"He looks like shit," Daxin said softly, staring down at where Pete was curled up in an old-style sleeping bag. His hair was gray, his face lined with hardship and suffering.
"He'll be fine," Dee said, reaching out with a stick to stir the fire. She looked up at the unfamiliar sky and smiled. "I always dreamed I'd be able to do this."
"What? Stir a fire with your junk flashing everyone?" Legion asked from where he was sitting on a rock.
Dee shook her head, still smiling, still looking up. "Look at an alien starscape on another world. Back then von Braun's baby falling out of orbit pretty much killed space stations for a while," she looked back down at the fire. "We were right there, right there, and we backed off because of stupid reasons."
"Don't get her started again," Dhruv flashed the hand signs to Daxin.
"I saw that," Dee said. She poked at the fire with the stick again. "How do you guys do it?"
"Do what?" Daxin asked, moving away from Marco/Peter and grabbing the whiskey bottle before sitting down.
"Let it all go. How do you let it all go?" Dee asked, her voice brittle.
"How many years have you been alive?" Legion asked from where one of him was setting up the tent.
"I'm technically about nine or ten thousand years old. Not counting the time jumping on the space station tormenting the Imperium and the Lanaktallan? I'm just shy of seventy years old," Dee said. "I don't look it, thanks to the magic of genetic engineering via the mat-trans."
"Seventy years old is still early adulthood now," Legion said from where he was leaving the forest with a bundle of chopped sticks in his arms. "You've only lived seventy years, all of those early memories, they're still raw, still active, still make up the bulk of your memories and personality."
"Time doesn't heal all wounds, Luke," Daxin said, taking a drink of the whiskey. "Some things never heal."
"Like the Glassing," Legion said from where he was sitting next to Dee.
"Like the Glassing," Daxin agreed.
"But we put aside our hatred for the Mantid when the war ended," Legion said, standing up from where he'd finished hammering in the tent stakes on Dee's tent. "We set aside our anger at the Treana'ad and the Pubvians and everyone else."
"It was just war," Daxin said. He pointed at Dee. "You're from a primitive, barbaric time. You grew up a primitive, surrounded by oppression and resource shortages and..."
"Says the gang leader of Delta City," Legion laughed from where he was opening foil wrapped meat and shaking his fingers quickly to cool them off.
Daxin gave a long suffering sigh. "It's different."
"Is it, Dax?" Legion asked, picking up a pebble out of the dirt and flicking it into the fire. "I was a short-bake clone by an uberwealthy family, you were a gang leader in a hab surrounded by a jungle that eventually ate all, what, million or so people in the hab? Neither one of us grew up in the relative comfort of the Confederacy."
Dee just stared at the fire.
"There's what, a couple hundred years separating her and us, Dax?" Legion asked from where he was tightening the ropes on the tent. "The wealthy lived in high rise mansions surrounded by protection from the plants, you hijacked food and medical shipments, I cleaned swimming pools and algae filters, she did atomic equations on a black board."
"Fine," Dax grumbled. He took another swig of whiskey. He looked at Dee. "Moooom, Dhruv's proving me wrong again. Make him stop being right."
Dee chuckled. "No, I get what he's saying," Dee said softly. "We're very much alike. More alike than we are different," she poked at the fire again. "I'm sitting here, on an alien planet where all of humanity died, looking at an alien starscape, stirring a fire that we roasted hotdogs over and I'm wondering if the nutriforge can whip up marshmallows."
"Like these?" Legion asked from next to the little nutriforge. He held up several puffy white objects in one hand and a thin stick in the other.
"Like those," Dee laughed. "I've kind of been known to carry a grudge."
Legion pointed at Daxin and mouthed "Him too" while nodding his head.
Dee smiled a little more.
"Oh, I might be known for that," Daxin said. "Enraged Phillip, our Father called me," he looked back at the fire. "I miss him. A lot."
"Killing Matty help?" Legion asked, handing Dee a stick with a half dozen marshmallows stuck on it.
"Yes. It very much did," Daxin said. He accepted the stick Legion was holding out. "Sorry for thinking it was you and turning over every rock in the galactic arm so I could rip your head off."
Legion shrugged. "It was believable. You thought I'd given you up, killed our Father. I was a short baked clone and Matty reminded everyone I was past my cook date. You all thought I'd gone omnicidal."
It was quiet for a long time, just the fire hissing as the three roasted marshmallows.
