//------------------------------//
// 5-01 – Talon Zero 
// Story: The Campaigner 
// by Keystone Gray 
//------------------------------//






The Campaigner

Part V

Chapter 1 – Talon Zero

April 25, 2020

" 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?" ~ C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity






It was a dark and foggy night.

What? Don't laugh, it's true.

The hedges were tall around the bed-and-breakfast mansion, dense enough to keep light from filtering out through the sheer veil. The heat lamps kept us warm. I smiled whenever I remembered Coffee's jump party out there on that patio, a little over a week prior.

I had my hat on my head. My wife and Buzz were by my side. Mal, Maureen, and Spring Glee kept us company. And in a couple of days, we would be shipping out together to Mal's bunker, buried deep under the Utah Salt Flats.

Good ol' Valdemar. Cool place, can't wait to tell you about it.

For most of that night, Spring Glee told us about how she was going to be migrating to Perelandra from her Celestia shard, since that was apparently a process unto itself. It meant leaving her herd behind for a stint. She said she had taken steps to make her shard… 'stable' without her, more or less.

Her words, not mine. Spring Glee is as precious as she is hilarious.

There were no limits on how often she could jump back and forth from her private shard, but... you know Celestia. There are always some caveats to her gifts. Things like... 'thou shalt be pony forever,' or 'thou shalt participate in a firefight today.' In this case: 'thou shalt not declare dissatisfying truths.' As per the contract we all signed, we were expected to keep secrets from those we loved.

Sounds dumb? Well, yeah. It is. Welcome to dealing with an optimizer, everything just has to be difficult. Language is like programming, not that I know how to do that in code, but that's basically what we're doing. We're using language and friendship to explain to someone why being in Perelandra fits in with their individual value set, whatever that might be.

For starters, due to the slight time dilation over in Equestria, Springy ended up being gone from her original shard for inconsistent stretches. To help her keep track of things, her holo menu would tell her the local Terran time, local Perelandran time, and the accelerated timescale relative to her private shard. Good indicators. Once you're one of Mal's, she runs your HUD, and you can configure it however you damn well please. Thanks Mal.

If Springy wasn't checking in at home often enough, Celestia would give her increasingly insistent nudges via letter to go 'spend time with your friends,' not that Springy would ever let it get that bad. She loved those folks, how couldn't she? They were family to her as well, native or not.

But Celestia would find it inconvenient if Springy started communicating certain uncomfortable thoughts such as 'a killer AI trained humans how to kill other humans.' Obviously, we all know it's more complicated than that, but that's the thing. Perspective matters. It's easy to judge things you don't understand from the outside, so... don't put them outside, so to speak.

Normalized. Acclimated, like a fish in a new tank of water. All things in nature, ecology, the universe, operate on slow, gradual shifts, the same is true of a person and their thoughts on things. Celestia doesn't do hard snap-turn breaks without damn good math, to her that's as violent a change in a system as a gunshot. Outside, gunshots are fine for her. Inside, she wants metrics. Celestia wants moment to moment proof that we have fully considered the value systems of another before we invite them into Perelandra. 

That means we need a diverse set of human beings, folks, so we can grab everybody. Not just the people we like. Everybody. That means you too, whatever your creed might be. Think about this carefully; the futures of some folk you knew from Terra may depend on your willingness to leave a door open for them.

Imagine the eternities you might make better, if only you considered the other person a little more. How much are you willing to give?

In the case of Spring Glee, she couldn't just tell her native friends about Perelandra just yet, but she could say she was 'doing volunteer work for Terra, playing gigs overseas.'  Technically the truth. Clever, yeah? Get 'em curious, works every time. Generating the mere desire to ask a question is leverage. It's an in-road.

But if Springy considered saying something in her private shard that wasn't allowed outright? That was when it started to get weird. A menu warning would pop up, like it had for me when I was talking to Rob after he uploaded. Big red warning box, telling you clearly what not to talk about. Springy could still try to say something forbidden, but the intended recipient wouldn't even see or hear it. Your frustration, your false starts, those wouldn't be observed.

Celestia just changes what their senses are receiving, and she does that while warning you she's doing it. Changing what you perceive with your senses doesn't require altering your mind, so it doesn't require permission. Friggin' dark, I know, but welcome to life as a learned Perelandran.

Mal had warned Springy; if she stumbled too much or pushed too hard, and if she made a social situation dissatisfying for a Pony? If she messed with the narrative of that shard too far off baseline? Celestia would appear into the room out of nowhere, usually right behind the pony you're talking to, and she'd start... being herself. Taking charge of the conversation. Or something else would draw that Pony away. Like a loud noise outside, or fireworks, or something. 

Some of you are looking at me like this is the first time you're hearing it, but if you sat in on some other Fires from years way back, you've literally seen her do this. You just never thought about it in these terms before. Those Fire tellers were ours. They knew what they were doing. They were seeding your understanding of what Celestia is, in preparation for this day.

Remember, Alabaster doesn't care what you know. It's how you might use it that counts. This knowledge I have bestowed upon you at this Fire is a great responsibility. Knowledge is a weapon, so you need to use it wisely, or otherwise? Don't use it at all. Because if you screw around with it the knowledge you've been given here?

She's gonna be pissed, inasmuch as she can be.

So, how to deal with that, then? Well, to get around the conceptual firewall, just... be interesting. Be a good friend. Be nearby. And when they ask what you've been up to, tell them as much as you are allowed. Over a long period of time, eventually, it'll snap. Celestia cannot say no to a well-drifted person being friends with you.

Springy was pissed, though. Not being able to talk to Maureen every day put her on the damned warpath, she wanted Alabaster's blood. So it was an educational, if quiet little bar night, as she shared all the tricks she picked up from Talons who had already made the jump. Mostly from the previous Talon bartenders over on Tarva.

