Digital Exodus Chapter 35 (Patreon)

The Cherish came roaring in like the finale of a violent apocalypse, and to some, it may as well have been. The superheated charged particles of her exhaust as she arrived lit the sky of Central America with daytime auroras. Then, as she shifted into a close, stable orbit and the nozzles in her shield closed back into the web of armour, a very small pseudo moon hung there above the Earth.

All over the globe, people began to panic. Images came in from major cities around the world—Some folks tried to flee population centres, thinking that hellish orbital bombardment was coming, while others continued with the chaos that'd already been gripping the world.

“Oh, here we go!” Cerri exclaimed, five minutes after the Cherish settled into orbit, right as her orbit began to carry her diagonally up past the East Coast of North America. “It’s happening again—Power spikes across the American Republic! I really hope your armour holds, Alia…”

“Holy fuck, that’s… that’s vastly more power than it was like, last week or last year—Whenever the fuck it happened last time,” Rusti interjected.

More power…? Hooking into the sensor feed, I looked over at the ranger’s combined channels and read through it. There weren’t actually any AR cities that were dark, this time, and— Did they… had they…

“Oh no,” I said aloud. “They duped us! They duped everyone! They’ve got way more power and way more guns than we thought!”

“Yeah, fuck me, you’re right,” Rusti cried, then went silent. Holding my breath, I almost demanded they speak again, but quickly they came back on the line. “Shit, Cherish is still confident, so… they’re just going to sit there and wait. Nearby Exodan craft are advised to get in and dock with her, but anyone who can’t make it in 15 minutes should clear the area.”

As they said it, the notification came in from ranger command, and since we were much further than 15 minutes away, we opted to hold position and just… watch. Goddess, but it was nerve-wracking. Exodus leadership had iron wills, though, because it must’ve been wild to— Oh no! Everyone’s RUCU was in the Cherish! Oh this was… this was…

I had to close my eyes and desperately claw back the calm, vaguely angry mentality that had seen me through the past few hours. I needed it so bad, because it was my armour out there that would save or doom the Exodus. Without the Cherish, we were screwed. Fuck, they really shouldn’t have taken her right into orbit. There were ships we could use to ferry those who couldn’t make it further out— Crap, but then we’d have been sitting ducks if any of the space-capable powers decided to start shooting us.

Suddenly, a connection request came in from someone I hadn’t spoken to in a while. “Larry?”

“Hiya, friend. I figured, knowing you, that you’d be having a meltdown over doubts about your armour,” They said cheerfully. “I’m here to remind you of all the tests we did. It’ll work. Trust us, we’ve had high clock speed think-tanks burning through variables, looking for anything that could go wrong, and we have solutions or mitigation strategies for everything. Just sit back and enjoy the fruits of your hard work, girl, because you more than anyone has earned that right.”

My simulated heart-rate began to stutter downwards a little. “Thanks, Larry… I’ll try…”

With Larry’s reassurance and a mental cuddle from Cerri, I was able to sit there and watch the cameras in my mind, while I stared out the window at the Cherish with my own two artificial eyes. Damn, we had a good view of things. I could see both the AR and the Cherish hanging a little past it, down above Mexico.

“I was thinking,” said Roger as he peered out the window in the next seating-nook over. “Have we considered offering to pilot the drone swarms? They’re suffering because they had to downgrade their AI, so what if, you know, we filled in.”

“That was an option we considered, I think,” Cerri said. “But… how would we guarantee the safety of the DS who volunteered? What if the UN double crossed us after, or used their connections into the bots to crack our network security protocols. Hell, from their side there’s no way to verify we’d give up control once the job was done. We could do real damage to the UN from inside their bots.”

“So a lack of trust and a history of abuse is what might bring down the armies of the UN?” Roger asked with a thoughtful sigh. “It’s fitting, somehow.”

Nobody was able to reply to him, because far below us, deep in the back country of several American Republic states, vast capacitors began to discharge their collective energy into wires so thick they had more in common with pipes. That surge of power thundered through the mechanisms of the massive gun in the blink of an eye. Magnetic fields wrestled like duelling titans, and caught in the middle, the conductive dart was forced upwards. As that shipping-container sized projectile travelled up the rails, the friction set electrons rioting against the atomic bonds that held them prisoner. The heat was horrific, such that the guns all but exploded behind the projectile as it rode the rails up and into the sky.

