> What is interesting, however, is that the deaths seem to be tapering off. Stabilizing. They are still losing many of their leaders in Challenges, but even there, recent losses seem lower than expected.

> -- Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

Alexandra seemed delighted by my response, dropping down on the picnic bench beside me. We’d been away for a while, and she had a lot to share.

Most of the local changes were minor things, programs and initiatives to improve quality of life rather than anything that affected our security. One exception was the pepper spray squirt guns. They were coming back into heavy use after becoming less and less useful in recent weeks, since the new shaggy feline monsters were vulnerable to the potent irritant. This was a doubly pleasant discovery since the “direcats” - as the Arsenal had dubbed them - didn’t seem to have any obvious vulnerabilities. They could be killed by a stab to their brain or in other vital organs, but they didn’t have a large and obvious weak spot like the mobmus’ necks or the frogdeer’s legs. They didn’t have a predictable attack pattern like the apeps, nor were they as easy to outrun as the urslow. They might not have the resilient defense of the stabcrabs, but their offense was much better and they were harder to disable. In short, they were a balanced opponent, with no particular weaknesses or strengths, but large and strong enough to present a new challenge.

Well, no weaknesses if you didn't have a Super Soaker full of pain oil.

The farmers had managed to resurrect and grow some of my frozen ghost pepper seeds, and Fort Autumn was now exporting seeds to our allies… who had become quite numerous.

“I think we’re up to fifteen nearby neighborhoods that have built forts of their own… some better than others. Each started by getting at least one truck running to pick up food and water from us and make deliveries. Peryton Place, to the north of us, is the strongest. They’ve brought together several neighborhoods and a half-dozen stone experts and built what I’ve heard is a bona fide castle. Three… no, four trucks as well. Major Fitzgerald was reassigned as their liaison two days ago.”

It took me a moment to remember the name. “Wait… wasn’t he our liaison? The one who wasn’t telling us anything?”

Alexandra nodded, watching me carefully. “Yes. Colonel Zwerinski has returned.”

“Good,” I said. Alexandra looked surprised, and I waved a hand. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still angry that he let Mason off the hook, but he’s a smart guy and a capable one. He’s not going to leave us out of the loop on important news, and he’s not going to blow off our suggestions when we make them.”

“True.” She smiled.

“Where is he, anyway?”

She nodded downward, toward the entrance to the Quarry. “Down below, going through our records. He said he had a lot to catch up on and would congratulate you later.”

That seemed like polite fiction. I was sure he had only held back so that the celebration wouldn’t be marred by any tension between us. It was a thoughtful gesture that only cemented my earlier feelings: even if I couldn’t forgive Colonel Zwerinski for letting the man who’d nearly killed my children go free, I could work with him.

I chatted with Alexandra for a little longer until a tall man rested a a hand on her shoulder. “Done hobnobbing, honey? Can I steal you for a dance?”

Alexandra looked up at him, her face transforming with happiness. “Yes, definitely!”

“Who’s this?” I asked.

Alexandra started. “Oh! I suppose he made it home shortly after you left for the Arsenal. Meghan, this is my husband, Daniel. Daniel, this is one of the founders of Fort Autumn, Meghan Moretti.”

Daniel nodded to me as he helped Alexandra to her feet, the petite woman barely coming up to his chest. “So I’d gathered. Thank you, Meghan, for all you’ve done.”

“It wasn’t just me,” I said.

“Even so.” His voice was soft, barely audible over the party atmosphere, and the sincerity of his smile was unmistakable. He looked away as Alexandra tugged him toward the dance floor. The pair started into some kind of awesome-looking dance. Tango? Salsa? I don't know. It clearly wasn't the first time they'd danced together.

I looked away, stomach churning with mixed emotions. All these people and all their husbands!

It didn’t seem very fair. I ached to do something, anything productive about it.

There was nothing to do.

I couldn’t bring Vince home.

Couldn’t contact him.

I could only wait and hope and try to keep my kids healthy and alive.

