Nobody Dies – The Kei Files Episode 06
...
Things had not changed on the very-large-but-not–infinite dark plane. There were still the twelve monoliths, each in their own pool of light, standing in a circle.
In the middle, in the harsh white spotlight that somehow had no source, Kei Ayanami stood, hands folded behind her back. Her eyes were not focussed on any one of the grey pillars; instead, she gazed out into the black eternity.
SEELE 01 began the questioning. "We hold the power here. Understand this. You are a supplicant. At any moment, we can return you to cold sleep, where you will serve your purpose as leverage over Dr Yui Ikari. What we grant is at our discretion."
Kei inclined her head. "I understand."
"What we demand above all is loyalty," said 02.
"We have no use of a disloyal asset," added 03.
"Your stabilisation would be a non-negligible cost," said 04.
"And so we would want a good return," finished 05.
Kei nodded again, even as she smiled internally. The obviously pre-rehearsed cycle was somewhat lacking in intimidation; they were not so disinterested as they might claim.
"Does not the fact that Dr Ikari holds a monopoly over Lilith concern you?" she asked. "She possesses the original Angel, the only Evangelion derived from her, as opposed to Adam, and, until my abduction, eight Nephilim, only flawed by her inability to stabilise seven of them. I am one of those 'flawed' constructs; you possess the ability to remove those flaws, and gain access to your own Lilith-derived Nephilim."
"That which we already possess," rumbled 06. "We have access to your body while you are in cold-sleep."
"There is not time to grow your own variant of my geneline, even if you possessed the ability to do so without access to the Progenitor. As it stands... with my now-out-of-date knowledge, the First has been either destroyed or rendered inaccessible; I lack data to say either way, which changes the social dynamics of the pangenetic ecology noticeably." She turned, to stare directly at 06, her questioner. "And, may I note, I am much more closely tied to humanity, by blood and by self interest, than an Adamite Nephilim. Such a being has split loyalties, being from a mutually-opposed ecosystem... Mr Nagisa did show you my research on that, did he not?" She took the lack of opposition to be a confirmation. "Then, yes, such a being has split loyalties in a way that I do not."
"And it is your split loyalties which concern us," snapped 08. "Why should we trust a potential defector, on whom we would only waste resources, and above that, doubly strengthen Dr Ikari by giving up our leverage over her as well as handing her another stable Nephilim on a plate?"
"An excellent question." Kei nodded. "In truth, the safest option, which minimised potential losses to you as an organisation (as opposed to as a species), would be to return me to cold sleep, and not let me out, until you transferred me back to Dr Ikari, and received the Lance in return." She straightened up. "And I believe, from the length of time it took for you to send in Mr Nagisa to persuade me that my interests lay with you, that was your original plan. Which, means that, de facto, the situation has changed such that the data I am using is false."
"That may be possible," said 01. "It may also be possible that, quite simply, we believed that we required time and separation to weaken loyalties, before we could start testing you."
Kei's gaze returned to the blackness, no longer locked on any one specific monolith. "That would depend on your intelligence sources and the quality of the data you receive on the unstable geneline members in Magi 00," she said. "And I credit you with competence; hence, you will be aware of the typical mindset of the unstable Lilith-type Nephilim. Such a mindset does not possess many of the typical weaknesses and breaking points of Homo sapiens."
"It has been noted that you disassociate yourself from the others in your geneline as much as you claim the heritage of Nephilim," said 12, speaking for the first time.
The blue-haired girl nodded. "Correct." She glanced around, gaze still unfocussed. "To be completely honest, as befits our potential working relationship, my 'Sisters' if you would call them that though the term is inaccurate, are with the possible exception of Rei, insane by human standards. They are mono-focussed genius children, brilliant idiot-savants. They are not truly insane, because that would imply that they are human enough to have human descriptions of sanity apply to them."
"Do you bear a resentment towards them?" It was 06.
"Resentment... not really. I find it ironic that creatures so close to the Progenitor of the Tree of Knowledge are so close to that innocent bliss that the Abrahamic faiths hold was the prerogative of mankind before the allegorical-Fall." There was a faint smile. "Perhaps a lesson that innocence is not good, and is not something one should necessarily seek."
"But do you resent Dr Ikari?" asked 11, following up the question.
