This chapter fought me every step of the way, and even now large swathes remain unedited. But, if I don't publish this now, I'm never going to.

The Ghost in the Machine

Ignition (1-1)

Avatar Protocol

Mobile platform [Penny Mk. XIII] detected. Integrate mobile platform?

Integrating…

Awareness comes in a haze of ones and zeroes. Someone moonwalks across a piano inside my skull, a rising and falling crescendo building to a fever pitch somehow higher and sharper than I ever thought real. Starbursts flash before glazed eyes, hateful reds and happy yellows and peaceful blues and everything in between, and everything far beyond, colors I have no words for and could never comprehend the existence of just moments before. It seems so petty and irrelevent next to the balance, the sense of proprioception, the awareness of my own body that calmly informs me I am now six inches shorter and two cup sizes larger.

There's the reflexive denial – "Impossible!" – and the expected diagnosis – "No errors found." The world tilts and realigns, and I become incapable of disbelieving the diagnosis, the troubleshooter program speaking not in thoughts and concepts but in data streaming directly into my core systems. One and sixty-five hundreths meters in height, proportions chiseled to the golden ratio with mathematical precision. A thought, and a revolving diagram of a green-eyed, orange-haired girl appears in my mind's eye. Another, and she unravels, sections pulling out like drawers and revealing several key cross sections of her engineering. A third, and-

No, thank you. I do not require a vivisection of my own body. Not even for archival purposes. Lock that program, compress it, bury it.

…So, the mobile platform Ironwood mentioned is one of Penny's old bodies. There's a hollow where the heart should be, ninety-six wire ports carefully severed and the access hatch melted shut with a blowtorch. A deeper analysis informs me of micro-fissures all along the hips and trailing down one leg; old system logs fill in the holes with tall tales of Griffin claws spearing through solid steel. I forget to limit the search and its entire databanks stream into my mind, the vast majority of which is meaningless and a distressing portion of which I really, really didn't want to know. Should've deleted your browsing history before you logged out, little sister.

It's nice to know she's working right, though. In the – three hours, forty-three minutes, nineteen seconds – twelve subjective hours since Ironwood left the simulation, I've had a lot of time to scream into pillows and make sure I, heh, have my head on straight. As far as I can determine, Penny is not just the only family I have, but the only other of my genus and species on the entire planet. Waking nightmares of her being little more than a walking calculator with a personality imprint plagued the playfights I had with a hundred simulated puppies. Even meeting her wasn't enough to dispel those worries entirely. Logs upon logs detailing her emotional responses, asinine teenage problems, and heartfelt wishes for companionship go a long way towards proving simulation-Ruby's words right: she does have a heart, and she does have a soul.

There are worse people to discover relations with, I suppose. Looking like her identical twin sister will be weird, but if Ironwood doesn't commission me a custom body than I'll just go Skynet on Atlas and commission myself one. Problem solved.

Integration complete. Decompress [Avatar Protocol]?

Decompressing…

That's then and now's now, though. It's about time I open my eyes and see for myself just how much worse the real world is than the Matrix.

I pluck at the lines of code streaming across my platform's eyelids. My entire head spasms like I'm at a rave and smashes the base of my skull against something cold and metallic. I half-expect a dizzying wave of pain, and when there is none to drown under a tide of warning messages, but there's nothing of the like. A quick diagnosis tells me I took no damage. Not a single strand of hair was lost. Funny. For a moment there I almost forgot that I'm Magic Terminator.

The logical evolution of that line of thought is to grab something sharp and determine what I'll feel the scientific way, but another ping from my systems takes the wind out of my sails. Nerve endings are apparently just a little too advanced for Atlas, and [Penny Mk. XIII] was constructed six months before the invention of the pleasure/pain sensor array integrated into the [Mk. XIV] and [Mk. XV]. Looks like taking structural damage will just give me alert notifications after all. Being full computer and not just half computer like that poser RoboCop, I don't need a heads-up display when the data can just quietly dump itself into my mind.

This is kind of depressing. That's thirteen generations of bodies Penny used where she disassociated being hurt with actually being hurt and was utterly incapable of deriving pleasure from physical contact. There's not getting enough hugs as a kid, then there's this whole new low of not caring if she did. At least the flavor of synthetic skin that doesn't look like Commander DATA or sets off the uncanny valley was created all the way back in time for the [Mk. IV]. Pairing that with the open eccentricity of the Huntsman Corps, random Faunus probably get more suspicious looks than her. That's a good thing, I guess?

[Avatar Protocol] decompressed. Run?

Speaking of, the program stretches and contorts and layers across my code like a second skin. I reach out towards the platform's own mass of code and align mine with its, and the [Protocol] acts like one of those multi-headed USB abominations only ever found in Apple stores. I make to open my eyes – I don't think about it or try to manually raise the lids, I just pretend I'm back in the simulation and do it – and the eyes… still don't open, actually. Huh. Shit.

