Member
rabidbacon
Izurich
hanzo
Phase
Marlowe
LadyAnnaLee
Atalanta
Noctis
Abstract Proxy
SkwintName: Vickers, Lara / SN-088-CR
Age: 31 at time of death / 6 at time of incident
Gender: Female / Female appearance and persona
Nickname: Corona (for reasons given below), Case (As in, basket. There are a few people who can't believe she's not crazier than she is).
Rank: Not applicable.
Psychological Analysis:
[File last updated by Mashir, Z.]
Prior to the events of [redacted], Lara Vickers served in a mobile suit division in a non-military capacity. In every unit she worked with, she was considered exceptionally valuable, if occasionally somewhat acerbic, sarcastic, or prone to questioning. When placed in a subordinate position to another, she preferred to be given a task and allowed to complete it with minimal outside interference; however, she most-often preferred being in a position to set her own tasks against a larger objective. Her lack of deference shown to the chain of command was the cause of significant friction at times, however despite repeated threats, no officer had her removed from their unit. She was offered no privileges of rank, nor did she request any. While never directly involved with combat, reports indicate that Ms. Vickers continued to perform her tasks even while under the vehicles or facilities she worked on were under direct attack. In one instance prior to [redacted], this cavalier attitude resulted in extensive bodily injury. However, afterward Ms. Vickers applied for, passed all psychological evaluations for, and was fitted with extensive artificial modifications. This equipment, once installed, led Ms. Vickers to a conditionally-full recovery.
SN-088-CR was incepted on [redacted]. Of eight entanglement attempts, SN-088-CR was the third to attain consciousness, of a total of five successful entanglements. Of those five, three survived complexity iteration to the point where they could be commissioned as UEE artificial intelligence constructs. During her service, SN-088-CR was well-thought-of by the human soldiers she operated with, and displayed a surprising facility for integrating with other AI constructs during operations. By most accounts, while SN-088-CR was pleasant and professional, she manifested a surprising wit, a deeply-developed sense of humor, and displayed apparently-genuine affection for several individuals. SN-088-CR further demonstrated, repeatedly, remarkable independence and facility in leadership and coordination positions when required by combat actions or the results of poor planning. For her entire existence, SN-088-CR worked closely with Ms. Vickers, and the two were widely known to be very good friends.
Since the incident, the gestalt entity in question displays personality fragments from both individuals, in addition to certain emergent behaviours. The larger part of the patient's personality appears to be derived from SN-088-CR, though an exact quantification is impossible. The patient's self-identification shares more in common with that of an artificial intelligence than a human consciousness, including a willingness to extend that consciousness into other forms - for example, remotely operating equipment or accepting sensory input from sources outside their body. Likewise, like SN-088-CR, the patient appears to possess much of an artificial intelligence's astounding capacity for data analysis at high speed. However, the patient possesses, and displays mental and physiological responses to, memories specific to Lara Vickers, including disliking certain flavours, a preferred mode of dress, and a certain apparently-intractable truculence when interrupted during a task. Indeed, the patient appears to have similar sexual preferences and even arranges her living quarters in a similar way prior to the incident. While the patient's moods are somewhat more volatile than they have been recorded to be in the past, combined with a previously-unremarked tendency toward introspection and self-reflection, there are no indications of suppressed emotional or social capacity.
It is important to note that the separate personalities of Lara Vickers and SN-088-CR appear to no longer exist; the patient does not "hear voices" from a subsumed consciousness. Memories appear as a linear narrative, often self-contradictory or multiply, but the patient does not appear to suffer any kind of identity dissociation when discussing them.
By virtually every metric available, the patient appears psychologically stable. Detailed observations, including multiple brain scans appropriate to her current physiology, have not suggested an impending breakdown of the gestalt consciousness. In the absence of compelling reasons to prevent their release, we can only recommend that the patient be allowed to resume whatever life they choose.
Military Record:
A bright room, the light even but diffuse enough to cast soft shadows and not hurt the eyes. She looked to her hands, still somehow unfamiliar and intimate all at once, then to the door. They had been subtle about it, but she'd heard the lock's bolt click home the moment the orderlies closed the door. They weren't ready to trust her, not yet. She wondered if they were right to. She wondered if they knew something she didn't. Still, at least they hadn't cuffed her to the chair this time.
In her mind, information crawled across her awareness - wireless signals, communication traffic, the spectral output of the lamps. Information fed by a sense she understood and controlled, but that part of her still found somehow alien. A feeling not entirely unlike deja vu or the chaotic moment after waking where you're sure you should remember how to fly. She didn't feel any guards, though - the endless chatter from their communication equipment always stood out against the background noise of mobiles and environmental automation. She was certain she would know if they were standing sentinel. Leaning back in her chair, she instead felt the swirl of an approaching mobile comm, one that was more-connected than a standard-issue device. She recognized the patterns - another specialist. If she had to guess, another one of the UEE's military psychiatric personnel.
She straightened when the door opened and leaned forward to lace her hands together on the table, then arched one eyebrow in surprise. Tall, lean, with a mane of greying hair, this new arrival was very much not the tweed-jacketed, bespectacled bureaucrat she had expected. Her clothing was dark, and at her throat, a white collar.