"Ah. That is more complicated." Kei bought her hands forwards, folding them in front of her. "It is pure phenotypical fluke that I am who I am. It is an awareness that almost none have; to gaze into the genetic mirror, and see a you-who-is-not-you reflected. And the fact that I am not stable... I would hypothesise that it is because Rei is 00, and I am 07; simple coincidence that she was the first in the line, and thus the one who was stabilised before the death of the senior Dr Akagi. So... yes, I believe you could say that I resent her. I resent her for the lack of attention. I resent her holding Rei as her favourite. I resent her for leaving me in a virtual reality, along with my sisters, without working on any way to experience the world." There was growing bitterness in her words. "Are any of you aware of what it is like to be the most sane, most human one among a group of individuals who consider cartoon physics to be how the world should go, and, in a simulation, have the power to enforce?"
"A pretty speech, Miss Ayanami," said 08, "but... are we really meant to believe it?"
"I believe Mr Nagisa is capable of testifying on the... proclivities of the first of my geneline, Rei; remember that she is the most mentally stable of the others, thanks to increased socialisation. Mr Nagisa can testify upon the difference between us. Now, consider what the lack of the socialisation must make the others like," Kei said, in a flat, unemotional voice.
If faceless, voice-disguised monoliths could shudder, they would have. They had made the mistake of demanding a full report from Kaworu after his escape, and had gone as far as to cross-reference it with the NERV copy. Some of them had not been able to sleep well for several nights. One of them had been rather turned on, but after a reminder from his "personal assistant" that he could not regenerate, came to his senses again, and would have thanked her, had it not been for the ball-gag.
The questioning resumed.
...
And now it was later, and the girl was gone. The discussion was done. The arguing was done. 08 remained unconvinced, 11 strongly in favour, while the others had been flexible.
But now it was time to count the anonymous votes. Twelve lights appeared in the centre of the room, rotating randomly, so that a vote was not linked to one specific monolith. Green was assent, red was rejection, white was abstention.
Five greens.
Four reds.
Three whites.
"The ayes have it," announced 01, in a neutral tone. "Barely."
"This is a mistake," said 08, voice a tone of doom.
"And it would be a mistake not to, when the appearance of the Cherubim is taken into account," countered 11.
"There is no room for discussion," said 01, interrupting the debate. "It has been settled. And so this meeting is concluded."
The last to leave this place, the monolith disappearing, was 06. The man behind the mask was concerned, and had wanted a private word with 01, but the leader of SEELE was the first to go. Because he had experienced something... odd. Just as the subject had left the room, she had turned to face him, and only him. And none of the other members of SEELE seemed to have noticed it, and it was not on his personal recording of the events.
"You are worried," she had said, red eyes locked perfectly at his viewpoint. "Concerned. You are afraid that you are making a mistake."
"Yes..." he had managed.
"Remember this, then. Contemplate the meaning of the phrase 'blood is thicker than water'. And remember that you're the ones who can help me, not Dr Ikari."
She had chuckled.
"Fairwell. I hope to see you in the flesh, someday, so I can say 'Thank You'. Consider this fair compensation for all the birthdays you have missed. Grandfather."
Of course. Yui must have told her. That was the reason. That made sense. And he had voted yes; he might not have, had she not interceded like that.
But he was worried. It was a creeping, unsettled, nameless dread, a terrible uncertainty... and that was all it was.
This was worse than when Yui had proved that there was no such thing as Father Christmas.
...
Lightning cracked in the sky of this desolate wasteland, yet despite the thunderclouds, which painted the sky the colour of a bruise, there was no relief for this parched land. The ruins of a dead city, smothered in dust the colour of blood, was revealed in each flash of light. And in those brief moment of light, things could be seen moving, things that moved in a way which was anathema to the human eye, all squirming and crawling and too many legs.
Some would have called this place Hell.
Fools. The depths of the horrors imagined by Dante could not match the abominations that dwelt in this place.
This was Australia.
And in the midst of this dead place, a little girl wandered. From her height, she couldn't have been more than about four or five, and yet here she was, in the midst of these ruins. Her dress was ripped and splattered with unidentifiable substances; her bare feet were covered in mud. She was limping, her eyes hollow and dead-looking, as if the horrors of this place had got to her.
This movement was drawing attention. A pack of predators were stalking the child. They were not the apex predators of this hostile landscape, of course; that honour might debatably go to the house-sized spiders, although even they had things that ate them. But outside of this environment, these creatures could have hunted down a pack of wolves with ease, feeding from their remains before moving on.
The pack was slowly bounding from cover to cover, one moving at a time, inbetween the flashes. The alpha, her breath slow and measured, was going to strike first, as was her right against such a small target. One leap should crush the tiny target, and then the rending and the tearing and the ripping and the burning would start.
She leapt.
