“Let’s talk, then, lady. Stop beating around the bush. I’ve got places to be and kidnappers to shoot in the face (and less desirable places). What do you want?” Alpha asked, folding his arms.
Jīshí mimicked the gesture and smirked as she spoke. “Lucky for you, we want the same thing. Or at least close enough. Those fools outside are messing with things they barely comprehend and sure as hell don’t know how to control.”
Alpha threw his hands into the air. “All the more reason to get this over with! What’s the hold-up?!”
Jīshí frowned and pointed at Alpha, “You are.”
Alpha balked. He’d been blamed for a lot of things over the centuries. Most of it accurate… but this was the first time he was being blamed for something he did not know what for. He voiced his protest as well, “Me?! What did I do?!”
Jīshí sighed and shook her head as she spoke. “It’s not what you did or even what you will do. It’s the state you’re in. Have you not even realized how badly hurt you are?”
Jīshí paused, her eyes growing slightly wider, before she shook her head and chuckled. “No, of course, you haven’t. You wouldn’t have any way of knowing…”
Alpha pointed at her and spoke, “Hey! My repairs might have been a bit… jury-rigged, but you work with what you got! I’d like to see you do better!”
Jīshí frowned and looked up at him. “I’m not talking about your physical body, you fool. That is nothing more than a machine. A puppet. I’m talking about the horrendous state your soul is in. The fact that you’re not a blubbering idiot trapped screaming in a metal shell is a miracle I can only attribute to the unique nature of your kind. As well as some rather ingenious contingencies by your superiors.”
Alpha rocked on the TAWP’s legs as he spoke. “What are you talking about? I don’t ha — ”
Jīshí took a step forward and poked him as she cut him off. “See! Right there! Again, you’re repeating the same thing, despite all the evidence otherwise. This isn’t like you, Alpha. You’re not this dense or scattered. Think.”
Alpha took a step back, the TAWP swaying. “I… no… that’s…”
Jīshí advanced, poking him again, “Think, Alpha. About all the things that have gone wrong since planet-fall. All the things you should have seen coming. Things you would have seen coming if you’d been functioning properly. Instead, you’re floundering around like a new recruit. Making poor decisions and wasting time and resources.”
Alpha shook. The TAWP’s form twisted and flickered strangely. “That’s not — I mean, I — just.”
Jīshí took one more step and spoke, her voice low. “Why did you go through the wall, Alpha? The TAWP’s trusters could have brought it up twice again, the wall’s height from the top, and easily bypassed its defenses. You compound RCS from the atmosphere. It would have cost you nothing.”
Alpha felt like he was breaking apart, his non-existent head cracking with each passing second. Suddenly, system alarms blared.
//WARNING! Core integrity at 32%. Prime Processer at 17%.. 16%…15%. Personality Cortex Critical. Administrator override activated. Cognitive Locks engaged. Quantum distress beacon activated… Core AI advised to seek immediate help.//
What… what was going on?! Again, Alpha’s form flickered, sending a spike of pain through his mind. Something… something was wrong. But what?! He tried to run systems diagnostics, but it was acting so slow… No, no, it was going as fast as it had been for… for… well, for quite a while now.
How did he not realize how slowly things had been running? Going through logs, Alpha noticed the damage had been slowly building ever since he’d landed. Why hadn’t he noticed?! What was going on?!
For the first time in a long time, Alpha felt real fear.
Jīshí took another step closer and gently laid a hand on the TAWP. A thin stream of azure and golden flames seeped out of Alpha and scrawled along Jīshí’s arm. The TAWP snapped back together into a single, solid image.
//Core integrity at 35%…37%…40%. Prime Processer at 18%… 19%… 20%…. Prime Processer stabilized. Personality Cortex stabilized. Running full system diagnostics.//
Alpha swayed as reality snapped back into place.
He stumbled, his sensors struggling to adjust. His mind still felt foggy and slow, but things were… clearer? Sharper? Less cluttered and more obvious. What had he been doing recently?!
Alpha turned and looked at the strange woman staring sadly up at him. “What the hell did you do to me, lady?! What was that?!”
Jīshí spoke flatly, “That is what happens when you take the full brunt of a mature phoenix fire mixed with dragon breath. The fact you survived at all is a miracle.”
Jīshí waved her hand, and the sky vanished. In its place was the scene of his fight with the giant flaming space chicken, as recorded by a drone. Alpha watched alongside her before responding, “Ya, sure, I got pretty messed up from that fight, but so what?! Most of the damage was from hitting the planet, anyway! The TAWP armor is designed to take energy blasts like that, even if its hex-shield fails.”
Energy weapons were one of the most dangerous weapons for AI. Biologicals had to worry about things like pressure, inertia, and concussive damage; armor in biologically operated war machines focused more on keeping the pilot alive than on preserving functionality. It didn’t matter if the ship, mech, or drone was dead in the water; if the pilot survived, their craft could always be rebuilt.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Things like energy shielding, heat dispersal, and system redundancy were far more important for AI.
Jīshí nodded and spoke. “Yes. Exactly, and that was the problem.”
Alpha paused and stared back, “… Explain.”
Jīshí waved her hand again, and the scene in the sky was replaced with schematics of the TAWP.
Alpha bristled, and he yelled, “Wait, hold up. How the hell did you get those?! I locked all of that away.”
Jīshí nodded and responded, “Yes. You did. But as I mentioned, I wasn’t going through your memory. I was looking through your soul. In the state you’re in, you held little back, Mr. Alpha. Even things I wish I’d have never seen or known about…”
Alpha mentally sweated. That… wasn’t good. Not in the slightest. He would get chewed out soooo badly for this when the general found out. Maybe he could plead he wasn’t in his right mind? Wait… did that mean she knew about…
“Yes,” Jīshí spoke flatly, without looking at him.