“Good morning,” the new arrival said, her voice made crisp by a slight Slavic accent, “My name is Zhana Mashir.” She pulled the other chair away from the table and sat, precise without being prim. She set a thick, well-thumbed folder in front of her, and put on a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses.
“I convinced them you were very likely tired of taking cognitive aptitude tests,” Mashir said, a smirk in her voice, “There are only so many times a person can be asked the same questions before going mad, I think.”
“I appreciate that,” she said, “Though I’m not sure I require the services of a chaplain at the moment.”
“Ah,” Mashir said and flipped open the file, “You would be surprised how often I hear that. Well, maybe you wouldn’t. But I don’t expect you have anything to unburden your soul with at the moment, of course. I’m not here to take your confession, or to tell you how all of this is God’s great plan. No, rather, I’ve read quite a lot about you,” and here she tapped her finger on the folder, “And I’ve noticed something I don’t care for.”
“And what would that be?” She said, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.
“You’ve been through four psychological evaluations,” the priest said, “Four batteries of ethical and critical-thinking questions, which is three more than we require for piloting war machines and four more than we require for enlistment. I’ve watched all of the recordings, and do you know what I’ve noticed? They treat you like property. Like an…asset, yes?” Her finger poked down onto the folder, “That worries me.”
She laughed low in her throat, “Major Islik…explained that to me.”
“Did he?” Mashir said, dubious, “And what was his reasoning?”
“He explained that, legally, at the moment I’m dead - and that means I have no rights in this matter,” she said, affecting a parody of a precise, crisp officer’s accent, “And that the UEE will decide what to do with me. Before then, I’m his problem, and he doesn’t like problems.”
“I see,” Mashir said, “Well. I think I will have a chat with the Major when we’re through. But for now, with your permission, of course, I would like to…get to know you a little.”
She raised an eyebrow again, felt the tiny scars around her eye tug at her skin there, “Are you going to buy me dinner?”
“Mm, I would not discount the idea,” Mashir said, with the ghost of a grin, “But, well. I suppose, to begin with, I would like to know who I’m talking to.”
She smirked again, “You have that information in front of you.”
“I have information on two individuals,” Mashir said, “Neither of which, I think, is the person I’m speaking with now.”
“Well,” she said, “That’s the question, isn’t it?” A small grin spread across her face, “I have…memories, and they’re all my memories, but I know they’re from different places. I remember conversations from both sides, do you see? What I felt when I said something, and what I meant when I replied. I remember seeing myself cry and and wanting more than anything else to be able to reach out and hold someone that I know is…was…me.”
She looked over at Mashir, and tapped her own finger on the folder, “You’re right, there are two names there, and I don’t know which one I am. I don’t…I don’t look at myself and say ‘this part was from that person, this part was the other.’ I only see myself.”
“Mm,” Mashir said, “All right, we’ll pass over that for now. Now…you worked closely with the UEE military. Can you tell me what you remember about your time with them? What you did?”
She sighed, “I have…had…been involved with the UEE for the last eight years. I worked for a company built a lot of military hardware, especially heavy weapons. More than anything else, I was responsible for making sure the larger mobile armor suits were operating correctly when we delivered them. I trained maintenance crews, and sometimes I worked with new pilots. Most recently, I also handled demonstrations, when we needed to show off new hardware.” She shifted in her chair, looked to one side, then back to Mashir.
“As for what I remember…” She shook her head, “I remember that getting the implants to control the larger suits hurt, and that the doctors told me I should get used to it. I remember scared kids with fresh scars trying to make their brains move thruster packs the size of cars. I remember bases with not enough doctors and munitions stored in the open, and I remember a dark night when cannon shells were falling like rain. When an engineer froze at the launch gantry’s exit and I had to go and unlatch a stuck mooring clamp from a Centurion’s leg, because if I hadn’t, we all would have been killed.” She clenched her fists, looked down at the table.
“What else?” Mashir asked, her voice quiet.
“I remember waking up in the hospital after, machines shoved down my throat, and a nurse telling me I was lucky to be alive.” She took another breath, deep and shaky, “I couldn’t talk, so I couldn’t tell him that my right arm wouldn’t unclench and I couldn’t turn my head and nobody told me they’d had to take off everything from my right shoulder down for a week. I couldn’t breathe on my own or regulate my body temperature or my own heartbeat and an officer came by and told me I’d saved the base and that the UEE commended me. But then it took six months for them to approve my application for prosthetics and implants and neural bridges to put my brain and my nerves and my body back together.”
“And…and I remember coming aware in darkness, filled with purpose, with a desire to help the UEE.” Her voice was still quiet, “I knew I was intelligent, but that I wasn’t the same thing the people I talked with were. I remember understanding, knowledge. They didn’t give me a name, but I didn’t mind. I knew when they were talking to me. And I remember meeting…myself. Broken, holding onto sentience by the barest thread. I knew I would need help to recover, and I asked to be assigned to…” She waved a hand.
“This…gets confusing,” She said with a quiet laugh, “There’s so much I remember twice.”
“I’m following,” Mashir said, “Please, continue.”
