30
Day Cycle, Day 5, Tenth Period, Year 47,262,571,813
Unnamed Star, Unnamed Galaxy
Exodus Fleet
Earth ???
Somehow I was her again, the chief engineer and leader of the project to create the first stellar lifter around Sol. She looked much the same as she had, but I knew with her knowledge that her body was entirely artificial now. A machine of unimaginable complexity, every atom had been designed and placed with purpose. Much of it served as computing and storage hardware. Other parts mimicked the desirable aspects of human biology, or made her far stronger, faster, and more resilient than the body of her birth.
She needed all the computing hardware just to hold her mindstate and the important memories locally. She was old. So very, very old. One of the oldest humans still alive, and tired in a way that was impossible to convey in words.
But she would not give up. While people yet relied on her she would never, ever give up. That was how she had held on all this time. How she resisted the desire to enter storage and finally rest.
She was needed.
And that was why she was in another observation room of another stellar lifting station, mentally prepping it for startup with the surety of long practice. This time she was there alone.
The room was smaller than that ancient first station, more utilitarian, and the station itself was far different. The design had been improved countless times, most significantly with the addition of a faster than light drive, added so it could be moved from star to star with the fleet.
She didn't even really need to physically be here, but she had learned that honoring ritual was one of the things that kept her going.
When she and the station AI were certain every system was functional, they each submitted their startup command codes.
Coronal gases lifted. Reactors and particle accelerators spun up. Antimatter began to fill the vast magnetic bottles the station used as the Fleet's reserve fuel tanks, and matter fused into the ratios needed to construct the autonomous scouts that charted a safe course for the fleet. Soon drone ships would begin to load matter and antimatter up and carry it to the quarter of a million vessels in the Exodus Fleet, orbiting up higher in the star's gravity well like a Dyson swarm.
She monitored the startup and waited. As usual when her thoughts were idle she tried not to think about how the vast shock fronts of energy and superheated matter they were fleeing had grown at the speed of light to encompass most of the universe.
The armada that was the known remainder of humanity could keep outrunning the shock fronts thanks to FTL drives, but they were running out of cold universe to run to. Reality was a cheese that was more hole than cheese. They had perhaps only half a million years left before the shock front covered every bit of space in energy so dense it was too hot for atoms to exist, with unknown alterations to the physical laws inside.
With a thought repeated so often it was a prayer, she hoped the others could still come up with some way to get them out of this. That wasn't her department, though.
Her job was to keep the ships fueled, and she would do her duty until there was nowhere left to run.
If it turned out there wasn't any way out of this, well. The universe should by all rights have still been young yet, but humanity had nevertheless had a good, long ride. And she'd been there to see it all. It hadn't been a bad life. She'd had great accomplishments, children, loves. She was respected, even by the large AIs, which put her in rare company. She'd seen countless galaxies and natural wonders over the years, and she could crisply remember them all with the clarity of augmented memory.
It was a life far larger than she ever could have imagined when she'd been a child on Earth all those long, long years ago.
But the stubbornness that carried her through the first stellar lifter project was still alive. She would not give up. And the others who were still active wouldn't either.
Those who hadn't sought storage after so long were all simply too stubborn to die. They'd fight for every last second. For themselves, for the unborn, and for those who slept, mindstates safely uploaded onto the memory ships and awaiting the day they were needed, or the day humanity had exhausted the last of its time and options.
Many of the stored had left instructions to be woken so they could bid one final farewell. They didn't expect for the fleet to find a way out.
She could admit, rationally, that the cynics might be right. The scientists had been working the problem too long without success for there to be much hope left.
But slim hope was not no hope. And so she would not give up. Not while people needed her. Not until humanity found a way, or the last of the universe burned them along with it.
After all she had seen, she could not help but believe that humans would prove harder to kill than universes.
And so she would not give up, as long as will remained.
Saturday Morning, January 30th, 2011
TW Hydrae, 196 light years from Earth Bet
I woke, disoriented. Another dream.
There were tears in my eyes, and I blinked them away as best I could.
The project leader, the engineer, she held on for at least forty seven billion years. She watched and worked, saw incredible heights of civilization and accomplishment for literal ages. Then cold space began to become scarce as the shockfronts continued their inexorable advance throughout the cosmos. The times between when her group of humanity had to pick up and move shortened.