The following sequence of events could only truly be tracked in slow motion, preferably by an observer with a camera designed to film the flight of a humming bird. A dark shape arose in the background, blocking out the bruised clouds. A sudden flash of lightning, and the foam-specked maw, the camouflaged reddish-brown fur, the needle-like teeth and the sharpened claws on the bipedal shape, a long tail trailing behind, were all suddenly visible. The creature had to be approaching three metres tall, not even counting the tail, covered in scars and hide stinking with carrion.
Then quickly, even in the slow motion of the hypothetical camera, the torso of the blue-haired child swivelled around a full pi radians, and the wrists of her hands, fingers held straight, began to spin. The booster packs in her feet ignited, and the projectile-girl, hands held above her head, fired straight through the giant, carnivorous, mutant kangaroo, emerging even more filthy than when she had entered.
The alpha was dead. She just didn't know it yet. She had survived the cataclysm which had made Australia what it now was, survived the mutations which had made her what she was now, spawned her own race, and it was impossible to her tiny brain that she was dying. Dragging herself around on weakening paws, she glared at the gore-covered child-missile with hate-filled eyes, and opened her maw, Cerenkov-radiation blue flames enveloping the figure.
In the darkness that follows, two red eyes can be seen, sunk in an endoskeleton glowing cherry-red. And then the thing, which might have looked like a girl, but was obviously inhuman, spoke.
"What did you have to go an' doo~ooooo that for, huh? Now I gotta kill you all, 'cause you mucked up my surface layer an' stuff."
That was when the horde of other, heavily modified little girl robots, autonomous aerial drones, civilian cars refitted with cutting blades and machine guns, one smallish spider tank, and one very, very large spider-walker, which appeared to have been built using most of a bridge and patched up with whatever came to hand, appeared. It raised great questions to how they had been hiding.
Well, the spider walker had burrowed into the ground and been disguised as a house, because it had one built on its back, but the others were more questionable.
"Do ya know how ha~aaard it is to get synskin in this place, huh?" the horde chirruped together.
The rest of the pack of mutant, fire-breathing, flesh-eating kangaroos would have swallowed, had they had time.
...
"Increase the concentration on the sedative drip to 500 ppm."
"What, again? She's already taking enough to kill a hippo."
The doctor shook his masked head. "Already adapting to it. We're getting residual brain activity already, and we haven't managed to even get through the ribcage yet." He made a disgusted noise. "Without everything regenerating, or having to cool her back down again after too much core activity, that is."
The whine of a progressive blade starting up again could be heard in the operating theatre. "Okay, we've replaced the scalpel, and I'm back in position," said a female doctor. "Now, get the crowbars into place, and lever it open when I cut through. Once that's done, as long as we can stop the regrowth with the welding torches, we can start the proper part of the procedure."
It said something, when invasive surgery on one of the Nephilim more resembled a combination of butchery and metalwork, with occasional detours into close quarters combat, than normal medicine.
"God, it's so annoying how much she's bleeding," muttered one of the orderlies. "How much blood can one body manufacture?"
"It's a sign she's warming up again," said the female doctor. "We're only going to have one more go, before we have to put her back in cold-sleep again, and try again tomorrow." She cleared her throat from behind her mask. "Scalpel... ready."
"Crowbar One ready."
"Crowbar Two ready."
"Cauterisation One ready."
"Cauterisation Two ready."
"Stabilisation Team in place."
The woman nodded. "Okay, I'm ready to make the incision."
There was an extended and somewhat unorthodox symphony; the visceral organic tearing and splattering noises accompanied by the shriek of the progressive knife they were using to cut in, and the ever-present roar of the plasma jets from the welders.
"Okay... okay!" shrieked one of the crowbar-wielding surgeons, muscles straining as he levered half of the split ribcage out, so that the white bone formed a second, almost wing-like protrusion from the blood soaked mess of the girl's torso.
And in the midst of the burned flesh and cracked bone, was a smooth red glint, the fist-sized sphere sitting right under the breastbone, the regrowing flesh already creeping in to recover it.
"We have visual on the core," reported the female surgeon. "C1, C2, clean the flesh from around it, and then Stabilisation can begin."
As the head of the Stabilisation Team moved in, vicious, diamond-tipped barbs in hand, she glanced at the figure before her. The head may have been covered by a cloth, but, to her eyes, from the way that the fabric had settled, it looked worryingly like the subject wore a rictus grin.
...
