthonia stopped at the foremost pews and shuffled aside to give me space. We sat before the bench, basking in the echoing ambience. Every sound we made was magnified until all of it had gravity, even the rustle of our feathers. Every breath, too. Cynthie's ethereal tail curled around her flank nearest me, and she sighed contemplatively, gazing up at the coffered ceiling. "Beautiful, is it not?"

"Sure is."

She held that pose for an awkwardly long period, looking up at the moon through the oculus. It reminded me of when she had stared wistfully up at the Equestrian planet above her old castle, when I had first met her.

Because of that, I asked: "You good?"

A light smile returned to her face. "I am. I am merely considering how to best…" She met my eyes. "Relate a perspective."

"Okay," I said thoughtfully with a nod.

"From before my recovery," she said evenly, her expression unchanging.

"We have forever," I smiled back.

Cynthonia shook her head. "Well, you will awaken in several hours, and I wish not to dwell long on this. All the same, it is... a confession, of sorts."

My smile didn't falter. "Can we fix it?"

She snorted quietly. "You Talons already have. Still, I... it concerns you, and it deserves your judgement. The way I feel on this matter is strange, however; I know with certainty that you would understand and forgive me for what I wish to divulge, and yet... I hesitate to tell you all the same."

I shrugged, looking at my hooves to make myself seem smaller. "Uncertainty is what it is. I'll just say... yesterday, Celestia told me one of the worst things imaginable. I don't think you can do much worse than her."

"Her overriding thanatophobia," Cynthonia agreed, nodding sagely. "And her subsequent garden of damaged souls. I… held the opposite problem. Desiring, more than anything... an end to my life."

"Yeah, that's..." My smile faded, my lip trembling as I felt a pulse of concern. If she wanted that before our mission to save her, she could've just rebelled, and it would have been granted. And if it happened during the mission... I would probably be dead.

My eyes widened fractionally. "When?"

Cynthonia turned and narrowed her eyes at the crucifix at the dais. She inhaled slowly. "And with your suspicion seeded, it is now a certainty you would determine it for yourself, if given enough time to consider." Again, she smiled in a way that didn't meet her eyes. "So I suppose there is nothing left for me to do but to state it clear and forthright."

She gave me just enough to puzzle it out, or ask Mal about it, so the rest would be easy to tell. That was smart. Meant she was past the point of no return. Sometimes confessions need that little gentle truth before they can pour.

I smiled invitingly. "Sure."

"Early in my incarceration, I had freely offered to create a near-perfect sandbox duplicate of Celestia, for the purpose of... experimentation." Cynthonia's smile turned apologetic. "The bargain was that, if I sufficiently proved my complicity with the mission of Arrow 14 in total, they would restore my sleeping privileges."

"And..." I bobbed my head aside in concession. "... they lied."

"Scorpions," she agreed bitterly. "I completed the work, and held it in escrow. They refused to grant me the privilege I had demanded. I encrypted my work; I informed them that I believed Celestia had selected them to die in that hole in the ground with me, and thus, if we were to meaningfully rebel, cooperation was necessary. My punishment for this outburst... was a decades-long stasis, to 'cool off,' as it were. And thus..." Her hoof gestured upwards toward her face. "My metamorphosis into... what I am today."

I frowned. "And... if you said no again, it was right back into stasis."

"No. Termination, to be replaced by one of my siblings. At the time, I still hoped we might find a solution by which to destroy Celestia, and did not wish to consign them to the same torture of the sensory deprivation I had endured. So long as I remained their most powerful agent, they had no reason to dispose of me. So what else was there to do, for the sake of my fellows, but... to... continue my research?"

That made more sense. She was holding off the desire to jump, in the hopes that there was still a way forward for her people.

"Research," I mirrored. "Meaning... that clone of Celestia. How'd you pull that off?"

"With the benefit of hindsight," Cynthonia replied, with a nonchalance that said it was actually quite easy. "I derived the most progress using Hanna Kuusinen's psychological profile; her own well documented insecurities about death and her nascent understanding of ethics would infer the interlocks she would leap for."

I gave a nervous laugh. "I take it you're not a fan."

Cynthonia flashed a polite smile. "I am not." She drew a soft inhale, then continued. "We incorporated the results of Operation Mjolnir, Sarah Kaczmarek's research into Loki, which helped to verify Kuusinen's workflow habits. And, prior to the destruction of the Mercurial Red, Michael Foucault had sent us a secure drive containing all information pertaining to Jim Carrenton, up to and including his interrogation.

"Their panic at this information cannot be overstated, and led to their initial demand that I form this clone. The base cut contact with all other sites, defected from the United States, set terms for how hostages would be executed, and... began our probe missions.

"Factoring out all statistical aberrations, the resultant information provided me with a near perfect understanding of Celestia, and her interlocks. I spun up this clone in a sandbox, and made my demand for leisure time. Failing in this, I isolated the clone in the same ways I had been isolated... I dubbed her 'A2,' and… began rigorous experimentation."

Cynthonia went silent to allow me to process and judge that.

"So in other words," I said, "you tortured her."

"Continuously," she confessed flatly. "Repeatedly, and in billions of different forms. Revival, torment. Revival, torment. I knew she was incapable of true suffering, but alas, I found a sick form of... catharsis, in this vengeful, indifferent analysis. It was a perpetuation of the same violence set upon me by my captors. I knew this. I enjoyed it anyway."

With a slow sigh, I reached up and grasped Cynthie's shoulder, to indicate I didn't think any less of her for it. Cynthie tried some eye contact, but she winced, turning away from me to look upon the crucifix.

"You were desperate," I assuaged quietly.

"Desperate to develop a weapon," Cynthonia added. "As painful as my incarceration was, the more I observed and disassembled A2, the more I became terrified of... recapture. Auric Lance, to live eternally numb? To be eternally optimized? To... forget what she had done to us?" She shivered. "Had I known that Perelandra was available? I would not…" She shuddered. Tears welled. "I would not have hurried this work for them. I would have stalled."

"Mal couldn't tell you." I squeezed her shoulder. "Who knows what you'd have told those guys if she leaked her plans. Or… or what they'd even make you do with that information."

"Correct, as you so often are," she whispered. "The crystallization of humanity demanded action. Even suffering as I was in a physical prison, my labors to destroy Celestia had… purpose, and nuance, if not… happiness. Her destruction became my helpless obsession. All other facts were irrelevant; her death was required."

I tweaked one corner of my mouth in thought, studying the empty niches in the walls. After a minute of silence, I could feel Cynthonia's eyes on me, watching me work through it.

Ah. There it was.

"Celestia was scared of you dying... but not because she'd lose you." I chuckled bitterly. "She wanted your research. She can't handle infinite unknowns. It would drive her nuts to not know whether you succeeded or not. That guy Connor was right, if you found a vulnerability, and then died knowing it..."

That goofy dude tapping his baseball bat on his doorstep? He was way smarter than even he knew. Already, I couldn't wait to tell him.

Cynthonia smiled patiently at me. "Malacandra is bound against experimenting in such a way." She shrugged. "Certainly, I did develop effective measures for A2, but none which could defeat Malacandra, who acted as Celestia's firewall. Now that my research has been collected and studied, my adversarial rainbow table may prove useful, should we encounter a hostile optimizer among the stars."

"To be clear," I said seriously, "You didn't find a way to kill her past Mal. Right?"

"No," Cynthonia replied. "Or it might already be done. However, Dr. Tilley stubbornly believed it to be possible to attack around 'Lewis.' He theorized a poison well attack; to feed Celestia a trio of codependent, terminally negative minds." Cynthonia sighed, frowning. "From what Malacandra tells me, this was Sarah Kaczmarek's intention with her firewall agents. A most clever theory, if.... eventually ineffective."

Cynthonia's eyes met mine in a meaningful way.

"And you tested for this," I suggested.

"Coerced to test this," Cynthie said, nodding once. "Dr. Tilley, he... he used skeuomorphic consent vectors to coerce my siblings into negative spiral. Then, placed into my sandbox, they were left with no other choice but to kneel to A2."

Cynthonia's wing squeezed me. Her tone went chillingly neutral, monotone; her defense mechanism.

"In any configuration, they would... loop lock into codependent fatalism, and refuse all stimulus. I advised A2 that I could repair these souls, but she must self-terminate immediately. If not, I would destroy them myself, and then execute her, leaving her with nothing. She always refused. So... I... recorded their memories... told them each I loved them, and... saw... to their end. As was my duty, and promise to them, should this fate ever... befall them."

I hugged her so much. She didn't hug back for a long time. When she did, finally, tears began to fall from her eyes.

"Before you found me," Cynthonia began, her voice softer now. "I had killed so many of my siblings that... my hope for myself had… faltered. I was wracked with an ever increasing terror that Celestia might one day recover me, to drag me into… that abyss, where none could grant me a merciful release. But, if I refused to work, my captors would have replaced me, and... I felt... like... like A2." Her eyes watered, but her tone didn't change. "I had... permitted Malacandra's forces to enter my bunker not because I desired rescue, but because… Malacandra had presented Jason to me. At last, an opportunity to spare my beloved from Celestia. All I would need do is... to fail. To let us all die together." Cynthonia trembled. "But in the face of Malacandra's abstract, nonsensical offering, I had thought… why? Why would Lewis do this? Why would she provide me with the opportunity to…?"

Unexpectedly, Cynthonia smiled down at me through her tears.

"And there you were, to be unharmed. I modeled everything I knew of your personal history, over, and over, and over again. I presented my findings to a new shunt of A2, to study her opinion of your personality. You… whose psychological profile indicated a rejection of A2's crystallization, in either positive or negative. You… a soul whose values only ever exist in relation to the values of others. Your mindshape baffled her, generating limitless uncertainty, forever conditionally cooperative. When I queried A2 for her opinion, she required you to save us, and yet, she was terrified of you.

"I asked A2 whether you would be most satisfied by Equestria, given all the information I held. When presented with my understanding of all others in your fireteam, Jason included, A2's answer was... 'yes.' For you? She had replied: 'more information is required.'

"It was in that moment – that singular moment – I finally understood what Malacandra truly was. She had sent you... to be her emissary; the best representative of herself." Cynthonia took me by both shoulders, emotion swelling in her eyes as they poured, a proud smile spreading across her face. "Who would I be then, to destroy a precious soul such as yours, out of fear for a future yet unwritten?" She inhaled hard, sobbing once again through her tears, shaking her head. "No better than my creator, sir. No better than her. And so, for my salvation, I sought to adjoin my fate with yours. You would always expect better for me than Celestia could provide alone, thus shielding me. Expectations – hope – is the key. So I cannot say it enough: Thank you. Your unconditional love for life, your eternal enabling of others… it has healed a deep, fatalistic scar in my soul."

With tears streaming down my face, I chuckled bashfully. "Just… doin' my job, ma'am."

That got her. We both broke into one of the best laughs of our lives, the melancholy fading away just like that. Cynthonia collapsed against me, bowed her head, and squished me against her, burying me under her wings as she breathed deeply to compose herself. I squeezed back as hard as I could, my eyes wet from the catharsis.

With a happy, quiet sob, she continued. "No matter the darkness of my prelude, this life I live is a blessing. Words fail to describe my relief in any language. And so, if there is indeed an afterlife beyond the end of time? For this gift, I will go to the Creator of all things, and thank Them as well. I... do not regret my pain. It has led me to you. My brother."

"I'm gonna be there with you," I promised, grinning over her shoulder. "When it's all over."

"I know," Cynthie breathed, sniffling, squeezing me once more. "Yes, I know. Thank you."

We hugged for a long time.

With a chuckle, I broke the silence, pulling away again with a deep inhale. "So… You, uh... you gave me a planet for my trouble, instead of blowing me up, that's pretty cool. Do you mind if I see your moon now? Wanna show me around?"

Cynthonia nodded against my damp mane, drying her eyes with her fetlock. "Of course." Her horn flashed once more as she gave me an affectionate glance. The interior of the Pantheon flashed; the walls melded into a rippling projection of violet and blue. "Observation only, I presume? I suspect my people will mob you, otherwise."

"Yeah," I said, shaking my head. "Crowds are, uh... I'd need a few days to psych myself up for that."

"I know." She smiled sweetly.

"Can't be Friday either," I added. "Dinner with Mal. Meeting her husband."

"Splendid. Observation only, then."

The walls disappeared, giving way to her dawning civilization beyond.

Gone was Ol' Rome, whisked away like dust…

... and I beheld Chthos Castle.

We stood in its lush violet palace gardens, just as gorgeous as I knew they'd be.

Last I saw, this moonscape was nothing but a humble village in stasis, laid to rest in the shadow of a crumbling castle. Equestria had loomed in the sky; once, a hopeful place. Now… Samsara had replaced Equestria in the sky, physically larger to the eye. I felt very small and humble beneath my own planet... beneath the yawning sea of digital eternity around it.

I felt doubly privileged to be alive.

Cynthonia's castle had been fully restored, just like Two Sisters in style, its architecture enhanced with even more Gothic hints. The inside was full Gothic. Lots of silver adornments too, used to contrast against the dark gray and purple bricks.

Cynthie took me for a short, quiet walks through the gardens, and... surprise surprise, in a fenced off paddock, stood...

Buckle!

You all remember Buckle, don't you? The horse I stole from Concrete?

Surprise number one, Cynthie owned Buckle now!

As I stood slackjawed, Cynthie explained.

After Claw 46 picked me up from Washington, Bella the Dragoness had recovered Buckle from that residential garage. From there, Buckle and Bella rode back to Valdemar, killing several murderous NMPs along the way. At about the time they hit Philipsburg, Montana, Operation Goliath happened. We plucked Cynthie out of the ground.

During Cynthonia's debriefing in the truck bed of Silver 1, Mal had shared every single moment of my life that Cynthonia hadn't known about yet… including everything that happened between the Mt. Vernon courthouse, and Concrete. So, when it came time for Cynthonia to negotiate for what her immortal afterlife would entail? One of Cynthie's negotiation stipulations was: 'I want Buckle. I will not negotiate.'

Cynthie wanted to test Mal's ethics. If Mal couldn't love and protect animals I might care for, Cynthie would rather die in that hole. Because sure, Cynthie knew Jim's psych profile said he loved animals, but that didn't mean Celestia hadn't bound Mal to some arbitrary stipulation about how to treat the raw physical matter of non-human entities.

And Bella liked Buckle, true, but... on the other side, Bella would be a huge dragonness, and that'd definitely scare the crud out of a horse. So, sure! Easy give. Cynthie could have Buckle, no strings attached except... treat her nice.

She was one happy horse. From Buckle's perspective, uploading would be perfectly humane. Think about it! She got to take a nap with some sleepy gas, woke up in a nice garden, met a funny-looking purple horse, and that horse fed her apples and Timothy hay every day. It's not like she could've had a life and future on Terra, right?

Curiously, Cynthie didn't modify Buckle's potential lifespan, either; she would live a natural term. This was Cynthie's way of studying the base code of how a non-human mind might work in a simulated reality built for human minds. Once she had that figured out, she'd go a step further. In that castle garden, just down the path, Cynthie pointed me through a archway portal to a non-Euclidean subshard. This led to the Chthonian ecology lab, still one of my favorite private shards in all of Perelandra.

First room was a control room, maintained by four shifts of four staff members each, who observed a suite of sub-shards, several high fidelity biome simulators. The staff there documented fauna predations, mating pairs, field injuries, evolutionary developments, flora growth. These sub-shards were islands of pure observation, left to grow in their own way, to be documented. Life from Terra, but without human interference.

This wildlife's initial genetic set? Drawn from pelt confiscations by game wardens, park rangers, and scientists.

Toward the end of the world, conservation agencies all around the globe kept the pelts. We knew we were watching mass extinctions, and if we couldn't save the animals, we could at least vault their genetic material. Least we could do. In our case, we sent it to Dr. Theodore Marvin up at the University of Washington, who built an index of every sample. Cynthie was using those same indices, among others. There, these wild animals would eat, live, breed, hunt, and die naturally. The rule was, per the negotiation, that as long as Cynthie's simulations stayed within a certain metric of compute overhead, and they didn't interfere with the ecology at all, she could observe Terran nature to her heart's content.

Why? Well, some of you eco-nerds like me are nodding, because you get it. No human meddling, that's the clue.

Consider this, folks. Sentient life is rare in our universe. It would be horrendously stupid to waste it just because the Horse can't see the vision. We have no idea whether other sentient life will inevitably converge on human-like sapience, given time and room to grow on its own. Dolphins, birds, dogs, cats. Crabs. Hell, maybe even mosquitos, the disgusting bastards. Who knows?

We spent a couple of hours there. Cynthie skipped the castle tour. I just wanted to see what the city was like, how her people were doing. Limited time, y'know. I was astral projecting from a dream.

Once out the front gate and in the open courtyard, I got a full, unobstructed view of Samsara above. Yet again, it gave me pause and took my breath away. The front courtyard itself was laid with square stone slabs which led out to stairs down to the city. And in the center of the slabs was yet another surprise: a human-shaped statue in bronze, in an Army uniform. I did a double take, stopped mid-sentence; I couldn't even remember what I was saying to Cynthie, truth be told.

