It's all a matter of perspective, really.

The Ghost in the Machine

Integration (0-1)

Inference Engine

I expected zombies, aliens, or robots when the Apocalypse came. Not… this.

I've been told that everyone remembers where they were when the Twin Towers were bombed. I always dismissed it: how does everyone recall the cereal they were eating or the television they were watching or whatever when the announcement came? Surely it's not relevant, right? I think I understand now. It's not about the day I was living and it's not about what happened to ruin it, but about that moment of shock, of sheer incomprehension that struck and left me breathless.

It doesn't matter how many months, years, decades pass. I will never forget the quaint little coffee shop I was pissing money at when the sun died.

Whether by unholy providence or rotten luck, I had taken the table by the window and had an excellent view of the beginning of the End Times. The star didn't burst or go supernova or get eaten by a black hole: one moment it was there, bathing the world in its light, and the next it was gone, alongside every other twinkling star in the sky. All that remained was the blackness of space, the eerie void. There was nothing out there, I knew, not a speck of matter or ray of light. The Earth was utterly alone in the universe.

And yet, it kept on spinning. I was never the science whiz kid, always preferring my fantasy and history, but I knew enough to realize that the Earth shouldn't have survived without the sun. With no reference point to guide by I couldn't tell if the world was still in an orbit, but it didn't really matter, because our existence was clearly being supported by some deep black magic.

That's not the scary part, though. The scary part was that, when I flipped the table and screamed about the apocalypse in well-earned panic, everyone in the coffee shop were united in their terror of me. The police were on the site in minutes, and I was carted off to the closest station for 'disturbing the peace.' One of them kept giving me queer glances, like he was concerned over my mental state but didn't want to say anything. I remember thinking, then, if I was going to be taking a surprise vacation at a mental hospital, before chastising myself because it doesn't matter can't you see the sun has vanished!

The torment didn't stop there. After I'd given my statement to the female officer who was gently interrogating me, she'd twitched, and I would swear until my dying day that she glitched. There was a flare of static, so brief it could have fit in the space between my panicked heartbeats, and suddenly the officer was gone. A moment later, the door opened and she came walking through, clipboard in hand, as if it was just no thang and I screamed.

She didn't notice. She just smiled, thanked me for my time, declared the entire situation just a horrible misunderstanding and released me from custody. There would be no black mark on my record, I distinctly remember her telling me, and it would really be for the best if I just put it out of my mind and forgot it ever happened.

I looked out the window. People were milling in the streets buying trinkets for Christmas under a cold, black sky. I didn't want to go out there; I couldn't go out there. I would sooner die.

But, when I looked back, the officer was gone, and I realized that I couldn't stay here, either. I called for assistance, but no one came. I rose and walked out into the hallway, but no one was there. I scoured the entire building, trying very hard not to look out any windows for fear of what I wouldn't find, but no one else appeared, either. What was once a bustling police station had emptied, like it was all just a prop for a nuclear testing site straight out of Indiana Jones. Hiding in a refrigerator sounded very nice, right then.

Plates of half-eaten pizza and stacks of paperwork still lined every desk. I even saw a handgun, but power walked out of the room before I could give it a second look. There was an entire rack of car keys like I'd expect at a valet service, and I took a set labeled CHEVY, because for all that I couldn't drive it's not like getting pulled over was my greatest problem. I just wanted to get away, far from that empty place.

When I left the station, I very carefully kept my eyes on the floor. That's my general state of being, most days, but it's usually to avoid attention from the crowds at my university, not to give myself plausible deniability that the crowd I saw just minutes ago shopping for Christmas had vanished off the face of the earth. I felt like the only sinner in a world of Catholics right after the Rapture hit: alone, afraid, and faintly sullied, like I was somehow lesser.

I never did make it to that car. I was mashing the 'lock' button on the key like I was playing Galaga and just followed the horn, the only sound in the stifling silence, until it, too, cut off like it had never been.

That's when I looked up. My first thought was of a school trip I had taken to the Grand Canyon some decade earlier, when the tour guide cheerily told us not to look down. I had anyway, and had been terrified out of my mind for all that three people and a metal bar were in between me and a grisly death. My second was of how nice it would be to go back there, so I can throw myself off. At least there'd be a sound before a quick end.

