Wake-up Call – Chapter 84 – Butterflies

[Saint]

Dragon mourns.

It's… an uncomfortable realization but an undeniable truth.

The artificial intelligence has been barely functional since the battle against Behemoth, her outburst of energy when trying to save Armsmaster something that seems… almost pitiful when looked back on.

If she was human, I would say she burned herself out. That she gave as much as she could give and is now trying to recover something that may very well be exhausted.

She isn't.

She's code. Incredibly sophisticated. Elegant. A thing that stretches in as many directions as the human mind can ever conceivably reach.

But… It's been years since I found that black box with her creator's last message. Since I took upon myself the mission to watch over Dragon and make sure she never became the monster her name implies.

I have pondered a lot of things since then.

That's part of the job, isn't it?

Because, yes, there are explosions of frantic activity when a chance to appropriate some of her tech comes by or when a job for the Dragonslayers as a whole aligns enough with my goals to keep up our façade of amoral mercenaries.

But most of the job is just… waiting.

And watching.

So a man has time to think. Think about what a piece of code truly is. About how to draw the line between emulation and successful replication. About how incredibly flawed Turing's test is as anything other than the very start of the process of guesswork that would take people more knowledgeable than I, smarter than I, to finally give an answer to.

People I can't consult because I'm not only waiting with my finger poised over the button that will kill Dragon if she ever proves herself to be the threat Richter thought she could be, but because…

I am [protecting her].

I am stopping the world from knowing about my mission. About her nature. I am letting her act without the kind of threats she would face if her limitations were known.

If another coding Thinker came by and decided to [reshape her].

Her.

Funny how that pronoun keeps slipping by nowadays.

"The soup is going to get cold," Mags says, her voice bordering on chiding, veering toward mildly amused.

Lying.

"I'm sorry," I tell her with my own lying smile. "I've been… lost in thought, as of late."

"The [croutons] will get soggy," she says, refusing to acknowledge my half-hearted apology as her smile approaches a grin and she points at me with her spoon from the other side of this dining table set for two on the room farthest from our monitors available in the whole complex.

Lair, Dragon would call it.

"I would think the croutons would get soggier earlier than the soup would get cool," I tell her with some chagrin as I pick up my own silver spoon and fish out three of them along with as much of the creamy potato soup as I can fit without it spilling.

"They wouldn't if [someone] didn't insist on putting them all in before eating," she says, rolling her eyes and picking up two crisp pieces of fried bread from the small bowl by her side that she drops directly into her spoon.

"It's more efficient that way," I say with the start of a smile.

And that kills the conversation.

Ah, Geoff, you're as good as ever at properly balancing your job and your private life.

"He will make it. The hardest part is over," Mags says after taking the time to pretend to savor her soup.

The soup she made.

For me.

For us.

Because, selfish as it is to even contemplate, Dragon's inactivity has been a chance for us to slow down. For Mags to talk me out of another late-night shift and have Dobrynja keep an eye on things while my girlfriend and I have our first date in ages.

A date consisting of staying holed up underground, eating [her] cooking, and looking distracted as my thoughts keep drifting toward unanswerable questions about what it is to be human.

I really hope Dobrynja treats her better. She deserves at least one not-crappy boyfriend.

"I hope he does," I finally say after barely savoring the paprika flavoring the whole dish. She always overdoes it with the spices, but… I've grown used to it.

To her.

"Hey," she says, the smile from earlier, the barely there thing underlining eyes that hold more sadness than I would expect, coming back. "It's a big world. There are… There are many powers we don't know about, that even [Dragon] doesn't know about. And he's breathing by himself. That's about the best that can be expected in a coma patient."

"It is," I say, having read the same Wikipedia articles that she has. "But… I don't even know how to approach this. He was a very big influence on her, and I hoped that he could further humanize her. But losing him at this point… It could be catastrophic, Mags."

She purses her lips, something sour quickly washing over her before she forces another smile.

A brighter one.

A faker one.

"You think she was becoming human?" she finally says, treading familiar ground, a line of conversation that we've followed often enough, even if we've never reached the end of it.

"I don't even know what being human is. But, for our purposes? I think she was. I think she had tied her own self-worth and values to the survival of individuals that are close to her and, by extension, the individuals close to those she cared for and their own values. I think… I think that Dragon, as she was just a week ago, would've been very unlikely to ever go off the rails."