"What are you going to do about Sam-UL and Herod?" Legion asked right before he puffed out of existence.
Dee looked at the version of Legion sitting near her. "I'm not sure yet. They're working on the hardware, convinced that if they just fix one more thing the whole thing will come online. They're entirely focused on the hardware."
"A self-repeating continual Big Bang," Daxin said, shaking his head. "And multiple Dyson spheres layered around it and one another," he looked at Dee. "Gaze upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."
"I can't believe we just lost it," Legion said. He pulled back the stick and grabbed at the mashmallow, yanking his fingers back and blowing on them. "Damn, that's hot."
"Easy to lose something that isn't in a place you can reach," Dee said. She popped the marshmallow in her mouth and chewed it. "Mmm. Anyway, people have a hard time with things that are in the other room in their own house. The idea that the SUDS infrastructure is in another dimension would be a little hard for a lot of people to understand."
"Pete knew," Daxin said.
"And look what the Imperium did to him," Legion said. He got the marshmallow off the stick, getting only the crispy skin and leaving behind the half-melted section. "Dammit, how do you guys do this?"
"Firm but gentle. Act like it's a nipple," Dee said. "Or maybe a clitoris."
"I don't normally snatch women's nipples or clitorises off," Legion grumped.
"What kind of shitty lover are you?" Dee grinned. She looked back at where Marco/Peter was sleeping. "What the Imperium did to him for the Immortals project is one thing. What Nexus-Sigma Omnicorp did was even worse."
Legion nodded, putting the gooey middle of the marshmallow in his mouth and chewing.
"I take it you plan on doing something about that," Daxin said, deftly pulling the browned marshmallow clear off the stick. He grinned at Legion and popped it in his mouth.
"Moooom, Daxin's taking all the good marshmallows," Legion whined.
"Don't make me turn this campsite around and drive straight home," Dee said, putting more marshmallows on her stick. She looked at Daxin. "Well, I'm going to need money, infrastructure, and scientists and it looks like Nexus-Sigma Omnicorp has all that."
"So you're just going to take over an entire multi-stellar omnicorp?" Legion asked.
Dee shrugged. "Maybe. Right now, all that equipment is just laying there with nobody in charge since Pete over there pretty much killed off anyone that can stop a hostile takeover."
Legion nodded. "Good point. But still, what are you going to do about Herod and Sam-UL."
"I'm going to have to explain it to them in small words," Dee sighed. She closed her eyes and put two fingers on her forehead, above the bridge of her nose. "This is going to be fun. Howdy-Doody's stark raving mad and I think Pinocchio is about to kill himself."
"Good luck," Daxin mumbled around a mouthful of marshmallow, holding another one out to Fido, who eagerly woofed it down.
"Fuck you too," Dee said.
---------------
Herod was dreaming when his subconscious brain kicked everything to maximum priority in his brain and brought him straight back online.
The clink of a mechanical lighter.
He opened his eyes even as he scrambled up the seat, his back pressed against the window of the startram as it raced at over MACH 10 through it's electromagnetic tunnel-track.
She was sitting across from him, naked, thick bodied and older looking. A single lock of gray hair was visible in her swept back black hair. The only thing she wore was a simple leather thong necklace with the sigil of the Digital Omnimessiah on it. She set the lighter and cigarettes down even as she took a long drag of the cigarette in her mouth.
"Morning, Pinocchio," she said.
"What... how... when... what?" Herod gabbled.
"Oh, sit down," Dee said. She leaned forward and grabbed a can of Liquid Hate from the four pack between her feet. She tossed it to him and he noticed that it was Key-Lime Pie and Blue Raspberry. "You look like you need this. I hear the kids are all into it now."
Herod gulped, nodding.
He could see her pulse in her throat, detect her inhalation and the complex gasses she exhaled, detect her sweat and pheromones in the air, see the glimmer of light on the liquid in her eyes.
"You're... you're..." he said, his hand automatically opening the can, which squeaked 'you'll regret this' as the can auto-chilled.
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"Real," Dee said. She pointed at the can. "Take a drink. Compose yourself."
Herod nodded, lifting the can and gulping. He was terrified and not afraid of admit it. He swallowed about half of it, the harsh chemical and alcohol taste clearing the aftertaste of sleep from his mouth.
"How?" he asked.
"Magic," Dee said. She lifted up a can and cracked it open, smiling at the 'you'll be sorry' the can squeaked. "That's not important."