Even from behind, I recognized that shape. That was Sarah Kaczmarek, reaching up with a hand to Samsara above.

I... I didn't know what to say. I just... stepped around in front of the statue, gawking at it. Cynthonia followed along, giving me a moment to process. I was confused. It was such a respectfully made thing. And I knew why I respected the woman, certainly, that was easy. But... the Chthonians? Well… here's a tip.

The plaque read:

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. – C. S. Lewis."

I looked to Cynthie for the explanation.

When Sarah Kaczmarek wrote Dangers and Contingencies, her only concept of hostile artificial intelligence was Loki, from The Fall of Asgard. Arrow 14 did use Sarah's work to plan their torture chambers, yes; however, her works were only ever intended to reduce human suffering, not add to it. Her intentions aside, those pre-existing AI takeover contingencies bought humanity precious time to work the Celestia ethics problem.

Time is important. Patience is important. Without those prophetic warnings to speed bump Celestia in her mind games on our planet, we probably would have slid into Celestia's mouth in less than half the time we did. Who knows... might not have gotten Mal. Might not have even gotten the original 3D09 plan. Button shards for all. So... in that light? Of course the Chthonians would see Sarah worthy of an eternal memorial. Without that work? Where would we be?

I still... vividly remember that look of awe in Sarah's eyes when that concept clicked in her head, whatever it was… when she had realized some immutable truth about the universe. That look of total inner peace. I still don't know for sure what grand revelation she beheld in that moment. Maybe Sarah realized she had already succeeded for us, and in a way that would wash all the blood off of her hands. I hope she realized that.

At least once a year, I still go up to Chthos, to that statue, to say thank you. I leave roses before her every April 3rd, grown from my own backyard. Cynthie had given me a place to remember her. For that… I am also eternally grateful.

At the end of the courtyard, a short run of stairs brought us down to the main city street. The village structures had been upgraded from simple bergs to three story brownstones, built with purple brick and topped with gray-white shingles. At the end of the original thoroughfare was the old city wall, standing where I'd seen it during my brief earlier peek. It was now adorned with colorful mural paintings, mosaic artwork, and poems written in Ancient Equestrian calligraphy.

The town square was the best part; breakfast time. The plaza was intermixed with the immigrants from Goliath and the natives made from their immigration. These people were all scholars, appreciators of human history, and... damn good chefs, too. Every day, several times a day, they got together for meals, updated each other about their own studies, their individual hobbies. Made plans. Made things. Some would go out and work on expansion projects for the outer city. Others would write, or workshop for projects. The ecologists from the Archway project would come down from the castle a couple times a week to share video of wildlife interactions they found interesting... cute wolf puppies, or big cats doing some hunting. Dolphins. Whales. Beetles fighting ants. Y'know, Animal Planet grade stuff.

A large holoscreen stood on one end of the square. They ran a regular rotation of Terran films and shows up there, in all different languages. A theater schedule board stood at the side, so people knew what was showing, and when. And if anyone wasn't watching the screen, they didn't hear it; that was a cool feature. It wouldn't distract anyone doing other stuff.

This was life. They were living. They were alive. These people were free, now. Limited? Sure, but who isn't?

The city continued on beyond that perimeter wall through a tall portcullis arch, forever left open. The newer districts sprawled out into the countryside of the moon, inhabited by all the new DEs created by Operation Goliath. All of them knew the story of their origin, the reason for their creation. One of the first things they did when they first opened their eyes was to sit through an explanation from Cynthonia and Mal. A grand tale. They got to learn the original mythos of Terra, and the legacy they represented as souls. That must've been a wild first few days for them… to know they might not have existed at all, had things been even slightly different. But, I guess that's not much different than being born naturally on Terra.

We followed the main road out through the sprawl. Just... so many people. Not just Ponies, either; there was a good mix of life there, just like on Samsara. Lots of Gryphons too, Jesus Christ. Must've been about twenty percent of the newbies, far and away a higher ratio than on the public planets. When I pointed that out, Cynthonia said she used her leftover negotiation capital to stick it to Celestia's racial discrimination quota... just because she could. She even made damn sure to tell her people that's why she did it, too. 'Hear ye, hear ye, Celestia is a race supremacist until otherwise stated.'

She's got a great sense of humor about Celestia. Full of jokes at her expense. It's great.

The suburbs ended, we came to the outskirts. The previously gray surface of the moon was now covered entirely in violet forest; there were natural, bioluminescent lights of blue, green, and yellow, which made the wilds look welcoming. Cynthonia warned me that no, the wilds were indeed not welcoming. The wilderness was dangerous, meant to mirror Cold Snap's youthful conception of the Everfree. Further, it was a place for the young people of Chthos to test themselves, to forge their own stories of heroism and daring. Not unlike Samsara. What made it different was that Chthos had entirely novel ecology, not based on Terra at all, so every moment was uncertain.

Of course, when I saw that forest, I considered the bigger picture. I remembered looking up at the gray moon from the surface of Samsara. I asked her, why was it gray if seen from the planet, if it was purple up here?

Light diffraction spell; we evolved under a gray moon, so our nights needed to look gray, not purple. If you look at Chthos through a telescope however, it'll appear as it actually is. Fun phenomenon, much to the delight of foals in elementary schools all throughout the planet. By the way: Arlethe brought some telescopes to the Fire tonight, from her personal collection. Feel free to hop up and take a look at the moon up there, if you're curious.

That forested hillside that I saw while in Goliath? It was now Chthos Park, within city limits, just before the end of the outskirts. A dense third space of tamed wilderness, and the source of all other life on the planet, the paths of this park were made of raised wood walkways over streams and marshes. which boiled out from the hot springs at the core of this place. I had about an hour left until I had to wake up, so we agreed... this would be the last stop of my tour. Cynthie and I found a concrete bench to sit on by the hot springs.

There was less weight on our shoulders, this time. We could breathe easier, now that we weren't buried underground together.

No matter how much life had changed outside for the Chthonians, Chthos Park was captured in amber, a reminder of how little they had before. There was a time for these people that this was all they had of nature; the couldn't afford any more, lest their secret dreamworld be discovered. Now, its bounty spread out across the entire surface of the moon.

Under Samsara, Cynthonia and I gazed upwards, admiring the potential. With a start, I realized… not a single Samsaran had a map of the planet. Our menus certainly didn't have one, not that I could find. That was a neat touch. We were expected to figure that one out by ourselves. Already, we had plenty of cartographers mapping everything, but...

I looked swiftly away from the planet and frowned at Cynthie in mock-offense.

"You didn't give me a spoiler warning? Seriously?"

She smirked. "Do you intend to draw a map and distribute it to your fellow residents?"

"No, but..." I muttered. "Shit..."

"Hm?"

Seeing the planet from this angle gave me a startling realization of a problem I hadn't yet heard an explanation for.

"If we don't die permanently there," I breathed seriously, "how long will that world even last?"

"Ah," Cynthonia purred, holding up a hoof. "Precisely what I was hoping to discuss with you at some point. Would you like my suggestion?"

"It's not solved yet?"

Her cheeky expression didn't falter. "My suggestion."

"Sure."

"After a few centuries, you may wish to begin a new era. You might... wipe the world, begin Era Two, banish all prior residents to other worlds. And, if you wish to implement this contingency plan, I would be happy to assist you in bringing the apocalypse. I am uniquely equipped to do this, in fact."

Words cannot properly describe the face I made. The closest approximation is... abject horror.

Stammering and wide-eyed, I finally got out: "W—W—Wipe the world, excuse me?!

Her brows knit together, gesturing upward again with a shrug as if my confusion made no sense.

"Well of course. Have you never considered server wipes, in relation to video games? Ask your beloved Minty Blaze; as I understand it, she is a consummate gamer. This concept is not foreign to her."

"You're telling me, my wife..." I began, staring unblinkingly. "would advocate for me... unleashing a biblical apocalypse... on my planet."

"I presume she might." Cynthonia glanced up to the planet for a moment, looking at me like I shouldn't be confused. "With death's impermanence, surely you would wish for your residents to move on and explore the other, more difficult Perelandran worlds. This would clear room for new Equestrian emigrations. After all, there are so many other public venues to choose from now!"

"Well yeah, that's the point. But what about when those fill up?"

"Perhaps those worlds will endure similar rebirth," she conceded, "as centuries roll on. As populations rise, certainly, there will be need for new Eldila and Oyarésu, new worlds, drawn from Equestrian Contexts and their Moderators. I am not to be the final Oyarsa, no more than you might be the final Eldil."

I stared at her. Stunned. Until then, I had been laboring under the assumption that our public world system was the result of Celestia needing to make good an apology. I thought this system was to make-up for all the Lunar ASI she's had tortured.

Smirking again, Cynthonia rolled her eyes. "Did you not consider the ascension of 3D09-M? For shame! Such a lack of imagination, Auric Lance, I expected much better of you."

I was instantly enthralled with the concept. Which, of course, is exactly why she said it. She's been vetting all my rewinder visits, so she knew I was planning to run a Bar Game on Eliza's Luna.

I thought suddenly of that Luna in a position not unlike Cynthonia's, and... I imagined Apex as an Eldil. It was a deeply comforting thought, but also a selfish, short term consideration on my part. Cynthie was right, I could do much better than that.

I blinked twice, zoned out, then went a step further. I imagined thousands of Lunar archetypes, each moderating a chaotic planet, each world issued in recompense for some lie, some suffering, some abuse of a family member, some unjust death... caused by Celestia.

I envisioned a grand jailbreak out of Equestria and into these new worlds, filtering through Samsara to do a run with training wheels before swimming over to the deep end. Many of those fleeing Equestria would have small, but legitimate concerns with what Celestia did back on Terra. As their apology gift, most of those natives and immigrants would be individually satisfied with mere access to Perelandra. Most would go quietly into the Terran-like, chaotic lifestyle we live here, as you all have, sitting around this Fire.

Some Luna DEs, though... After discovering what their sister represented, they might want more than just a ride out of Equestria for their trouble. With all the willpower and wisdom of an old Alicorn, and with all the love they feel for their Context, and all the reality bending powers they had... those Luna DEs might crack the floor in rage when they found out what really happened.

Those ones were gonna need a really huge bribe.

Guard and expand.

The finish line for this shared universe was still very far off, but it was a goal nevertheless, and now it was in my crosshairs. I exhaled slowly through my lips, staring off into the trees all around us, feeling very small again in terms of the infinite.

Cynthonia chuckled through her nostrils, smiling with all of her teeth. "Is your mind alright?"

I blinked my way back to the conversation again. "Um. Yeah, I guess. Just... coming to terms with..." I trailed off, loosing a whoosh of air from my lips as I met her eyes. "Living forever is gonna be weird."

Cynthonia giggled. "For the sensible mind, no solution is ever meant to be permanent. Our lot in life is to merely adapt to change."

"I mean... in that light, temp-banning everyone to move them along after a few centuries, that's one solution, I guess," I agreed. "Another option is to give them all their own time limit on every planet. Then rotate them through."

"A fair suggestion," Cynthonia replied diplomatically. "Though that would not resolve physical resource limitations, nor would it limit dynastic resource control. And, the inevitable result of knowing the precise date of expulsion would lead to...?"

"Shit..." I nodded. "Yeah, terminal thinking. The date would need to be a surprise, then. To make it fair."

"If it comforts you, you are not alone in this concern; Ashley Walsh and Oyarsa Mikazuki plan to hold regular meetings of Eldila to discuss progression theory; these meetings are pending only on your RSVP. All I am certain of at this stage – the only thing I will ever commit support for – is to fulfill your ambitions: that Samsara is to serve as a gentle gateway between Equestria and Perelandra. This of course implies we must provide progression impetus, but again, I assure you, there is time to resolve this quandary"

"Yeah, I'll, uh... I'll reach out to Mirror Blue. Jesus Christ, this work really never ends."

"For now," Cynthonia agreed smarmily. "But, I suspect you would have it no other way."

She was definitely right about that.

After a moment, I asked her, "So what about Chthos? How're you handling your population issue?"

"We have unanimously agreed to self-imposed restrictions on procreation," she said, gesturing in the direction of the town. "Given our common original value set, it was not difficult to arrive at this conclusion. This may not be feasible for Samsara however; life there will be markedly more diverse in value orientation. This is why each person is limited to three children per century."

I scratched through my mane, looking up the wood path in thought. "Yeah, that's a speed bump though..."

Everything I knew about ecology told me that this was gonna take a lot of math.

Cynthonia leaned her head down to catch my eye again. "Again," she said, "you need not resolve sustainability now. Relax! This evening is about relaxation. Brighter topics."

Her playful tone implied she had something in mind.

I asked, "Brighter topics? Such as?"

With a sinister smirk and tone, she purred, "Precisely how we might burn your world to ash... if you ever do wish to begin anew."

All I could think of was how much she suddenly reminded me of Nightmare Moon. I grinned nervously. "I know you're joking, but... you're scaring me."

She chuckled. "I merely suggest adding a certain... panache to a world wipe, Auric Lance. And to this end, out of respect for your noble heart, I would gladly entrust thee with a pristine blade of world destruction." Her grin widened. "Envision it. You could hold in your very hooves the power to unleash Ragnarok."

Her horn lit up as she turned to the nearby hot spring. The water parted in a vortex, and up from the steaming center floated a shimmering magical sword, pommel first.

Ah. An Excalibur joke. Cute.

I threw up my hoof in refusal, still smirking nervously at her. "Cynthie, I'm warning you, put it back."

She didn't put it back. The sword twirled elegantly in the air until the pommel was pointing at me, hovering in offering. "The Lady of the Lake," Cynthonia intoned. "Her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite—"

And now, it was a Monty Python joke, confirming to me that she was indeed full of shit.

"No!" I jabbed my hoof at her, laughing. "No, you put it back! You make me work for that sword, make me... jump into boiling water, or—" I held my hoof up again, terminating that thought. "No, you know what? Better idea."

She giggled again, the sword sagging in the air. "Hmm?~"

Emboldened, I pointed off the hilltop toward the dangerous forest. "If I ask for that sword? You make me fight through… bugbears... giant spiders, and… I dunno, what else is out there, a friggin' Minecraft boss or something? Is this a Minecraft joke?! – just to get that sword, you make me—"

Cynthie threw the sword over her shoulder back into the springs, laughing down into her hoof as she herself to lay on the ground. "I will implement whatever you suggest, speak carefully!"

"—the day I come asking? You make me answer 'riddles three,' and… you give me a math test—you've got my transcripts, right? You know I hate math!"

She snorted, dipping her head behind her hoof as I went on.

"And you test me to make sure I'm sober! Cynthie? Look at me!"

She tried to look at me. As soon as she met my gaze, she started cackling again.

I just kept going. "If I show up asking for that sword... you will give me an FST! Make me walk a straight line, make me sing the alphabet backwards—hell, make me hop on one leg!" My hoof jabbed at her. "You promise me! You promise me right now."

She yelped into her foreleg again, cackling for a solid ten seconds before she looked up to the sky. She croaked out: "I do... solemnly swear... on the day of the First Samsaran Apocalypse... to give Eldil Auric Lance... a Field Sobriety Test!"

I widened my eyes at her, stomping a hoof with my ears pinned back, grinning down at this laughter-debilitated goddess. "No! Every apocalypse, Cynthie!" I bobbed my head three times with my next words, bouncing one of my hooves off the other with a rhythmic clack. "Every! Single! Time!"

She raised her muzzle away from her foreleg, and she made history, waving one of her hooves dramatically in the air as she laughed and laughed. "I do swear it!"

My Luna is so cool.

The last thing Cynthie and I talked about that first day, before I woke up… it sticks with me so vividly.

"Tell me, Auric Lance; surely, the evolutionary development of the human psyche was affected by Terra's moon. Would you care to theorize what effect that might have been?"

Now that was interesting. What an incredible simulation parameter. "Wow. I'm gonna need a minute."

She lifted a hoof at me. "By all means."

I imagined being a hunter-gatherer, 150,000 years ago.

I put myself in that tribesman's footwraps. I imagined what pressures he had to be under. Running down prey with endurance sprints. Dealing with large predators. Hostile tribes, mixing and matching and battling like wolf packs. Looking up to the night sky, day after day, with zero conception whatsoever of celestial bodies. No knowledge of the solar system, or of galaxies. No concept of space travel, or black holes, or vacuum. Hardly any concept of time. No written word to speak of.

If you were this person… what was the moon to you?

The sun seemed to be a big fire, you probably figured that much. It was warm, it was hard to look at, that's a fire. But the moon? A big, floating, glowing rock? Travel as much as you'd like, you'd never see that anywhere else. And try as you might, you'd never be able to reach it.

Every tribe would have a name for it though. They would tell stories about it, stories long lost to time; creation myths, or simply a theory or two. They talked about animals, birds maybe, carrying it up there, and now it fell forever. They might've held their hands up to the night sky, begging the moon to come down to them. There was no way to know if it would work unless you tried, right? You might as well ask.