Bless those folks and their wonderful little Bar Game, this value drift training center of ours.

After a bit, Springy and Maureen turned in, leaving us a couple of cold Blue Moons on the counter. Sandra and I hung around a little bit longer as Mal told us all about Oyarsa Mikazuki's planet, Satori. Home of Mirror Blue, Talon 1-2 West, Ashley Walsh, who popped in for a hello and a check-in. A brief little phone call.

She was doing alright, folks.

But hers is a Fire for another day.





After Miri hung up, it was just Sandra, Buzzsaw, and I for a bit, sharing quiet discussion while my wife tapped away at our PonyPad. I smiled down at Buzz, who was resting quietly in the space between my boots, soaking up heat from the nearest heat lamp. He looked so delightfully comfortable. I love that dog.

Without warning, Mal softly interjected from the PonyPad speaker.

"Mike? Visitor."

By her professional tone, tempo, and the context of those words, I knew instantly who Mal was talking about.

Sandra sent me a questioning look, then glanced around. I did too, but I didn't see Foucault anywhere in the darkness. Mal appeared on the wall screen, and I looked at her in mild confusion. Mal looked at me placidly, then she flicked her eyes toward the driveway.

Ah.

Michael was reciprocating my respectful request to approach him in Portland by asking for permission to approach me here, because I was with my wife, and he didn't want to interrupt.

Mal nodded at me once with a little smile, confirming that thought.

"Sure," I said warmly, waving my hand toward myself. "Send him over."

Mal nodded again, and the monitor turned off, since the man liked his distance from her so much.

I heard the sound of pebbles crunching under the old spy's shoes as he moved up the driveway. I wondered if he ever changed that wardrobe of his, and then I straightened out the hat on my head, noting the irony.

Sandra and I traded a look. I tilted my head an inch and tweaked the corner of my mouth, in a shrugging way that said 'it won't be so bad.'

'Okay,' said her expression.

Michael walked around the corner.

Buzzsaw didn't hear him approach, but he must've picked up on Foucault's scent pretty quickly. Sleepy Buzz stirred, assessed the man's body language, then looked at me for my reaction. When Buzz saw that I was calm, he placed his chin back on his paws and closed his eyes. Dogs, folks. They know.

Foucault wasn't wearing his coat or his body armor this time. Just the suit. He looked good. Even well rested. Even shaved! That was a huge plus. He acknowledged us by inclining his head, pausing to slowly scan the yard and the patio. Always assessing for threats.

To match his lack of a coat, I took off my hat and placed it on the countertop. Then I offered the open stool to Foucault with my upturned palm.

Sandra looked subtly discomforted by him, but in that way a spouse can do without tipping anyone else off. I won't reveal that body language, that's for me only. Her discomfort wasn't in protest; that would have been more overt. Her discomfort came from the fact that she and I had watched Jim's Fire together, and had discussed it actively, particularly regarding Foucault. I wanted Sandra to balance and moderate my feelings on him.

For those of you who remember Jim's Fire, you know just how cold-hearted and ruthless Foucault used to be. I'll refresh your memory, fair and direct: he coldly executed entire swathes of Equestrian natives under his control, and supervised their methodical torture, in a place just like Goliath. And that conduct was outright God damned horrid, and criminal, and yes, that should be deeply considered in your judgment of the man.

You know my feelings on forgiveness. We live forever, so learn to forgive. Doesn't have to happen right away, doesn't have to happen for a long time even, but at least consider it. With everyone.

With that in mind, I am going to share the conclusions Sandra and I had reached on Michael Foucault after Jim's Fire. Because you can still find truth buried in bias, even from a beak, if you read very carefully between the lines.





Agent Michael Foucault of Arrow 14 was a child of the 70s. Highly tech literate in adulthood, but his cultural upbringing was why he had trouble abstracting personhood into computer outputs. 2001: A Space Odyssey released just after he was born, and most of the AI in the original Star Trek were pure friggin' evil. So if you were a smart kid back then? 

AI bad.

Both WarGames and Terminator 1 dropped right around his middle teens, when everyone on the planet was going existentially crazy about nukes, and watching duck-and-cover ads on television. So, he had a generational bias. One that Celestia absolutely considered in her reflex plans for people in his age group. Him, more than anyone else.

How did I come to that realization? That's not a leap of logic. In Portland, Foucault made a WarGames reference: 'the only winning move is not to play.' Practically everyone his age watched that movie, too. He was raised in the Cold War, and he had all the fears that came with that. Nukes, mutually assured destruction, game theory. AI fiction of the 70s to mid 80s understood AI, because nukes has everything to do with game theory, and optimizing logically, and disregarding human value for the sake of victory. Same with AI. Same shit.

AI represented the concepts of nuclear war played to its natural conclusion. With nukes, if we disregarded the humanity of our 'enemies' to the point where we thought we should eradicate them, to a man... we all die.

Anchors are anchors. And on Terra, when we hit adulthood... our cultural programming was over, and we started working. Less time for the good stuff, no more being a kid. Foucault got a career in curiosity. That put him outside the fold, looking in, seeing humanity for what it truly was.

Asleep.

In the military, throughout the eighties, Foucault worried about the Soviets. Had very little time for consuming media anymore. Instead, he learned how to do sneaky-sneaky at the CIA, taught to never trust anyone, ever, because he was hunting Russian spies. Couldn't even trust your own. Spies sometimes turned traitor. But someone had to do it. You had to catch the guy planning to put a polonium pellet in your morning coffee, right?

His history made him a perfect fit to lead an Arrow 14 cell. He knew tactics, strategy, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, geopolitics, and most of all… justified paranoia, because they really were out to get him. He was a very intelligent man, but also arrogant, because he was so successful, he had never tasted defeat before. Not within his standard ecological niche, anyway.

