We were not given to much time to think or talk, but Arnold did leave the room saying he'd, "Be Back," in an odd way before he laughed at whatever joke it was.
I started to spiral. It wasn't a hard thing to do, not when you had to wonder if your brain itself was suspect. Maybe I wasn't myself, not after Max rebuilt my brain. Maybe all the conspiracies out there about why Samurai didn't take over whole sections of humanity were onto something. Maybe the AI in our heads did stop us. Or maybe it was worse. Maybe we were elaborate puppets dancing on the ends of the AI strings.
Max was very little help, mostly because I suspected she was telling me the truth when I asked things like, "Do you have the capability to rewrite my mind? To which she of course answered in the affirmative. Why lie after all.
There was a huge amount of history concerning the Antithesis. Thousands of years of war with thousands of people. Trillions upon trillions dead. But so much of it that I couldn't see it all, and even if I did Max was already powerful enough to make up everything before she showed it to me.
"How are you?" Sara asked.
I noticed she had set her utensils down and had pushed her plate forward.
I had a fork perched half way to my mouth.
"Me?" I shrugged, then I realized she had heard the same things I had, but she was built upon a foundation of faith.
"How are you?" I asked.
"With this?" she asked? making a gesture to the empty seat where Arnold had sat.
I nodded.
She smiled and sighed as she leaned back.
"When we were young one of the elders asked us to consider the nature of titans. Huge giants that fought forever trampling us under their massive feet. We were asked to ascertain their nature from the fact that one set of titans avoided stepping on our farms if they were not in combat while the other was indifferent to us at all times."
She smiled at me, then shifted in her seat a bit.
"It's a question," she said slowly, "of scope. One set of titans seems nicer, because the outcome aligns with us not dying. But their war is beyond our comprehension. So too is this war you now fight in. the battles here are all but meaningless. One of your AI could line the world in laser satellites and burn up everything before it hits the ground. A tier nine or ten Vanguard from some other alien world could show up and rebuild the planet, returning it to its former glory. There are millions of things that could happen with the power the titans wield. Yet one side appears to help us, but not save us, while the other side is indifferent to us."
"Indifferent?"
Sara let out a wry laugh at my question and I felt that slow ball of anger in my middle start to form. As always I went about trying to push it down, to lock it away.
"The Antithesis ultimately don't care about us," Sara said, "We are calories for them, but we are calories that fight back. If we didn't they would treat us as everything else. Did you hear about Venus?"
The segue was hard to follow.
"Venus?" I asked. I knew what it was, assuming she was speaking of the planet, but I was on the back foot of this conversation, still reeling from the things Arnold had said, and now feeling lost with what Sara was saying.
"We have just as many, if not more, satellites pointing out as we do pointing in, do you know that?" She asked. I couldn't even follow the conversation at this point and shook my head no.
"Some of them, the ones pointed at Venus, saw Plumes." The last word was said in a way that indicated some significance I wasn't following. She noted it from the look on my face.
"There may have been incursions on Venus," she said. She was almost excited by it. It was such an alien concept to me that I didn't understand at first.
I understood the words, and even the meaning of the sentences, but the idea that they would swarm Venus was something that made no sense to me. There wasn't life on Venus. Was there? Wasn't it like five hundred atmosphere of pressure with like super acid air or something?
Silence stretched between us.
"I don't know what you're trying to tell me," I said eventually, feeling even more lost when I realized the age difference between us. Once again my thought began to center on the idea that the wrong one of us was made Samurai.
"Earth is not unique. The Antithesis are not targeting us, targeting humans. We are meaningless to them. They just target everything where there is bio-mass or the potential for bio-mass. The fact that Earth has intelligent life is meaningless to them. We cannot know," she said slowly, "as in we do not have the capacity to understand, if the warring Titans are good or evil, right or wrong, we cannot know. All we can know is that one side seems to be helping us. We know," she emphasized the word, "they could save us in an instant if they so wanted. By choosing not to save us, does that make them evil? Morally bankrupt? Wise to see things we cannot?" she shrugged.