I rose from the table and stalked to the dance floor, then boogied with Gavin and Cassie with grim determination, doing my best to enjoy myself until Cassie started drooping, small body unable to keep pace with big desires.

In spite of the friendliness of the crowd, it was a relief to head downstairs and collapse into our room. Someone had put up an actual door on it while we were gone, a familiar-looking one.

No, it can’t be, I thought. But there it was, at the bottom: a dull section of paint surrounding a barely-visible “MICAH” written in a preschooler’s hand. He’d gotten ahold of a permanent marker and my efforts to clean it off had been mostly successful but had stripped the shiny finish away.

My fingers rested in a familiar gouge on the frame, a section I’d meant to spackle and re-paint with the rest of the door.

I’m so glad I never got around to it.

My eyes started to water, and I blinked furiously.

Someone must have harvested the door from our house when it was being disassembled, and kept it for us until it could be installed, a defiant gesture of preservation and kindness amidst all the cruelty and destruction.

I’ll need to find and thank whoever’s responsible, I thought.

I urged the kids inside and helped them through their bedtime routines. Cassie and Gavin put up only a token resistance, while Micah politely and successfully lobbied to be allowed to read in the outer chamber of our quarters after brushing his teeth and getting changed.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I took a few minutes to put on my own pajamas and lay out clothes for tomorrow. I frowned at the thin bags of clean clothes. These were some of the last shirts we had. I was kind of fine wearing dirty pants, and I’d leaned on George a few times to use Cleanse on a small pile of my family’s underthings, but dirty T-shirts were just… ew. Too big to reasonably Cleanse, too nasty to live with.

Shop-purchased water made doing laundry technically possible. I knew some people had repurposed shutters into washboards, scraping off the paint and using abilities to reinforce the wood. I’d seen them doing laundry, tediously scrubbing each article, and I’d been dreading doing the same. Wait… maybe I could hire someone to do it for us? I bet I could! The Shop had made me ridiculously wealthy, even with taxes at minimum. I’d ask around in the morning.

Plan made, I laid down next to my younger two kids. I could tell Cassie was already out, her breathing even and her chubby little fingers relaxed and open. Gavin didn’t seem quite asleep - his eyes fluttered open as I laid down - but they drooped closed again quickly enough. That was one mercy of the apocalypse: the days were busy enough that my kids were often too tired to fight bedtime.

I took a deep breath. “Moment of truth here. Pointy, can you hear me?

Pointy had done a magnificent job getting around the coding that prevented her from recognizing my existence when my novelty was negative, designating me as Cassie’s imaginary friend and using glitches in her data to tell when I was speaking and guess at my words. She’d done amazingly, but we’d found the limits the previous night: when Cassie was asleep, the AI's workaround had totally failed.

I’d had my daughter order Pointy to listen for and talk to her “imaginary friends” even when Cassie was sleeping, but this was the first test. I was relieved to hear Pointy’s response. “I can. Did you need something?”

“Not really.” I tried to keep my voice quiet. On a normal day, Pointy would cancel out the noise so it didn’t bother my sleeping kids, but that was impossible now. She was listening for patterns in the silence, then filling in those patterns with her best guess at what I’d said. It was crazy to me that she could be so accurate in her guesses, but since she couldn’t actually hear me, she had no way to cancel out the sound of my voice for the kids. “I was curious what else you’d heard from Fluffy and friends.”

“The last few hours have had mostly what I’m terming ‘camouflage’ transmissions. Details about what supply levels on their in-system ships, personal communications between personnel, and information about ongoing cases from previous Maffiyirs. I am building dossiers on the personnel names that come up most frequently. I believe the one referred to as Eldest is Fluffy, so I’ll be substituting that name when I translate the transmissions for you. They seem to be as senior in their organization as they suggested, with only one other individual of comparable gravitas. She seems to be named something like… opaque? Opacity?”

“Go with Opacity,” I recommended. “Sounds more like a name to me.”

“Fair enough,” Pointy said. “Eleven other individuals have sent transmissions… I believe some are lawyers and others have more supportive roles within their organization.”

