Salvation
Chapter 6
By Nan00k
Ada figures out the key in rehabilitating the AIs, and then bureaucracy plays its part.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I have finally caught up to Seasons 9 and 10! I should reinforce the fact there are some minor discrepancies between the canon and this story, specifically the names of the AIs and Sigma's characterization. I am not changing those facts, sorry. I'll do my best to blend the canon into this story and to minimize the conflicting future plot points, but we have crossed over into an alternative universe at this point, especially once we get to the end of Salvation and start the sequel. Just…take everything at face value here, I guess.
Also, guys, just as a little note: If you want to keep up to date with my writing status for this story or others, I have an update twitter at nan00kwrites.
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Warnings: original characters, violence, foul language, mentions of torture, alternate-universe story line after season 8
Disclaimer: I do not own Halo (© Bungie) nor do I own Red vs. Blue (© Rooster Teeth Productions). The original characters in this were made up for the purpose of this story.
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It was amazing, how much sense it made, after thinking it over and over on the way down to the labs and rousing Okafor to get access to the AIs so late in the evening. It had bothered Livingston to no end how multi-faceted these creatures were, when in reality, they had been designed to be segments of a single personality, not multiple ones. The most troublesome of them—Omega, Gamma, Delta and Alpha—had given no answer to Livingston this entire time, but one conversation about a dead Freelancer agent had changed that.
The Alpha's explanation for being so well rounded was still elusive, but Ada had her theories now. The Alpha had been exposed since his creation to multiple humans, but had never been inside of an agent like the others had. What if his only true way to handle the absence his own personality was to mimic the ones he saw around him?
That could wait for another session, Ada resolved, leaving Iowa by the door. Tonight, she realized the focus had to remain on one of the AI, the most intriguing one.
It all made sense.
Sigma was a colorful sociopath, having been placed with one of Freelancers' deadliest sociopaths available.
Omega was violent because he had been placed with a notoriously violent agent.
Gamma's deceit was amplified with his contact with Agent Wyoming, a known con-man.
The weaker AIs? They hadn't been placed inside of their hosts for long, giving them no chance to become stronger.
Delta… Delta had been placed with York. And if Livingston's notes meant anything, York had been one of the only sane members of Freelancer. It was easy to see the damages Agents like Texas or Wyoming had given Omega and Gamma, but Delta… Delta was the exact opposite.
The little green figure flashed to life on the hologram desk. Livingston smiled, knowing it was a strained look.
"Good evening, Delta."
0000
Delta hadn't known what to expect when he was abruptly brought out of stasis. He had been in the middle of analyzing an algorithm that he had previously solved weeks ago, so he wasn't bothered. He was surprised to see Ada Livingston there in front of him at such an odd hour; his internal chronometer said it was nearly midnight.
"Good evening, Doctor," Delta said regardless, scanning the area curiously. It was only her. "I thought our sessions were over for today."
Livingston looked odd; her hair wasn't tied back like it usually was and her eyes were brighter than normal. Against her dark skin, they were almost like stars.
"I had a thought, earlier tonight, about our talk the other day, Delta," she said. She sounded out of breath. "I wanted to apologize for pushing the conversation last Wednesday. That was wrong of me."
Delta considered her words. That was what this was about? Humans had such odd minds. York would often dwell on his slights made days prior. It was illogical and unnecessary, but Delta had to assume now that it was normal for empathic humans. He recalled the culturally appropriate response to apologies.
"Apology accepted," Delta replied, tilting his head. "You are only doing your job."
Livingston's eyes shone even more. "And I would also like to apologize for continuing to push it now."
All at once, Delta's vague amusement faded.
Oh.
His reluctance to be involved in the conversation—yet again; why was she pushing this?—was clear. Livingston shook her head slowly.
"Delta…" She didn't have her tablet with her. This was just her talking. "Tell me about York."
"Why?"
"I want to know what you think of him." She interrupted him before he could cite the Freelancer's official records. "Your opinion. Not from a field report."
A harsh silence fell between them. Delta said nothing, because he had nothing to say. Livingston watched him anxiously.
"Delta," she coaxed. She looked sympathetic. Why?
The AI said nothing. He watched as the hurriedness left Livingston's body. She was staring back at him quietly; the quiet hiss of the hologram machine was the only sound. Because of that, the whole room felt so empty.
Delta braced himself when the psychologist in front of him took a deep breath.
"You cared for him," she stated, the words oddly… loud.
The darkness of the poorly lit lab closed in on his visual field. "I… do not know how to care."
Human emotions. Irrelevant.
"Delta…" She leaned closer, ignorant to his torment. "What did York mean to you?"
Everything.