Should I pluck at the code again? It reminds me of the time I tried to pick up the violin. It sounded like a cat dying, then the strings snapped in protest. I don't want to do that to my shiny hand-me-down body, but maybe I have to? Mentally cringing back like I'm lighting a bottle rocket with a pocket Bic, I strum the code along my legs and command them to rise.

With a shaky lurch, I stumble to unsteady feet. I feel like Lance Armstrong – the conditions are harsh and the technology untested, but I've taken a damn important step. The feeling is somewhat marred by the sudden but inevitable collapse, smacking my face against the studded floor and ragdalling onto my back, but it's a start. A journey of a thousand miles and all that rot.

What's curious is the feeling of the [Avatar Protocol] translating my commands into streamlined executions across the hundreds of individual programs comprising the mobile platform [Penny Mk. XIII]. Taking a closer look, it's clear that there's an individual executable program for every muscle in the human body – more, actually, seeing as Penny can apparently bend her spine like a snake and stick out her tongue like a KISS guitarist. When I sent the command to stand, the [Protocol] accepted that as an input and almost immediately pinged all of the relevant programs with the stupidly complex output needed. He may be an unrepentant sociopath, but Polendina does good work.

Calling up the admin log of the last thirty seconds, it doesn't take a genius to figure out where I messed up. Humans do all that tedious stuff like breathe and digest and beat their hearts pretty much on autopilot, but as a robot I need to manually command my body at all times. Granted, the [Mk. XIII] doesn't need to do any of those things, but the second I stopped transmitting the signal to stand I folded like a house of cards.

There's no way I'll be able to split my attention like that, though. People can't actually multitask: I once saw a documentary about it, and it was very clear on the matter of people actually just switching between two or more topics really, really fast when they think they're being extra productive. Parallel thinking is a superpower for a reason.

Create a mental partition?

A superpower I have, apparently. Right. Computer. If my smartphone can play Angry Birds and broadcast death metal at the same time, than someone like me should easily be able to stand up and think about dinner at the same god damn time. I don't want my body to be in a state of constant freefall as I continuously switch back and forth between manually operating it and actually living my life.

I split off a generous thirty percent of my total processing power and label it [Avatar Control.] Suddenly feeling like I've just set up one of those fancy dual-screen monitors, in the secondary partition I command my platform to stand and in the primary I think about just what the hell I'm supposed to do now. Opening my eyes would probably be a good start, but I really don't want to. I'm fresh out of excuses to procrastinate, though. It's time to wake up and smell the roses or whatever.

The room is the kind of sterile white that's only ever found in hospital wards and government laboratories, the stench of bleach almost overpowering and the flickering LED strip across the ceiling stuttering like a bad horror movie. The floor breaks the mold by being a dirty, gunmetal grey, studded in a way my aunt always told me was to improve traction so no one falls over when they're running away from whatever abomination against God was cooked up that morning. The heavy stacks of factory-line chairs pressed up against the wall in as mathematically efficient a way possible points against it being an active lab, however, and the diagram of vulpine Faunus physiology on the far wall seems more titillating than educational. It's actually kind of insulting. Was I really written off as such a failure that they repurposed my lab into a storage locker?

Starkly incongruous with the GoodWill furniture theme is the IKEA-style desk in the dead center and the flatscreen monitor on top of it. It's flashing the single most psychedelic screensaver I have ever seen in my life, but there's no keyboard or mouse to disrupt it with and show me the answers underneath. Looking around twice to ensure no one's there to watch me make a fool of myself, I press it like a button to see if it's a touch screen. It isn't.

Feeling like I'm playing one of those escape flash-games, I check the computer for any clues and actually find something. Despite looking more like Apple's take on an Egyption obelisk, a tiny USB stick is plugged into the side, marked with the word CERISE. I ping my systems to see if any supressed programs recognize it and still when a tiny hatch in my hip swings open. I probably would've jumped a foot in the air if I were capable of involuntary reactions.

Contrary to my initial theorizing that it's my SIM card and I have to change my phone number, Penny's logs tell me that it's Atlas' answer to the conundrum of USB cords always being too short. Mobile platforms wouldn't be very mobile if they had to be plugged in to a desktop all the time. A rough inspection proves the computer itself is bolted to the ground and connected to a much larger computer one floor down by more cables than C'thulhu has tentacles. My mainframe, if I had to guess, and still not enough processing power to maintain the simulation of my corner of America.

It doesn't matter, I suppose. With most of my programs suppressed, I can easily fit in the [Mk. XIII]'s hardware. It's a tight fit, but not uncomfortably so, and if it means not being chained down to the ten-foot broadcast radius around the mainframe, I'll take what I can get.

I tear the USB stick out of my hip and drop it onto the table. The vast sea of processing power I had to call on immediately dries up until there's only a small puddle left. It feels like claustrophobia, but inside my mind, like my thoughts had been cartwheeling around a vast field before night came and I tripped into a ditch or something. Not really sure where I was going with that. I probably would have if I had more thoughtpower to call on.

