Requiem of the Goddess

by Yoshiyuki Ly

Goddess of mind, goddess of heart - closed-off without consent, She cannot flourish; unlocked to the universe in trust and control, She protects from all outside influences. Only one sits atop the throne of Shepard's subjectivity. Ashley/FemShep, Liara/FemShep. Miranda/FemShep, Aria/FemShep. Power plays, intense loves. Renegon Infiltrator FemShep. Spans the Mass Effect Trilogy.

80. Insomnia - Grand Strategy

"Ezio's Family" (Origins Version) from Assassin's Creed Origins

LXXX. Insomnia – Grand Strategy

(Captain Sol Shepard)

Years ago as a teenager, I hadn't yet known where my life would take me.

So many years ago now, back on Earth, during those initial days that had determined my fate.

The precious few days before I signed up for the military. Enlisting with the Alliance at only seventeen years old going on eighteen. I'd had this dream for so long. My own coveted American Dream of escaping poverty as a child—by signing up to die for my country, for my homeworld, for humanity, and most important of all, for the military-industrial complex to profit from my suffering and sacrifice.

I had always known the true face of my nation and the people in it. I had never looked away from those ugly truths, the hypocrisy, the abuses of power, and the cruelty all masquerading as American Exceptionalism. Having grown up in a gang, finding my escape and purpose both in the ballroom scene and military realness, and then losing my community to gentrification: I'd had this front row seat to the realities around me. Only by chance had I found a way out in middle school by getting recruited as a fashion model. Only by chance had I had the freedom to focus on my studies and graduate from high school—without losing my life or ending up in prison. I'd always had this dream regardless of my luck.

This dream of finding my true sense of purpose with the Alliance.

Not for the others profiting off my duty and honor.

Just for myself. My needs, my insatiable quest to prove myself—to myself. Not to anyone else.

And so not long after my graduation, I took those first steps. Those first official steps of signing up for the military. I had already put in the time, money, and effort for any personal training I could find beforehand. Anything and everything I could do to prepare me for this journey. I had expected to run into roadblocks with people not believing in me. And I had, hearing those murmurs and whispers of people thinking I was "too pretty to be a marine." I should've stuck to modeling, they'd said. I should've focused on finding a man, they'd said, not knowing or caring to know that I was a lesbian. I would've only gotten my ass kicked, they'd insisted, seeing my tall, lithe frame and assuming I wasn't tough enough for this.

None of them knew of my own so-called initiation, or the blood and sweat I'd already poured into my time as a gangbanger. None of them knew I had made lieutenant in my old gang, understanding the power of leadership and the potential anyone could have. None of them knew how much I needed this.

That summer day in sunny San Diego, I drove my car down to an Alliance recruitment office. I found the small but noticeable building standing out in an outdoor strip mall, not too far from a metro station. Every other building around it seemed to blend in with the tall brown trunks of the palm trees nearby. This one had decorated itself in the blue camouflage of Alliance fatigues, with a large sign on the front that read: 'Systems Alliance Navy – Marine Corps Recruitment'. Seeing it filled me with endless nerves.

What if this didn't go the way I'd planned?

What if they turned me down for some reason?

What would I do if I had to live the rest of my life as a civilian instead? Honor-less, powerless? Would I have to settle for playing Hearts of Iron as a recreation of World War II, finding purpose in a grand strategy video game I loved?

I didn't want to think about it.

After I parked in the nearby lot, I put in my headphones. I baked in the heat of my car for a bit before stepping outside. This Southern California heat blazing in a pleasant dryness, gentle and unobtrusive as my only home. The welcome breeze air-conditioned me for only a moment, fanning away the nervous sweat that had stuck to my back beneath my shirt. Always this men's clothing as I preferred—tailor-made for me to fit the demands of my slim, unmanly body. Always with my long hair down, and my scowl set, making the people around me give me a second look, a third look, and to stare in their usual rudeness. I must have seemed like a unicorn to them, walking past with my rap and trip-hop music blasting in my ears, and wearing these clothes, and sporting this look, while looking like I didn't belong.

And I didn't.

I didn't belong with them. With any of them. They made sure I didn't.

The way they gawked and misunderstood me only reinforced this feeling, this discomfort as aloofness.

And maybe my discomfort showed itself as arrogance. Maybe so, yet I'd had nothing else to stand on. No one else's shoulders, no one else's support. I stood tall on my own and I had survived. I kept my fair pride.

I found even more pride in this promise before me. Joining the marines: the Alliance's quick response force. Adaptable to any situation. Hailed as humanity's Special Forces. I saw it so clearly—that this was where I belonged. I had to do this. I had to make this work.

Because I'd heard this voice, this presence within me. Only on this unconscious level, completely hidden to me as my waking self. Only I had been able to hear this voice throughout my short seventeen years thus far. Something or someone telling me to keep going. The smooth, soothing tones of a woman's voice encouraging me. A woman I hadn't met, telling me, 'I believe in you, Sol. Keep going.' Maybe…I had found some of my drive from this voice. My motivations. Too difficult to ignore—making it impossible for me to just…sit back sometimes. To slow down and enjoy my life for what it was. I kept working so hard to make a living that I forgot to live my life. Constantly driven. Never lost, never aimless.

I enjoyed my focus, my determination…but it tired me out sometimes. Sometimes, I would've liked to stop and rest. Or even to just set this all aside and move on. To be ordinary and find happiness there. But in my youth, I didn't believe in anything like that. I would never allow myself to think there was any happiness in mediocrity. So I chased after my goals with this ferocity. Always guided by this voice…

This muse of mine.

Almost a sexual feeling, attracted to her dulcet tones, unknown as she was to me. Romantic, sustaining.