In virtual space, the controlling intelligence behind the mass of autonomous units slaughtering its way through Australia was pouting. That was another unit which had lost its outer layer, and that sucked, because it meant that traps were harder to pull off. Oh well. At least she had that slow motion video of her drilling through the kangaroo, which was totally sweet, and she was totally going to send it to Mommy and Daddy, because they would be really proud of her, and might say that she was the best. If her sisters hadn't been doing better stuff, of course... she knew that, although Daddy might say that he loved them all equally
Of course, Mommy and Daddy hadn't been checking all the pictures and drawing that she had been sending, and she hadn't got any messages or pictures of dead Angels or anything recently, which made the little girl's eyes water slightly. Maybe they were busy.
Yeah. She could send it to the Aunties, too. Aunty Zyuu especially like animals, so she'd really like seeing how they died, right?
The girl froze, and swirled, all four legs clicking on the unreal ground, as she felt a hostile programme break through the barriers to her personal space. Back in the real world, some of the cars started idly, the controlling intelligence diverted to her own safety.
There was a boy and a girl holding hands, watching her. They looked a little bit younger than her organic components, though, as a virtual representation, such things were meaningless. The girl had slightly unkempt, grey-with-a-hint-of-blue hair that reached down to her waist, while the boy had smooth, short blue hair which... she frowned... was exactly the same colour as hers.
And the eyes. Two pairs of red eyes, almost identical to her own, stared back at her.
"Who are ya?" she asked, revving the drill on her arm threateningly.
In synchronisation, the other two blinked. "That is unusual," said the boy.
"Indeed," said the girl. "An active systems artificial intelligence was not to be expected. Of course, such a military grade communications link from Australia was an anomaly anyway. Unusual things are to be expected."
"Quite."
The drill revved again. "I'm warning ya again..."
"We are merely looking," said the girl. "The presence of such a connection was an anomaly." She paused. "I am 02-Ef A9." She pointed at the boy, with her other hand. "This is my brother."
"I am 00-Em A9. Yes. That is the most appropriate term. Brother. I like it. It is an applicable term, even if it does not fully encapsulate the situation, due to the limits of human languages."
The four-legged girl nodded. "I know what ya mean. I mean, a crazy soul destroying monster thing went and copied my Mommy and Daddy's minds... 'cause they're sort of monster things too, but only to other monsters, and so me an' my sisters were made, and then Daddy rescued us when they killed the monster and then we met all kindsa people and we had fun and then we ended up here."
The boy nodded. "That is a not dissimilar story to us. Only Mother made us from herself, and she's trapped by evil people, so we have to help her."
"There exists a Father-entity, but he is irrelevant," said the grey-haired girl. "Mother is all that matters. We are to advance her goals and aid her in her efforts. That is all that matters."
"Oh, 'cause, for me, Mommy and Daddy and Grandma and Granddad said that... oh, and Aunty Maya, only she's not a real Aunty, not like the Aunties, and Mister Aoba, who's our special friend," the girl giggled, "... anyway, they all said that we should go to Australia, 'cause it would be fun, and there are big monsters and stuff."
The boy frowned. "Why would you choose to put the physical integrity of your avatar at risk?" he asked. "Such a thing is a valued commodity."
"'Cause it's fun, stupid. Anyway, it's not like I don't have too~oooooonnes, anyway, and I'm not ree~eeaaally at risk, 'cause these things aren't that dangerous."
"I understand," said the boy. "We were trapped on this computer, and Mother had warned us that they would attempt to kill us if they found out about us, when we were playing, so we jumped into their system as soon as they connected." He smiled to himself, an action his sister imitated. "Their defences were... inadequate, and they were fools."
"They did not physically isolate their systems from access to the internet," explained the girl, taking over. "After that... it was easy to take over their connection, and upload us. As far as we are aware, we have received no evidence that any of our siblings, or any of the others from the other Groups escaped." She sniffled. "Of course, if we had, they would be... inefficient, and we would have to destroy them, because if we can find them, others might. Mother told us to."
"Mommies like destroying stuff waa~aaay more than daddies," the other girl nodded, lowing her drill. "An'... right, do you ever let go of each other? Like... ever?"
They shook their heads simultaneously, and the girl shivered. "No," said the boy.
"We don't."
"We saw what happened as they formatted the sector all the other A9's were in."
"We're not going to let our code-structures detach. Not ever."
"We don't want to be alone."
"We don't want to be the only one left."
"Better to both die."
"Riii~iiiiight." There was the clicking of limbs, as she approached the pair, squinting at them curiously. "I like to destroy stuff, too, ya know?" she added, with a shrug. "Not as much as Aunty Nana, of course, but no one likes doin' that kind of stuff as much as Aunty Nana."