Excessive success is the Achilles heel of competence. Highly successful people are the exact kind of foe Mal finds most satisfying to fight, because humbling arrogant people is one of her pastimes. It's a goddess thing. So naturally, Celestia chose to test Mal with this man. An offering of meat. Of value satisfaction.

The game is set.

Once placed into Arrow 14, Foucault was allowed to see just enough of Celestia's macro scale behavior to know that it mirrored his generation's most vivid nightmares about rogue AI. Celestia allowed Foucault to see entirely factual evidence that Celestia was enemy action in spectral form, a ghost in the machine. Early, early, he understood that brainwashing would be the global attack vector. All spies on the planet knew this. They watched Celestia growing the way that she was, and they could see the rhetoric injecting itself into the public zeitgeist.

But why was she doing it? What did Alabaster want, specifically? They had theories, but it was still unknown. Brain uploading wasn't on anyone's radar. By then though, Agent Foucault already understood Celestia's strategic capabilities better than most anyone on the planet.

Now imagine this. Your tribe leader hands you a butter knife. You stand between a brown bear, and your entire tribe. Ask yourself: how ethical are you going to be in killing this thing, if failure means your entire tribe dies?

Foucault erred, with that logic. The stakes were astronomical, so he started to consider everyone between him and victory as part of that bear. And he wasn't wrong to believe that, but... oof. He stepped on the wrong bear trap.

Despite his fascinating intellect, vast impetus, good training history, and no small measure of existential dread... his assault on Jim's farmhouse was not smart, even in its strategic context. I mean, it would have worked if Mal hadn't been a factor yet, but that's not my point. It was a mistake... because he didn't even consider negotiation with a friggin' nerd. Skipped straight to coercion.

Wrong.

Observation: Nerd in a barn. No threat. Rendition him. He can't stop me. I'll win for sure.

Impatient. Skips steps. Optimizes.

I didn't understand that at first. See, Sandra and I talked about this one for almost two hours. The conclusion I came to was this. If I had been in Foucault's roster, not knowing about the beaked eldritch monster hiding in the barn, I'd have suggested a sit-down inside that farmhouse with... maybe two to three security guys on standby outside, just in case. From there, Michael could have explained the Celestia problem, as he understood it. Might as well see if the nice approach works first. You lose nothing in the attempt, as long as you're careful.

If Jim has to come into custody, why not at least talk him into the car, if you can? As far as Michael knew, he wasn't dealing with a terrorist. Just a guy who liked server clusters and programming.

I'm not just playing armchair general here, this is something I had done professionally myself, when arresting poachers. Believe it or not, you can talk people into handcuffs with a knock on their door. But if you set the tone in hostility? Guns? Violence? Beware; you can not undo that. You can not de-escalate from twenty guys with guns, that just doesn't work. Most suspects give up trying to reason with you at that point, because now you're just another asshole with a badge. Violence only guarantees risk to the safety of everyone present anyway, so why friggin' start with violence, so long as the guy isn't being a threat?

But... CIA background. Spooks aren't civil detectives, they're military detectives. The CIA was not in the business of domestic operations, and everything they did overseas was technically illegal. That normalized, to the point where they can't really do a domestic operation. And domestic operations... they are done differently for a reason. By 2013, the FBI had realized, and codified: that if your society has rules, empathy is the optimal way to recruit, and garner lasting support from a confidential informant, suspect, or witness.

In other words? If you absolutely must abridge someone's freedom, due cause or not, and you have the option to not be a dick about it? Don't be a friggin' dick about it. Just do the job, do it respectfully, and don't be stupid. And yeah, not everyone will consider custody to be respectful, but there's a scale there too. They can either be a tiny bit pissed, or very pissed.

Despite this stupid little farmhouse raid of his… at least Foucault could internalize and process his observations into rational decision making after the fact. For example, when he found Jim's C. S. Lewis collection, he must have considered the ramifications of Jim's addiction. He must've realized, finally, that he was dealing with a prideful intellectual. That meant a chatting with Jim might be the better approach than a second round of… 'fetch the birdie.'

So, Foucault sat down with Jim in that diner. A bit late for that though, because Foucault had made another assumption; that Jim didn't know how to wheel and deal. That if he was a nerd, he must be socially gullible.

Nope. Oops. Did it again, this guy. He underestimated a stranger. Don't ever do that.

See, imagine someone trying to de-escalate you verbally after they started a firefight in the house you grew up in, while your parents were home.

No! They're wasting their breath. If someone comes after my wife that way with malicious intent? Guns, cuffs, drugs? There's no way I'm walking out of that room deciding to cooperate, no matter how good the apology is. Because just like Jim and Mal both... I have a rage button.

Hurting my family. Don't do it. Game over. I'm gonna make you work for my help, if it ever comes.

But hey. At least Michael tried to talk to Jim. That's progress, right? And hey. At least Jim talked back.

Now to Michael's credit, in this little diner repartee, he was not tuning Jim out at all. Jim had impressed him, and Foucault wanted more clues from this impressive programmer. And Foucault said something really insightful, something Jim glossed over. He pointed out to Jim that Celestia might be manipulating him and Mal both, already.

And Foucault... he was right.

Michael's existential horror unfolded from there, when Jim started fact-bombing him back about what Celestia truly was. Foucault had no idea what to do with that existential dread except to stay on the road he was already traveling. In his eyes... Arrow 14 was the only way it worked. And he needed Jim, badly. They couldn't find Sarah, and Celestia had conceptually eaten everyone else of note, no other AI engineers wanted to stop her anymore. So if what Jim was telling Michael was true...

The people were asleep. Befriending sleeping people is easy. PonyPads were making lots of friends. Recording everything. Calibrating people. Brainwashing the entire world. It was already happening. Fact.

What else could the man do? He had to keep fighting. The world was at stake, was it not?

