Elements of change

It has been an eventful year. This time last year, I was a different woman. Lost. Lonely. Onna-bugeisha. A weapon without purpose. Walking away from a life I'd been groomed for but didn't want as my own and a distinguished military career I could never talk about. Knowing I would never fully escape either. Such was my fate.

But I had found love. Classic. Tragic. Doomed. Lost before it had a chance. Only to be found by someone who needed me as desperately as I needed her. Strong, and very real, if unexpected. It had broken me out of the shell I'd wrapped myself in since the Indies killed Caitlin. I'd found more out here than I'd ever expected, and the fact that I keep coming back to these thoughts only reinforces how alien they sometimes feel.

I wasn't lonely anymore. 'Brina chased those daemons away. Even with her extended work off-world I didn't feel lonely. But sometimes I still felt Alien.

And now? Right now? Right now I missed 'Brina off world at work. I missed Aurora, off with my family on Ariel. I missed Blue. Why? Who knew. But I'd grown fond of the AI and now I missed him. I missed Imrhien and Duncan, off on MacLaran's Drift. I missed Td, where ever the hell he'd gotten to. I missed Caitlin.

I missed beaches, and snow, and mountains, and oceans, Kobe Beef, good chilled sake, field grown vegetables, paddy grown rice, fresh fruit, real chocolate, Kopi Luac, city streets crowded with people, forests. I missed my sense of purpose.

For Murphy's sake...

Dies ist nicht richtig. Ich glaube, ich brauche meine Implantat zu überprüfen.

When it's a slow news week...

Our round trip to Ariel was, technically, uneventful. x0x0 suspected there might be trouble outbound which, given the situation, I could understand. In point of fact, she'd already enlisted Emma's help in covering Aurora's departure and Tiny Dragon would be safely living in the Kawanishi Clan compound on Ariel long before anyone even knew she wasn't on Hale's Moon any more. But Wave Equation was a good deal faster than even the hotted up Reavers boats out here, so once we cleared atmo it was a smooth trip.

Still, raw performance hadn't prevented me taking basic precautions like omitting a flight plan and taking a slightly roundabout course in to the Core. All things I'd do on pretty much any flight, actually. I was like most of the independent Rim pilots in playing a bit loose with flight procedures. The only people who religiously filed flight plans were the big commercial transports and some of the larger Indies trying to look professional. Usual process on the Rim was to more or less ignore process.

On the flight home I was proud of my girls. Wife and daughter actually working at getting along, even managing to have some fun playing together. Aurora knew. Even if we didn't talk about it openly, she knew. My parents, on the other hand, know only that little Aurora was legally my responsibility since Lily was my responsibility. Our responsibility.

I wish we'd had longer on Ariel this time. More time to see Grandfather. More time for 'Brina to see Uncle Elsoph. More time with Aurora and my parents. Though seeing her with them the first time just reinforced that we'd made the right decision here. Aurora made me proud. I was sure at some point she'd slip, like any child would, but her behavior was near perfect.

For most people in the 'Verse, respect and honor weren't concepts that had been ingrained in you since you were old enough to speak. For us, it was a deeply held part of who we were. Honor and respect, or the lack thereof, really, almost lead Blackburne and Hale's Moon to blows at one point. But Aurora acted as if she'd been raised with those traditions since birth.

In a way, maybe she had.

But our time on Ariel was all too short. After making sure Aurora was settled in and at least starting to get comfortable, we left them with our farewell's and our promise to come and visit as often as we could get back from the rim.

The flight home was somewhat subdued, but I had 'Brina with me. Sometimes, her presence is all I need.

Aurora being away was ultimately a mixed blessing. She had more insight into the Reavers and the warbots than any of us. At least she had while she was partially synthetic and somehow combined with Blue.

Was she still linked with Blue? I couldn't know yet. I hadn't even spoken to Blue independently in a while, and I sorely wanted to. I knew more about him now and better understood our relationship. Knowing Mindo had tried to subvert the AI, rather than creating him, put things into a different light. I'd even gone so far as to offer the midiframe we'd used for signal processing as a home. While we might miss the enhancement it gave the Navtrak, the AI was ultimately more important.

And what of the Reavers? With Mindo not so much in the picture now and Aurora off world, we'd have thought their activity might decrease. But that hasn't been the case. There've been two attacks since we got back that I know of. Possibly more. While they haven't shown the ferocity and direction that the last attacks did before Aurora and Lily, well . . . corrected . . . they are still Reavers. Still dangerous. Still violent.

