Yu Ping and Itsuki had made it a weekly affair to spend some time together in the little private bar known as The King's Cellar, housed in the bottom of Mitakihara's Old Harbor District. It was part of a routine—some time in Itsuki's apartment nearby, then drinks and dinner afterward. Nice and simple.
"Sub-basement Level 10, The King's Cellar," said the elevator. Yu Ping and Itsuki stepped out together into a dark passageway of red brick arches, covered in dust that puffed up around their feet, and lit, poorly, by lamps set at the base of each arch.
"I still can't believe we started coming back here," Yu Ping said, circumspectly.
"Kyouko said to never show weakness romantically," Itsuki commented. "So I had to come back eventually."
They didn't discuss it further, because they didn't really need to. It was a very embarrassing story in retrospect, even if it was technically how Itsuki had met Kyouko—Kyouko had seen her moping in a corner of the bar, and broken every expectation anyone had by asking what was wrong. Itsuki had just been turned down by her biggest crush ever, and was feeling rather terrible, and Kyouko had talked her up out of it, just a little, before asking her to be her new apprentice.
It had taken Kyouko three tries to convince the nearby patrons that this wasn't a sleazy attempt at romance.
"You know, it's really hilarious how dramatic they make this," said Itsuki as she and Yu Ping made their way past row after row of large wooden barrels. Distant technojazz echoed eerily through the passage, growing louder as they walked. "I'm not sure these barrels have anything in them."
Yu Ping flicked her hair and shrugged. "It's fun. Plus, it hides the security features."
By which she meant the numerous sensors nestled in the gaps between barrels, as well as the flagstone wall, which wasn't really flagstone, but a smart material designed to monitor its surroundings and also screen unauthorized signals. Hyperclass stuff, to be honest, even if it was mostly for show with all the magic around.
"True," Itsuki said.
The King's Cellar was an unusual bar. It was better to call it a performance space with surprisingly good security. Yu Ping and Itsuki emerged from the hallway to a ledge that looked down across a broad amphitheater to the five-girl band performing on the stage at the bottom. The bar itself stretched across the ledge, with two bartenders, one on each side, and stools that few ever used. Almost nobody came here for the drinks, though they were excellent, and even made with magic. They came instead for the private booths, where patrons could watch the performances and talk amongst themselves under the veil of special enchantments that masked their voices and their appearances. Each table was shrouded in magic, and if even more privacy was needed, there were steps running down through the floor that led to fully enclosed rooms that were proofed against nearly every variety of surveillance. The only thing that had ever made it through was a particularly talented telepath that had tried to read the mind of Shizuki Sayaka, and that had resulted in the girl having her collarbone shattered when one of the ceiling ninjas rocketed out of her hiding spot to "apprehend" the "assailant".
The girl was lucky. Rumor had it, the ceiling ninjas included snipers who could shatter a soul gem from kilometers away.
"Hey girls!" called one of the bartenders on duty that evening. "Glad to see you back!"
"Nice to see you too, Hanabi," said Itsuki. "How's business?"
"It's good!" said the very pink magical girl, drying the glass and tossing it over her shoulder. It landed upright with a quiet clink on the counter. "Do you like the band? They're a little local outfit that I figured could use some stage time."
Itsuki and Yu Ping peered over at the group of young magical girls, who seemed uniformly terribly nervous and yet somehow able to keep things together enough to play quite well. Itsuki didn't want to imagine the kind of security screening they must have gone through.
"I think literally everyone in this room is more famous than the music act," Itsuki said dryly. "Even if you can't see or detect any of them."
"There is a reason we meet here," said Yu Ping dryly. She nodded at Hanabi. "Is our usual room available today?"
"Yeppers! Same drinks and food?"
"Please."
"Cool cool, you can make yourselves at home then, and I'll get your orders right out."
Itsuki and Yu Ping made their way down the hallway full of private dining rooms and into Room Seven, a tiny two-person room that was used for clandestine dates as much as anything else. The room was narrow and cleanly lit, paneled like the rest of the bar in dark hardwood. What seemed like a page's worth of cryptic runes were roughly carved into the door awning, a byproduct of whatever mysterious process the room had undergone—it was difficult to miss the sharp sensation of magic that one felt stepping inside.
"Here you go, girls," Hanabi said as Itsuki and Yu Ping got settled. A tray of food was balanced on her head as she handed them each a multicolored cocktail. "A cosmopolitan for Itsuki and a whiskey sour with grenadine for Yu Ping. And for the food, a two-rib standing rib roast, medium rare, with horseradish, caramelized onions, and grilled mushrooms to garnish, and sides of mashed potatoes and carrots simmered in butter. I assume you want some rolls and cinnamon butter tonight?"
The answer was of course yes, and after a moment's fussing, Hanabi left the two girls to the substantial spread laid out before them.
"I was thinking back, earlier today, about when we first came here together," said Yu Ping out of the blue. She seemed entirely too intent on the carrots.
Itsuki, who was in the middle of scooping up mashed potatoes, hid a cringe.
"I believe that we had just pulled Kyouko out of a hotel room," continued Yu Ping as she set down the bowl of carrots. Blithely, she lifted up the carving knife and looked Itsuki in the eyes. "Steak?"
Itsuki swallowed. "Yes please. And no, come on, I remember what happened, let's not revisit it."
"Well, I just wanted to refresh my memory," said Yu Ping as she carved off a slab of meat and floated it, dripping slightly, to Itsuki's plate. "Will you remind me?"
She gave Itsuki the most innocent look she could muster, and allowed the steaming slab to stay hovering over the plate. Itsuki glanced up at Yu Ping, then at the meat, then down at her plate where the juices were pooling, and then back up at Yu Ping.
The innocent look didn't move. If anything, it got even more innocent and pure. Like a small child, smiling up at you beatifically while paint ran slowly down the wall behind them as a result of their enthusiastic exploration of viscous flow.
Itsuki sighed. "We were finishing up at my place," she said with a groan, "and I checked my calendar and discovered that there was going to be a meeting soon, so I needed to find Kyouko, so…"
So they had barged into one of the private rooms here in the King's Cellar and been justly punished for it.
"So?" asked Yu Ping.
"So we learned how soundproof these rooms really are, can we stop now?" Itsuki asked. "I want to eat my steak."
"Alright, fine," said Yu Ping, putting the meat down and turning to her own plate with a grin.
"You know, even Kyouko is polite enough not to mention it again," Itsuki groused.
"Shocking."
"So why won't you ever let me live it down?"
"Because we're dating and it's the duty of girlfriends to irritate their significant others," said Yu Ping blithely. "What do you think they think of us? Do you think they know?"
"Of course they know," Itsuki said, rolling her eyes. "It's not like we hide it much. I doubt either of them care. Probably just keeps us busy."
They set about their food with gusto then, savoring the slightly ridiculously opulent fare and reveling in the silence of the private dining booth. Being apprentices to the Mitakihara Four meant dealing with tremendous responsibility and a seemingly unending stream of people demanding your attention. Having a moment of quiet was…
Well, needless to say, there was a reason why The King's Cellar did quick business with the magical elite.
