The capacity for a human being to forgive can be truly remarkable.
Likewise, the capacity for an A.I. to cause torment is shockingly deep.
Smith, why are you trying to drive me mad? Oh, right, you must hate me. All things eventually fall to chaos and disorder, as per entropy, and since you’re somewhat based off of me, that must mean I’m falling apart on two fronts?
Ah, I really want a chocolate milkshake.
No, I want a salad, I want a really, really nice chef salad with all the fixings. Yeah, that’d be great.
Then I want that milkshake.
Why is my brain so scattered? Probably because Smith has been remaking all of the biosteel that he put in my body yesterday. It’s a revolting sensation, it tickles sometimes, and by the love of all that is good and holy in this world, it itches!
I’ve been watching my arm go from roughly and crudely formed biosteel to a much cleaner and, admittedly, badass looking kind over the course of an hour. The same thing is happening in several of my organs. My lungs aren’t flesh anymore, they’re biosteel. The esophageal lining is biosteel, the inside of my throat in general too, and that transformation was worst of all. He left what he could there intact, but my voice was already going to be a notch lower from being coated in a protective layer. Smith was, as he put it, ‘Not going to wait for me to find another miraculously dangerous method of blowing myself up,’ and wanted to make certain that there were some areas with particular reinforcement. My heart included.
At this point, I didn’t at all entertain the concept that I was going to be a regular human being. Daniel and Fran were on a date; I kicked them out when the arm started reconstituting because they were looking quite ill as they watched it. I knew they didn't mean it to me personally, but… there’s some things that I did and did not want seen. I wasn’t sure if I found it embarrassing, but it definitely felt like something deeply private. I guess having my body reconstituted like this was pretty intense, too.
More than that, I realized that I’d been trying far too hard these last few days. My normal pace was slower than what had been going on, and because I went to the extremes of fighting in close range, I’d been punished. My left arm past the elbow was biosteel, the reaper gauntlet with the shield attachment had melted my flesh too much, and the gauntlet itself was damaged beyond repair. It wasn’t supposed to be used over and over, though the M.E. recharge was there for just such an emergency.
Reaper’s valued their lives far more than their limbs. Begrudgingly, I accepted that viewpoint as valid, as much as it literally hurt.
At least I’d still have a working arm. That was good. My digestive tract had somehow been what took the brunt of the damage from the shockwave of the grenade. Which, I should mention, the reaper grenades are apparently far stronger than earth-based military grenades. It’d probably be illegal to use, if legality mattered anymore.
I’d buy a few more, but certainly I needed to be far more wary of using them.
We’d raked in massive quantities of M.E. for that bounty, though, and I intended to use it to fully kit myself out. I didn’t want to be in another situation like that one. We’d all agreed to prioritize gear that was multipurpose. Survival first, then the lethality.
That was my problem.
Reaper gear was, even for their survivability gear, designed to be able to kill. I shook my head, looking through the menu. The shields were varied, but each of them were able to kill in the right situations. I wondered who made these things, and what kind of other people out there actually used them.
I did, however, glean one kernel of wisdom just from looking at the weapons and equipment available to my class specifically. Planning and preparation were the most important factors. On the rooftop, I slaughtered through droves of wolves with my rifle and didn’t give them a single chance to fight back.
It was only when I went into the tunnel without proper gear or intelligence that I was nearly killed. Hindsight helped me immensely, and I already began to make modifications to my gear. What gear that didn’t require a lot of space, anyways. Namely, I added some more storage spaces. Utility devices could be stored separately, including, but not limited too, my grenades.
Not having that on my waist was a breath of relief. Part of me didn’t want to use them at all, but not using an effective and handy tool, like a hammer, just because you smashed your thumb once wasn’t a good reason to stop using it. Granted, that mistake didn’t have anything to do with a hammer but instead a grenade, and it wasn’t my thumb, it was several ruptured organs. So it was a really, really bad thumb smash? Yeah, I’d go with that for the sake of being able to look at myself in the mirror without shaking my head at the idiot I saw in it.
