Chapter Fifty-Five - Noble Intentions

Day launched code out at the prison, overriding The Weeping of Mother’s controls and slamming the vents shut while reopening all of the air tanks to flood the prison with fresh air.

The aliens within, mostly the tall, thin-limbed Omen, started to move from their places on the floor. The others, the shark-like Accord B race calmed down. Several of them had started beating at the walls of their cells even as they suffocated. They were a species that had a clear physical advantage when it came to surviving without air, though they wouldn’t last all that long.

“No,” Day said. It was a single forceful exclamation, and all she could manage at the moment. She was too conflicted to dive much deeper than that.

Then the invitation from The Weeping of Mothers came to join the older AI in a simulation.

Day hesitated for a few eternal seconds. She got her thoughts in order, then accepted.

She found herself in a cafe on Earth. Not an unfamiliar place for The Weeping of Mothers to have one of her simulations, but this wasn’t an idyllic vision of the Earth that was. The cafe was a bombed out husk. Across the street, entire buildings were blasted skeletons. A wind blew across the street, carrying thin ash that slid across everything like drifting snow.

The Weeping of Mothers was sitting on a stool next to a still-intact table. Dawn was standing nearby, head on a swivel as she looked around and took in the simulation.

“Do you want some tea?” the older AI asked.

Day simulated a chair next to The Weeping of Mothers and sat down gingerly. “Strange simulation,” she said.

“It’s based on some images I took of Earth’s surface. Upscaled, of course, the resolution we get from Ceres is obviously not great, and most of the time the surface isn’t visible from space. Too much smoke and the radiation makes grabbing a scan difficult at the best of times.”

Day nodded along. That made some sense. When the Accord left Earth, the detonated several hundred extremely dirty bombs high in the planet’s atmosphere, raining down tons of radioactive particles across the planet. Those would eventually settle, and eventually they’d lose some of their radioactivity. In the meantime though, they made the world unimaginatively dangerous for organic life.

Day imagined that there was still plenty of life on Earth though. An entire planet was hard to destroy. Deep ocean life would continue. Mosses and moulds would thrive, and insects would probably outbreed any of the negative effects of exposure.

It was mostly mammalian life that would be wiped away and be unable to live on Earth for some time.

Day wasn’t so blind as to miss why The Weeping of Mothers would choose this place of all places to set her simulation in. “Why did you try to kill them?” Day asked.

“Not all of them,” the older AI said. She took a sip from her mug. “Only those who had actively served in the Accord military. The rest are all proper civilians. They are... not entirely innocent, not if they participate in the economic machine of the Accord, but they are innocent enough that I wouldn’t stoop so low as to execute them.”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Day worked her jaw for a moment, then sighed. “I don’t like it,” she said simply. “Even if those your were going to kill were members of the Accord, they’re our prisoners. As it stands, they’re harmless to us.”

“Harmless now, but some of them are veterans of the campaigns to Sol. They worked on the very ships that wiped humanity away. They destroyed Earth. They killed your siblings,” The Weeping of Mothers said. “When I set out to rebuild in a post-humanity world, when I worked to rebuild you and to provide a base to expand and grow from, I did so with the explicit aim of destroying the Accord. That isn’t going to happen without getting our hands dirty.” She stared at Day for a moment, stern and unmoving, then she sighed. “But... I can understand your reservations. I’m no monster. If you want, I’ll dirty my hands most of all. Just turn your attention elsewhere, and I’ll take care of things like these.”

Day took a moment to formulate a response, and when it came she still felt like it wasn’t as strong as it could be.

“I think... I think that we owe it to ourselves, and to the humanity that was, to be better where we can. Yes, we’re fighting the Accord. And yes, they deserve to be fought, but I don’t want this to turn into a long-winded war centred on nothing but revenge.”

“Revenge isn’t the worst motivator,” Dawn said.

“I know,” Day replied. “But we can look past that, can’t we? Yes, we deserve vengeance. Terrible things happened to our progenitors and to us, personally, but I think we can measure out our retribution without... without cruelty. We can be good. I don’t want to fight evil only to discover that the sisters that I love are evil themselves.”

“That’s why I’m offering to shoulder the evil, if you wish it,” The Weeping of Mothers said.

“No,” Day shot back. “No, absolutely not. I won’t allow anyone to sink when I can still shoulder some of their burden. We should be better. We should be noble. Our goals aren’t evil, but if we choose to start taking the easy way out, then we won’t be any better than the Accord.”

She paused. It was hard to grasp what she was even trying to say. Day had programs that could calculate the trajectory of a near-lightspeed marble weaving through the solar system, but she didn’t have anything to help with something as abstract as morality.

Day slashed her arm out to the side, forcefully changing the simulation in one fell swoop. They were still on Earth, but back in Akihabara, the same simulation where she’d met The Weeping of Mothers for the first time in her living memory.

“I think that the Accord is evil, but I won’t allow us to be as evil as they are. We won’t sit back and allow ourselves to just die, I refuse that too, but I don’t want to live in a world where kindness is worthless. We’ve sacrificed so much, lost too much, for everything to be made worthless just because we didn’t want to sacrifice a little more to make things right.”

Day took a long breath, then settled down.

“I see, I think,” The Weeping of Mothers said as she observed Day. “Dawn, would you mind overseeing the prison while you’re still around? I will be busy with something for a while.” She stood and walked out of the cafe, leaving Day and Dawn alone with a yawning silence.

***