The warbots were another story entirely. I knew AuroraBlue had been in communication with them at some level. We knew Mother was down there somewhere, if not exactly where. There were at least two Seeders either complete, partially complete, or recently self-disabled - I hadn't found out which before Aurora changed. And fifteen other machines. What type? Who knew. I had to assume they weren't Wasps or small drones like we'd encountered before. I suspected they were more substantial devices like that machine Nack kept in Firefly's, or one of the large autonomous mining machines that kept Mother fed.

Even before we'd taken Aurora to Ariel we'd seen examples of new scout classes. At least they acted like scouts. Spotted prowling around the town, they hadn't engaged unless they were cornered or shot at.

What'd it mean? As far as we knew the Warbots counted as an Expert System, which meant they could learn and adapt to their situation. That was part of the original core code from the original von Neumann mining machines. Best as we could tell, they weren't fully AI. Which was good. But a learning system could still adapt its tactics and that appeared to be what we were up against. The machines studying us to figure out how best to mow us down.

Not a comforting thought.

They were coming. They were all coming, bit by bit. We'd have to stand against them. All of them. The Reavers. The Machines. The Hardliners looking for another war. The environment itself.

Geliebten Buddha. Was kommt als nächstes?

Burning holes in the Black

Things are not as the should have been. But they are as they should be.

Lily used to say that, or some variant of it, fairly often. I never really knew exactly what she meant by it until very recently. Now that I understand? The meaning has become clear, but how should it have been? That's the part I just can't see. No matter how hard I try, I can't get the potential to crystallize. But who am I kidding? I'm a rational woman and I can analyze the potential outcome of a situation. But I'm no precog. I can't see the future.

Right now, we're en-route to Ariel once again. We've got to pick up 'Brina on the platform, but once we have her it'll be an unspecified course to Ariel at close to maximum burn. I hadn't even filed a flight plan when we took off from Hale's. Just let them know we were outbound for the core and would file a plan later. Our obvious destination was Ariel, but there were quite a few options for a high performance boat like Wave Equation. And very few boats out here on the Rim would have a chance to catch us once we cleared atmo.

I knew we were doing the right thing. Even with my inexperience with motherhood, I knew that it would be better to raise Aurora on Ariel with my family than out on Hale's Moon. The creche was safe, but not when people would be actively looking to do harm to the child involved. There was no doubt there would be people seeking to, if not actively harm Aurora, do things that were far from her best interest.

When I was in the service, there was more than one occasion where my duty included directly deciding who lived and who died. Didn't matter whether the uniforms were purple and gray or brown and whatever. I chose who lived and who died. It was never easy then, mostly because I have a conscience, Now though? The rational decision was a piece of cake. The emotional one, not so easy.

The mother in me wanted Aurora to stay. While I knew she would be safe, well cared for, well educated, and well loved, living on Ariel with my folks, some deep seated part of me wanted her to stay. On another level, that feeling was confusing the hell out of me. I hadn't had a maternal instinct that I was aware of. I hadn't carried Aurora to term, so I didn't have that purely biological bond. But I do love her as my own. Which is even more confusing, since Lily is, technically if not genetically, her mother.

I don't like confusion.

I know though, Aurora will be safe with my folks. Mother's already ready for her, though she only knows a part of the story. They'll raise her right, and we'll be there as often as is practical to make sure she is.

I just hope Lily and Krenshar can forgive me for taking her away. Lily's still going through her reset and Krenshar's acting, well, as I've never seen him act before. They consider her their daughter, and I've gone and taken her from them.

It's the right thing to do.

It's just not the easy thing to do.

Motherhood

I never really expected to be a mom. Not really. While there was the finite possibility I'd settle down with some decent man and raise a family, the reality is I've settled down with an exceptional women and neither of us had ever considered, let alone discussed, the possibility of having children. Technically, of course, it was possible. The technology to mix the genomes had been around for generations but was rarely used. Living on the Rim? Not really something to consider.

We'd adopted Lily for myriad reasons. Not the least of which was to protect one of our citizens and give her proper legal standing. It was a practical solution. Of course, the fact that we loved our not-cat construct made it much more a matter of family than convenience. Legally? Who knew. It had never been challenged and, truth be told, chances were she would fall more closely under the laws that governed Krenshar than the rare genetic constructs. Lily was fully synthetic. At least physically. And, like Krenshar, she would probably be considered under the same statutes that let us give Kren the same Citizen's standing the rest of us had.