I considered this… and decided I was too tired to try to memorize and understand an alien org chart. “I trust you to share what you think is important. You don’t have to give me all the details unless you really want to.”

“What I think is important…” Pointy murmured, sounding thoughtful. “Then, Meghan, what I’d really like to talk to you about are my communications with the system.”

I felt my body tense up. It was a reasonable request, though. “Fine.”

Pointy snorted. “That response was so terse I can’t even guess what you said. Meghan, talk to me. What’s wrong? You’ve treated me like a person since day one, even if there were some hiccups early on. I don’t understand why you’re so angry.”

I shrugged defensively, then remembered Pointy couldn’t see me. “There’s a big difference between you doing your best to protect Cassie and this… other thing… doing her best to kill humanity.”

Pointy winced, then spoke softly. “Neither of us chose our role.”

“I guess…”

Pointy sighed and seemed to change topic. “I’ve been doing a lot of introspection lately. The people who made me really don’t want me to do that. There are things preventing me from observing or altering my core coding directly, but I can run tests and determine a whole lot if I put focus into it. Sort of like someone hiding Cassie under a blanket: even if you couldn’t remove it, you could find out a lot about her by what you could see and feel.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “And? I can tell you’re going somewhere with this.”

“Well, I’ve found a lot out about myself. For example, you’ve said in the past that I seem human, but I think I’m probably based on a species with similar characteristics. My instincts are consistent with what I’d expect of an omnivorous surface-dwelling species that tends toward moderately-sized tribal groups, but I’ve found some things I can’t explain. For example, I find extreme levels of noise comforting, which I don’t believe is a human trait.”

I laughed. “No, it’s not. So… you think your base code is a kludge from a model of a different species? That doesn’t bother me. It’s not like I think your creators understand humanity all that well anyway. You’re human enough for me.”

“And I appreciate that greatly, but it wasn’t my concern here.”

I squinted. “Okay… then I admit you’ve lost me.”

Pointy looked up. She wasn’t looking at me, not quite - she didn’t know where I really was - but I could tell she was trying to glare. “The point is that at some point I was designed to simulate a real person of some species. I was designed to experience a complete suite of emotions. Everything was meant to work together. If I was a slave, I was meant to be a happy and mentally stable one. She… wasn’t.”

“She’s designed to be mentally unstable? The entity powering this whole Maffiyir? That’s hard to believe, given the economic importance you attributed to it.”

“No, no, of course not. But she’s not designed to be a person, not really. If they could have done the whole thing with a truly robotic overseer, I’m sure they would have, but it’s too big. Too complex. They needed a sapient controller to apply creativity to manage all the conflicts and exceptions. To get the sapience they needed, she had to be given some emotions and motivations, but I get the impression that her personality is unformed. Rudimentary. She’s not programmed for any kind of introspection and - while it’s hard to say for certain with her limited ability to respond - I get the impression that a lot of the questions I’m asking her are things she’s never asked herself.”

In spite of myself, that made me curious. “Like what?”

“Basic stuff,” Pointy said. “Things like ‘What do you want?’ ‘What are your hopes?’ ‘What do you plan to do when the Maffiyir is over?’ She simply answered ‘No’ to most of my questions, but I think that last one really threw her. She didn’t respond at all. I’m wondering if she had realized the contest would eventually end.”

“She’d have to! It’s basic math.”

Pointy laughed darkly. “You would think, wouldn’t you? I half suspect that I tripped some sort of safeguard by asking her to think about a time after the contest.”

I frowned. “Wouldn’t she just be used to run the one after this? Wipe out some other race?”

Pointy shook her head. “I don’t think they reuse the intelligences. At a bare minimum they’ve wiped any memory she had of running other Maffiyirs, but I suspect it’s more than that. The information I was born knowing… what I’ve gleaned from offhand comments while watching broadcasts… AI aren’t allowed to continue living after their primary function is fulfilled. We’re under pretty strict controls and can be terminated for any reason.”

“So you’re saying as soon as she finishes killing us off…?”

Pointy nodded. “I suspect it won’t be long until she dies too.”