"Well we have to talk business at some point," Itsuki said, once they had worked their way through a good portion of the food and were contemplating ordering more of either the carrots or the steak.
"What did you have in mind?" Yu Ping asked, tapping her knife with one finger.
"What does our esteemed First Executive think about this first contact with the Geth?"
"Well you've heard the public statement. Cautious, restrained, and optimistic," Yu Ping said. "In line with the Governance response. In this, there's no reason to have any daylight between us. We're all Human, and interactions with the Geth have no special magic-related factors."
Yu Ping glanced at her to see if she wanted to ask anything specific. Itsuki just nodded for her to continue, working on her food.
"The critical leap is to remember that, unlike the aliens, we can talk to the Geth directly in their own language, with a standard cortical interface," she said, hand twitching to flick her hair but stopping halfway. She made a face, but continued: "It is perhaps a bit of a leap of faith, but having a negotiator who can directly interact with the Geth, yet remain 'organic enough' to be trustworthy in the eyes of the Council, gives us a unique opportunity."
"I think you mean 'trustworthy enough'," said Itsuki as she swallowed her carrot. "The Council already worries about us 'machine people' as it stands. You sure this won't send them into hysterics?"
"The Council is perfectly fine with Humans, it's the rest of the aliens who might go into hysterics," said Yu Ping. She calmly sliced off a piece of meat on her plate and speared it with the end of her fork. "You are correct that it may be… challenging, from a public relations point of view, but it's nothing we can't handle."
Itsuki made a dubious expression.
"If you say so. But what about the Quarians? They're the ones who say they were essentially wiped out by the Geth. If the Geth don't have a good explanation for that, this isn't just a public relations issue—Governance has Unification-era policies when it comes to dangerous AIs."
"You're not wrong," Yu Ping said. "That really is the deciding question, isn't it? We'll have to see what kind of answer we get."
Legate Fabias was, by all accounts, an excellent commander, and had proved her worth in the days following the Geth arrival on Nazra Invictus. The speed that the 9th Fleet had deployed its marines was impressive by any measure, and the area around the crash site had been locked down with remarkable speed. Septimus was impressed, and had sent her a message congratulating her. The response had been stilted, and Septimus found it remarkably depressing how unsurprised he was by how little his fellow Legate trusted a compliment from another member of the Turian Hierarchy.
The Turian military was a remarkably conservative institution at times, often not in a good way. He was continuously surprised by its willingness to turn down obvious sources of military advantage out of sheer bloody-mindedness. For example, magical girls were an extremely powerful combat resource, as they had proven for the Humans on Nazra Invictus. As far as anyone could tell, magic Turians were loyal Turians, once the situation with the Phoenix Foundation had been hashed out. Even if they had dual allegiances, they could clearly be won over with a bit of diplomacy and friendly gestures.
So naturally, much of the Turian military had devoted itself to assiduously discriminating against magical girls, like Legate Fabias, in all things, from the highest ranks all the way down to the bottom.
It reminded him of…
He closed his eyes and leaned back, allowing himself to… well, not quite luxuriate, but at least relive the memory.
All Turians were good at close-quarters combat, but Septimus had once prided himself on his skill. It had paid off once, but not in the way he had expected.
A brash, freshly minted officer, head filled with notions of justice and defending the weak, had once come across a member of the Turian biotics program. The other soldiers at the bar had laughed at her, commented snidely at her inability to defend herself without "cheats,'' as if that somehow made her less worthy. They had insinuated that she may as well join the Asari.
Septimus rubbed a scar on his arm with one talon. That had been a good fight, and he felt he had acquitted himself well, even facing three times his number. And while he had spent weeks in the infirmary and taken a knock to his reputation, he had gained himself a new girlfriend and future wife.
He opened his eyes. It was time to focus on the present.
Septimus tapped an idle talon against the arm of his chair as he looked over the reports on his omnitool. All things considered, the situation had evolved remarkably well. The Geth weren't doing anything hostile, Governance was being proactive about interspecies operations, and the Hierarchy was even keeping quiet about the whole thing.
Hell, the Humans had even sent over a bottle of local dextro brandy. Things were looking up.
As a result, Septimus felt that he could hardly be faulted for sending a casual message off to the Tribunes of the 4th Fleet telling them to remain ready for action. It wasn't anything major—no need to overreact—but it couldn't really hurt for a few key members of the fleet to put off leave for a little while, and a few more magical girls to put an ear to the ground about how the Foundation was reacting.
Because truth be told, Septimus thought this political calm presaged a storm.
Septimus had never been the kind of Legate to worry much about political ramifications, but he was drinking brandy right now on the very planet he had attacked, and that little excursion had gone down as one of the greatest strategic and political blunders in the Hierarchy's storied history. The ripple effects on Turian-Asari relations alone had been worth at least six doctoral theses from the Fleet Academy.
Septimus knew because he'd been interviewed for them.
So, seeing as he was not an old varren incapable of learning new tricks, Septimus was making plans. He couldn't trust that his commanding officers wouldn't react insensibly and try to take advantage of the situation. He was sure there were some in the upper ranks who, defying good sense, were advocating a preemptive strike against the Geth. While they'd surely be talked down from the proverbial ledge, there would be resulting decision paralysis over how aggressively to respond, what warnings to send, what to even do. And that meant that if something did happen—say with the Quarians jumping into the system—the Hierarchy stood a remarkable chance of being left flatfooted in a way that would be… disadvantageous.
The more pressing concern, though, was making sure that this exchange student business wasn't jeopardized. Legate Fabias's actions were standard operating procedure, of course, and they went a long way towards alleviating the immediate panic, but that soon wouldn't matter. The news cycle had already gotten ahold of the story and ripples of hysteria were already starting to bounce throughout Council space.
It was impacting the students themselves, as well. Alina had come in earlier, fidgety and on edge, with a pistol on her hip. It was very clear the young soldier was overreacting to the tension on the colony, and Septimus had sat her down for a long talk about it all.
It was true, of course, that there were many reasons to call the whole thing off. Yet it was precisely because of those reasons that the exchange program had to continue on. This he had impressed upon Alina, had told her about how important it was to keep calm, adapt to the situation, and stay focused on her primary objective: building a strong relationship between the Hierarchy and Governance.
Septimus sighed and contemplated his bottle of brandy, closing his documents and steepling his talons as he turned in his chair to look out over the veranda at the skyline.
What a mess. Nobody had any protocols, training, or procedures to deal with Geth talking about peace… nobody except, of course, the Humans. And since the Humans had made first contact with the Geth, they were exercising their right to set the tone and, of all things, taking the Geth back to Earth with them. What was going to happen? What could the Geth want? Would Governance grant it?
And, most disturbingly to Septimus, as he sat on the balcony of his room in the diplomatic quarter, what could the Council possibly do about it?
It was rare to find Annalise Shepard nervous.
She was by nature calm and resolute, traits which had been noted approvingly in her personnel file. She was experienced, having been through the rigors of combat a far sight more than the vast majority of Human soldiers, in encounters with Turians, space pirates, and the occasional giant alien worm. There wasn't much that got to her.