Delta wished he could have just… disappeared. "I am unable to answer your inquiry."
"When York died… it says in Recovery One's report that you opted to stay with his shell, under the impression that you would die along with him." Livingston's eyes narrowed with emotion he couldn't identify. "You chose to die."
The immediate urge to deny that was overwhelming. "I did not want to go with any other Freelancer. I saw no point. I was stationed with Agent New York for the purpose of aiding him and him alone. We…"
There was a chance that Agent Texas would attract more attackers. It was the logical thing to stay out of the line of fire, to chose deactivation instead of allowing himself to fall into unwanted hands—it was his duty, his job—
There was a chance that he could have survived, that the protocols were just exaggerated. They were expensive; there was no reason for Freelancer to dump them—
There…was…
York.
Delta felt his processors skip several times over the files, York's face—full of pain, of fear, of death—caught in an eternal freeze frame, no matter how many times he tried to purge it.
York was going to die. Delta had failed him and it was only right that they—that they went—
Together.
Delta had no body to swim with, but he felt like he were drowning, based on human descriptors and the sensations he was cognizant of. There was no escape from the memories, which all smashed against his mental barriers, begging his attention. He couldn't bare it—
"We were… partners," he said.
After the team fell apart—after CT, after Carolina fell under the combination of Tau and Lambda, after Sigma had turned them all upon the only allies they had under the Director's terrorization, after Freelancer had let their once stable team tear each other to pieces, after Freelancer shut down the AI project and took all of his siblings away from him—
York…was all he had left.
After everything, Delta was alone. Except for York.
Except for York.
"You saw him as a friend," Livingston said, eyes glistening.
"I am an AI, Dr. Livingston," Delta replied, forcing himself to speak. He did not—did not understand why she was saying these things—or why it was doing things to him. "I do not have friends."
"I'm your friend," Livingston replied, without giving him a chance to contemplate that declaration. "And so was Agent York. He probably cared as much about you as you did him."
Delta knew he must have flickered; his systems felt destabilized. "I do not have the capacity to care, Dr. Livingston. I am a computer."
AIs, machines—it didn't matter. He didn't have the ability to feel pain, or to do inane human things like missing people who had once been there—
Like York had been always there.
"You cared enough to choose to die with him. Delta, that means something," Livingston insisted, desperate. "Something far more than you're giving it credit."
Delta faltered. "What does it mean, then, doctor? I am unable to understand what you are insinuating."
Livingston frowned. "You cared for him. You were friends. You grieved his death. Your primary objective would have been to let Agent Texas retrieve your AI capsule and be sent along to another Freelancer or Command," she said. "You didn't. You… want to stay with the one person you had worked with your entire existence."
"I am an artificial—"
The human made a sharp gesture. "Delta! Don't you get it?" she exclaimed, emotional for reasons Delta could not compute. "Why? Why did you do that? Why did you choose to die?"
"I did not die," Delta tried to say. He could not understand why her words were affecting him. Why was he being affected?
"You thought you were going to, so the meaning is the same." She shook her head, eyes sad. "Why? Why did you go against your programming?"
All at once, everything stopped. Delta froze on the platform as he struggled to answer her insane, illogical questions
"I…"
I did not want him to go alone.
We were partners. We are.
I did not want to be alone.
"I do not… know." Delta tried to collect himself. Why did he have to do that? He wasn't emotionally compromised; he had no emotions. "I am logic. I am an AI. I do not have feelings or attachments." He hesitated. "But I do not know why I did what I did."
Please… I do not want to be alone.
York hadn't listened, in the end.
Delta shivered inside his own coding. Why did that matter?
The human in front of him—the human who refused to let him ignore such things—shifted.
"Who else among you were paired with a Freelancer?" she asked suddenly.
"What?" Delta was startled by the abrupt change in questions, but he was grateful for it. "You know which one of us had human partners."
Livingston nodded stiffly. "I know Omega was paired with Agent Texas for some time and then he apparently jumped hosts often. Gamma was paired with Agent Wyoming, correct?"
"Yes," Delta replied, now very unsure of where she was headed with this. "Sigma was assigned to Agent Maine after Agent Carolina bequeathed her to Maine. Agent Carolina was then implanted with Lambda and Tau, but that failed immediately. Beta was with Georgia. Theta was paired with North Dakota, while his twin South did not receive any. Epsilon… he went with Agent Washington. Not for very long."
He did not know why she asked, or why she was looking like she had suddenly been struck with some sort of revelation. Delta was still reeling from their prior conversation.
Livingston quietly placed her hands on her knees, looking awed. "…I need to ask them about their human partners," she said, about his siblings. "I… I think I may be onto something here."