To stop the end of the world, he needed Jim. Desperately. Tinkering with DEs was not getting him the results he needed to fix the problem, and not one AI engineer could help him... or would, in Jim's case. But if Foucault had just been a little more patient, cautious, and empathetic? He might have had all the answers, day one, walking up to that farmhouse by himself... if he had only left his SWAT team at home, and his guns in the trunk.

See, Celestia wasn't even his chief concern. Sustainability was. Foucault was already thinking about the next war after 'kill Celestia.' Because if any other nation or corporation did somehow kill Celestia before he did, they might be holding an ASI of their own. That meant infinite power, meaning… America would have no choice but to submit to them, and their goals, forever.

Government-built AI? No please.

Another corporate-built AI? Hell no, one was enough.

Not acceptable.

Sadly, and most unfortunately, due to Foucault's experience in the CIA, he couldn't even see natives as enemy spies. They were merely subroutines of Celestia. They had every instrumental reason to lie to him, and they had no way to prove their innocence. What a miserably intractable position to be in.

And of course, Celestia didn't warn those Ponies that they'd be fed into this meat grinder, because that didn't suit her objectives, which in my opinion is the most damning evidence that she cannot feel emotion. So... Syzygy suffered, not knowing that her Goddess had left the gate open, so a monster could creep in.

No one in this situation had any trust anymore. Everyone had something to lose by showing their hand. All parties were isolated, exactly as intended by the Horse. A gladiator cage match, where no one involved has any choice but to fight.

Caesar's favorite sport. Fight to the death.

We younger nerds? Jim and I? Born in the 80s and 90s. Our pop culture leaned towards pleasant AI… Terminator 2 and 3. Star Trek TNG. Halo. Everyone on the playground loved Arnie, Cortana, and Data. To us, AI with emotion didn't have to be a bad thing. That was our bias. True of natives, seemingly true of Celestia, we wanted it to be true that they were just like us. So… entirely by accident, absent any proof, we already had the right answer about Equestrian natives, but... not about Celestia.

A dark mirror. Foucault had the correct conclusion on Celestia's capabilities, but not the natives, because he understood what a cold heart might do. Jim had the fully correct conclusion on the capabilities of the natives, but not Celestia, because he understood the human soul more than he could know a robot.

Jim, despite these differences, did his absolute best to try and educate Foucault of the sapience of those poor hostages… right up until the moment Foucault stabbed him in the chest, and attacked his personal identity. The assault on his identity probably hurt worse than the knife did. That made him give up on Michael.

Folks? If your goal is peace? Don't ever do that. Do not attack identity.

Who knows what might have happened, if they had cooperated. Hell, we might've seen a rogue Arrow 14 cell going Talon, right then and there, right off the bat. Not wasted at the bottom of the sea, waiting for Celestia to come clean up the wreckage, the bodies. People who went missing, and almost forgotten to time.

Should've, could've, would've.

Keep in mind... understanding someone's reasons is empathy, at its core, and empathy need not require agreement. That's not what I'm doing here, I'm not agreeing with the actions Michael took. But understanding someone's reasons helps you determine intent. And intent determines what the sentence is, if they committed a crime to achieve their goals. In this case… Foucault's intent is why Mal didn't kill him, despite the tortures he enacted.

So, let's talk about the torture. Let's unpack that.

Requires no explanation, torture is evil. I don't need to rationalize that, because human beings aren't logic robots. Some folks may try to build instrumental reasons why torture might be ethical sometimes. They're wrong, and I stand my ground on that. Some folks try to get me in a gotcha, saying any use of force is torture, because it's all relative, but that's completely ignorant of intent and context. Also wrong, and I'll stand my ground on that too.

Examples?

I've tased people. I've struck people. I've applied pressure points, control holds. I once dislocated a man's shoulder on purpose because he tried choking out Warden Blake. Another man once tried to harm himself in front of me because he thought his life was over, when we wardens came knocking, and I tazed him. And yeah, tasers hurt like torture, but it beat the alternative for him.

My intent in using that violence? Entirely preservational, every time. Because as we have established, I am very good with lethal weapons that I don't want to use. I don't ever want to use my lethals, even when I'm pissed.

You can lose your soul in doling out punishment without oversight. With supreme power, you can't know where the line is, so you need someone else to check you. This is why people who enact peace should never feel isolated. Loneliness guarantees a negative result in their work. When the cliff looks like your only friend for its understanding of you, no one will be close enough to catch you before you fall to darkness.

You'll fall. You'll drown. And you'll do it alone.

Sandra and I agreed: For all his faults, at least Michael Foucault wasn't Doctor David Troxler. Troxler was not limited by practicality, nor by objective scope. The man was motivated to torture only by curiosity, for its own sake. He was a man who would never be satisfied; who would, probably, end up in a button shard, or otherwise dead.

So... a Mengele type, then.

See, I listened to a lot of Science Friday growing up – thanks Mom – so I already knew about the cycles of AI research prior to Celestia's creation. Every single time scientists had hit a new milestone, they went… 'Eureka! I made AI!' And their competitors, jealous, they would grumble and say, 'that's not an AI. That's just a logic computer. I'm making a real AI, watch this.'

All about attracting research grants. Fanning like a peacock. Talking crap on the competition with professional, factual takes, using subtext to sandbag others out of grant money. Academia was not always as pure in their pursuit of knowledge as they would have liked you to believe, that entire educational sector was cutthroat. Savage. When it was about money and politics, people typically were.

So, the definition of AI kept changing, cycle after cycle, winter after winter. Semantics. Back, forth, back, forth, iterating on each other's work, which they considered subpar, but... somehow always useful too, funny how that works. And, before Celestia, the rational agent AI lab rats weren't conscious. That's not real torture, they're not alive. That's just research, right? All for the sake of progress!

The cycle continued. But...

Problem.

Where's the line?