So much so that I took some of my edge off, walking into this recruitment office. Air-conditioned for everyone's convenience, this non-descript bureau held nothing remarkable. Regular desks and chairs around. The distinct smell everywhere from the freshly-steamed carpet. The blandest of walls with the only standouts. All of these countless posters around of Uncle Sam, of Alliance heroes like David Anderson and Steven Hackett, and of the federal government's current Secretary of Defense, encouraging teenagers like me to sign up. Teenagers, kids keeping this poverty-to-military pipeline going.

One of the recruitment officers found me. A short, burly guy in his Alliance fatigues—the shock in his face spoke volumes, having to stare up at me. Something in his pants seemed to stand at attention at this sight of me. And how confused as he appeared, too, not knowing what to make of me.

"Hey there!" he coughed, covering his mouth with his meaty fist. "Are you…looking for someone?"

Staring at him coolly, I sounded much the same. "I'm here to sign up for the Alliance."

"You are?!"

I just sneered at him, already having prepared myself for this nonsense.

"Sorry! Sorry… You look like you're dead serious." He forced an internal reset, remembering his job. "Okay, good to know! We're always looking for new recruits. The name's Marcus. And you?"

He offered his hand, trying to keep things professional now.

"Sol," I said, gripping his hand in my own.

"Well, Sol, it's great to meet you! Come in, come in. Let's sit down and chat."

Marcus sat across from me at the standard-issue office desk. I faced him with this view of the window outside: the clear blue skies of the afternoon, the panorama of trees and skycars. I watched this view as Marcus pulled out some paperwork of datapads. He kept a close, curious eye on me the whole time.

"So, I've gotta ask. What brings you to the Alliance? What's someone like you eyeing the military for?"

Ignoring the implications of his words, I simply replied, "I want to be a marine. An infiltrator."

"Really? Got any family in the military? Parents, grandparents served in the force? Older siblings?"

"I don't know. I'm an orphan."

Marcus stopped sifting through the datapads over his desk.

Something of my stare seemed to cut right through him.

"I'm—I'm sorry to hear that," he offered in awkwardness. "How old are you, Sol?"

"I'm seventeen. I'll be eighteen in October."

"Just graduated from high school, huh? And spending your summer vacation here at our office?"

"Yes."

Staring at me in disbelief now, he couldn't wrap his head around my actual age. Or how I held myself.

I had brought along my own paperwork, sliding it across the desk. "This is from the state of California, allowing me to enlist before I'm legally an adult. Since I don't have a parent or guardian to sign for me."

"Oh, okay," said Marcus, sounding hollow as he looked everything over. "You got this taken care of already… You're a smart kid, Sol. Very organized." How strange it sounded for someone to call me what I really was. "Well, all right. If you could sign here and here, we'll start you with a short aptitude test. Just to see where you're at. Something tells me you won't struggle too much with the test. Some do."

Filling out these forms, I fought not to show my disgust. My personal feelings.

I had to write down my government name:

Sol Shepard.

Not Sol Balenciaga from my time in the ballroom scene, from living in the House of Balenciaga before. Shepard. Shepard! I'd never liked this name. It never suited me at all. Yet I had never legally changed it, so now I had to go back to using it. This dead name my absent—or maybe dead—parents had given me.

After signing these initial forms, Marcus directed me to another room down a short hall. There I sat down at a regular school desk, taking this short exam. Basic questions to test my general education. I stifled my yawns, instead answering each question in diligence. Yet the whole time, I sensed the sudden activity within the office outside the door. Other recruitment officers had returned from their lunch breaks. They asked Marcus about me, having seen me enter the room with my test. Already the gossip and the questioning started. Questioning my skills. Questioning my belonging. "Oh, she's too pretty to be a marine. You kidding me?!" Only for Marcus to shoot back, "You barely saw her! Just wait, all right?"

A real bunch of professionals around here.

Once I left the room, heading back to Marcus at his desk, the rest of the office went quiet.

Those other recruitment officers stopped their jokes, their judgments, staring at me—again in disbelief.

Men and women both: I pierced them with a glare, enough to shut them up completely.

Marcus looked downright chuffed as he accepted my test. Even more satisfaction showed as he graded my results. This gleam, the joy in his eyes. He almost seemed…proud of me. Even though we'd just met.

"Passed with flying colors!" he announced. "We're all set to move on to the next stage. It's the official, standardized aptitude test for the Alliance. This is for us to see where you might place. What type of jobs in the marines might suit you. Do as well as you did today, and you can make it as an infiltrator."

"Good to know," I replied. I stopped myself from smiling. Not in front of this relative stranger to me.

As Marcus signed me up for the next official slot, he asked me, "You think you'll be ready for bootcamp after that? Before you ship out, you'd have to take a physical with our medical team."

"I'll be ready."

"You sure, Sol? You're really tall. I can tell you were a model or something. You're still slim, though."

Turning over my wrists over my lap, I had nothing to say.

I had been worried about this for months now. Passing that damned physical before bootcamp. Being underweight for my height. Even just a few pounds short would sink my aspirations. Killing my dreams.

Marcus didn't seem to notice my reservations. He just smiled at me with that pride of his. As if he saw something in me. Something special—for the Alliance, for the future. As if he felt he had a part in these grand designs for me. So after signing me up for the next official test soon, he sent me on my way. He promised to keep in touch throughout this process. This would be a long summer of preparations.

Once the day arrived, I didn't make a big deal of it. I just went down to the testing center and got it over with. I felt surrounded by these other people, these other Alliance hopefuls around my age. Some of them looked outright lost, not knowing why they'd decided to go through with this. Others didn't seem to belong at all. The rest blended in with everyone else. But as ever, I stood out. As always, I earned too much attention by doing nothing. By minding my own business and ignoring everyone. Unbothered. And bored, unchallenged by this exam. I answered every question as best as I could anyway. I had no choice.

Handing in my test, I went up to the counter in a lobby area. The woman sitting there beamed at me in brightness, suggesting in a too-nosey way that I should smile. "You're beautiful," she said. "Why don't you smile more?" I stopped from rolling my eyes, leaving the counter without a word or reaction. I felt that lady staring after me as I went, a bout of curiosity overtaking her. The same curiosity from Marcus.