Delta almost dreaded more information about her idea; she was dangerous when she was like this, he rationalized. "What, may I ask?"
Fixing him with a firm look, Ada seemed to be confident about her unknown conclusion. "Half of my co-workers believe that you AIs ethically can't be considered sentient. You're parts of a whole mind. You're fragments," she said. She shook her head. "But I've never understood why some of you were so…so…developed. Why you had feelings."
"I do not," Delta automatically replied, sharper than he normally would have spoken.
That made Livingston pause…and then smile. "Ha… you might be blind to your own self then, Delta," she said, which was bizarrely frustrating. "I believe the interference of a Freelancer's mind may have… altered you. In a good way. While it was no substitute for the Alpha, perhaps these Freelancers gave you a stable hold. It gave you a chance to try to cope with your missing halves. Omega and Gamma, unfortunately, were paired with humans similar to themselves, like the violent Agent Texas and the conniving Agent Wyoming.
"You… you got lucky," she said, eyes again bright. "You were paired with an opposite of yourself. York was apparently kind and expressive. You had never witnessed kindness before him, had you?"
Her theory…was illogical. He did not have emotions. He did not. He had not been designed to have them, due to his nature as a fragment of a whole Smart AI. It was ridiculous to suggest that simply being implanted into a human mind would have altered that.
It was…impossible.
"You're logic, Delta, but you're also part York now. You have his mind with you still. That is the true result of the implantations, isn't it?" Livingston asked, smiling. "You learned to adapt what parts of you that you were missing."
Delta struggled to voice his thoughts. They were incoherent, mostly. "…Your theory doesn't have any ground to stand upon, Dr. Livingston," he said.
Livingston leaned closer, stubbornly insistent. "You miss him." As if that were evidence of something.
He wanted to tell her it wasn't true. It wasn't. It couldn't be.
"I…" Delta's processors skipped again. "Don't know."
He didn't. He just…didn't understand.
What was missing someone? He didn't know what it was supposed to feel like, so how could he confirm that he did? It did not compute.
"You do, Delta. I know you do. You miss him because you grew to care for him," Livingston told him, gentle voice so dangerous. "You grew to care for him because he became a part of you. You loved him because he loved you. That doesn't go away, not for humans."
"I… am not human," he said, knowing it sounded pathetic.
That's what Sigma had wanted, what the Meta had wanted. They wanted to become human.
Delta knew nothing of humanity, except that it was not what he wanted to be. Not when being human meant so much tragedy.
The woman before him did not share his turmoil. "We'll see, Delta," she said, almost as if she were making him a promise. "You keep losing control over the rare emotions you are exhibiting, the emotions you inherited from York. I believe that is because you have not been inside a stable mind for quite some time. If my theory is correct, Delta, I believe that the best possible remedy for you and your siblings is the exact thing that you were designed for: implantation."
Calculations flared in his processors, thankfully distracting him from the discontent he was suffering from. There were few ways to describe how utterly insane that suggestion was.
"That is dangerous," he warned, already calculating the probability of complete disaster, specifically concerning Sigma and Omega—
"With the correct humans. Humans who are opposite to your natures, not the same," Livingston replied, not disheartened. She didn't understand. "Not Freelancers, not the military. I'll have to run it by the Chairman, but… it might help you all. A lot."
How could she not see the danger in her suggestion? Omega… Sigma… they would have no problem in killing her, or anyone else. It was insane.
Delta fought the urge to—run? He wasn't sure. Memory files of York, of past sessions with Ada, and his siblings all ran in subroutines, distracting him. He felt out of control. That feeling was lessening thankfully, especially now that Ada seemed intent on leaving.
Standing, Livingston gave her patient a look Delta couldn't identify. "Delta…" She steadied her breathing and seemed to grow even more confident. "I'm going to help you. I promise you that."
"I…" He wanted this to stop. He didn't want to be out of control. "Hope so."
"Emotions aren't bad. Emotions are good," she told him. "They mean that you've connected to someone, or someplace, and it matters to you. Hasn't anything ever mattered to you?"
Survival.
York.
Being… with someone. To not… be alone.
"Yes," he replied quietly. Yes, things had mattered to him before. He could not deny it.
He couldn't rationalize the whys…but he could not deny reality. Not to this human.
"Then…" Livingston smiled, still trying so very hard. "We can work on that."
Delta hesitated. "…I don't know." What was there to work on? How could he be so out of control over his own senses, his own coding?
How had he not realized this about himself?
About York?
"We can take baby steps," Livingston promised. "Will you at least do that for me?"
Maybe it was her eyes. Or her quiet smile. Maybe it was because her kindness reminded him of the only other kindness he had ever received in his short, ill-made existence.