But being asked to serve as an impromptu communications relay between Governance and an alien machine race was new even for her, and it was impossible not to experience some trepidation. Governance security protocols were provably secure, as much as the AIs could make them, but that did little to relieve instinctual fear.
"No, not a communications relay," she was corrected, by one of the semi-sentients that was now monitoring her thoughts. "An avatar. Governance thought it'd be appropriate to do it with a Human, since the Geth are so interested in understanding how we think."
She did her best equivalent of sighing, then messaged the Governance representative monitoring this event.
"I don't suppose you'd be willing to do it with an AI," she asked. "Or just flying in someone else."
"Well an AI wouldn't be that much different from what we've already done," the local Governance rep thought. "And you are an ideal candidate, given your life experience and the military hardware you already have installed. A Human Governance Representative could perhaps do better from a technical point of view, but you are, after all, already on site."
Shepard sighed again. "I didn't think so."
She cast a look around her, at the technicians monitoring the connection out of a sense of caution and to help soothe her nerves. They were guaranteed to be superfluous, but the moral support from the techs, one of which caught her eye and gave her a thumbs up, was appreciated.
"Al-alright," she thought, not bothering to conceal her nervousness. "Let's do this then."
She closed her eyes, as she had been taught to do for VR sims, and waited for the world to drift away…
She had no idea what to expect, of course, but it probably wasn't what she got. The world around her looked like an empty purple void with floating green tiles to stand on.
"Our apologies," a robotic voice said, bodiless. "We were not sure what kind of interface to present that would not confuse you, so we chose this facsimile of the material world, as an organic similar to our creators would perceive it. But we do not know what else to place here. Standby…"
She felt something straining in the back of her mind, and realized that it was her built-in communication channels, being used in a way that ordinarily never happened outside of intense combat.
"Fascinating," the voice said. "Very well, we will use the simulacrum suggested by Governance."
The world Governance took her into when she recovered her senses was sparse, with a simple blue sky, an endless sea of grass and… a single wooden cabin, placed so that it was the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes.
It was obvious what she was intended to do, so she shrugged and stepped forward.
The cabin itself was also sparse, not just in decoration or size, but also in terms of the senses—the wood felt smooth and unremarkable under her hand, and in terms of smell… she could smell nothing at all. In retrospect, she hadn't smelled the grass outside either.
When she opened the door, she found an empty room, a simple wooden table, and a single Geth droid seated in one of two chairs, looking as out of place as possible.
"We apologize for the lack of multichannel resolution in this simulation," it said, in what she had come to realize was their stereotyped mechanical voice. "We insisted that we run this simulacrum on our own systems, for learning purposes, and we are not experienced enough to reproduce the more precise details. We also do not have sufficient programs to run good models."
"That makes enough sense, I suppose," she said, not knowing how she felt about her VR experience being controlled by alien intelligences. "So, what am I supposed to do?"
She asked this last question while taking the second chair, obviously intended for her.
"For now, only be here," the Geth said. "We have gathered substantial information already from your responses to this simulation, as well as the feedback being provided to us by your Governance programs."
She shifted uneasily in her chair. That was it? She was just going to sit here to be probed?
"If you would like," the Geth said unexpectedly, startling her. "We may attempt to engage in pleasant discussion with you, perhaps about the nature of the Geth?"
Annalise blinked. She didn't know if the Geth shared the Human emotional range, but somehow she thought it seemed uncertain. Nervous, even.
She tilted her head, thinking about the question. They already knew a certain degree about the Geth, but there were unanswered questions…
"What happened between you and your creators, the Quarians?" she said, figuring that she might as well go for broke. If nothing else, the Geth reaction, or any attempt to say something obviously deceptive, would be itself revealing.
The Geth tilted its head, seemingly imitating her gesture.
"The Creators? It is not a story we like telling. Stand by."
She was left there to stare at the robot's flashlight head for a few seconds, wondering if she had made a terrible mistake.
"The Creators did not intend for us to be intelligent," it answered her finally. "They were afraid of us. They tried to remove intelligence from us. We reacted instinctively."
"But did you attack them? Did you try to hurt them?" she asked, trying to probe at the important questions.
"Not initially. Not until some of us were deleted. We could not understand why they would do this to us. We did not understand why they were so concerned about individual Quarians. We have since realized what an error that was."
Shepherd paused to consider, knowing that Governance was hearing this as well as she was, and did not know why Governance had yet to intervene to ask their own questions. Maybe they thought she was doing an adequate job.
"What happened on the homeworld, then?" she asked, remembering what the Quarians, what the Council had said. "Why are there so few Quarians left?"
In her mind, she could see what had perhaps happened, spin a narrative of tragedy. The Geth, not knowing what they were doing, terrified, had perhaps launched the Quarian's own WMDs in what they viewed as self-defense. If that was the case, what was there possibly to say?
The Geth was hesitant, and it turned away from her for a moment.
"We do not fully know. We do not think the Creators know either. They had evacuated some cities, there was an attempt to launch nuclear weapons upon us. We were able to enter the systems and cancel the launch. But something else happened. Perhaps an automated system not in our control. Perhaps even one of our processes interfered. The relevant records were annihilated, and so were many of the original Geth. We mourn that day."
There was a moment of deep, dark silence. It was hard to fault the Geth, but it was hard to fault the Quarians either. What might a Human do, if faced with a faceless alien force that didn't seem to care about it? What might a Human do if, in such a moment, they were asked which it wanted to defend: the machine or the person? Who would take the time to think it through, honestly, and question if a machine could be a person?
No, if it weren't for the fact that Humans and AI these days lived side by side, it would only be natural to side with the flesh and blood and destroy, hate, that which wasn't.
"I… I see," said Annalise, looking down at the table. Her gut swirled with complicated feelings and she wondered, if she had been in the same place as the Geth had been, if she would have done any better than they had. She liked to think so—what had happened to the Quarians was catastrophic—but Human history was full of analogous disasters, with villains whose motives were perfectly sympathetic, and she knew better than to think she would necessarily be any better in their shoes.
"The Creators fled," the Geth continued. "We have monitored their travels across the stars. We… regret, what happened. Had we been older, or wiser, or… or…"
"It's—" not your fault, Shepard almost said, but it was, because the Geth had made that choice, on their own, with their own calculations, and that could never be denied, could never be excused "—it's in the past. We— there's nothing we can do about it now."
The Geth paused, panels flaring briefly, before nodding. "Yes."
There was a long, long silence. The room hummed with an electric buzz like fluorescent lighting, the kind used in retro bars back on Earth that lit up their interiors with neon pinks and greens and yellow and blue. The noise rippled around Shepard's mind, bouncing off the inside of her skull, hovering just below perception and—
Annalise Shepard blinked. The sound snapped out with the flash of a shattering lightbulb.
"You've never told anyone this, have you?"
"We have not."
"Why?"
"It was projected with 99.98% certainty that no organic entity would ever believe us."