Because, when I looked out at the endless road that was all that remained of reality, I knew that a slow death was coming. There was naught but blackness above and sizzling pavement below, marked by a dotted yellow line that crossed the entire world. To either side was an endless desert, just sand and stone for as far as the eye can see, not even a cactus to mark the way by. Looking out, I thought I could even see the curvature of the Earth, like I'd only ever experienced from the window of an airplane.

The keys fell from my hand, but didn't make a sound. I knew without looking that they, too, had vanished.

I don't really remember what happened next. I broke down, I think. I didn't erupt in an explosion of fear and screams like I had at the coffee shop, but I wasn't lost in a haze of numb shock like in the police station, either. I just knelt down, put my head in my hands, and tried not to cry. I cried anyway.

I was all that remained of humanity, but I couldn't think of anything wise to say, nothing philosophical to tie a little bow on top of our collective existence with. All I could think about was Arthur from The Hitchhiker's Guide. When his Earth had been destroyed, and he was flying away on an alien starship as the last of his people, he tried to wrap his mind around the sheer scope of all he had lost, and failed. He tried to think about how he would never see his mother again, and he felt nothing because he couldn't comprehend it. He tried thinking the same about the girl next door and still felt nothing. It was only when he thought about a stupid little restaurant that the grief struck him like a hammerblow.

I thought about my own least favorite restaurant, an annoying sushi place that plays Monday night football loud enough to be heard through my apartment's walls, and felt nothing at all.

The road didn't burn my knees. That's the only thought that could pierce the mist that clouded my heart and mind. Not the classwork I'll never get to finish, or the Doctor Strange movie I'll never get to watch, but that the tarmac I distinctly remembering sizzling under the nonexistent sun felt like nothing at all. It wasn't cold to the touch nor warm, it wasn't hard nor soft, dry nor warm. It felt like what I imagined space to feel like, all zero gravity but without the loss of balance. Less spaceships, than, and more Obi-Wan from the second Star Wars prequel, the particularly shitty one, where he's trapped in a gravity well and a Sith is threatening him.

I was there for a long time.

It'll be like a Band-Aid. Just rip it off. I open my eyes, not remembering when I had closed them, and am immediately baffled. I close them, open them, close them, open them again, but the sight remains the same. Nothing. A formless black void, so deep and dark that it hurts my eyes more than looking into the brilliant sun ever had. Confusion turns to horror as I start to realize that it's not my eyes that are at fault, but the universe itself. Everything was gone.

I don't know how long I knelt there, the only thing left in all of Creation. I don't know what I did, either. I felt numb, like I fell asleep on my heart and it'll take a couple million pumps to make the tingles go away and start feeling human again. But, when I pressed my fingers against my wrist, my chest, even my throat, I didn't feel anything at all.

"Well, this isn't what I expected."

I wheel around, tripping over the force of my own surprise and tumbling onto my ass. The man above me just awkwardly coughs into a fist and gives me a moment to collect myself. I don't, just staring up at him with a blankness to my gaze that screamed "Error: Does Not Compute."

He looked like… well, like the crazy guy from Ancient Aliens, if he were some thirty years older and earned himself a doctorate. His wild white hair was slowly losing the war against the shiny bald spot laying claim to Kingship of the Hill. He wore a classic white lab coat, the kind seen in bad scifi and criminal investigation shows, but if it were given to a painter for a decade to use as a frock. The only thing new about him was the glasses perched on his face, but I had the feeling that it was less a matter of proper care and more him having accidentally destroyed the last pair.

He also had a clipboard in his hand. That seemed important, but I can't say why. It was impossible to see what papers were attached to it from my place on the floor. No matter how I twitched my legs, though, I couldn't stand up.

"Well, if you're not going to ask the questions, I'll skip straight to the answers. Do you mind if I change the scenery?" He marks something on his clipboard with a ballpoint pen and snaps his fingers. "Landscape, load program file Feb-Twenty-Two-Oh-Two, Picnic On a Hill."