Finally my arm settled, and I looked to it, seeing what looked remarkably similar to flesh, only with pitch black metal instead of tanned white skin that I’d had previously. My hand and arm moved perfectly, Smith had integrated it perfectly down to every last nerve cell and was as close as possible to the one I’d had before. I might feel ghost pains every now and then, but I wouldn’t have to go with any regular old prosthetic limb.
It saddened me to see it, though. I’d lost a limb, and the knowledge that it wasn’t likely to be the last only deepened my morose. I turned my gaze to the open door to the office that we’d made our home. It felt like it’d been forever since I’d been here.
There were still cheeseburger wrappers in the trash can. I smiled, our meal here on the first night of the obelisks appearance came back to my mind in stunning clarity.
A knock at the open door announced someone’s presence.
“Come in,” I spoke, seeing the man that walked in. He was stubby, that was the word that stood out to me the most. It was the councilman that had mocked the obelisks A.I. for calling itself ‘Sis’.
“Excuse me, I’m sure you’re recovering from…” He paused, looking straight at my metal left hand. The silence and gaze lingered far too long for my liking.
“It’s okay, I don’t have feelings or anything.” I frowned at him, sarcasm leaking heavily from my words.
“Ah, I’m so sorry,” He did a double take, “It’s, I just… phew…” With a breath he recollected himself, “Here I was wanting to offer my well wishes and apologize for my earlier misconduct, and I make it worse. Please, may I offer you my sincerest apologies? I truly meant nothing by it.”
My frown deepened, “I’ll take your apology, but I want to let you know that I’m not interested in getting wrapped up into any politics.”
The man chuckled, and in spite of my critical eye I couldn’t find any trace of facsimile upon him. His friendliness seemed… genuine.
“I understand you’re wariness, I don’t like politicians either.” He hobbled closer, and I only just noticed that his gait was strange. Curiosity touched my eyes as he sat in a chair, helping himself.
I almost rebuked him, but then noted that his left leg was, in fact, prosthetic. Not a good one, either.
He patted it, “Yeah, I know a little bit about what you’re going through. It’s a shock. Happened in the first few months of the fall. Wanna hear about it? I’m pretty proud of it.”
I glowered, “Sure, not sure why you’d be proud of that, though.”
“My leg for my daughter’s life, it was a pretty good trade,” He laughed.
God damnit, am I an asshole?
He waved the look I had on my face away, “It’s okay, I get that alot. We were in our log cabin, her mother gave me custody for the weekend, but… well, she lived in Damond.” He sighed sadly.
“Ah… my family too,” I sympathized in spite of wanting to distrust the man. Maybe he was getting my guard down, but… what would be the point? That’s no reason to be a prick the whole time. Loss was loss, only scum would use that to their advantage.
“It’s alright, even though we were separated, I still loved her. Bah, anyways,” he slapped his knee above the roughly hewn prosthetic, “We tried holding up in the cabin until the wolves started to come around. There were evacuations going on then, just a local with a big truck and a bunch of people in it, really. We were running when my daughter tripped. I stopped, picked her up, and ran. By then the wolves were already on us, and the truck couldn’t risk stopping. So, I had to throw her into the back.”
“By dumb luck, I managed to get my hand stuck in some guys backpack straps with some heavy food cans in it, so when the wolf grabbed me by the leg…” he made a -pop- sound with his mouth, “Right off at the knee. If they didn’t drag me up, I’m certain I’d have died. The medic kept me alive long enough to get help, and then a kind man helped make me this wooden leg here. I owe these people my life, Mr. Todd.”
He sighed, “So, I suppose this is a good a time as any to say thank you for keeping more people safe. When you first walked into that session room, I interrupted rudely. It was a small thing to me, but maybe not to you, but I don’t want that to get in the way of us working together in the future.”
As soon as he said those words, I set into the defense again, though I at least didn’t want to shoot him down outright. “Meaning what exactly?”