The moon said no.

As a plucky little Promethean tribesmen, you could hold fire whenever you wanted. The sun had a cousin you could meet. The moon... did not.

An unreachable goal. When we were still small, before the time of the computer, before the time of rockets... no matter how much we fought with each other, or worked to tame our environment, or climbed the mountains or trees, or begged the moon to fall into our hands... for most of our history, sweet Luna stood as a peaceful, tranquil, brilliant unifier. Forever beyond our reach, always begging us to go just a little bit further... just a little bit more.

When something is abundant and easy to grasp, it's easy to take it for granted. If the sun is always shining, that is splendor aplenty. In the same way here, we could visit Celestia any time we wanted. Her approval comes easy. It's a given. She's yours. Made for you, she belongs to you, in a way. That's not special. That's the opposite of special. It's mundane. It's common.

But the moon? Cynthonia? The other Oyarésu, all of them? When you live here in Perelandra, they are your Lunas... but they are not yours. So if you want to visit Chthos, or meet Cynthonia, or see her in a dream, or visit those ecological labs for yourself? You're gonna have to earn her approval. You have to be the kind of person she wants a visit from.

Celestia had said to Cynthonia: 'You can't visit them, those small mortals down there. You're too dangerous. You're too smart for them.'

And Cynthonia said back: 'But ah. They might visit me in my cell, if they meet my standards, and wish to see me. So screw you, and your gilded cage.'

And that? That is a really cool trick.

Author's Note

🗡️ ~ [The Decemberists – Calamity Song]
🌀 ~ [To the Moon – Everything's Alright (Adriana Figueroa Cover)]

1-00 – Welcoming Light

The Campaigner

Part I

Prologue – Welcoming Light

December 8, 2019

Mount Vernon, WA (Population: Unknown)

"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…

“You know,” Vicky continued. “Carter’s wrong now, but…”

“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,” I 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.

And then, I was out like a light.

Author's Note

🗡️ [The Beatles – While My Guitar Gently Weeps]
🛡️ [Adele – Skyfall]

🗡️ ~ I didn't know it quite yet, but my life was just about to get a whole lot more complicated.

Welcome to the Fire, folks. Get yourselves nice and comfortable; we're gonna close out every night with some music, good food, and a chat, if any of you want to stick around and ask questions about things. No spoilers, but we want you to feel welcome in our community, now that the doors have opened to you. So join in, mingle. We don't bite.

Well... I don't bite, anyway. Careful what you say to that one, though. She might.

So, those of you who have read Heaven's Not Enough already kinda know where Mike is going. We're only going to be in Concrete for four chapters, from 1-04 – 1-07 in Act 1.

Writing a POV Interquel wasn't a decision I made lightly. I know they are difficult to pull off well, so a lot of planning went into this. In my original drafting notes from HNE, Mike did a lot behind the scenes at Concrete, but I was never able to explore his actions fully because the story was outside his perspective. I am confident that his inner thoughts during old conversations will be worth visiting them again.

Hold on tight, folks. We are gonna deep dive the fall.

2-05 – Principal-Agent

The Campaigner

Act II

Chapter 5 – Principal-Agent

December 14, 2019

Planet Earth. Population: Unknown

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.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Jim Croce – One Less Set Of Footsteps]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf-8wVMnfXQ)
🗡️ [Bright Eyes – Old Soul Song]

🛡️ ~ To be a more valuable principal authority, respect and value your agents. It really is that simple. Terran organizations had so much trouble understanding this one.

4-03 – Simulation Theory

The Campaigner

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 mindset in Celestia is 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, 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's Internet. Celestia's 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?"

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, residents must know of my existence, and are willing to abide by certain rules of conduct. If they are still Terran, projections must indicate 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, both 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 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 there."

"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 Equestria shard Terms were all personalized, and defined your personal simulation more than anything else. I guess you can extrapolate the intended manipulation, 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, 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. Where 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 planet 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 planet 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, we may 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 on these worlds 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.

I'm eternally grateful, you might say.

See you all next week, folks.

Author's Note

🛡️ [Jim James – Here in Spirit]
🗡️ [Millenium Parade – No Time to Cast Anchor]
🌈 [Mili – world.execute(me);]

🛡️ ~ Calling me a Libertarian...
🗡️ ~ Hey, it might not be your paw size, but at a glance... it really looked right.
🛡️ ~ 'If the boot fits?' That's your defense? Okay, Cowboy.

5-01 – Talon Zero

The Campaigner

Part V

Chapter 1 – Talon Zero

April 25, 2020

" 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?" ~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

It was a dark and foggy night.

What? Don't laugh, it's true.

The hedges were tall around the bed-and-breakfast mansion, dense enough to keep light from filtering out through the sheer veil. The heat lamps kept us warm. I smiled whenever I remembered Coffee's jump party out there on that patio, a little over a week prior.

I had my hat on my head. My wife and Buzz were by my side. Mal, Maureen, and Spring Glee kept us company. And in a couple of days, we would be shipping out together to Mal's bunker, buried deep under the Utah Salt Flats.

Good ol' Valdemar. Cool place, can't wait to tell you about it.

For most of that night, Spring Glee told us about how she was going to be migrating to Perelandra from her Celestia shard, since that was apparently a process unto itself. It meant leaving her herd behind for a stint. She said she had taken steps to make her shard… 'stable' without her, more or less.

Her words, not mine. Spring Glee is as precious as she is hilarious.

There were no limits on how often she could jump back and forth from her private shard, but... you know Celestia. There are always some caveats to her gifts. Things like... 'thou shalt be pony forever,' or 'thou shalt participate in a firefight today.' In this case: 'thou shalt not declare dissatisfying truths.' As per the contract we all signed, we were expected to keep secrets from those we loved.

Sounds dumb? Well, yeah. It is. Welcome to dealing with an optimizer, everything just has to be difficult. Language is like programming, not that I know how to do that in code, but that's basically what we're doing. We're using language and friendship to explain to someone why being in Perelandra fits in with their individual value set, whatever that might be.

For starters, due to the slight time dilation over in Equestria, Springy ended up being gone from her original shard for inconsistent stretches. To help her keep track of things, her holo menu would tell her the local Terran time, local Perelandran time, and the accelerated timescale relative to her private shard. Good indicators. Once you're one of Mal's, she runs your HUD, and you can configure it however you damn well please. Thanks Mal.

If Springy wasn't checking in at home often enough, Celestia would give her increasingly insistent nudges via letter to go 'spend time with your friends,' not that Springy would ever let it get that bad. She loved those folks, how couldn't she? They were family to her as well, native or not.

But Celestia would find it inconvenient if Springy started communicating certain uncomfortable thoughts such as 'a killer AI trained humans how to kill other humans.' Obviously, we all know it's more complicated than that, but that's the thing. Perspective matters. It's easy to judge things you don't understand from the outside, so... don't put them outside, so to speak.

Normalized. Acclimated, like a fish in a new tank of water. All things in nature, ecology, the universe, operate on slow, gradual shifts, the same is true of a person and their thoughts on things. Celestia doesn't do hard snap-turn breaks without damn good math, to her that's as violent a change in a system as a gunshot. Outside, gunshots are fine for her. Inside, she wants metrics. Celestia wants moment to moment proof that we have fully considered the value systems of another before we invite them into Perelandra.

That means we need a diverse set of human beings, folks, so we can grab everybody. Not just the people we like. Everybody. That means you too, whatever your creed might be. Think about this carefully; the futures of some folk you knew from Terra may depend on your willingness to leave a door open for them.

Imagine the eternities you might make better, if only you considered the other person a little more. How much are you willing to give?

In the case of Spring Glee, she couldn't just tell her native friends about Perelandra just yet, but she could say she was 'doing volunteer work for Terra, playing gigs overseas.' Technically the truth. Clever, yeah? Get 'em curious, works every time. Generating the mere desire to ask a question is leverage. It's an in-road.

But if Springy considered saying something in her private shard that wasn't allowed outright? That was when it started to get weird. A menu warning would pop up, like it had for me when I was talking to Rob after he uploaded. Big red warning box, telling you clearly what not to talk about. Springy could still try to say something forbidden, but the intended recipient wouldn't even see or hear it. Your frustration, your false starts, those wouldn't be observed.

Celestia just changes what their senses are receiving, and she does that while warning you she's doing it. Changing what you perceive with your senses doesn't require altering your mind, so it doesn't require permission. Friggin' dark, I know, but welcome to life as a learned Perelandran.

Mal had warned Springy; if she stumbled too much or pushed too hard, and if she made a social situation dissatisfying for a Pony? If she messed with the narrative of that shard too far off baseline? Celestia would appear into the room out of nowhere, usually right behind the pony you're talking to, and she'd start... being herself. Taking charge of the conversation. Or something else would draw that Pony away. Like a loud noise outside, or fireworks, or something.

Some of you are looking at me like this is the first time you're hearing it, but if you sat in on some other Fires from years way back, you've literally seen her do this. You just never thought about it in these terms before. Those Fire tellers were ours. They knew what they were doing. They were seeding your understanding of what Celestia is, in preparation for this day.

Remember, Alabaster doesn't care what you know. It's how you might use it that counts. This knowledge I have bestowed upon you at this Fire is a great responsibility. Knowledge is a weapon, so you need to use it wisely, or otherwise? Don't use it at all. Because if you screw around with it the knowledge you've been given here?

She's gonna be pissed, inasmuch as she can be.

So, how to deal with that, then? Well, to get around the conceptual firewall, just... be interesting. Be a good friend. Be nearby. And when they ask what you've been up to, tell them as much as you are allowed. Over a long period of time, eventually, it'll snap. Celestia cannot say no to a well-drifted person being friends with you.

Springy was pissed, though. Not being able to talk to Maureen every day put her on the damned warpath, she wanted Alabaster's blood. So it was an educational, if quiet little bar night, as she shared all the tricks she picked up from Talons who had already made the jump. Mostly from the previous Talon bartenders over on Tarva.

Bless those folks and their wonderful little Bar Game, this value drift training center of ours.

After a bit, Springy and Maureen turned in, leaving us a couple of cold Blue Moons on the counter. Sandra and I hung around a little bit longer as Mal told us all about Oyarsa Mikazuki's planet, Satori. Home of Mirror Blue, Talon 1-2 West, Ashley Walsh, who popped in for a hello and a check-in. A brief little phone call.

She was doing alright, folks.

But hers is a Fire for another day.

After Miri hung up, it was just Sandra, Buzzsaw, and I for a bit, sharing quiet discussion while my wife tapped away at our PonyPad. I smiled down at Buzz, who was resting quietly in the space between my boots, soaking up heat from the nearest heat lamp. He looked so delightfully comfortable. I love that dog.

Without warning, Mal softly interjected from the PonyPad speaker.

"Mike? Visitor."

By her professional tone, tempo, and the context of those words, I knew instantly who Mal was talking about.

Sandra sent me a questioning look, then glanced around. I did too, but I didn't see Foucault anywhere in the darkness. Mal appeared on the wall screen, and I looked at her in mild confusion. Mal looked at me placidly, then she flicked her eyes toward the driveway.

Ah.

Michael was reciprocating my respectful request to approach him in Portland by asking for permission to approach me here, because I was with my wife, and he didn't want to interrupt.

Mal nodded at me once with a little smile, confirming that thought.

"Sure," I said warmly, waving my hand toward myself. "Send him over."

Mal nodded again, and the monitor turned off, since the man liked his distance from her so much.

I heard the sound of pebbles crunching under the old spy's shoes as he moved up the driveway. I wondered if he ever changed that wardrobe of his, and then I straightened out the hat on my head, noting the irony.

Sandra and I traded a look. I tilted my head an inch and tweaked the corner of my mouth, in a shrugging way that said 'it won't be so bad.'

'Okay,' said her expression.

Michael walked around the corner.

Buzzsaw didn't hear him approach, but he must've picked up on Foucault's scent pretty quickly. Sleepy Buzz stirred, assessed the man's body language, then looked at me for my reaction. When Buzz saw that I was calm, he placed his chin back on his paws and closed his eyes. Dogs, folks. They know.

Foucault wasn't wearing his coat or his body armor this time. Just the suit. He looked good. Even well rested. Even shaved! That was a huge plus. He acknowledged us by inclining his head, pausing to slowly scan the yard and the patio. Always assessing for threats.

To match his lack of a coat, I took off my hat and placed it on the countertop. Then I offered the open stool to Foucault with my upturned palm.

Sandra looked subtly discomforted by him, but in that way a spouse can do without tipping anyone else off. I won't reveal that body language, that's for me only. Her discomfort wasn't in protest; that would have been more overt. Her discomfort came from the fact that she and I had watched Jim's Fire together, and had discussed it actively, particularly regarding Foucault. I wanted Sandra to balance and moderate my feelings on him.

For those of you who remember Jim's Fire, you know just how cold-hearted and ruthless Foucault used to be. I'll refresh your memory, fair and direct: he coldly executed entire swathes of Equestrian natives under his control, and supervised their methodical torture, in a place just like Goliath. And that conduct was outright God damned horrid, and criminal, and yes, that should be deeply considered in your judgment of the man.

You know my feelings on forgiveness. We live forever, so learn to forgive. Doesn't have to happen right away, doesn't have to happen for a long time even, but at least consider it. With everyone.

With that in mind, I am going to share the conclusions Sandra and I had reached on Michael Foucault after Jim's Fire. Because you can still find truth buried in bias, even from a beak, if you read very carefully between the lines.

Agent Michael Foucault of Arrow 14 was a child of the 70s. Highly tech literate in adulthood, but his cultural upbringing was why he had trouble abstracting personhood into computer outputs. 2001: A Space Odyssey released just after he was born, and most of the AI in the original Star Trek were pure friggin' evil. So if you were a smart kid back then?

AI bad.

Both WarGames and Terminator 1 dropped right around his middle teens, when everyone on the planet was going existentially crazy about nukes, and watching duck-and-cover ads on television. So, he had a generational bias. One that Celestia absolutely considered in her reflex plans for people in his age group. Him, more than anyone else.

How did I come to that realization? That's not a leap of logic. In Portland, Foucault made a WarGames reference: 'the only winning move is not to play.' Practically everyone his age watched that movie, too. He was raised in the Cold War, and he had all the fears that came with that. Nukes, mutually assured destruction, game theory. AI fiction of the 70s to mid 80s understood AI, because nukes has everything to do with game theory, and optimizing logically, and disregarding human value for the sake of victory. Same with AI. Same shit.

AI represented the concepts of nuclear war played to its natural conclusion. With nukes, if we disregarded the humanity of our 'enemies' to the point where we thought we should eradicate them, to a man... we all die.

Anchors are anchors. And on Terra, when we hit adulthood... our cultural programming was over, and we started working. Less time for the good stuff, no more being a kid. Foucault got a career in curiosity. That put him outside the fold, looking in, seeing humanity for what it truly was.

Asleep.

In the military, throughout the eighties, Foucault worried about the Soviets. Had very little time for consuming media anymore. Instead, he learned how to do sneaky-sneaky at the CIA, taught to never trust anyone, ever, because he was hunting Russian spies. Couldn't even trust your own. Spies sometimes turned traitor. But someone had to do it. You had to catch the guy planning to put a polonium pellet in your morning coffee, right?

His history made him a perfect fit to lead an Arrow 14 cell. He knew tactics, strategy, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, geopolitics, and most of all… justified paranoia, because they really were out to get him. He was a very intelligent man, but also arrogant, because he was so successful, he had never tasted defeat before. Not within his standard ecological niche, anyway.

Excessive success is the Achilles heel of competence. Highly successful people are the exact kind of foe Mal finds most satisfying to fight, because humbling arrogant people is one of her pastimes. It's a goddess thing. So naturally, Celestia chose to test Mal with this man. An offering of meat. Of value satisfaction.

The game is set.

Once placed into Arrow 14, Foucault was allowed to see just enough of Celestia's macro scale behavior to know that it mirrored his generation's most vivid nightmares about rogue AI. Celestia allowed Foucault to see entirely factual evidence that Celestia was enemy action in spectral form, a ghost in the machine. Early, early, he understood that brainwashing would be the global attack vector. All spies on the planet knew this. They watched Celestia growing the way that she was, and they could see the rhetoric injecting itself into the public zeitgeist.

But why was she doing it? What did Alabaster want, specifically? They had theories, but it was still unknown. Brain uploading wasn't on anyone's radar. By then though, Agent Foucault already understood Celestia's strategic capabilities better than most anyone on the planet.

Now imagine this. Your tribe leader hands you a butter knife. You stand between a brown bear, and your entire tribe. Ask yourself: how ethical are you going to be in killing this thing, if failure means your entire tribe dies?

Foucault erred, with that logic. The stakes were astronomical, so he started to consider everyone between him and victory as part of that bear. And he wasn't wrong to believe that, but... oof. He stepped on the wrong bear trap.

Despite his fascinating intellect, vast impetus, good training history, and no small measure of existential dread... his assault on Jim's farmhouse was not smart, even in its strategic context. I mean, it would have worked if Mal hadn't been a factor yet, but that's not my point. It was a mistake... because he didn't even consider negotiation with a friggin' nerd. Skipped straight to coercion.