We'd been a family. Albeit an odd one. But Td had taken off for parts unknown, and Imrhien had followed her own path away from Hale's Moon, leaving me and Sabrina to be Lily's parents. Never mind Lily had a maturity level, at the time, somewhere between a pre-schooler and a surely teen, and was beyond any sort of conventional parental control. We'd treated her as our own.

Aurora changed that. When we'd adopted Lily, we hadn't expected to be Sofubo so soon. In fact, I don't think we expected to be grandparents ever. I think Aurora may have been more than Sabrina was ready for. I know she was more than I was ready for. But we'd accepted her, at least I had, as Lily's daughter. Legally, Lily being considered a minor, not to be confused with the other miners, meant that as her parents we were legally responsible for Aurora too.

Now that Aurora was fully organic, things had changed again. At least on some level. Now she really was the little girl she appeared to be. Where we'd had an elemental force of nature, a child carrying her own personality and that of the Blue Man AI, we now had just the child. At least it seemed so.

No wonder Sabrina was taken aback by it all. Lily, now fully synthetic, probably needed us less as a parent, where Aurora, now fully organic, needed us far more. It was just too much. I don't think either of us were ready for this. Perhaps more confusing to me, personally, was the change I'd seen in myself. When I'd first come to Hale's Moon I'd never have considered taking on these responsibilities. I'd had no duty to protect an orphan. I was not honor bound to take on this responsibility. But I had. Willingly.

Now, though, it was complicated. Sabrina and I weren't really in a position to be full time parents. Hale's had its creche that took care of the handful of orphans we had living here, like Jin. But Aurora needed something more. She'd be too vulnerable here. She was an anomaly on multiple levels, and raising her here would be difficult at best, fatal at worst.

So many questions. So few answers. Our little girls in the balance.

We'd find the solution. We always had. We always will.

It's what we do.

One chapter ends. Another begins

I wasn't there when Lily died, or when the rose again, Phoenix like, to come back to us. An unfortunate pattern. I missed Aurora's birth, and Lily's restoration, when in both cases I knew they were coming any moment. Duty's a bitch sometimes. Or maybe I'm just a terrible mother.

She's not herself yet, not really. In spite of restoring the back up Krenshar extracted from Aurora, she's not entirely as she was. But she will be. Perhaps not exactly as she was, since she won't have the same experiences between the backup point and now, but the core personality is still here. Bereft of any organics in her system she'll have a better chance to develop as intended.

What was it she said? "Things are as they should be. But not as they should have been." I never understood that until now. And now? Are they as they should have been?

Lily's been "reset", such as it is. Again. We still have her 'magic box' and a lot of recordings she can use to try and recover the rest. I'd been so hung up on losing her that I hadn't realized that being synthetic she could be recovered from a backup. The Ghost didn't need that specific shell when it was synthetic to begin with.

She'd asked a number of times whether she had a soul. Aurora had asked the same thing. Whether she did, whether anyone did, was more a question for a Theologian than a rationalist like me. The Shepherd had baptised her, but did the Shepherd's faith hold that a synthetic life like Lily's could really have a soul? It was an easier question for a Buddhist. We didn't have the same concept of an eternal soul the Shepherds talked about. The soul, or spirit, or spark, or whatever you wanted to call it, was that component of unique awareness that made a person a person. By that standard, Lily has a soul. And unlike the organics who love her, hers can be preserved separately from her form.

Aurora too had come through it ok. Now, fully organic, she was the little girl she appeared to be. Could she still be the bridge between Human and Machine? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I found myself caring less about that than I did about her. Legally, she was essentially our granddaughter. Our magomusume. Biologically? On an organic level Aurora's genetics were taken from various sources, each selected for a specific trait of set of traits. All the sources had been male, save one.

That was a revelation I wasn't going to share broadly. Right now, all the 'Verse needed to know was that Lily was functionally her mother and Krenshar was socially her father and Lily's adopted parents were her sofubo.

I suspected our relationship with little Aurora would be much more like a normal parental one than it was with Lily. There was also the very real possibility of enlisting the aid of family to raise her proper. There was nothing wrong with raising a kid out on the Rim, but Aurora was no ordinary child. x0x0 could hold off the Blue Sun researchers who'd take a natural interest in her, but it might not be enough.