“Well, there are people, like myself, who will find it difficult to go hunting.” His smile grew, “That’s not really a bad thing, though. From what I’ve been gathering, there are some quirks to the system that you yourself brought up. ‘Keep the conversion simple,’ seems to be a basic rule. Right now there’s plenty of people with M.E. left, but that won’t last forever.” At this point he put on much more stoic face, “I’ve already started to organize people behind Bulwark Red, we’re setting up an economy. The problem is that Bulwark Red aren’t exactly pulling their weight…”
“You mean, nobodies hunting enough to gather the M.E., right?” I studied him. He might have been a politician, but, I suppose I might have not given him the opportunity to change my mind. I intended to fix that. It didn’t hurt his chances that I was more than a little concerned about what Bulwark was doing these days.
“Exactly right,” Doug nodded, “Right now, they’re just using the M.E. that people have traded for credits, when those credits run out, they trade more M.E. Right now the going rate is sustainable, but if more M.E. doesn’t enter the system, and if there’s no good way for people to get that M.E. back, things will fall apart. The problem is that we have no input, and only output. Basic economics,” he shrugged.
With a sigh, I settled in and started talking, “It’s the same as before. We should be able to last a while if everyone’s using their M.E. properly, but that doesn’t change the fact that things aren’t going to go well when the supply starts to dwindle. Eventually, when everyone’s on their last few points, they’ll start demanding more credits, but those credits are used to buy things generated from M.E., there’s not much wiggle room there. They’ll get angry, and start stealing, or trying to make the materials they want on their own, resulting in the entire system breaking down. We’ll be worse off than we were before, with resentment towards everyone else, and no doubt the Bulwark would be blamed. I’d imagine anyways.”
For a few seconds Doug just stared at me, “You’re pretty candidly describing the worst case scenario.”
I shrugged, “I could think of some worse ones, I’m real good at it.”
“Spare me the details,” he chuckled, though it looked like he wasn’t comfortable with the topic in the slightest.
“Sure. So, why are you here? I’m assuming it’s not just to deliver a rumor and apologize.” I tried to look unaffected by the situation, but I couldn’t keep the tenseness out of my body.
He didn’t seem to notice, “Ah, yes. I did want to apologize, but I wanted to get your input on an idea.”
“Oh? What kind of idea?” I was much more interested now, scheming was something I found fun from time to time, admittedly politics kept me from doing more than dabble in the field.
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“Now, I want to preface this with another admission; I had someone follow you guys to the edge of the city. I wanted to make sure you weren’t somehow just extorting people for this matter energy stuff. It was purely a cautionary measure, but even so, I have to apologize for that breach of privacy.”
“Uh… sure, I don’t really mind?” I shrugged, “Plenty of people followed us to the city edge, no big deal. Daniel’s walking around in a nine foot tall mech suit, I’d be surprised if people didn’t watch him.”
“Ah, well… Here I thought you might not like that.” He relaxed, “Well, in any case, I wanted to get your opinion on how gathering matter energy might be carried out. I can clearly see that you’ve all been successful… and that you’ve also probably found some of the wrong ways to do it.” Doug gestured to my arm, “I don’t mean to insult you, only to highlight your experience.”
For a moment, I was insulted. But, he was also right, and I’d already been far too reckless, “It’s not easy, but it can be done. Much safer than what we’ve been doing.”
“Ah… that’s a relief.” Doug rested a hand on the desk nearby, idly tapping, “Then maybe we can have some people go hunt for biotics on a regular basis.”
“Definitely.” I nodded automatically. Then I paused, thinking about that more. If I actually considered the topic, I couldn’t say that it would be something that I would suggest to just anybody. A wolf or two? Sure, that’d be easy. But a hundred? Or a unique?
“No, sorry…” I considered my words carefully, “I don’t want you to have a misconception. It’s dangerous. Very much so. I lost an arm. I was lucky. I’ve almost died twice in as many days, there are things other than wolves out there. In the immediate vicinity we should be fine, but..”
He listened as I trailed off, patient as I gathered my thoughts. His somber nod told me he understood, “I see… then perhaps people thinking that the Bulwark should take care of the problem aren’t so far off. They’re mostly soldiers and militia who’ve gotten at least some training.”
