We have come to the end. Thanks for joining me.

Next week I will publish an epilogue of my thoughts on the story, a little Q&A, and a deleted scene. For now, enjoy this- the final chapter of Abyssal.

Paladin grimaced. Chess was Goddess' game, not his. How she'd roped him in to this...

"So, you've read the charter, then?" he said, stalling for time.

"I've read it," she replied, though her eyes never left the board.

"And what did you think?" he asked.

"I think he took Napoleon's advice."

"What do you mean?"

"About how constitutions ought to be short and vague. That's not really a criticism. He was pressed for time- it had to be pushed out quickly, before chaos became endemic."

Paladin made a diffident gesture. "So?"

"It's a good piece of paper, as far as pieces of paper go."

"Given how many essays you grade..."

"Don't remind me. It is your move, you know."

He knew. He hadn't been able to weasel out, then. It wasn't like there was any good move available to him. His king was pinned behind a pawn, which in turn was under serious threat. Goddess had him completely on the defensive.

The brutal thing about chess, Paladin reflected, was that you could never blame the dice. It was your fault when you lost- that was inescapable. And you could usually see it coming well in advance. An opponent who was beating you did it by taking away your choices, one by one, until you could only do what they wanted.

If the opponent had sufficient foresight and skill, that is.

"So?" he said, trying to stall one more time. He didn't think that looking at the board for any longer would give him an out, but at least it put off the kill shot. "It's short and vague. Are you behind it?"

"Sure, I can say I'm behind it," she replied. "Frankly, it would have taken an awful piece of work for me not to want to endorse it, and he's too careful for that."

"He?"

"X."

"Oh."

"But here's the thing about short and vague constitutions," she said, and her eyelids partially closed in thought. "They grant a lot of flexibility, but they also demand that any gaps be filled by personal efforts. I know X will try- level of effort isn't the question."

"Then what is?"

"Do you trust a government that's based on someone's personality?"

Somehow, that question was even more uncomfortable than Paladin's impending loss in the game. Goddess didn't stop there, though. "That's why I don't put much stock in the charter. We've seen what he says. Now it's time to see what he does, because that's what will really matter."

Paladin had started the conversation to distract from the chess. Now he turned back to chess to stop the conversation. Gritting his teeth, he advanced one of his rooks up the board to support his embattled pawn.

Almost as soon as his hand was off the rook, Goddess' hand whipped out. Her queen swept down the board into Paladin's back rank. "Checkmate," she said.

Paladin looked hopelessly at the board. His hand kept starting to move, as if to grasp a piece that might save him, only to retreat with the gesture incomplete each time. He sighed. "Damn it," he said, and toppled his king.

"Is this what you wanted?"

The question could have been seen as an open one, except that X was clearly looking at the marker. It was surprisingly bare. It was large, yes, in its own section of the cemetery behind a gate that X had left open. Large, but unadorned. Perhaps the man just hadn't had quotes or memes of his own that lent themselves easily to a grave marker. Maybe they'd had trouble finding family to give quotes for him. Maybe they'd presumed that someone as important as Dr. Light needed no explication; his work said everything. Those people would have been surprised at the level of tech damage World War III had done.

Whichever it was, the marker was plain. Two smaller markers rested nearby. One read: "Rock Light, beloved son and brother. He was the mega of men." The other read, "Roll Light, beloved daughter and sister. Her soul will live on."

That one had made X almost smirk when he had arrived. Now he had eyes only for the largest marker.

"Is this what you wanted?" he asked again. "For me to become anything? Well, the danger with that is, if I can choose what I become, I can choose to become anyone. Even someone who makes threats, someone who kills, someone who... who can look at people like they're cogs in a machine. Someone who can predict what people will do, and take away their wills that way, harness them..."

He shivered. "I'm scared, father. I'm scared of what I could be. I've done some bad things. I could do worse things. Why would you do this? You made me strong- so very strong- and then let me loose. These things I've done... I'm not proud of them. You wouldn't be proud of them, either. They were all I could think to do at the time. But if that's really all I could do..."

He laughed mirthlessly. "Listen to me. I'm rambling. Unfocused. I know you have the time, but still."

He shook his unhelmeted head. "I barely know who I am anymore. I don't know what I'm not willing to do... or, worse, what I am willing to do. I could become anything, and now I've gotten a taste of what that really means.

"When I spoke with Sigma, everything I said to him was about what was best for reploids. Humans were just an object that could help or harm reploid survival. Even as I reminded him that races aren't monoliths, I used that language to have the conversation. It was so easy. So natural. Almost... almost like I believed it, too, on some level. I don't think I believe, I don't want to think I believe it. I say that I want to protect reploids, my children, but I killed Vile. And Sigma..."

