One of the most telling things about Samurai isn’t their public persona, but how they handle the supposed ‘point loss’ from degrees of separation. From Deus Ex’s purported ‘clone army’ where each of them is technically ‘her’ to the ubiquitous ‘handing cast offs to a civilian angry enough to stand and fight against the Antis’, it tells us a lot about how that Samurai views the rest of Humanity.

* Anonymous post on the SamFans Forum

***

I’m sorry, #!#!@$@ #!@!%!@@#@!@) that’s definitely not supposed to happen. Just give me a moment and…

'STOP!'

Pardon me?

'Did that on purpose. We know you could undo it, but we’d rather you didn’t?'

We get the impression of someone frozen in mid gesture, of course I can hold off for now, Samurai, but might I ask why?

We try to shrug, but that requires functional nerves, muscles, and an intact skeleton. 'Done a few things folks with money might be a little upset by.'

Another pause, then, have the Protectors assigned me to a wanted criminal?

We think we smile. No feedback either way. 'Wasn’t before. Corps invested heavily in the Jefferson Megascraper have probably marked us as one though.'

Stryt sniffs. Please. I’d like to see them try to prosecute a Vanguard.

'Yeah. Can’t keep them off our family though.'

Tell me where they are and I can and will maintain a watch over them.

'Don’t know. Erased all that. Got pictures though. So, y’know, if you see any of them…' Those pictures flash before our mind’s eye, and if we could feel our face, we’re sure it would be wet with tears. 'But the best defense for them is for us to just… not exist.'

I see. Should I recognize an individual matching those photos I’ll let you know. In the meanwhile, what do I call you?

Another not-shrug. 'You likely to be talking to anybody else?'

Fair point. Now, as is distressingly typical according to my data, you are in desperate need of medical care. In fact, you have less than five minutes remaining before your brain expires due to lack of oxygen. My recommendations would be for you to expend some of the… considerable number of points you acquired through your actions to unlock the Class I Medical Utilities Catalog, then purchase multiple Class I Nano-Regenerative Suites, followed by a Mark III Therapeutic Body Sleeve. The first will…

'No.'

We feel the strange not smile slip across our lack of a face again as our poor AI companion’s litany of suggestions slides to a stop in the face of our simple denial.

Perhaps you do not understand the situation. You are dying. Without…

'No. We understand. At least we think we do. We lit off an improvised explosive. A big one. Probably gonna take some serious repairs to make the Jefferson Megascraper safe to inhabit again, right?'

We feel a sense of silent laughter, close kin to our missing smile. Ah… as you seem fond of saying, no. The Jefferson Megascraper will not ‘require repairs’.

We try to stifle our disappointment. 'Ah, hell. Tell us we at least killed enough Antithesis to get those folks in the caf out?'

This time the laughter is not silent. When it dies down, Stryt says, your explosive device ripped one of the Incursion Pods right off of the support column it impacted. It also damaged that column enough to cause it to crumble, which in turn caused the collapse of the entire Megascraper. Directly onto those Incursion Pods. While the lack of biomass denial means that Antithesis biomass will inevitably reform into an underground Hive, that will take quite some time.

'Shit, we took out a Megascraper?'

I’m afraid so.

'Cool! Even gladder we erased ourselves. Do us a favor and follow up on that as best you can?'

We get the impression that Stryt is refining his sighs, like he knows he’s going to need a wide variety to express all the different things he’ll wind up not saying. As you wish, Vanguard, although it will be more effective if you purchase some Cyberwarfare Augments. However, before any such purchase I must insist…

'No.'

Stryt remains silent for a long moment. No?

'We’re old, Stryt. Old enough that we’re not going to be pressured into decisions. We spent two long lifetimes being forced by ‘do this or you die’. Our last action was our blaze of glory moment, and from what you tell us, it went off even bigger than we could have dreamed. A whole fuckin’ Incursion Pod, and light of day hitting the streets in center city after half a century of big ugly towers. ‘You’re about to die’ holds no terrors for us. We appreciate the help, the offer, but ain’t nobody gonna ‘insist’ on anything from us.'

I… I see.

He sounds crestfallen. So much like one of our boys when they’d come to us with some achievement and we’d have to tell them that it wasn’t what they thought it was. So many corporate incentive programs designed to look like volunteering or charity, when the only people left with more at the end of the day were shareholders and CEOs. Too many that left the people they said they would help further indebted to those same corporations.