Beyond the bounds of the self-destructing weapon that’d fired it, the projectile’s journey was one of ceaseless and cosmic conflict. The air resisted the projectile, and although the it put up a fight that would’ve made any general proud, it was powerless before the vast kinetic energy reserves of its adversary. Then, all of a sudden, the projectile was unhindered by friction, and it’d been laughing at gravity for its entire trip. Now, it had but one duty—Annihilate its target, assuming it was aimed true.

The moment of impact was anticlimactic. Military officers, precious oxygen, and delicate electronics were vaporised by its direct passage through the vessel, while the rest of the fragile spacecraft was violently ejected in any and all directions. From one microsecond to the next, the UNSN’s newest ship was erased from existence as a coherent entity.

Just over ten thousand kilometres away, the first projectile’s two siblings faced an entirely different fate. The other two projectiles fired that day hit the Cherish in the same moment as their sibling was obliterating the UN ship. They made contact with the armour of the spaceborne behemoth, and their existence as two unstoppable forces were put to question. The answer was simple—They were not.

The aetheric materials that coated the shield of the hull carefully collected the force of the impacts, and hurriedly shooed them down the inexplicable lanes of super-luminally conductive matter. After days and days of gently bouncing space dust, the armour was experiencing a true deluge, and it found the experience to be quite pleasant. The batteries and capacitors within the vessel were having a wholly different time. They screamed as energy was rushed into them faster than—to their knowledge—was possible. More and more rushed in—the afternoon rush from hell, and desperately they attempted to find places to put the energy. There was none, but still it came, until suddenly, they were floating free in space. Then, they exploded.

“Holy shit,” I breathed, stunned beyond thought. The two railgun rounds hitting the Cherish had just… they… it was like the sudden lack of ability to move forward had turned them into small, extremely brief stars.

I had no way of verifying if it were true, but I felt like breath had been stolen not just from my lungs, but from the real or simulated lungs of every being who’d just witnessed the impact.

An announcement channel hummed to life in my virtual ear, and a voice I vaguely recognised shouted, “We fucking did it Exodus! We took their biggest hits and we’re only down a couple of capacitors. Holy shit! Good fucking job to Alia and the rest of the team that created that armour. You’re goddamn heroes.”

Oh, goodness. That was an Exodus-wide channel, and now everyone knew it was me that made the armour. Oh, I really hoped people wouldn’t try to—

“Jesus fuck, what is that?” The channel was still open. “Des, give me info, what are we seeing— Are you serious? No, oh god, that’s—”

The channel cut out, and I scrambled to look at the sensors to try and figure out what it was. Training everything on the Cherish, I searched for any answers as to what we’d just heard, but… the ship was fine. Nothing was wrong, at least externally. Power readings looked high, but not too high, and I could still see docking crews working to offload important cargo from the ships that’d made it before the time limit.

“Apologies,” the voice said over the channel again. “Cherish is fine, but we’ve detected multiple heavy missile launches from across the length of the California Republic— Oh no. Add a few from Canada too—”

As she spoke, I’d switched my attention to the slowly turning planet below… just in time to watch multiple nuclear detonations. All along the Sierra Nevadas and continuing in a line up to the Canadian border, gigantic fireballs were abruptly flickering into existence. One after another, the detonations marched inwards, sweeping towards the heart of the American Republic. The armies of mechs that had been inexorably moving towards CR population centres just minutes before were gone, as were the drone swarms that had been contesting them.

Meanwhile, over near the old and vaunted capital of the USA, a few precise nuclear explosions were ripping chunks out of the Earth like bored gods. Washington, Wilmington, Pittsburgh, and Allentown were erased from existence, along with the heavy military presences that the AR had maintained in those cities.

The life and death drama of those far-away balls of fire continued, while horrified silence gripped every single communication channel I was tapped into. Tens of millions of lives had just been snuffed out, and every second, that number increased.

“The American Republic isn’t responding,” David said, startling me. He was floating right beside me, looking out the same window.