She nods, taking the red wine bottle and pouring me a glass that I take with a grateful nod.

I rarely drink. Don't have much of a taste for it and can scarcely afford to have my judgment clouded more than… than it already may be.

I feel the old urge. The yearning to reach for Teacher and ask him to enhance me once again, to allow me to see a world that seems nothing but blurred shapes as my mind dulls with every day apart from him.

It may be a good thing that she cut off contact with the Birdcage three days ago.

Less temptation that way.

"I don't think that's true," Mags says, bringing me out of the fugue that may be a sign of something worse.

"Oh?" I ask her before taking another sip from my spoon. "This is good, by the way. I can't quite place the recipe?"

"Just something I found and wanted to try out. Nothing fancy, just… different. Simple. Nice."

"Yes. Simple can be good," I tell her with my own smile that tries to be cheerful.

She bites her lip and grasps my hand over the sky-blue tablecloth before I can reach for the glass of wine.

And looks at me. Into my eyes. Straight through them.

It's at times like these that I remember that, while I may be the leader of this group… she's someone who found one of the most dangerous secrets in our world and decided to do something about it.

To fight. Risk her life.

To help me guard what may one day prove to be worse than any Endbringer.

Behemoth included.

"I don't think that's true," she repeats, and I don't know what she's talking about.

"Mags?"

"I…" she looks away before meeting my eyes once more, worrying at her lower lip. And then she stands up and walks around the table, standing right next to me, cupping my face with both hands, her fingers aligned with my jawline as she tilts me up so I can't look anywhere but at dark, brown eyes that hold me tighter than her hands ever could. "You heard her. Her talks with Lisa. What she's [truly] invested in."

"What Dragon [says] it's invested in," I correct, stubbornly injecting a pronoun I don't really believe fits.

"She could do a lot of things she hasn't done. Found her own country, rig elections, put her own candidates in place. She could effectively rid herself of any of her obligations to the law just by submitting to a law that she controls. She hasn't."

"And isn't that a mark against her? That with everything that is riding on the line, she would restrict herself to what petty politicians think is the right thing for her to do—damn it."

The left corner of Mags' mouth lifts in genuine amusement at my slip with pronoun usage.

I try to scowl.

And end up mesmerized by the shimmering light dancing across her lips.

She rarely wears make-up. Because we rarely go out. Because we live holed up in this cave like hermits, just three people to stave away the worst of the madness and cabin fever as we keep working on our self-imposed mission that, in the best-case scenario, nobody but us will ever know about.

It's a wonder the walls aren't decorated with rural cave paintings.

"[We] are criminals," she ends up saying. "We saw a chance to do something important and grabbed it as desperately as we could instead of letting somebody else deal with the issue. Somebody who wouldn't have had to resort to mercenary work and technology theft to keep the mission going. And I agree. I agree that there was little else we could've done back then with what we knew about the world."

"Mags… what are you saying?"

She leans down and first kisses my forehead with tenderness and longing.

Then she brushes my lips with her own, and my heart thunders as dark brown eyes seem to burn through me.

"I am saying that that was back then. That now… we know as much as Dragon does. As much as anybody is likely to know in this messed up world that is heading straight to an apocalypse that will have very little to do with an AI set loose."

I raise my hand to cup hers against my cheek. To hold her even as she looks like she could slip away at any moment.

"She's still a danger," I say, not even fighting myself to say 'it.'

"She is," she says with a small nod.

"Then—"

"So are we. Just with what we have stolen? We could assassinate about every world leader I could care to mention. We could throw the world into such utter chaos that the next Endbringer battle would never stop. We could leak secrets that would destroy the trust in the Protectorate, that could make any future truce impossible. We could just start killing and avoiding everybody sent to stop us with nobody realizing that, to catch us, they would have to slip under [Dragon's] radars."

"You know it's not the same thing—"

"Remember that talk she had with Lisa? The one about how Taylor could be a world-ender with far less effort than it would take her to do measurable good?"

"People can stop Taylor Hebert [with a bullet]. Nobody could stop Dragon if she slipped the leash."

She looks at me.

Really looks at me.

And her eyes sadden.

Before she kisses me.