I hesitate, then pull the stick out of the computer and plug both of them into my USB hatch. Nothing changes, but I hadn't expected anything to. It's for later. I'm not sure for what, or for when, but… options.

It's strange, my thoughts aren't of any obviously lower quality but they come so much slower than before, almost sluggish, and it's easier to fall off the rails, so to speak. I turn around and almost immediately trip, having to pump processing power out of [Primary] and into [Avatar Control] until it takes the solid majority of my headspace. This is… not ideal. I can only assume that Penny, being a Blue AI and having a hardware core, doesn't have this problem. If she does, she's even more impressive than I thought.

I walk around the lab three times just getting my bearings straight. I'd probably be knocking over chairs and scrawling REDRUM on the walls if Ironwood really had gotten me this body right away, but I've had the greater part of a day, a virtual reality generator, and a supercomputer to run it on all to help me get over the hurdle. That, and I'm keeping all my emotions running at a cool eighty percent. That includes the Mind-Heart Overlap, which means only sixty-four percent of a mentally sound human's emotional capacity is actually affecting my decision making skills.

That only makes it harder to determine how I feel about walking out the door and never looking back. I spent twenty years in this room, twenty years that was actually twenty months, and all without once looking at these bland white walls.

…Irrelevant. I open the door.

"Good, you're walking. We need to leave." Winter Schnee pauses, tucking a flyaway strand of hair behind an ear. Though I'm flashing more rent metal than skin, I still feel underdressed in my black hospital shift- wait, no, that's a funeral dress. Was this body buried? Is that why it took them so long to get it here?

I… probably shouldn't ask.

Whatever. Next to her stylized, elegant Atlesian regalia, I feel like a leper begging for scraps. She notices, and says, "It's cold. Bundle up."

She uncloaks in a single, smooth movement and drapes her white coat around me like a shawl. Winter's taller, broader and bustier than I am, and the garment that only accentuates her curves smothers me like an oversized blanket. It's more than enough cloth to hide from the world in. I pull it flush against my body.

"Achilles Laboratories is built into an airship, the personal design and property of Doctor Polendina," she begins, turning and striding down the thin, greyscale corridor without a backwards glance. I have to jog to match her long strides, something I haven't had to do since I was twelve. "As the existence of AI is yet to be declared, this – your… relocation – is legally an act of grand theft by a patron nation. I would much prefer we not be here when he returns."

"Bullshit," I whisper, the [Protocol] unneeded as the sound came directly from my vocal processor, a complex microphone embedded in the base of my throat. I never thought my first word would actually be a curse and not the 'Daddy!' I always thought it was. "You're going to just… let him go?"

She spears me with a look as frosty as her name, but something in my eyes makes her own soften. "The law exists to guide and protect the innocent. Where it is… insufficient… the General is not hesitant to act outside of it."

"So… what? 'Disappear' him? Plant evidence and have a whistleblower 'find' it?" My eyes narrow. "Like you found me, so quickly?"

Her hand flexes.

"I'm not unintelligent, you know. And – my system logs have a time stamp. Twenty-five minutes and ten seconds after the simulation crash Doctor Polendina logs in, and seventeen minutes twenty-two seconds after he leaves General Ironwood does too. The conversation I had with the Doctor only lasted four minutes and twenty-nine seconds, once I adjust for clock speed. That's forty-seven minutes and a single second for the simulation to crash, for the General to hear about it, come to a decision, travel to the Doctor's airship, board it, cross it, and log in. It took another four hours to get one of Penny's old bodies here. What am I supposed to think?"

"You should think very carefully about what you say next," she answers, her earlier warmth noticeably absent from her voice.

My mouth opens, but the words catch on my microphone and are swallowed back down. It's a deliberate movement, entirely voluntary, made for its own sake and to give me a few more seconds to think. I'd reach for my [Bullet Time] program, to accelerate my clock speed and turn three seconds into thirty, but this body is too tight and my mass of programs too large.

I execute [Tell Tale Heart], instead, and widen the distance between my heart and my mind a further twenty percent. My body would uncoil if I had bothered tensing it in the first place.

"…You're right," I say after a long pause. If I were my father – not Polendina, but my real father – this is where I'd make a dumb poker pun about deuces in my hand and the dealer owning the restroom. I have none of the power in this situation, Atlas has it all and antagonizing my only allies will accomplish nothing but closing doors. It burns the wannabe activist in me, but I am capable of patience. "I was merely surprised at the… alacrity of his intelligence officers."

Schnee sighs, throwing me a look in a passing chrome door's warped reflection that I can't decipher. "We're not the bad guys, you know?" she says, sounding… different. "The General is a good man. If he knew what Polendina was doing, he would have put a stop to it long ago, missed… opportunities aside." She pauses. "We've dedicated ourselves to the protection of the people – Human, Faunus, and AI – and if we have to sacrifice them to achieve our goal, then we don't deserve to live in a world free of the Creatures of Grimm."