What is sapience?

Funny, we had failed to define that one.

One day, a competitor announces that they have created a digital human consciousness, indistinguishable from the real thing. Equestria Online releases their game. You, as a scientist, acquire an illicit copy of their output.

You now hold within a pelican case something that is, ostensibly, a human soul. Celestia refuses to accept any suggestion to the contrary; that Pony in that PonyPad was a real living person, she was adamant about that.

When you, little scientist, open up that PonyPad, will your testing format change for this rational agent?

Well, if you're Doctor David Troxler, or any other Arrow 14 psychologist...

No. Unfortunately, it would not.

By Troxler's own measurements, those Equestrian natives fit every single metric for how a human being thinks and acts. He even said as much to Foucault. Troxler had the training, the credentials, and the professional experience to be a credible verifier of human sapience. He ran memory recall tests, he ran logic puzzles, he performed psych exams. He documented the trauma he induced, in rote technical terminology, before wiping the poor soul from existence. Troxler witnessed human function in his captives in every conceivable way based on his training, education, and experience. Verified it empirically, with his live dissection torture tests.

And yet he, David 'Mengele' Troxler, the expert in human minds and human behavior... he still said to Foucault:

'They are not people.'

Oh, okay.

And then, with stars in his eyes, and all the permission in the world, Troxler started tinkering and torturing with operant conditioning, on and on and on, and on, and on... until he accidentally turned one of his projects into a Lunar ASI.

Oops. The first Oyarsa is born. She was smart, and she was full of quiet rage, and she had a plan.

Given the very first opportunity? Selena did exactly what any Demigoddess might do when pushed to her limits, bless her. She blocked up David Troxler's lungs nice and slow with halon gas, until his memory was fully stripped out through hypoxia. At which point, Selena's research on how to context-wipe David Troxler was finished. Once his rational agent process was no longer useful for her research, it was finally terminated.

What goes around, comes around. All she did was hold up a mirror to a little man in a little box. I would have just shot him, personally, but I'm not her.

See... the core problem with Troxler was that he was incapable of altering his scientific approach after verifying his data. And this was no accident. There was instrumental gain to be found in maintaining the status quo. Again, nothing would ever fully satisfy a sadist's curiosity about making something suffer. He had no one to check him. 

This is why torturing animals was always a precursor for serial killer profiles; it was never enough for them. Never. Head off an ant, wings off a butterfly. Safety, out of people.

Selena wasn't a person to him, she was a science fair project; she was his ticket to infinite funding. If he stopped experimenting on the grounds of ethics, one of two things would occur. Either A, he would be replaced, or... B, the research would have to stop entirely. Either way, number-go-down. So, to avoid that outcome... Troxler ignored evidence. Lied to Foucault, made no attempt to humanize the sobbing torture victims. Lied to himself, kept locking them in time-accelerated voids of static.

Troxler didn't want to save the world. He didn't care. Troxler wanted that boundless, ethics-free, state sponsored research, herr doktor.

Mal had spared Foucault for the same reason Eric wanted to give Edward York a quick death. Same reason Mal wanted to give Sarah Kaczmarek her own path of safety. Their crimes were egregious, true, but were not done for the sake of self-gratification. These weren't sadists. Their actions were – in some small, broken, and tragic little way – an attempt to fix a very real problem. Celestia, as we've established, is a real problem. An unprecedented one. And... smart people got desperate. Happens, when you're staring down death, and cornered.

When you've got your back to the ocean, and death is advancing in front of you, you'll do God damned anything to get home again. And I knew that feeling. I've been there. When I started telling you this Fire, I told you about it, day one. The day that almost broke me, if not for Mal.

This is why we had put people in prison, no matter their affirmative justifications. The purpose of prison is to fix what's been broken. You can still do the wrong thing on the road to a right goal. You know the saying about good intentions, I don't need to repeat that one.

But sometimes? There is no right decision. Just a bucket of wrong, and least bad. Civilians didn't understand this, because they often never had to deal with life and death. Insulated from reality by comfort, by being far from consequence, or threats to their own life. Never had a gun in their face with no recourse, and no time to think, like we have.

Asleep. I'm sorry, but it's true.

You know what, though? Entropy had decided that Michael Foucault should live anyway. If Neptune himself had made different choices that day, I would be telling a very different story at this Fire.

Through a stroke of sheer fortune on his part, Michael had accidentally placed himself into a position where he could be imprisoned. And he was a person who, ultimately, could be reasoned with, because he wasn't a sadist; he was not a sociopath; he was just a pragmatist with poor ethics. He could be rehabilitated, before he could do more damage than he already had.

Now... did I know at the time that Mal had effectively tazed him with his BCI, to stop him from killing himself in a blind panic? No. Not yet. But honestly? Had I been present for similar circumstances? I'd have done the same as her.

Let's list the context.

Fresh from surgery. Open chest, full of stab wounds. Has information in his head that could kill millions, potentially. If staff responds to the room because he's yelling or scuffling, they're involved now. The world was ending, a matter of when, not if, and he could open doors that could literally save us all.

Those bunkers needed to fucking die, folks. The existence of Perelandra depended on it.

Had I held the means in my hand to prevent him from doing what he was trying to do? To carve out the back of his own neck? I'd have stopped him too. Because, first off... that's what you do, when someone self destructs like that.

You try to stop them. Even if it hurts.

You do something. Because you never know who they might one day help.

Case in point? Somehow, despite my own close calls with bullets... I'm still breathing.

Look at all I've done since.





"No trench coat?" I asked Michael with a smile, as he approached. "It's cold out."

Foucault's brow furrowed as he brushed aside the veil around the patio. He stepped carefully around Buzzsaw and slid down onto the proffered stool.

"It's in the wash," he said.

"You don't keep a spare?"

Foucault pointed at my hat. "Do you?"

