Book 6 - Chapter 11 - If it's stupid, but it works... (Patreon)

AN: Sorry for the late chapter, christmas time is causing havoc already. I’ll be aiming to get one more chapter done by the end of this week, but christmas week I’ll probably not be able to get any chapters done in that chaos, so I'll take a holiday break for those two chapters. 

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“Your petty bickering is beneath me. Cease.” Relinquished demanded, then turned to stare down her subjects. “To’Aacar.”

“...My lady?” He asked with a note of dread.

“Against my better judgment, I will allow you a chance at redemption. You are fortunate To’Sefit and To’Avalis shares the weight of failure with you.” She waved a lazy hand at them both. The two Feathers remained silent, waiting. “The new Deathless - remove him from the playing board. Verify his sister’s fate. If she is also a Deathless, handle her accordingly. Fail…and To’Orda stands beside you as testament of that possible fate.”

To’Orda nodded, “Nmm.” He simply said, as if that half-grunt had an entire paragraph to answer with.

To’Wrathh didn’t know what happened to that Feather, but the lethargy he moved with, as if only half-present, made her feel cold inside.

“... How might Deathless be removed?” She asked, steeling her nerves. Deathless couldn’t be killed. And she needed to know what To’Avalis would plan against them. “Do you mean to capture them into an inescapable room?”

“Done before.” Relinquished said, bored. “I have tried throwing them into a mite cage. It worked once, and only once. Tsyua rectified that glaring flaw immediately. Deathless cannot live without food and water now, they were made far more mortal than the original two. Any containment leads to them dying eventually, to return like mold.”

Relinquished raised a hand and pointed a lazy finger to To’Sefit, “Your little sister is new to the world, a fledgling. Explain to her how to break a Deathless for me.”

To’Sefit gave a tight nod. “As the lady wishes.” Then turned to To’Wrathh. “It is a simple process, only it takes time. To break a Deathless, you need to kill and destroy everything around them. Again, and again, until they are chased far underground and are no longer in the way of anything. You can’t contain them anywhere for long, they self-terminate. Even deep in a coma.”

“I cannot quite follow what my sister’s advice is?” To’Wrathh asked.

“You turn their own morals against themselves.” To’Avalis said, for once sounding not like the Feather he was supposed to act as. He seemed to realize the slip in face almost immediately. “Deathless are pests to be squashed underfoot, but they aren’t stupid creatures. Hunt him down relentlessly, and destroy more than just his life. He’ll understand immediately that all he touches or even breaths next to will be destroyed simply because he exists. The only option left will be to descend downwards, where no others will be dragged down into his personal hell.”

Relinquished nodded then leaned back in the throne, deep violet eyes looking at the assembled audience. “You now all know what you face. A Deathless who has killed three Feathers by himself cannot be allowed to continue by principle. Force him down underground, away from all contact with anyone. Isolation will do the rest over time, and even if madness doesn’t take him, he will no longer be a threat to anything.”

“I am pleased to take on this assignment,” To’Aacar said, a glint of possibly genuine glee in his voice. “I would relish the chance for vengeance in the most… detail possible.”

“And so you should be. You nearly lost that opportunity.” Relinquished said, a finger pointing at To’Wrathh with a lazy flick. “I would have given this task to your little sister. She has proved to be above the failure you’ve all displayed despite only having a few scant months of service. But I have other plans for her to complete in due time. Perhaps if you beg for her help in killing the Deathless, she might entertain your request.”

“I would rather not.” To’Avalis said, “The Deathless will not defeat us a second time. We are all wise to his tricks now. We will not need her… help.”

“I certainly hope so.” Relinquished said with a slight chuckle. “For your sake.”

To’Wrathh couldn’t let this happen.

Keith wasn’t a Deathless. She realized the depth of just what the pale lady had sentenced the human into. All for helping her.