"And what of the Antithesis? Are they evil? Or are they driven by a biological imperative to live and spread and damn the consequences? Look at the relationship between humans and our own planet. Did we care about any of the tens of thousands of species that went extinct under our rein? We over fished, killed off the dodos, buffalo, rhinos, and tens of thousands of other things. Did you know windshield wipers were not originally for the rain, but to help remove dead bugs from the windshield? There was a time when you have to scrub the windshields to clear them of the paste of dead insects. Heat, pollution, reduction or elimination of wetlands, and a hundred other decisions killed all the insects off. Did we care? Or were we indifferent? Perhaps we are more like the Antithesis than we like to admit?"
I blinked at her and she sighed before continuing.
"All we can see, all we can judge these Titans on, is that one goes out of their way to make human life slightly better, and the other is indifferent. When we choose sides in their war, it seems obvious we side with the Titans that help us, even if that help is a tiny sliver of what they could do if they choose to do it. We are tiny insignificant things in this conflict between Titans." She held up her fingers with just a small gap.
"Don't worry over much about what they could do if they wanted, or ultimately what values they have that differ from our own. Ask yourself instead the only question that matters; Which side of the war are you siding with? We can no more understand the Protectors than we can the Antithesis. We convince ourselves we can. But we are only slightly better than indifferent to them. They would wipe this world out if only to keep the antithesis from getting a toe hold. They care enough to help us, but not enough to save us outright, even though they have the power. We can accept that or rage against it, but in both cases we can't change it."
"So I what? Just get all Zen and accept that which I cannot change?" I said with bitterness in my voice.
"Or rage, rage against the dying of the light," she said and it took me a moment to remember that was a line of some poem.
She shrugged.
"But in either case, we die. You will die, even if you tech up and live ten thousand years, there is no living forever. I'll die. Everyone you know will die. This planet too will be eaten as the sun expands and burns all life away. Why then fight at all if it will all end anyway?"
"Fucking Christ," I said standing up. Unwilling or unable to deal with a twenty-something spouting off about death and dying. She'd never had back problems, or a pain in her chest that made her wonder if it was just strain from working out or a heart attack.
She stood as well.
"They all like you?" I asked.
"The cultists?" she asked with a sad smile. "No."
"So I just accept?" I said out loud, though I wasn't speaking to anyone else.
"Or rage, or build in the hope that things will last, even though you know they will not, not in the long run."
"If this is supposed to make me feel better or become a better Samurai it's not helping."
She nodded.
"And yet it if you've never heard it, it needs to be said."
I gestured to the chair where Arnold had sat. "He just told us the food economy is propped up by Samurai printing shit all over and doing a big-"
I moved my hands around mimicking the pea-and-shell game I couldn't remember of the name of.
"Lift-a-kitty?" she asked.
It was like a crowbar to the brain.
"What?"
She mimicked the motions I was doing, "Lift-a-kitty."
"The thing with the shells and pea!" I said louder than I wanted, my frustration bleeding through.
"And the fucking cancer shit? That's fucking bullshit," I said angerly.
"He also said you were free to make your own decisions, but that they may have drastic consequences down the line for humanity as a whole."
"I heard him," I said.
I started pacing the length of the table from wall to projection screen that showed an empty room on the other side.
Eventually I stopped. I was full of something. Rage or anger, or frustration. It was an impotent feeling. A powerlessness I felt when my mother died of cancer. The pure WANT of something to hit, of some task I could attempt, even if it was impossible, but something to do so that I didn't feel so powerless. It was the terror of being a passenger when the bus was sliding on the snow and ice. The knowledge that you could do nothing.
I didn't think about dying. I don't know if that was healthy or avoidance or whatever, but I never sat down and thought about the fact I was going to die. It would sneak up on me sometimes in the moments after I turned out the lights and waited for exhaustion to pull me into sleep. I would feel that whole body chill as I realized that no matter what I did, I was going to die.
It was a horrid feeling, and not something I was mentally equipped to deal with.
In those moments I could understand the delusions of the religious. How they could lie to themselves about an afterlife even when presented with all the facts. We died, and it was then end for us. Full stop.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I wasn't sure if the enlightened people that said they came to terms with that really had. I honestly couldn't see how anyone could.