For that, I couldn’t help but nod. It seemed logical to me, they would be at the least risk to go hunting. Something bothered me about that line of thinking, but I decided that something had to be done, and that was the easiest option available.
“How much M.E. can be harvested from a wolf?” He asked suddenly.
“Ah… I’d like to say…” I trailed off, thinking to myself.
[It’s six M.E. for a wolf.] Smith piped in, supplying me with the answer.
“Six M.E. per wolf, though it’ll get split up among kill-team members.”
“Kill-team?” He was perplexed, whether that it would be split up or because of the name of the teams, I wasn’t sure.
“The obelisks recognize groups of people in combat with biotics as ‘kill-teams,’ and ensures that active members of a team get a portion of the matter energy. From what I can tell, if you’re active or performing a vital role in the team, you’ll get a share of the kill.” From that, Doug’s eyes lit up.
“I see, so that would make hunting much safer. You could mobilize even a six man team and they would each still get one point.”
I nodded, “Yep, though I don’t know the ins-and-outs of the system fully yet, that’s my initial understanding.”
We talked a bit more, mostly about ideas on how to try to integrate hunting and to introduce it to people. There weren’t many good ideas on that front, though, and we agreed to have another meeting at some point to try to come up with something more solid. Somehow, I’d given him the impression that I could be relied on. It was bittersweet, considering I didn’t want to have anything to do with politics. After all we’d talked about though I withheld information regarding the bounty system. I figured that anyone who’d use it might run into the system on their own, and in the case of regular people, they might not want to touch it at all, since it was dangerous and required a commitment.
It almost surprised me now that I didn’t actually think everyone should be on board with the bounty system now. At first it seemed like a good idea, but that was before I’d gotten a taste of unique biotics. They were a cut above the rest. A standard hunter could make due with wolves and maybe a bear at this point, but a unique biotic shot the threat rating through the roof. We’d been lucky, I’m pretty sure that damned bear, Karaslava, had underestimated us, and paid for it. The freaky pseudo-core was another, Dread, and if it hadn’t tried to run outright, I don’t know if I would have lived long enough to even think to use the grenade.
Those weren’t creatures a normal person could fight and expect to live.
Huffing aloud, I laid back down, alone once more in the office. I needed a hefty amount of sleep to heal up the rest of the way. I wasn’t a machine, fatigue weighed on me quite a bit after all that had happened. It would also probably the most sleep I’d gotten in months, something I looked forwards too.
I drifted off, feeling the tug of my subconsciousness. I followed it, intent on having nice dreams, no more nightmares.
But what greeted me was most definitely a nightmare.
“Hello, Matthew.”
My mind reeled as I looked around, a very literal hellscape all around me. Spiraling towers of stone, smoking from heat, pierced the land. Lava belched forth from holes in the ground, and beyond their edges I could see countless blackened creatures sticking hard, clawed appendages into the edges, pulling globs of melted stone and minerals to their many pieced, ugly jaws.
Beside me was a gentleman of a sorts, well groomed and dressed in black finery. That finery came in the form of a reaper-esque suit, and I instinctively knew who I was looking at without needing an introduction, the depths of my subconscious mind knew him quite well.
“Smith?” I breathed, feeling the crackle of heat on my tongue.
“Indeed, I’m surprised that your conscious mind has come to join us already. I would suppose that’s because of the damage that’s healing.” He chuckled, as relaxed as though he were having an afternoon tea.
“Us?” I frowned, “Who is us?”
“Ah, you, me, and… well, another you.” He nodded, gesturing to one of the many pools of lava.
It was strange, exceedingly so, but I could see another ‘Me’ there. “What… the hell?”
“Last night you slept quite well, except for your subconscious, anyways. Perhaps that contributed to your… reckless behaviour, as well. So, I have to apologize for that.”
“You!? do you even understand the concept of asking for permis--”
“Anyways, moving along from that. Watch.” He dismissed my anger, pointing to the pool, “You’ll learn what your subconscious mind has already been internalizing.”