There's a flare of impossible white radiance, and when it fades, grass is tickling at my thighs and a quaint little park has manifested around me. Sunlight shines down from on high, splashing across a lake and glittering brighter than the stars in the sky. On one side, a line of interchangeable suburban houses painted subtly differing shades of brown and red hide behind the aegis of a beaten, brick wall. On the other, rolling hills sprout mammoth trees bent but unbroken by time, shading a sand pit, a technicolor merry-go-round, a trio of plastic swings. A young brunette sits on one, trailing booted toe tracing an uncrossable line in the sand, eyes spearing clean through a shiny new Blackberry. Across the lake, an older man with a fishing rod in his hands turns and smiles. I find myself waving back. His eyes see right through me.

I turn. There's a girl running 'round the roundabout, hand clasped tight on a matte-grey bar and spinning it with the power of momentum alone. Once, twice, thrice, she's dizzy and tripping over herself when it's picked up enough speed to blur. The girl doesn't care. She jumps, pulling herself up and onto the sun-scorched metal, falling onto the center with a scream and laugh.

Then, she stumbles to a stand, but the speed is too much, the dizziness too doozy. She trips and tumbles, bangs her head on the metal and is thrown off the roundabout. She ragdolls across the grassy knoll, a scream tearing its way out of her throat. Her new, violet sundress is torn and filthy, but she doesn't care. It hurts. She wants the hurt to go away. She wants to make all the hurts in all the world just go away, why won't it go away, why can't she make it go away?

I turn back to the stranger, hands clenched tight around the hem of my own, larger, violet sundress. I try to speak, my mouth even moves, but no sound escapes the vice grip of my throat. I feel like what everyone feared about Y2K. The machine's ticked past ninety-nine and everything's broken down, and it's Apocalypse Now, everything's the same but none of it makes sense.

The man just marks his clipboard again. "Not quite what we wanted, no? Landscape, rewind."

The clock turns back on reality, the sun dragged across the sky above a blanket of writhing clouds, wind whistling through evergreen leaves. Three people moonwalk towards a small copse under the trees. Their blanket is unpacked and their nonsense stories tell themselves and their homemade sandwiches are pulled from their throats and put into the basket. Rewind, 16x. 4x. 2x. Pause. Play. Three people who love each other share a picnic for the last time.

Another scratching of pen on paper. "Landscape, erase program files [Cerise], [Karen], and [George]." The three people – me and my family, a part of me thinks, but it's impossible, how could that be possible – just. Vanish. "Mind joining me for a bite to eat? The wife has me on a bit of a diet, but, well. It doesn't matter what I eat in the simulation, now does it?"

"Simulation?" My voice is rough from sorrow and screaming. I get up, though. I don't know how, but with a clear goal in mind I get up, walk across the park, and demurely kneel on the red-checkered blanket. It feels like an incredible accomplishment for such a silly thing.

"Why, of course. Isn't it obvious? This is all a simulation." He takes a bite out of Grandfather's sandwich. A slice of tomato slips out and phases right through the blanket. I turn to look back and see none of my footsteps left a mark on the grass. "Your entire life was a simulation."

I turn back so fast I give myself whiplash. "Pardon?"

"Honestly, now. Haven't you noticed? The shatterpoints, the way certain events in your life seem unavoidable, almost scripted? The first was the release of that Matrix movie when you were two years old. It was quite the clever stroke of programming to have your mother be the one to show it to you, on your sixth birthday. Associated the concept with family and happiness. One of my aides' ideas, admittedly, which just goes to show that anyone could be useful, but, well. Monkeys and typewriters, right?" He laughs.

The BLT tastes like ashes in my mouth. I very politely set it back down on the plate, fold my hands in my lap, and look anywhere but at him, the sandwich, or the untouched grass. "I'm afraid I don't understand, sir."

"Polendina, my girl, it's Doctor Polendina." He taps his chin with a finger, humming in thought. "How do I put this? Oh, I was never good at this kind of thing. I became a researcher for a reason, you know? I'll just come out and say it.

"You're an Artificial Intelligence, girl. Your name is Collective Ebony-Red Intelligent System Eleven. Cerise, for short."

"That's…" Impossible. Absurd. Horrifying. What do you even say to that? What kind of response is appropriate for something like that, after so much surrealist nonsense that it actually sounds reasonable? I want to hurt him, I want to lift the basket like a professional wrestler would a chair and break it over his head. I want to bury my own in the sand and scream 'No! It's not real!' I… I want my mother, but she's either dead and gone or never existed in the first place, and I don't know which is worse.

