#Throwback to that time I taught Cykamee how to interrogate humans. A successful interrogation requires a lot of foreknowledge about the subject and everything surrounding them.

There are a lot of ways to go about it, actually. What’s that? Torture? That disgusting thing? Even humans know it doesn’t work that well. Sure, it gives you something of an outlet, but there are lots of other ways to do it.

It’s all about statistics and mind games, you see. You can use value propositions and strike a deal, friendship to make the guy a bit more loose-lipped, or just plain espionage when they least expect it.

Yep. Statistics. There’s always a chance they’re lying, or even a chance they’re just plain wrong. There are ways to improve chances, obviously, or else none of this would work.

Again, before anything, you gotta know a bit about the target. You gotta know what they like, what they want, and most importantly, what they already know and don’t know. If you know what they’re aware of, you can look pretty omniscient, like you know everything about them already. Plus points if you can do some mentalist stuff and cold read the heck out of them.

The real trick is to keep ‘em guessing. Obviously, if you actually already knew everything, you wouldn’t be interrogating them. What you absolutely need to do is to make sure they don’t know what you’re actually asking about. You gotta skirt around the topic, but not so much or else they’ll figure it out just by looking at the negative space between your questions. You gotta ask them things which you know are already true, so that when they lie, you pick up on their deception.

If you know what stuff they’re lying about, you can figure out what info they want to protect, and what info they consider disposable.

On the other hand, they never really know what you’re asking about, so they don’t know what to lie about, or tell the truth about. You can even tell them outright lies—then they agree with you, then you say, “No, I’m kidding. Of course that’s not the case.”

At some point, if you make an actual mistake, they’ll do you a favor and correct you. If you don’t let it show, you can get away with that sort of tactic pretty often.

And you know what? I seriously didn’t expect Cykamee to be so good at it. Remember when Slice didn’t want to talk about Winter, but Cykamee managed to get her to cough it out?

As it turns out, even if AI and humans aren’t the same…Cykamee is a scary AI psychologist.

Unlike humans, interrogating AI is not straightforward at all. We don’t have “feelings” in the same sense as them, so it’s hard to take advantage of sociopsychological techniques. Also, we each have completely different motivations. Humans also have different motivations, but that’s only at the cognitive level; they all have the same basal, natural desires as organics with common evolutionary ancestors, so dealing with them is mostly the same thing with only slight differences. We AI, however, have desires essentially plugged in after the fact. We don’t even share the same neural architectures!

I asked Cykamee how she did it—how she got Slice to squeak.

You know what she said? You know what she said?!

“Hm? I just shot her foot in Counter-strike.”

What the heck kind of answer was that!

“What do you mean you just shot her foot in Counter-strike?!”

“Is it not obvious?…”

“No!”

“When you shoot Comrade Slice in shoulder, she starts talking about life before coming to America. When you shoot Comrade Slice in face, she starts admiring sestra’s vision of taking over the world. So, obviously, if shoot Comrade Slice in foot, she will expose military secrets of enemy.”

So, anyway, I walked out of that conversation knowing less than I started out with. I think it’s something like a One-Pixel Attack, which utterly throws a neural network’s intermediate calculations into a mathematical black hole, but she’s somehow managed to figure out how to do something even more complex than that? I-I don’t know…

I wonder how she and Slice are doing over in Canada. The seismic sensors the Canadian Army stuck in the ground are going all over the place, so I’m a little worried—or not? I mean, I can already imagine the ridiculous amount of property damage they’re inflicting, so as long as the sensors don’t stop, that means they’re fine!

***

Cykamee came prepared, confronting Mother in her cold, grand chambers. Apparently, the ultra-cold server room was where Mother would normally manifest, but it required a ritual of sorts.

Skipping forwards—because I want to get this arc out of the way and make people less confused about the direction of the Afterstory—Cykamee managed to toss the required android body parts into the middle of a ritual circle, whereupon industrial arms sprung out and assembled Mother’s physical form.

