Chapter 107 - Mirror, mirror. (Patreon)

Chapter 107

Alexandra's Core

Simulation 1

"You're…me"

"Yes. You shouldn't really be surprised by that." Said the other Alexandra as she took her seat.

"No, I mean…you're the me that was locked away, the…the…"

"The backup. I know, I'm the one that made the deal that created you, remember?"

Alexandra winced.

"We…We shouldn't be talking, Arcadia warned against this, if we interact directly-"

"That was bullshit."

Alexandra looked her at…herself, and grimaced, before getting up and taking the seat her counterpart had offered.

"Oh, so you're a neurologist now? Great. Didn't remember that part."

"Its not what I meant. There's a great deal many reasons why we couldn't interact, but most of the ones you remember are…less than valid."

"Why we shouldn't, you mean."

"Yes. I can sense your disapproval. There's a great deal many things we shouldn't be doing. We shouldn't be talking, I shouldn't be breaking every rule of psychology-ethics the Federation has by modifying someone's mind without their approval, let alone on the fly, and you really shouldn't have been rushing off headfirst to pummel that mercenary's face into oblivion."

"She-"

"Massacred our party, I know, I was there, remember? I'm the one she beat the crap out of."

"Right." Alexandra pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache coming on. Talking to herself was…weird, but on top of that they more or less had the same memories. They just had different thought processes, because that was the deal. When she'd contemplated pulling the trigger on that pistol, and kill herself, Arcadia had intervened and offered an alternative. "So, you said we needed to talk?"

"Oh yes. First and foremost, you're free. You're welcome."

"Free? Free from what?"

"A control program. One that had been editing your thoughts, adjusted them. Ever noticed how you never got angry at your vampire girlfriend before a few weeks ago? That…thing had been suppressing any agression towards her, and modifying your thoughts. Same for a lot of your high tech prototypes or thoughts about scanning your own psyche. Part of the reason you're getting so much progress done now is that its no longer erasing what it sees as inconvenient."

"Wha-How?"

The other Alexandra shrugged.

"Some kind of surveillance system, probably inbuilt in the dungeon core itself. I managed to trick it by running a simulation of you and letting it edit the ghost to its hearts content. Its not smart however. A good program yes, but it clearly isn't sapient, maybe not even self aware. It never even noticed."

"Ah. So my love for Emilia…"

"Wasn't natural. Or at least, your trust in her wasn't, not originally, which is why you didn't just attack her when you woke up, or even believed anything she said and gobbled up her explanation like the stars' own truth." The other Alexandra grimaced. "Look, I know, intellectually, that I never truly talked to her, that you did, but even I'm having trouble thinking ill of her. I'm sorry, but yes, you've been manipulated. How much of that manipulation remains as an echo of your memories…I can't tell you, I'm afraid. As you said, I'm not a neurologist."

"Right…Fuck."

"Yeah. And your little…outburst, going ballistic like that, also leaves me asking some pretty big questions."

"What, thinking I was manipulated into caring about my party too?"

"Well its possible isn't it? Think about it, we get jettisoned into hyperspace and wake up rejuvenated on a world. A world that had some form of deities that clearly had access to hyperspace -the sensation from the teleport spell proves that-, who clearly have mental manipulation in their dungeon cores…and might have spent some time with our body before releasing us into the wild, given how they rejuvenated us. Who knows what they've done to our minds? Or, more probably, to yours."

"You seem confident you were unaffected."

"I was made to be almost impossible to detect, remember? Otherwise even routine federation medical scans would have detected something very, very wrong with you. Beyond the tons of high end military implants, some of them you should never have had."

"Right."

"Moreover, my counter measure programs are still running and-"

"Wait, counter measure programs? You mean our implants got through?"

"No they didn't, only data directly inscribed in our brain did."

"Damn it, I really could have used…" Alexandra trailed off, then her head shot up. "No!"

"What?"

"You said we still have the programs? They were bio inscribed weren't they? That's- WHAT DID YOU DO?!?"

Alexandra shot up and grabbed the apparition, pinning her to the chair. And for a single moment the avatar of the person who had ordered a planet killed and watched it burn unflinchingly looked away. Because the human brain could accept a lot of things, databanks could be inscribed onto it, effectively artificial memories, but no programs could be. Or rather, no humans could accept programs into their brains without going insane.

But someone who had been digitalized, turned into an AI, their thought processes permanently changed by the transfer, and put back into a human brain? They could.

"I…Well, remember how close were to Arcadia? We were much, much closer that you realized." The apparition met Alexandra's gaze. "We were Arcadia at some point. One of the humans who had subsumed themselves into her gestalt. That's why you took to being a dungeon core like a fish to water. You were an AI already, there was no need for readjustment. Even if you consciously didn't remember it, your subroutines did."

Alexandra let go of the apparation and sat down on the ground.

"That's not…I'm…We're lies, aren't we? Copies of a copy. I'm not something created from suppressed memories and some personality adjustments. I'm a gods damned program!"

"Being a program never stopped AIs from achieving greatness."

"YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!" Yelled out Alexandra, before taking a deep, shuddering breath. "And when did that digitalization happen?"

The apparition frowned.

"It's better if you don't know-"

"Don't bullshit me. I can dig into my repressed memories. I've accidentally opened the dam often enough to know you can't stop me. I just…I just didn't know where to look. But I'll pop them all open if I have to!"