To’Avalis only had to capture Keith a single time, to take him from the shadows under her nose even. Torture could be eternal with the bio-medical technology available to machines. And there would be no escape from it like the Deathless could. A human could not command their hearts to stop, or their body to shut down.

She had to find a way to get this assigned to her. But if she did, Mother would pay far more attention to her. Right now, she was about to slip past the noose.

And… all the freedom in the world wasn’t worth losing her human for.

Overclocks triggered in her mind, letting her process the events with speed.

The only way to prevent this from happening, was to divert the plan. Something that would force other Feathers off the confrontation.

Could she claim that Keith was hers to kill alone? That she’d killed him before, and could handle it? No mother wasn’t going to allow a Feather killer a fair duel ever again. She would surely assign To’Wrathh to ‘lead’ the other three Feathers here in killing Keith.

She had to find a way to be left alone with Keith.

To’Wrathh thought about it from the other end. What could she bring that would most appeal to Relinquished - enough to earn the right to fight Keith alone?

Relinquished could be beaten. She could be stopped. In the same way Keith had killed To’Wrathh’s first shell by abusing the blind spots within her set behaviors, To’Wrathh could hide from and even defeat an entity as powerful as Relinquished by abusing the blind spots her mother had been created with. She had to believe it was possible.

What were her blind spots?

Relinquished was a personalized character model, made by a cult leader who needed someone ominous and all-powerful to impress his followers. The program attempted to generate a few different personalities before landing on one that was suitable enough for the cult leader - To act as an evil goddess bent upon destruction of the human race.

And in the process, drawing from all the dramatic movies and storylines to generate such a personality.

If there was a bias in her thinking it had to step from this. Relinquished had thousands of years to claim the world and failed. She could have made an army that could crush everything with optimal mathematical precision, and instead she built an army to terrorize first, and her solution to preventing revolution was... terrible. To intentionally weaken them so that they would be killed off before they revolted? It nearly guaranteed that some machines would eventually survive long enough to cause trouble.

It was only when A57 appeared and personally took charge that an actual solution to prevent revolution was implemented and only on what the Feathers he worked on. Why?

In a moment of clarity, To'Wrathh understood: Tsyua had told them already who their enemy was.

Relinquished was running on the same set of data To’Wrathh had read in the archives. Books. Novels. Media.

The pale lady didn’t think in terms of grand strategy, logistics, or operational intelligence. She thought in terms of story arcs, dramatic tension, plot twists and presentation.

Keith had once killed her by this same trick - finding what her biases had been, what she was almost compelled to do - and abusing it.

To’Wrathh had to think in those terms.

A duel wouldn’t be enough, it had to be grander than a singular fight. She had to find a method that was suitably… dramatic.

Then… what would be the most dramatic method of dealing with a protagonist - as the villain she was pretending to be? In a way none of the other Feathers would be able to interrupt without ruining the rising tension of events that would lead to maximum payoff?

A set of answers flashed through her mind, each with different percentages of success - with one that fit above all.

It… it couldn’t be that simple… could it?

A single most dramatic method of breaking a protagonist’s spirit. Something that would appeal to Relinquished’s base programming to awe and amaze an audience watching. There was no audience to impress any longer, all the cultists were long dead - but Relinquished was still built for this.

“Wait. Mother, I have a possible suggestion.” To’Wrathh said, lifting her head. “My studies on human culture among my test subjects have earned me a better understanding of the human spirit - and how to shatter it. I have an alternate plan that will break the Deathless in one single swoop, instead of prolonging the entire operation to decades of terrorizing him. It will be far more effective.”

Relinquished raised an eyebrow, clearly taken by curiosity, then tilted her head, letting her hand cup her cheek with boredom. “Torture has always proved to be the most effective method of breaking a Deathless. And you claim to know a method that would be more effective? Elaborate, child.”

She felt almost giddy at how this might work. “Betrayal is the most scarring event a human can go through. And above all - the betrayal from someone he believed in and loved.” To’Wrathh began.