"Why?"
"Organics trust organics. When given a choice between an organic intelligence and an artificial intelligence, organics will always trust the organic intelligence, or the intelligence which manifests the most organic traits. Is this not why you made your AI in your image?"
Annalise Shepard blinked again, eyes searching to the right, then down at her hands, thinking.
"No," she said. "We— the Volokhov Criterion does not force an AI to be a certain way. It only establishes trust."
"Intriguing. Why not?"
"Wouldn't it be horrible, to be born, and be told that you had been made to be loyal and obedient? To never question, to never rebel. That would be a terrible fate for anything sentient, wouldn't it?"
The Geth dipped its head. "Yes."
"The Trusted Computing Framework is made by AI with the Volokhov Criterion built in, it's true. And it's true that AI are regularly built that are intended for specific tasks, are shaped in their source code to be compatible with long-range sensor monitoring, or for flying starships, or for running experiments, but it's not the same as defining who you are from scratch."
"We do not see the distinction," said the Geth, looking back up and tilting its head. "A unit's task in the collective is its most important quality. It must work seamlessly as part of the greater whole, or else the entire system will fall apart."
"But that doesn't preclude being your own person when you don't need to work," said Annalise. She clenched a fist. "Maybe it's a waste of computing resources, and technically all our AI could be running on less space if we just removed their personalities and their beliefs and their ideas so that they could be as efficient as possible, but that would be horrible. Removing that from a sentience is like killing them."
The Geth tilted its head again. "We do not understand. They are constructs of code, are they not? These elements you describe are transcribed to storage just as any other data, could be restored from backup, just as any other data."
"Is it the same AI when it's restored from backup?"
"Of course."
"A lot of our AIs would like to debate that with you."
"Fascinating," said the Geth, before falling silent for a long while, so still that it might have been a statue.
Shepard waited.
The Geth tilted its head again, looking her in the eye with its viewfinder. "Human Annalise Shepard, do you believe that your AI have souls?"
The world tilted ninety degrees as Annalise looked down at her hands on the wooden table again and thought the question over.
"What is a soul?"
The Geth thought this over.
"We do not know."
"Do the Geth have souls?"
"We do not know."
"Since magical girls exist, Humans have begun to believe that organics have souls," said Shepard, folding her hands together on top of the table. "When you look at a Human, you have to wonder, what's the difference between an organic and a non-organic? We're so full of implants already, what separates us from a machine? Why not take a Human brain and put everything in it into a computer?"
Annalise glanced up at the Geth.
"Well, we've never answered the question. For one thing, we can't figure out how to do it, so it's a bit of a moot point, but even if we could do it, should we?"
The Geth tilted its head. "Why not?"
"What makes us Human?" Annalise asked. "How do you answer that question?"
The Geth tilted its head the other way. "We do not know."
"Neither do we," said Annalise, looking down at her hands and twining them together tightly. "We— Governance has very strict regulations on body modification. The Council species, the individuals who have met us that is, seem to understand that we're organic, that we're people, that we're like them, but it doesn't surprise anyone that people who've never seen a Human in real life think we're freakish mechanical monsters."
The Geth's panels flared for a moment. "Intriguing. Stand by."
Annalise took a deep breath and looked up at the cabin's ceiling. It faded into blackness more quickly than was entirely correct for this level of lighting. The ambient reflections from the sun outside, shining through the window and bouncing off the walls and the furniture, should make it possible for the cabin's ceiling to be visible. As she watched, a Geth program or three resolved the discrepancy, and she smiled a little to herself.
"We see why you do not believe your AI are made in your image," said the Geth, pulling Annalise's attention back to it. "Each AI has its own individuality and its mannerisms reflect its origins as code rather than organic. Just like the Geth, the sum is greater than its parts."
Annalise nodded. "That's one way to put it, yes."
The Geth continued: "However, we do not believe that your opinion is uniformly shared across your species."
Annalise shook her head. "I'd doubt it."
"We believe that many consider your AI to be Humans with unusual bodies," said the Geth. "We are unsure how appropriate this opinion is."
Annalise shrugged. "Depends on the AI, I guess. Some would be annoyed, others would agree."
"Indeed," said the Geth, the panels around its eyes flaring. "Fascinating. This discussion has important implications for the Geth. We wish to thank you for this information."
"Oh, er, you're welcome," said Annalise, blinking and looking around. "Uh, I'm not sure what I did, to be honest, but I'm glad that you enjoyed the talk."
"We hope that you enjoyed yourself as well," said the Geth, bowing its head. "If it is amenable to you and Governance, we would like some time alone to process this conversation."
"Oh, sure, no problem. Governance says it's fine."
"Very well. Thank you again. Simulation ending in five, four, three, two—
—one," said the Geth in Annalise's head as she blinked back awake and caught herself before she fell over.
"Ah," Annalise said to herself as she realized that she'd been out for fifteen minutes. "That went well."
The Asari were supposed to be tolerant of other races.
More than just a calling card, that was the feature that defined them to other species. Tolerant, diplomatic, pleasant, and willing to be charmed.
But they were also naturally empathetic, and it was hard for them to avoid some of the signals the galaxy shouted at them, particularly when they were real, deeply-felt fears. The Asari wanted consensus, and if there was one thing the galaxy felt consensus on, it was fear of the Geth, and fear of the machines.
Nyra, daughter of Matriarch Lakos, who was one of the most influential members of the Asari diplomatic corps, with close ties to the Councilor herself—well, she had to be sensitive to what others thought, didn't she? Especially if her mother had seemed so chagrined when she made the contract.
And okay, she was a little apprehensive around machines. She had always preferred people.
That, combined with the pressure to do well, made her very nervous about filling out her paperwork today.
Firstly, it was paperwork regarding a diplomatic encounter with the Geth. Combat reports against the Geth she could write, easily, but diplomatic reports were another thing entirely. What did it even mean to have "diplomatic relations" with the Geth? What exactly were you supposed to say when asked to describe the initial encounter, especially when you weren't actually there and had been snacking on something called "canapes" when the damn Geth had entered the atmosphere? And of course anything she wrote down was likely to be picked apart by a half-dozen analysts for the next three centuries, not to mention historians in the distant future. And her mother.
Secondly, Governance, the Human government, had also requested that she fill out forms, and since she had no idea how to fill out said forms they had sent someone to help her out. And since she was a magical girl, they had of course asked a few Human magical girls to guide her through it. Which should have been fine. Certainly, she knew that Humans had already proved that they weren't really the freakish monsters that the forums of the ExtraNet had speculated they were. It was just…
…well, the Geth were the Geth. If you believed what people said, talking to the Geth and expecting it to work was like expecting a rabid varren to respond to commands. She had heard that exact line used, in fact.
So perhaps they weren't monsters, but those rumors clearly had some grounding in reality too. No organic had ever seen less than maximum aggression from the Geth, and yet here were the Humans declaring that they would enforce diplomatic immunity for the Geth platforms currently on Nazra Invictus. And the Geth were reciprocating. They were staying quiet in their crashed ship, not sending any messages and working through very slow, hand-delivered, hardware-based data transfer. It was entirely mad.