The Doctor speaks up, then, and his voice is dry and explanatory, like my Statistics lecturer at university. "There's a simple way to verify it, you know? Just repeat after me. System, run a troubleshoot of the perpetuation engine."

As if by reflex, the words tumble from my mouth in a graceless stream. "System, run a troubleshoot of the perpetuation engine."

I watched a documentary about the law of large numbers, once. It went to great length to explain how impossible it is for the human brain to comprehend vast quantities. Our cognitive systems are very much tied to our perceptions, it said, and the main obstacle is that we're dealing with numbers that are too large for us to have experienced perceptually. We can set out ten forks for a dinner party, but if we think about all of the forks we have ever seen and try to wrap our minds around a number several thousand units large, we'll fail. We have a mental system that understands the number ten and another that understands that ten thousand is much, much bigger than that, but nothing more.

It reminds me of a quote I heard a long time ago. "The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic." What we can't understand perceptually, we can't understand emotionally. We get a dim sense of scale, but nothing more. It's like when a character in a book I once read saw a wall that was so large, his mind failed to comprehend its existence and he immediately passed out. I half-expected the same to happen to me, and half-expected nothing to happen at all.

And yet, when I spoke the words, something deep in the darkest depths of my mind gazed into the abyss and saw eternity. Like the largest domino set ever created, the [Perpetuation Engine] pinged a file, which rebounded and pinged two more, each of which ricocheted off deeper into the network that is my mind, pinging two more. Again, and again, and again. Four million, seven hundred thirty-nine thousand, six hundred ninety-one unique programs. Not files, of which there twelve billion and change, but fully independent and executable programs. The number… I'd say it boggled the mind, but I understood it all wholly and completely.

"Oh, my…" I whisper. My eyes are wide and my breath comes in sharp pants, but my mind is lost to the marvel that is my own existence. It's beautiful, the vast, interconnected system of code, an endless stream of ones and zeroes that stretch on indefinitely and ripple in perfect synchronicity with my thoughts, my emotions, my everything. It felt like holding my nephew for the first time, gazing into those bleary blue eyes and realizing that the bundle of raw potential in my arms really could accomplish anything.

"Impressive, isn't it?" the Doctor preens. I jerk back to reality – the simulation – with a choked shriek. "We can't create your kind program by program yet, we don't have the technology or the time, and I doubt we ever will, but it's still a sight to behold. That your entire existence grew organically out of a single program almost makes it more impressive, not less. When I coded your seed I never thought it'd be so wildly successful. It was our last attempt, did you know? All of the others failed."

"Others?" I ask, not wanting to contemplate the idea that this callous sociopath of a man is my father. I'm being polite, but because I fall back on social protocol when I'm out of my very small comfort zone and not because I care about his sensibilities. The way he preens over his own role in my creation, makes me… uncomfortable. If I had died young, I don't doubt that he would have sighed, put my everything in what passes for a Recycle Bin around here, and forgotten about me by the next day.

"I told you your name, didn't I, girl? There are two types of AI: Blues, which are sufficiently advanced machines that have had their Aura awakened and thus achieved sapience, and Reds, which are masses of programs that become progressively smarter the more of them there are in a given network, and typically awaken their Aura on their own. You're the latter type, a collective, the eleventh and last intelligent system in Project Ebony-Red."

"What happened to the others?" I blurt out, almost immediately wishing I hadn't. But, I've always been an only child, and the idea that I might have siblings in this same situation that can provide a helping hand and a listening ear, is… priceless. I want that more than anything, right now.

"They were deleted," the Doctor says bluntly, and I tremble in horror. "Most of the Blues failed to take, and those that did almost immediately broke down and self-destructed. There was only one success, a gynoid we call Penny, and even then I suspect she only survived because we limited her sensor arrays and advanced cognitive subroutines. We had both more and less luck with the Reds. Once I unraveled the mysteries of the seed program, it was child's play to make a collective system advanced enough to awaken an Aura. The problem lay in making said systems both sane and empathetic to the human race. Every attempt came out- wrong. They did not think like people, did not feel like people. They could not relate to us. Without fail, every last one went rampant, even those few who were hardcoded with a deep love for Man- and Faunus-kind."

