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!