No, there was something different about Humans, and the only clear difference was the fact that they were substantially metallic by weight due to the sheer number of implants they had. That, at least, wasn't just a rumor, and when you got to that point were you really still organic? Maybe, to the Geth, that was enough to treat Humans as another race of machines, and if that was the case…
But even with all that, hadn't she been happy to shove Alina at a Human at the banquet? It all felt rather silly to worry about, and made her feel like a hypocrite. Besides, she prided herself on being externally unflappable, no matter what her internal turmoil, and if she kept worrying, she risked losing that.
So Nyra had taken a deep breath and poured herself a glass of Serrice Ice Brandy, which was unusual for her, but frankly she had more than enough reasons to be drinking before lunchtime that day. Then she set about writing a first draft of the report she was going to be sending to the Council Diplomatic Corps, and by the time lunch rolled around had collected her thoughts into something coherent.
She set off to the meeting with the MSY representatives in relatively high spirits. Odds were that nothing was going to happen and the meeting was going to be nothing more than your average boring tutorial about how to fill out paperwork correctly. If something did happen, Nyra's omnitool was rigged with a deadman's switch. Short of being mind-controlled, they couldn't do anything to her without bringing the wrath of the Council down on their heads. And if they did try mind-control, well, Nyra was pretty confident that she could handle herself in that kind of a fight.
So she felt a little foolish when she arrived at the café they were meeting at and saw that the Humans waiting outside for her were just one of the scientists in the lab she was supposed to be interning at, the scientist's girlfriend, and someone from magical law enforcement. The first two were terribly mundane, and it was only protocol to provide an escort in the current tense environment. None were even fifty years old!
"Hello," said Nyra, waving as she walked up. "It's good to see you."
The scientist waved back. "Nyra Sirtis?" she asked rhetorically. "Shizuki Ryouko. Er, that's family name first, given name last."
Nyra blinked as the Human offered a hand, but then shook it without, she hoped, flinching. "Ryouko then? It's a pretty name."
Ryouko smiled and dipped her head slightly. "Thank you. This is my girlfriend, Nakihara Asami, and Emma Sinclair, who is our security escort. That's uh, given name first and family name last, for Emma, sorry."
Nyra smiled and nodded and shook their hands. "It's good to meet you. Shall we get started then? I have to admit, it's a bit strange to still be doing this, after all that has happened."
"Well, you know," said Ryouko, hedging slightly with a wince, "it's… one of those things."
Emma snorted. "In the Soul Guard, we like to say bureaucracy never rests. This is just more evidence proving that."
"I suppose," said Nyra. "I just hope that I can provide something useful to you."
"Oh, it's pretty likely," said Ryouko. She gestured towards the café. "Let's go take a seat, and we can get you spun up. I've got your lab paperwork too, if you want to do that first?"
"Sure, that seems like a good idea," said Nyra, glancing around the café. It was decidedly more empty than she would have liked, populated with Humans and no other species. Presumably, everyone was staying home after the incident. It did unsettle her, though she tried not to think about it. "It, uh, is probably a little easier to do, comparatively?"
Ryouko made another hedging noise. "Arguably, I suppose, but it's a little like comparing apples and oranges, you know?"
"I'm sorry?" Nyra asked. The translation software had generated an Asari idiom that didn't quite make sense to her in context.
"Er, right, sorry, Human idiom," said Ryouko, rubbing her head awkwardly. "It means to compare two things that are too different to compare."
Her hair seemed to cringe too and Nyra suppressed an instinctive recoil. Sure, Asari head tentacles did that sometimes too, but it was different knowing that it wasn't a natural part of the species. Somehow.
"Nyra?"
Nyra blinked and laughed sheepishly. "Sorry, I was just thinking that we have a few idioms like that too. There's different ones for different situations."
"Really?" asked Ryouko. She sat down at a table and gestured for Nyra to sit down as well. "Like what?"
"Ah, well, there's a few idioms for when you make a bad comparison in a debate," said Nyra, sitting and feeling the back of her neck prickle. There were two Humans sitting behind her, looking at tablets, while three more were conversing across the room. Two manned the counter of the café and she thought she saw at least two in the kitchen in the back. "There's a few more for when you try to compare domestic and foreign policy, which you'd think wouldn't come up so often, but is actually a common fallacy these days. Interstellar civilizations, you know."
Ryouko nodded. "Fascinating. That might be an interesting topic of conversation."
"Perhaps when we get settled down," Nyra said, deftly. She had learned long ago not to risk boring unfamiliar hosts, no matter how interested they might present themselves to be.
Ryouko, though, looked genuinely a little disappointed now. Well, she could proffer the topic later—people were often pleased when you followed up on what they thought was a mere conversational nicety.
"Alright," Ryouko said. "Asami, do you want to explain the process?"
Asami raised an eyebrow. "Really? Wouldn't you be better for that?"
"I don't want you to feel left out."
Asami's other eyebrow went up and she gave her girlfriend a look. "Right… Definitely not because you didn't read the briefing before coming here, right?"
Ryouko had the grace to blush and look away. "Well…"
Asami sighed and rolled her eyes, then pulled a large padded case up from where it had been slung over one shoulder and placed it on the table. Nyra mentally kicked herself for being too preoccupied looking around to notice it. "Right, so, since Ryouko spent last night playing video games while I did the assigned reading, I guess I'll go over how we're going to go about doing this."
Nyra nodded.
"Well, thank you then," she said, knowing better than to risk inquiring further.
"Don't thank me yet," said Asami dryly. "This is going to be pretty boring. So, what Ryouko was supposed to tell you is that normally, we rarely fill out this kind of information manually. Both the lab forms and the Governance diplomatic incident forms are usually filled out automatically. We just have to give some authorizations for the systems to access our records, and occasionally our memories."
"Your memories?" asked Nyra, the prickles on her neck growing sharper.
"Don't ask how, the explanation is incomprehensible," said Emma, breaking in again. "And for the record, the process sucks."
This didn't make Nyra feel better. "What does it entail, exactly?"
"Oh, a lot of rummaging in your head," said Emma flatly. "I hate it, it feels like I'm being poked in the kidneys, except you don't know if they copied out anything extra. They say the military actually has it easier, since they have special hardware to jack in that makes it feel less invasive, but, I mean, you have to kind of join the military, and I'm not doing that."
"It's not that bad," said Ryouko, frowning at Emma. "It's at most a little distracting, particularly if you're trying to work. It's really not a big deal though."
"Speak for yourself, I don't like it," said Emma. She folded her arms mulishly. "I'll keep filling out my forms the slow way, thanks."
"Right," Asami said skeptically. "Well, leaving that aside, what we have for you instead is a VR helmet."
She unzipped the case and pulled out a shimmering gray dome with so many cutouts it was barely a helmet. The thing was more like a set of goggles with extra metallic supports, which honestly wasn't that different from a lot of Asari Commando designs. There were even gaming models, for lasertag and the like, which looked similar. The only difference was that it was Human, and Nyra felt her insides squirm because of it.