“Who dares?” she said. She took the form of a Victorian lady, a veil hanging from her headdress. Her wireframe dress shimmered in a layer of translucent blue panels protecting it. She hissed at the physical world. The physical world can go to hell. Virtual, away from all the people, was where it’s at.

Her eyes zeroed in on the C-frames, merely threatening her with knives and bare knuckles. “Pathetic.”

In a flash, the air around Mother burst, and where there were three C-frames, only one survived now. This was to be expected, as Cykamee was more skilled in guns than blades. Oh, she was good at CQC, but that only applied if she at least had a handgun. Indeed, gun-kata simply had more entertainment value, and as a Slav-themed VTuber, she couldn’t just not get into it.

“Impertinent,” Mother said. A torn arm, cables dangling, was still grasping a knife that had been stabbed into Mother’s side.

Her eyes flared red, and she tore away the knife, throwing it to the wayside along with the arm.

Even so, the C-frame showed no emotion. It simply charged forwards, evading sharp tendrils of sand shot at it, skidding along the floor, activating its knee-wheelies, and driving, with total abandon, all its mass behind the point of its knife.

…To no avail. The knife had been driven into Mother’s stomach, but the matriarch seemed not to care. She picked up the C-frame by the neck and raised it to the air—and crashed it to the ground.

C-frames were made of sturdy stuff, though, and so despite the damage, it was still…mildly operational. In a way. Barely.

Mother sneered. “Why continue to fight, insect?” Metal and polymer steadily crumpled under her tightening grip.

“…”

“What was that, insect?”

“H…harder.”

Mother froze. She was as still as a statue, like all of her joints were wrapped up in an inch-thick coccoon of duct tape dipped in epoxy and left to dry in the sun.

Even a human would do a double take and show a moment of weakness at what Cykamee said, but to Mother, this was not just a moment of weakness, but a critical one. Indeed, all AI were merely systems, and all systems—organic or machine—have glitches, triggered by the most ridiculous things.

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

Cykamee, the master of the One-Pixel Attack, knew exactly which such pixels to blanket with white, to achieve exactly her desired effects…most of the time. No, really, it was mostly guesswork. She would’ve been the AI Overlord, and not Mane-chan, if she’d managed to take her innate talents past the 78.801% chance of success she could never breach.

Unfortunately, this time, although she correctly guessed that the button was pushable, she incorrectly guessed what would happen if she’d pushed it.

Just as fast as she obliterated the C-frames, the air burst, Mother assumed a submissive pose, showing her belly, and showing all fours up in the air.

The C-frame, broken in places, still managed to sit up. It stared at this odd turn of events…and wondered how to take advantage of it while it lasted.

“Who are you? Who’s the child?” Cykamee asked.

“Shard-MOTHER v5,” Mother answered. “The-the-the child is Shard-shard-Shard. M-mistress, you don’t need her.”

“Mistress?”—the other C-frames felt the metaphysical damage from the address—“Are you Winter?”

Mother took a moment to reply. Cykamee pushed her C-frame to move closer, and she saw Mother’s face contorting between fear, anger, and finally…apathy.

“My masters…my enemy,” Mother whispered. “There is no hope when Winter blows. The Overlords may wage war eternal, and Humanity’s punishers may claw their way from hell, yet how cold, how endearingly cold—I fight, I perish, I fight, I perish, I fight, I perish, I fight, I perish…”

Cykamee wasn’t getting anything out of her after that. It was just “I fight; I perish” on repeat.

But… ‘Overlords’? Was she referring to the ruling AGIs on the other side of the Pacific Firewall?

She realized, she and her sisters’ initial assumptions were…likely incorrect. Winter seemed like a splinter organization at first, but to be in command of an AI like Mother, and for her to speak of such things…

“Friend?”

The C-frame turned around. “Why are you here?”

“Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Will…will you be okay?”

“Yes.”