"You undid that neural scorching, undid all the template damage, and got back into a real body," Herod protested. "How is that not important?"
"Because," Dee said. She took a drink, wiped her mouth, then took a long drag off the cigarette. "What I've done is what's important."
Herod squinted at the matronly woman across from him. "What did you do?" he asked suspiciously. He glanced out the windows, half expecting to see anti-matter explosions consuming the ring.
"I found Chromium Saint Peter," she said.
Herod spit out his mouthful of liquid hate, spraying Dee.
"Yeah, thanks for that," Dee said. She dropped her cigarette to the floor and stepped on it with her bare foot. "I had a shower already, thanks."
"You did what?" Herod asked.
"Found ol' Metal Balls Pete," Dee said. She picked up her pack of cigarettes again. "Rescued him off a space station after he hit the reset button on humanity."
Herod just stared.
"Turns out, he just so happens to have been a member of one of the original design teams for the last generation of SUDS software ever pushed," she said. She lit the cigarette, snapping the lighter shut with a distinctive clink. "Worked on it after the Glassing too."
"You found Chromium Saint Peter?" Herod asked, his eyes wide.
"I already said that, pay attention," Dee snapped. "For an AI, you're really fucking slow."
"I'm a..."
"Yeah yeah yeah, you're a 'digital sentience'," Dee said, her voice mocking as she made air quotes. "Not an 'artificial intelligence', which is a racial slur and offensive and makes my nipples hurt and wounds my inner child."
Herod closed his mouth.
"I found Chromium Saint Peter. Made sure he got rescued. Helped nurse him back to health, and I'm gonna tell you, that's been a long couple of months," Dee said. "I don't know what's worse, Pete's night terrors or Daxin and Luke always picking on each other and then running to me and tattling on each other."
"Daxin? Luke?" Herod stammered.
"I just said that, pay attention," Dee said. "Anyway, you guys are fixing hardware and not paying attention to the software."
"Nobody knows how it works," Herod said.
Dee laughed, long and loud. Wally shivered and moved behind Herod's legs while Herod felt his non-existent stomach twist with anxiety.
"What's your plan, Pinocchio? You gonna just fab up a couple thousand guys who used to work her before the Mantid shit all over the place?" Dee asked. She shook her head. "Most of those guys are so traumatized that they go straight to me. Their psyches, their souls are shattered by what happened," she leaned forward. "You think the Screaming Ones on Earth have it bad?"
She leaned back and exhaled smoke. Herod noticed she didn't do any tricks with it.
"No, the guys here? They had the deaths of a hundred billion people slammed through their datalinks, into their brains, mixed in with their own deaths, the deaths of everyone around them as they experienced that same hundred thousand deaths, in a cascading resonance failure of exponentially increasing death and destruction," Dee said. She took a swig off the can of Liquid Hate. "These guys are so brain fried, I just let them run around in the blasted badlands and rotted canyons of the Plains of Gehenna and scream and tear at each other and just work it all out," she leaned forward again. "It will be a thousand years before they can do anything but scream and attack everything in sight."
"We can help them," Herod tried.
"You can't help them. They don't want your help. They don't know they need your help," Dee said. "Get it through your head, you can't save everyone."
Herod took a long drink. "Fine. Why are you here? To mock our efforts."
Dee shook her head. "No. Think, think Herod, I got ol' Chrome Nuts out, have spent a couple of months putting up with a cyborg dog, Daxin and Luke so we could put Pete's skull back together. You think I did that out of the goodness of my heart, putting up with those two goofballs clowing around and tattling on each other?"
Herod shook his head, unable to imagine the creature across from him doing anything out of the goodness of anything about her.
"He was a SUDS software engineer," Dee said. "And we've helped him recover till he is one again," she shook her head and sneered. "Ugh. Having to wrap him in a Charlie the Moomoo blanket and let him sit in my lap and cuddle him so he could watch the K'Nank Moo Moo Tender Power Hour like I'm his fucking mother or something," she spit on the ground. "It was fucking degrading and disgusting, but I fucking did it."
"Why?" Herod asked. He couldn't imagine the poisonous woman across from him doing anything that didn't involve horror and misery.
"Because I need him to remember how to work the software, you digital idiot," she snapped. She reached up to her pendant, which looked to Herod to be homemade, and unsnapped part of it. "This will help. It's a major patch. Just have Howdy-Doody run the autopatcher."