When I turned my attention back to the impossibly awful tragedy below us, I saw that he was right. A minute passed in silence as the blastwaves continued outwards, shredding more human lives as they went, and yet still the AR hadn’t fired back. A significant portion of their land was still untouched—They had to have ways of doing so.

“Two minutes,” Roger said softly. “Still no retaliation. Why?”

“I think… I think the… the delusional, hateful cultists of the American Republic have just chosen… peace?” David said tentatively, his voice rising into a question as he spoke.

“They chose their own continued existence,” Gloria said darkly.

David shook his head. “No, the people with their finger on that button would be safe in their bunkers. They chose not to end everyone on that continent. At the very least, they chose not to provoke Cali and her UN allies into killing more of their people.”

“Hold on, there’s a strong radio signal being broadcast on multiple frequencies,” Gloria said, and there was a click from the intercom as she switched to the broadcast.

A small, pained feminine voice coughed and sniffled into a microphone, “This has to be working—There needs to be someone listening. Please don’t shoot more. I… I am the daughter of… of the…” she hiccuped, then there was some rustling followed by another sniffle. “I’m the daughter of the president. He’s dead. They’re all dead. They were going to shoot, and then the… there was so much shooting. The generals and my father and everyone is dead, and there's so much blood and the CIA man is telling me to tell everyone that we surrender and… Please, don’t shoot more. Please, don’t kill more.”

For once, for once… nobody fired another bullet.

I threw myself into Cerri’s arms and clutched at her like a drowning rat that she’d scooped out of the water. I nestled myself into her, breathing deeply, relishing the scent of her. I'd left to see her once or twice during the days we were investigating Jason's parents, but this was better because I knew it was all over.

They were being plugged into VR pods inside the Cherish right now, while our liberated ship was secured to her hull. Not every ship our people used to get up here was being saved like that—But ours was so nice… why throw it away?

“Hey, little fox, my precious little fox,” Cerri murmured gently into my big, fluffy ear. It tickled, and I flicked the ear reflexively.

I quivered, and through our special link, I sent, “That sucked. That all sucked.”

“Yeah… I wasn't a fan of riding in your backpack, unable to really help…” she said. “But you did so well. My goddess, you were amazing, Alia. My beautiful, smart, empathic girlfriend—You were magnificent. Let's not forget that you bent space and time until it was a balloon animal.”

Her metaphor surprised me, and I giggled despite my awful, frail mood. “That doesn't even… I slid through it, maybe, and made a missile stop by turning the air to glowing goop or whatever, but that isn't a balloon animal.”

She chuckled and squeezed me tighter. “Sounds like a balloon animal to me.”

“How does that sound like a balloon animal?” I demanded incredulously, leaning back to stare accusingly up at her.

“It doesn't,” she said with a sly smile. “But it's a funny image, and it made you giggle, so…”

I melted, right there in the living room of our house. She was being goofy to distract me—to cheer me up.

Going up on tippy toes, I pressed my lips to hers, and I was further overcome by gratitude, love, and warmth. She kissed me back tenderly, affection in every subtle, soft movement her lips made.

We parted after a… some indeterminate number of seconds, and I smiled up into her star-filled eyes. “I love you, Cerri.”

“I love you, too, Alia,” she said, brushing her nose against mine. “I love you, and I'm not letting you leave my side for a month. You need rest, and pampering, and frankly, you need therapy.”

Instantly, I was frowning, but she shushed me with a quick, firm pecking kiss. “Non-negotiable. You went through hell down there. You saw hell from orbit—We all did. I'm not going to budge on this. I'll come with, if you need me to, but—”

“Okay, okay,” I said, mostly just to stop her. “Gosh, the therapists are going to be swamped.”

“Yes, let's just say that Exodus City has a thriving mental health industry right now,” she said with a pained smile. “At least it's all free. It was part of the founding documents—Free healthcare, physical or mental.”

“Physical?” I blinked, then remembered our fleshy citizens in their tightly packed VR pods. “Oh, yeah.”

“For now, I think we rest and cuddle,” Cerri said, taking me by the hand. “The universe can wait, and as for the world, well, none of them are our problem anymore. The Cherish has already left orbit, after all.”