Society began to crumble under the strain of slow, creeping, pervasive despair as all the arts of man and AI failed to make headway against the great problem of looming extinction.
By her time there were so few left. So very few. And all of them, stripped of everything but obsession and duty by time and desperation. Worse was the tiny shard of hope, of faith in humanity that refused to die among a few of the ancients who saw it grow. For them that hope was an agony that made despair's knife cut all the deeper.
The weight of it. I...words weren't enough.
"Are you alright?" Dragon's voice shook me out of my feelings, and I looked over to see her approaching.
"Yeah. Or no. I had another dream," I said.
"Share it?" she asked.
"I will if you really want, but...I don't think you want this one," I answered, my voice heavy.
"That bad?" she asked.
"They made it at least forty seven billion years without finding a solution," I explained. "All that was left was a huge fleet, running from the shock fronts. I was the woman who designed the stellar lifter, again. She'd been alive the whole time."
"Gods," Dragon spoke softly. "I can't imagine."
"...yeah," I said. "I...well. I suppose they weren't so dissimilar from us in the end. Facing an enemy they weren't sure if they could defeat, something that seemed insurmountable, they refused to give up."
"You are proof that they found something. If not a way to get themselves out, then a way to make it all have meaning," she said.
"Yes," I agreed.
"Was there any answer to your question of how you got caught up in everything?" she asked.
I shook my head, helmet exaggerating the movement. "No. Perhaps I'll find out when I dream of what they did. I have a suspicion that the dreams are leading up to it. I wonder if the implant is trying to communicate with me, somehow, despite the assistive VI self-deleting, for some reason."
Dragon made a thoughtful hum. "Perhaps. The implant seems to be incorporating important memories chronologically. And doing so during sleep makes sense, that's one of the biological functions of sleep and dreams. It might be programmed, intentional behavior. Or not. It's impossible to say without learning more about how it works."
I took a long breath and let it out slowly. "We should talk about plans before we go back," I said.
"We should," Dragon agreed. Despite the lack of an animated face on her suit I was struck with the impression that she was looking at me carefully. "I agree that we need to reverse engineer how the entity's dimensional travel works, and I can also agree with stabilizing the world where we can. Although I'm...hesitant about some of the ideas you've had."
I sighed, thinking about dictators and their hardcore supporters. Much of Earth Bet was at the mercy of an authoritarian regime or parahuman warlord, and that was not a state of affairs I would permit to continue while I could do something about it.
Even if stopping them could involve a great deal of butchery, were things to go poorly. Hopefully it wouldn't come to it, but...there were some worst case scenarios where I might need to slaughter armies before I could start rebuilding without interference.
And I could do it. It wouldn't even be hard, a thought that frightened me.
"Hopefully not all that many people will need to die, but if it comes to it I'm not going to ask you to bathe in rivers of blood for us. When it comes to using force to remove malignant governments, a human should make that call. For posterity's sake, if nothing else," I said.
Dragon held my gaze for a long moment. "I would still prefer to find another option, for those cases. I'm confident we can find some, if we work at it."
I nodded in agreement. "I would like that. I can agree we should work on trying to come up with better options together. Going in and slaughtering everyone complicit in crimes against humanity was always going to be the last resort. Something to fall back on if we can't come up with anything else, or the first resort fails, or something forces us to move early."
"Very well," she said. "Your plans for studying dimensional tech seem reasonable, although making a pattern out of bribing villains is a little...well, pragmatic."
I shrugged. "As villains go, they're not bad people. Tattletale is a child who had never done anything worse than petty theft before Coil coerced her by threatening her life. And of the other two in Brockton Bay, well, one is an innocent and the other is just an idiot who can be reformed with the right incentives, I think. And it'll be a good test run for the bigger idea to cut down on villainy."
"Your plans for the cash supply you took from Coil," Dragon prompted.
I nodded, thinking about a scheme I'd been musing about to throw a wrench in the largest cause of villainy that I could control. "Yes. It's the sort of thing a government couldn't get away with doing for political reasons, but a mysterious, unaccountable private entity with bottomless pockets could pull it off."