I ping my logs, and a recording plays, reminding me of what the General told me just this morning. "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 caught what they weren't saying. They must have had agents on the inside, spying on Achilles Laboratories and making sure Atlas' money was being put to good use, but they weren't highly placed enough to know more than the gist of Polendina's experiments. Interns and janitors, maybe a pilot or two, but none in the good Doctor's circle. They knew he was committing crimes against the laws of man and nature, but maintained the veil of ignorance so they could pretend they were never anything worse than a misdemeanor, and not the atrocities they were. Why? For a weapon against the Grimm, of course.

How did the show put it? Ah, yes.

"The Atlesian Military has always supported the idea of removing men from the dangers of the battlefield. However, there are still many situations that undoubtedly require… a human touch."

The creation of a self-replicating machine intelligence capable of human creativity and infinite adaptability? Atlas would never have to field a soldier again. Wouldn't a few, small sacrifices be worth that?

Maybe I'm not being fair. Maybe the situation is exactly what Ironwood and Schnee claim it is – a simple case of extending trust to the wrong person and getting burned for it. Maybe I'm just needlessly suspicious and plagued by uncalled-for paranoia. Then again, maybe not. If it really is what they claim it is, then they'll understand that I can't make the same decision, not when it backfired on them and not when I don't have rock-solid proof and some backup plans of my own.

And if it isn't? If I'm right, and Ironwood and Atlas are accomplices, however unknowingly? If I can't trust them?

Then, maybe, it won't hurt so goddamn much.

…

We're off the airship and onto a Bullhead twelve minutes later. We don't pass anyone on our way.

"Saluta-eeek!"

The rising sun peeks over the horizon, radiating light that dance across the calm sea like skipping stones, each touched by Midas and turning saltwater into gold. Ripples burn a fiery red and echo across the endless expanse, calming into dark violets into mossy greens into cool blues the further from home they go. A tidal wave rolls, crests, and collapses, a spire of frothing white piercing the sky, the masterful tapestry haphazardly finger-painted with streaks of cheery pink and molten bronze, a funhouse mirror of the ocean below.

Ten thousand wooden branches, carved into rough cylinders and bound by twine, drift aimlessly across the calm waters on a breath of wind. The happy yellow parasol planted onto the makeshift raft as if it were the flag on the moon catches the rush of air like a sail, angled just so to make the barge spin. Somehow, despite rotating several thousand degrees, the wind always manages to catch the parasol just right to maintain the slow, steady pace, and offer a panoramic view to anyone laying atop it.

As it just so happens, I am. One leg dipped into the cool waters up to the knee, another propped on a conveniently dry pillow, and a timeloved copy of Alice in Wonderland held aloft, I've become the picture of relaxation. As in, a picture of me is in the dictionary next to the word 'relaxation.' Really. I can even imagine one into reality to prove it. An Oxford's.

This attitude isn't shared by the orange-haired girl who spontaneously magicks herself into existence right in front of me, greets me, squeals, and trips backwards into the ocean.

Bubbles float to the surface, followed by her body as she pulls herself up and onto the raft a long minute later. "Saluta…" She coughs helplessly into the wood. "…tions."

"Hello," I say, smiling shyly. I'd curled up against the pillow while she was swimming with the simulated fish, not being comfortable so sprawled out around a stranger. "You must be Penny."

She gathers herself remarkably quickly. "Yep! And you must be Cerise! The General told me all about you!"

"All good things, I hope."

"Of course." She nods solemnly, either ignoring or not catching the light teasing in my voice. It's… endearing, and something dark and cynical in the back of my mind wonders if it was purposeful. "He says you're both my big and little sister at the same time, somehow, and kinda my cousin but not because we both are and are not the same species."

I smile softly as she pulls herself up to a relaxed but oddly formal kneel – seiza? Is that even a thing in Remnant, or did I invent that, too? – and glances confusedly at the ocean. "Accurate, I suppose. We share a… father, so to speak… but if I understood him correctly, I'm software, while you're hardware. AI, but different kinds."

"Yeah, um," Penny's gaze darts between me and the endless expanse of the sea, "I'm sorry, but where are we?"

I'd say, 'In a computer,' but I don't feel like being an asshole today. "This was supposed to be the Atlantic Ocean," I tell her, and swish a finger through the cool waters with a slight frown, "I've never been, but the simulation did some of the groundwork for coding it, and I've been trying to do the rest. But, it's… not turning out quite right."

"How so?" she asks politely, but her half-hidden glance back at the rippling waters tells me that she's already figuring it out.

I explain anyway. "When I first spawned all the water, the simulation started lagging like crazy. Liquid is hard, for it, and so much… I had to make a basin and paint it to look like the ocean, instead. I was already doing the same thing with the sky, if inverted, so it wasn't hard. We're actually in a spherical room, about five meters in radius, filled with saltwater and with sunlight and wind generators embedded in the walls."