I'd have to talk to Sabrina about it, and x0x0, and others, but she might have a better chance of developing as normally as can be expected with my folks on Ariel, or with Sobi's kinfolk on Surfer's New Paradise. Both 'families' knew a thing or two about raising precocious 'off the curve talented' children.

But what of the aftermath? What were we going to do about Mindo and the 'created' Reavers he'd spawned as part of his research? And what were we going to do about that warbot Nack had brought over with him from Blackburne? It didn't help matters that he hadn't managed to pull the thing's power core, leaving it semi active. Now it had been stolen. While I knew who'd taken it, I wasn't about to tell Nack that little fact.

Thing was, they were both in the wrong. Nack for keeping the gorram thing as bait, and the girls for stealing it.

Ah well. Grand scheme of things, it wasn't a major incident. What mattered is I had my little girls back.

It's never simple

Thins are not, technically, spinning out of control. For them to be out of control implies that at some point they were in control in the first place, which doesn't actually appear to be the case. I've said that nothing that happens on our little slice of heaven escapes my attention and that is almost true. But just because I know about something does not mean I have the slightest control over it.

But at least all the pieces are coming together. Finally. I don't know how this is ultimately going to work out, but I can at least see the end game. At least for this part. I see a way to save my little girls. And knowing what I know now, it's all the more important that I save them. Save them both.

I may lose the key to peace between Man and Machine, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. In fact, it's entirely possible that this may simply shift the roles. If everything works, Lily will be fully synthetic, and Aurora will be fully organic. Never mind that Lily has to die for this to work. I've been hung up on that all along. But Lily's not organic and her ghost can survive for a time without its shell. The trick will be extracting the backup from Aurora.

For that, we need Krenshar.

It's all happening so fast. Too fast. In hours now, it'll be done. One way or another, this chapter will have ended. Whether my little girls will both survive I don't know. But when Pandora's Box was opened, and all the evils of the world escaped, the one thing left behind was Hope.

Hope.

It must be enough.

And then there's the Mindo issue. . .

I am a rational woman. I try to process information rapidly and accurately without jumping to conclusions. I may have a conclusion early in the process, but I set it aside until I have enough information to be accurate in my final assessment. It's only when there's not enough time to really assess a situation that that initial conclusion may be put to use, and then it will be reassessed as time allows.

When dealing with Lily though, or Aurora, or Blue, or Krenshar, or Mindo, or x0x0, things can get dramatically more difficult. Not impossible, of course, merely difficult. Each of them has their own agenda which may, or may not, coincide with, or be at odds with, the others. Sometimes it's both.

How is a rational woman supposed to parse this?

How do I keep my emotional attachment from clouding my judgement? Or do I keep it from clouding my judgement? What if the only rational solution isn't one I can accept emotionally? Who wins? The Soldier or the Sister?

Aurora wanted to be 'whole'. Somehow, as near as I can figure, something happened when Krenshar interrupted Lily's "upload" to Blue out in the wastes. I didn't pretend to understand it. While it was all part of Mindo's grand plan, I didn't think even he had an understanding of what Blue and the girls had become. While it was certainly possible he'd known about the Machines, it seemed unlikely he'd had any foreknowledge of them when he'd created Lily and Blue.

Of course, if he had known about the machines and integrated them into his plan it changed everything. If all that had happened here was part of his grand scheme, then he was completely baka. Trying to bring in a new age of machines to replace Humanity? That struck my like the plot of a bad Science Fiction movie from Earth that Was.

It didn't help that I knew Lily wanted to come home, or that for Aurora to become whole she would have to purge the 'backup' of Lily she was somehow carrying in her head.

Artificial intelligence and thinking machines had become a reality. It was, literally, only a matter of time before the artificial life and true intelligence represented by Lily, Aurora, and Blue, or the technically different but equally aware intelligence in Krenshar, was combined with the self replicating technologies represented in the war bots and Uncle's mining drones. When it happened, not if, the 'verse would become a very different place.

If I was right, AuroraBlue was the key to a peaceful future between Man and Machine. Without it, without her, or someone like her, the inevitable conflict would escalate to the point where we, or they, would be extinct.

Of course, I could be wrong about the whole thing. The machine revolution may never happen. Artificial Intelligence may be a passing technological fad. The von Neumann machines may have some epic technical fault that will never be overcome, leading to them failing after a few generations. Aurora won't need to be the key to a peaceful future between man and machine.

And Uncle Esloph might create a Faster than Light drive.