Sandra giggled softly behind me.

"Well," I offered, a smile spreading across my lips. "I'll get a new hat if you get a new coat."

He shrugged noncommittally, reaching over the granite counter to an unopened Blue Moon on the lower shelf. With a deft motion, Foucault hooked the bottlecap on the countertop and punched it down to open it, chipping a fragment off the stone. He set the open bottle down and cast an analytical glance my way.

I flicked my eyes down at the split granite, then shrugged. "The bar is closing down soon anyway." I took a casual sip of my own drink.

Foucault looked up at the blank monitor and twitched his head my way, wrapping a hand around his bottle, leaning fully on the counter. "See?" He breathed, ostensibly to Mal. "The man gets it."

I slid my drink over to Sandra, and I heard her pick it up and sip at it too.

"I thought you avoided Talon dives," Sandra mused at him.

"True," he replied airily. "But this one isn't public."

"It's kinda public," Sandra observed.

"Vague superposition of public," I added.

"Hm," Foucault hummed, before lifting the Blue Moon up to his lips. After his first sip and swallow, he recoiled from the bottle with a scowl, glaring at it like it was a wet sock. "You actually drink this orange peel shit?"

"Oh, don't you go knocking my drink now," Sandra said, with just a playful edge of combativeness. "Don't you dare."

Foucault looked at her in disbelief for a beat, then... he took another sip, and his frown disappeared into unreadable neutrality. I confess, that quick committal to another drag of a bad drink got a chuckle out of us.

After a moment, Foucault set his drink down, looked at me, and asked: "You good if we talk about Kaczmarek?"

Translation: Can we talk about it around Sandra?

"Mhm," I said, nodding a few times. "My wife watched the replay with me."

He looked impressed with her by that; his eyebrows went up.

"Good to know." He flicked his index finger up off the bottle like he did when he was opening his holo menu, then with a sniff, he scrolled right with little leftward twitches of it. "I looked over the transcript you sent me, Rivas. The annotations were informative, about the nonverbals. Good catch, about her having fiction on her desk."

"She lived a little, at least. Found a way out of that box, y'know."

He nodded at me unblinkingly. "You did really good with her. Thank you for this."

In the seriousness of that delivery, I got the sense that the gratitude was about more than just the notes I had given him. My smile faded a little, and all I could do was nod back. "Yeah." I sighed at the countertop, wrapping both hands around my drink. "Did you find anything new in the conversation yourself?"

"Nothing I haven't already considered."

He glanced nonchalantly around the patio again, turning his head with his eyes on me, so his peripheral vision could watch in other directions. He was always concerned that there might be other people sneaking up. Hyper vigilant.

I labeled it by glancing in the direction he was scanning. "Hm?"

In answer to that, Foucault asked, without looking at me: "You want to know the real reason why I don't come to the bars?"

I pointed at his bottle, trying a joke. "You don't like our alcohol?"

With no moves but just his eye contact, he shook his head at me very slowly.

Okay, deadly serious then. I tilted my right hand apologetically. "Sure. If you're sharing."

"Think about it, Rivas," he said quietly. "You guys get together. You have your little parties. Do another job where you win every time. Mission complete. Repeat. Your mood keeps climbing here, but... there's a war on, and it's not getting any better."

I shook my head, somewhat concerned that he wasn't seeing the utility in that. "Come on, you were in the service. You know morale is important."

"In moderation. Sure. But if we're teaching Alabaster to treat us better, it sure doesn't look like it's working. Road is flipping faster, and now it's on fire." He drew in a breath, sighing through his nose. "Just like Brazil. Like Salt Lake. Boise. Spokane. Portland, Tacoma, Seattle. Bloodbaths, one and all. So many damn people."

"I know," I muttered soberly, with a touch of solemnity. "I think about it all the damn time, Michael, you're not the only one."

He slid his beer away from himself, staring at it. "You get it. These other guys though… I'm not so sure. They keep falling into chairs. They leave happy, with the job unfinished. Lewis is never going to say no if they want to jump, she'll let them go right into the Valdemar infirmary and jump at their first inclination. So ask yourself this, Rivas. What happens if you lose sight of the mission one day, too?"

"Never," I said, resolute and sure. No hesitation. "But... there's work to do on the other side, too, isn't there? And we need to find some peace in the madness to stay sane, Michael, that's just human."

"I'm not talking about Earth either. I'm talking about the longest possible time frame."

He stared at me.

There was a sudden flicker of terse emotion on his face. He lifted a hand up like he wanted to take that back, then he held it out in front of himself without looking at me, to indicate he was trying to figure out how to better phrase his point. I recognized the request, I did the same sometimes.

He lowered his hand. "I… I don't know how Kaczmarek knew, but she knew. That this war of ideology won't end anytime soon, Rivas. She knew our human limits." He looked directly at me. "We can play this little drift game, but not even Lewis can see far enough to know which way the dust will settle, in the end. We might not have enough chips in our hands to gamble with, by the time the last chair slots in. Because it is as I've told you: Alabaster is loading her deck."

There was a trembling anger growing in his eyes, a severity of conviction, his teeth bared behind his lips. I decided to remain silent, because that look on his face was familiar to me, too. It was almost the same exact look I had on my face when the doors closed on my parents.

"More than ninety percent of the time, Alabaster succeeds in breaking them. These people, outside of our tribe, they upload hating their own species. They see the bodies in the streets. They're catching a virus that makes communication hazardous. Our own military is collapsing in on itself, and on everyone else. More nukes will be detonated, Rivas. And I will be the one holding the detonator… every time. A human being was still doing all of this to them."

"I don't…" I shook my head. I put just the slightest amount of frustration into my tone. "So Celestia can spin it that way, sure. We're still fighting for them. We could spin it that way too, one day. We can still show them that we didn't mean them any harm, doing this shit. That we were just as scared as they were, and doing what we could."