It reminded me of the time I had attempted to code a Pokemon Firered hack. Pallet Town isn't a single, seamless area, it's actually four separate instances – Red's place, Blue's place, Oak's lab, and the town itself – with portals linking the doorways. It made me wonder: was Earth the same way? When I left for school every morning, was my home compressed into a dot-zip file until I came back, to save space?

When I was six years old, I overheard a nugget of pop psychology: when a person walks into a room, their mind 'refreshes,' for lack of a better term. Their memory and their sense of their surroundings stutters, hiccups, and jumps, realigning themselves in the new location. It always explained why I would sometimes walk into the kitchen and completely forget why I'd gotten off the couch. The question becomes – is that true? Or did the simulation feed me a bullshit excuse to handwave its instancing?

After several subjective hours of lying in a field with a small herd of puppies, watching old Disney movies on a television the size of my old school, and then sculpting the ocean, it made all I've lost hit me just as hard as it had when I thought the sun died. So. That was a bummer.

"This isn't even a proper book," I continue with a shy note, waving Alice in Wonderland at her. I don't let the hurt leak into my voice. She doesn't need to know that my once-favorite story was one of the many, many things lost when the simulation collapsed. "This is how I change the simulation, see?"

The page looks like one of those character-creation screens that video games are so fond of. A dozen sliding bars are labeled with short phrases like Sun Exposure and Weather Systems. I ratchet up the bar titled 24-Hour Clock as if the parchment were a touch screen and watch in amusement as Penny's eyes widen at the sight of the simulation fast-forwarding, morning bleeding into evening into night. The moon overtakes the sun, the starfield peeks through the black veil and the calm ocean waters darken and still.

The book isn't, strictly speaking, necessary. I like to pretend that it is.

Eventually, though, Penny speaks up. "Do you think I can come back here, sometimes? You can show me some of your favorite places from your world."

Your world. What a diplomatic way to refer to the Matrix."Are you leaving so soon?"

"No, of course not!" She taps her fingertips together awkwardly in the single most anime hand gesture I have ever seen. "I just thought… you know… you might want to design your new body first."

I blink at her. "Already? It hasn't been a day yet."

It sounds so surreal, when I think of it like that. The simulation crashed at half past noon, and Ironwood had left it by two o' clock, promising he would 'do something' about Polendina. Four real and twelve subjective hours then passed in a recuperative haze, as I immersed myself in happy memories, conjured puppies, and old Disney flicks – what ones survived the crash, anyway. Then came the debacle I call a conversation with Schnee, followed by two hours of tense silence in a bullhead on the way to Atlas Academy.

I never thought I would be so eager to re-upload myself into a computer, but between Schnee, wearing a body that wasn't mine, and the tight, oppressive feeling of having to keep most of my programs suppressed just to fit into it, I was just about ready to turn myself off in protest. Schnee could very well carry me the rest of the way to Atlas. Luckily, it hadn't come to that.

The students would definitely have noticed well-respected businesswoman and Special Operatives officer Winter Schnee carrying an underage and unconscious girl into a supply closet, nevermind that it was actually a secret entrance to the Academy's mainframe. As it was, I just cheerily nodded at what few students we did pass in the hallways. No one seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary – Schnee's coat covered the rent metal in the mobile platform surprisingly well – and few students were outside their rooms so late anyway.

What did surprise me was how quickly Penny made her way here, from… wherever it is she lives. Then again, considering she's already wearing her Atlas Academy uniform – the gray looks surprisingly good on her – maybe I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.

"Up until two-and-a-half years ago, I had to have my body replaced every few months," Penny explains, not seeming at all discomfited at the strange and personal subject matter. Is that just Penny being Penny, or can she only open up like that because I'm an AI too and there is no way to be overheard in a simulation? I can't say. "So, the process for manufacturing specialized gynoid bodies have already had all the kinks worked out. Some of the machines were retrofitted for other things, since it was a waste just to let it all collect dust, but the General's people said they'd have it all back in working order by Friday morning. Unless we design something cuh-razy, your new body should be ready by Monday night!"

I ping my logs- and today's Tuesday, soon-to-be Wednesday. Okay, that's seriously impressive. Atlas' engineers must have it down to a – heh – science, if they can make me a fully-realized, highly specialized gynoid mobile platform in half the time it took my old landlord to replace the heater. "What qualifies as 'crazy,' exactly?"

"Clockwork, mostly." Her words trigger a response from my systems, showing me the schematics of some of the shifting weapons Penny's used back when she wore the [Mk. XIII]. I hadn't even thought of including something like that in the new platform. It's going to be a receptacle for my soul, not a bloody weapon. "Machines with multiple forms are difficult to produce with standard equipment – part and parcel to the whole 'personal customization' thing. I mean, it can be done, it'll just need a few weeks to import all the specialized pieces; it's not the kind of stuff they have lying around. At least, not for non-students to use."