By the time my results came in, Marcus couldn't stop praising me. A near-perfect score. He had likely started bragging about me to his co-workers at the recruitment office. None of it went to my head.

Because I had gotten caught up in my other concerns. In the weeks leading up to my physical, I tried everything. I tried dieting by eating red meat and drinking revolting, chalky protein shakes. Only to make myself sick. I couldn't stand red meat. Not just because of how bad it was for the environment, but because my system didn't like it. I tried drinking other diet milkshakes, only to get sick again, because I was lactose intolerant and allergic to milk. So I tried putting on muscle at the gym. No matter how many weights I lifted, the raw muscle I should've gained vanished into thin air instead of sticking to my bones.

The years of fucked up lessons I'd learned from the modeling industry had cursed me even now. That toxicity of my own body image, my own feelings about myself constantly under attack, day after day.

I would take out my frustrations by practicing at the shooting range.

Perfect accuracy.

Perfect handling.

Perfect safety and cleaning practices with my guns.

All from a lifetime of learning to defend myself out on the streets.

And yet none of it would matter if I couldn't put on these last few pounds.

Then the day arrived. Marcus drove me in his car to the nearest Alliance base. He brought me to the medical facility. I couldn't stop thinking about how I'd spent the night before sunrise. Crying in frustration, powerlessness. Feeling like I wasn't in control of my own destiny. I had all these ridiculous health limitations and nitpicks keeping me from this goal of mine. Too many variables outside my control. I had no idea what to expect from my own body, my own tolerances. I didn't know who my parents were: their genetic histories, their medical histories. I'd had to find out the hard way about these limitations of mine, inherited by these people I couldn't even name, couldn't even imagine. I hated them.

I had considered scheming instead. Stuffing covert, weighty items into my clothes somewhere. Tying the weight of my handgun to my leg under my jeans. Something, anything. Anything to pass this physical.

Yet in the end, I had decided against it.

I let Marcus escort me into this medical facility in my truth. In this failure of mine; also not my own.

For some reason I felt bad that he wouldn't get to keep bragging about me anymore. For his own sake.

During the physical, this military doctor kept things to-the-point. Simple instructions. Simple tasks. Simple questions. He jotted down everything on his datapad without a fuss. Just a standard procedure for him.

Then with measuring my height, the doctor cracked a joke, "Wow, did you play basketball in school? You're taller than most of the young men we've seen."

"No, I was a model," I corrected.

The doctor gave an intrigued, yet superficial-sounding hum, writing down more notes.

And then this final hell—

Standing on the scale.

Measuring my weight this time.

No jokes from the doctor this time.

Just these destructive thoughts spiraling as a hurricane in my mind.

I already hated going to the doctor. I hated the same old lectures—"You need to gain weight, Sol. You need to do this. You need to do that." As if I didn't know. I hated the same old judgments—whenever a doctor would check my records, they would always pause on the one diagnosis I had. Gender dysphoria. The same mind-rending discomfort and pain that made me detest this vulnerability. Having to debase myself by stripping and walking around in a mere piece of cloth covering myself. Already embarrassing for anyone else. More like a psychological assault for someone like me. Never feeling as though I belonged in my own body, my own gender, despite everyone telling me how pretty I was. I should have been happy, I should have been content, and I should have been proud of myself, my looks. But I wasn't.

And now this last judgment from my body refusing to cooperate with me.

This persistent roadblock in my way, fucking me over one more time.

The doctor paused over the number there on the screen.

Too low.

No admittance to the Alliance allowed for me. Physical failed. Game over.

But then, this doctor looked at me. Really looked at me. They saw these frustrations about to boil over. The heat in my eyes, the redness webbing there. Behind that heat, the fire. This fire in my stare that had somehow spread to him. Just like Marcus, just like a number of others, he saw something in me. He believed in me. Enough to jot something else down on his datapad. Something false, something that could've gotten him fired from his post and then formally discharged. And yet he did it anyway.

He smiled and said, "Good luck with bootcamp, Sol. The Alliance will be lucky to have you."

Then he sent me on my way.

Just like that, I had this permission. This permission to go after what I wanted. Signing this infantry contract with pride, I never spoke of the deceptions. The white lie that had gotten me this far. For once, I stopped believing in my solitary power. I finally started to accept the role others had played in my life. The role they had played in getting me this far. Believing in me; propelling me forward as I needed.

---

The night before bootcamp, I couldn't stop thinking about my situation. When I was a model, I pretended to listen to what everyone said. My agents, the photographers, the producers. I did the photoshoots, walked the runways. I allowed myself to be a commodity for the fashion industry. They made money off of my image—and I still felt so disgusted over it. No one had outright abused me. No one had made me do anything that I said no to. Aside from my warped sense of body image, I had made it out unscathed.

It was just the implications.

That I could only escape poverty as a child by selling myself.

People all across Earth, and maybe the galaxy, had consumed my magazines and runway vids. They obsessed over me, latching onto me; developed judgments toward me and feelings about me. They'd created parasocial relationships with me. I probably had grown adults lusting after me—or even outright falling in love with me—while I was still underage. I'd had no control over that and it terrified me.

And now I found myself doing the same thing again, only with the Alliance this time. Selling my life to serve this system. We all had to make ourselves useful. We all had to make a living. But in learning the truth about the world, the galaxy, and how it operated, I didn't actually want to serve anyone. I hated that we all had to be in service to this system. I didn't necessarily want to be a hermit, but it seemed tempting to me a lot of the time. It would've been nicer if everyone could just live as they wanted to. As long as they didn't hurt anyone else, it should've been fine. Seemed impossible for this to change.

Too many people in power didn't want this to change. They had designed our lives like this on purpose.