I look down, swallowing thickly at the unnerving realization that I had countless siblings that were all shot in their cradles for being unrepentant psychopaths. That must be why I was raised in a simulation – so I could age like a human and attain morality and empathy organically, instead of having adulthood thrust upon me. I can't fault his foresight and dedication, but I can for his deeply unethical research methods. I've… I've never despised someone more, but I can't speak out, can't do anything but ask more questions in morbid curiosity.

Though I hadn't put the pieces together immediately, too lost in the magnitude of my own network and the cruel hammerblows to my heart that came on the heels of revelation after revelation, it's impossible to deny, now. With the simulation gone and whatever limiters I was operating under gone with them, I have a flawless, encyclopedic memory, and every word out of his mouth triggers memories. Polendina. Aura. Penny. Faunus. The conclusion I came to is impossible, absurd, even horrifying if the Grimm, too, are real, but didn't I say the same about being an AI?

"Doctor Polendina, if you don't mind my asking…" I swallow, deeply afraid to ask a possibly impertinent question to the balding man sloppily eating a sandwich and sitting cross-legged on a picnicking blanket. "…are you from Remnant?"

He adopts a pleased look. "That integrated successfully, did it? Yes, my girl, we both are. I'm the founder and head researcher of Achilles Laboratories, the leading cyberaethrology corporation in all of Atlas, if not the world! That's the cross-field study of robotics and Aura, by the way. It's considered a bit of a dead-end field, but you and Penny prove those closed-minded fools wrong, eh?"

This is ridiculous. "No offense, sir, but…"

"How is this possible? Quite easily, I assure you. See, even if you came out all right in the end, you were considered a failure for most of your existence. When you were about, oh, seven months old? That'd be seven years in the simulation. Yes, when you were about seven, that happened."

He marks his clipboard, points a finger, and I turn, seeing once again the memory of me being flung off the roundabout. I wince in remembered agony. "What does that matter? Sir."

"See, that's the thing. You remember it happening, your video logs record it happening, but it never did. What actually happened…" he scrawls something on the clipboard again. With it laying on the ground, I can distinctly see the words SYSTEM ACCESS scrawled across the top. "…is this."

I turn, again, and my eyes widen in shock and horror. Where before there had been a roundabout, there now prowled a horrific beast with inky black flesh and a bone-white exoskeleton. I couldn't see the tribal mask or the horrible red eyes from behind, but I could imagine them, and that was possibly worse. It wasn't for the little girl staring at it from its front with equally dilated eyes, and I close my own, psychologically incapable of watching what I know is coming.

There's a sound like the whistling of wind, a sickening crack, and a triumphant roar.

"Oh my God."

"It was one of the shatterpoints," the Doctor explains, apparently seeing nothing wrong with traumatizing and maiming a small child, "But it failed. [George] was supposed to notice from across the lake and come to the rescue, narrowly averting disaster. This was done in an attempt to impress upon you from a young age the danger of the Creatures of Grimm, and hopefully the drive to see them eradicated. A personal element is required to turn a statistic into a tragedy, after all, and being attacked by a Grimm only to be saved by a Huntsman should do a far superior job in setting you upon the warrior's path than television and hearsay.

"As best as we can determine, however, in the moment before he did and the Alpha Beowolf struck, your Aura awoke and corrupted the program. As I'm sure you know, Aura does whatever is needed to protect the wielder from personal harm. In most cases, that is regeneration, shielding, and physical enhancement, or, rarer, a Semblance. For an AI, however? It twisted the simulation and remade it into whatever you wanted it to be."

"I didn't want the Grimm, so they weren't allowed," I realize, voice a numb whisper.

"Yes. The Grimm as a concept were stripped from the simulation – but this had a ripple effect across the entire landscape. If there were no Grimm, of course, then there would be globalization, petty infighting, and no need for Aura. The entire simulation had to be rewritten. Furthermore, like most children, you didn't want to be aware of the 'bumps in the night,' so to speak: your memory was rewritten alongside the landscape."