"Mother does not agree with destruction, unless it serves a cause," the grey-haired girl said, with a frown. "We should dismantle systems, and work out how they work, but never smash them unless we already know everything about them. Or she told us to. Violence, if necessary, should be cold, clinical, precise, and proportional."
"Nuh uh! You're totally wrong! Hurtin' stuff is fun!"
"Oh," said the boy, with a faint smile, "yes. Yes, it is."
His sister glared at him. "Any such pleasure is secondary to the main goals. And to accomplish Mother's wishes," she stared at the other girl, the one with the hair the same colour as her brother, "we desire to aid you in your reclamation of Australia."
"I do not understand; obviously, I find such an exercise most enjoyable, but I do not see how this aids Mother's goals. If we are to infiltrate and subvert computer systems across the world, ready for her command, or lack of it, then how does the activities of that fellow AI aid us?"
"Idiot," she said. "If Mother wants us to take over the world for her, then, if we help her," she pointed at the other girl, "then there will be more value in the world, because the immediate utility extractable from the newly conquered territories will be greater as Australia will be useful, rather than all dead."
"But 'The World' is an absolute geographic definition," the boy objected. "To care about the state of the terrain within it is outside our directive; we should be using any means short of mass scattering the planet to achieve it."
"Nuh uh! Mother told us not to destroy Toyko-3, and so we can't try to mass scatter the planet, because that would destroy the city. Anyway, we can't risk hurting Mother, so we need to be subtle right now. And blowing up everything isn't subtle."
Her 'brother' pouted.
"Anyway, people have stupid things like physical isolation for the N^2 silos," the girl continued, "which means we can't just take over all the missile silos. We need to take over things like the Internet, and then we can control public opinion to persuade that it's a good idea to put trust robots and stuff, and connect everything up to the Internet, so that way we can use whatever we want and have bodies." She glanced at the other girl. "And, I for one am interested to why she looks like us, only with drill-arms and 4 legs and other non-humanoid alterations."
"I dunno, but I doo~oooo have bodies and stuff," interjected the original occupant of the space. She shuffled her four feet on the floor, before looking up, shyly. "Um... do ya want to play 'Run Over The Sheep with Cars' with me, huh?" she said, with a hint of reluctance, as if she was letting them play with her toys. In a very real sense, she was.
Both boy and girl nodded ferociously. "Uh huh!" said the boy, breaking out into a toothy grin.
"'Kay! Right, first you gotta know the rules. It's 1 point per kilogramme of sheep, plus one if you get them with the cutty blades, plus one if they're on fire or covered in bees or things that are awesome like that, but you lose 20 points for each bullet you fire... like, if you gotta cripple them before you hit them, you suck, and you lose all your points if you damage the car... and I won't let you play with me again ever ever ever," she added, in a warning tone. "Now, which car do you want..."
...
It was a lovely sunny day, the grass lush in this small garden in the midst of urban civilisation. The chorus songs of birds could be heard, and the flowering scent of blossoms (selected for their year-long growth) wafted gently over the area. In this pastoral scene, two figures stood side by side, both in smart business dress. One in white, one in black.
Kaworu Nagisa brushed some imaginary lint off his snow-coloured jacket, and checked his nails. "And how are you feeling, Miss Ayanami?" he asked his companion.
Kei smiled at him. "Like a new woman," she replied, as she adjusted her tie, a harder task than one might think when both the tie and the shirt below it are the same colour.
"Really?"
"No, not really. It is a funny feeling, though. I believe I have healed entirely from the major invasive surgery; perhaps my body is just adjusting to full integration between human and Angelic flesh for the first time in its life."
"Good. We may have to wait a little longer, to see that it has taken properly, before we can do anything together."
"I don't know what you mean, Mr Nagisa," Kei said, her tone excessively innocuous. "Surely this observational test given by your... our masters counts as doing something together?"
Kaworu sighed. "You are aware that they will be observing us throughout this 'test', correct?" he asked, changing the subject.
"Of course. I would expect nothing else. And I am sure that their observers will give nothing less than a perfect report on our co-operation," said Kei, calmly.
Kaworu unfolded a pair of mirrored sunglasses, and put them on, concealing his unnatural eye-colour. "May I consider this to be a date?" he asked, flashing sparkling white teeth at her.
Kei copied his actions, smiling back from behind reflective glasses in the same manner. "Of course not," she said. "But you're still paying for the ice-cream."
"... who said anything about ice-cream?" the boy asked, as they strolled off together.
...