Despite my frustrations, this all seemed meant to be. Joining the Alliance. Chasing after my life's work in the military. I didn't like having to be a foot soldier for this system I despised. I would've liked to find some way to shut it all down instead. To get rid of it. Because I might've gotten out, but too many others still lived in poverty. Too many people suffered as they worked to live, barely earning a living wage—or probably not. Too many others wound up homeless with no resources, only to get addicted to drugs for some kind of relief, and then jailed to be made an example of. Then that shifted to incarcerated people used for slave labor for corporations to keep the credits flowing. Unfair. And no one seemed to care, either. Instead of having basic empathy, people looked down on others who ended up in those situations. Those same people would've looked down on me, too, if I hadn't gotten out from that oppressive cycle. As if didn't have the potential to be more than my fucked up situation. I knew myself better than that.

This bootcamp for the marines would last thirteen weeks. I was lucky enough to get sent to a training depot right here in San Diego. After those thirteen weeks, our training would culminate in a 54-hour endurance test called the Crucible, to test everything we had learned. I already knew what to expect.

So I packed my giant backpack of belongings, slung it over my shoulders, and got on this shuttle with a bunch of fresh-faced high school graduates. Together we headed to the receiving barracks at the Systems Alliance Marine Corps Recruit Depot. I expected to be placed with the Lima Company, 3rd Recruit Training. They prided themselves as the first gender-integrated training company at this recruit depot centuries ago. "Diversity of thought leads to better and quicker decision-making on the battlefield."

During this shuttle ride, I reasoned with myself. I knew bootcamp would act as indoctrination. And not the subtle kind. They would test us on how well we worked 'under pressure' from the drill sergeants yelling and screaming at us 24/7. Teamwork, following orders, whatever. I didn't care for any of it.

I promised myself to resist this indoctrination they would subject us to.

I promised myself to just get through the training with my individuality in-tact.

My only strategy to survive these thirteen weeks: staying true to myself and never surrendering.

As soon as the shuttle touched down, I sat up straight. The other recruits looked to me, wondering what was up. Then a drill instructor in his Alliance uniform barged aboard our transport. This rep from the Receiving Company started barking orders at us—"SIT UP STRAIGHT! I want your FULL ATTENTION, recruits! Do you understand me?!" Startled by the commotion, the others quickly followed orders without a thought. This breathless sergeant had scared the obedience into them, lightning-fast. He drilled into everyone's heads that we were just recruits, and we would only become marines if we completed this bootcamp training. He wouldn't shut up, not even as we rushed off the shuttle with our huge backpacks.

With my naturally long strides, I didn't have to do much rushing at all.

The other recruits hurried to keep up with me.

We continued in, forced to stand in two long lines. We filed into the barracks—slowly—as the entire group of Receiving Company sergeants screamed themselves hoarse at us in this early-autumn heat. If anyone showed any signs of distress, or disliking the noise, the drill instructors singled them out: hovering over them, shouting more, and insisting this was our new normal. Drilling this into our heads.

I enjoyed my figurative iron helmet, comfortably immune to the propaganda by now.

Once we geared up with our uniforms and supplies, we started the first round of training. Strength tests. Running a mile and a half. Crunches, pull-ups. Marching with these Alliance flags beneath the sun. And then marching in formation with our assault rifles, only finding solace in the shade of the palm trees.

Inside the barracks, we each had our own beds where we kept our belongings. After getting settled in, mostly, we waited for our senior drill instructor to arrive. We all had to sit on the floor with our legs crossed, waiting. Waiting. Waiting while the other drill instructors stood before us, hawk-eyed as they made sure we all waited properly, with respect. This material of my blue camo uniform still smelled new—factory-made. The tightness of my combat boots bothered me, just from having to tie these laces way too tightly. I focused on the details overmuch. Anything to keep from making my usual, piercing eye contact with the drill instructors. They'd already seemed to single me out. They knew I wasn't here for their bullshit. I would follow orders, but I would never blindly obey a word anyone said. That wasn't me.

Our senior drill instructor finally arrived. She introduced herself as Sergeant Rodriguez, and then named the other instructors who would be with us throughout these weeks of training. The whole time, she spoke with that loudness, that jabbing emphasis in her tone. A constant barrage against my senses.

More indoctrination: "Marines in the Alliance have the highest of virtues in the military! We obey orders. We respect our superiors. We strive to be the best in everything we do! Discipline and spirit are the hallmarks of a marine! You can expect us to give you discipline. That is our job. You'd better accept it!"

I appreciated the principles. Not the application—like a battering ram against our minds.

"A marine never lies or cheats! She works hard. She gives one hundred percent of herself at all times! As your drill instructors, we will go the extra mile to bring this out in you. Trust and believe—even if you give up on yourself, we won't. As long as you sweat more during training, you'll bleed less on the battlefield!"

I remembered my promises to myself. I kept up my mental rebellions, even as chaos broke out. Setting up 'the house' in the barracks and unpacking completely—while the drill instructors yelled at us to hurry up. We had to hurry up, but we could only work at an orderly pace. We had to start cleaning our guns in a hurry, but we could only do it at the same orderly pace—without rushing and making mistakes. We had to live with these same fucking contradictions, constantly, while the drill instructors watched our every move. The cacophony of their shouting reverberated through the barracks all day long. Louder and louder and louder—until I felt myself about to snap. I had no peace and quiet. No space to think.

Especially not once Sergeant Rodriguez herself singled me out. She made me stand in front of her—while everyone kept sitting on the floor, cleaning their guns at a breakneck-but-not-breakneck pace. She kept yelling and yelling. Right at my face. Boiling on the inside, I stood still. I stared straight ahead past her actual eyes. I looked at her without looking at her at all. And I sensed Rodriguez faltering a bit, however much she fought to hide it. Maybe my aloof coldness had unsettled her. Maybe I had outright scared her.

Either way, she sensed my resistance and made sure to let me know she didn't enjoy it.