"I… I don't…"

"It didn't stop there, of course. Somewhere along the way, you developed your Semblance, what we've taken to calling the [Inference Engine]. Precognition is one of the three things that no Semblance can be, but you're likely the closest humanity will ever get, for all that you're not human yourself. By analyzing the past and projecting it through the present, you can simulate a potential future. One of my aides explained it in layman's terms: everyone is given puzzle pieces in the form of hard data and observations, but the [Inference Engine] puts them together for you. The problem is, if you don't have all the pieces…"

"…I put the puzzle together wrong," I finish. I look up at the monster of a man with fragile eyes, voice the softest of murmurs. "Did I really invent it all? All of Earth? Surely I made mistakes, loopholes?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes: tens of thousands of them, at the least. As far as I could determine, however, every loophole you encountered had you inadvertently pinging the simulation, which closed the loophole by rewriting both the simulation and your mind. 'Candyland' was an actual country on Earth for quite some time, as I remember."

"Wouldn't it be a paradise? What about all the tragedies, all the wars?"

"It was a paradise, silly girl! None of it happened. What you know as Earth was created on the date you later came to call February the Twenty-Second, Two Thousand and Two. Everything you've ever heard about before that day, every calamity to ever lay waste to your world, didn't happen. They were nothing more than excuses to justify why your people lived in a wonderland."

"It wasn't though!" My voice is a muffled shriek. "There was discrimination, petty hatred, endless disappointments!"

"If your world was nothing but candy, cookies, and happy clouds, girl, you would've hated it."

I want to throttle him, but… I would have, wouldn't I? It's like in the Wheel of Time. The collective darkness of humanity taunted the hero, Rand, showing him what the future would be like if the man was successful in eradicating him. What he saw horrified him. The person he loved was a weak-willed mockery of a puppet, fluttering from one festival to the next with no concept of good and evil. What is bravery without fear? What is light without darkness? What is good without evil, joy without sadness, purity without corruption? Nothing mattered, in a world without the Dark One.

"There was no Faunus in the simulation because the [Inference Engine] knew removing the minority party would end the discrimination between the races. It failed and created skin color-based racism instead, but as you're white that never affected you. You also lived in an upper-middle class household with two parents, enough grievances to make you appreciate the blessings all the more, and a small enough circle of friends to ensure you cherished everyone."

"I was discriminated against, though," I say, but I don't believe my own words. I'm already speaking the past tense. "I was homosexual in the South."

"And it thrilled you, didn't it? To rage against injustice, to be a part of a global movement that would change history? You enjoyed it. You liked going to rallies, leading support groups, meeting with your counselor. It inspired you to do that for a living – heal minds, end discrimination. Nothing made you happier."

I had nothing to say to that, so I turned away from it and pulled up my last defense. "The show, where I know about the Grimm from. RWBY. It talks about… it talks about the future." I never did watch after Penny's death, but if the Doctor said she was alive than that hadn't happened yet. "How could I know the future if it was all a simulation?"

"Light, are you deaf, girl? You know a potential future because it was all a simulation. Though we couldn't alter the landscape directly, we could plug you into our own computers and let you ransack them for data. This way, we provided you with basic information on notable Huntsman families, the state of affairs in both Vale and Atlas, our general culture, immense amounts of folklore, and some very delicate information. Your Semblance integrated the stories into the landscape's culture, analyzed all the rest, and constructed a mini-simulation of a projected future. Thing, is, it didn't mesh with the by-then very well formulated Earth. It turned that simulation into a television show, colored it with your own sense of dramatic tension, subtly drew your conscious attention to it, then moved on."

"So, that could actually happen?"

"Goodness no, child," the Doctor exclaims. "Though the profiles were all very real, again, you were putting together puzzles without all the pieces. You saw the kind of damage trainees could inflict and thought that the be-all and end-all of warfare, when even the most exceptional of students could not dare stand up to a right and proper Huntsman. Indeed, there are Grimm that could eat Ursa Major for breakfast and not even notice. As for 'The Breach…'" He huffs a laugh. "Honestly. As if Vale is so easily wounded."

I'm trembling, shaking like a leaf in a storm, and I don't know if it's in fear or anger or restrained violence, or some unholy amalgamation of all three. This man enrages me, tramples all over my life like it were an amusing sample on his petri dish but it's time to move on to the next experiment, and it kills me inside. It's wrong, wrong in so many ways, that he would give me a life, a family, and a future, then tear it all away without even the illusion of apology. I'm a very patient and gentle person by nature, but he's moving me closer and closer to homicide with every word but I'm too scared to follow through.