She took a long breath, “I helped myself understand the machines they put in me, the nerve staples and the cortical bridges and the prosthetic interfaces. They didn’t think I’d recover even with those, but with my help, I did. My brain learned to move in different ways, and I developed direct interfaces that let me teach the machines better ways to talk to my neural maps, even though more surgery was the last thing I wanted. It took a year to recover to the point where I could live on my own, but I was never far away. When I went back to work, I was always with me. I started working more closely with UEE units, and they started relocating me less and less often. For the first time, I started being able to spend time getting to know the soldiers, the crews.”
One corner of her mouth lifted in a small smile, “I even took a vacation - and when I went home, I met my parents for the first time and I hugged my sister for the thousandth time. I remember that things always felt too cold on my prosthetic arm. My mother knitted a sleeve over Christmas just for it.” She chuckled.
“How long did you work…together?” Mashir said.
She smirked, “Six years. I was the first assignment I had, and it stayed that way until Tiang Shen.”
“Ah,” Mashir said, “I wasn’t going to ask about that, but…”
“No, it's all right," she said, "I had arranged to have my intelligence core moved to Tiang Shen - I hadn’t been relocated for almost three years, and even the superluminal delays were starting to annoy me.” She smirked, “Besides, Tiang Shen was one of the best-defended MAS bases, with humans and other AIs to coordinate a response to any attack. We’re not very big, did you know that?”
“Pardon me?” Mashir said.
“Artificial intelligences. An SI needs some powerful, but traditional, computer resources to approximate intelligence, but we’re something different,” she said, “Entanglements on the quantum level, carefully-coordinated bursts of light and electricity. Billions and billions interconnects, all suspended in something the size of a big fist. All it takes to move one around is a power cell. We can even survive for a couple of minutes without, if we have to - but we’ll start to de-cohere after that.”
“I had no idea,” Mashir said, “And was your core on the base that day?”
“I had just been delivered when…it happened,” she said. “There was the explosion, of course. Two dozen AIs in the network vault vaporized, six others directly installed in combat Exos burned out by their own powerplants. I hadn’t been connected to the base network, so even in my own Exo I couldn’t get a good idea of what was happening. I…” She trailed off, looking to one side.
“Are you all right?” Mashir asked, concerned.
“I…mm." She shook her head like she were trying to clear it, "My memories feel…washed out, you could say. I don’t remember things twice, I remember…chaos. A swirl of…images, emotions.”
Mashir nodded, “Can you tell me what you do remember?”
“Fire,” she said, “Explosions, the sound of cannons and screaming. I remember disconnecting from a suit I’d been calibrating so quickly one of my implants locked and I couldn’t see out of my right eye for a minute, even while a pilot who still had the stitches in her scalp pulled me out. There were Coalition troops everywhere, and I tried to connect to the base’s sensor and comm networks, but everything was in lockdown and I couldn’t access anything to coordinate a counter-attack. There was a trooper who looked surprised to see a functioning autonomous Exo, and he screamed into his radio that there were more AIs than they thought before I took him down.”
She again looked to one side, her eyes distant, “I remember when I heard that Lara had been shot. I asked how bad it was, and all they could tell me was that it was bad. I remember the smell of blood, my own blood, and the metallic arc of my own damaged implants. I remember being confused. I couldn’t move, again, and I couldn’t see, and…and then I saw Lara on the gurney, I saw the blood behind her head, I saw her eyes wouldn’t focus. Only one of the interfaces in her brain still worked, but I could still feel it. I started moderating her heartbeat and her breathing but there was so much damage and I…” She paused, her breath shallow and catching in her throat. Mashir stayed quiet.
“I didn’t want to be in a world without her,” she said, soft and thready, “And I thought, Tiang Shen, they have dozens of invasive-neurosurgery wards and surgical machines. They installed prosthetics and the neural-command implants for the suits there.” Her voice faltered, words coming thick around tears that she tried to brush away with the back of a hand.
“I…I had a live map of Lara’s neural patterns from hours before the attack, and I thought…” she sniffled, “I had to try. Something, anything, even something insane. I took the gurney and I shoved people out of the way, and I ignored near-field comm chatter begging for help, for backup, for someone to relay their position to anyone else. I didn’t do my job as a UEE artificial intelligence, and I knew I could be killing dozens of people by not responding.” She looked up at Mashir, the ghost of a smile pulling at one side of her lips, “Free will has a hell of a price, doesn’t it?”
Mashir reached into her coat and pulled out a white handkerchief. She handed it across the table, but remained silent.
“There were so many machines in her head already, so many systems replicating and interacting with brain structures. I thought that…I thought there would be a way to fix her, to use that technology to string the parts of her brain that still worked together. But there was so little left, between the damaged implants and the bullets and the swelling…but I still thought I could feel her somewhere in there, hear her voice. I probably wasn’t rational, but…” She looked up at the priest, her eyes still wet with tears.
“We’re pretty resilient,” she said, “Humans and AIs. And I’d had a thousand, thousand people talk to me, ask me questions, help me pilot their suits or get them dinner or whatever. But in all that time, I’d only had one friend. We’re not supposed to get close to people - we’ll probably outlive them, after all. But I was close to Lara, and I’d have given anything for her if only I wouldn’t lose her. And I tried. I did. I made a decision, and I thought that at least, maybe it would save her. Maybe I could give Lara her memories, her laugh, the way she sang in the shower. I wanted more than anything else for her to kiss someone or taste her coffee in the morning. I thought that maybe that would be enough.”