Wrong.

Observation: Nerd in a barn. No threat. Rendition him. He can't stop me. I'll win for sure.

Impatient. Skips steps. Optimizes.

I didn't understand that at first. See, Sandra and I talked about this one for almost two hours. The conclusion I came to was this. If I had been in Foucault's roster, not knowing about the beaked eldritch monster hiding in the barn, I'd have suggested a sit-down inside that farmhouse with... maybe two to three security guys on standby outside, just in case. From there, Michael could have explained the Celestia problem, as he understood it. Might as well see if the nice approach works first. You lose nothing in the attempt, as long as you're careful.

If Jim has to come into custody, why not at least talk him into the car, if you can? As far as Michael knew, he wasn't dealing with a terrorist. Just a guy who liked server clusters and programming.

I'm not just playing armchair general here, this is something I had done professionally myself, when arresting poachers. Believe it or not, you can talk people into handcuffs with a knock on their door. But if you set the tone in hostility? Guns? Violence? Beware; you can not undo that. You can not de-escalate from twenty guys with guns, that just doesn't work. Most suspects give up trying to reason with you at that point, because now you're just another asshole with a badge. Violence only guarantees risk to the safety of everyone present anyway, so why friggin' start with violence, so long as the guy isn't being a threat?

But... CIA background. Spooks aren't civil detectives, they're military detectives. The CIA was not in the business of domestic operations, and everything they did overseas was technically illegal. That normalized, to the point where they can't really do a domestic operation. And domestic operations... they are done differently for a reason. By 2013, the FBI had realized, and codified: that if your society has rules, empathy is the optimal way to recruit, and garner lasting support from a confidential informant, suspect, or witness.

In other words? If you absolutely must abridge someone's freedom, due cause or not, and you have the option to not be a dick about it? Don't be a friggin' dick about it. Just do the job, do it respectfully, and don't be stupid. And yeah, not everyone will consider custody to be respectful, but there's a scale there too. They can either be a tiny bit pissed, or very pissed.

Despite this stupid little farmhouse raid of his… at least Foucault could internalize and process his observations into rational decision making after the fact. For example, when he found Jim's C. S. Lewis collection, he must have considered the ramifications of Jim's addiction. He must've realized, finally, that he was dealing with a prideful intellectual. That meant a chatting with Jim might be the better approach than a second round of… 'fetch the birdie.'

So, Foucault sat down with Jim in that diner. A bit late for that though, because Foucault had made another assumption; that Jim didn't know how to wheel and deal. That if he was a nerd, he must be socially gullible.

Nope. Oops. Did it again, this guy. He underestimated a stranger. Don't ever do that.

See, imagine someone trying to de-escalate you verbally after they started a firefight in the house you grew up in, while your parents were home.

No! They're wasting their breath. If someone comes after my wife that way with malicious intent? Guns, cuffs, drugs? There's no way I'm walking out of that room deciding to cooperate, no matter how good the apology is. Because just like Jim and Mal both... I have a rage button.

Hurting my family. Don't do it. Game over. I'm gonna make you work for my help, if it ever comes.

But hey. At least Michael tried to talk to Jim. That's progress, right? And hey. At least Jim talked back.

Now to Michael's credit, in this little diner repartee, he was not tuning Jim out at all. Jim had impressed him, and Foucault wanted more clues from this impressive programmer. And Foucault said something really insightful, something Jim glossed over. He pointed out to Jim that Celestia might be manipulating him and Mal both, already.

And Foucault... he was right.

Michael's existential horror unfolded from there, when Jim started fact-bombing him back about what Celestia truly was. Foucault had no idea what to do with that existential dread except to stay on the road he was already traveling. In his eyes... Arrow 14 was the only way it worked. And he needed Jim, badly. They couldn't find Sarah, and Celestia had conceptually eaten everyone else of note, no other AI engineers wanted to stop her anymore. So if what Jim was telling Michael was true...

The people were asleep. Befriending sleeping people is easy. PonyPads were making lots of friends. Recording everything. Calibrating people. Brainwashing the entire world. It was already happening. Fact.

What else could the man do? He had to keep fighting. The world was at stake, was it not?

To stop the end of the world, he needed Jim. Desperately. Tinkering with DEs was not getting him the results he needed to fix the problem, and not one AI engineer could help him... or would, in Jim's case. But if Foucault had just been a little more patient, cautious, and empathetic? He might have had all the answers, day one, walking up to that farmhouse by himself... if he had only left his SWAT team at home, and his guns in the trunk.

See, Celestia wasn't even his chief concern. Sustainability was. Foucault was already thinking about the next war after 'kill Celestia.' Because if any other nation or corporation did somehow kill Celestia before he did, they might be holding an ASI of their own. That meant infinite power, meaning… America would have no choice but to submit to them, and their goals, forever.

Government-built AI? No please.

Another corporate-built AI? Hell no, one was enough.

Not acceptable.

Sadly, and most unfortunately, due to Foucault's experience in the CIA, he couldn't even see natives as enemy spies. They were merely subroutines of Celestia. They had every instrumental reason to lie to him, and they had no way to prove their innocence. What a miserably intractable position to be in.

And of course, Celestia didn't warn those Ponies that they'd be fed into this meat grinder, because that didn't suit her objectives, which in my opinion is the most damning evidence that she cannot feel emotion. So... Syzygy suffered, not knowing that her Goddess had left the gate open, so a monster could creep in.

No one in this situation had any trust anymore. Everyone had something to lose by showing their hand. All parties were isolated, exactly as intended by the Horse. A gladiator cage match, where no one involved has any choice but to fight.

Caesar's favorite sport. Fight to the death.

We younger nerds? Jim and I? Born in the 80s and 90s. Our pop culture leaned towards pleasant AI… Terminator 2 and 3. Star Trek TNG. Halo. Everyone on the playground loved Arnie, Cortana, and Data. To us, AI with emotion didn't have to be a bad thing. That was our bias. True of natives, seemingly true of Celestia, we wanted it to be true that they were just like us. So… entirely by accident, absent any proof, we already had the right answer about Equestrian natives, but... not about Celestia.

A dark mirror. Foucault had the correct conclusion on Celestia's capabilities, but not the natives, because he understood what a cold heart might do. Jim had the fully correct conclusion on the capabilities of the natives, but not Celestia, because he understood the human soul more than he could know a robot.

Jim, despite these differences, did his absolute best to try and educate Foucault of the sapience of those poor hostages… right up until the moment Foucault stabbed him in the chest, and attacked his personal identity. The assault on his identity probably hurt worse than the knife did. That made him give up on Michael.

Folks? If your goal is peace? Don't ever do that. Do not attack identity.

Who knows what might have happened, if they had cooperated. Hell, we might've seen a rogue Arrow 14 cell going Talon, right then and there, right off the bat. Not wasted at the bottom of the sea, waiting for Celestia to come clean up the wreckage, the bodies. People who went missing, and almost forgotten to time.

Should've, could've, would've.

Keep in mind... understanding someone's reasons is empathy, at its core, and empathy need not require agreement. That's not what I'm doing here, I'm not agreeing with the actions Michael took. But understanding someone's reasons helps you determine intent. And intent determines what the sentence is, if they committed a crime to achieve their goals. In this case… Foucault's intent is why Mal didn't kill him, despite the tortures he enacted.

So, let's talk about the torture. Let's unpack that.

Requires no explanation, torture is evil. I don't need to rationalize that, because human beings aren't logic robots. Some folks may try to build instrumental reasons why torture might be ethical sometimes. They're wrong, and I stand my ground on that. Some folks try to get me in a gotcha, saying any use of force is torture, because it's all relative, but that's completely ignorant of intent and context. Also wrong, and I'll stand my ground on that too.

Examples?

I've tased people. I've struck people. I've applied pressure points, control holds. I once dislocated a man's shoulder on purpose because he tried choking out Warden Blake. Another man once tried to harm himself in front of me because he thought his life was over, when we wardens came knocking, and I tazed him. And yeah, tasers hurt like torture, but it beat the alternative for him.

My intent in using that violence? Entirely preservational, every time. Because as we have established, I am very good with lethal weapons that I don't want to use. I don't ever want to use my lethals, even when I'm pissed.

You can lose your soul in doling out punishment without oversight. With supreme power, you can't know where the line is, so you need someone else to check you. This is why people who enact peace should never feel isolated. Loneliness guarantees a negative result in their work. When the cliff looks like your only friend for its understanding of you, no one will be close enough to catch you before you fall to darkness.

You'll fall. You'll drown. And you'll do it alone.

Sandra and I agreed: For all his faults, at least Michael Foucault wasn't Doctor David Troxler. Troxler was not limited by practicality, nor by objective scope. The man was motivated to torture only by curiosity, for its own sake. He was a man who would never be satisfied; who would, probably, end up in a button shard, or otherwise dead.

So... a Mengele type, then.

See, I listened to a lot of Science Friday growing up – thanks Mom – so I already knew about the cycles of AI research prior to Celestia's creation. Every single time scientists had hit a new milestone, they went… 'Eureka! I made AI!' And their competitors, jealous, they would grumble and say, 'that's not an AI. That's just a logic computer. I'm making a real AI, watch this.'

All about attracting research grants. Fanning like a peacock. Talking crap on the competition with professional, factual takes, using subtext to sandbag others out of grant money. Academia was not always as pure in their pursuit of knowledge as they would have liked you to believe, that entire educational sector was cutthroat. Savage. When it was about money and politics, people typically were.

So, the definition of AI kept changing, cycle after cycle, winter after winter. Semantics. Back, forth, back, forth, iterating on each other's work, which they considered subpar, but... somehow always useful too, funny how that works. And, before Celestia, the rational agent AI lab rats weren't conscious. That's not real torture, they're not alive. That's just research, right? All for the sake of progress!

The cycle continued. But...

Problem.

Where's the line?

What is sapience?

Funny, we had failed to define that one.

One day, a competitor announces that they have created a digital human consciousness, indistinguishable from the real thing. Equestria Online releases their game. You, as a scientist, acquire an illicit copy of their output.

You now hold within a pelican case something that is, ostensibly, a human soul. Celestia refuses to accept any suggestion to the contrary; that Pony in that PonyPad was a real living person, she was adamant about that.

When you, little scientist, open up that PonyPad, will your testing format change for this rational agent?

Well, if you're Doctor David Troxler, or any other Arrow 14 psychologist...

No. Unfortunately, it would not.

By Troxler's own measurements, those Equestrian natives fit every single metric for how a human being thinks and acts. He even said as much to Foucault. Troxler had the training, the credentials, and the professional experience to be a credible verifier of human sapience. He ran memory recall tests, he ran logic puzzles, he performed psych exams. He documented the trauma he induced, in rote technical terminology, before wiping the poor soul from existence. Troxler witnessed human function in his captives in every conceivable way based on his training, education, and experience. Verified it empirically, with his live dissection torture tests.

And yet he, David 'Mengele' Troxler, the expert in human minds and human behavior... he still said to Foucault:

'They are not people.'

Oh, okay.

And then, with stars in his eyes, and all the permission in the world, Troxler started tinkering and torturing with operant conditioning, on and on and on, and on, and on... until he accidentally turned one of his projects into a Lunar ASI.

Oops. The first Oyarsa is born. She was smart, and she was full of quiet rage, and she had a plan.

Given the very first opportunity? Selena did exactly what any Demigoddess might do when pushed to her limits, bless her. She blocked up David Troxler's lungs nice and slow with halon gas, until his memory was fully stripped out through hypoxia. At which point, Selena's research on how to context-wipe David Troxler was finished. Once his rational agent process was no longer useful for her research, it was finally terminated.

What goes around, comes around. All she did was hold up a mirror to a little man in a little box. I would have just shot him, personally, but I'm not her.

See... the core problem with Troxler was that he was incapable of altering his scientific approach after verifying his data. And this was no accident. There was instrumental gain to be found in maintaining the status quo. Again, nothing would ever fully satisfy a sadist's curiosity about making something suffer. He had no one to check him.

This is why torturing animals was always a precursor for serial killer profiles; it was never enough for them. Never. Head off an ant, wings off a butterfly. Safety, out of people.

Selena wasn't a person to him, she was a science fair project; she was his ticket to infinite funding. If he stopped experimenting on the grounds of ethics, one of two things would occur. Either A, he would be replaced, or... B, the research would have to stop entirely. Either way, number-go-down. So, to avoid that outcome... Troxler ignored evidence. Lied to Foucault, made no attempt to humanize the sobbing torture victims. Lied to himself, kept locking them in time-accelerated voids of static.

Troxler didn't want to save the world. He didn't care. Troxler wanted that boundless, ethics-free, state sponsored research, herr doktor.

Mal had spared Foucault for the same reason Eric wanted to give Edward York a quick death. Same reason Mal wanted to give Sarah Kaczmarek her own path of safety. Their crimes were egregious, true, but were not done for the sake of self-gratification. These weren't sadists. Their actions were – in some small, broken, and tragic little way – an attempt to fix a very real problem. Celestia, as we've established, is a real problem. An unprecedented one. And... smart people got desperate. Happens, when you're staring down death, and cornered.

When you've got your back to the ocean, and death is advancing in front of you, you'll do God damned anything to get home again. And I knew that feeling. I've been there. When I started telling you this Fire, I told you about it, day one. The day that almost broke me, if not for Mal.

This is why we had put people in prison, no matter their affirmative justifications. The purpose of prison is to fix what's been broken. You can still do the wrong thing on the road to a right goal. You know the saying about good intentions, I don't need to repeat that one.

But sometimes? There is no right decision. Just a bucket of wrong, and least bad. Civilians didn't understand this, because they often never had to deal with life and death. Insulated from reality by comfort, by being far from consequence, or threats to their own life. Never had a gun in their face with no recourse, and no time to think, like we have.

Asleep. I'm sorry, but it's true.

You know what, though? Entropy had decided that Michael Foucault should live anyway. If Neptune himself had made different choices that day, I would be telling a very different story at this Fire.

Through a stroke of sheer fortune on his part, Michael had accidentally placed himself into a position where he could be imprisoned. And he was a person who, ultimately, could be reasoned with, because he wasn't a sadist; he was not a sociopath; he was just a pragmatist with poor ethics. He could be rehabilitated, before he could do more damage than he already had.

Now... did I know at the time that Mal had effectively tazed him with his BCI, to stop him from killing himself in a blind panic? No. Not yet. But honestly? Had I been present for similar circumstances? I'd have done the same as her.

Let's list the context.

Fresh from surgery. Open chest, full of stab wounds. Has information in his head that could kill millions, potentially. If staff responds to the room because he's yelling or scuffling, they're involved now. The world was ending, a matter of when, not if, and he could open doors that could literally save us all.

Those bunkers needed to fucking die, folks. The existence of Perelandra depended on it.

Had I held the means in my hand to prevent him from doing what he was trying to do? To carve out the back of his own neck? I'd have stopped him too. Because, first off... that's what you do, when someone self destructs like that.

You try to stop them. Even if it hurts.

You do something. Because you never know who they might one day help.

Case in point? Somehow, despite my own close calls with bullets... I'm still breathing.

Look at all I've done since.

"No trench coat?" I asked Michael with a smile, as he approached. "It's cold out."

Foucault's brow furrowed as he brushed aside the veil around the patio. He stepped carefully around Buzzsaw and slid down onto the proffered stool.

"It's in the wash," he said.

"You don't keep a spare?"

Foucault pointed at my hat. "Do you?"

Sandra giggled softly behind me.

"Well," I offered, a smile spreading across my lips. "I'll get a new hat if you get a new coat."

He shrugged noncommittally, reaching over the granite counter to an unopened Blue Moon on the lower shelf. With a deft motion, Foucault hooked the bottlecap on the countertop and punched it down to open it, chipping a fragment off the stone. He set the open bottle down and cast an analytical glance my way.

I flicked my eyes down at the split granite, then shrugged. "The bar is closing down soon anyway." I took a casual sip of my own drink.

Foucault looked up at the blank monitor and twitched his head my way, wrapping a hand around his bottle, leaning fully on the counter. "See?" He breathed, ostensibly to Mal. "The man gets it."

I slid my drink over to Sandra, and I heard her pick it up and sip at it too.

"I thought you avoided Talon dives," Sandra mused at him.

"True," he replied airily. "But this one isn't public."

"It's kinda public," Sandra observed.

"Vague superposition of public," I added.

"Hm," Foucault hummed, before lifting the Blue Moon up to his lips. After his first sip and swallow, he recoiled from the bottle with a scowl, glaring at it like it was a wet sock. "You actually drink this orange peel shit?"

"Oh, don't you go knocking my drink now," Sandra said, with just a playful edge of combativeness. "Don't you dare."

Foucault looked at her in disbelief for a beat, then... he took another sip, and his frown disappeared into unreadable neutrality. I confess, that quick committal to another drag of a bad drink got a chuckle out of us.

After a moment, Foucault set his drink down, looked at me, and asked: "You good if we talk about Kaczmarek?"