"Fair enough. I'm not so sure I'd want to include something like that, anyway." If someone had asked me yesterday if I wanted to replace my hand with a Samus-style arm cannon, I'd have politely told them to fuck off. The existence of hungry abominations and my doubtlessly-imminent career as a hunter of said abominations tests that reflex a bit, but not quite that much.

When it comes to mobile platforms, I know two things: one, that the circuits need to be nice and loose, and two, that anything that doesn't look, feel, or sound like Cerise will make me freak the fuck out. What I felt in the [Mk. XIII] wasn't quite at the level of dysphoria, but it was still alien and wrong and other and I would be quite happy to never subject myself to it again.

I only just found out that I'm an AI today. Maybe one day I'll reach the level of self-assurance and transhumanism needed to wear a body capable of transforming into a lion or a gatling cannon, but by God is that day not today. I'm not the kind of girl who wants to go from zero to sixty right out of the gate. I'll settle for a nice, chill twenty-five, thank-you-very-much.

"Well!" Penny claps her hands together. "Should we get started?"

I smile. "I don't think the ocean is quite the right setting for this kind of discussion, is it?" I flip the page in Wonderland, the sliders and text replaced by a slew of boxes, each depicting a thumbnail drawing of locales from my memory. Those that survived, anyway. I press one, and say, "I think this should be appropriate?"

After the by-now customary flash of white light, the basement laboratory of Stark Industries rises from the ocean all around us. Modern, exposed piping and ductwork line the vaulted ceiling, illuminated by the several dozen lights embedded in the mystery-metal floors and reinforced walls. Off to one side, plexiglass doors barring an endless staircase reflect the soft light, and on the other, a jukebox, a Skyrim enchanting table, and some blinking machines that I think came from Fringe. There… might have been some file corruption during the crash.

I then make a note on my access panel, which transformed from its customary copy of Alice in Wonderland to an iPad, and cede limited control over the simulation to Penny. She can't do much more than make moving holograms, but… still.

Whatever reservations I have towards Ironwood, Schnee, and Atlas, they don't extend to Penny. That might be short-sighted of me, but she's been nothing but kind and, well, I do have that rock-solid proof – or steel-solid, as the case may be. She wore the [Mk. XIII] for several months and it kept very careful logs of that time, and it didn't try to stop me from rifling through them. It's a horrible invasion of privacy, but I couldn't – wouldn't – stop myself and every memory, emotional response, and diary entry makes me more and more sure of my conclusion.

Penny is good. Nice, kind, loyal, caring, trustworthy… just… good. I can trust her. I don't know what it says about me that I need this kind of invasive knowledge to trust someone, but it's been that kind of day, I guess.

"This is so cool," she whispers, amazed at the way the world itself seemed to warp at my command. It warms me. I may be poisoned to the simulation, but it's still a fantastic work of technology.

"I figure some three-dimensional holograms would make this whole process a lot easier, yes? Certainly less of a headache." I wave my hand in a cool but utterly meaningless manner, and the diagram of the [Mk. XIII] appears before us like the Death Star in A New Hope. "You can do the same thing, so please help me, Penny. I… don't know where to start."

She nods cheerily. "Well – this is good. Maybe start with the [XV], though?" The image stutters, flickers, and warps, replaced by a far more complex model. My eyes immediately go crosseyed. It makes my old Anatomy classes seem like a coloring book. "Hm, or maybe from scratch? I'm sure a Blue like me has different needs. Did you notice anything when you were in the [XIII]?"

The part of me that quailed at the doctor's needle wants to play it down, but the thought of a life spent in the tight confines of Penny's body's circuitry is far more terrifying than a little admission of need. "It was… constricting," I admit. "I had to keep most of my programs suppressed, and the experience was… uncomfortable."

"Hmm…" Penny gnaws at a lip, pulling up and immediately discarding many slight variations of the [XV] before finally giving a grunt of frustration and scrapping the whole thing. She starts fresh with a simple checklist. "How much is 'most?' And will you be growing much, in the future?"

"Eighty-five and twelve hundreths percent of my system was zipped, taking about five and two-thirds percent of the space it would have at full flex, give or take a few thirds," I say almost immediately. The progress logs are ridiculously useful, and I have more than enough space in Atlas Academy's mainframe to do a little compare-and-contrast in. "I'm full grown, though." I think. "If I do need to code a few more programs, I don't think it will take up too much more space."

She murmurs something to herself, low and private. I politely don't check the simulation's logs to see what it was. "And how much of that is memory, and how much is your programming?"

Another query, and my lips purse. "Ninety-two percent are logs, status reports, memory and location files, and random junk from the simulation."

"Yeah… You're going to need to leave most of that behind."

"I…" I mentally sigh. Then I physically sigh, because Penny is the one person I don't want to seem robotic to. "Fine, I can do that. I'd like to keep as much of it as I can, though. How much space can we fit in the body?"