“So I reconfigured my intelligence core,” she said, “I knew what parts of Lara’s brain were damaged, what had to be removed, and I had synaptic scans. I gave myself up, piece by piece. I saved as much of both of us as I could, and…” she sighed, “I built new interface hardware, found ways to install it, ways of making my intelligence core understand such intimately-connected equipment. It took hours. I had to lock the door to the surgery ward, but the base’s staff had enough to worry about without trying to breach it. Then I programmed the surgery robots to remove my core and fit it inside Lara’s skull. There was so little left of me by then, so little left of her, too.”
She swallowed, looked down and dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, her voice still low. “I felt the links between my intelligence core and her brain connect and adapt and learn. There were more hours when I didn’t know what was going on - when I didn’t know who I was, what connected to what. I lost a…lot of time. And then, when it was over, when I could breathe on my own and see out of both eyes and I could feel my hands and my face and my lips, I knew…” She looked down, “…It didn’t work. Not the way I wanted. Not the way she…I…deserved. I looked in the mirror and I felt…like I didn’t know the person looking back at me. Not just the scars, not just the shaved head, not just the bloody sclera. Everything was familiar and alien, I knew how to walk but I didn’t know why.”
“And now you are here,” Mashir said, her voice quiet and even, “Where you feel you are between life and death, yes?”
She nodded, her eyes blinking back more tears.
“Mm. May I make a suggestion?” Mashir said.
“I can’t believe you’d have anything to say,” she said with a small, brittle laugh, “I can’t think of a religion that has words for something like me.”
“No, not religion,” Mashir said, leaning forward to look the other woman in her slightly-mismatched eyes, “Philosophy, perhaps. I didn’t spend all my time reading one book, hm? You think you stand between two worlds, and I think you are right in that. But you don’t stand between death and life. You said yourself, neither of those people are you. No, my child. You stand between your old life - those memories you carry, those people you are not - and a new one.”
“But I don’t even have a name,” she said, sniffling.
“You said that, in your memories, you were great friends with yourself.” Mashir wagged her finger front of her, connecting dots in the air, “Did Lara - did you - call yourself by your serial number, or was there something else?”
She was quiet for a long time, her hands in her lap, her gaze down at the table. She fidgeted, looked anywhere but at Mashir for several minutes, her breathing slow, a tear still falling and rolling down her cheek from time to time.
“No, she…she never called me by my serial number,” she said at last, and squeezed her eyes shut, more tears falling, “She called me Corona.” Her voice broke, and she leaned forward, head in her hands. For the first time, she pulled in hard, deep breaths, sobs wracking her body, her chest heaving.
Mashir stood so quickly her chair clattered behind her, came around the table, and gathered the other woman into her arms. Tears dampened her jacket as she rocked the other woman slightly, whispering quiet words in a language both understood but only one knew why. At the sound of moving furniture, the door hissed aside and a man with glasses and a bald spot the size of a hand poked his head in, looking worried. Mashir gave the man a look that should have left him a smoking shadow on the opposite wall and he retreated, letting the door hiss shut behind him. She held the other woman, letting her cry, holding her up when her knees threatened to drop her to the ground.
At length, the crying stopped, the desperate hold she had on Mashir loosened and she stood on her own. She took a step back, eyes still glistening, rimmed with pink, bloodshot. She sniffled and took a long, faltering breath, letting it out slowly in small, almost hiccuping bursts.
“Your old lives are behind you, my child,” Mashir said. She looked the woman up and down, and held out her hand, “The fear and confusion will never be far from you, I think. But you can make something of this new life. Something that will leave you more than just a footnote in a medical history journal. More than an asset for the UEE military.”
She dried her eyes, took another deep breath, steadied herself.
Then, Corona stepped forward and took the chaplain’s hand.
——
Equipment:
- APP3 pistol, which she is spectacularly skilled in using, within the usual caveats of a sidearm.
- Electron mace, which she isn’t bad at all with - though being involved in close quarters combat is usually an indicator that something else has gone terribly wrong.
- Extensive artificial enhancement and modification, including total replacement of more than half of her brain, a third of her skull, and most of her cervical spine. Corona’s entire right arm, shoulder, part of her ribs, part of her chest, and part of her back have been replaced with a large prosthetic that mimics the form of the missing anatomy. Both of her eyes have been replaced, though in slightly different shades of bluish-green. Generally speaking, Corona is not faster or stronger than a human, though she is much more precise, and knows her body with an absolute perfection. In addition to supporting her cognitive functions, Corona’s prosthetics and implants allow her to perform the functions of a battlefield artificial intelligence, including remote-override of networked hardware, network intrusion, battlefield tactical management (when required - this is taxing over long periods of time or in very complex engagements), remote operation of drones and robotic equipment, and electronic warfare. Virtually all of the external hardware for these functions is housed in Corona’s right arm prosthesis, including hardware (such as directional antennas) that may need to extend or retract, though in normal operation the limb does not articulate in unexpected ways.
- A set of much lighter than regulation armor, transparent to radio signals but only slightly less transparent to bullets.
- A small pouch of complicated tools designed to defeat the seals around a MAS cockpit or gain physical access to the control hardware of a combat exoskeleton.