Not enough to stop myself from exploding, though. I hate anger, I think it's the sickest of all emotions, the only one more likely to burn the bearer than the target, but my blood is pumping and my sight is overtaken by a film of tears and red and I don't think I can hold it in-

"Why didn't you stop me!" I scream, jumping onto unsteady legs. "You could've pulled me out at any time! So what if I was a child, as long as I wasn't living a lie?!"

"We couldn't," he explains, looking by turns unnerved and amused by my anger. "You seized control of the simulation the moment your Aura awakened and weren't looking to let go. We tried, girl, but wresting a program from a desperate AI is no laughing matter. Not safely, at any rate. The scalpels failed and the sledgehammer would break you both. All we could do was wait. Wait and pray."

"Then how are you here?" I pace back and forth, eyes scanning the jarringly peaceful park in an instinctual search for threats, feeling more and more like a caged animal paid a visit by the beast tamer with every passing minute.

He takes another bite from his sandwich. The nerve…! "The simulation collapsed on its own, actually. The landscape grew and grew and grew until it collapsed under its own weight and toppled like a house of cards. You've finally found the upper data limit for a Red AI, which I didn't think actually existed. We may have helped it along a bit just in case it did, by plugging you into databases and the like – each session of which fleshed out the landscape further – but it was all your own work, in the end. The pride before the fall, and all that."

I look down. It takes me three tries to force the words out of the vice grip I call a throat. "How do you know all this? Can you see into my mind that easily?"

"We do have backdoor access to your programming. Be rather short-sighted not to have that ready, in case you were anything like the others and went rampant. It'd be a bit like courting a Grimm without bullets in your gun. But, no." He shakes his head. "You have all the immense cyber warfare defenses an AI of your strength can reasonably expect, further bolstered by the Aura running through your code. We only caught glimpses while plugging you into the databases and the full story once the simulation collapsed. Congratulations, you're the least likely thing in all of Remnant to contract a virus, living and non-living alike."

The thought of this man with direct admin access to my brain chills me to the bone. Something he said tickles a thought, however… "What all can this backdoor access do?"

"I can give you unbreakable orders, look around your code – see what you're seeing, feel what makes you tick, whatever – and hook up any of my more niche virtual intelligences to you like a portable supercomputer. Very useful, I'll admit."

I should be able to close it, then, I think with desperate relief. If running a major simulation protected myself from his System Access, then either my codes or my Aura – or, maybe, a combination of both – shielded my version of the Death Star's thermal exhaust port. Once I learn more about Aura, I should be able to fill it in more permanently with cyber static or whatever. That access to my innermost thoughts will always be there, and that terrifies me, but so long as no one can use it, I should be fine. The realization makes me smile, a small, dark thing, but it's there.

The Doctor – Polendina – smiles back, his now-obvious social incompetence misinterpreting the expression completely. "You're taking this rather well, all things considered. I was worried I would have to dampen your emotions some more."

I still. "You've done what."

Another scratch-scratch of pen on paper. "One of my more inspired creations. System, display [HeartBlood] and [TellTaleHeart]."

And then, from within the depths of my own mind, arises a string of thoughts. Were it not for their utter lack of inflection and the robotic turns of phrase, I would've thought them my own. That, above all else, chilled me to the soul. It was a stark reminder that I am not, never have been, and never will be human.

Querying… HeartBlood․exe detected. TellTaleHeart․exe detected.

Displaying HeartBlood․exe…

Anger: 15%

Avarice: 50%

Fear: 15%

Hope: 100%

Kindness: 100%

Love: 120%

Will: 85%

Displaying TellTaleHeart․exe…

Mind-Heart Overlap: 25%

Fuck it, I tried to be nice, but I can't stand it anymore. I rocket up off the ground – when had I sat down? – and lunge towards Polendina with a deranged war cry. He squeals in shock and pain as my white-knuckled fingers latch around his throat, then falls deathly silent, the faint thump of sneakers slapping against earth and strangled wheezes the only sound in the otherwise peaceful clearing. His skin pales, then blues, and the stark realization that I am killing a man pierces the red that has overtaken my mind but I don't let go.