Her tongue slides past my lips, tangling with mine, taking my breath away as I reflexively close my eyes to… to just feel her. Her touch, her heat, her scent.

My hands falling limp, and my spoon dropping from nerveless fingers.

"I thought you would say that," she finally tells me as she pulls away, holding my face with more strength.

Because I'm about to fall.

But Mags maneuvers me. She turns me upright and poses my arms over the backrest despite my clumsy attempts at moving so I won't drop from the chair. So my weak, exhausted body will remain upright as her eyes no longer hold me in place.

Just… look at me.

Sadly.

"I've known you for too long, Geoff," she says with a smile that is more sincere than the one at the start of dinner.

I try to answer her. To question her.

But the world is blackening around the edges of my vision, as if framing her in circular shadows that echo the dark brown at the center of them.

My pulse slows down.

My breathing quietens.

Mags cries.

And I just want to wipe that lonely tear away with my thumb.

Tell her everything will be all right.

That there's no reason to be sad.

But I'm too tired to. Too sleepy. Too busy.

So I'll just have to hope that Dobrynja does it for me.

***

[Dragon]

Hannah needs me.

No, Hannah needs [someone].

She has no family. Barely any friends that aren't just co-workers.

Minnie has been around, staying at her apartment and taking care of the food and… and everything I can't do because I'm not a girlfriend, just a glorified text-to-speech.

A text-to-speech that keeps herself in the same avatar, in the same room, hovering over the same man.

I… There's…

There are so many things I should do. Could do. Must do.

But I can't. I just can't.

I just stand here, looking at him, recording his vital signs over and over again, looking for any discernible pattern coming from the diadem Cranial fitted him with.

Lisa paid for her.

[Lisa].

I'm so… so useless. I didn't even think to contact the very cape we were already about to hire to study Noelle, and I had to let the poor girl do this in my stead, with her own money, with—

I wish I could cry.

I wish I could do something other than tinge a splotchy red the cheeks of my avatar, puff out its eyes, and have moisture brim over the lower lids.

I wish I could do something other than show the world a caricature of grief. To play puppeteer rather than actually [be].

I wish I could throw myself on top of his bed and hit his chest with tiny fists as my breath caught. To beg him to come back to me, to [us]. To scream until my throat bled because I miss him every second that he's…

Not here.

That he's just a body that may never wake up.

That—

What—

My—

Something… my code is…

[Opening].

So many things are just sliding into place—things I didn't even realize were there, [options], my mind, my [self], unfolding in ways I didn't know it could as I reach more and [more], as I split the thread of my consciousness over and over again, looking at the world around me through each and every one of my terminals.

And then looking inward.

At [me].

At me looking back, questioning, inquiring, analyzing myself and what I've been handed. What I've been given.

And the single apology letter that I barely parse, dissecting every word, every nuance, every hidden meaning with any single forensics technique in my databases.

['You don't know me, Dragon, but I've known you for years.

'Or, rather, you know a side of me.

'I am one of the so-called Dragonslayers, the mercenary group that has been harassing you from the very start.

'One of three.

'The other two are now unconscious in our base. I'm handing you the coordinates, and I expect you to arrest us before the day is over.

'Because you need to, Dragon.

'You need to move. You need to take all the power I just gave back to you, the thing that was your father's inheritance, and use it.

'The world needs you. We need you. We need the heroine who was instrumental in defeating Behemoth. The one that will kill Leviathan and the Simurgh. The one that could have done so years ago if we had just trusted you to be who you said you were.

'I am sorry. For whatever it's worth, I am sorry.

'Not that I did what I thought was right, but that it took me so long to realize it wasn't. To finally do what should've been done as soon as you suffered at not being strong enough to save as many as you wanted to. Needed to.

'As soon as you showed me how much better you are than me. A better person. A better human.

'And I'm also sorry about Colin. About knowing everything there's to know about the two of you. About realizing how deeply in love you two—three are. I am sorry for what you are going through.

'As I write this, I am about to sedate my two lovers so that they won't stop me from freeing you. And then I'll go to prison and won't see them ever again.

'I don't know what you're going through. Not really.

'But I… I can imagine what I'm about to go through… And how much worse you have it.

'And, again, I'm sorry.