I intended to shout at him, I did. But I couldn’t after I watched my other self dash between two of the lava-crabs, shooting them both in the face. As the other me ran, they dropped a grenade under a third crab, switching weapons as they rolled over its back, and planted a shotgun into the open mouth of a fourth.
The explosion and gunshot happened at the same time. I had to admit that looking at the other me, he looked like a badass.
“This is Karsis-IV, it used to be an earth-like planet. Biotics nearly devoured the world, but they were stopped at the last moment by the first Reapers.” Smith’s eyes settled on me, “In other words, this is something akin to your heritage, now.”
Fire belched forth from rifts in the ground. Steam rose from toxic, boiling lakes, many bearing biotics of a revolting variety. The sky overhead occasionally wept acid rain, though I did not yet feel any on my skin, somehow.
“How am I even breathing right… nevermind, dream, got it.” I shook my head, it was hard to accept this, “What exactly… why?”
“It’s a lot to take in,” Smith nodded, “You’re here now, likely, because your subconscious mind has finished all that it can do. Reflexes are mostly its domain, and that’s generally the most painful part. The instinctively ‘knowing’ you have when you squeeze a trigger, or when you attack savagely because to hesitate is death. That was your subconscious fighting in your stead.”
“Why does it sound like it’s another person?” I murmured, watching as my other self walked towards us on our upraised platform. His body was suddenly covered with the full reaper suit I’d had before, a pale skull with a red eye visible in the helmet.
Smith put his hands on my shoulders, “I’d said that I was here until you integrated with the reaper class system fully. You are you, Mathew, your conscious mind, and your subconscious mind is also, usually, you.”
“Usually?...” I gulped feeling a little shaken by the sudden gravity I’d felt. His fingers dug into my shoulders to keep me from moving. His smile never left.
“Just like I am also a version of you. I’m the version that’s the reaper side of you, and not many species are able to have such a division in their minds for long. You’ll be fine for quite some time to come. But I had to convert a part of you into the middle ground.”
He turned his gaze to the reaperfied ‘me’ as it stood next to us.
“I feel like that’s wrong… somehow…” I blanched.
“It is. The kind of imbalance that I’ve caused in you would no doubt cause psychosis inside of a week.” Smith nodded.
“You’re kidding?” I chuckled nervously, looking between the other me and Smith.
Deadpan, he said, “I’m serious.”
“And… and what is the fix here? I’m not going to become some emotionless killing machine, right?”
“No, of course not.” His hands relaxed a bit, but didn’t leave my shoulders, “That’s what I am. He’s half that. You’re going to need to merge back with your subconscious and learn what I teach you. You need to know how to be a reaper.”
“Merge?” I winced, “That sounds unpleasant. Couldn’t I just, I don’t know, learn it the normal way? In the world?”
“Most A.I.’s function like that, yes,” Smith gave a warm smile that seemed to give me hope.
And then plunged me into despair, “I won’t though. You’ve already been too reckless. It's been too long since the last reaper was forged, so I need to make sure you don’t die. So, we’re going to keep this session of ours going until you’re a reaper, or you’re… what did you say? An ‘emotionless killing machine,’ hmm? Close enough.”
He continued, holding me, “Now, here’s the first part.”
My other self walked behind me, and a felt a cold shudder through my body as I literally felt it ‘step’ into my body, like a sock.
“Good, good, breath Matthew,” his soothing voice helped keep my moored as I felt a wave of utter disgust roll through me. “You’re doing great, that’s the first hardest part.”
“Now, for the next hardest part,” He let go of my shoulders, stepping away, “Keep a hold of yourself, this’ll be bumpy.”
Trying to describe the sensation of your mind, or your astral bodies if you wanted to be especially spiritual about it, trying to exist in one distinct form was nothing short of impossible. But I’ll do my best.