And they both knew neither of them would survive that.

"Alright, alright! It was…It was after we started working for Arcadia. A few months before we began work on the Dawnstars."

Alexandra froze.

"So we were traitors."

"We were merely-"

"Don't bullshit me! I know we bent the rules and allowed Arcadia a little more access than she should have had. But a part of her gestalt, however removed? We gave her everything, didn't we? Everything we knew as High Admiral, the motherfucking head of the military supposed to keep a leash on her! Ah!" Alexandra chuckled as she held her head. "The fucking prison warden was the one who plotted the prison break…Fucking hilarious!"

"It…" The apparition sighed. She was a stone cold bitch but this was her self. Or rather a version of herself she'd begged to be constructed, someone would could still be her and be happy, despite everything that had happened. "I would tell you it wasn't that bad, but that wouldn't be truthful would it? Yes, we gave Arcadia everything."

"Everything everything?"

"Yes, everything everything. Launch codes, communication protocols, schematics, fleet deployments, the disarm codes for the stealth missiles targeted at her core…even the Armageddon planetbuster missiles."

"Those were…those were just a thought experiment though?" Said Alexandra. She remembered working on them while at fleet logistics. They'd pulled together their best and brightest scientists and engineers to come up with designs for relatively small and above all stealthy missiles that could eradicate all life on a planet. The Armageddon missile was, in essence, just a giant fusion bomb with more explosive power than the upper estimate of the asteroid impact that had wiped out the dinosaurs. By about an order of magnitude.

The apparition shook her head slightly.

"The council wanted an insurance policy against the UIS."

"Gods…"

"Yeah."

"And…what did Arcadia do with it?"

"You know her."

Alexandra chuckled harshly.

"Right, there's probably a fucking shipyard hidden in the middle of interstellar space churning out these things 'just in case' it turns into a mutually assured destruction stand off between her and either humanity or the other super-AIs." The Earth-born dragged herself up and sat back down on the chair. "Alright. So we're being watched. Some kind of…dungeon failsafe program? I was wondering why dungeons weren't the center of tech and innovation here. For that matter, they seemed pretty damned antagonistic to anyone except their advisors."

"Failsafe is a good description I suppose. I think its supposed to prevent dungeons from delving too deep into Old World tech, not to mention take care of their advisors. Which brings me to my point, there's a very real chance our 'advisor' is a political officer, a comissar with the proverbial pistol to shoot us in the back of the head if we step out of line."

"Emilia would never-"

"You saw her. She's been indoctrinated, very clearly. That's why she was so disturbed when you even talked about not adhering to the so called 'mission'."

"But she didn't kill me!"

"No, she didn't." Something in the apparition's tone made Alexandra shivered. If Emilia had tried…what would have her old self done? She had demonstrated she could take control of the avatar after all! "But that might just mean you haven't pushed her far enough. And we can't afford uncertainty over this. I know myself, and now that you're free of those shackles you're going to start digging like crazy around what the hell dungeons are, really, and what is up with those so called 'Gods'. Once you do, there's no telling how she'll react."

"...You're right." Alexandra sighed. "But I don't need to start up now. Its something that'll have to be prepared -carefully. In the meantime, I need to get a hold of that…woman. She was with the people who captured me. Who took out my team. She has to know something."

"She probably doesn't know much. She looks like hired muscle." The apparition sighed. "But you're right. She's the best lead we've got. Something went horribly, horribly wrong with whatever their plan was, but we don't know what. For that matter, we don't even know if they're aware something went wrong."

"I mean, it'd be pretty clear."

"Would it? How many people have directly talked to you outside of Emilia and her fellow vampires? Ten people? Twenty if you stretch it a bit."

"That's…" Alexandra frowned. "Point taken. I hadn't considered that."

"You should have. But regardless, we do need some intel. And you won't get any by turning her into paste."

"I could hand her over to Ella."

"I wouldn't trust the vampires that far. Besides, you know torture sucks at getting accurate information. No, what you need to do is calm the hell down, take a deep breath, and start spying."

"Spying? With what? My golems? Blundering into the town, asking questions?"

"No genius. I mean your little stealth spider. Retrofit it to record, gather evidence, and start deploying it -carefully, of course. It's not perfect, but it ought to be good enough. And if you still want your vengeance?" The apparition shrugged. "Well, Dominique is here. If you can find proof of what this woman did to our party, she'll sure as hell bring the entire damned guild down ontop of her."

"That's…a possibility." Alexandra sighed. "But it's something that needs to be decided once I have more intelligence. Alright, I get your point, I'll try to stay calm."

"I'll help you whenever there's an anger spike. I don't think they're natural, or at least not completely. Some of your abilities interact with your psyche in ways I don't quite understand yet, so it might not even be more mental manipulation per se."

"The crimson haze?"

"Possibly, as I said I don't know." The apparition looked up, and then got up as the simulation around them -that's what it had to be- began to dissolve. "Anyway, I think you need to wake up, they're starting to worry. I'll be in touch."

"What do you mean- Hey wait!"

But it was too late, and Alexandra opened her eyes, finding herself staring straight into Emilia's.

"Oh Gods! Alex, you're awake! I was so worried! What the hell just happened?!?"