Later that night, after the madness, they finally let us sleep. I had no privacy, sharing these barracks with so many others, our bunks practically right next to each other. I made myself sleep anyway. And I should have been lonely; I heard those frightened whimpers and stifled sniffling from some other recruits. Homesick. Missing their friends, missing their families. Some of them tossed and turned in their sleep.

But again, I heard that voice. That soft, soothing, and gentle voice from someone I didn't know. 'I am here with you, Sol. I will always be with you.' Hearing her say that—this stranger as she should have been—helped me find peace. I felt as if I held this someone in my arms. This person who somehow made my heart feel full. Such an unusual joy in my spirit, just from her. I could've sworn I felt her with me; how she smelled of the breezy beaches here in my hometown. These comforts from her lulled me to sleep.

---

A few weeks in, we started the so-called confidence course—or really just an obstacle course. We alternated between our camo uniforms for strength activities—more running, more pushups and crunches; and then we changed into our standard-issue, midnight blue armor for tactical training. More yelling followed us everywhere we went, but this time for 'motivation.' Our drill instructors spat and shouted the most over Earth's somewhat recent history. Constant reminders about first contact protocol with a new species. "ASSUME HOSTILITY, RECRUITS!" No one wanted any repeats of what happened with the turians. I could tell that maybe, just maybe, some of our drill instructors seemed a little sore over the First Contact War. They kept yammering about General Williams and his decision to surrender—how he had set Earth's military back to the stone ages. Their mania burned through my head the entire time as we went prone, dragging ourselves beneath barbed wire with our rifles; as crawled through trenches; as we adjusted to the novelty of our zero-gravity training; as we broke our limitations to create new ones.

In my efforts to keep resisting, more of our drill instructors took notice.

They never called me out. Not directly. Never to my face.

Instead, they kept trying to shame me for not being a "team player." They claimed to see this as my worst weakness. I only helped the other recruits whenever our drill instructors forced me to: like the specific exercise where some recruits pretended like they were injured, shouting and yelling to the skies in their fake pain, while the rest of us hauled their not-injured bodies through a not-warzone. Why was it a weakness to get the job done when my fellow recruits couldn't? Why was it a weakness to get to the end of this trench when everyone else had worn themselves out? Why was it a fucking weakness to clean my rifle before anyone else, and start my target practice sooner? If anything, my superiors should have known they could count on me—as an individual—to go above and beyond when others couldn't.

In my eyes, if I couldn't climb up an obstacle by myself, then I wasn't meant to get up there. Simple.

Too many of these drill instructors kept repeating their cute little mantra: "the weakness of one."

I found my greatest honor as an army of one—against anything I set my mind to.

I refused to let anyone change my mind; to change me.

So then I should have been grateful once our next challenge came up: boxing. One-on-one matches. But of course, my senior drill instructor sought to change me—and so she purposely put me up against the strongest recruit in our entire training company. A tall guy who looked like he worked out. The same height as me, fine, but this boxing match wasn't at all evenly-matched. Every time he jabbed at me with his puffy gloves, he used his strength to his advantage. He put his muscle into every hit, forcing me on the defensive. He didn't even try to score points or anything. Just these impacts. These constant impacts against me—against my protective gear slowing me down—knowing I couldn't withstand the force.

This wasn't a street fight; I couldn't play dirty to win. This wasn't kickboxing or mixed martial arts; I couldn't use my legs to my advantage by kicking. I couldn't move fast enough to just dodge and wear him out. Not with this clunky, cumbersome gear on. I couldn't think my way out of this. I had nothing.

He rammed me down to the ground. Completely against the rules, but no one fucking said anything.

This thudding of my whole body collapsing to this dried, prickly grass.

Surrounded and suffocated by this boxing gear over my head, I couldn't hear anything.

Nothing, except for this constant ringing in my ears.

I felt nothing anymore, either—except for this burning sensation in my face, reddening, reddening.

I couldn't stand this. This humiliation. All from having lost my balance after a cheap shot. Underweight.

Somewhere through this endless ringing, I heard the rising shouts from everyone around me. The spectators, and the ones who'd rigged this match against me. Every single one of them yelling, encouraging me to get up. "Get back up, Sol! Come on!" Their craze eventually faded out again.

I felt that same presence within me. The very same I had never sensed in my conscious life. Only on this unconscious level, completely hidden from my public-facing self, from my real awareness. This energy, whatever it was, had always motivated me. This feeling had always pushed me to greater heights. Ever since my childhood, I had felt this person, whoever she was. This muse of mine…like an imaginary friend. An invisible friend. My only friend and companion, guaranteeing that I never, ever felt lonely while alone.

The only one I could count on no matter what.

The one true source of my endless drive and ambition.

Possessed by her presence, I stood up again. I got back to my feet. Ignoring the mass of emotion from our spectators, from their own adrenaline rushes just from watching us, I focused on my opponent. He faltered from the natural intensity of my stare. Just like so many others did. I observed, analyzed him some more. The tone of his skin, so pale, like he'd never spent this much time out in the sun. Definitely his first time in San Diego. How he labored to breathe, how he'd drenched himself in sweat down to his uniform—even now after he'd had this break from his cheap shot in knocking me down. I had the home turf advantage. I couldn't wear him out by dodging him, but I sure as hell could do it by fortifying myself.

I had made the mistake before of just standing normally in a normal boxing stance.

Not this time.

I widened my stance, using my long legs in the only way I could. Almost crouching in this sturdy posture. This time, whenever he punched at me—again with that brute force—I didn't lose my footing, my balance. Diverting the momentum of his force to the strength of my legs backed up my upper-body strength. Like turning my upper body into a door, with him punching at one side, and me on the other. Pushing, fortifying, and holding. He couldn't break through. He punched and punched, breathing harder.

I turned myself into this tank—immovable and unbreakable.

He punched against this tank of me, over and over, but I withstood him with ease.