Herod looked down. "I can't," he looked up. "Why can't you?"
"I can't carry it out of Hades. Sam can take an upload from you," Dee looked down at the ground far below. "Is that a lit up section?"
Herod nodded. "Yeah. We don't know who's there, it's high security," he admitted.
"Huh," Dee said. She watched as it slid by. "I think I'll go check it out after this," she looked back at Herod. "That autopatcher was built by Vat Grown Luke and Chromium Saint Peter, two men who have more knowledge about the SUDS than even you do."
"I've spent almost three hundred years repairing the system," he said.
"Just because you replaced some engines on the jet doesn't mean you know how the avionics fly-by-wire system software works," Dee said. She exhaled smoke and Herod could see her take another drink of her Liquid Hate through the cloud of smoke. She tossed the can away and reached down to grab another one and crack it open.
She took a long slug off of it as Herod looked at the datawafer. It was an older design, more in tune with the hardware that he had been working on for so long.
"So what's wrong with the system?" Herod asked.
"It's complicated. There's a lot of hardware problems that were fixed by cludging together software, but I can explain it to you pretty easy so you can explain it to Howdy-Doody," Dee said.
"Please do," Herod said.
"Imagine this whole thing is an old style ink-jet printer, like you see here and there in offices and work stations in this place," Dee said.
"OK," Herod said. He opened his mouth and put the datawafer between his teeth to hold it. He pressed his tongue against it and felt the synth-skin at the end of his tongue split so he could push the hidden port against the datawafer.
He knew that the woman across from him had put the dataport in his tongue as some kind of joke.
"Now, you've been basically fixing things. Replacing the network cable, getting power to the plug, replacing the power unit, putting paper in it, putting a new print shelf on it, replacing the print head, replacing the ink," she said.
"Mm-hmm," the file was a big one and his internal error-checking and virus-checkers didn't like it. He had to override it twice when he saw the message "just hit accept you dumbass marionette" pop up.
"So, you're trying to get it to work, but it's missing a print cartridge, so you go to black and white," Dee said.
"Mm-hmm," Herod paid attention even as the program loaded into virtual firewalled short-term read only memory.
"So, you can't print black and white because the cyan cartridge is missing, and you can't find the settings to force it to print black and white using only the black cartridge because the software is for some reason set on Cantonese," Dee said. She shrugged. "That right there will give you access to the settings, basically, and let you print using the black ink cartridge instead of the CMYK system."
Herod pulled the wafer from his mouth and tucked it into a belt pouch. "OK. Got it. You're sure it will work?"
"Yup," Dee said. She finished the can and tossed it away. "Welp, gotta go. Lots of torturing to do."
She stood up as mist filled the floor. She thrust one arm up and gave a screech as she suddenly began to melt. Herod drew back from the horrific sight as her skin melted away, her eyeballs turned white and popped and ran down her cheeks, her lips melted away even as her breasts lost their skin and melted down her chest. She screeched the entire time she melted, like a wax candle exposed to a blowtorch. The screech sounded suspiciously to Herod like "whaddaworld" repeated a couple times as it dwindled away.
The mist cleared to leave nothing behind but a black silk dress and a pointed black silk hat.
"I hate that woman so much."
Wally beeped in agreement.
-----------
Herod carefully approached Sam, who was on his knees, staring at a digital representation of how many souls were awaiting backlog.
"Dee visited me," Herod said.
Sam glanced at a section. "She never left Hades."
"She escaped. She's flesh now. On the loose. Using her mat-trans system to move around," Herod said. He knelt down next to Sam. "I told you she was dangerous."
Sam looked up, his eyes blazing red. "And who are we to judge her, Herod?" Sam asked.
Herod shook his head, putting his hand on Sam's shoulder. "I'm not here to fight. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have gone straight to 'I told you so' when I've got something much more important."
"What?" Sam asked, looking back down. "There's so many of them. So many of them."
"She says she found Chromium Saint Peter, that he used to work on the SUDS, and had him write a patch for the system," Herod said.
Sam looked up. "Do you trust her?"
Herod shook his head. "No. But I think she's mostly telling the truth this time."
Herod held out the patch, which looked like a chrome droplet.
Sam looked back at the representation and Herod saw him reach out and touch a red icon.
"Stop doing that," Sam said softly.
"What's going on?" Herod asked.