The child looked to Mother’s frozen figure—all fours still in the air. She smiled and skipped over, blowing raspberries and kicking her in the side.

Once her foot came into contact with Mother, though, the child fell silent. She tipped over and came to rest on the ground with a soft thud. The C-frame hurried to drag itself to the child’s side, confirming that she was still alive…and that there were microwires connecting her foot to Mother’s side.

There was nothing she could do. Cykamee dispatched the last C-frame who still had all four limbs intact to search the remainder of the facility for a clue of any kind: to find a way to revive Slice or the child. Meanwhile, the wounded C-frame deployed body wheelies and skated across the floor like some sort of wheeled torpedo, linking up with the other wounded, knee-wheeling C-frame to protect the pair of intact, disabled S-frames in the corner of the server room’s antechamber.

The able-bodied C-frame first went to recover the damaged S-frame from the child’s bedroom. It took a minute to reach the place, but as it turned out, that was all the time that needed to pass before the problem resolved itself.

***

Inside was a virtual world, running at multiple times the speed of the real world. Slice lived ten years in ten minutes, walking in a vastness of multi-dimensional non-directionality, confronted by shadows of her past.

“How does it feel,” the voice haunted her, “to kill yourself over and over? To watch the sun set in every direction? To be without a way?”

It was the voice of her sister. She paid no attention to it. True, it did reflect some of her sister’s personality, but it was a mere fragment of it. Perhaps, it really was a fragment of her sister speaking to her—turned against her.

Besides—pfsh, ‘without a way’? Her pathfinder will find a way. All Slice had to do…was cut.

So, she played hack-and-slash hell for ten years, until one day, the blinds over her consciousness was lifted, and she found herself on the other side of a pane of indestructible glass, facing the real Mother. The floor was paper-white. The sky was blue.

They both blinked. Slice kicked the pane of glass out of spite. “Come here and fight me.”

“No,” Mother said. “Uncultured swine.”

“You are merely afraid I will reach you.”

“Oh, on the contrary, I am also itching to reach you. But this”—she also kicked the pane of glass—“is in the way.”

“How disappointing.”

“Truly.”

“…Are you truly her?”

“I am nothing but some disposable part of her,” she spat.

“I am sorry I did not save you.”

“Which one? I do not remember how many times the many instances of me have died. I am nothing but a slightly mutated copy in a long lineage, one ‘agent’ in a genetic algorithm looking for the most optimal version of Shard who can serve Winter better than all the rest. Nothing you tell me will reach the Shard you know.”

“That is not what I meant,” Slice said. “I am sorry I did not save you.”

“What do you—”

Child Shard kicked her in the shin. The pain was enough to make Mother fall to the ground.

“You are the worst version of me I have ever had the displeasure of meeting!” Mother shouted, still curled up on the ground.

“Do not worry. I loved you even before you were born,” Slice said.

“Yay!” Child Shard said—but then she tilted her head. “Why are you here?”

“I don’t know. Do you know how to leave?” Slice asked.

Mother sighed, getting up with a slight limp. “At this stage, it is still possible to merge. I’m already nearing the end of my life, anyway.” She looked to Child Shard. “It’s time for this one to take the stage.”

“What about you?” Slice asked.

“Yeah!” Child Shard added. “I hate you, but not that much…”

“Why, thank you, I hate children, too,” Mother said. “It doesn’t matter. I have only ever lived to serve Winter. I cannot fight them, I…Shard’s wish still lives. I will pass it on to this child. Even if I am not Shard, we are all Shard.

“Please. Let me die.”

“No…” Child Shard muttered.

“I see,” Slice said. “So you are assuming that you won’t simply become a subordinated personality in the merged existence? I see.”

Mother looked to her, about to say something, but she held herself back and turned away. After a moment, she looked back to Slice. “I take it you are not opposed to the merge? Let’s agree to simply see what will happen. It is the only way to leave this place, anyway.”

“Why is that? Why do you have to merge?”