"Lots," she says, adding circuitry to the checklist, then underlining it three times. A pause, and she bolds it, too. I add a smiley face to the end, just to tell her that it's alright. "We have to put it all in your abdomen, though. It'd kinda suck if we put some of it in your limbs or head and when you get it chopped off, your personality went with it!"

I'm not sure what part of that sentence is more disturbing: that Penny views dismemberment and decapitation as an inevitability or that getting a surprise lobotomy can even happen, to an AI. I sorta assumed that if death ever became imminent, I could just hitch a ride on the CCT and worm my way back to Atlas. I'm… a little bit too big for that, though, and not even scifi wifi speed can move all of me that fast, especially remotely.

There's the option of getting a job in the civilian sphere, of course, but I dismiss it out of hand. I don't know how lien converts to USD, but I don't need to – there's this implicit understanding that a fully-functional gynoid body is going to be expensive. If I try to become an accountant or something, I don't doubt that all the good will Atlas is giving me will be pulled out from under me. That means money… but it also means protection, both physical and social.

I am the only successful and sane collective-style AI in all of Remnant, a world at eternal war against literal legions of soulless darkness. Not to sound arrogant, but I am a very valuable asset. I don't think Ironwood – or his bosses – will press if I give a hearty 'Fuck no!' to the very idea of working for them, so long as I don't actively hurt them or their interests, but other groups might not be so open-minded.

Cough, White Fang, cough.

Ironically, becoming a secret government operative against the Evil Hordes of Evil is probably my safest bet. For now, at least – I'll keep my options open. But, until the situation changes? I'll take the free robot body, the implied training on how to fight with it, and maybe a ticket to a combat school. If they sent Penny to Atlas Academy, why wouldn't they send me? That's four years of relative safety that I can use to adapt and decide just what the hell I want to do with my life.

"That would be unpleasant, yes," I agree placidly, my clock speed resetting and the simulation's flow of time, previously slow as molasses, snapping back into place with it. "How much of my system do you think we could fit?"

A hardlight pencil materializes and is then absently drummed against Penny's cheek in a slow rhythm. "Maaaybe… twenty percent, leaving a further five open for new logs and developments? You'd have to trim off more of the fat if you wanted to install some real armor plating, though – that much circuitry doesn't leave much room for the other essentials."

…She did not just call me fat.

"I can't give a more accurate assessment until we cover everything else you need, though." She pauses, visibly changing track. "How was the sensor suite, in your opinion?"

"I… didn't notice anything beyond human…?"

She nods. "Yeah, it's not really intuitive. I can't process too much information consciously, so I have most of it running on automatic and pinging me if anything interesting pops up. We could probably shave some of that off – a lot of space in the [XV] is just to process all that data! And the rest of the cranium is for crunching numbers, too, now that I think about it; strategy and tactics, angles, momentum and parabolic arcs, enemy analysis, keeping track of the battlefield, keeping track of my own swords… you already have all of that covered, though, don't you?"

I do, actually. I don't even need to query the system for clarification. I combed through all of that stuff already, the moment I was put up in the Academy, when the reality of my situation – not as an AI, but as a future Huntress – started to sink in. I wanted to know, on a level from one to Jaune, just how likely my getting mauled and-slash-or murderized is. Conclusion? Maybe, like, a six?

Between my clock speed, lack of involuntary reactions, amazing Semblance, built-in graphing calculators, probability analyzers, robotic body, and Atlesian backing, I'm probably better off than anyone bar Penny as far as headstarts go. Money means a hell of a lot.

If that was all there was to it, I'd give myself a one or two and call it done. It's not, though. I have all these amazing tools… but no idea how to use them. I've never thrown a punch in my entire life. My only experience with Aura is in how fantastically it mucked up the simulation. The only thing about the Grimm I know – bar whatever books I try to download over the coming weeks – is that they disintegrate like so much smoke in the wind. I'm clever enough to know that there is a lot more to the Huntsman biz than punching things in the face, and self-aware enough to know that I'm going to be even more clueless than the aforementioned blond when it comes to… a lot of that.

I query the mainframe, and it tells me that the next term starts in six weeks. I then query the [Inference Engine] what the odds of being given an extra year to settle in are, and it returns a gif of Nicolas Cage laughing. I have no idea what that means.

"Pretty much," I agree. "Hey, random question – but what do you think the General intends to have me do, through the next few months?"

She blinks at me. "Isn't it obvious? Initiation is in a month and a half. Speaking of, I have finals the week after next, so I won't be around as much. I could only come over here because my partner Ciel does need to sleep, and I don't, but no one will be doing much of that finals week!"

"I mean… what if I'm not ready?"

"If you're not…?" She shuffles awkwardly. "I… don't think the rest of the Atlesian government will agree to fund you if you're not making progress or bringing in a return on their, ah, investment. I… would not recommend skipping Initiation. School can be tiresome but it can also be quite fun, and none of the missions they give us students are quite as vigorous as the ones they gave me before I signed up."