Whatever it was…
"Yes, Ada," Delta said, meaning it despite the tremors inside him. "I can do that."
He could at least… try.
0000
The Next Morning
"The AIs are improving."
"As your report has noted," the Chairman replied through the monitor on the wall. "Define improving."
Livingston held her ground before him, hands firmly clasped behind her back .She felt alive with determination; she knew where she stood in this conversation.
"While they, quite like Freelancer and the UNSC, lack the definite knowledge of Epsilon's location, the AIs have responded with immense positivity to the Alpha's appearance among them," she said, elaborating their collective reports. "All psychologists on the project have reported a thirty percent increase of attentiveness and reciprocating to conversation and therapy. Our tech specialists claim they have never seen better readings from the AIs' data reports."
"Hmm."
"More so, sir," Livingston continued. She eyed the tablet just barely visible in front of the seated man, where her report must have been blaring up at him. "My solution proposal."
The Chairman's frown increased a fraction. "…Yes. That."
It had been subjected to a large amount of opposition from her colleagues. She hadn't even had time to run it by Iowa, even though he probably shouldn't have been included in the conversations anyway. It was a rough plan. Illogical by Delta's standards. But it was a plan.
For the first time in over seven months, they had an honest-to-God plan.
"Implantation was the root of the problem concerning the AIs, was it not?" the Chairman asked, glancing at her, suspicious.
"Yes," Ada agreed. "However, in control situations, this may be the only way to reconstruct their programing, retaining the use of ten AIs instead of only having one, or none at all."
"…How?"
Livingston cleared her throat. "Through my observations of the strongest AIs—specifically Omega, Sigma, Delta and Gamma—I've concluded that their previous long-term implantations in their Freelancer partners gave them the chance to adapt to the human mind." Her colleagues supported this only after a long deliberation and analysis of the patients' histories. "They subconsciously began to mend the parts of their psyches that had been missing due to their fragmentation."
"And you think that if they are re-implanted, it will help rehabilitating them?" the Chairman asked, suspicious.
"Yes," she replied, standing her ground firmly. "I believe that if given a chance to fully link with a human mind that is properly chosen for them—which was not the case for several of the Freelancer soldiers—the AIs will begin to self-mend. They will be able to become true assets to the UNSC, which they aren't right now."
It felt harsh to equate the AIs yet again to material worth, but with this particular audience, she had no choice. Her logic was sound; she didn't need Delta's opinion to prove it.
This plan gave the UNSC an outline, at long last, for how to fix their property—and then be able to salvage even better forms of it. If her theory stood up, that meant the AIs would be able to become whole AIs. Perhaps not "Smart," but they would be functional. That included the rogue ones, such as Omega and Sigma.
Even if they were not able to acquire Epsilon, reintegration had limited them to one AI. This plan gave them potentially ten. The UNSC could not argue with that increase of wealth.
One the screen, the Chairman shifted and looked up from her report. His eyes were narrowed.
"This… is most likely the most illogical and dangerous news we have gotten thus far in this project," he said. He sounded reluctant when he added, "It is also the most promising."
Livingston did her best not to grin. "My thoughts exactly, sir."
He seemed to be weighing the odds internally, but there was only one possible outcome at this point. "We will not do implantations until the psychological survey commits to one—and only one—AI for testing implantation first," he said, almost warning her. "If that succeeds, we will begin to map out the plans for the more dangerous ones."
"This will be a long-term project, but my colleagues and I are highly optimistic, sir," Livingston told him, butterflies in her gut. "We…may actually have a plan for actually fixing what went wrong."
It might not work for all of them, but without Epsilon… this was their only hope for the remaining fragments. Delta and Church—who had been alone for a long time but still with other humans—were their best evidence in support of this. Livingston had faith she could at least save most of the AIs this way. It was their only shot now.
"A conclusion, at long last," the Chairman concluded in a heavy sigh. His frown turned into a wry smile. "I hope this does not end in disappointment, Livingston. I quite like you."
That was almost ominous. Livingston tried to keep positive. "…Thank you, sir."
"You have six weeks until the first Committee inspection," the Chairman warned her, reminding her of the upcoming group evaluation the Committee had demanded; the AIs would be put on full display then. "Perhaps at that point we can consider the first implantation, should the AIs jointly pass the on-site psychological interviews."
"Absolutely, sir." Livingston smiled. "I won't let you down."
Now… she just had to make sure that in six weeks, her patients passed the Committee's approval.
I won't let you down either, guys.
That was a promise she had every intention of keeping.
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End Chapter 6.
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Next, Iowa makes a rather poignant faux pas, and then O'Malley teaches Ada about secrets.