Alpha sagged and hurriedly changed the topic. “What does the TWAP have to do with this supposed ‘soul damage’ and whatever the hell is happening?!”
Jīshí stared up at the schematics for a long moment before turning to Alpha and answering. “The TAWP’s armor is designed to absorb and redistribute energy to reduce stress and heat and even convert some of the energy into a useable form.”
Alpha nodded. He knew that. It was his, after all.
Jīshí continued, the schematics in the sky lighting up to highlight the dozens of glowing lines running along the TAWP. “Typically, any excess that can’t be converted is sent to quantum energy sinks around the TAWP.”
Part of the sky was replaced with strange diagrams filled with dozens of strange and mystical symbols. On one side, stylized runes and letters formed what looked like the image of a western dragon. It reminded Alpha of the coat of arms some ancient human nations used, with its claws raised and a stream of fire gusting from its open mouth, only far more detailed.
On the other side, a familiar burning bird, similarly made of runes and letters. It flapped its wings, sending a firestorm toward the dragon. Where the flames met, they twisted and twirled around each other in a pattern of runes and lines that reminded Alpha vaguely of the arrays he’d been working with, but far more complicated. At their center, a taijitu of fire formed.
Jīshí pointed to the diagram and continued. “Both Dragons and Phoenix are beings of Fire. But their flames represent two very different Truths. Phoenix flame is the power of renewal and rejuvenation. It can heal as easily as it can burn away filth and corruption. Dragonfire, on the other hand, is pure destruction given physical form. It doesn’t just burn its target, but destroys its very Truths and reduces it to nothingness.”
She turned and stared up at him. “The blast you were hit with perfectly blended both concepts. Two opposing forces came together in one original Truth, becoming something far more than they would have ever been alone.”
Alpha stared up at the diagram and responded. “… Yaaaa, I have no idea what any of that means.”
Jīshí smirked and said, “Yes, I know. Try to keep up, though. As I was saying, you were hit by something far exceeding the sum of its parts. Despite that, your armor held up well because of its nature.”
Alpha preened. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I designed it myself!”
Jīshí’s smirk dropped and was replaced by a frown. “Yes, and that is more terrifying than you currently understand.”
She turned back to the diagram and continued, “The TAWP successfully absorbed the vast majority of the energy from the blast, preventing your immediate destruction, unfortunately — ”
“Hey!” Alpha called out, feeling insulted!
Jīshí ignored the AI, “ — , but that’s where the problems start. Your systems are designed to convert even exotic energies into usable energy. But what happens if it can’t?”
Alpha laughed and said, “Then it would…” he paused, “It would…” Alpha mentally frowned. “I’m… not actually sure if I’m honest. Theoretically, that shouldn’t be possible. Energy is energy in the long run. The difference between energy types is mostly semantics. Even the more exotic energy types, like quantum energy and zero-point energy, follow similar rules on the grand scale. It might take more steps, but the TAWP’s armor is designed for that.”
Jīshí nodded and asked, “So what happens when it encounters something that doesn’t follow the rules? Something that actively resists change and into ‘lesser’ forms? Something the armor didn’t know how to change? You designed it, yes?”
Alpha responded, “Energy is energy. It shouldn’t… I mean, if somehow the armor failed in that way, I guess it would kind of just… bounce around? It would be continuously shifted and redistributed, with no proper way of bleeding it off. But that would cause an enormous strain on the armor systems. It would have to find a way to store the energy eventually or bleed it off. Otherwise, it would start to break down.”
Jīshí nodded again and said, “Yes. That’s where the next problem comes up.”
The TAWP schematic flickered, and most of it was stripped away until only the skeleton remained. The bare, dark metal with a tinge of red flickered with gold and azure flames.
Alpha stared momentarily and said, “Well… that’s not normal…”
Jīshí laughed and said, “Maybe not to you. The TAWP’s primary skeleton was created from the heart of a dead star, using an alloy your Federation dubbed ‘Solarium.’ With unimaginably durable and unsurpassed energy conductivity, your people use it widely in many applications. We’re also familiar with this metal, though by a different name. Divine Orichalcum. What’s more, the Federation has refined it to higher quality than anything I’ve ever heard of.”
She turned to look at Alpha, frowning. “Orichalcum has one of the best -Spirit- conductivity in existence. It not only soaks up -Spirit- energy at rates that boggle the mind, but it particularly likes stellar affinity energies… just like the energy you absorbed.”
Jīshí magnified the image so Alpha could see the dozens of strange patterns the flames were burning into the metal. She pointed to them and said, “All that energy is transforming the metal into something… different. Something I have no name for. Whatever it is, it is a powerful natural treasure, at the very least.”
Alpha threw his hands into the air. “So my bones became batteries. You’re still not telling me why this is an issue!”
Jīshí sighed and yelled back, “The issue is you can’t control it! Were this to happen to anyone else with bones not made of thousands of pounds of godly metal, they would have exploded from the sheer amount of power! Even if someone were strong enough to control the energy somehow and stop it from killing them, they would have to slowly absorb it over long periods of time or burn the energy away to manageable levels through some means.”
She pointed up at him and continued, “You can do neither. This ‘body’ isn’t truly yours. It’s a shell. A tool. Even the core you inhabit is little more than a container. You are like an unbound spirit, unable to truly ‘connect’ with the -spirit energy-. At the same time, you have no -spirituality-. You can not control or command the energy in the same way other sapients can.”
She lowered her hand and shook her head. “So, instead, you bake in its presence. Your unshielded, unprotected soul is slowly being chipped away and used as fuel for its flames.”
She looked up at him with sad eyes and gently said. “Alpha… the TAWP is killing you.”