"My mother told me it was all sand castles," Sara said interrupting my thoughts.
"What?"
"It's all sand castles," she repeated.
"What is?"
She frowned and shrugged, "Life."
I shook my head a bit and half-shrugged in that way that indicated, 'what the fuck?'
"We build sandcastles and we are proud of them. We might fight over space, or sand, or rocks. We build sandcastles because they are beautiful, but we build them below the high tide line. Eventually all our work is washed away."
"This isn't helping me," I said seriously.
"It doesn't matter if it is," she said flatly.
"Aren't you meant to help me? Like, isn't that your whole thing?" I snapped.
"I've been given the most glorious of opportunities," she said softly, "in knowing you. In being this close. That you even listen to me at all. You can change the world. You can build mighty sand castles and do great things. If I can help with that at all I will."
"And all this gibberish? This is helping me?"
"You have a choice to make," she said seriously, "and I cannot help you make it. I can help you understand the need to make the choice instead of ignoring it, but I can't help you make it."
"What choice is that?" I asked.
"How you deal with the evitability of death and all things ending."
"How I deal with- You're supposed to help me kill the Antithesis better! Or where to go to rescue more people."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why rescue people? Why kill the Antithesis?"
"Because they are killing us!" I said.
She nodded slowly and I felt the anger in me expand.
"What was all of this," I asked quietly gesturing at the room but meaning the conversation.
"Was this all to get me to fight the Antithesis more?"
She sighed.
"It was in the hopes that you distill your thoughts. If you want to build, build, if you want to fight, fight. I hope that whatever it is you decide that you do it with a sense of urgency, with a sense of purpose. Cold and calculating or in a rage, it matters not, so long as you are not indifferent."
"Indifferent?"
She nodded.
"I'm not indifferent to people dying!"
"You weren't trying to just get through the incursion? To just make it to the end of it, as if the end of that single incursion would mean something? As if it would be over afterward?"
I didn't say anything because of course that had been exactly what I'd been trying to do.
"You don't want to be a Samurai," she said, "You aren't unique in that. There have been others. It's not talked about much, but there are some that take the daily allowance of points and don't earn anything else. They don't fight, they don't build anything, they just exist. That to me, to many, is the only real sin. To be given the power to do something and choosing to do nothing."
"And talking about death and sand castles, that's meant to motivate me?"
"It is a hard truth, but the only real motivation to do anything is death. If we lived forever there would be no incentive to drive forward, to change the world, to leave a legacy. That or people realize there is no point to doing anything because eventually the sun will expand and consume everything anyway."
"We already have one human leaving the solar system," I said, "In a thousand years there could be more."
"Then the heat death of the universe," she said with a sad smile.
I felt that shudder move through me. That one that snuck up in the dark of night.
The door opened and Arnold stepped into the room.
"We could all pretend that I don't know what you've been discussing in my own, shall we say, lair, but we are all aware I am informed. The Operator is correct in that you need to choose how to use the gift you've been given. However you decide to use it, you'll be the one who has to live with the consequences. Now I don't mean to be rude or to rush you through your quarter-life crisis of mortality, but my time is valuable. More valuable than yours if I'm being blunt."
There was a pause.
"And I suppose I'm being blunt. Come along. I'll show you what I've built here. Then I'll warn you again to keep the human race in mind even though that might mean hardship for individuals. Last but not least I'll remind you to keep human nature in mind when you design your utopia or private army or super-gigantic-battle-mech or whatever you end up doing."
The next six hours seemed to take forever as I lived them, but looking back they went by in an absolute blink. There were moments that stood out. Looking down over a literal city-sized manufacturing plant or learning about the bases dotted along the bottom of oceans that supplied the dying seas with new life. The breeding programs that happened both above ground in the open and those that happened in secret with the goal of keeping various species alive. The tier four tech that could print living creatures, clones copied in a single flash-frozen instant.
More sobering was the fact that the planet was dying, or dead, and the Samurai were continually doing CPR to help.