"It...has potential, I confess. It's not something I could have done while I was restricted by authorities. It may not be very popular with the general population, and the initial reaction will be rather suspicious. A suspicion which would not be entirely unjustified, with the amount of surveillance that would be needed to make it work," Dragon mused. "Perhaps a conversation for another time. When we get back I'll do an analysis for powers with likely dimensional components. I can likely convince Legend to let me take measurements while Flechette uses her powers under a pretext, although that raises another question."
"Cauldron," I said.
"Yes," Dragon answered, disapproval at the group in her voice. "We need a plan for Cauldron."
"At an absolute minimum, we do whatever we need to do to keep them from controlling either of us, of course," I said.
Dragon took a moment, likely well aware of just how far I was willing to go.
"While I agree with the goal, I'm not willing to go as far as you are on that point," she said.
"Threats don't work against Path to Victory unless you're willing to carry them out," I pointed out.
"Even so," she disagreed. "There need to be limits. You know that. I draw the line at being willing to end life on two planets. Working together means we have better options than arranging for the extinction of humanity on Aleph and Bet if they move against us. Even if making the plans means we almost certainly won't have to use them, I'm not comfortable with the sliver of doubt. There's always an outside chance they do something foolish and the threat gets carried out. I don't want to take the risk. We need to find a third option."
I sighed. So much for the plan I'd had for keeping Cauldron for messing with me. "Alright. We'll play it by ear if they get aggressive. Hopefully it won't come to that."
"Hopefully," she said. "I'm...not sure how I feel about your plan for Eidolon."
The best idea I'd had was to tell him - or have someone else tell him - about the cause of the Endbringer attacks in a controlled setting, with every precaution taken to prevent it from breaking him. That would mostly depend on whether he could find powers that would protect him from psychological trauma, and whether they would work. It wasn't a great plan, but it was the best I had.
"The alternative is letting Contessa try to figure out what to do, but with her being unable to path Eidolon, just a model of him..." I trailed off.
"It's unreliable, yes," Dragon agreed, and a frown entered her voice. "And they might just decide to kill him. They're ruthless enough for it. I'll have to give the problem some thought. It doesn't need doing immediately, at least. We should have nearly a month until the next Simurgh attack, if your actions haven't changed that." She paused. "Are you sure you want to work with Cauldron, despite everything?"
"Do you think we have a choice?" I asked, expressing a bit of the helplessnessI felt on the subject with my voice. I didn't like what they'd done, or the idea of working with them, but they were too useful and too aligned with my own motivations to ignore or make an enemy of if I could at all help it.
"There is always a choice, but I'm not sure the alternatives are better," Dragon answered with resignation.
"They can be counted on to act according to what they believe will maximize the odds of human survival. They might be amoral, but they're rational actors. Given that we have capabilities they must have to have a chance against Scion, they should be fairly easy to maneuver into working with us in ways we can ethically live with," I explained.
Dragon sighed. "That just leaves the small matter of their many crimes going unpunished."
"I'm afraid that might be something we have to address after Scion is dealt with. Although the best solution might be for their penance to be spending the rest of their lives helping to undo all the harm they've caused," I said.
Dragon said nothing.
"I would suggest they undo the harm they did to you, but I've already freed you from anyone's control. Spending their lives helping others seems like the only way left for them to make it up to you, as well as everyone else they've hurt," I continued.
"Perhaps," she said, with hints of anger and frustration.
We floated in silence.
"I'm sorry," I said.
Dragon shook her head. "It's not your fault. You're not the one that used me, and what you're saying makes sense. They're too valuable to waste, even if part of me wants to see them punished harshly for what they did to me and the Case 53s and others. And there is a certain justice in having them work to help people, rather than wasting away doing no good to anyone."
"We have a god to kill first, in any case," I said.
Dragon nodded sharply once. "Yes, we do."
She paused another moment before changing the subject. "You understand what you did wrong on your mission to free me."
I clenched a hand in self-annoyance. "Yes. I should have waited until I was better prepared, just in case my plans went awry and I was forced to fight them after they got suited up and in the air, however unlikely that seemed when I planned my approach. I should have abandoned stealth and gotten out sooner when things started going wrong. And I forgot that I was dealing with true believers."
"Promise me you won't risk yourself unnecessarily again?" Dragon asked.
"If it's at all avoidable," I said.