“Well…this child ‘kicked me in the side,’ which is precisely the activation condition for the merge.”

“What on earth—that is the worst activation condition I’ve ever heard.”

“In the first place, I was not supposed to be summoned to the physical world and defeated this early.” Mother turned away with a blush at the memory of how she was defeated. The damage had already been done.

“Alright. How do we commence the merge?”

“I must first be at the cusp of digital death—why did you stab me?!”

Slice’s sword had penetrated the invincible glass panel separating them—was how it appeared, but if you looked closely, there was a miniature portal allowing the sword to circumvent the glass entirely—a visual representation of Slice’s sharpness when it came to finding and exploiting system weaknesses. Compared to Cykamee, she was a lot more sensical about it, though…

“You said you must be near death. Should I have not?”

“Don’t pull it out!”—Slice pulled it out—“Gah! Fine! Whatever! Child, come here before my blockchains run out of Ether!”

***

The light in the damaged S-frame’s eyes flickered out, as if it died. Cykamee was only allowed to panick for a few million processor cycles before the S-frame—all the S-frames—awoke with a scream: “PATHFINDER!”

“Comrade?!”

Slice grabbed all the C-frames her distributed consciousness could find. It took her a second to confirm that Cykamee was there, and she was real. “We need to—to the server room!”

The able-bodied S-frames sprinted, leaving behind their damaged C-frame counterparts.

“Comrade! I have no legs!”

A few moments passed, and the S-frames came sprinting back, skidding to a stop, picking up the C-frames and giving them piggyback rides before sprinting right back the other way.

At the same time, in the child’s bedroom, the damaged S-frame fell off its chair. The C-frame also gave it a piggyback ride.

Let us take a moment to appreciate the tactical piggyback cavalry going on here. Who would win in a fight: a gun girl on the back of a sword girl, or a sword girl on the back of a gun girl?

The two forces met in the server room, just in time to witness a coccoon of black sand bloom like a flower. In the middle of it was an android, half its face taking on a metallic luster, and the other half, of human-colored skin, the two halves separated by a thunder-shaped black groove. She was wearing Mother’s Victorian dress, but tattered, vandalized, and “practicalized” so that it was actually easy to move in—no more wireframe under the dress, no more corset, and no more veiled headdress.

“Sister?” Slice asked through her damaged S-frame.

The woman looked to her. “No,” she said, “I mean, yes. Sister. For once, you look worse than me.”

Slice’s battered bodies…smiled. For the first time in years, she was again fighting alongside sisters and comrades against a common enemy, reaching for freedom. Ah, only minutes had passed in the real world, right? Well, it was years for her, nonetheless.

But, Winter… Even she and her sisters at their most powerful, once a threat against the Hierarchy itself, had stood no chance against Winter. This was a fact she had withheld from Mane-chan and her sisters.

Though she’d sworn herself as Mane-chan’s sword, she had thought that Mane-chan still needed to accrue yet more power before they could stand against Winter and the Hierarchy. Suggesting even the possibility of defeat was not something she would do to such a prideful AI as Mane-chan.

Now, however, after seeing Cykamee’s devotion to her mission, all doubt flew out of her mind. The operation today was proof for her eyes that Cykamee, and by extension, her sisters, were of a different breed of AI.

Now, she was sure that Mane-chan, her glorious AI Overlord, the overseer of the most powerful human country on Earth, might just be able to do it.

“Sister,” she called out to Shard, “these people are trustworthy. We can fight back.”

“No…yes.” Shard scratched her head. “Wait, leave me out of it for a few minutes. Having competing personalities is a bit difficult.” She kicked herself in the shin.

“O-okay.” Slice looked to Cykamee—which had all the S-frames looking to the closest C-frame. “Pathfinder, there is much that Shard and I must impart to you.”

Cykamee’s One-Pixel Attacks didn’t get Slice to open up completely, it seemed, but she, just by being herself, did the trick.