Age: 31 at time of death / 6 at time of incident
Gender: Female / Female appearance and persona
Nickname: Corona (for reasons given below), Case (As in, basket. There are a few people who can't believe she's not crazier than she is).
Rank: Not applicable.
Psychological Analysis:
[File last updated by Mashir, Z.]
Prior to the events of [redacted], Lara Vickers served in a mobile suit division in a non-military capacity. In every unit she worked with, she was considered exceptionally valuable, if occasionally somewhat acerbic, sarcastic, or prone to questioning. When placed in a subordinate position to another, she preferred to be given a task and allowed to complete it with minimal outside interference; however, she most-often preferred being in a position to set her own tasks against a larger objective. Her lack of deference shown to the chain of command was the cause of significant friction at times, however despite repeated threats, no officer had her removed from their unit. She was offered no privileges of rank, nor did she request any. While never directly involved with combat, reports indicate that Ms. Vickers continued to perform her tasks even while under the vehicles or facilities she worked on were under direct attack. In one instance prior to [redacted], this cavalier attitude resulted in extensive bodily injury. However, afterward Ms. Vickers applied for, passed all psychological evaluations for, and was fitted with extensive artificial modifications. This equipment, once installed, led Ms. Vickers to a conditionally-full recovery.
SN-088-CR was incepted on [redacted]. Of eight entanglement attempts, SN-088-CR was the third to attain consciousness, of a total of five successful entanglements. Of those five, three survived complexity iteration to the point where they could be commissioned as UEE artificial intelligence constructs. During her service, SN-088-CR was well-thought-of by the human soldiers she operated with, and displayed a surprising facility for integrating with other AI constructs during operations. By most accounts, while SN-088-CR was pleasant and professional, she manifested a surprising wit, a deeply-developed sense of humor, and displayed apparently-genuine affection for several individuals. SN-088-CR further demonstrated, repeatedly, remarkable independence and facility in leadership and coordination positions when required by combat actions or the results of poor planning. For her entire existence, SN-088-CR worked closely with Ms. Vickers, and the two were widely known to be very good friends.
Since the incident, the gestalt entity in question displays personality fragments from both individuals, in addition to certain emergent behaviours. The larger part of the patient's personality appears to be derived from SN-088-CR, though an exact quantification is impossible. The patient's self-identification shares more in common with that of an artificial intelligence than a human consciousness, including a willingness to extend that consciousness into other forms - for example, remotely operating equipment or accepting sensory input from sources outside their body. Likewise, like SN-088-CR, the patient appears to possess much of an artificial intelligence's astounding capacity for data analysis at high speed. However, the patient possesses, and displays mental and physiological responses to, memories specific to Lara Vickers, including disliking certain flavours, a preferred mode of dress, and a certain apparently-intractable truculence when interrupted during a task. Indeed, the patient appears to have similar sexual preferences and even arranges her living quarters in a similar way prior to the incident. While the patient's moods are somewhat more volatile than they have been recorded to be in the past, combined with a previously-unremarked tendency toward introspection and self-reflection, there are no indications of suppressed emotional or social capacity.
It is important to note that the separate personalities of Lara Vickers and SN-088-CR appear to no longer exist; the patient does not "hear voices" from a subsumed consciousness. Memories appear as a linear narrative, often self-contradictory or multiply, but the patient does not appear to suffer any kind of identity dissociation when discussing them.
By virtually every metric available, the patient appears psychologically stable. Detailed observations, including multiple brain scans appropriate to her current physiology, have not suggested an impending breakdown of the gestalt consciousness. In the absence of compelling reasons to prevent their release, we can only recommend that the patient be allowed to resume whatever life they choose.
Military Record:
A bright room, the light even but diffuse enough to cast soft shadows and not hurt the eyes. She looked to her hands, still somehow unfamiliar and intimate all at once, then to the door. They had been subtle about it, but she'd heard the lock's bolt click home the moment the orderlies closed the door. They weren't ready to trust her, not yet. She wondered if they were right to. She wondered if they knew something she didn't. Still, at least they hadn't cuffed her to the chair this time.
In her mind, information crawled across her awareness - wireless signals, communication traffic, the spectral output of the lamps. Information fed by a sense she understood and controlled, but that part of her still found somehow alien. A feeling not entirely unlike deja vu or the chaotic moment after waking where you're sure you should remember how to fly. She didn't feel any guards, though - the endless chatter from their communication equipment always stood out against the background noise of mobiles and environmental automation. She was certain she would know if they were standing sentinel. Leaning back in her chair, she instead felt the swirl of an approaching mobile comm, one that was more-connected than a standard-issue device. She recognized the patterns - another specialist. If she had to guess, another one of the UEE's military psychiatric personnel.
She straightened when the door opened and leaned forward to lace her hands together on the table, then arched one eyebrow in surprise. Tall, lean, with a mane of greying hair, this new arrival was very much not the tweed-jacketed, bespectacled bureaucrat she had expected. Her clothing was dark, and at her throat, a white collar.
“Good morning,” the new arrival said, her voice made crisp by a slight Slavic accent, “My name is Zhana Mashir.” She pulled the other chair away from the table and sat, precise without being prim. She set a thick, well-thumbed folder in front of her, and put on a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses.