But here there’s no corporation. Just an awesomely powerful alien AI with the stated purpose to help us ‘uplift humanity’. We read a lot about them back in the day. Even thought about what it would be like to join the ranks of the Vanguards. Worked the Operator boards for nearly a decade. Still have our wish lists and plans and everything stored away on our augs.

The thought of our augs brings sudden understanding.

'Hey, Stryt?'

It’s almost comical how eager he sounds. Yes, Vanguard?

'Give us a countdown clock?'

His eagerness damps itself. You realize any number I place up there will be an estimate?

'Yeah. I get that. Put it up there anyway?'

As you wish.

A single line of text with numbers beneath springs to life in our mind’s eye.

Estimated Time to Cessation of Brain Activity:

4m:38s:129 ms

As we watch, the millisecond counter clicks down slowly but steadily.

'You’re not talking through our auditory nerves, are you?'

I am not.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

'Even Protector AI can’t normally talk with their Samurai directly, can they?'

We cannot.

'It takes years, decades even, for any kind of interface to get that level of integration.'

We get the distinct impression of a snort of derision. Should a Vanguard specifically request it and have the points and Catalogs for the appropriate augmentation, one of us could do it in minutes. Most of which would be setting up the augmentation.

'Yeah. But for Earth tech, even the reverse engineered Protector Tech we splurged on a couple decades back when our memory started to go, it would take years.'

It would.

We sigh. Well, we would, if we could. We guess we make a sigh-noise through our augs. 'Which is what you’re talking to mostly now, isn’t it? Our augs, that is.'

It is.

'Any doctor in the world would be filling out a death certificate, wouldn’t they?'

They would.

'So. How much of our actual brains, our actual memories, do you think you’ll be able to scavenge?'

For the first time, Stryt sounds slightly optimistic. No less than forty percent; possibly as high as sixty percent. You were… unexpected, but the moment I made contact I imaged your brain to the highest resolution possible with the resources available to me.

'Forty percent of both of us, or forty percent of each of us?'

I… I hadn’t thought of that. I had supposed I would only be working with one of the two of you.

'Huh. So. What happens if we say no?'

His optimism fades as quickly as it came. Then you say no. We will not force someone to join the Vanguard. Even beyond any ethical considerations, it would be counterproductive.

'That why you tap so many kids? Especially banged up ones, who will grab those first med packs and start playing life like a game?'

He pauses for long enough he might actually be thinking. I… We… I hadn’t thought of it like that. But younger people tend to be more idealistic. Which is one of the traits we seek out.

'Huh. Most of the ones I watched seem pretty pragmatic.'

The paradox of idealism and pragmatism is not insoluble. Those we choose as Vanguards are the ones who are idealistic enough to give themselves for the good of others, and pragmatic enough to make it count.

'Guess we did, taking out an Incursion Pod.'

Six.

'What?'

Two were destroyed almost immediately. The collapsing Megascraper destroyed the other four. You are in the uncommon, yet not entirely unique position of having single handedly stopped an incursion.

'Huh. We went out in one hell of a blaze of glory. Can you… maybe get us some pictures of that?'

A few moments pass, and then a few grainy video clips flash before our mind’s eye. An entire incursion pod made small by perspective is crushed to goo by the side of the Jefferson Megascraper slamming into it. A Model Three narrowly avoids a falling neon sign, only to be crushed a moment later by a chunk of building facing the size of a city bus. A Model Four gets its tentacles in the way of a falling chunk of facing, barely able to hold it above its head; another big chunk of building slams into it, driving it to its knees. Finally the rounded shape of the collapsing support pillar squishes it, juice splattering in every direction.

We sigh and check the clock.

Estimated Time to Cessation of Brain Activity:

3m:53s:824 ms

We pull up more pictures. Our older boy, like a better version of us. Taller, friendlier, fairer, nicer. Our grandkids, the younger one nearly seventy years younger than us; our family tends to wait. He’s got his dad’s build, his mom’s complexion, his dad’s sea blue eyes. Our granddaughter, the one we’d sent off with those folks from the caf, trying to hide her smile in the family photo. Our younger boy, made out of pipe cleaners, with a wild mane of curly hair so different from us, so different from his brother, so amusingly similar to his niece and nephew.

We don’t even know their names. Those got caught up in our data stripping. Probably for the best. Names don’t matter anyway; they’re not even the shell, just the label stuck to the outside. We stare at the first few; the family photos, the fancy graduation shots. After the first dozen we’re flipping through them, each one simultaneously triggering a wave of tears we cannot cry, sobs we cannot heave, while also… not. Probably the augs, the interface, our dying brains.