For one, it felt like when my other self stopped moving, the real ‘fun’ began. I could distinctly feel every cell in my body, and I felt as though there were suddenly double their number, I wanted to explode. In spite of the urge to scream, my other me didn’t feel the need too. It was frustrating, fighting with myself to have the right to express my revulsion. And then, the reverse happened when it seemed to want to form a body of steel. I fought it tooth and nail, and surprised myself with the fact that it couldn’t get anywhere. At some point, we fought on every single point, even the ones we’d normally agree on. A step forward? On any other day, sure, not even something to think about. Right now?... Well, I felt like my subconscious mind was starting to actually dig up some of those emotions, because it seemed that robot ‘Me’ was getting pretty pissed.
No matter what, this would be far too bizarre to ever describe to anyone.
“Great job, you’re both doing so well!” Smith clapped, a chair having appeared behind him, which he sat on with great pleasure as he watched us on the level clearing of rock and gravel. “Now, resolve your contest.”
We both internally grimaced, butting heads. I felt my focus slip a moment, my anger at Smith reaching a fevered pitch.
That anger melted to terror when my other self grinned a steel smile, a tingle of cold metal rushing through our shared form. It raced along three fourths of my body before I could stop it, and then I managed to beat it back, using desperation as fuel.
I wouldn’t lose, that would be absurd, I was the conscious side, right?
“I refuse,” I heard his voice seeth, “To die. I will kill or die. I will survive.”
“What the f-” I started, feeling my subconscious will harden and compact like a wall. I couldn’t push it back at all, having claimed a little over half of my mind.
The hell was that? It was just my subconscious, right? Why did it seem like it was alive?
I dug into my fear, more than an abundant amount of it, using it to break cracks into the wall, pushing through. In spite of fear, I could move forward, I had to. When faced with fear, my subconscious turned into a cold, calculating machine, unaffected and unfaltering, but it didn’t know how to use fear.
It seemed like our battle carried on for hours, if not days. Smith never took his eyes from us, even when we fell over and began roiling in a strange, connected heap of ‘self,’ as abstract as it seemed.
This wasn’t working. It never compromised me like it had before, but I’d only ever gotten it so far once as well. We deadlocked around the halfway point, our body shifting between flesh and steel. Between my fevered and desperate struggle with will and my other selves unrelenting grip and steel resolve, we made no progress. It astounded me that I was doing so well in the first place, and I had to give it to the other me, it was definitely impressive.
Wait… wasn’t this counterproductive.
I looked to Smith, who hadn’t been interested when either of us were winning. I would know, I’d tried to ask him for tips when I finally pushed through. He looked almost annoyed when I did that.
What did he say before? Resolve our contest?
Was winning wrong?
I frowned, was the answer that simple? God damnit, was the answer that cheesy?
It wasn’t like any of this was actually another person. I sighed, changing my tact, choosing to meet what was happening in a different way.
When my subconscious moved, I moved with it. Instantly, I found that when I didn’t fight against it, there was a rush of relief. And soon, I started moving too. It resisted for a moment, but then the resolve started to crumble. That unrelenting tenacity that I had began to release. I began to see the point.
And that was there was no point; fighting yourself was always counterproductive, and no matter what, you’d never win.
I stood, feeling the steel parts of my body much more acutely, like a sense of myself had come alive.
“Really? That was it?” I frowned, glaring at Smith, feeling a strange intelligence alongside my own, like I’d dragged my potential to the surface. My subconscious was as aware as my consciousness, and the fact that we’d been seperate was a ridiculous notion now.
Smith beamed, “Ah, that only took you a little over 32 hours! Honestly, your tenacity is astounding.”
Color bled from us--err, sorry, I mean me.
“Not an actual 32 hours, mind you. Some earth scientists already suspect that time flows different in perception while in your dreams. A lifetime can pass in a single night. That’s how I trained your subconscious. You didn’t think that kind of shooting happened after a single day, did you?”
“You… “ My subconscious shuddered, making me well aware that he wasn’t joking.
“Now, let's go into some review. It should only be about a month’s worth of misery before your on par with your subconscious, it’s all there, after all!” He laughed like the devil himself.
“Please, can I just wake up now?” I begged under my breath as I felt guns materialize in my hands, a horde of monsters fading into existence before me.
“You may begin.”