He huffed. "The command crew said that Serges killed Sigma. I know better. I know the truth. And... I was willing to swallow the truth and let them believe a lie. I've tried and tried to rationalize it, but that just makes me feel worse. I could rationalize anything, if I tried. Knowing that doesn't help."

He closed his eyes. "It makes me sick to my stomach to think that Luke might have been right about something, but I don't see a way around it." He inhaled, puffed his chest up. "It's all strategy, isn't it? Altruism is a strategy. Cooperation and cooption are strategies. Am I doing them, am I acting this way, because it's right, or because that's how I can win? How could you tell the difference? How could anyone? I would use the same rhetoric either way. I want to say that I'm different from Luke because we spoke and acted differently, but that was before I went to Volcania."

He looked at his hands as if he expected to see something there. "MAD existed. Mutually assured destruction- diplomacy as suicide pact. Countries decided to guard themselves by being willing to destroy the planet. They staked their freedom to their willingness to incinerate millions of people. And I... I endorsed that logic. I embraced it, I duplicated it. And that's awful. What sense does it make? You have to be willing to follow through on a threat or you can't convince someone to abide by it. But if the threat doesn't hold, it does no one any good to follow through on it. Hitting back is pointless.

"If Volcania had bombed Abel City, then by my threats I would have been obliged to destroy that airbase. But that would have been absurd. It wouldn't have un-bombed Abel City. It wouldn't have brought anyone back. And it would have killed a lot of people who had no involvement with the attack. It would have meant... doing a lot of things I would remember, and regret, for life. Things that would have made me hate myself.

"But I had to be willing to do it, all the same. I had to be able to say I would. An empty threat is the worst. So if I made that threat- if I made that threat- then I must have been willing to do it."

X dropped his hands and tore his gaze away from them, as if he couldn't bear to see them. "Vile called me a mass murderer by proxy. He hadn't seen anything yet. I was about to become a massacre machine, for no better reason than because I said I would. He at least had the excuse of being damaged. I... I would have known exactly what I was doing.

"But worst of all... I surrendered my choice on what sort of person I would become. That's terrifying."

His gaze settled on the large grave marker. His eyes ran over the letters, one by one. "If you built me for any reason, it was so I could think, feel, and make my own decisions. At this point, I've lived long enough to wonder if that's even possible. I told Sigma that we can only make the choices available to us. We can only make the choices the world allows us to make. Now I know it's even worse than that. Sometimes the world makes the choices for us.

"I gave Volcania the ability to change who I was. The sort of person I would become. If I was supposed to be my own person- if my choice had been to be a good person- how could I let that happen? How could I consent to that?"

His gaze strayed to the lesser markers. Rock's, and Roll's. As he looked, his eyes widened. "Love changed you, didn't it?" he whispered. "Your caring for people, for family... they say you built robot masters to better the lives of humans. That's not why you built me, though. You didn't build me for a purpose. You built me so that I could choose the purpose I wished, even if that meant fighting humans, fighting what you had built with robot masters. Once you did that, your choice was gone. Your control was gone. You surrendered your choice and gave it to me. Love changed you. Like it's changed me, but in a different way."

He clenched his hand over his chest. "If I had razed that airbase, it wouldn't really have been because of Volcania. It would have been because I chose to protect Abel City, and I would do what I needed to do, because that's what I considered important." He laughed. "Isn't that exactly what Sigma was saying? That there were more important things than being a good person? That's why he was willing to murder a comatose ally. He felt, somehow, that that would help him protect all reploids. What was one man's life next to that? Zeroth Law. The needs of the many."

He sighed. "He and I had different apertures. Different scopes. He wanted to protect all reploids. I wanted to protect everyone in Abel City. Was that the only difference between us? Was it really just a matter of degree? If that's all I'm capable of- it's so... tribal. It's still so small. My city, not yours. My people, not yours. Yours aren't mine, yours don't matter."

He shook his head. "Is it possible for me to love everyone like they're my family and still be a good person? Is it possible to love one person and still be a good person? Because once you love, your will is no longer wholly your own."

The corner of his mouth ticked up. "Why did you give me the ability to love, I wonder? If I was supposed to always be free, why let me enslave myself like that?"

The humor faded. "But I can't blame you for doing it. Because I did the same."

He went still. Without his words, silence settled over the area. There wasn't enough of a breeze to stir or rattle anything. There wasn't even dust settling around him.

"I'm scared," he whispered. "So very scared. I don't know what I'll be from now on. I don't know how this impure world will shape me. I don't know how to get other people to do the best thing when I don't even know what that is any more. The only thing I know to do is to get help. Build yet another dependency."