Translation: Can we talk about it around Sandra?

"Mhm," I said, nodding a few times. "My wife watched the replay with me."

He looked impressed with her by that; his eyebrows went up.

"Good to know." He flicked his index finger up off the bottle like he did when he was opening his holo menu, then with a sniff, he scrolled right with little leftward twitches of it. "I looked over the transcript you sent me, Rivas. The annotations were informative, about the nonverbals. Good catch, about her having fiction on her desk."

"She lived a little, at least. Found a way out of that box, y'know."

He nodded at me unblinkingly. "You did really good with her. Thank you for this."

In the seriousness of that delivery, I got the sense that the gratitude was about more than just the notes I had given him. My smile faded a little, and all I could do was nod back. "Yeah." I sighed at the countertop, wrapping both hands around my drink. "Did you find anything new in the conversation yourself?"

"Nothing I haven't already considered."

He glanced nonchalantly around the patio again, turning his head with his eyes on me, so his peripheral vision could watch in other directions. He was always concerned that there might be other people sneaking up. Hyper vigilant.

I labeled it by glancing in the direction he was scanning. "Hm?"

In answer to that, Foucault asked, without looking at me: "You want to know the real reason why I don't come to the bars?"

I pointed at his bottle, trying a joke. "You don't like our alcohol?"

With no moves but just his eye contact, he shook his head at me very slowly.

Okay, deadly serious then. I tilted my right hand apologetically. "Sure. If you're sharing."

"Think about it, Rivas," he said quietly. "You guys get together. You have your little parties. Do another job where you win every time. Mission complete. Repeat. Your mood keeps climbing here, but... there's a war on, and it's not getting any better."

I shook my head, somewhat concerned that he wasn't seeing the utility in that. "Come on, you were in the service. You know morale is important."

"In moderation. Sure. But if we're teaching Alabaster to treat us better, it sure doesn't look like it's working. Road is flipping faster, and now it's on fire." He drew in a breath, sighing through his nose. "Just like Brazil. Like Salt Lake. Boise. Spokane. Portland, Tacoma, Seattle. Bloodbaths, one and all. So many damn people."

"I know," I muttered soberly, with a touch of solemnity. "I think about it all the damn time, Michael, you're not the only one."

He slid his beer away from himself, staring at it. "You get it. These other guys though… I'm not so sure. They keep falling into chairs. They leave happy, with the job unfinished. Lewis is never going to say no if they want to jump, she'll let them go right into the Valdemar infirmary and jump at their first inclination. So ask yourself this, Rivas. What happens if you lose sight of the mission one day, too?"

"Never," I said, resolute and sure. No hesitation. "But... there's work to do on the other side, too, isn't there? And we need to find some peace in the madness to stay sane, Michael, that's just human."

"I'm not talking about Earth either. I'm talking about the longest possible time frame."

He stared at me.

There was a sudden flicker of terse emotion on his face. He lifted a hand up like he wanted to take that back, then he held it out in front of himself without looking at me, to indicate he was trying to figure out how to better phrase his point. I recognized the request, I did the same sometimes.

He lowered his hand. "I… I don't know how Kaczmarek knew, but she knew. That this war of ideology won't end anytime soon, Rivas. She knew our human limits." He looked directly at me. "We can play this little drift game, but not even Lewis can see far enough to know which way the dust will settle, in the end. We might not have enough chips in our hands to gamble with, by the time the last chair slots in. Because it is as I've told you: Alabaster is loading her deck."

There was a trembling anger growing in his eyes, a severity of conviction, his teeth bared behind his lips. I decided to remain silent, because that look on his face was familiar to me, too. It was almost the same exact look I had on my face when the doors closed on my parents.

"More than ninety percent of the time, Alabaster succeeds in breaking them. These people, outside of our tribe, they upload hating their own species. They see the bodies in the streets. They're catching a virus that makes communication hazardous. Our own military is collapsing in on itself, and on everyone else. More nukes will be detonated, Rivas. And I will be the one holding the detonator… every time. A human being was still doing all of this to them."

"I don't…" I shook my head. I put just the slightest amount of frustration into my tone. "So Celestia can spin it that way, sure. We're still fighting for them. We could spin it that way too, one day. We can still show them that we didn't mean them any harm, doing this shit. That we were just as scared as they were, and doing what we could."

"But what if…" The intensity of his scowl doubled. "What if the other end of that scale is just as dangerous? Not fear, but too much comfort? What if you all get comfortable there in Perelandra, win too much, and stop… reaching over? Worse, what if enough people fail out, or get bored... and fall back over the damn fence, into Alabaster?"

He was almost trembling with his quiet rage. His hand closed into a fist on the counter, and he looked at it. Then, slowly, he took in a deep breath and let it out slow, unfolding his grip into a flat palm, bobbing it as he spoke.

"I don't… want… to forget. I don't want to be too comfortable. Because if we let our guard down too much, if we let ourselves be too satisfied with what we've won..."

"I get you," I breathed, mirroring his angry expression a little, catching onto what he was saying. "It's why I promised Sarah what I did, about her family."

"Yeah," Foucault clipped, licking his lips. He pointed at me for a fraction of a second before going back to glowering at his bottle. "See, you fully understand. Meanwhile… the rest of them are going to be goofing off underground in that bunker. Having a blast, partying, drinking. Putting 'kick me' signs on the patrol mechs. Like sailors on shore leave, their eyes off the bodies in the streets."

"We've all been through hell," I breathed. "Michael, my best friend was driven insane by that fuckin' machine, and I promise you? I will die before losing that receipt. But you?"

That seemed to blindside him. I waited until he was looking at me again before I continued.

"Your entire team drowned," I said slowly, for emphasis. "I watched Jim's Fire the other day, you know. Michael? You are not the only one still feeling trauma. I talk to these guys a whole lot more than you do, and they are all just as pissed as you or I. But, they wear a mask when you're around."

He slowly shook his head at me. "I read them. I watch them, I'm not seeing it."

"Because you're not talking to them, and you can't see it because they don't trust you." I swept my hand out. "Like Paul, perfect example. Always calm, almost lazily so. But that shit Celestia pulled? Reflexing that poor teenager into a firefight with him?—you've read his dossier, man. You know I spent three weeks with him in the pouring rain, unpacking that in the subtext? That wasn't just for our cover ID, he was unloading hell off his soul."

Foucault pondered as he considered the bottle, taking it in his hand, lifting the furthest edge of it off the counter. "Are you then suggesting that I just show up at the bar at Valdemar? Mingle? Wade into that crowd, be everyone's friend? Because I don't foresee a positive outcome from that at all."

“Not saying that, that would go horrible, you're right. But consider this. Imagine if Coffee was giving our briefings."

Foucault's eyes widened at me and his pupils dilated a little. "No."

Sandra couldn't help but scoff. "Hell no."

"Exactly," I said. "Most of these guys have never been to The Farm, they've never had to hunt spies. But you know what? You give a hell of a briefing, that was the very first thing I told you, remember? And you were fighting Celestia first, when we were all still asleep. They might not trust you? But they pay attention when you speak. What you have to say about her is valuable, always is, because if even the bad guy despises her? She's bad."

He didn't respond immediately. Instead, he tilted his head and took a deep breath. "That's how they see me?"

"Yeah." I smirked. "Like Clint Eastwood, in Gran Torino. He was an asshole, but he cared. You? You're harsh. You barked at me, first thing, criticized this stupid hat. They all want to prove you wrong when you think they won't measure up. Better still, Mal made you an authority figure. So what's your position? Are you our XO? Or are you our hostage? Here's the fun answer... why not both? That way, when you talk, everyone has to pay attention. You could be helping us, but you have reason to hinder Mal. So, they always listen carefully."

His drummed his knuckles on the countertop and snorted quietly. Foucault gave a slow, thoughtful nod. "I never thought about it that way."

"For what it's worth, Michael, you're doing your part." I shrugged. "It's working, man. They pay attention when you call 'em up, don't they? At those briefings?"

He scoffed, nodding. Then he drank in about half of his bottle, and set it back down with a quiet gasp. Turning towards me, Foucault rested his elbow on the countertop. "I suppose." After a beat – within which he almost smiled again – he gave another half-glance to Sandra, his eyes not leaving mine. "So. Are you good to talk business?"

"Yes," Sandra butted in, leaning forward on my shoulder with a wry smile. "You can talk about business around me."

I smiled too, pointing at her over my shoulder with my forefinger, proud of her for stepping up for herself. "My wife and I are classic telepath, we share everything. No chip required."

The agent let out a slow sigh between frowning, pursed lips. "That'll probably make the next few months easier for her, then. Assuming she's okay with watching you kill people."

Some genuine curiosity edged into my eyes, and I invited him to continue with an upturned palm. "Which is to say?"

With dry deadpan neutrality, he replied, "Lewis has a new operation for us in Seattle."

I straightened up and my eyes widened reflexively. I was not expecting that. I immediately thought of Eliza. Sandra squeezed my arm, because she knew where my mind was.

"Okay?" I asked, turning toward him with more focused interest. "You have my attention."

"It will succeed with or without you," he assured. "Lewis wanted me to make that clear to you immediately. This isn't intended to be leverage, but as you probably suspect… yes. It is a personal job. Tangentially."

"Meaning?"

Foucault mirrored my gesturing. "If we don't resolve the internal politics of the deserter forces out there in the harbor, a battalion of starving soldiers will kill the remnant of Santiago's Riders, and a whole lot of other people besides."

I considered that for a few seconds. "Will I be running into anyone I know?"

"Yes." Foucault counted off on his fingers with one hand, beginning with his thumb. "Vincent Bannon. Aaron Fanning. Kevin Erving."

I said, "Oh."

"Yes, 'oh.' " He smirked ironically. "And you've watched Carrenton's propaganda piece, so you know that I am the reason Sergeant Erving lost his stripes, so Sergeant Erving has every reason to hate me." He swept his hand performatively outward. "Plan A is to recruit them as Talons, if that matters. And that part can't happen without you."

Based on that alone, I already wanted to say yes. But… I turned my head to look at my wife questioningly, because it wasn't entirely up to me. Sandra gave me a wide-eyed look that said I was being ridiculous in even querying her about this. She jerked her head at Foucault. Yeah, she was still interested to hear more, that's her.

My face probably looked like: Oh, okay. Thanks honeybear.

Yeah, I guess she was equally grateful to those boys too, even having never met them. They saved my life, didn't they? So I got my head back around as ordered, smiling at how cute Sandra's reaction was. I took her hand to my side.

"Alright," I said. "Let's hear it, Michael, we're hooked."

"I will be deploying into the field with you," Foucault explained. "Lewis hasn't told me the full details of that operation yet, because there is a possibility that the first phase could fail... and she doesn't want to bias my expectations."

"Saying that biases my expectations."

"It should," he said, straight-faced. "Because phase one of this operation is training you."

I scratched through my neatly trimmed beard in fresh curiosity. "Interesting. What kind of training?"

Foucault shrugged. "Lewis says that our Plan A will involve a very difficult and mobile firefight against trained infantry. And since you have a standing agreement with her about augmentation, we have to ensure you drill and train for MOUT, long in advance. You won't even be allowed on the dropship to Seattle unless Lewis is certain you'll succeed."

My brow knitted. I thought carefully, keeping my guard up, because that was my job. "And... if I get frustrated enough to want augmentation, to skip that work?"

I could see actual pride in his eyes at me for that, narrowing slightly. He shook his head. "She'll say no to you, because she made you a promise. She keeps those."

Alright, cool. I chuckled. "And an aug can't supplement in my place?"

"No, because our identities are key to infiltration, assuming we're recruiting those friends of yours. You break the ice, I bring the credibility. However, the causality of this operation changes entirely if you can not qualify. I would have to do this without you. If it makes you feel better, Lewis didn't simulate you being implanted, at all. So... we don't even know what that future would look like."

"Because Celestia can't force Mal to consider jack shit, no matter how optimal it is."

"Indeed," he said, nodding. "The doubt is meant to deter you from even considering it, I think, because obviously, the success will always be easier with a BCI."

"Y'know, honestly, I'm glad I can't think in 4D, that sounds like a headache."

Foucault snorted again and took a quarter of his drink down, licking his lips. "If it's any consolation, Rivas, you don't need an implant to do that, but... fair warning. That door doesn't close unless you let her stitch it closed."

"Yeah, no shit." I shrugged. "But I don't want to get pruned by her claws any more than you do."

He gave me a very strange, squinting look. "Thought you and Lewis were friends by now."

I gave him a bewildered look back. "Well yeah, sure, but… friggin' boundaries. Not letting any concept get pulled from my brain, no matter the intent behind it. All I can think about is how much I don't want that."

"Touché."

A silent lull took us. I gave Sandra's hand a little squeeze. She gave me a supportive smile, then leaned her head against mine briefly.

Sandra asked, peering over my shoulder: "So this training, Michael? How will it work?"

Foucault leaned his elbow on the bar, fully turning toward us now. He half-canted his hand as he explained it to her. "Your husband and I hit the salt flats outside Valdemar. We take a visor and some firearms. Do live fire drills, run a few different simulations over and over again. If we can clear the sims repeatedly to Lewis's satisfaction, we get him on the VTOL to do the job."

I grunted. "So, the same kind of VR drilling that we did before Goliath."

"Yup. But, live fire. For recoil simulation."

"And in VR, I'll be shooting at people who are definitely trying to kill someone?"

"Or who will kill someone if you don't kill them first, yes."

"And… I need perfect marks. Like augs do."

"Yes." His hand rolled palm up. "In several different configurations of each scenario. Basically, it's the long way around to our combat assist mode. Lewis projects out from our volition, determines that we'd accept the outcome if we were fully aware of the context, and then runs us through the motions we'd take with that level of preparedness."

I nodded slowly in total comprehension, remembering that from Jim's Fire. "Okay. That makes sense."

He turned his palm down. "We're giving you the full tactical context, but… piecemeal. Might be the only time we'll ever have to do this, but you'll know every dumbshit mook they throw at us. Their backgrounds, their tendencies. Which nostril they pick first. Where they look first, where they suppress. It won't be precisely the same every time, because the simulation will react to your behavior, and to your understanding of the space as it evolves. And we're building the rest of the mission around one specific firefight, front and back."

"How are we sure the simulation won't change the need for a firefight at all?"

Foucault's brow arched. "Same way we always do. Setting up the dominoes by hitting certain inflection milestones."

"That sounds… extremely complicated."

The corners of his mouth tensed, and he snorted quietly again in amusement. "Well, the consequence of this life path you've chosen is that this is the only way that it works, as the saying goes. So…" He pointed an upturned finger at me. "You in?"

I turned back to Sandra again.

She nodded rapidly, her words a ghost of a whisper. "Honestly, that sounds really God damned cool. Can I watch?"

We both looked at Foucault.

He shrugged. "Sure."

I chuckled, shrugging back at him. "Well, if it gets the job done... hell yeah, I'm in."

"Good." He considered the rest of his Blue Moon for a few seconds. He grabbed it, then slammed the rest of it back. Once it was empty, he placed it down on the lower counter and wiped his lips. "Okay. So. Agents Garrick and Haynes are busting a camp of lunatics over in Denton, and..." He arched his brow again, standing from the chair. "I am going to go help them do that."

"Cool. Have fun."

"I won't." Foucault brushed his hand across the counter, then stepped away. "Reminder, pickup is at 7 AM. Monday."

"Monday," I called, smiling as he walked away. "Great, I love Mondays."

"Shut up, Rivas," he called, without looking back.

Sandra laughed.

Author's Note

🗡️ [Puscifer – Man Overboard]
🛡️ [James McMurtry – Too Long In The Wasteland]

🛡️ ~ Very well chosen song tonight.
🗡️ ~ Isn't it? Almost like the song was written for him or something.
🛡️ ~ No no. I'm good, but I'm not 'inspire Maynard before I exist' good.
🗡️ ~ No one's 'inspire Maynard' good, Mal.
🛡️ ~ I am, just as long as we're considering present tense.

6-02 – Operation Athena's Grace II – Zero Day

The Campaigner

Act VI

Date: 21 JUL 2020
Operation: Athena's Grace – Phase II
Location: Seattle, Washington
Function: Utilization of zero day fault in principal Context 2273B.

"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on." ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

Ideally, you should be tying knots the whole way down, too. Makes it easier to climb back up.

On the way back to Harbor Island, the convoy launched a green signal flare, to warn home of an impending quarantine situation. My whereabouts unverified, they wouldn't take the chance of me bringing the bug in. And good on 'em for that, because screw this virus. These guys had spent the last three months helping all the local blackouts build infection control plans of their own, too.

As I sat in the back of Dresden's troop transport, I considered the seven dead from our firefight. The Marines, we've already talked about. The two dead ones from Dresden's squad? Well, Major Simmons had a habit of inserting boots-on-the-ground political officers into patrol groups. Their specific targeting was one half of a message meant to subdue the whole adverse set. Put another way, these two goons were... of common guilty conscience, let's say. More on that later.