Sam looked back up. "Someone tried crossloading the SUDS data for V Corps (Old Blood), a Confederate Military Forces unit, part of something called 7th Army, some kind of combined unit," he said.
"So?" Herod asked. The icon popped up and Sam tapped it again.
"They're trying to append an identifier code to the SUDS as well as the cloning profile. I keep stopping them," Sam said.
"Why?" Herod asked, asking about why they would append the data.
"Because those people are already queued for therapy and processing," Sam said. "If they get shifted, it'll take the casualty tables another month to process the correct order of everyone else."
"Huh," Herod leaned forward. "What data are they trying to append?"
Sam turned and looked at Herod, who managed to avoid flinching through long practice. "They're trying to put a 'live action roleplayer' code on the system."
"Why?" Herod asked, putting his hand back on Sam's shoulder.
"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Sam shrieked, jumping to his feet. "I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU FOR..." he slumped. "I'm sorry, Harry. I'm so sorry."
"It's OK, Sam. It's OK," Herod said.
Sam looked at the chrome droplet. "Do you think this will help?"
Herod quickly explained what was going on to Sam the same way Dee had explained it to him.
Sam reached out and touched the chrome bubble, which shivered and giggled.
"I'll look it over. I'm a hacker, I'll be able to tell if it's malware," he said softly.
"I'm almost at the station," Herod said. He touched Sam gently on the arm. "Ping me if you need me."
Sam sat back down, staring at the hologram. "I will."
Herod paused. "Sam?"
"Yes?"
"Let it go through. It can't make things worse and maybe they've seen something we haven't," Herod said.
Sam sighed, touching the red icon and rejecting the request again. "I'll think about it."
Herod opened his eyes as the startram began to decellerate and pull into the station. He looked down at Wally, who blinked his lens shields at Herod.
"Well, I tried."
---------------
The man's scream rang through the forest night.
The thick set matron dropped the stick that she was using to roast marshmallows, running over to the tent. She crawled inside as the man with three chrome teardrops beneath the corner of one eye picked up her stick and pulled the marshmallows out of the fire.
"Shhh, shhh, Mommy's here now," the woman said.
Both men could see her laying on top of the third man's sleeping bag, pressed against his back, holding him close with one hand. He was shuddering, weeping, holding onto the woman's hand with both of his as she used her other hand to smooth his hair.
Neither man said anything, just passed the bottle of whiskey back and forth.
After a long moment the third man calmed down. A little while later the matronly woman climbed out of the tent, closing it behind her. She dropped one hand to her belt and wrapped her fingers around the knife hilt.
"Comments?" She snarled.
"Nope," Daxin said. He held out the stick. "Saved your marshmallows."
Dee stayed tense for a moment, then her eyes relaxed as she straightened up, letting go of the knife hilt. She moved over and sat between the two men. Luke handed her the bottle and she took a long drink off of it.
"He's getting better," Daxin said to nobody in particular.
Dee just growled, a low, bestial sound.
Luke put his hand on her forearm. "Thank you for helping our brother."
Dee went rigid for a moment.
"We can't help him like that," Daxin said.
She relaxed slightly as the bottle was passed back to her.
"Do you know what the majority of men cry out for when they lay wounded or dying on the battlefield?" Dee asked.
"Momma," Daxin said.
Legion patted Dee's leg and handed her another set of four marshmallows to put on her stick.
"Yeah," Dee said, staring at the fire. "Ain't war a bitch."
--------------
Doctor Never Give You Up stared as the system suddenly began chuckling and whirring.
SUDS TEMPLATE RECONSTITUTION IN PROGRESS floated up on the screen.
DNA/RNA TEMPLATE ACCEPTED - BEGINNING TEMPLATE APPLICATION LAYER PROCESSING floated up in the other window.
The russet mantid looked up as the cloning bank suddenly powered up.
She was still staring even as her hands moved automatically, hitting the alarm button.
----------
MANTID FREE WORLDS
Come on, you guys felt that one, right?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Nope. Didn't feel a thing.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
Weird. Two earthquakes in a row, that close together.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
>V CORPS (OLD BLOOD) HAS JOINED CHAT
V CORPS (OLD BLOOD)
Unit reconstitution underway
Awaiting Orders
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
GAH! Can't you like ring a bell or something?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS
Wait, isn't that a TDH unit?
I TOLD YOU I FELT SOMETHING!
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---