Chapter 28
"Bullshit!" or its khelish equivalent, was the first word that came to Ysa's mind and thus left her lips.
"Sal'Kezah vas Benyat died on Rannoch, killed by geth like you, almost three hundred years ago! How do you know his name?" she spat at the machine.
The geth placed its hands on its hips, "Once again, I am not a geth! I am a quarian! I remember who I am! But, how do you know my name? Three hundred years? That's got to be a sick joke!"
She didn't reply. She had no idea what to think or say. The machine had a point, though. If it were a normal geth, it certainly would have killed them already. It really didn't appear hostile and helping her boyfriend was Ysa's only concern at that moment. She slowly moved along the wall, keeping her distance to the geth. She had to step across the bed to reach Colin, who sat in the door frame, holding his head. She knelt down by his side and examined the wound on his forehead.
"Colin, your head! You need treatment! You could get an infection!"
"It's okay. I'll survive. Looks worse than it is, I think." he said quietly.
Ysa looked at the geth again, "So you, whatever you are, you really have no intention to kill us?"
"Of course not! I'm not really sure what I am, but I can assure you that I won't harm you!" it replied and held up its hands.
"Good, then you'll excuse me, I need to treat his wound. Colin, do you have a medkit here, somewhere?"
"Yeah, in the bathroom cabinet."
"Okay, come on!"
She put her arm around him, helped him to get up and supported him to walk down the stairs, leaving the confused synthetic behind. In the bathroom she made him sit down on the toilet and fetched the medkit from the cabinet.
"Okay, disinfectant, medi-gel, plasters... Stay still!" she said and started to clean the wound.
"Ouch!" he gasped.
"Oh sorry, that crazy geth hit you badly..."
"I think it didn't mean to, it just sprang to life, jolted up and hit me with its head."
"What do you mean 'sprang to life'?" she asked and applied the medi-gel.
"I did this! I activated it. It's all my fault, I'm so sorry!" he lamented.
"I don't understand and I don't think I want to. This is not the right time for silly jokes! You're dazed, maybe you have a brain concussion..."
"I'm not joking. I'm sorry! I tried to tell you before!"
She put a large adhesive plaster on the wound and looked at him with narrowing eyes.
"What? What did you try to tell me?"
"The geth! It was here all the time, in the basement. That's what I tried to tell you! My father once found it somewhere in the Hades Nexus cluster, near Asteria. That's many years ago, I was a little boy back then. We didn't know what a geth is! For some reason my dad thought it were an ancient salarian mech. But he never got it to work, its memory core was completely fried. I totally forgot about the thing, we had it just in the storage with the other salvaged parts for so many years... But then I saw the geth on Nova Macedonia. I felt they looked familiar, but I couldn't really believe it's the same. Only after returning here I found out what it was. I just couldn't tell you, I didn't want to scare you! I'm so sorry!"
Ysa unmovingly listened to his explanation. Everything was just crashing down on her and she couldn't take in that much more.
"What have you done, Colin?" she asked in a lowering voice.
"Your device, Neria's device! I needed some compatible hardware to get it to run. I was certain that it wasn't a geth memory core! I mean, from what I've read, I knew that geth are basically just a lot of VI programs networked together. I've seen a lot of alien VI programs, but this code didn't look anything like that! I thought, maybe it's just something like a strangely encoded holographic recording. I wanted to use the geth hardware to decode it. The connectors fit perfectly. I thought I could cut the power anytime if it turned bad. I didn't expect it to immediately knock me down like that. I'm so stupid!"
"You put Neria's device into a geth body and switched it on? That's just... the geth is right, this has to be a sick joke! I don't believe it! What in the homeworld's name were you thinking? You had a geth down there all the time and didn't bother to tell me? I... I thought we're friends! I thought I could trust you! Keelah, what are you doing to me, you idiot!? Damn right you are stupid! You jerk! You bosh'tet!" she yelled at him, anger and fury boiling up in her.
"I tried to tell you! But you wouldn't listen!"