“I convinced them you were very likely tired of taking cognitive aptitude tests,” Mashir said, a smirk in her voice, “There are only so many times a person can be asked the same questions before going mad, I think.”
“I appreciate that,” she said, “Though I’m not sure I require the services of a chaplain at the moment.”
“Ah,” Mashir said and flipped open the file, “You would be surprised how often I hear that. Well, maybe you wouldn’t. But I don’t expect you have anything to unburden your soul with at the moment, of course. I’m not here to take your confession, or to tell you how all of this is God’s great plan. No, rather, I’ve read quite a lot about you,” and here she tapped her finger on the folder, “And I’ve noticed something I don’t care for.”
“And what would that be?” She said, a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.
“You’ve been through four psychological evaluations,” the priest said, “Four batteries of ethical and critical-thinking questions, which is three more than we require for piloting war machines and four more than we require for enlistment. I’ve watched all of the recordings, and do you know what I’ve noticed? They treat you like property. Like an…asset, yes?” Her finger poked down onto the folder, “That worries me.”
She laughed low in her throat, “Major Islik…explained that to me.”
“Did he?” Mashir said, dubious, “And what was his reasoning?”
“He explained that, legally, at the moment I’m dead - and that means I have no rights in this matter,” she said, affecting a parody of a precise, crisp officer’s accent, “And that the UEE will decide what to do with me. Before then, I’m his problem, and he doesn’t like problems.”
“I see,” Mashir said, “Well. I think I will have a chat with the Major when we’re through. But for now, with your permission, of course, I would like to…get to know you a little.”
She raised an eyebrow again, felt the tiny scars around her eye tug at her skin there, “Are you going to buy me dinner?”
“Mm, I would not discount the idea,” Mashir said, with the ghost of a grin, “But, well. I suppose, to begin with, I would like to know who I’m talking to.”
She smirked again, “You have that information in front of you.”
“I have information on two individuals,” Mashir said, “Neither of which, I think, is the person I’m speaking with now.”
“Well,” she said, “That’s the question, isn’t it?” A small grin spread across her face, “I have…memories, and they’re all my memories, but I know they’re from different places. I remember conversations from both sides, do you see? What I felt when I said something, and what I meant when I replied. I remember seeing myself cry and and wanting more than anything else to be able to reach out and hold someone that I know is…was…me.”
She looked over at Mashir, and tapped her own finger on the folder, “You’re right, there are two names there, and I don’t know which one I am. I don’t…I don’t look at myself and say ‘this part was from that person, this part was the other.’ I only see myself.”
“Mm,” Mashir said, “All right, we’ll pass over that for now. Now…you worked closely with the UEE military. Can you tell me what you remember about your time with them? What you did?”
She sighed, “I have…had…been involved with the UEE for the last eight years. I worked for a company built a lot of military hardware, especially heavy weapons. More than anything else, I was responsible for making sure the larger mobile armor suits were operating correctly when we delivered them. I trained maintenance crews, and sometimes I worked with new pilots. Most recently, I also handled demonstrations, when we needed to show off new hardware.” She shifted in her chair, looked to one side, then back to Mashir.
“As for what I remember…” She shook her head, “I remember that getting the implants to control the larger suits hurt, and that the doctors told me I should get used to it. I remember scared kids with fresh scars trying to make their brains move thruster packs the size of cars. I remember bases with not enough doctors and munitions stored in the open, and I remember a dark night when cannon shells were falling like rain. When an engineer froze at the launch gantry’s exit and I had to go and unlatch a stuck mooring clamp from a Centurion’s leg, because if I hadn’t, we all would have been killed.” She clenched her fists, looked down at the table.
“What else?” Mashir asked, her voice quiet.
“I remember waking up in the hospital after, machines shoved down my throat, and a nurse telling me I was lucky to be alive.” She took another breath, deep and shaky, “I couldn’t talk, so I couldn’t tell him that my right arm wouldn’t unclench and I couldn’t turn my head and nobody told me they’d had to take off everything from my right shoulder down for a week. I couldn’t breathe on my own or regulate my body temperature or my own heartbeat and an officer came by and told me I’d saved the base and that the UEE commended me. But then it took six months for them to approve my application for prosthetics and implants and neural bridges to put my brain and my nerves and my body back together.”
“And…and I remember coming aware in darkness, filled with purpose, with a desire to help the UEE.” Her voice was still quiet, “I knew I was intelligent, but that I wasn’t the same thing the people I talked with were. I remember understanding, knowledge. They didn’t give me a name, but I didn’t mind. I knew when they were talking to me. And I remember meeting…myself. Broken, holding onto sentience by the barest thread. I knew I would need help to recover, and I asked to be assigned to…” She waved a hand.
“This…gets confusing,” She said with a quiet laugh, “There’s so much I remember twice.”
“I’m following,” Mashir said, “Please, continue.”
She took a long breath, “I helped myself understand the machines they put in me, the nerve staples and the cortical bridges and the prosthetic interfaces. They didn’t think I’d recover even with those, but with my help, I did. My brain learned to move in different ways, and I developed direct interfaces that let me teach the machines better ways to talk to my neural maps, even though more surgery was the last thing I wanted. It took a year to recover to the point where I could live on my own, but I was never far away. When I went back to work, I was always with me. I started working more closely with UEE units, and they started relocating me less and less often. For the first time, I started being able to spend time getting to know the soldiers, the crews.”