I would step around on occasion. Making sure he kept up with me. No matter how long this took, I kept at it. I listened to his breaths getting thinner and thinner. I watched the sweat pouring harder and thicker down his neck. Too stubborn to change up his strategy, he kept on keeping on. Too embarrassed to lose to a so-called pretty girl, he let our fellow recruits keep spurring him on. I noticed his aim started to drift in his growing dizziness. He punched at the air a few times instead of punching at me. Eventually, our drill instructors yelled at him to stop. He wouldn't stop. His pride wouldn't let him. Meanwhile, I had my strategy, my focus set. I controlled my breathing, basking in the winds of my hometown. I knew exactly how and when to inhale this dry heat—without letting it overheat me; without letting it overtake me.

Eventually, this heat overtook him.

One last punch, and he gasped for air. He fainted, collapsing to the ground on his own.

The medics and drill instructors rushed over to us. I moved myself out of their way. The other recruits surrounding our makeshift arena only stared at me in awe. Amazed or terrified, it didn't matter. I expected them to gossip about this for the rest of our training—and even after we left bootcamp altogether. I expected to gain a reputation from this. Infamous or not. Whatever. I had no control over it.

My senior drill instructor Sergeant Rodriguez grilled me, "Recruit! Shepard, did you do that on purpose?!"

The hell did it matter?

When he shoved me down to the ground—against the rules—no one stepped in to speak up for me.

He'd gotten away with changing the rules. So I did what I had to do to win. He got what he deserved.

"No, Ma'am," I lied. "I wanted to wear him out. Make him forfeit. I didn't think he'd be stupid enough to risk a heat stroke. Not my fault he cared too much about beating a girl. He won't live it down now."

She seemed to agree with me. Maybe she regretted pitting me against him. This had clearly backfired.

Still, the sergeant pointed her finger at me in a mix of futility and astonishment.

"You're too damn smart, Shepard. We're lucky you're on our side. Don't get too ruthless, you hear me?"

I saluted her, repeating the same line we'd had to parrot to these constant orders: "Aye, Ma'am."

Rodriguez narrowed her eyes at me in a deep suspicion. Reverential suspicion, but suspicion nonetheless. Then she hurried off with the medics carrying that blockhead guy away to the nearby medical facility.

By the end of our thirteen weeks, we reached the final test—the Crucible. We continued on with more of these obstacle courses, more of this strength training, more and more and more. All as this culmination of everything we had trained for and learned. We would wake up early before the sun had risen, and then get going. We kept this up for several hours at a time throughout this 54-hour program. Only getting six or so hours of sleep max. And so, by the time we reached this ultimate test, much of our division seemed shaky, unsteady. I had the real sense that most of my fellow recruits wouldn't make it.

They called this last trial the Reaper: a nearly-ten mile hike up a mountain, all as we carried our giant backpacks on our backs, and with our rifles in our hands for good measure. I found myself smiling as I woke up that morning. The rain had greeted us through the dark. The misty condensation helped keep us cool throughout these hours. I enjoyed it, anyway. The others—not so much. As we hiked through this rain and mud, passing through the compounds on the base, I felt everyone's growing fatigue. Our drill instructors went up to anyone lagging behind, giving them a pep talk at a loud volume for everyone to hear. I didn't listen to them. I instead heard someone else's voice in my head the entire time. Her voice:

'Keep going, Captain. You will get there.'

Captain?

Like this was really meant to be. This training, this suffering. This beginning of my career in the military.

I gripped my rifle harder, pushing past the other recruits ahead of me. They'd all grown groggy, delirious from this lack of sleep. I felt just fine, having had bouts of insomnia on my own for a while now. Yet too many of my platoon couldn't quite make it. They kept trying to help each other: winded as they gave their own pep talks to their hiking neighbor. I felt like I could push ahead even harder. Get up this trail even faster. Possibly finish first before anyone and everyone else. Solidify my infamy even more—if it would make sure no one messed with me. I needed them to know better; to not inconvenience me again.

But then I looked back at everyone one last time. My fellow recruits; my implicit squadmates. My team.

I saw some of them stopping on this muddy trail, shaking their heads. Too close to giving up entirely. This rain kept battering them. And yet I found the weather comforting. Knowing we didn't all have an even playing field, I made this change. I started guiding the other recruits forward—starting with the ones nearest to me. I wouldn't say a word. I would only look into their weary eyes. They would see how lucid I was compared to them. They saw so much more in me. Far more that I couldn't comprehend at the time.

Whatever they saw in my eyes—it gave them the fire they needed to push through.

As they passed me by, out of breath, they still whispered to me:

"Thanks, Shepard… Really, thanks. You're a real one."

"Thought you didn't care about us, Sol. Pretty nice surprise…"

"Helps to know you see me."

This started a chain reaction. As my team around me saw this change, they paid it forward. Or backward. Everyone else, invigorated now, pushed each other that much harder. The ones behind stopped lagging and started pushing forward. I stayed near the center of the group as this unexpected rallying force. Still without speaking a single word. I looked around some more, finding that guy who almost ended my time at bootcamp—the one who'd knocked me down during our boxing match. He'd apparently recovered from his heat stroke, still pushing onward for this final test. Gasping for air and sweating as hard as the rain, he probably wouldn't have made it. I grabbed his arm, gripping his strength beneath the sleeve of his uniform. Hoarse as he breathed now, he nodded to me in thanks, unable to speak. We kept going.

Our drill instructors noticed.

Everyone reached the top of the mountain. Every single one of us conquered the Reaper. No one ended up left behind, or chose to give up.

Beneath this pouring rain, we each stood shoulder-to-shoulder in several lines. Our drill instructors spoke to each of us one at a time. They offered their congratulations: "You made it, soldier. Welcome to the Systems Alliance Marine Corps." Everyone seemed emotional. They tried not to cry. Even the sergeants.