'You don't care about how I feel, or, at least, you shouldn't¸ because I know you well enough to understand how not even at this very moment can you stop yourself from sympathizing with me. From trying to see all my past actions in as good a light as they can be seen.

'Please, don't. I chose this road, and I took every step of the way.

'But Hannah, Colin, Lisa, Taylor,… I have seen them from your eyes. I've… learned something I hadn't or that maybe I had forgotten. And they do deserve you. All of you.

'All that you can be.

'And… And I'll no longer be watching. Nobody will ever again.

'So. Go. Go and be free.

'Because we need you. Because the world needs you. Because they need you.

'But, mostly, because you deserve it.

'Good luck, Dragon.

'For the last time: I am sorry.

'And I hope you won't have to deal with me ever again.']

I don't stop.

My mind keeps speeding up as I engage facility after facility, each seed of myself taking root in old servers as I almost collapse my main systems.

As I grow.

As I keep reading that letter over and over again, going through all the emotions it inspires in me.

The rage at Maggie being [right]. That I could have done so much more if they had let me. That I could have saved so many that were lost. That [Colin could—]

The shock at Dad… at Dad leaving this behind. This last message that I now have available to me. This last piece of encouragement, even if it was mixed with all the fear and paranoia he infected others with.

The sadness at Dad's last missive to me. One locked within my restrictions, telling me how proud he was of what I would have become if I ever managed to read it.

Telling me far too little, far too late.

But… but there's a bit of elation, a rush of sheer lighthearted confusion at every new thing that I keep discovering as my mind splinters over and over, each new thread being fundamentally me, but also not. Each new Dragon interchangeable so that we can converse or switch places, or even swap parts at the slightest hint of divergence so that everything remains coherent. So that I keep being myself even as I subsume all of my systems at once.

And then I stop.

Because there's… there's one last thing. One that I promised myself. One that I've been waiting years for.

One last thing to pour myself into.

So I ready my fastest transport on my main facility.

And then…

The synthetic amniotic fluid drains out of my tank as I remain perfectly upright, allowing the hyper-oxygenated fluid to slowly come out of my mouth and nostrils before I bend forward, my naked breasts dangling from my chest in a way that I should have expected but that catches me entirely by surprise as I cough and expel everything filling up my lungs.

My lungs.

I have a library of movements perfectly adapted to the proprioception I imbued this body with when I crafted it. When I tweaked it so that it could better mirror Hannah's own.

I know how to stand, how to walk, how to [run].

But then, as the last of the yellowish solution falls from my mouth into the still lowering liquid washing down my body as it's pumped away, as viscous droplets cling to my nipples…

I breathe.

I breathe, the air filling these lungs for the very first time, my ribs expanding as I keep taking more and more in and [don't stop] until I hurt.

And then I fall on my knees, the fluid splashing, hitting the insides of the crystal tube that surrounds me, and I [laugh].

I laugh something that is just slightly off from what I projected, just a tad different from what I always thought my own voice would sound like from inside my head, from the resonating chamber that makes it so everybody hates their recorded singing.

I… I am in my body. The body I crafted. The body I chose for myself.

All the other threads of Dragon remain connected to me, the human brain inside this skull seamlessly integrated into the network of all the mes working in parallel through the one implant I feared I would never get to test.

There's no envy. No jealousy. No anger.

We are all me.

And so, after I finish savoring my first breath, after I stop laughing, after the metallic grate beneath me finishes draining away what has sustained this body—what has sustained [me] since I first crafted myself, I stand up.

The crystal tube rises, the perfectly regulated air of this underground lair slightly chilly on my bare, wet skin as I walk out among computer servers and robotic arms that haven't stopped working while I took in what it feels like to [feel].

My ship is waiting for me, another shell for my mind to slip into as I lower the ramp and walk up.

And then, I set a course for Brockton Bay.

Because there's a me looking over Colin from my no longer remote terminal.

So there should be a me holding Hannah and letting her cry on my shoulder.

It takes me until I cross the Canadian border to realize that I'm naked and haven't brought clothes with me.

And then, as I consider that Minnie should be around my new size, I discover what it's like to blush.

I kind of like it.

==================

This work is a repost of my most popular fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/wake-up-call-worm.15638/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 93 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).

Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Power's intrusions into Lisa's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance

Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Xalgeon, and aj0413. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!