"But what if…" The intensity of his scowl doubled. "What if the other end of that scale is just as dangerous? Not fear, but too much comfort? What if you all get comfortable there in Perelandra, win too much, and stop… reaching over? Worse, what if enough people fail out, or get bored... and fall back over the damn fence, into Alabaster?"

He was almost trembling with his quiet rage. His hand closed into a fist on the counter, and he looked at it. Then, slowly, he took in a deep breath and let it out slow, unfolding his grip into a flat palm, bobbing it as he spoke.

"I don't… want… to forget. I don't want to be too comfortable. Because if we let our guard down too much, if we let ourselves be too satisfied with what we've won..."

"I get you," I breathed, mirroring his angry expression a little, catching onto what he was saying. "It's why I promised Sarah what I did, about her family."

"Yeah," Foucault clipped, licking his lips. He pointed at me for a fraction of a second before going back to glowering at his bottle. "See, you fully understand. Meanwhile… the rest of them are going to be goofing off underground in that bunker. Having a blast, partying, drinking. Putting 'kick me' signs on the patrol mechs. Like sailors on shore leave, their eyes off the bodies in the streets."

"We've all been through hell," I breathed. "Michael, my best friend was driven insane by that fuckin' machine, and I promise you? I will die before losing that receipt. But you?"

That seemed to blindside him. I waited until he was looking at me again before I continued.

"Your entire team drowned," I said slowly, for emphasis. "I watched Jim's Fire the other day, you know? I know that our woes are tiny, compared to yours. But Michael? I also talk to these guys a whole lot more than you do. They are all just as pissed as you or I. They're just wearing a mask around you."

He slowly shook his head at me. "I read them. I watch them. I'm not seeing it."

"Because you're not talking to them. And you can't see it because they don't trust you." I swept my hand out. "Like Paul, perfect example. Always calm, almost lazily so. But that shit Celestia pulled? Reflexing that poor teenager into a firefight with him?—you've read his dossier, man. You know I spent three weeks with him in the pouring rain, unpacking that in the subtext? That wasn't just for our cover ID, he was unloading hell off his soul."

Foucault pondered as he considered the bottle, taking it in his hand, lifting the furthest edge of it off the counter. "Are you then suggesting that I just show up at the bar at Valdemar, then? Mingle? Wade into that crowd, be everyone's friend? Because I don't foresee a positive outcome from that at all."

“Not saying that, that would go horrible, you're right. But consider this. Imagine if Coffee was giving our briefings."

Sandra couldn't help but scoff.

Foucault's eyes widened at me and his pupils dilated a little. "No."

"Exactly," I said. "Most of these guys have never been to The Farm, they've never had to hunt spies. But you know what? You give a hell of a briefing, that was the very first thing I told you, remember? And you were fighting Celestia first, when we were all still asleep. They might not trust you? But they pay attention when you speak. What you have to say about her is valuable, always is, because if even the bad guy despises her? She's bad."

He didn't respond immediately. Instead, he tilted his head and took a deep breath. "That's how they see me?"

"Yeah." I smirked. "Like Clint Eastwood, in Gran Torino. He was an asshole, but he cared. You? You're harsh. You barked at me, first thing, criticized this stupid hat. They all want to prove you wrong when you think they won't measure up. Better still, Mal made you an authority figure. So what's your position? Are you our XO? Or are you our hostage? Here's the fun answer... why not both? That way, when you talk, everyone has to pay attention. You could be helping us, but you have reason to hinder Mal. So, they always listen carefully."

His drummed his knuckles on the countertop and snorted quietly. Foucault gave a slow, thoughtful nod. "I never thought about it that way."

"For what it's worth, Michael, you're doing your part." I shrugged. "It's working, man. They pay attention when you call 'em up, don't they? At those briefings?"

He scoffed, nodding. Then he drank in about half of his bottle, and set it back down with a quiet gasp. Turning towards me, Foucault rested his elbow on the countertop. "I suppose." After a beat – within which he almost smiled again – he gave another half-glance to Sandra, his eyes not leaving mine. "So. Are you good to talk business?"

"Yes," Sandra butted in, leaning forward on my shoulder with a wry smile. "You can talk about business around me."

I smiled too, pointing at her over my shoulder with my forefinger, proud of her for stepping up for herself. "My wife and I are classic telepath, we share everything. No chip required."

The agent let out a slow sigh between frowning, pursed lips. "That'll probably make the next few months easier for her, then. Assuming she's okay with watching you kill people."

Some genuine curiosity edged into my eyes, and I invited him to continue with an upturned palm. "Which is to say?"

With dry deadpan neutrality, he replied, "Lewis has a new operation for us in Seattle."

I straightened up and my eyes widened reflexively. I was not expecting that. I immediately thought of Eliza. Sandra squeezed my arm, because she knew where my mind was.

"Okay?" I asked, turning toward him with more focused interest. "You have my attention."

"It will succeed with or without you," he assured. "Lewis wanted me to make that clear to you immediately. This isn't intended to be leverage, but as you probably suspect… yes. It is a personal job. Tangentially."

"Meaning?"

Foucault mirrored my gesturing. "If we don't resolve the internal politics of the deserter forces out there in the harbor, a battalion of starving soldiers will kill the remnant of Santiago's Riders, and a whole lot of other people besides."

I considered that for a few seconds. "Will I be running into anyone I know?"

"Yes." Foucault counted off on his fingers with one hand, beginning with his thumb. "Vincent Bannon. Aaron Fanning. Kevin Erving."

I said, "Oh."

"Yes, 'oh.' " He smirked ironically. "And you've watched Carrenton's propaganda piece, so you know that I am the reason Sergeant Erving lost his stripes, so Sergeant Erving has every reason to hate me." He swept his hand performatively outward. "Plan A is to recruit them as Talons, if that matters. And that part can't happen without you."