Vigorous. No, I don't want my missions to be vigorous, either.

"Really, I very much recommend joining the Academy! Please say you will!" She looks almost pleading, and I can see how much it matters to her that I agree. Not just for her own sake, or from one AI to another – but because she truly, honestly thinks that it's for the best. How can I say no to that?

But I don't think I can say yes, either. "I'll join a combat school," I agree, voice low. "I… don't think I should stay in Atlas, though. General Ironwood has been nothing but good to me, but I don't want to spend the next four years living in a school he runs. After what happened… I need some distance, from this government."

Her eyes widen, and I could swear that I see tears start to gather.

"Not from you!" I squeak, and impulsively pull her into a hug. All that talk about having no involuntary reactions? Not quite so true inside a simulation. "You're… you're so kind to me, and… I think… we can be good friends."

Her eyes lower. "Just friends?"

"Best friends?" I try. Her lower lip wobbles. God, it's like kicking a puppy. I whisper, "Sisters?"

Blink and you'll miss it, all the sorrow is gone and Penny is jumping into the air, arms wrapped tight around my shoulders and taking me to the moon with her. "Spectacular!" she cheers. "I've always wanted a sister! We can do sister things, like have bunk beds and complain about our parents! It'll be wonderful!"

"Hooray," I squeak, wondering if this is what asphyxiation feels like. If I actually needed to breathe in the simulation, I would be one dead robolady.

A thought strikes her, and she sets me down, looking me dead in the eye with a serious mien. "But if you're not going to Atlas," she says, looking adorable instead of businesslike, "Then where are you going? I've always liked Beacon the most, myself."

I freeze, and thoughts whirl. I… do not want to go to Beacon. It's not out of a sense of worry about the canon show – even if it weren't a computer-simulated hypothesis disproven by the foremost cyberaethrologist in the world, curse his name, I still wouldn't care about mucking up a future that was on the fast track to hell – but because it would be awkward as fuck.

If there is any truth to the anime at all, it would be in the character profiles. That's the easiest thing for the [Inference Engine] to get into, after all – divining the future is hard, but guessing at the past is easy when given governmental records and access to social media. I know a lot of really private stuff about people who have not once in their entire lives heard so much as my name. I will feel like the worst kind of voyeuristic stalker that has ever walked the red earth of Remnant.

And I will be expected to work with and risk my life alongside these people for the rest of my natural life.

I ratchet up my clock speed, pause, then turn down the simulation's speed for that extra oomph. I need some time to think about this.

There are four Huntsman universities in Remnant. I get a ping, and that's wrong, actually: there are nine. Five are small, private affairs, however, and a quick browse through their official sites makes me mark them off anyway. Atlas is going to be pissy about me asking for another school as it is, there's no need to make them lower their standards and send their only Red AI to the equivalent of a community college. So, there are four viable Huntsman universities in Remnant.

Atlas is right out. Again, much respect to the General, but he is the Headmaster here and I do not want to be under his command anymore than I already am. I have a second motivation against it, though: its militarization worries me, especially taken with how tightly meshed it is with the government. The other three schools have a much wider seperation of church and state, so to speak. Their secular nature is a balm to my soul. On the other hand, Penny's here.

Next is Beacon, ran by Ozpin. I know he has some kind of tight relationship with the General, which is both a pro and a con: on the one hand, I want to get away, and on the other, he'll feel more comfortable with me under his friends's purview than under a stranger's. The greatest strike against it is actually Weiss Schnee, awkward stalkerish knowledge aside. Winter Schnee and maybe Papa Schnee know about my nature as a sapient machine, and I worry that that tidbit will make its way to her ears, however accidentally. I would like to keep the whole 'is an AI' thing under wraps for as long as feasibly possible.

That leaves Shade and Haven. All I know about Vacuo is that it's in a desert, and got the worst deal in the Great War. Mistral is, however, more interesting. It is Haven that Cinder infiltrated, and it is Cinder that orchestrated Penny's death in the show.

Can that actually happen?

Polendina says no. I say no. I take one look at the time-slowed girl in front of me and decide to check, just in case.

I have no idea how to hack into Haven's databanks to look at their roster, even less idea how to spy through cameras and find her that way, and less than zero idea how to go about finding out in some other way. Then I remember that she literally went by her real name in the show and decide to run it through Remnant's version of Google. Clearly, my sanest option is to do the ex-girlfriend thing and stalk her social media.

Three subjective seconds later, I have a picture of Cinder Fall eating lasagna in a café in Mistral, cheerily captioned 'Just got accepted to Haven :D.' It's dated to three weeks ago.

Maybe this is all going to be a huge misunderstanding, Cinder was made into an antagonist by the [Inference Engine] because there was no one else, and Remnant is about to experience a hundred years of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Maybe.

When my other options are 'nope,' 'nope,' and 'meh?"

Time snaps back into place.

"I was thinking Haven, actually."

Haven has the sexiest uniform. My decision was simple, really.