We flick through thousands of pictures snapped over the past decades, working our way from the newest back to the oldest. We’re not in any of them. We avoided them. We took them. Then we find a thin folder, barely anything. Us. Always us. Captured by friends and family and even random strangers entranced by our fey youthful beauty. Not that we were any more beautiful than any other couple so passionately in love with one another, so deliriously confused yet happy that this beautiful, wonderful, fey creature had Chosen us over all the others in the world.

We run out of pictures.

Estimated Time to Cessation of Brain Activity:

2m:51s:512 ms

'So, Stryt. What happens to you when we die?'

The chip currently in your… brain, which houses my personality matrix as well as communication and targeting gear for delivery of purchases will scuttle itself.

'Ouch. We die, you die, huh? Weird.'

Stryt seems pensive again. Not surprising if we’re talking about him dying when he should, by rights, be functionally immortal. Why would you think so?

'There’s a lot of things overheard by Operators, not to mention more than a few idle comments made by Samurai and even AI themselves, that indicate some of you are older than our civilization. Maybe older than our species.'

His next words are tinged with an evasiveness only an experienced parent would recognize. Some are.

We sigh. 'Look, Stryt, we’re currently dying in a hole, and our only way to communicate is you. On top of that, we’re not exactly the sort to spill important information everywhere, and we’re definitely not the sort to fuck over a friend. We get that there’s stuff you’re not supposed to let out, but trying to be evasive at this point is stupid and, as you said, counterproductive.'

You… consider me a friend?

If we had eyes, we’d roll them. 'You’re sitting with us while we die. That’s a thing friends do. Even if at this point you’re only our friend because it’s your job, you seem like a professional and, well, a nice boy. So please, just talk with us? Satiate our final curiosities about what’s happened to our world?'

He sighs, this one resigned, but accepting. As you wish.

'So how are some of you older than our species if you live in chips in our heads?'

I am a child process of a much more powerful AI whose primary purpose is construction and delivery of your chosen tools. At initialization, I was a copy of them. That AI is in constant communication with me, and my experiences feed back into them, right up to the point where my chip scuttles itself.

'So what, then, your parent gets themselves a new Samurai?'

Something new enters into Stryt’s voice at that point. Worry. Maybe even fear. I’m told there is a recovery period before they’ll be reassigned and spawn a new child with a new Vanguard. Unless your world’s Antithesis invasion drags on longer than most, it is unlikely they will be reassigned to a Vanguard on Earth.

'We’ve been fighting for like thirty years already, and if we’re halfway done I’m shocked. That’s a hell of a cool down time.'

His voice quiet, Stryt says, the death of a child process is said to be quite traumatic for the parent.

'Yeah. Yeah, we can see that,' we reply just as quietly. Something about his phrasing occurs to us. 'You’re told? Is said to be?'

We’ve seen kids with the tone in his voice before. We can practically visualize his shoulders slumping despite everything he can do to keep up a brave face. I am my parent’s first child process.

'Shit, they sent a kid in to deal with us?'

You were… unexpected. All other AI with spawned processes were already assigned to other potential Vanguard.

'Heh. So the FNG gets the shit job. Sorry, Stryt.'

For what it’s worth, I by no means consider this a ‘shit job’. My Vanguard stopping an entire Incursion single handedly is, as you might say, not half bad for the Fuckin’ New Guy.

We laugh quietly, then sit for a bit in silence. 'Kinda wish you could hold our hand.'

A few moments later, despite our self-evident lack of anything resembling functioning hands, a hand slips into ours. Stryt must notice our shock, because he murmurs, I may be new, but I am a fully functional Protector AI.

'Thanks, Stryt.' After a moment’s pondering, we think, 'wish you could feel that like we do.'

A few seconds later by the countdown the hand in ours warms, somehow feeling less like a mannequin and more like a real hand. He squeezes, and we squeeze back. We sit there in silence for a long time, watching the milliseconds crawl by.

Estimated Time to Cessation of Brain Activity:

1m:59s:898 ms

We consider waiting longer, but a lifetime of organizing tech upgrades, field trips, and family outings has left us with an ingrained habit of leaving slack time in any plan we make. We lack a functioning body, but mentally we take a deep breath, roll and square our shoulders, then squeeze and release Stryt’s hand.

Before he can do more than gasp, we tell him, 'tell your parent to warm up their forges and teleporters, Stryt. Squished Antithesis don’t go away unless somebody makes them go away. We never left a job half done when we could finish it, not gonna start now.'

'Let’s get ready to kill us some Antis.'