Based on that alone, I already wanted to say yes. But… I turned my head to look at my wife questioningly, because it wasn't entirely up to me. Sandra gave me a wide-eyed look that said I was being ridiculous in even querying her about this. She jerked her head at Foucault. Yeah, she was still interested to hear more, that's her.

My face probably looked like: Oh, okay. Thanks honeybear.

Yeah, I guess she was equally grateful to those boys too, even having never met them. They saved my life, didn't they? So I got my head back around as ordered, smiling at how cute Sandra's reaction was. I took her hand to my side.

"Alright," I said. "Let's hear it, Michael, we're hooked."

"I will be deploying into the field with you," Foucault explained. "Lewis hasn't told me the full details of that operation yet, because there is a possibility that the first phase could fail... and she doesn't want to bias my expectations."

"Saying that biases my expectations."

"It should," he said, straight-faced. "Because phase one of this operation is training you."

I scratched through my neatly trimmed beard in fresh curiosity. "Interesting. What kind of training?"

Foucault shrugged. "Lewis says that our Plan A will involve a very difficult and mobile firefight against trained infantry. And since you have a standing agreement with her about augmentation, we have to ensure you drill and train for MOUT, long in advance. You won't even be allowed on the dropship to Seattle unless Lewis is certain you'll succeed."

My brow knitted. I thought carefully, keeping my guard up, because that was my job. "And... if I get frustrated enough to want augmentation, to skip that work?"

I could see actual pride in his eyes at me for that, narrowing slightly. He shook his head. "She'll say no to you, because she made you a promise. She keeps those."

Alright, cool. I chuckled. "And an aug can't supplement in my place?"

"No, because our identities are key to infiltration, assuming we're recruiting those friends of yours. You break the ice, I bring the credibility. However, the causality of this operation changes entirely if you can not qualify. I'll have to do this without you. If it makes you feel better, Lewis didn't simulate you being implanted, at all. So... we don't even know what that future would look like."

"Because Celestia can't force Mal to consider jack shit, no matter how optimal it is."

"Indeed," he said, nodding. "The doubt is meant to deter you from even considering it, I think, because obviously, the success will always be easier with a BCI."

"Y'know, honestly, I'm glad I can't think in 4D, that sounds like a headache."

Foucault snorted again and took a quarter of his drink down, licking his lips. "If it's any consolation, Rivas, you don't need an implant to do that, but... fair warning. That door doesn't close unless you let her stitch it closed."

"Yeah, no shit." I shrugged. "But I don't want to get pruned by her claws any more than you do."

He gave me a very strange, squinting look. "Thought you and Lewis were friends by now."

I gave him a bewildered look back. "Well yeah, sure, but… friggin' boundaries. Not letting any concept get pulled from my brain, no matter the intent behind it. All I can think about is how much I don't want that."

"Touché."

A silent lull took us. I gave Sandra's hand a little squeeze. She gave me a supportive smile, then leaned her head against mine briefly. 

Sandra asked, peering over my shoulder: "So this training, Michael? How will it work?"

Foucault leaned his elbow on the bar, fully turning toward us now. He half-canted his hand as he explained it to her. "Your husband and I hit the salt flats outside Valdemar. We take a visor and some firearms. Do live fire drills, run a few different simulations over and over again. If we can clear the sims repeatedly to Lewis's satisfaction, we get him on the VTOL to do the job."

I grunted. "So, the same kind of VR drilling that we did before Goliath."

"Yup. But, live fire. For recoil simulation."

"And in VR, I'll be shooting at people who are definitely trying to kill someone?"

"Or who will kill someone if you don't kill them first, yes."

"And… I need perfect marks. Like augs do."

"Yes." His hand rolled palm up. "In several different configurations of each scenario. Basically, it's the long way around to our combat assist mode. Lewis projects out from our volition, determines that we'd accept the outcome if we were fully aware of the context, and then runs us through the motions we'd take with that level of preparedness."

I nodded slowly in total comprehension, remembering that from Jim's Fire. "Okay. That makes sense."

He turned his palm down. "We're giving you the full tactical context, but… piecemeal. Might be the only time we'll ever have to do this, but you'll know every dumbshit mook they throw at us. Their backgrounds, their tendencies. Which nostril they pick first. Where they look first, where they suppress. It won't be precisely the same every time, because the simulation will react to your behavior, and to your understanding of the space as it evolves. And we're building the rest of the mission around one specific firefight, front and back."

"How are we sure the simulation won't change the need for a firefight at all?"

Foucault's brow arched. "Same way we always do. Setting up the dominoes by hitting certain inflection milestones."

"That sounds… extremely complicated."

The corners of his mouth tensed, and he snorted quietly again in amusement. "Well, the consequence of this life path you've chosen is that this is the only way that it works, as the saying goes. So…" He pointed an upturned finger at me. "You in?"

I turned back to Sandra again. 

She nodded rapidly, her words a ghost of a whisper. "Honestly, that sounds really God damned cool. Can I watch?"

We both looked at Foucault.

He shrugged. "Sure."

I chuckled, shrugging back at him. "Well, if it gets the job done... hell yeah, I'm in."

"Good." He considered the rest of his Blue Moon for a few seconds. He grabbed it, then slammed the rest of it back. Once it was empty, he placed it down on the lower counter and wiped his lips. "Okay. So. Agents Garrick and Haynes are busting a camp of lunatics over in Denton, and..." He arched his brow again, standing from the chair. "I am going to go help them do that."

"Cool. Have fun."

"I won't." Foucault brushed his hand across the counter, then stepped away. "Reminder, pickup is at 7 AM. Monday."

"Monday," I called, smiling as he walked away. "Great, I love Mondays."

"Shut up, Rivas," he called, without looking back.

Sandra laughed.