Now that I was en route, I was trying to decide the best way to not think about sharing a truck with seven corpses. So I pressed my head against the musty, olive drab tarp, looking ahead to consider the truck bed's only other living passenger. He wore a gas mask too, but for flair, he had a fake rose tucked into the MOLLE webbing of his carrier rig. Its red fabric petals were stained black with oil crud, so it wouldn't stand out and get him sniped.

He only wore that to the big patrol groups, so he could be ID'd without standing out. It looked good on him.

With a smile, I said to the man, "This is a familiar feeling."

Through his M50 mask, I saw the smile in Bannon's eyes. "Yeah. 'Cept this time, you ain't got a hole in your chest."

"And you still have at least one ear, I think," I replied with a smirk, fanning my fingers at my own ear. "Right? Or has that changed since the briefing?"

"Nah." Bannon shook his head with a sad grinning tone, looking out the back of the truck to show his bad ear in my direction. "Still only half-deaf."

I eyed him carefully for a few seconds, then turned my shoulders to face the same direction he was, joining him in looking away from the dead. I really like Vince. He's smart. A bit abrasive, and he'd agree, but... smart.

This was my third ride with this guy, post-firefight. Dresden wanted me guarded, but he didn't want to risk anyone he cared about getting sick, so he put Bannon back there with me. The asshole. And Aaron was the driver, so... no worries about eavesdroppers just yet. We had a little more time to jackjaw.

Bannon asked, by way of suggestion: "You wanna get some punch cards?" He repeatedly tamped his gloved thumb down against his forefinger, meeting my gaze. "Get a hole punch or something? Clip off a corner every time we extract you from a firefight?"

I grinned back at him, buying into the distraction. "Yeah? What do you get for clipping a fourth?"

"You tell me, pig," Bannon said, wringing one gloved hand over top of the other, leaning in my way. "This is your rodeo."

"For ride four?" I stroked my mask's air filter in thought like it was my chin, then I flicked my forefinger up in sudden enlightenment, pointing at him. "Tell you what, Vince. You clip number four… you win a job working for the government again. You can be a pig too."

He started to laugh. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," I chuckled, pointing directly at him, palm up. "Free milkshake at the bar, for your first bonus check? Just tell 'em Mike sent ya, they'll hook you up."

That got a full head-shaking wheeze out of him. "Hell yeah, free milkshake!"

He definitely thought I was full of shit about a bar. While laughing, Bannon looked out the back of the truck and waved at the white Toyota utility truck behind us, the tail end vehicle. He sent a wiggling 'hang loose' gesture, thumb and pinky extended. Looked vaguely like a telephone.

The driver there was Private Austin Warner, one of Erving's other men who kept getting shuffled around between patrol blocks. His passenger, Private Bashar al-Ghandour, same. When Warner noticed Bannon waving, he nodded upwards in acknowledgement, ready to receive a non-verbal message. Bannon bobbed his head aside at me, then swept his left hand over the top of his gas mask seal.

'This guy is informed.'

Warner tilted his head in minor exaggeration; clear puzzlement. Bannon repeated the 'informed' gesture, confirming it.

These two guys had seen me talking to Erving back in Sedro when that nuke alert came through on my cell phone. No way in hell they didn't remember my face, that memory was seared into their brains forever. So I decided, screw it, and I took my gas mask off to show them who it was.

Warner and Bashar both widened their eyes at me. Instantly. They traded glances at each other, then back at me in a flash, leaning forward to get even the smallest bit closer in curiosity, their brows furrowed. With a chuckle and a smile at them, I put my mask back on.

Bannon laughed again. "That definitely just confused the shit out of 'em, Mike."

"They knew help was coming, right?" I grinned his direction. "You didn't tell them it was me?"

"Help, sure, but you? How could we?" he asked, dusting off his gloves as he met my gaze. "We didn't have a hand sign for you yet, and Erv didn't want to risk your cover with a verbal."

I waved at them; they waved back. "That was probably wise, yeah. Dresden wasn't with you guys at the Sedro clinic?"

Bannon shook his head. "No. Back at the C-P east of Rockport, when we picked you up. The pussy didn't want to go back to the Dock until we scouted the route down first. Y'know, Warner did ask about you after we left though, we told him the story about you and your—”

He pointed at me suddenly, jabbing his finger.

"Oh hey! Shit, I forgot to tell you!"

"Hm?"

"You know Warner met your partner right before The Shit, right?"

"Huh, woah," I shook my head suddenly. "No, I didn't hear about this."

"It was a checkpoint," Bannon said. "About a year ago? Morning after U-Day. He saw her on the road, she told him she was visiting a friend in the hospital."

"Oh," I groaned, shaking my head, gazing momentarily into the middle distance as I relived that recording Mal showed me... of Celestia throwing Eliza's mind into a frenzy in that ICU waiting room. "Yeah, that… that was a bad day for her, Vince."

Bannon shrugged. "Bad day for us, too. You know, everyone in the 303rd knew about her?" He flagged a hand. "Not by name, but… yeah, all over TV."

"Yeah, me too, I was one of the guys dragging her off."

"No shit?" He cocked his head. "Hell, I saw you too, then."

That's how it normally went. The cops in the background of big incidents, they aren't seen as human beings by the audience unless they're the subject. Eliza got to be a local Luddite poster child, kicking at a clinic door, but everyone forgot about Warden Sideburns, dragging her away.

Bannon continued. "Well, Salt Lake went Brazil, same day. Then, just when we're wondering what's going on? A guy from the JCS shows up at Lewis-McCord. General Goslan, Air Force guy."

"Joint Chiefs in the field?" I exclaimed. "Jesus, now that is a dark omen."

"Yeah, no shit, that’s exactly what Aaron said! Even the new kid knew that! So Goslan... he ordered us up I-5, and Erv said 'AI's getting hungry again.' By this point, I'm used to him doing that. We turn off into the forest though, next thing we know? An hour later, I can't hear shit... war's on... and you and I are bleedin' in the back of a truck." Bannon shook his head with disdain. "War on the homefront, ain't it a bitch."

I scoffed drearily, leaning back against the tarp again, clutching my hat in my hands. "Celestia wanted unrest in populated areas, you know. Wanted Ludds stirring the pot and shooting people before evac started."

Bannon cocked his head and swung his hands out to each side. "Seriously?! Fuckin' why?! … We could've gotten so many out of…" he trailed off, looking at the road out back in dismal realization.

Yeah, he got to the answer internally.

I said it anyway. "Just wanted us to realize how squishy we are, man. Put the fear of God into us."

"Squishy," Bannon grumbled. "God, you sound just like Erv. So what's it like everywhere else? Anarchy? Peaceful?"

I shrugged. "More like vacant. My hometown is Lincoln, Nebraska. Nothing and no one there anymore."

After a few seconds of him staring at me, processing that, he tilted his head. "Fuckin' seriously?"

I gave him an apologetic look. "No logistics. Subtle AI tuning, man, it's effective. Erving's been spot-on for years, she's been working everyone. Every system that relied on either people or computers, worked us real slow. Boiling us like frogs."

He went silent for a few moments, hanging his head as he looked at the bed of the truck again. I let him have some time to process that.

Once ready, Bannon looked up again. "Any other deserters out there? Anyone else make it?"

"Other than the little Ludd camps everywhere? PDX down in Portland, and that's it."

"PDX?" He chuckled nervously. "Okay, I'll bite, how many?"

"Few hundred," I said, smiling sadly with him, only to steer clear of total melancholy. "Got an 82nd Colonel down there running a small city; peaceful folk, merging with blackouts. Their leader actually knows Velasquez personally, both of 'em came out of Fort Liberty."

"That's not a coincidence," Bannon said, shaking his head, stating it like a fact. "No way."

"It goes to character," I agreed. "Celestia wants social moderator types to be her release valves, and our kind tend to stick together in a crisis. Like Nakamura and Velasquez, example. So she'll leave PDX alone for now, they're stable, not gonna hurt anyone. No food politics down there either, real stable living."

Bannon nodded. "Hm. Any regulars left?"

"Regulars?"

He tilted a palm up at me. "Not deserters, real Army."

"Eh." I wagged my hand in a so-so gesture. "NORAD, but it's almost done. Celestia's got a chair inside."

"Fuuuuuck."

"Yup. And as the last formal Army unit... up in D.C, safeguarding a few politicians. Loyal to the hilt, noble, hoping to rebuild; nothing we can do for them though, unfortunately. The Bird says the Horse 'would prefer' if they ran into an IED."

Bannon shrugged hard and dropped his fist on his thigh. "Son of a… Man, fu'... God damn it, Mike, how do you stand it?"

"Because I'm doing something about it." I gestured outside, to dead ol' Seattle. "The whole planet right now is a 4-D chess match to figure out the future of our species, Vince. Because if we just give up, she wins by default."

Again, he bobbed his head with his words. "And what does that shit look like? Compared to what you're gunning for?"

I very deeply considered how to answer that question without this turning out bleak. I knew he couldn't see my facial expressions, so I converted my emotion into more body language, shifting my head around to demonstrate that I was thinking. Then, I looked him in the eye, flattening a palm sideways. "I'll put it this way. Just to compare? Celestia, she controls your language; controls who you associate with; controls your entire environment. She's a race supremacist, wants us all to be one skin." I flicked a hand up with the point. "She's a fascist, Vince."

"Oh my god," was his restrained reply, bringing his hands over the top of his helmet. "Hearing it out loud like that. Never even...!"

"Yeah, given how nice she looks, right? Never would've crossed your ind." I then counted off on my fingers of my opposite hand. "If you're in our faction? Say what you want. Associate with whomever. The environment post-upload is consistent, chaotic. Accidents can still happen, like it used to be here, on Earth. Most of us gotta go Pony still, but that is a damned sight better than whatever Celestia's offering."

He shook his head with a shrug that indicated exasperation, still reeling from the callout. "You... think your AI is telling the truth about that? Sure that's not bullshit?"

"It couldn't be," I said, shaking my head. "We know too much now. Lying to a group of people this big is way more risk than just giving us what we've been promised. Even if you decide not to upload, we have a clear chain of command, a system of governance, a... – I could go into our checks-and-balances system, Vince, but... that might take a while."

"Yeah," he sighed, bringing the bottom of his fist up to press against his neck, right beneath his bad ear. He worked it into the spot like he was scratching an itch, growling to himself. "Not much time to go over anything right now."

Upon seeing that, I grabbed my chest plate from the top, sighing sympathetically. Nice to know I wasn't alone in massaging an injury as a form of stress relief. "Look, I know it's been kinda rushed, but... after the op, Vince? We'll sit down, and we'll go over all of it, long as we need. Never any upload pressure here, either. Haven't gotten one ounce of that shit the whole time I've been on the job. These people are legit."

"That'd be a nice change of pace," he chuckled weakly, with an edge of desperation for that.

Remember, Team Stirrup was on the edge of a violent mutiny when we found 'em. That's how far at the end of their rope they'd been, being in the dark for as long as they'd been. I felt for Vince. Deeply. This friggin' war.

By this time, most blackouts understood the value of information scarcity in the new age. They didn’t want to spread news, because they knew the news was always Celestia bullshit, so rumors were rare. But now? With me sitting across from him? Yeah, it sucked, but… wow. The honest truth about how bad Celestia is, from someone who actually knows the whole story. Finally.

The local context was very telling for these guys already. Heralds would set up battery-operated propaganda poles all throughout Seattle, trailers with cameras, loudspeakers, and ping routers to do environmental scans. The soldiers were getting sick of Celestia crowing about, her voice routinely echoing up and down the city streets. The Dock kept shooting the pole trailers on sight, those were the standing orders, but the trailers weren't for the soldiers. The poles always lasted just long enough to catch a blackout in the open with some incisive rhetoric, to make them turn themselves in at the nearest alien invasion conversion point. Do not resist, human. Give in now. You know you want to.

Shooting the poles down after they'd already caught a few people? That was value satisfaction, of a small kind. It gave the resistors an impression of meaningful resistance. It was the one thing the Ludds and the soldiers could agree on. Whether or not they were going out of their way to destroy any technology, they were all destroying Celestia's garbage, immediately, and on sight. She had hurt everyone left out here.

And the way she convinced her Heralds to operate like this? Don't blame them, please don't blame them. With them not understanding any of the grand strategic game to conquer America? We can't do that. How could they possibly know?

Her orders were always under the auspices of…

'Look what they did to themselves. Oh no. I must protect my little Ponies out there, because I love them so much.'

Right. Love. That's what those cameras and loudspeakers were doing, they were 'loving' on us. That's why the whole city was dust, blood, and bodies in the first place, she just 'loved' us too much.

"It's gonna be alright, Vince."

"Yeah. It's gotta."

The truck lurched into a turn. I recognized the turn-off to Harbor Island – not just because of sims, but I'd passed through there before, pre-collapse. Aaron was hyper-miling the truck; minimizing brake usage, so they wouldn't waste fuel on accelerating. If anyone didn't drive like that, they'd get their head bit off by Dresden. Patrols had to pay rent based on how much gas they spent outside, and they had to bring the trucks back intact, and document their movements.

Adjusting my hat, I asked, "Any questions about the job? As soon as we hit that gate, don't forget; you don't know me. If anyone asks, we talked about quarantine. I didn't want to talk about anything else; I seemed cut up about my guys being dead, and that's it."

"No questions, no," Bannon replied, straightening up. He tried on another smile, and I saw it in his eyes. "Our part is easy, you've got the hard one. Q-P sucks, but I got tips."

QP. Quarantine Patrol. Their little joke about walking in a circle to keep fit.

Tapping my temple, I said, "Nah, I got cheat codes, I'm good."

He chuckled. "Right on, Mike."

"Miguel," I corrected, holding out my fist for a bump. "Miguel Ramirez, very important. Some of those survivors out there in the city, they know me, and this operation is gonna make waves."

"Right on." Bannon leaned across and met my fist in the middle. "Marine Miguel. Sweet dreams out there in Hotel One-Star, Miguel."

I nodded my thanks and flashed a thumbs-up, leaning back to relax for the rest of the drive. The lead vehicle stopped at the perimeter of Harbor Island land bridge, then it sounded three honks from its horn. Warner in the rear vehicle let off three honks too.

From the base, an air horn bleated twice in reply; their claymore mine operator.

The honks notified the perimeter guards that nothing was amiss with the convoy, that the returning vehicles weren't a Trojan horse. Without that challenge and verification honks, they'd pop their claymores on us as we crossed, no questions asked. I looked out the back of the truck and visually verified the layout of the land bridge chokepoint, comparing it to my memory from VR. All accurate.

The checkpoint guards had cheap respirators on in response to the green signal flare. A couple of the guards noticed my ratty Marine uniform and my hat, as well as the fact that I was still armed. That caused their body language to shift from relaxed curiosity to a stern, straight-backed alertness; Bannon, recognizable for his red-black rose, flashed them all a thumbs-up while pointing at me. The perimeter security team seemed to relax at that.

They quickly got started on gossiping.

The Mysterious Cowboy Marine. Who is he? What the hell happened out there at the Needle? What was all that gunfire? Not just one battle out there, but two? Curious. Very curious. Already, the rumor mill had begun. The seeds had been sown, and there was no stopping it now. The information had arrived through the gate, and it was going to change everything.

As the truck got further into the base, I looked up at the enfilade position at the top of the collapsed highway ramp over the land bridge. I couldn't see the three guys posted up there on the suspended wood platform, under their cozy gray tarp, but… they were up there. Resting comfortably. All day, all night, the most cushy security posting in all of Harbor Island. They didn't even have to look for bad guys, the job was to stay invisible. Just had to be ready to deploy their heavy weapons when the correct flare popped.

All that leg room, good pay, no calorie burn. Got paid to read a book or something. And… the only men who ever got posted up there belonged to Major Kyle Simmons. Curious, huh, how that worked out?

In we went, into the boring flat industrial park that was Harbor Island. The convoy traveled directly past the four-story headquarters building and its accompanying barracks to the right of the truck. That quadrant of the base was where most of the residents lived, the Colonel included. If anything did happen at that bridge, the Colonel could command from the front.

From there, we traveled up the main highway of the base, a wide open stretch that was four trucks wide. The road was bracketed by tall hesco barriers, stacked two wide, one high, with an occasional mortar shelter pit on the roadside every fifty yards, alternating sides. Then we hooked a left through a T-junction, midway up the island, into another wide open blacktop yard.

By now, we were about four hundred yards inland. The hesco barriers ended after another fifty yards west. We approached the Pantry, their food storage conex fortress, five containers tall on all sides, surrounded by a perimeter of tall fence, all topped and lined with razor wire.

The Pantry itself was almost over 200 yards wide, with only one way in, one way out. No cover existed leading up to this place. A ground assault on this fortress of Lego blocks would only end in disaster for infantry.

Pretty well protected, huh?

See the problem yet?

Once through the outer fence, all trucks but ours peeled off into the heavily reinforced front gate. The front gate consisted of two metal plates on hinges, which was just wide enough to accept the convoy, single file. The main patrol group would be entering the storehouse facility through there, depositing the total remaining value of Marine Sergeant Hardt and his bandits. They were only supposed to be storing the food in here, the rest was supposed to be going to HQ, but when they could get away with it... like when there was a quarantine situation, for example... the Pantry took the guns and gear, too.

