Callie sat, eyes subtly wide and posture frozen but otherwise not reacting – seemingly stunned by the revelation.

Of course, her mind had not slowed to a stop. Quite the opposite, in fact; at some point in the last few seconds it had accelerated to several hundred kilometres an hour, filled with a combination of horror, political calculus, the most bizarre sense of half-déjà vu and, perhaps most importantly, rapid tugging on a certain thread in her mind.

Ineffectually.

[color=f7941d][i]Of all the times for Spindle to be busy, why in God’s name –[/i][/color]

[hr]
[color=6ecff6][i]Yes, I am sending this to the top.  Now.  Yes, [/i]now,[i] now.  No, Jerry, I don’t know how she keeps stumbling onto this, evidently ASEAN’s just the [/i]tiniest[i] bit hotter than we thought![/i][/color]

[hr]
[color=f7941d][i]– does it have to be now?  Damn it…  Stay impassive, then – can’t know the scope of this.[/i][/color]  With some effort, Callie forced the spiral of questions that had suddenly arisen about the nature of the world to the back of her mind.  That could be processed later; for now, she had a job to do.

[color=f7941d][i]Got to know that this would destroy him too – either fanatical or his sense of…  Vengeance?  Doesn’t seem right.  Trying to put right what went wrong seems closer, if Turing saw his mistake as regrettable…[/i][/color]

For a moment, the thought: [color=f7941d][i]And, well…  Is it?  Sure, the first thing’s an abomination and the second might also kill us depending on how you look at the metaphysics, but…  We’re so focused on limiting AMs’ impact in the theatre – if they just weren’t there…[/i][/color]

It grated.  For a moment, she felt and suppressed the urge to summon Charter to her hand.  And even besides that…  [color=f7941d][i]Naïveté.  Some other power would have filled the void – no idea what that might look like, how things would transpire…[/i][/color]

Not even death, the realisation coursed through Callie with cold certainty.  In all likelihood, she simply wouldn’t have been born at all.

In any case, even a best-case scenario would involve fundamental risks to global stability, and that could not be allowed.

Yet…  There was the question of how this all interacted with the war they were fighting [i]now[/i].  Which she would mention, once Charles had his curiosity salved.