There were floating mirrors in the pacific that did nothing but reflect and radiate heat away from the planet. Huge lasers at both poles that drove energy up and out with a lossy process that heated the air above the lasers greatly but cooled the seas more. It was a process that netted less heat for the planet but created vast storm cells.
Perhaps most sobering was the fact that most of earth's oxygen wasn't produced by trees, but by tiny ocean dwelling plants that were sensitive enough to heat that had the Ohio Incursion not happened, we would soon be suffering a lack of oxygen of dangerous levels even today.
I was given data about job creations and economies and price fluctuations. It was all spinning plates and juggling balls and insane. Arnold made it seem like all the breakdowns to society were designed so that other parts of society could swoop in to fix it.
Then the most sobering part of the conversation came up. How much control Samurai actually had. It was virtually zero. They fixed someone or tried to help, then had to rush somewhere else to do something else. Unforeseen consequences meant markets reacted in ways even the AI couldn't predict in the long term. And on top of it all, humanity tried to tear down, corrupt, or steal what was being built.
"If there is one truth you can say about most, most mind you not all, of humanity," Arnold had said, "It's that they are of the mindset to take take take, using what others built, and then, when they are better off, not to give back to the next generation."
It was something that stuck with me even as we stepped back out into the cold air of the far north.
"I'm sending you what blueprints I have for Class One and Two tech. You'll find them very useful in expanding your base of operations. Keep in mind that replacing things is almost universal. You might start with some sort of solar panels on the windows, then work your way up to better tech that replaces the windows with built in solar panels and the ability to filter how much light it lets in, or tech that produces power and heat while projecting a perfect life-like view while providing thick armor. There is no shame in getting things working and then replacing them. If you need Family resources just reach out. If you want to join the great web of manufacturing and shipping that is the global economy reach out as well though I suggest you try to find natural markets. Remember creating jobs and losing money is still a net boon to both the economy and to the people who have job security, pride in the work, and hope for the future."
After we took off Sara began to speak but I asked her for some time. It was hours later as we flew over the fields with plates and towers that I stopped zoning out and started thinking.
"Max I need to bounce some idea off you."
"Of course."
"I'm having trouble seeing how to even start all this. I need credits. What sort of interest rate could I get from corporate lenders."
"Any stipulations you are unwilling to concede?"
I let out a small bark of a laugh.
"Max I just had my head pounded into goo. Dumb that down for me."
"Lenders tend to give more favorable rates if there are stipulations. Such as that you pay back specific loans by one lender before others, or that you allow oversight and auditing of your accounts, or that-"
"So let's assume I'm not willing to do anything. Nor am I willing to put anything up for collateral. No guarantees, no blueprints, or material for sale, no discussing how I will make money. None of that."
"There would be very few legal entities willing to load you capital at any interest rate if you were not a Samurai. As a Samurai you can likely secure rates in the twenty-two to twenty-eight percent interest range."
"There is not an insignificant risk associated with Samurai in their first fourteen months. Both in their view of debt and the legitimacy of currency, and in their survival."
"And if I took loans from the Operators how much interest should I give them?"
"I'm not sure how you want me to calculate that. I agree with Sara's assessment that should you ask for a loan, at any interest rate, including zero, you would find people willing to loan you credits."
"Can you audit the Peer-to-Peer lending program they operate and look for any discrepancies?"
"I already have. There were seventeen different cases of embezzlement or fraud. Each case was investigated, heavily documented and the investigation results encrypted in such a way that only Vanguard AI's would be able to break it. While none of the issues were made public, and all of the funds were eventually returned, they were not always returned by the people who stole them. Various operators pooled money together to replace the stolen funds in the hopes that the program would continue to exist. For the last four years there have been no problems. Investors typically make seven to eleven percent on their loaned capital even though there is a six percent default rate."
"How would I affect the, I don't what you'd call it, market? Would asking for money stop investors from giving to others?"
"More than likely. You would be seen as both a good bet, and as a way to help humanity. I would assume many investors would increase their investments specifically to loan to a Samurai."
"Talk to me about the hardware I need to hack these corps for credits."