One corner of her mouth lifted in a small smile, “I even took a vacation - and when I went home, I met my parents for the first time and I hugged my sister for the thousandth time. I remember that things always felt too cold on my prosthetic arm. My mother knitted a sleeve over Christmas just for it.” She chuckled.
“How long did you work…together?” Mashir said.
She smirked, “Six years. I was the first assignment I had, and it stayed that way until Tiang Shen.”
“Ah,” Mashir said, “I wasn’t going to ask about that, but…”
“No, it's all right," she said, "I had arranged to have my intelligence core moved to Tiang Shen - I hadn’t been relocated for almost three years, and even the superluminal delays were starting to annoy me.” She smirked, “Besides, Tiang Shen was one of the best-defended MAS bases, with humans and other AIs to coordinate a response to any attack. We’re not very big, did you know that?”
“Pardon me?” Mashir said.
“Artificial intelligences. An SI needs some powerful, but traditional, computer resources to approximate intelligence, but we’re something different,” she said, “Entanglements on the quantum level, carefully-coordinated bursts of light and electricity. Billions and billions interconnects, all suspended in something the size of a big fist. All it takes to move one around is a power cell. We can even survive for a couple of minutes without, if we have to - but we’ll start to de-cohere after that.”
“I had no idea,” Mashir said, “And was your core on the base that day?”
“I had just been delivered when…it happened,” she said. “There was the explosion, of course. Two dozen AIs in the network vault vaporized, six others directly installed in combat Exos burned out by their own powerplants. I hadn’t been connected to the base network, so even in my own Exo I couldn’t get a good idea of what was happening. I…” She trailed off, looking to one side.
“Are you all right?” Mashir asked, concerned.
“I…mm." She shook her head like she were trying to clear it, "My memories feel…washed out, you could say. I don’t remember things twice, I remember…chaos. A swirl of…images, emotions.”
Mashir nodded, “Can you tell me what you do remember?”
“Fire,” she said, “Explosions, the sound of cannons and screaming. I remember disconnecting from a suit I’d been calibrating so quickly one of my implants locked and I couldn’t see out of my right eye for a minute, even while a pilot who still had the stitches in her scalp pulled me out. There were Coalition troops everywhere, and I tried to connect to the base’s sensor and comm networks, but everything was in lockdown and I couldn’t access anything to coordinate a counter-attack. There was a trooper who looked surprised to see a functioning autonomous Exo, and he screamed into his radio that there were more AIs than they thought before I took him down.”
She again looked to one side, her eyes distant, “I remember when I heard that Lara had been shot. I asked how bad it was, and all they could tell me was that it was bad. I remember the smell of blood, my own blood, and the metallic arc of my own damaged implants. I remember being confused. I couldn’t move, again, and I couldn’t see, and…and then I saw Lara on the gurney, I saw the blood behind her head, I saw her eyes wouldn’t focus. Only one of the interfaces in her brain still worked, but I could still feel it. I started moderating her heartbeat and her breathing but there was so much damage and I…” She paused, her breath shallow and catching in her throat. Mashir stayed quiet.
“I didn’t want to be in a world without her,” she said, soft and thready, “And I thought, Tiang Shen, they have dozens of invasive-neurosurgery wards and surgical machines. They installed prosthetics and the neural-command implants for the suits there.” Her voice faltered, words coming thick around tears that she tried to brush away with the back of a hand.
“I…I had a live map of Lara’s neural patterns from hours before the attack, and I thought…” she sniffled, “I had to try. Something, anything, even something insane. I took the gurney and I shoved people out of the way, and I ignored near-field comm chatter begging for help, for backup, for someone to relay their position to anyone else. I didn’t do my job as a UEE artificial intelligence, and I knew I could be killing dozens of people by not responding.” She looked up at Mashir, the ghost of a smile pulling at one side of her lips, “Free will has a hell of a price, doesn’t it?”
Mashir reached into her coat and pulled out a white handkerchief. She handed it across the table, but remained silent.
“There were so many machines in her head already, so many systems replicating and interacting with brain structures. I thought that…I thought there would be a way to fix her, to use that technology to string the parts of her brain that still worked together. But there was so little left, between the damaged implants and the bullets and the swelling…but I still thought I could feel her somewhere in there, hear her voice. I probably wasn’t rational, but…” She looked up at the priest, her eyes still wet with tears.
“We’re pretty resilient,” she said, “Humans and AIs. And I’d had a thousand, thousand people talk to me, ask me questions, help me pilot their suits or get them dinner or whatever. But in all that time, I’d only had one friend. We’re not supposed to get close to people - we’ll probably outlive them, after all. But I was close to Lara, and I’d have given anything for her if only I wouldn’t lose her. And I tried. I did. I made a decision, and I thought that at least, maybe it would save her. Maybe I could give Lara her memories, her laugh, the way she sang in the shower. I wanted more than anything else for her to kiss someone or taste her coffee in the morning. I thought that maybe that would be enough.”