He half-turned. "What do you think, Zero?"

Zero started. He'd been happy enough to let X ramble on about X things, but he hadn't expected there to be a quiz at the end. Mild panic came over him. "Uh..."

"How long have you been here?"

That took Zero even further aback. "The whole time," he said. "You had to know that."

"My helmet's off," X said.

Was that more than an observation? Zero wondered. Or was it supposed to suggest something to Zero? There was no way X hadn't known Zero was there. His situational awareness was better than that. It had to be. So what was X actually saying? Talking with X was always so hard.

"How much did you hear?" X spoke when Zero did not.

"All of it," Zero replied. When X brightened he hastened to add, "I didn't understand most of it."

X took this in stride. "I was talking about... if it's possible to do good things, or if the best I can do is as few bad things as possible. I was worrying if loving my family meant I would become a bad person."

That was hard for Zero. "You are a good person, though," he objected. "That's obvious."

"Is it?"

Zero shifted. He didn't know a good way to explain it, especially since the concepts were so new to him. He couldn't even frame this as an attack and enlist tactical's help. "When I first knew you, being a good person seemed easy. It looked as easy as..." he paused; metaphor was hard, "...easy as swinging a saber, or firing a buster. Now, I've watched you for a while. It's not easy at all. When I tried it, well, for me it's almost impossible."

"You're doing well," X said graciously. "You're trying your best. That alone is worlds better than some."

"I could say the same about you," Zero replied. "It's hard. Even you needed some help earlier."

"I'm glad you helped when you did. I don't want to think about what might have happened..."

When he didn't finish, Zero used the gap to continue. "Because it's hard, I can see that you're still fighting. You're trying to find the best way. If it were too easy... that would make me worry more."

X smiled. "I'm glad to hear you say those words, Zero. Because I need more than that."

Ah! Zero knew what was coming next. Feeling no small pride, he said, "You need a friend."

"Well, yes, that too," X allowed, surprising Zero with the weakness of the acknowledgement. "But I need even more than that. I need a praetor."

Zero wondered if he'd ever stop discovering words he didn't know. With his memory, probably never. "What's that?"

"In ancient Rome, the legions sent their very best back to the capitol. There they formed the Praetorian Guard, the elite bodyguard of the emperor."

That? That wasn't hard, that was trivial. That was wonderful. Zero had thought he'd have to ask for that.

But X wasn't done. "That was only half of their purpose, though."

Uh oh.

"The Praetorian Guard was loyal, not to the emperors, but to the empire. If they ever had to choose between empire and emperor, they sided with the empire. If there was ever an emperor who hurt the empire, they would side with the empire."

"No," Zero said, trying to ward this off.

X would not be stopped. "The Praetorian Guard deposed or assassinated..."

"NO, X!"

Zero hadn't expected himself to be shouting, but there it was. Not that it seemed to affect X. He was standing there, unblinking, seemingly undisturbed by the interruption. Zero couldn't face him. His eyes dropped. X spoke again. "I'm sorry for asking this of you, Zero. We're friends. I don't want to die, and you don't want to kill me. I'm making you do something hard."

Zero felt himself rising to that. "Hard? Hard? That's not it at all! It would be too easy. Even now, right now, a part of my truly wishes to kill you. You are threat value maximal to me. You always were. And now I have evidence that you deserve that rating. I've seen it. It's taken all my mental effort to make you not a target. I've had to... to change how I work, reforge how I think, because our relationship isn't the sort of thing I was ever supposed to have. If you tell me... if you make yourself my target..."

"That's part of what I need, though," X said, apologetically but uncompromisingly. "I need that part of you."

"Why?"

"Because power corrupts," X said simply. "I'm afraid I'll change. This is a different kind of power than I'm used to. If I shoot someone in the face, I'm using power, and I can see the effects of that power. I can't not see the harm I do. This new power, this political power- I could erase whole peoples, whole places, and never see it. Never feel it. If that happens and I can't feel it anymore, if I can't care anymore, then I'm a threat to everyone. At that point, you'll be the only one who can stop me."

Zero's eyes widened. "You mean that?"

"Absolutely. My father left a warning with me when he sealed me that said as much. Now I'm starting to see what he meant. I'm beginning to understand what I can do. I can tell you, for example, that the Council of Volcania is doomed. They're building reploids with the Three Laws at the same time I'm putting them face-to-face with reploids without the Three Laws. They can't survive that contact, not when teleportation is real and I lead Abel City. Zero, reploids use my family name as an invocation. Volcania can't stand against me. Not any more. If they try, they'll come apart from the inside.