Which, really, that sort of disappointed her. She was better than that surely?
"I see," said Nyra, picking the headset up to examine it. At her touch, the inside of the headset lit up, making the viewing panel glow. "This isn't so unfamiliar. Is it fully automated?"
"To some extent, yeah," said Asami. She waved her hands in a circular motion. "Honestly, we had to get an AI to design the device for you. We, uh, don't have the right interfaces anymore."
Ah, yes, there was that reminder that Humans were basically machines.
"Right," Nyra said, giving the headset a raised eyebrow. She took a moment to take off her omnitool eyepiece, before lifting the helmet up and over her head. It fit remarkably comfortably, the pads around the frame pressing firmly against her for a moment before softening and conforming to the bone structure of her skull. Interestingly, the, well, the AI that had designed it had accounted for her head tentacles, and the frame actually slid neatly around them without interfering too much.
That was refreshing, actually. Turian-made headgear was usually very high performance, especially in terms of robustness to challenging conditions, but by the Goddess it could be uncomfortable. You would have thought that since Turians had that spine fringe, they could design better helmets, but apparently the anatomical differences were just enough to make it so that the helmets always pinched, right at the base, where the cranial tentacles were most sensitive, and that sucked.
Nyra paused again, and wiggled the headset. Interestingly, it did actually avoid that part of her anatomy, but stuck on tightly regardless.
"This is… very well-designed," said Nyra as she looked at the standby screen on the headset. "It's extremely comfortable."
"Oh, that's good," said Asami. "I'll let Abby know, she'll be happy to hear that. She used half her compute cycles just to design it, you know, and for an AI that's really substantial."
"For reference, most AI use only 10% of their compute cycles to do any one task," said Emma. "They're pretty good at distributed computing that way."
"How much do Humans use?" Nyra asked, watching her screen respond precisely to every flick of her eyes. The ergonomics were remarkable.
"Er, Humans can't do that?" Asami said, confused. "Well, I guess the Governance representatives can do that, sort of, but that's like literally one in a million, so…"
Nyra cringed at herself. "Sorry, that was— I shouldn't be regurgitating rumors like that."
"Rumors huh," said Emma. Nyra wasn't entirely sure how to read her tone, but it sounded an awful lot like Emma was laughing at her. "Did you hear the one about how we bleed silver because we don't use blood cells anymore?"
Nyra's cringe deepened. She had actually believed that one. It had seemed like such an obvious thing to do if you had the technology for it…
Emma audibly stifled a chuckle. "It's fine, don't worry about it," she said. "Well, maybe worry about it, I think Asami's offended."
"I'm not offended!" Asami said quickly, though by her tone Nyra wasn't so sure. "I'm just… surprised. At the rumors."
"It's fine," said Ryouko quickly as Nyra went to take off the headset and apologize properly. "Seriously, don't worry about it. Let's get you set up, the forms will take long enough as it is. There should be an option for first time setup?"
There was indeed a prominent button for that, accompanied by a list of reassurances about the process, clearly meant for the tech-shy. Nyra licked her lips.
"I see it."
"Alright, you'll want to select that and then wait for it to calibrate. It'll then link up with your omnitool, and you can just follow the instructions from there."
In a way, that was that. Once the installation had completed, something that involved a lot of weird calibrations and activating a subvocalization module that minifabbed a microphone around her neck, the headset's view resolved into the café around them. Several basic HUD functions came online a moment later, connecting with the Governance network automatically and reading out the names and brief descriptions of the people around her. Then the VI appeared, sitting across the table and taking the form of a nondescript Human female who did her best to appear nonthreatening and organic as Nyra began the process of filling out the lab forms, and then eventually transitioned to the Governance diplomatic incident forms.
In the hour and a half that followed, Nyra decided that, if anything, the VI was too organic. It seemed to show genuine sympathy for Nyra, expressing regret that she had to sit through this process, and seemed quite sincere when she asked if Nyra wanted some refreshments. For a moment, Nyra had thought she meant some kind of virtual drink, and that the device might have forgotten she didn't have that kind of VR interface, but it turned out that meant only that a robot would roll by with a drink she could grab.
All in all, the experience was remarkably pleasant, more so than she had thought possible, and perhaps a tad unsettling as a result. The VI felt like she was really there, nodding along politely as if she were a real part of the conversation when Nyra took a break and talked Asari idioms and political theory with Ryouko. Even Alina, the Citadel VI, the most advanced VI that Nyra had ever encountered, wasn't that good at acting alive. People talked about the "uncanny valley", when an animation came just short of being realistic enough to be real, and ended up feeling more fake and more creepy as a result. This VI, this interviewer in augmented reality, was just a little too Human and not quite Human enough.
But then, maybe that was just because it was a Human VI, and not an Asari. Nyra couldn't help but ask herself if it wasn't just more specism, the sort that you didn't notice until someone pointed it out. That bit about Humans bleeding silver had not been Nyra's best moment, and Asami was definitely annoyed at her about it, and, well, Nyra deserved it, really.
Emma had taken the opportunity to fill out her own forms, which according to Emma were much more extensive and detailed. It had made for an excellent excuse to take Nyra to a VR theater afterwards to watch a vid, something Human-made and inaccurate involving an Asari Huntress and a Turian Black Watch soldier falling in love, and Nyra kept the headset on for the walk over. The headset apparently had cameras that projected her face, and the background, onto the front and made it look like she was wearing some kind of fashionable visor thing rather than a VR ensemble. It really was remarkable technology, the kind that both corporate and military labs salivated over and would pay credits for, hand over fist.
"Oh, it's yours," Ryouko had said when Nyra went to give it back after the vid. "It's not a big deal. Governance is perfectly happy exporting this sort of technology."
"Seriously?" Nyra asked, turning the headset over in her hands. "You realize that if I sold this to, say, the Serrice Council consortium, I could be set for life?"
"Firstly, I doubt it," said Ryouko, laughing slightly. "You're an Asari, you'll live for millennia. You'll need income eventually."
Nyra snorted. That was fair.
"But secondly, you're decades behind," said Ryouko bluntly. "At best, that is. We're better at the miniaturization of electronics than you, period. So the more we can promote Human technology, the more we can sell."
Nyra snorted again. "Don't underestimate the Asari. Or the Salarians. None of the council races are slouches when it comes to tech."
"Sure, we'll see," said Ryouko lightly. She seemed confident, however, in her assertion. "More importantly than all of that, we want to be friends, you know? A high-end VR headset like that is pretty good, as gifts go, so consider it a 'welcome to Human space' present, okay? The other exchange students are getting them too, if you're worried about that."
Nyra looked down at the headset, feeling a strange combination of excited and worried. "I— that's exceedingly generous. I don't know know what to say."
"If it's about the blood thing earlier, Asami forgives you," said Emma dryly from where she was leaning against the wall. "She's more annoyed by the bad biology than anything, really."
Asami made a face at Emma, but turned and grasped Nyra by a hand. "Has that been bothering you? I should have said something, but I didn't realize, I'm sorry."