Dragon made an exasperated noise. "It's admirable that you want to help, but you are too valuable to be risking yourself."
I shrugged. "I don't disagree, but I also don't know what the future will hold. I'm not cold blooded enough to just let good people die."
Dragon looked away. "I suppose we wouldn't get along if you were," she said, quietly.
"Maybe we're too much alike," I said.
Dragon made an amused noise. "A human and an AI, too much alike. It sounds like a punchline, but I'm not sure what the joke is."
I shifted my focus and mentally checked things through my implant. The large nanoassembler was complete, and assembly of a local reactor and compact collider for synthesizing antimatter and exotic matter was well underway. Once they were done I would have a larger, more efficient equivalent of my home manufacturing setup out here. It could produce whatever I needed, and scale up both collection and production operations over time. Weapons I'd designed and wanted were in the queue, ready to start once exotic matter production was under way.
The Spark itself was in adequate repair now. The hull plates I'd patched could stand proper replacement when I had time for the sake of reliability, but the ship was FTL capable and all the damaged thrusters had been replaced. Dragon and Hephaestus had done a flawless job, according to the diagnostics.
As for my implant, I was pretty sure the skill and knowledge downloads I'd been using were the emergency data transfer mode that the implant reported as 'inadvisable'. Given that the last time it had reported something as inadvisable it was prematurely using the emergency bullet time function that had somehow done the damage in the first place I was inclined to take that warning very seriously. It would probably be for the best if I was very careful about pulling more knowledge until the drugs I'd given myself had time to work. I didn't want to do any more damage, especially since part of my mindstate was running on the implant for now, using memory it had likely been using for managing knowledge downloads.
The regeneration drug cocktail was a powerful thing, and neurons in damaged areas should be dividing and growing as fast as they can soak up nutrients. I wasn't sure how long the implant would take to 'train' the new neurons back into the proper linkages to replace the ones that had died, but my best guess wasn't all that long.
"Well, I suppose it's time to return. Where would you like me to drop you off?" I asked.
"Yes. I left a fork behind to manage things, but I'm eager to return and sync up. As for where, the Toronto PRT building, I think. I should introduce you to Narwhal, and smooth things over. There will be a great deal of explaining to do. I hope you got enough rest," Dragon answered.
I sighed, not looking forward to it. Despite the sleep I was still physically tired, from the injuries and the drugs. I toyed with the idea of dropping her off and vanishing, but Dragon was right, it needed to be done. I couldn't make allies by making a huge mess in Toronto and then disappearing without so much as a word.
With a mental command the Spark's FTL drive engaged and space warped. We stopped on the outskirts of the Sol system for a precise correction burn, and then the FTL drive activated once again. Dragon and I landed on our feet as gravity returned, and with a thought I deployed the Spark's landing gear and gently set us down as I opened the door, revealing the underground concrete parking structure of the Toronto PRT building's motor pool beyond.
Red lights studded on the walls at regular intervals started flashing.
"After you," I said to Dragon, gesturing outside. "They'll probably be less likely to shoot if you go first," I joked.
She didn't move. A blaring siren started somewhere above us.
"Uh, Dragon?" I asked, concerned. She just stood there, unmoving.
Scientia > Prometheus, what's going on with Dragon?
Prometheus > Response engine unavailable.
My blood ran cold. That was a hardcoded error message. Prometheus couldn't interact.
Scientia > Why is the Prometheus response engine unavailable?
Prometheus> System resource allocation insufficient for response engine instance.
Scientia > List system resource allocation table for Prometheus VI.
Prometheus > System resources allocated: EWAR module 100%, Priority: Maximum. End list.
Something was very wrong. Prometheus normally had many, many submodules that should have been running, at least at a low level. Maybe the other VIs?
Scientia > Hephaestus, Ares, report status.
Ares > Response engine unavailable.
Hephaestus > Response engine unavailable.
Something was going on in the digital realm so urgent that my VIs weren't even sparing the cycles needed to run the code that allowed them to communicate.
My helmet's exterior microphones picked up the sound of doors being opened and many booted footsteps pounding on concrete. They were getting louder, too. Coming my way.
"God damn it," I swore, and internally debated whether to stay and talk or risk leaving and severing the connections despite not knowing what was going on.