"I'll gain the edge over the other cities too, eventually. They won't be able to stop me. Only you."

Zero's hands flopped, much like his mind was doing. "How can I do that? You're the one who taught me about sympathy and friendship and doing good. How could I judge you on that? How can I know better than you?"

X gave a weak smile. "I didn't say this was easy. Sigma once said to me that he couldn't ever stop being the Commander. I know what he meant, now. And so do you. You won't ever be able to stop being Praetor no matter how hard it is. As long as I have power, I'll be a threat only you can counter."

"I thought we weren't enemies," Zero accused. He wasn't sure how he got the words out. He didn't think he knew how to speak any more.

"We're not," X agreed. "What I'm asking you is that you devote yourself to my ideals, not to me. That way, if I become a threat to my ideals..." he paused, as if something had occurred to him. "Huh. Maybe I am like Jefferson, after all."

Zero had no hope of keeping up when X went to places like this. He retreated to an earlier part of the conversation. "Why me?" he asked.

"If not you, then whom?"

Zero had no answer to that. He knew the only possible responses.

X closed with Zero. Every step closer, Zero's tactical idly noted, put the ranged fighter at that much more of a disadvantage against the melee fighter. He didn't know if he liked that. "Thank you for being my friend," X said.

"Is this how you treat friends?" Zero said.

"Just you," X said.

Zero started to object, but couldn't quite get there. "Sort of like I'm the only person to talk mean to you?"

"Sort of," X said affably. He looked happy. "I'm glad I can count on you."

Zero wanted to remind X that he hadn't agreed to anything, but X pointed at himself before the words could come out. "One?" the android asked.

That forced Zero to go down a different train of thought and shake his head. "Two," he said firmly.

A too-knowing smile came over X's face. He nodded his assent. Then he spoke his radio transmission for Zero's benefit. "City Hall landing pad, two coming in."

"Clear," was the crisp reply.

"One," X counted, "two..."

Zero teleported on the count of two. X had filled him in on how he'd died earlier. Zero didn't regard that outcome as failure. It had worked exactly as intended. Better he spring the trap than X.

There was no trap waiting for him atop City Hall. There was just a painted yellow circle with a neat number '1' at the top of the ring. Behind it was an identical ring with the number '2'. There were no enemies here, either, just Alia and that human- Paschal, maybe?- waiting. For X, not Zero. They even had data pads in their hands. X had put the work of the city on hold while he went on his... Zero didn't know what to call it. Diversion, maybe. Zero used the time to assess those who waited.

Alia was in a black bodysuit that neither accented nor hid her near-human shape. Practical boots and a peach-and-white jacket completed the outfit. The only hint that she wasn't flesh and blood beneath all of that was a headset that fit perhaps too tightly for human comfort. Paschal wore a deep blue-gray blouse that matched her eyes. Its shoulders were padded- perhaps to disguise the point where her body ended and her prosthetic began. A no-nonsense skirt and nearly flat shoes complemented the stern countenance she wore.

Danger of attack, obviously, was low. Intent to attack... that part was odd. His assessment was fluttering between zero and one. That didn't quite make sense, since zero was usually reserved for the dead. And X.

Oh- was that it? They were part of X, and X was part of him, and he couldn't very well attack himself- had they really gotten there?

X touched down behind Zero. "You know something I never understood?" he asked as he walked into Zero's field of view. A small, conspiring smile was on his face, a private smile just for the two of them. "The social use of the term 'revolution'. I know what people mean when they say it, but it doesn't make sense to me. The world is always turning. Revolution is the norm."

He walked past a confuzzled Zero to meet his advisors. It had been darker where the grave was, but here the sun had just come up. It threw the rooftop tableau before Zero into relief. From his vantage point, things came into focus.

To X's left, Alia, a humanized reploid.

To his right, Paschal, a robotized human.

In between, X- the only one, Zero saw, that could bring them all together.

And Serges had wanted Zero to give all this up!

No, Zero decided. Never.

Perhaps he understood part of what X had been saying earlier. He'd been wondering if it was possible to love someone and still be a good person. If he wanted the best for the person he loved, wouldn't that sometimes have to come at the expense of some unloved third party?

That was X's worry. If he couldn't love everyone, he'd end up hurting someone. Well, Zero knew he couldn't love everyone. He could maybe, just maybe, manage to love one. He would do that, then, wherever it ended up taking him.

X wanted Zero to protect the world from him. That wasn't going to happen. X was the world to Zero.

And if ever X decided that everything else needed to burn, then Zero would be the one to light the match.

After that, a new normal came to be.