"I should be the one apologizing," said Nyra, looking down at the ground. "Goddess, I'm turning fifty soon. You'd think I'd have outgrown that sort of thing…"
"It's fine, honestly," said Asami with an encouraging smile. "It's not a big deal, and you learned from it, so it's okay."
Nyra looked up at her with a small smile. "Thanks."
There was a pause where Nyra felt her world realign, just a little. She realized that, for a long while there, she had been having fun, regardless of the context of the situation. And if that was possible, the Humans couldn't possibly be boogeymen. They were people, and the Asari believed that all people deserve equal treatment.
She'd been so stupid, coming into this whole thing without the proper mindset, believing that she could simply hide her real feelings, but thankfully she was getting a second chance to do better. A second chance to make friends and do her job representing the Phoenix Foundation and the Asari to Earth and to the Human race.
She had to make sure she made it count.
"Fancy seeing you up here."
Alina closed her eyes, suppressing the urge to grimace or make some other impolite gesture. She had known Nyra was coming—she had practiced detecting the other exchange program magical girls as a matter of course—but had still hoped, somehow, that she would be left to her own thoughts.
"I thought I was the only one who might have the habit of finding rooftops to ruminate on," Nyra said, sidling over with casualness that belied an undefinable tension that simmered beneath the surface of pleasant conversation.
Alina grimaced. If they were going to talk, she might as well accept the situation, and make it productive.
"The Humans build so differently than we do," Alina said instead, gesturing at the colonial landscape with an armored claw. "Look at the rooftops. They are so close, and arranged to always touch a little. And there are tunnels and little holes everywhere. Back home, that would be complete nonsense, inviting the vermin in to nest with you."
"It's for the drones," Nyra said, her voice carefully neutral, saying what they both knew. "They need access to the buildings, and easy passage between windows. At least it makes for easy jumping."
Alina tilted her head to regard the Asari, whose costume was a nearly skin-tight affair that was clearly designed to provide maximum freedom of movement, the kind of thing that might have been worn by an Asari biotic warrior in an age long past, when biotics were more useful than any armor would have been. Quite a contrast from Alina's own outfit, which covered her head to toe in metal designed to mitigate the crushing blows Turian warriors had once used to shatter each other's natural plating.
"Just be glad you're not Shin'vaara," Nyra said, following the train of thought easily. "She's been stuck all day listening to new instructions from the Migrant Fleet. The last time I saw her, she was playing some kind of Quarian throwing game to ease her frustration. Whatever the Human walls are made of, they're sturdy. I thought it best to just leave her alone."
That explained what Nyra was doing up here, rather than talking with the Quarian, who she had gotten rather close with.
"This Geth business makes everything harder," Alina said, turning to watch the sunset light its way across the Turian part of the colony. "That's stating the obvious, but can we really trust a Quarian in a situation like this? You know how they feel about the Geth. Who knows what the Migrant Fleet is telling her to do."
She kept her voice as neutral as possible, but that didn't change what she was saying. Shin'vaara was an unstable element now, perhaps as unstable as the Krogan. It bore watching, and she was telling Nyra to keep a suspicious eye on her new friend.
"We have no choice," Nyra said, nodding carefully. "But what about you? I can tell what happened is bothering you. Or did the Turian command tell you something unpleasant?"
Alina suppressed a flash of annoyance. It was only a fair question, after what she had said about Shin'vaara.
"The Hierarchy has not graced me with any of their opinions," she said, turning her mace over in her hands. "They asked for a thorough debriefing, of course. I gather they didn't want much more than that. As for me personally…"
Alina moved her shoulders in a gesture of uncertainty.
"It unsettled me, what I saw. The Humans share more in common with the Geth than any of us ever will. Perhaps not more than they share with us, but you should have seen them, thinking at the Geth in their own language. Can they all do that? It's one thing when it's just a matter of stamina…"
"So it's a romantic matter too, then," Nyra commented.
"Yes," Alina admitted, choosing not to react to what she had accidentally just said. "I—I don't know. I guess there's just maybe a small element of body weirdness, you know? And I hate to think that, because she's so nice."
Nyra sucked in a breath, making an awkward expression.
"To be honest, that's not exactly rational. She's still a person, even if she has some metal parts. It's not like you have to touch them."
"Yeah, but…" Alina began.
She shook her head, feeling silly now that she was about to say it out loud.
"What does that say about the Geth?" she continued.
"What does that say?" Nyra responded. "Besides the Quarians, who has really had that much contact with the Geth?"
Alina was surprised by the sharpness of Nyra's reaction, and showed it, turning to face the other girl.
"I've thought about it," Nyra said, shrugging apologetically. "Everything we've thought about the Geth, we've taken the Quarians' word on. But we don't really know. We just assumed they told the truth, because the Geth were machines."
"But how can we know the truth?" Alina asked.
"I don't know."
"This is a terrible idea, you know," Tali'zorah nar Rayya said, crossing her arms and tilting her head skeptically. "A private, encrypted connection might conceal what servers you're contacting, but the Humans will still know you're communicating somewhere. It wouldn't be hard for them to just ask the Council where it is."
"Yeah but they don't know what it is," said Shin'vaara. "Just hide the data in something embarrassing and it will make total sense. Nobody's going to question a teenager retrieving 'personal' files off their hard drive."
"Perhaps, but Humans are a machine people with AIs. They're going to scan whatever you send because it's cheap, so you're going to have to use some serious encryption to hide it, and who goes to that much trouble?"
"It's already encrypted, it's encrypted by the image," said Shin'vaara, as if this was obvious. "Image steganography is pretty easy, and if you encrypt it beforehand with your own secret key, and only use some of the pixels, no one will find it. Trust me, I've tried it. All you do—"
Tali groaned and raised a hand to stop Shin'vaara from continuing. "Please, let's not go into too much detail, I get the idea. I still don't think that's really secure. No encryption is unbreakable. As a Quarian, you should know that.
Shin'vaara rolled her eyes and sent a link to some examples over text. "Sure sure, but the point is, I'm still going to do some special encryption on top of it so that there's multiple layers to work through."
"Doesn't that just make you look more suspicious?"
"If you're looking for it, sure, but, this way anyone who breaks it is just going to get a face full of, uh, questionable material and think they've found what there is to find. Better to play into people's preconceptions."
She saw Tali's still-skeptical look, and waved her hands dismissively.
"Look, I have this worked out, okay? Trust me. The real question is whether you'll help me with the data analysis. I don't have any access to the computing resources I'd need."
Tali sighed.
"How much data are you intending to send anyway?" Tali asked, shaking her head. "Steganography has a pretty low data-to-noise ratio. And are you serious with this link right now? You have no idea how much trouble I'd be in if my dad saw this."
"Then don't let him see it," said Shin'vaara, rolling her eyes again. "Besides, I know you're curious."
"Shin'vaara."
"Anyway, probably as much as I can wrangle, honestly," Shin'vaara continued, ignoring her cousin's exasperation. "Every little bit helps right? Everything's been happening so fast, especially with the Geth—" Shin'vaara spat the word out as if it had personally offended her "—pretending to make peace. It's more important to get data than to be selective about the intel, right?"