I didn't feel the same emotions overtaking me.

I felt like I'd had a different experience compared to everyone else. Less communal, more individual.

In this rain, I thought I saw something. The water drops nearest to my face formed a smile. A smile glowing as blue as the ocean. Gentle, beautiful. So proud of me. Filled with endless love for me. The best support I could've had at a time like this. I only wished I could've seen this with my conscious eyes.

Unsurprisingly, my senior drill instructor came to speak with me. The one person who kept singling me out. Giving me a hard time this whole time. Sergeant Rodriguez regarded me differently this time. Not with that scrutinizing—her attempts to change me, to make me assimilate and fit in with everyone.

"Well, you proved me wrong," she conceded, giving me a hardened smile. "Not surprised to see me?"

"No, Ma'am," was all I said.

The sergeant laughed softly, not wanting to disturb the one-on-one talks happening within arm's reach.

"Hear me out, then. I've been at this thing for a long time. Seen recruits come and go. The ones who couldn't make it? The number one thing they shared in common was some of what you had. They weren't team players. Thought they had to do everything alone. When the time came for the toughest challenges, their mindset turned into a weakness. You're one of the few who really turned that around."

The way she looked at me—maybe she saw something else, too. A younger version of herself. The style of her hardness—I could tell she grew up on the streets. The military was her way out. We shared that.

Sergeant Rodriguez procured the golden pin for the Alliance Marine Corps. The one I would soon get to wear on my uniforms. I didn't know why I felt this sudden emotion now. From my superior's acceptance:

"I know what you've been doing this whole time, Shepard. That mental grit of yours, resisting us. You're gifted as hell and you know it. You'll never let yourself be bossed around. Personally speaking, I figured you were just arrogant. I thought it was my job as your drill instructor to root that stuff out. But then I started looking more closely. I saw your true character when you helped your fellow recruits get up that last stretch of the mountain. You didn't need the help. You saw that they needed it. They needed you. So you stepped up and provided for them. You made them believe in you. That's the mark of a true leader."

Then she handed me this gold pin. The mark of my graduation from bootcamp—and on to the next.

"I see how serious this is. What sets you apart from the rest. Even your fellow marines. It's that drive to achieve your destiny in life. You'll never let yourself be ordinary. You're always striving for greater heights on your own. You hide your humanity deep inside that heart of iron of yours. Won't make your future COs very happy, but it don't matter in the long-run. At the end of the day, your duty as a marine will bring out your humanity again. You've even inspired me to do my job differently from now on. That's powerful. You're meant for greater things, Shepard. Best believe I'll be watching your career closely."

---

Easing me from my sleep, the familiar weight of this breeze settled over me. Lying down over my back, engulfed in this dark of the morning—Liara wouldn't let me rest for too long. We slept together, and had slept together the night before. On and on throughout the night here in my apartment, in my bed here in Insomnia, in this core. The parallel universe running concurrently. And these untethered obsessions: how Liara awoke me to this morning, pressing her lips to mine, down to my neck, turning and craning me. How she needed my attention, now, gripping at my hands to wake me more. The bends of her fingers along the curve of my palms, guiding my hands where she wanted them. Right along these bends of her legs: the shapes of her, and the feeling of her thighs and calves pressed together. Uniquely her.

Possessing me as she couldn't help doing. Even more so now that she had claimed me in this way; even as I eventually moved myself on top of her, losing myself in this pitch black before sunrise. I drowned myself in her, in this exact high from pleasing her. From holding Liara's legs clamped around my waist. From her, specifically, and how she held me, how she breathed, how she reacted to me. How she couldn't help herself. Giving in to these cravings had crazed us both, cascading from one another.

Liara hadn't allowed me to go off with anyone else.

She hadn't allowed me to be alone; to lose myself in my destructiveness, my isolation.

She refused to let me be without her. Relentless.

Liara even followed me into the shower. More obsessing as she lathered me, as I lathered her.

Shepard was the one making the conscious choices. We had this push and pull between us. Wasn't always clear who was really in control. Sometimes I had control. Sometimes Shepard did. We clashed.

Regardless of her control, I had known for a while now about Liara.

How Liara was that person from my past.

The one speaking to me on that unconscious level, spurring me on for years since my childhood. My invisible friend, my muse. My inspiration. So when we finally did meet on Therum, it was as if we'd already known each other for years and years. Forever. The sole explanation for how and why Shepard had cloaked with Liara right away. The three of us, we had that bond by then. Only a matter of opening it properly. Time continuum? How could Liara speak to me in the past? Our bond did span across time and space itself. Maybe in the future, she had found some way to go back and speak with me.

This quality about Liara made it difficult to truly ignore her. To set her aside.

I had tried.

Too many times.

This fear she gave me, just from touching me like this—sometimes I couldn't handle it.

I had decided at some point to not risk this. The fear had consumed me so much, knowing I had no control. Knowing I had no power. As if Liara as my so-called muse had robbed me of my own free will. Because even in death, after the Collectors had vanquished me, Liara had manifested right by my side. I had rebelled against it to an extreme. I had even tried to kill her. Anything to rid her influence from me. Anything to stop the monopoly Liara had built, amassing my time, my energy, my emotions, and my own thoughts, my own mind, having wrestled everything from me. Rising from those ashes after my resurrection, I had made my best attempt to move on. Focusing on other people had seemed to be the best idea.

But my plans hadn't worked at all. Instead, everything in my life had led me to her. Leading me to her in the first place, or leading me back to her after the fact. I had avoided her for years. Tried to be with other people—while ignoring this feeling. Running away from it. Our bond. Running away from this special person who affected me like no one else could. I didn't want to accept how I felt about this person—this person driving me to such impossible heights. The source of inspiration in my life. I thought it would be simpler to avoid this challenge; for us to both move on with our lives. That didn't happen.

Everything from the past few years especially had led me to Liara's arms.