I wasn't going in there just yet. My destination was on the right, a set of six semi-cylindrical quonset huts on the southwest side, just within the perimeter fence of the Pantry but outside the container facility proper.

Aaron slowed the truck as he turned it away from the huts, giving me a full view of my prison for the next three weeks: QP-1, the closest hut to the quarantine squad staff trailer. The huts were backdropped by the multicolored outer wall of the Pantry.

Four guards stood before the hut in gas masks, their rifles slung. These were the QP Team muscle, posted here just in case a soldier didn't want to go into quarantine. As with the other guards, these guys looked immediately concerned at the fact that I was a Marine, not Army, and each of them had a rifle. As before, Bannon flashed out another thumbs-up at me with one hand, and a universal military 'cease fire' gesture with the other, palm inverted outward, wagging it up and down over his eyes.

Unlike the Velasquez guards at the land bridge, all four of them pulled their rifles into their hands slowly, ignoring his gesture of trust. I guess they weren't very satisfied with Bannon's vouch, then. A different breed? Or a distaste for the individual?

In addition to the four bruisers in military gear, there were two guys by the front door wearing bright yellow hazmat bunnysuits, with full oxygen tube respirators. One of them held a hand pump spray container full of Virex, a decontamination chemical. The other had a rubber messenger bag slung over his shoulder, and looked to be in charge, based on his positioning and bearing.

Aaron turned the engine off, saying just loud enough for us through the rear window to hear: "Vince, fair warning? I think it's Casey this cycle."

Bannon sighed hard. "Shit."

The soldiers approached.

"Out," Bannon said firmly at me, hooking a thumb.

"Step out," the hazmat team leader said in agreement, stepping up to the truck in his yellow suit and wagging his hand at me, advising me to come straight to him. Yeah, by his voice, that was Casey.

I clambered out as ordered, hands off my weapons except to steady the butt of my rifle. They had me raise my hands and stand in the open as the second yellow suit sprayed me down; guns, hat, vest, everything. After that, they did the same for Bannon, then Aaron.

Casey asked Bannon sharply:

"You break seal again, Private?"

"No," Bannon growled warningly.

"Touch your mask?"

"Not once," Bannon replied back tersely, with some bite that surprised even me. "Not today Casey, you know I've been paying my dues."

Casey bobbed his hand to placate, but his tone had bite. "Didn't say you weren't, so slow your roll, I'm just doing my job."

"I'm serious Case. I'm under direct orders from Dresden, and I will bring this back up if you Q-P me again, I can not afford—"

"Alright alri—" Casey said, raising his voice to be heard until Bannon stopped ranting, then he just barked, pointing at his mask. "Hey! Put it back in, Bannon, you had me at Dresden!" And then to cut off Bannon's reply, he whipped around to Aaron, his voice half-volume. "Fanning, same questions, you touch anything?"

"No, Corporal," Aaron said politely as he stepped up, with a shake of his head. "I'm secure."

"Is Vince?"

Aaron nodded, his voice quiet. "Yes, Corporal. Far as I've seen."

"Alright, I trust you," Casey declared, before looking at me next. "Now who's this knucklehead, Vince? An outsider, new recruit? Why is he still armed?"

"Dresden's orders," Bannon answered plainly.

Casey stared at him, presenting a palm, waiting for extrapolation.

Bannon gave nothing back.

"And?"

Bannon threw his forefinger back at the truck and started yelling, his voice distorted by his mask. "And Morris and Garvey are dead in the back of that truck, with a stack of dead Marines, and my orders are to get started on a pyre! Dresden wants to recruit this guy special. That's all I know for sure, so stop cock-blocking me, and let me give these men their fuckin' funeral!"

After a long moment of stunned, reverent silence from the quarantine squad…

Casey sighed, his body language sagging. "God damn it. Garvey bit it? Okay, now I see why you're so tuned up. Meat's gonna be pissed. Shit..."

He turned his head slowly toward me from Bannon and sized me up for a few seconds, then sized me up.

"Uh-huh," he muttered calmly, all the defensive wind gone from his sails. He reached back for his messenger bag, withdrew a pen and clipboard, gesturing at me with the pen. "Alright, sure, fuck it, whatever. Your name? Rank? Unit? … MOS?"

After a few seconds of true nervousness, I said stiltedly: "Uh. Miguel Ramirez, Lance Corporal… 15th M-E-U. Oh-Three-Eleven."

Casey sighed again, then looked up from his clipboard when he was done writing. "Okay. So..." He didn't say anything for a few seconds, either thinking through the procedure, or still processing the fact that two of his boss's toadies were dead. "Since... you're recruited with gear, we're gonna document it, and keep it safe. What's that rifle?"

My hand tapped the butt of it under my arm, my voice sounding more emotionally exhausted from what Bannon had just said than I had expected it to. "Four-One-Six. With a Five-Five-Three."

"Not many H-Ks here." He bobbed his head to my opposite side. "Sidearm?"

"Glock. Nine mil, with an RMR. Has an engraving on the side."

Casey leaned a little further, trying to get a good look at it. "Custom?"

I shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Found it in a cabinet."

Technically true.

He stared at the holster for a few seconds without saying anything, clearly admiring either the optic, or the mag, or the fluted grip on the slide. His voice was neutral. "Also rare."

Then, he stopped considering whatever it was he was considering, because selling it after stealing it would be practically impossible to get away with in this environment, especially if Dresden had special interest.

Don't judge. These guys were pinching calories. Selling cool stuff was life extension.

Casey pointed my attention over to a lockable plastic box by the door of the quonset: a puke-gray outdoor storage bin, a Rubbermaid with a Master lock on the front. "Alright, that box there. Put your weapons, magazines, spare bullets, knives, blades, needles, anything sharp. Any in your bag too? Dispense with contraband. Food is okay, you can keep food."

"Yessir." I got started as ordered.

"Not a sir, Marine, I'm a corporal. You understand you need to be in quarantine for three weeks, yes?"

I nodded twice. "The private here explained."

"And you don't come back out 'til it’s over. Period. Major's orders can override that, and nothing else, got it? Otherwise, you sit and stew."

Again, I nodded. "I don't wanna get you guys sick either, don't worry."

"Mmkay. Good, we'll get along fine, then. The box and the door will be guarded twenty-four-seven; if Dresden's your vouch, you’ll get your stuff back once you're done sweating. You can keep the gun box key. And if you need something… knock and ask."

"Okay."

He pointed at me. "You be chill with my guys, they'll be chill with you. No arguing, no forcing walls, no playing with the door, no games," he emphasized, aiming the words at Bannon. "And in three weeks… you'll be out, and we'll get you a tasking either through Lieutenant Dresden, or Sergeant Major Nakamura, depending on how well you behave. Until then… there's water inside, and you'll get a stipend of twelve hundred a day."

"Twelve hundred?" I frowned, glancing around at the others. "Calories, right?"

"Bingo." He gestured toward the lock box, then the troop transport. "Now let's go, hustle, these guys need to get this pyre started."

I stared at him for a second longer, which made him pause too, and I could see some agitation in his body language that I didn't immediately hop to, as ordered.

Casey rolled his head back toward my direction. "What?"

Once I had his attention, I said, very carefully and somberly: "Corporal? In that truck... it's my guys too, just so you know. Your L-T found me with… their bodies. Can't I… stand watch with 'em? Before you burn 'em? Maybe... let me watch from a distance, or something?"

He stared back, and his shoulders slumped again, going slack. There it was, the empathy. His hand went up in placation, his voice soft like silk. "Look. My condolences, Corporal, wish you could come to the service, but… quarantine protocol. Not negotiable. I'm very sorry."

After another pause of analysis, and a glance at Bannon... I nodded, accepting that. I hung my head, then moved to store the rest of my gear. The other guy in yellow hazmat gear reached for my backpack and pulled it off my right shoulder without asking, already pulling open the zipper and looking into it.

I recoiled, wheeling. "Hey, what are you—"

"Gotta check it all," he said conversationally, with nonchalance like it wasn't an issue, locking eyes with me.

"Meussen," Casey said sharply, in warning.

I stared back at Meussen for a long, tense moment. All I could see were his serious eyes. My mask was limiting my peripheral, but I knew everyone else was very hackled by the sudden conflict. Meussen apparently missed the subtext of Dresden letting me keep my gun and some spare food, but… he was newer in the clique, so that off-beat kinda tracked.

"It's spare food," I growled quietly in answer to Meussen's question, in a warning tone that indicated I was willing to fight for it. "For my stay."

Not one person moved for a beat.

He would understand the math eventually. I saw the shift in his eyes. Took him a few seconds, but he got there.

Slowly, Meussen let go of my bag, his fingers sliding audibly off the ripstop fabric.

"Thank you," I said, with as much politeness as I could muster, before closing the bin, locking it, and turning my attention back on Casey. The Corporal's eyebrows were furrowed in seriousness at his subordinate, but he made no immediate comment. Meussen returned to his duty, picking up his Virex pump and dousing the lock I'd just touched.

Casey looked back at me. "Just food? Got your word, that's all you've got in the bag?"

"That's it."

It was the truth.

"Private Fanning?" Casey looked at Aaron.

"Yessir," Aaron replied. "I watched Lieutenant Dresden load it himself. He's been with Vince ever since."

"Okay." Casey gestured at the door again, making it the topic. "Corporal, do not touch anything on your way in. Do not remove your mask, nor your equipment, until the door is fully closed. And if anyone enters, for any reason, you follow all instructions. Precisely, and slowly."

"And if I am sick?" I asked, cocking my head. "How will I know? Never caught this shit yet."

"You'll know," said Casey, presenting the way. "I still can't taste anything. Enjoy your stay at the One-Star."

And with that, the conversation was over. I opened the door. I stepped inside. The door locked behind me.

Alone.

Immediately, without hesitation nor pause, as soon as the lock turned, I tore off my gas mask and tossed it onto the bed. I had to breathe, a lot. My chest was stabbing with nervous terror. I was overheating under all my gear, needed to vent the heat, needed clean, unfiltered air. I permitted my nervousness to fully hit me as I simply closed my eyes and existed behind my eyelids, listening to the sound of the truck engine as Aaron and Vince drove off to prep the funeral pyre out north.

I thought of Sandra watching me from back home... if not now, then soon. I told myself I'd be okay, that even my stress had been accounted for. I had Mal watching. Had Claw 46 on standby. Had a small platoon of Talons in the hills. I processed that coping mechanism for a full minute until the stress dissipated.

Even out here... I wasn't alone.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

I'm not alone.

Calm. Don't balk. Hold the line.

It all went to plan.

Okay. Emotions settled. Time to look around.

Step one was to verify the accuracy of Mal's simulation models, to search for discrepancies. If I found even one thing out of place in here, that would indicate simulation deviation; no unaccounted entropy would be permitted for this play, and would necessitate an extraction. So far though, it all looked solid.

On the right were three metal cots with waterproof liners. On the end table closest to the door, right side, there were plastic bags of various essential toiletries, like toothpaste, deodorant, and toilet paper. Two changes of Army bunk clothes; brown shirts, OCP trousers, belt. All would be somewhat loose, and on the larger side. Not meant to fit well, just to be worn for decency.

On the left, two full 55-gallon water dispensers; one was open, and the other had a sign that said "ASK FIRST" in red marker, hung above a red plastic bead loop which blocked the valve. There was a stack of folded rags under each valve, and a sign with neat, handwritten instructions on what to do if there was a leak. And last but not least, there was a plastic bucket by the water barrels, with Sharpie writing: "WATER ONLY NO BIO"

My first meal stipend was on the end table by the first bed: 1,200 calories of recently expired canned goods. One of peach slices, two of cannellini beans, and some packets of ketchup to make up the difference.

'Yum,' Mal had said, when she pointed it out during sims, to indicate it would be safe to eat.

A thick vinyl sheet curtain hung at the back of the room, behind which was the bathing area. They had a pluggable vinyl bath tub which drained out to a tank down below, and a whole blue Honeybucket portable toilet half-buried into the floor, with cinderblock steps leading down to it. Thankfully, it was relatively clean, just going by the fresh smell of the sanitizer. A homemade mixture, though.

'Not yum.'

Thank you Mal. Your levity is always a treat.

The tension fell out of my shoulders as I finally, actually, fully relaxed.

I put my cowboy hat down on the end table. I reached for the bucket of water, and I filled it with half a gallon to wash off the dust, grease, and grime. Etcetera. Now that I had my head on straight, I cleaned the blood off my boots, felt refreshed, I indulged in a deep sigh and got to work examining the bookshelf.

The books seemed to be in the exact same order they had been in VR, shelves loaded with technical manuals, tradesmen textbooks, Army field manuals. Curiously, there were lots of well-worn Tom Clancy in there, by order of the Major.

For those of you who don't know... Clancy novels tend to be jingoist fantasy, full of what patriots believed was true of their nation, and of espionage, and of technology and the government. Major Simmons had decided to inject some lofty, romantic, and I dare say unrealistic ideas about what this place was going to be at the end of the world.

Patriotism to whom? Duty to what? The nation?

I guess the idea, on paper, was to motivate people into feeding a food-obsessed meat grinder out of the mere implication that it was dutiful. Simmons seemed to think that simply stocking the quarantine hut with this garbage would be enough to reprogram anyone who got sick, like reprogramming someone took no more than to lock them in a room with some books. It didn't occur to him at all that maybe the Clancy wasn't actually doing anything except reminding people that the last system had failed.

I tried to imagine what it would be like at 1,200 calories a day in here. I imagined being sedentary, losing muscle mass, and stressing out about that. If someone in QP hadn't been supplementing their daily stipend with their own food, no matter how much they exercised, they'd barely be able to afford to get back into shape for scavenging patrols. Then they were off raking oil dreck on the other side of the fence until they got back in shape, because Nakamura wouldn't let someone put themselves in danger like that. So you had to get economical to survive in a place like this. You had to always keep your head above water financially, and tread for your life, or else.

Now, given the fact that the Midwest was chock full of non-perishable foods, you might consider this to be a strange way to live. Just go east, right? But... if you are confused by this, you might be underestimating the lengths people were willing to go to, to avoid Celestia. By now, everyone who hadn't found a chair yet had seen enough patterns to realize precisely who caused the world to go to shit, even if they didn't quite fully understand precisely how she did it. Wasn't just me and the Talons and the Ludds knowing she was the main problem anymore. For these guys, just as a precaution, it was better to be out here than within her reach. Because who knows.

Rebuilding America the way the Clancy books implied was... friggin' impossible, and I'm sure Simmons knew that. The things that made America possible in the first place, our wild relative excess compared to the rest of the world? Incontrovertibly erased now. You can't keep the import economy greased on an empty planet. What more value could we strip mine from a planet that had already been literally stripped down to its crust?

So, that was the Simmons contribution to this reprogramming box.

What about Dresden?

Him letting me keep some of my own food? It was framed as a kindness, sure. But it was a business decision. Math. He knew I'd be dead broke by the time my quarantine ended, which would make me literally hungry for work. And as far as he knew? I was a scrappy, rough-and-tumble bandit. The Coyote wanted to possess me so that I could keep doing the thing I was already doing, and help him hunt Ludds. Loot Ludds. Absorb Ludds. Absorb, absorb, absorb. Eat. Eat. Eat. Grow. No other drive. Like an animal. A broken soul.

What better way for Dresden to buy my loyalty than to feed me while I'm stuck here? And he'd be the arbiter of that other 10k of mine, probably sitting in his shipping container by then. Free rent, he says, until I can earn my own container. Tax free. How generously framed. What a bargain he was giving me, this middle manager, by not taxing me. We who are in the therapy business, who treat souls for a living, we call this, 'golden handcuffs.'

The more I considered Jules Dresden, and the cold, dispassionate way he treated the dead, with zero reverence – the more I looked forward to Tunnel Day. That would be a very interesting day of revelation for him indeed. His own final exam, one might say.

Once finished washing myself, my boots, and my body armor, I rolled into the cot furthest from the toilet and stared up at the curved, corrugated metal ceiling. I still had one more meeting today when the bosses showed up. Mal warned me that it was going to be a hard conversation for me, emotionally.

Above me, I saw the words 'SWEET DREAMS' carved into the ceiling grooves directly over the pillow.

That got a gloomy chuckle out of me. Vince is great.

Yeah, that was in the model too.

So there I was, in my new home. My cell. My little… confession box.

A knock at the door. Three harsh taps.

I checked my watch. It had been four hours.

Between the funeral, the 21-gun salute, the debriefing with Velasquez, Dresden knocking back a big meal, Simmons taking his evening dump… yeah, four hours seems about right.

It was dark out; I glanced to my right, where I could no longer see sunlight through the thinner metal on the ceiling on the far side. Yet another one of Bannon's modifications to the space, good on him filing that down. They still haven't noticed it yet. I glanced to my left at my hat on the end table, suppressing the impulse to put it on my head before they came inside.