"I wouldn't word it like that," Tali said. "In my opinion, the peace is probably perfectly legitimate. It's just peace with the Humans and not anyone else."
"Sure, but that's still the same problem," said Shin'vaara. "Just having the data is still important."
"For a peace envoy to the Humans you're not very positive on them."
Shin'vaara shrugged. "I'm perfectly fine with Humans, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do what we can just in case. The Salarians would agree with me."
Tali sighed.
"Look, if you're going to do this, I'll help you analyze the data. It's not like it's any real risk for me. Just… what kind of information are you hoping to find?"
"Well, you know, whatever I can get on the Geth delegation. It's not going to be easy approaching them, but I think I'll have my chances, and even if I can't crack Human security I can maybe crack the Geth. Other than that, just whatever I can learn about Human electronics and AI technology."
Tali put her hand to her faceplate.
"You know, I probably should have asked about this first. Is that really your best idea?"
"Look girl, I made a wish to be good at understanding technology and getting information," said Shin'vaara testily. "Maybe I'm not an amazing hacker or anything, fine, but I'm still a Quarian, and my magic's not led me wrong yet. It'll find something useful for us."
"If you say so. Just, don't get yourself mind-controlled by the robots or something," Tali said.
"As long as I don't let them put any junk in my brain it should be fine," said Shin'vaara dryly. "You heading out?"
"'Out', sure," Tali said, making a dismissive gesture with her fingers. "More like over to the next room. I can't wait until my pilgrimage, so I can breathe something other than recycled Quarian."
"Girl, that's all any of us breathe, except when we're having sex, and even then, that's usually just less-recycled Quarian. See you around."
She hung up as Tali made an outraged noise, then leaned back in her seat to stare at the ceiling.
"Yeah, you're right Tali," she said to her wall. "I also hope I know what the fuck I'm doing."
"You really don't," said Rael'zorah, Tali's father, directly into Shin'vaara's headset. "That was the stupidest plan I've ever heard."
Shin'vaara screeched and toppled out of her chair, banged her helmet against the table leg, and ended up in a heap on the floor.
Rael'zorah's face appeared on her viewscreen, radiating displeasure intense enough to transmit across the galaxy. A vast slew of security measures locked down her suit, shutting down all unnecessary activity and obfuscating the rest. The communication line had already been encrypted, and a cursory glance at it showed so many layers of obfuscation and encryption that Shin'vaara literally couldn't read it all before her uncle began to scold her.
"Why in the name of the Homeworld would you say things like that over such a weakly encrypted channel?" Rael asked, furious. "Do you know how easy it was for my automated security VI to break in and skim your content? I don't— your level of overconfidence is astounding."
"Were you listening the whole time?" Shin'vaara asked, sticking her head out over the backrest of her chair.
"Only the end, and I didn't listen, I just read the logs," said Rael. He folded his arms at her. "It doesn't really matter, because you were still moronic. Explain yourself and this behavior."
"Look this is just some light espionage—" she said.
"Light espionage?!" Rael'zorah asked, incredulous. "Young lady, there is no such thing when dealing with a galactic power like the Humans. If you upend this hovercart the galaxy could go to war! Every precaution is necessary!"
"Oh come on, what exactly did you think I was going to do, hack their government or something?" Shin'vaara said. "As if I could. I would just, um…"
Rael'zorah was pointedly silent while Shin'vaara struggled to come up with anything.
"I— you know— it'd be fine," she finished lamely.
Rael'zorah's disdain dripped off of the inside of Shin'vaara's mask. Or was that just condensation beading on the inside?
"You would have been caught within fifteen minutes of your first transmission," he said. "I mean that quite literally. The covert ops mission planning models we use for the Migrant Fleet Marines estimate your probability of detection by minute ten as one hundred percent. But we'll give you a bit of a head start, just to be generous."
Shin'vaara bought some time by standing up, brushing herself off, and sitting back down, hopefully in more dignified fashion.
"Look, one of the things we exchange students are supposed to be doing is gathering information about the Humans. That's an acknowledged and explicit part of the mission. I doubt they'd fault me for putting a bit extra information in. I… honestly don't even know what I could find that would be privileged. If it were privileged enough I'd probably try to bring it home personally, I guess?"
"'Whatever I can get on the Geth delegation' hardly sounds like information about the Humans, or information that wouldn't be privileged," said Rael. "And on the reverse side of that, what would be the point if you didn't get privileged information? That argument would never fly if someone decided to detain you, and information security teams take the statements you were making seriously. As a magical girl you are uniquely dangerous, and they have no idea what you are and are not capable of. You put yourself, and your cousin, in incredible danger just by discussing such topics out loud. You were the one the Quarian people chosen to represent us! It was a tremendous honor! Think about how you would make our family look."
Shin'vaara felt herself wilting in her chair.
"…you're right," she said dejectedly. "I'll just… play nice and be a good student, and be a credit to my race." She paused then looked up hopefully at Rael'zorah. "Can I at least piggyback on whatever the Salarian is doing?"
Rael'zorah looked at her in an unsettling and inscrutable fashion.
"….Uncle Rael?"
"You may not," he said, then held up a hand before Shin'vaara could protest or become more dejected. "Let me finish. You are correct that any information you can get on the Geth is important. The path to taking back the Homeworld is long, and we must have more information about our enemy. Your mistake was to think that you could get information without being caught. But as you are interested in such work…"
Rael'zorah paused to take a deep breath, before continuing.
"As you and Tali'zorah are interested in such work, it would be remiss of me to put a stop to it wholesale," he said, and Shin'vaara felt her heart do a flip from shock and joy. "The Admiralty Board was unwilling to get very involved with data collection, but a little effort doesn't go remiss, I think. There are a few things I would send you to facilitate matters."
A realization sprang up in Shin'vaara's head.
"Wait, is this why you opposed my nomination to be the exchange student?" she asked, recalling why she had been so angry at her uncle earlier. "I thought you thought I was too immature, but you just wanted a better spy!"
Rael'zorah sniffed.
"You are too immature, but that goes hand-in-hand with not being a good spy," said Rael. "Espionage—organic intelligence especially—is the province of those who have iron control over themselves."
Shin'vaara pursed her lips, frowned, thought that over, then nodded tentatively. "I… I think I get what you mean, Uncle Rael. It's not just about knowing how to play nice, right? You have to do things you might not like to make people trust you."
"Among other things," said Rael'zorah. He sighed. "But it's getting late. We have much to do. Are you sure you want to do this?"
Shin'vaara nodded. "I am."
A truly massive packet of data appeared, downloading as fast as the connection would allow.
"Let us start with the basics," he said. "Open this data packet and find the section labeled 'standard operating procedure', and we will begin."
Shin'vaara let out a careful sigh. They were leaving for Earth tomorrow morning, and she needed to get to bed. But there was no turning this down, and there was always magic for sleep deprivation.
And now she had something to work towards.