"To clarify, you are requesting to ascertain if they did not pay fees, fines, and taxes and earn rewards as a bounty for turning the corporations in as well as moving the money owed to the correct entities? Or do you wish to simply take credits from the corporations?"
"Umm," I said out loud thinking it through. Did I want to just rob them? No. There would be people who worked there that did nothing wrong that would wake up without a job.
"The first one," I said.
I saw Sara glance at me and realized I'd once again spoken out loud instead of subvocalizing.
A while later I asked Sara to help me craft a help wanted ad. That quickly moved to creating several ads in conjunction with each other. There were estimated pay, relocation fees, and Max began digging through the operator data.
"Okay," I said while staring at the attendant who was filming us through the glass as we refueled.
"So we have twenty-four key positions. Even though we don't have a warehouse we need to hire a warehouse manager who can help us design and build the warehouse, and all that."
"Correct," Sara said.
"And why aren't we just picking who we want from the operators and sending out private invitations?" I asked. I knew I'd asked this before but we'd covered so much.
"Both to show everyone you are hiring from within the operator pool and to-"
"The brother-in-law thing," I interrupted as I remembered the previous conversation where there was a concern that an Operator might know the perfect candidate but that the candidate themselves would not be part of the Operator Network.
"And we don't open it up to everyone until we get down a few levels," I said to myself.
"First things first is housing and Logistic offices."
"Plumbing and Elevators," Sara corrected.
"Right," I said with a nod. Plumbing consisted of everything, water, sewage, hot water for usage, cooling water to transfer heat from each floor's air conditioning.
"Engineering, waste management, and planning first."
Sara was about to correct me but I held a hand up, having remembered what I'd forgotten. Or part of it.
"Is there a way to fix my memory," I asked Max half-jokingly.
"There are various solutions, body modifications, flesh sculping, memory techniques, implants, and more unique methods."
I paused having one of those moments.
It was the feeling I got when I asked for something and it just popped into being. Like I wasn't a hundred percent sure I hadn't imagined everything up to that point. I felt more-than-human at moments like that.
"Add that to the shopping list," I said to Max.
I flexed a hand and then stretched my leg out and pointed my toes. I'd been an old man- felt like an old man- before my untimely head crushing death and rebirth.
"Fuck it," I whispered.
"Sara," I said louder, "Contact our escort. Inform them we want a tour, specifically I want to see apple trees with apples ready to harvest. Of which I'm going to take some."
"Right," Sara said. She had her hands on the controls, but Max had been in control since we left.
"Max can you patch me through please," she said.
"Of course," Max said in my head in the way that let me know she was broadcasting to someone else.
I wondered why I'd told Sara to talk to them. By the time we were landing I still hadn't sorted it out. I could see the benefits of the decision after having made it. It included her and let her drive in manual among other things. But I couldn't really sort out my reasoning before I'd made the decision. I hoped it wasn't something as simple as delegating to someone you thought of as less-busy. I'd fallen into that routine in college and it had been a difficult habit to break.
As we came to a rest several people in full body hazmat looking suits were lining up just outside a door, while two men were exiting the small hover car that had been following us.
The tour was brief, ending at several trees. I'd imagined apple trees as tall massive things. But they were only slightly taller than I was with branches heavy with fruit.
"Which is your favorite," I asked the older man who had done most of the talking.
"Oh we don't get to eat them," he said with a chuckle.
"You do today," I said with a smile, "An apple for everyone. We eat it here and Max is going to write up that I made you do it under threat of dismemberment."
The blood drained from the old man's face as he glanced from Sara to me. I realized he likely thought she was the Samurai because she'd done the talking.
"Of course," he said with a bow. Instantly the others bowed deeply as well.
"And tell your bosses I'll be monitoring the situation. Should there be punishment involved for following my orders I'll be-" I paused trying to think of what to say.
"Displeased," Sara suggested.
"Displeased."
We all ate slowly. There was a crispness to the fruit. A wet crunchiness I don't think I'd ever really experienced before. I ate the whole of the fruit, only realizing as others quickly scrambled to eat their own cores, that likely we were not meant to eat that part. A suspicion Max confirmed when I asked.
We were back in the air minutes later discussing where to put public transport in the priority list.