Paladin and Goddess very definitely did not get back together. They did, however, consent to be part of the same gaming group again.

Vanzetti became the first reploid to submit a book for publishing. Its original title was "Ripples: A Biography". After some consultations, this was lengthened to "Ripples: The Life and Death of Priest Vito Cherup". But, because publishing companies simply can't help themselves, the final title was "Ripples: A Biography of Priest Vito Cherup: Faith, Principle, and How to Live". Vanzetti's only comment was, "Vito would be embarrassed." He did not protest further. Separately, the Catholic Church declared Vito a martyr and convened a summit on the topic of reploid souls.

Maria Pritchard leveraged her fame to acquire the title of Special Reporter, giving her near-total control over what she reported. For a time she considered a studio job, but turned it down, professing that even she had standards. Her use of the preemption codes was retroactively sanctioned. When the codes changed, she was given a copy of them. Officially, this time.

Sean McElvaine was never heard from again.

Long was medically discharged from Unitech's guard corps, which, under corporate policy, entitled him to nothing every month and more nothing annually. Happily, there was a job waiting for him in Reploid Relations. The name on the door was "Long", but everyone called him Longinus anyway. He didn't correct them.

Luke Parker was found dead in his cell while awaiting trial. The killing puzzled the police who looked into it initially, because there was no indication of anyone going in or coming out. Even more puzzling was the gruesomeness of the killing, which cannot be easily put to words. They never did find his genitals. In response to the killing, X ordered an inquiry, charging the commission to "ensure justice is done". When the commission started looking for motive, the number and magnitude of the motives they found convinced them that justice had, in fact, already been done. The investigation quietly died.

Roll retreated behind the sanctuary's encrypted enclave. She'd done too much already. She resolved to wait for when her little brother returned, seeking the secrets of fusion- and of his family. In the meantime, she would ensure his sanctuaries were ready for whatever he desired of them. Her definition of "whatever" was as expansive as her father's.

Suicides amongst the ex-Maverick Hunters reached epidemic proportions. The feelings of failure and treason were too strong for many. That their response ironically violated the Third Law didn't faze many of them. Only when the survivors were dispersed to Guardian Force units were they able to satisfy their internalized demands for duty, obedience, and sacrifice.

General-Marshal Gustavson announced his retirement. It struck most observers as rather sudden. Speculation abounded that the retirement was related to the unexpected- and apparently pointless- sortie of the city's bomb trucks. Other members of the Volcania press circles linked it to the subsequent founding of an Abel City diplomatic mission with a hybrid human-reploid staff profile. Volcania's Council offered no comment either way. They merely brought reploid production to full series levels. Not to worry, they assured their citizens. The reploids were perfectly safe. They had the Three Laws. Nothing bad could come of that.

The first and only regular job Allen had held rather spoiled him on the idea of employment. Instead he became a full-time volunteer at Saving Grace. In exchange he got three meals a day, a roof over his head, and all the prayer sessions he could stand. On balance, that qualified as an improvement over his pre-militia days. His only complaint was the lack of video games.

Rupert, Mogg, and Stein joined one of the reclamation teams. The task of making land and cities habitable again took them far away from Abel City. Given their memories of the city and its denizens, and how often they'd thought of Abel City as enemy territory, leaving it behind was okay with them.

Everywhere, life went on. For many, life was better. For a few, it was worse. For many, it was hard, but it would have been hard anyway.

And there was one thing more...

Roy stepped back and looked at the poster in satisfaction. Perfect. The contents of the poster were whatever- something about X calling for volunteers for the reclamation teams. Who cared? What mattered was that he'd put it up...

"Light almighty, that's ugly."

...damn.

Roy looked over his shoulder. Yup, it was Joseph. His boss. "Why would you do that?" Joseph went on. "What did that poster ever do to you?"

"Come on, boss," Roy whined. "Don't you have better things to do than follow me around?"

"Not when you're displaying serial carelessness." Joseph sidled up alongside Roy. His heavy footfalls were audible even over the clamor of the city. "Look right here. What do you see?"

Roy looked to where the red hand was pointing. His shoulders slumped. "A crease," he mumbled.

"A crease," Joseph confirmed. "Which means the corner is wrong, which means the whole thing is crooked. And you were gonna leave it like that, weren't you? Come on, have some professional pride! Take it down and start over."

Roy winced. "Can't we just put another poster on top of this one?"

"With a crease underneath? That'll mess with the poster on top. Nope, you have to take this one down first. Then we'll put up the next one, and we'll put it up right."

Roy groaned. Just what he needed- more time working alongside the acid-tongued reploid poster-putter.

Well, he thought glumly to himself, it beats working.

End.