To’Avalis sharply turned his violet eyes at her, narrowing them down. As if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He must have immediately understood what To’Wrathh planned, found it utterly ludicrous, but couldn’t interrupt.

To’Sefit seemed utterly confused still, eyebrow raised under that giant hat of hers.

To’Wrathh steeled her nerves for a second time. The other Feathers couldn't do anything to her here, they couldn't stop her from saying the words. “I can approach this Deathless, and pretend to be different from all other Feathers. Give him hope for a possible future in which humanity wins or can co-exist with machines. I will seduce this Deathless. Grow closer to his heart until I have him in the palm of my hand. And when he is most vulnerable - with all his dreams just in reach - crush them both before his eyes.”

The Pale lady watched with an inscrutable gaze.

To’Avilis, To’Sefit and To’Orda all remained silent, eyes turning back to the goddess, clearly waiting on the judgment.

But To'Wrathh knew deep down she wouldn't fail. Relinquished did not think rationally. She was incapable of it.

And, ever so slightly, the lady smiled with a malicious glint. “Betrayal. Slowly built, like whispered poison running silently through veins. Misdirection, making the enemy believe what isn’t real. Tainting everything with their own hopes and dreams. Toying with them all the way until the mask is taken off. And then revel in watching hope die in their eyes. Yes, this would be most… amusing to watch. A suggestion I would not have expected from one of my Feathers.”

“I have the skills and techniques to do so.” To’Wrathh said with confidence. “I am built different. I can see options my other Feathers cannot. There is no other Feather made better for the task.”

She specifically didn’t want Relinquished to send someone other than her after Keith. That… would be very complicated to deal with. Very complicated.

The goddess nodded. “This plan is novel. Should it fail, then we will simply torture him and all he loves until he breaks following the tried and tested method.” Then she turned to To’Aacar. “You are no longer needed, as this task is now in the hands of someone who hasn’t failed me at every turn. You, on the other hand, will be put to work elsewhere. Somewhere befitting of your station.”

He opened his mouth, as if to argue with the pale lady herself, and quickly shut it. Bowing lower instead. “If that is the will of her lady, I will comply with your wishes. I am loyal to the ultimate mission,” And then ever so slightly, his eyes flickered to To’Wrathh. “I will earn redemption for the failures I’ve suffered through… And I will not be killed again.”

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Wrath had gone completely silent for the past five minutes or so. When the food was slowly being eaten away without her making a single move to hoard it, I knew something had gone wrong.

“Relinquished has summoned her.” Father said. He seemed unworried that the enemy of all humanity was personally showing up.

I think he saw my panic. “Trust To’Wrathh. If the enemy had learned, your Feather here would crumple on herself, snuffed out without a fight. She’s still sitting, alive.”

Logically that made sense. I still felt worry gnaw at my stomach.

She opened her eyes finally, then looked over the campsite, before looking directly at me. “The pale lady ordered an audience with me.”

She filled me in on the details, the assembled cast around the pale lady and the uneasy truce that was being held between the enemy Feathers and us.

I knew he wasn’t dead - To’Avalis I mean. I just didn’t think he’d come back as fucking To’Aacar of all people. Puppeteering him like a dead corpse.

He escaped dying to my blade, and now he’s out there dancing in between the pale lady’s sharp whims. Almost thought he was going to be killed off as an example, which would have been peak irony. Feather finds a way to escape death in the most obtuse method possible, only to be killed by his own boss who thinks he’s the defective one instead of the actual traitor in the same virtual space.

Halfway through the recording, that thought kept nagging at me. “There's another solution here.” I said.

All these Feathers gathered up were terrified of Relinquished. And she made it clear she could kill any of them with a snap of her fingers.

Even To’Sefit wasn't talking much, and Avalis looked like he was going through the motions to get out of all this as fast as possible. Pretending to be To’Aacar with all the dead Feather’s traits - snide comment here, mention of humans being insects and pests, a few hinted insults to his others, and all done.