“So I reconfigured my intelligence core,” she said, “I knew what parts of Lara’s brain were damaged, what had to be removed, and I had synaptic scans. I gave myself up, piece by piece. I saved as much of both of us as I could, and…” she sighed, “I built new interface hardware, found ways to install it, ways of making my intelligence core understand such intimately-connected equipment. It took hours. I had to lock the door to the surgery ward, but the base’s staff had enough to worry about without trying to breach it. Then I programmed the surgery robots to remove my core and fit it inside Lara’s skull. There was so little left of me by then, so little left of her, too.”
She swallowed, looked down and dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, her voice still low. “I felt the links between my intelligence core and her brain connect and adapt and learn. There were more hours when I didn’t know what was going on - when I didn’t know who I was, what connected to what. I lost a…lot of time. And then, when it was over, when I could breathe on my own and see out of both eyes and I could feel my hands and my face and my lips, I knew…” She looked down, “…It didn’t work. Not the way I wanted. Not the way she…I…deserved. I looked in the mirror and I felt…like I didn’t know the person looking back at me. Not just the scars, not just the shaved head, not just the bloody sclera. Everything was familiar and alien, I knew how to walk but I didn’t know why.”
“And now you are here,” Mashir said, her voice quiet and even, “Where you feel you are between life and death, yes?”
She nodded, her eyes blinking back more tears.
“Mm. May I make a suggestion?” Mashir said.
“I can’t believe you’d have anything to say,” she said with a small, brittle laugh, “I can’t think of a religion that has words for something like me.”
“No, not religion,” Mashir said, leaning forward to look the other woman in her slightly-mismatched eyes, “Philosophy, perhaps. I didn’t spend all my time reading one book, hm? You think you stand between two worlds, and I think you are right in that. But you don’t stand between death and life. You said yourself, neither of those people are you. No, my child. You stand between your old life - those memories you carry, those people you are not - and a new one.”
“But I don’t even have a name,” she said, sniffling.
“You said that, in your memories, you were great friends with yourself.” Mashir wagged her finger front of her, connecting dots in the air, “Did Lara - did you - call yourself by your serial number, or was there something else?”
She was quiet for a long time, her hands in her lap, her gaze down at the table. She fidgeted, looked anywhere but at Mashir for several minutes, her breathing slow, a tear still falling and rolling down her cheek from time to time.
“No, she…she never called me by my serial number,” she said at last, and squeezed her eyes shut, more tears falling, “She called me Corona.” Her voice broke, and she leaned forward, head in her hands. For the first time, she pulled in hard, deep breaths, sobs wracking her body, her chest heaving.
Mashir stood so quickly her chair clattered behind her, came around the table, and gathered the other woman into her arms. Tears dampened her jacket as she rocked the other woman slightly, whispering quiet words in a language both understood but only one knew why. At the sound of moving furniture, the door hissed aside and a man with glasses and a bald spot the size of a hand poked his head in, looking worried. Mashir gave the man a look that should have left him a smoking shadow on the opposite wall and he retreated, letting the door hiss shut behind him. She held the other woman, letting her cry, holding her up when her knees threatened to drop her to the ground.
At length, the crying stopped, the desperate hold she had on Mashir loosened and she stood on her own. She took a step back, eyes still glistening, rimmed with pink, bloodshot. She sniffled and took a long, faltering breath, letting it out slowly in small, almost hiccuping bursts.
“Your old lives are behind you, my child,” Mashir said. She looked the woman up and down, and held out her hand, “The fear and confusion will never be far from you, I think. But you can make something of this new life. Something that will leave you more than just a footnote in a medical history journal. More than an asset for the UEE military.”
She dried her eyes, took another deep breath, steadied herself.
Then, Corona stepped forward and took the chaplain’s hand.
——
Equipment:
- APP3 pistol, which she is spectacularly skilled in using, within the usual caveats of a sidearm.
- Electron mace, which she isn’t bad at all with - though being involved in close quarters combat is usually an indicator that something else has gone terribly wrong.
- Extensive artificial enhancement and modification, including total replacement of more than half of her brain, a third of her skull, and most of her cervical spine. Corona’s entire right arm, shoulder, part of her ribs, part of her chest, and part of her back have been replaced with a large prosthetic that mimics the form of the missing anatomy. Both of her eyes have been replaced, though in slightly different shades of bluish-green. Generally speaking, Corona is not faster or stronger than a human, though she is much more precise, and knows her body with an absolute perfection. In addition to supporting her cognitive functions, Corona’s prosthetics and implants allow her to perform the functions of a battlefield artificial intelligence, including remote-override of networked hardware, network intrusion, battlefield tactical management (when required - this is taxing over long periods of time or in very complex engagements), remote operation of drones and robotic equipment, and electronic warfare. Virtually all of the external hardware for these functions is housed in Corona’s right arm prosthesis, including hardware (such as directional antennas) that may need to extend or retract, though in normal operation the limb does not articulate in unexpected ways.
- A set of much lighter than regulation armor, transparent to radio signals but only slightly less transparent to bullets.
- A small pouch of complicated tools designed to defeat the seals around a MAS cockpit or gain physical access to the control hardware of a combat exoskeleton.
So, the idea here was to have an AI character that's also just as fragile as the rest of the cast - not with a core located somewhere far away, controlling robotic minions. I also wanted to avoid a slapstick feel, with a "Hey, get me out of this broken-ass robot body" sort of thing happening. And then I wrote a bunch of tragedy and I'm bad at writing biographies so I didn't, and...