"Yeah, you tried to tell me. Today. A little late, don't you think?" she hissed.
"Ah, hello? Sorry if I'm interrupting your little private conversation, but I'm still here and I have some questions." the geth spoke up in the bathroom door frame behind them.
Ysa let out a high-pitched scream and spun around, "Aaah! Damn you! You thing! You scared me enough! If you didn't change your mind about not killing us, then go to the living room, sit down and wait while I'm scolding my stupid boyfriend, dammit!" she clamoured.
"Oh well... all right." it replied taken aback and turned around.
Ysa turned to Colin again, "So, you were afraid to tell me there's a geth down there, but you had no problem whatsoever activating it? And you call me stupid for blowing myself out of an airlock?!"
"I thought it's the only way to get your device to work. I knew how much it meant to you. I did this for you! I'm so sorry! Please, please forgive me!" he pleaded.
Ysa breathed heavily. She moved her hand up to her visor and started slowly knocking on it with her knuckle. Then she shook her head and looked at him.
"Listen, this... all of this, this whole crazy day, it's more than I can take! It's simply too much for me. I feel like you betrayed me! I just can't deal with this now! I'll decide later what to think about you. But now, we must find out what that thing you've just activated really is!"
"Yes, you're right." he said quietly with a pained expression on his face.
Ysa sighed and stroked his shoulder, "Oh damn, Colin. Tell me if you start to feel dizzy or the headache gets worse, okay? Maybe you need to see a doctor."
"I'm okay. Don't worry."
He stood up and stepped past her into the living room. She groaned quietly and followed him.
The geth indeed sat on the sofa, waiting for them. Colin sat down in the chair opposite to it, while Ysa preferred to stand beside his chair, suspiciously eyeing the geth unit. She was the one to speak up.
"So you want to talk? Okay, let's talk. But you will answer our questions first. You claim to be the quarian Sal'Kezah vas Benyat, while you are obviously not. Do you have an explanation for that?"
The geth shifted around a little on the sofa in an almost nervous manner. Its weight let it sink deep into the cushion.
"I... I think I know what I am. My memory is coming back. Dr. Xen prepared me for a confusing experience when being... activated. But I didn't expect it to be this confusing. For sure I didn't expect finding myself in a geth platform! The engineers and Dr. Xen told me I'd be activated to appear as a hologram, like the others. I am an ancestor VI. The last thing I remember is entering the interface pod they'd use to create a digital image of my brain."
"Keelah. Ancestor..?" Ysa whispered.
"A VI? You rather sound like an AI to me!" Colin burst out.
"Well, semantics. This is a simulation of my... of Sal'Kezah's brain, so I'm technically not an artificial intelligence. But you're right, Dr. Xen told me that this is a new generation of virtual personalities, that I would be self-aware, in contrast to the previous versions. I can tell you, they didn't exaggerate. I really feel like I'm still a person! I'll need some time to accept that I'm not anymore. But they told me I had to go through this."
"Unbelievable! An Ancestor VI..." Ysa gasped.
Colin looked up to her, "Is that possible? Did your people do such stuff?"
"Yes they did. I learned about it in history lessons. But it always sounded almost mythical to us. I can't believe it! You, Sal'Kezah, tell me, who is your mate?"
"My mate?"
"Yes, your bondmate, your fiancée." Ysa inquired.
"She... she is an asari, her name is Neria Tenakis."
"Oh damn. Neria. Where did you meet her for the first time?"
"The first time we met on a scientific congress on Palaven, six standard years ago. Do you know her? Where is she? I need to get to her!"
Ysa ignored the request, "Where did you kiss her for the first time?" she continued her interrogration.
"What? Why?"
"Answer my question!"
"On Thessia, in the city of Okana. She invited me to her home..."
"Keelah, that's right. Neria told me that. Only Sal'Kezah could know it. It's really true. You are an Ancestor!" Ysa gasped out and let herself fall into the chair beside Colin's.
The Sal'Kezah-geth leaned forward, "So you know Neria! Where is she?"