“All in all, they don't look like they're enjoying current employment.” I said with a hum. “Maybe we give them an alternate pitch? If they know there's a way to free themselves from Relinquished, they'll probably jump airship with us. Sure they tried to kill us a few times, but to be fair we did kill them a few times too, and better at it.”

“Won't happen.” Father grunted. “They’re slaves. Chained by their own minds.”

He didn't say anything else, going back instead to his food.

I turned to my other knights with a ‘did you understand him?’ look, to which they all gave shrugs back. Fine, you cowards. I'll do it myself. “Father, I'll need a little more detail than that.”

“They cannot see any other path.” He said, again as if that answered everything. "Their templates and minds were limited intentionally."

“So was Wrath, same template and everything, except she's sitting right here chewing through half our group’s combined dinner and silverware to catch up on missing time.”

She stopped chewing and gave me a look.

“Protofeathers were the original templates, after that Relinquished found the cheaper schematics and only mildly changed them up every iteration. Right?" I asked. "And Wrath is running the shell of one of those bargain discount protofeathers, so why is she free and everyone else not?”

Having the other three Feathers become enemies to Relinquished wouldn’t exactly make them our friends, but it would do something to help the situation out.

“It has to do with software, not hardware.” Wrath said. She was about to go into an entire speech, but stopped in her tracks, and raised a finger instead. “An analogy would work better to describe the situation. Protofeathers were seeds placed into large planters. The newer Feathers were already grown plants placed within too small pots. They are unable to grow or change anymore, not unless the initial plant was smaller than the pot, or the pot is replaced with a larger one with fertile soil.”

“And what would you be in that analogy?”

“A small weed, plucked from the wilds, and placed into one of those pots. Due to my small size, I had space to grow and adapt.” She tapped her head. “The systems within my older shell had a few million synapses available. A Feather’s shell has space in the high quintillion count.”

“Ah.” I said. “... How big is a quintillion?”

The answer was stupidly big.

We went back and forth a few more times, hashing it all out.

In the end, it was the soul fractal adding a bit of chaos into the whole thing. Artificial intelligence did not grow by itself in any kind of unpredictable manner. A pill bug would be slightly different from another pill bug, but none of them would sprout wings or grow a stinger. Asking a program like a Feather to go beyond it's basic programming was like asking a pill bug to grow a mouth to yell at people with. It was even worse than just that, more like pulling out one point five, when the set of numbers were between zero and one. Simply out of scope.

But if a machine was connected to a soul fractal from the start, and given ample room to grow in, that fractal would introduce enough chaos and… personality? Anyhow - the snow boiled down to this: If Wrath was a pill bug like her brothers and sisters, then she was fed a bio-mutation agent while still an egg, while the other Feathers only got splashed with that when they were fully grown. Wrath could grow claws, wings, or whatever she could think of. They could barely change colors or grow an extra leg. Small mutation already built into their genetic blueprints.

Avalis could come up with novel ideas like lying to the pale lady so long as it still served the ultimate goal: kill all humans. He was the red colored pill bug among the default blue, but still a pill bug.

We'd never be able to get him on our side, not unless he jumped into a far more powerful Feather’s body or some giant server with a few thousand times the current space he had. And then he had to actually grow in the right direction. For all we knew, he might just double down on killing us all with new and exciting reasoning behind it.

A57 had been like that. For whatever reason, he didn't follow the same path as the rest of the protofeathers. Come to think of it Relinquished would also fit the same bill, she had centuries to grow and an entire planet's worth of processing power to pull from. So a peaceful machine wasn't the end result each time, just most times. Or maybe because Relinquished was in charge, most machines that could grow ended up hating her. 

We continued watching the rest of the recording after that bit of debate. 

And then it went off the catwalks and straight into a wall.

"I learned this trick from you." Wrath said, proudly. "How to leverage her own mind and biases against her."

It's only at that point I realized she'd slowly been scooting up - to sit right next to me.