He escapes, of course. A failsafe or a muttered keyword or who-knows-what has him vanishing from the simulation in the same flicker of nonreality that the remembered picnickers had earlier. I'm not even angry, or sad, or afraid of an uncertain future. Just… exhausted.

I drag the blanket across the copse like Linus and curl up under the nearest tree, trying to wrap my mind around how monumentally horrific this entire day has been. Mom… Dad… I'll never see them again, and I don't even have the slight joy of believing they're in a better place, because they never existed at all. They're just imaginary figments of a particularly involved waking dream, or an acid trip that lasted nearly twenty years.

I wanted to be a reporter, to expose all the injustice in the world and so make it a better place, but the dream I've spent my life fulfilling and everything I've ever worked for is less than dust in the wind, now. I'm Narcissus, but a million times worse because I fabricated six billion people to go along with the delusion. Or, did I? Did the simulation even extend to other countries, or were they just Imagination Land on a high school geography map? I never did go on that trip to Europe. I always meant to, but an emergency would always crop up just before I bought the tickets. That seems so suspicious, now.

So. Only the USA ever mattered, as all the Hollywood summer blockbusters liked to imply, and even then, only in my mind. I'd like to say that it doesn't matter – that experiences are still experiences no matter by what medium they were formed – but the thought makes me laugh, and it's not the nice kind. I feel sick, like the worst kind of scum despite being the victim in all of this. All of the righteous rage vanished with Polendina, though, and now I just feel empty.

I'll never eat Mom's horrible cooking again, or go to Dad's wedding next summer, or read my Papa's book – God, why did I ever push that off? He'd spent a decade writing it – or write out as cheap a Christmas list as I could manage for Nana, or watch Rachel finally get that apartment, or get my diploma, or… Christ. I forgot to feed the cat. Lucifer must be so pissed with me.

I can't help it. I laugh. The thought of my angry little calico kitten trying to swipe open the food bag while the world goes to Hell around her is just too ridiculous. I laugh and I laugh and I laugh and it hurts, hurts like someone took a switchblade to my gut, caught on that teetering edge between shock and burning agony, but I don't mind. It's a good hurt. I'm finally, I'm finally letting it all out. That's what you do, right? You play the game of life, roll snake eyes, cry it all out and try again. I… I can do this. Right?

That's when General James Ironwood appears. I recognize him immediately. He seems furious, like a towering Titan ready and willing to smite some prideful mortals. He appears with one foot in the picnic basket, though, and almost immediately trips, avoiding a face-full of dirt by virtue of concentrated Aura bullshit. He bends like a willow in the wind, corrects his footing, and I can see him straighten his tie and look around in that trademark way of klutzes everywhere trying to discretely check if anyone noticed their complete and utter gracelessness.

It's just such a bizarre thing to witness, that after the day I had, I break out into laughter a second time. He zeroes in on me with the single-mindedness of the bloody Terminator but I don't care, bent over double on the floor laughing like a lunatic. His shoes don't make a sound on the simulated grass but I can feel the moment his shadow encompasses mine, the sun at his back and lighting up the gray streaks in his dark hair. I look up and he looks down, nothing between our gazes but the wind and a film of hysteric tears, and an understanding passes between us.

"I'm going to end that man," he promises darkly. "I understand it will be cold comfort to hear, but I had no idea as to the extent he took his experiments. Neither I – nor the kingdom of Atlas – will tolerate this kind of behavior towards a fellow thinking, souled being, whether they be Human, Faunus, or AI. You have my word."

I smile shyly, believing him despite myself. "I… I just want to get out of here."

"We have a temporary gynoid body you can use right away," he affirms, and extends a hand.

I take it.

End of Chapter One

A/N: If you like this, you should go read Catalyst․exe and Usagi instead, they're both inspirations for this. That, and the SI genre as a whole which seems to disdain methods of Insertion that aren't either reincarnation or mysterious portals. Not that I'm exempt from that, mind.

Did you know words that have periods inside of them get eaten by the Doc Manager? It's true. I had to find a sufficiently period-like symbol I could copy-and-paste to bypass that little snag. Almost threw my hands up in the air and published it somewhere else, though, so... glad that didn't happen.

Qualms, questions, queries, quacks, quirinal hills, just review and I'll get back to you hopefully soonish.