Ysa sighed, "She was my boss. And my friend. She died after a pirate attack, about two standard weeks ago."
"Dead? Just two weeks ago? No, no... Neria. Not her... it can't be!" Sal uttered and put his hands on his metallic head.
"I was there, when she got shot just next to me. I'm sorry, really." she said in a quiet voice.
Sal looked up at her again. The optical aperture of his gleaming eye twitched.
"I need answers, now! What was that about three hundred years?"
Ysa nodded, "The real Sal'Kezah, your... template died in the geth war, roughly three hundred galactic standard years ago. Now it's the year 2935 of the quarian calendar."
"By the goddess! How can that be? So much time. What happened? The war, how did it end?"
Ysa snorted mirthlessly, "We lost. We got annihilated. Well, almost."
"Go on. Tell me everything." Sal said blankly.
Ysa sighed and leaned back. Sal'Kezah had to take in a lot, for sure. She told him everything she remembered from the history lessons. How the geth overran the quarian defence. The escape of the last 17 million surviving quarians. Their exile aboard the migrant fleet. The degeneration of their immune systems. The geth platform that was Sal silently listened to her talk, without moving. He took it in surprisingly well.
"I'm glad I don't have a digestive tract anymore. I think I would have to disgorge right now." Sal uttered, shock and despair in his voice.
"I can guess. I'm sorry I don't have any better news for you." Ysa said compassionately.
"I can't believe all this!"
Ysa pointed across the room, "There's an extranet terminal over there. Go check the galactic encyclopedia if you don't believe me. It's all there."
"I will do that, later. But I believe you. Nobody could make that stuff up. It's just strange, I don't feel a thing. I know what I should feel like, but I just don't..."
"You're not an organic any more." Colin remarked.
Sal looked at him as if he just noticed him for the first time.
"Now, how do you fit into this story? What species are you anyway?"
"I'm a human. You can't know us. We're able of interstellar flight for just about thirty years. This is a human colony. I'm a freighter pilot and I met Ysa after the pirate attack on Thimaya."
"And how did I end up in a geth platform?" he looked back and forth between Colin and Ysa.
"Neria left that device for me. Your memory core. But she couldn't tell me what it was before she died. Colin here found out that it's compatible with the geth hardware, so he built it in and activated you, without telling me a single friggin word about it!" Ysa chided with an angry sideglance at Colin, who looked down in embarrassment.
"I see. Oh Neria! All those years, centuries! Why did she never... Wait a moment, wait a moment." Sal said and his synthetic body stiffened.
"What's up?" Ysa asked, puzzled.
"I just got a message. What is this? Basic system runtime. Energy management? It says that the energy cell is nearly..."
The geth platform suddenly fell silent. Its flashlight eye started to flicker and became dark.
"Sal..? Sal! Colin! What just happened?" Ysa called out and got up with a start.
Colin scratched his head, "Oh damn. I should have known. I guess the energy cell is depleted. Who knows how old that thing is? Eezo cells can last very, very long, but someday they wear out, too."
"Can you fix that? Will he be okay?" she asked with an exasperated voice.
"Um, sure, I think so. His memory is non-volatile, so he won't even notice that he was out. I have to check for the right voltage, but I think I can fit a LOKI mech's energy cell in it. But, would you really want that?"
"Yes of course! Damn, Colin! He's an Ancestor! A real Ancestor! Do you know what that means to my people? And we activated him, this is our responsibility. If he needs a new energy cell, we must give it to him! We owe him that." she lectured him with her hands on her hips.
"Okay, I'll see what I can do." he replied and headed towards the basement trapdoor to fetch his tools, when suddenly a chime sounded up in the room.
"What was that?" Ysa asked confused.
"The door bell."
Colin moved to the front window, glancing out to get a glimpse of their visitor.
"It's Yanina! Oh crap. Sometimes she goes for a walk out here and comes around for a visit."
"Oh Keelah... Okay, you try to get Sal back into the basement, or hide him somewhere. I'll go out to talk to her, okay?"
"Yeah, that'll be better."