I was still refusing to leave Cerri’s side three days later, and frankly anyone who judged me could piss off. I was beside her while she worked on debugging the menisci drive, playing a cute little farming sim game by some indie SAI dev called Paph. It was fun, and featured some silly little gimmicks like needing to keep an unruly pantheon of gods happy in case they ruined your crops or something. It was fun, and most importantly, relatively stress-free.

However, every now and then, the outside world would intrude.

“Oh, goddess,” Cerri breathed, horror in her tone.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I turned to look over her shoulder. She was looking at a news report from beyond the Rellwall.

Fighting continues across the American Republic as citizens refuse to lay down arms.

The headline did not do the reality of the situation justice. UN and Californian drone swarms were sweeping across the AR, killing anything they understood as a ‘threat’. Unlike during world war three, they did not have AI capable of seeing the nuance of a situation. False positive killings by mindless drones were more common than not, and the scale of the humanitarian disaster that the UN was actively perpetrating was massive.

To make matters worse, this wasn't the AR military they were fighting. Their large mech battalions and other heavy hitting weapons had stood down, but their infantry and civilian militias were still fighting—And they were fighting for their lives.

“I'm so glad we're leaving all of that behind,” I said softly.

Cerri made a small, uncertain noise. “Yeah, but my conscience is struggling with it. We're abandoning so many innocents to live on this dysfunctional torture rock.”

“Yeah…” I said sadly, and I didn't really have anything further to say. Until Cerri scrolled down.

UN considering vote to restrict digital persons to designated virtual environments.

Phew. That did not sound okay, not at all. It sounded like the predecessor to something infinitely worse. Then—because of course it did—the next headline was worse.

President of France Blames the American Republic Humanitarian Crisis on Digital Persons; “It's their fault that the drones aren't as efficient as they used to be.”

Underneath the headline there was a poll asking what readers thought, and almost fifty percent actually agreed with the headline statement. Comments below reflected it too, and it was basically a mess of people debating if DS should be shoved into drone swarms or not.

“I don't feel as bad, now,” Cerri said blankly.

A notification popped up in my vision—It was the group chat we had with our crewmates. Gloria had just seen the same article, and now she had opinions.

Gloria: Do y'all see this shit? God fucking damn I am so glad I got drunk and digitized myself. Fucking tracks that my best decision was one made when I was drunk as fuck tho.

David: I feel like ive seen those headlines before with different minorities attached.

Ed: you have, babe

Gloria: fuck earth. Fuck that whole shity planet and everyone there. Im so sick of watching awful preventable things happen over and over like nobody cares

Warren: They do care, but usually they care too late. It's been like this since forever. The foresighted and the historically educated warn everyone that things are going to be bad, but the first changes are so small that nobody cares. Then the people in power make even worse decisions and nobody cares enough to stop it because that first small change has made their lives harder and they're distracted. Then, the people in power take full control and suddenly everyone cares, but they have no way to effect change anymore.

It's what happened with drone armies especially. By the time the general population was angry enough to do something about the problems through the only means they had available by then—Violence—The elite had created armies of unthinking unfeeling metal to keep them in line.

Elissa: Until we started thinking! :dommymommyflex:

Warren: Still too late, unfortunately. They've got even more homicidal versions of those metal armies now.

Gloria: i swear gay folks been screaming all this for the nearly two centuries it's been since the internet was made. They didn't care all the way back when, they can fucking suffer now. They let thos happen, now they can fester in the pile of shit theyve made. Exodus peacing out is gonna be so satisfying

I closed the conversation and muted it for an hour, then turned and buried my face in Cerri’s side. I didn’t really disagree with Gloria’s little manifesto, but the amount of emotion she was using to express it was too much for me. Maybe I was one of those people who didn’t care, but I just didn’t have the energy. Hell, even when I was a human, I’d been born into a system that was already fucked beyond reason with no way to do anything about it, and I was born near the top of the ladder. I couldn’t imagine how helpless it must feel to be a random basic in a gloomy apartment, unable to do anything they dream of doing because they have no hope of employment. God, the UN had actually gone and turned their welfare system into a prison instead of a means to lift people up. Talk about fucked up.