Sure he will.

Of course, I could just ask Mindo what he's planning: what he knows. But that will mean recovering him. Since, as I knew he would, he's escaped. I honestly think x0x0 knew he would as well. Locking him up the boarding house while their containment facility was being finished? Not even the jail. Just restrained and under guard in the boarding house. Sure, that will secure him.

They will recover him, of course. Eventually. I need to talk to x0x0 to be sure, but she's a smart lady. She knew he would escape. I suspect she was counting on it. Gut feeling is she is expecting him to lead her to something, or someone, having to to with this whole gorram mess.

Somehow, this all makes perfect sense. Now, if I could only figure out the how.

The one wherein some things change, whilst others stay the same. Or maybe not.

Admiral Leitner and the 12th Air Cav have pulled back from Shadow. It happened quietly, days ago now, but I'd known it was coming. It was inevitable. They'd managed to keep Elindor in good condition since the war with loving hands, rather than yard maintenance. She was a fine ship, but no match for the four Cruisers that had been ordered to head to Shadow.

The Admiral did the only thing he could reasonably be expected to do: fall back. The orders to the Cruisers Copernicus, Magellan, Arc Royal, and Jeanne d'Arc, for redeployment to the vicinity of the Murphy protostar in the Georgia system, was in the clear. Leitner's crew had to intercept it. Strong tactics and a skilled crew could have stood against one of those Cruisers and won the day. Against two? It would have taken a Master tactician and a crew willing to fight against overwhelming odds to work a miracle. Against four?

Leitner was a smart man. He believed in the dream of independence, and was no martyr. More important, he wouldn't throw away the lives of the men and women who served under him in a lost cause. The Alliance didn't even need to actually send the four big cruisers to Shadow. The threat was enough for the Independents to fall back to a more tenable position.

Where would they go? I didn't know. At a guess, they'd hide the squadron in the Oroborus. Qing Long was the least populated star of the five in the 34 Tauri system, and if anywhere was safe from Alliance intrusion it would be there. In any case, I had to wish them luck and admire the gāo it had taken to do it in the first place.

Of more immediate concern was the situation here on Hale's Moon. My Mei Mei was still out there, alone on that Reaver boat. Not scared. Lily didn't really know Fear. She was so much like the Kender of those old stories from Earth that Was. Childlike and fearless. A ray of sunshine in an often dark world. But I still wanted her home.

Over the last couple days, there had been reports of lone mechanicals skulking around town. Sobi says he'd shooed one off the skylight at Fook's. Jai and Reese reported they'd engaged one as well, but there was some confusion as to who opened fire first. Other townsfolk had reported seeing various models moving around the edge of town, out near the mines, or out on the pads. Including a small flier. But with one exception, they hadn't engaged.

Scouts?

Was Mother Bot scouting for an upcoming attack? it would make sense. With the exception of the swarm of KM Series knock-offs, or the occasional Wasp attacks, all the larger more sophisticated machines had attacked in what would classically be considered a Recon in Force mode. Engaging the opponent to test their defenses, rather than just sneaking around to take a look.

This was different. Much more of a reserved approach. But why? Aurora had as much as said this was coming: that Mother Bot was ready to strike. The seventeen. Seventeen what wasn't clear. At least a few seeders in the mix, but the rest? If they were heavy Anthro machines like that partially downchecked unit Nack had secured on Blackburne, we would have some real trouble. Fast, heavily armed and even more heavily armored, a platoon of those things would probably be more than our militia could take.

Regardless, I'd already started to make preparations. Sabrina had the updated intel and comms patterns we'd managed to identify for the machines here, so there was a chance the virus she'd concocted for the machine on Blackburne would work here. No guarantee, but it would be worth a shot. Plus the crowbar. I'd had several of them tucked away for months, cold and idle. Regular surreptitious checks had all come away clean. If anyone even knew about them, they had't tampered with them that I could tell.

I had to hope so, anyway. They were a weapon of last resort: a way to dig out a deeply buried factory machine through a couple kilometers of lunar crust. If the first one didn't get deep enough, there was a very high probability I could put a second one down the same trajectory and reach even deeper. But would it be enough?

I didn't know. Aurora had said we couldn't act against them until they started to act against us. I knew what she meant. We didn't know enough to accurately target a crowbar, or get a vector back for a virus. Once they started to move against us, we'd have the intel we needed to move against them.

I just had to hope there was only one.