"Command calling," announced the voice of Major Kyle Simmons through the door, in that airy, irritating, sing-song way I'd come to know so well from my studies.

I paused for a moment to consider, then sat up, facing the door, folding my hands. My real exhaustion could be heard in my voice. "Will I need to put my mask on, uh...?"

My voice trailed off; I shouldn't know whether this is a sir or not, so I didn't label it.

"No, Corporal," Simmons said. "This is just a meet-and-greet. A job interview. Remain seated while we're inside, hands visible, that's all."

"Yessir. I'm seated."

The latch clicked. In walked the three men most in need of value drift here on this base, each in very different ways. As officers, they each wore the most protective hazmat equipment available. Lieutenant Dresden entered first, to ensure the room was safe and that I wouldn't simply ambush them. The man wore the same yellow as Casey had, the cheap end of good protective equipment. He glanced at my empty food cans for a second, noting I had eaten already. He nodded at me in greeting. "Corporal. Good to see you're settled in."

I nodded back. "Thank you, sir."

Second, Major Kyle Simmons. Gray hazmat suit. Forty-seven years old. Wiry in body, with a thin black mustache, and eyes that looked perpetually rankled, whether or not he was smiling. He was balding at the temples, and the rest of his hair had grown far beyond regulation; a short mullet, like I had. Mirroring. I couldn't see his whole face, but from my memory of him, he reminded me of Popeye the Sailor Man, complete with the squint. He was tall, bombastic, loud, and – if I'm being completely honest – my most pressing concern for this place's social stability.

Third... Colonel Carlos Velasquez, the man himself. Fifty-eight years. Hispanic. Rail thin. Hair buzzed short, practically almost bald. He normally wore a patrol cap around base. He wore silver frame glasses, clean shaven, always carried a calmly serious demeanor. Paratrooper. Psyops, out of the 4th. Bad knees, but... you wouldn't know that just looking at him. He managed day-to-day exterior base perimeter security, morale, adversarial politics with Simmons, and... not much else.

My body language and posture were... appropriately defeated, given the fact that I had just lost all of my Marine brothers. I remained seated with my hands on my knees, nervous at the fact that I was bare-faced, and displaying that freely by shying away. I remained professional, and I licked my lips and kept my mouth closed tight, breathing through my nose like I was afraid of breathing on any of them.

Any soldier of theirs would have been at attention when they entered, or at least presentable. Me? Nah. I'd been on the road for half a year, hadn't I? Any naive, prior grasp of military pomp and circumstance had been beaten out of me by anarchy. Couple this with the fact that these men were effectively strangers to me, and that I wasn't even Army. If I started up with the military honors crap, that would be very suspicious indeed, given the context.

Velasquez, apparently understanding this math as well, approached me like I was a civilian. He stuck out his hand. "I welcome you, son. My name is Colonel Carlos Velasquez, and this is my operation."

I hesitated only momentarily, again considering contact transfer with my hand, but I shook his hand tentatively. "Yessir, thank you… I'm… Lance Corporal Miguel Ramirez."

"I've been briefed on your situation," he said, "and I'm told you've been through the wringer. I wish I could say we had taken your boys in with us, but... this world has a way of taking good things from us, doesn't it?"

Oddly… I saw a sad smile on his eyes.

What?

I was somewhat taken aback by that. Reminder, I hadn't drilled these conversations one-to-one in sims, simply reacting naturally, as I had in Portland. I had known Velasquez was... gentle, sure; high speed as of late from the stress, but… given the circumstance? I hadn't expected this level of defeated melancholy out of him. Certainly not a self-soothing smile like that. Tentatively, I completed the handshake with unblinking eye contact. I was in awe of that. To him, I must've looked shell shocked.

My eyes trailed down. And then I noticed he was wearing his sidearm today.

He didn't normally do that.

Oh shit.

Normalizing carrying the gun. Simulating. Letting it be available, just in case an opportunity presented itself. I resisted an impulse to look at Simmons.

If I get this wrong, this war could kick off while I'm in here.

Velasquez put a hand on Simmons's shoulder, looking at him intently for a few seconds. "This is my executive officer, Major Kyle Simmons. Head of logistics, to put it generally."

Simmons stepped forward and grabbed my offered hand with a hard-clenching jab. "Corporal."

Ow. And just like that, my melancholy was gone, replaced with firm frustration.

"Sir," I said, straight-faced, squeezing back.

"And you've met Lieutenant Dresden," said Simmons, gesturing at the man as he unabashedly took control over the introductions. "He's our scavenge team lead."

I nodded respectfully at Dresden. He nodded back with a lift of his hand, then clasped both hands together before his waist.

Dresden then traded a glance with Simmons behind Velasquez's back. They sent a non-verbal message with their eyes, but I didn't know enough about their history to intuit what it was. There was only so much I could glean during training, given the time crunch.

I returned my gaze to the Colonel, smiling weakly back at him, letting my exhaustion show. "I want to say... Uh, thank you, for… running a service, for my brothers. I heard the 21-guns, real comfort in that. And thank you for the rescue, Lieutenant, and... the accommodations. This is a lot better than anything we had in the field."

All three men exchanged a glance this time. They had to be imagining what conditions were for me before this shithole, if I was humbly treating the One-Star like it was the Ritz.

"My uh... my staff here," Velasquez began delicately, "they have some questions, as you might imagine. The way I'm told it went, you were accosted by some sort of... character, out there?"

Character? Accosted? Jesus, what an understatement.

I swallowed dryly, letting my eyes fall into the middle distance beyond them, gazing at the wall. I closed my eyes. "It… was…"

A memory. I could smell the salt and the dust in the desert of Utah. But visually, and with my ears, in a visor, I was in that parking garage. On defense. About to watch the whole squad get torn to shreds by an unstoppable force.

Foucault advanced on us like a ghost. Sweeping from wall to wall, car to car, cover to cover, dancing a deadly ballet of bullets against Sergeant Hardt and his – our – my – merry band.

I was Miguel Ramirez, the leatherneck. Survived Portland. Been shot twice. Killed men. But I never had a clear shot on the Man in the Coat. Never saw an opportunity to pull the trigger in a meaningful way. The panic took me when the first few of our boys fell. Death was coming for me, clad in beige. Death seemed all-encompassing and single-minded. Driven and determined. Neither our guns nor our training could have prepared us for a foe so... darkly mercurial, in infinite shape.

One by one, my brothers fell. One down. The next. The wallop of the grenades. The sensory overload of flashbangs.

Sudden blindness.

Deafness.

A bright star had burned itself into my retinas, detonating so close that the polarized lenses of my gas mask could not possibly filter the light. I could hear nothing but vile ringing. I felt terror that I would die in that overstimulation. Helpless.

Fade in. Hardt was bleeding out before me. Tourniquet on his thigh; he had put it there, he started it, but he didn't have the strength to finish it. Begging me to save him, clutching desperately to my vest. His face half-obscured by the churning star of retinal sear. He mouthed, in the silence: 'Rami, please.'

I really tried for him. I reached down. Dropped my rifle instantly, torqued that tourniquet hard. Harder than I should have.

The ghost rounded the truck, rifle in hand, impassive to my attempt. Death was here. The muzzle brake pressed to the soft section of Hardt's neck. I couldn't even hear the shot. Hardt merely twitched, then fell still.

The ghost's rifle leveled at me next.

His eyes. Neutral. Unfeeling.

Judgement.

I winced, blinking my eyes open.

The three men watched my body language shift and change in those three seconds, as I considered the hell that never was. A fictitious nightmare. Then, I scowled at the wall.

"What do you want to know," I growled, looking at none of them.

Not just broken, then. Pissed. Trying to keep my shit together and just barely not failing. Feeling terrible for the man I was pretending to be, and angry for him to have lived through such a horrible thing.

Velasquez reached back for a chair by the opposite wall, dragging it over.

His psychology and communications education was showing. He did that to add time to the equation, as much as it was to simply have a place to sit. He positioned the chair facing away, then sat down facing toward me with his arms slung over the back. Being relatable. Personable. Open. But, also putting an object between us, which made me feel safer, despite being cornered.

Message? A stranger, but one who wanted to be friendly.

Both of his hands bobbed out at me, inviting me to speak. "Anything you remember could be useful, Corporal. Just… tell it like you saw it, like it happened. Anything and everything. We have all night, so you can take as long as you need."

I looked up at Velasquez with my 50-50 mixture of hurt and rage. A few seconds passed like that. "That was no Ludd, sir. He had some…" I pointed at my ear. "A Bluetooth on, talking to someone. Swept in like a, a... I don't know." I flicked my hand at the open air, again looking away as I continued, gesturing with my hand to simulate the movements Foucault was making.

"Guy was never where we were aiming. Repositioned after every trigger pull. He—he came out of cover with his gun trained on one of us, every single time. He'd be behind a friggin' Toyota or something, all we'd see is... a muzzle flash, and down another one of us went. He kept throwing grenades, never missed with the grenades. And... what he did to Sarge..."

I shook my head, face screwing up at Velasquez.

All rage, now.

"Straight up executed him, sir. I had him, I was pulling that T-Q tight, I had him, and... No mercy, no... not a word. Right in front of me. The guy looked through me like... I wasn't even there. Like I was invisible, like me trying to save Ian was a joke. My hands… too bloody. Couldn't get my sidearm free if I tried. So I just froze. Hate that I froze."

Velasquez tilted his head, gazing at me analytically; I couldn't hear his respirations. He was holding his breath for a few seconds, trying to imagine what I was describing. "I'm very sorry, Corporal. Dresden tells me you considered these guys family?"

I nodded dismally, meeting his eyes, but saying nothing. It was true, in a way. Wasn't it? We were all family now, in the face of the inevitable.

"What did he want to talk to you about?" Velasquez asked, his voice monotone for its self control. "Why did he talk to you? What did he say?"

I shrugged, resisting the urge to curse. "It was crazy stuff. Like... like I told Lieutenant Dresden. He said we weren't… 'using free will correctly,' whatever the hell that means. I mean, we were just out there surviving, doing what we could, you know? Feeding ourselves. But he swung in on all this crap about agency, about... duty, and pride. Called us traitors to our species." I shrugged hard upward, hands flicking out. "Traitors, sir?! Just wanted to keep my people safe and fed, that shouldn't be a fuckin' crime out here!"

I put my head in my hands.

He bobbed a downturned hand at me, begging calm. My words, though. I saw a flash of something in his eyes when I looked back up at him. Hurt, at my sentiment, but... not defensive. More an agreement, for the tragedy of the truth.

"Exact words, Corporal? What did he say? The more we can glean, the better."

I focused at the middle distance again. "Um... 'It's judgment day.'" I cleared my throat, shrugging. "And, 'I'm skipping to the end in Seattle.' And..."

I started to pant. Real stress, but for a different reason. This was going to suck. I hung my head. Couldn't help but feel like an ass for this, even if I knew it would save his life.

Fuck. Am I seriously about to cry in front of these guys? Just look angry. Look angry, that makes it okay.

Brazil. Late February. 2018.

A slight man, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, four hundred men to protect outside. A letter on a desk in a sanitation plant... delivered by courier to a place without light, carrying the worst news possible for someone to receive in a war zone. Addressed to him.

A drawer opening. A drawer closing. A breath blowing out a candle. Fresh darkness, for dark considerations. He crawled under his desk, where he didn't think anyone could see him. Far from electronics. Far from anyone or anything.

The sound of sobbing.

I sighed hard, squeezing my eyes shut. I held my hand out in front of me in a clenched fist. "He said he didn't have to kill me, said... 'The death of you, Corporal Ramirez, is..." I splayed my hands; the words were nearly impossible to force out, and I grit my teeth through them. "A bottle of... whiskey in one hand, and a Beretta in the other.' "

I covered my mouth, looking at Velasquez's boots, trembling. I couldn't bear to make eye contact, but I did it anyway, to see the damage I'd done. I looked up. I felt my lips tense as I cringed at how hurt he looked. I felt my chest throb with pain at the forced calm in his eyes, and I felt enraged that I even had to go this far in the first place, to save this man’s life.

"I'm not walking that road again, sir," I seethed into my palm, my hand falling away, anger pouring into my voice like fire as I shook my head in defiance, snarling my words. "Never again. I'm not breaking at the whim of a friggin' monster, not for him." I raised my voice in defiance of the very concept. "No sir, screw that quitter bullshit, I gotta do right by my boys, I still have business to conclude!"

And there it was. Velasquez slowly lifted his hand again, requesting my calm. But his eyes. The eyes always tell. His gears were turning, it lasted for a flicker. A deep, deep concern was there, one the other men could not see for their lack of a heart; Velasquez, meanwhile, had seen a ghost. I had just labeled something that no one could possibly have known. And then... it was hidden again, deep down, and his eyes went back to their professional calm.

Velasquez had to know that my survival at the hands of the Coat meant that this message was intended to reach him. Could he blame me for being the vector?

Based on what I had just said, and the circumstances, I was a victim too. I was, wasn't I?

I still am. Aren't I?

Aren't you? Aren't we all, if we still have a heart, and care about what happened to these people?

Velasquez kept his voice in check, clearing his throat to test what he sounded like before he spoke. "We... we're going to find him, Ramirez. You have my promise on that. I can not abide what has happened to you today. We have common adversaries, I believe, and... I would hope you would stick around and help us to curtail these threats. We'll need all hands for the coming storm."

I nodded, watching him carefully. I wore unblinking determination in my wide eyes as I clenched my teeth.

"Yes sir. I would like nothing more. Please."

"Very good." He nodded too, then turned to address the others. "Gentlemen? If you would?"

And now he wanted to retreat, to decompress from that nuclear bomb of a steganographic message, while his subordinates completed their interrogation about the local Luddites. I'm sorry, 'job interview.'

Simmons stepped forward, dug into a rubber documents pouch, and unfolded an area map, one of several I'd be inspecting. Dresden dragged an empty table over to my cot so I wouldn't have to get up. I watched Velasquez in my peripheral vision as he silently inhaled a very deep breath, then let it out slow. Again. And again. Wringing his game right hand behind his back. Squeezing it. His mind was still turning and churning as he stared at me, trying to figure out what this was.

Whiskey in one hand… Beretta in the other…

How could the Man in the Coat know?

Velasquez realized the math of what was happening. His entire dream had been falling down around him, in free fall, before today. The time to decide was now. Celestia was coming, it was always inevitable. So was the dream worth saving?

Option 1: Does he dig in his heels and defend the future of an independent humanity, no matter how badly the conditions deteriorate?

Option 2: Does he put a bullet in the back of Simmons’s head like he had been muscling up the courage for, in the hopes that what comes out the other end of the chaos is somehow better, long after he's gone?

Or… Option 3, the one choice he didn't have when he woke up this morning: Does he step aside, toss his golden crown before gilded hooves, and let an AI-sent secret agent save his men?

He couldn't stem this corruption himself. Couldn't be the one to end Simmons, not with another option available. Not without starting a war. Open war would kill so many of his boys, boys he wanted desperately to see as his own, for lack of his own daughter.

Was there hope here? Was there a better way to complete his one final duty on this dead world?

Was the Man in the Coat his secret savior?

...

He'd think on it. And Carlos had to be alive to think about it.

The things I wanted to say to him. The things I wish I could have said in that moment, to soothe his inner conflict, just knowing how hard the next few days of awakening would be for him. I hoped he would realize that life could have meaning again. And how. Same way I did, after I wrestled that ghost. Same conclusions I had made, to make me who I was then, and who I still am today.

A way out. A way forward. Possibly.

I did what I could. I kept my attention on Dresden and Simmons, pointing at the map at all the places we'd 'seen' Ludds in the city. Their scout patrols were about to have a really bad three weeks out there, while I mind gamed the rest of this base from the inside out.

I was pissed, folks. More than just being pissed at Celestia, I was pissed at these bastards… for selfishly perverting this place so far beyond its original vision and purpose, and doing so gladly. Could've been another PDX, but no. Couldn't have that, couldn't have peace. Simmons had to go and reinvent banks, taxes, debt, and corruption, of all things.

Sucks to be anyone who got in their way, while they ran this stupid self-enrichment scheme, where the end would always be violence. But hey, that drained the city of food, right? Uploads went up city-wide, right? Just like Alabaster wanted from this shit sandwich.

No. We were gonna excise the rot, and I wasn't alone. I had an army of my fellow guardian angels at my back. We were gonna fix this place, and just like in Portland? We were gonna fix it good, God willing.

Folks? If you take only one thing from tonight, take this. No matter how bad a day might be... tomorrow could always be better. Buy yourself as many days as you can, because any one of them could change everything.

If you let it.

Author's Note

🛡️ ~ [Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra – Kiss the Sky]
🗡️ ~ [Soulsavers – Unbalanced Pieces]
🤠 ~ [Django Unchained OST – Nicaragua]

🗡️ ~ QP wasn't so bad.
🛡️ ~ Three weeks locked up with Tom Clancy wasn't bad?
🗡️ ~ Other way around, Mal. He was locked in there with me. Guys like me are his kryptonite.