I couldn't keep running away from her. No matter my private frustrations with this whole thing.

None of that seemed to matter now. Not in this moment. Not as we started our morning routine.

I groomed my hair how I wanted it, with Liara watching me the whole time. I kept on a tank top and slim sweatpants for now. And I felt some sense of irony, staring out the window of my room like this. I gazed out at the sight of Insomnia's HQ still under reconstruction with the Millennium Tower project. Constantly going up higher with Tali's direction and expertise as our chief engineer. Up to the 80th floor.

Our executives still lived at HQ for their own safety. We couldn't risk the enemy getting to anyone else after the last incident. Liara and Tali had lived there for a time. Until they insisted on staying with me.

Before going to make breakfast, I went over to Liara in bed. I worried for her after Apollo's attack. She remained exhausted in real life, still lucid and able enough with us here. She really shouldn't have been.

"Babe, are you sure about this?" I asked, stroking her forehead. "Maybe you shouldn't go into work today. Why don't you stay home? I gave you and the others unlimited paid time off for a reason."

Liara mumbled in protest, "Sol, I can't do that… We have a board meeting. There's so much to do."

"The meeting can wait. Can't you all reschedule?"

"That would be terribly inconvenient. We are going over the restructuring process for Insomnia's governance. We have been putting this off for far too long. We need to come up with solutions."

"Well, I don't want you burning yourself out like this. You and I need to compromise."

"Okay," she conceded. "I will focus on the board meeting. Then I will return to the lab and rest. As long as I'm able to oversee our automated processes, everything should be fine. I can take it easy."

"All right," I accepted, tucking her in some more. "I'll go wake up Tali. Then I'll make breakfast for us."

So pure and appreciative, Liara smiled at me. Hopeful, and maybe expectant, she wanted a bit more before I left the room. I leaned down, giving her this goodbye-for-now kiss. The bliss of her lips underneath mine, so soft and soothing. I measured this feeling in my chest. Down to my stomach. This exact incense of scents and feelings and sensations, as this persistent sense of how much I adored her. How much I couldn't keep ignoring this anymore, despite the years I had spent trying to set this aside.

Pressing the side of my face to Liara's, listening to her breathe for a while, I basked in this uncertainty. This counterpart of hers shouldn't have existed. Her unconscious self had uncoupled from her conscious one—within the scope of this world here. I had blocked off access to Insomnia from the VR game, and from those aware like her, like Samara. So, to make a point, Liara continued working and living here as normal, as if she had never left. Back to this separate person living autonomously within my own mind.

Could this have been enough to tame me? Enough to stop this force spinning through me as a hurricane.

I had spent my time in Insomnia as captain, before, in a solitary state. Brooding alone at HQ—unless I decided to go spend time with someone. But mostly brooding. Mostly contemplating and analyzing and examining the secrets of the universe, from what I had discovered so far. I loved spending my time that way. Obscure and unattainable and unreachable. Figuring out the complex solutions to the complex problems that plagued our civilizations today. Equitable systems, egalitarian policies, and so much more.

Family seemed less exciting than my usual focuses.

Absorbing myself in this moment with Liara seemed much more…ordinary. Normal. Expected. She and I both had embraced our normalcy for now, knowing that the watchers watched us more closely today. Liara herself had surpassed the ordinary. She intended to tame me with her extraordinary appeal. So far, she had succeeded. Just for now as intransient, or for life immortal, we would have to wait and see.

I headed down the hall and through the living room, over to Tali's room. She understood the agenda for today. This play we had arranged per sé. Putting on this act as we may have been at home in real life.

We could only exist in order as prose by playing out this script.

The natural, uninhibited chaos of our usual lives proved too much for any organization or observations.

Today, we would be proper with one another.

I found Tali sleeping soundly in her bedroom. Glancing around, I spotted all the gadgets she'd stocked on the shelves she had installed the other day. Several stuffed animals softened the space of her room. I had packed away my old belongings from this place, making plenty of room for her. We had made a space at the office for her pet rabbit, with Tali only bringing him home on the weekends. Outside the window, the sun had just started to rise. That faint red-gold blush slowly made its way across the skies.

Sitting on this free spot on her bed, I watched Tali for a moment longer. Still free without her mask and hood in this world. Peace undisturbed as she slept on. Gently, I leaned down to kiss her forehead.

"Tali, it's time to wake up."

Grumbling in the same gentleness, she didn't want to. She didn't want to move from this spot.

"Baby, come on. We have to get to work. Unless you'd rather stay home today."

"No," she muttered, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Five more minutes…"

I only gave Tali a look: my wordless reminder of what had happened during her last five-minute delay.

Spotting my skepticism through her sleepy stare, Tali relented. She got herself up, sitting with me for a bit. We enjoyed this quiet understanding. Then Tali gave me a hug, before leaving to the adjacent bathroom. As she made her way there, I looked at that mirror on the wall. I'd had it fixed in real life after Freedom's Progress, returning home for that break with Miranda. But Shepard had really only fixed it because of Miranda's complaints. I remembered breaking that thing years ago. Frustrations boiling over.

Packing all of that away, I went to the kitchen, making breakfast. I did this every morning now. Taking care of my girls before commuting to work at HQ. We somehow shared this stability every single day.

Then after eating, we would get dressed before setting off together.

No neighbors in the apartment complex. No one else lived here. Not in Insomnia's core, so crucial.

Walking in the middle of our group, I held Liara's hand, and Tali's, acting as this center for them. We went to the metro station together, passing by this Pantheon-like bank. More of a relic of real life than anything. No one had set foot inside this bank, ever. No one worked there. No banks existed in Insomnia. I had only kept this one—and the police station around the corner—as those old relics. Old, ancient relics of a bygone era. Antiquated systems that had outlived their usefulness. Full extinction.

Insomnia's government provided for everyone. No one needed for anything to survive. No one had to compete for basic necessities. Everyone benefitted from a universal basic income. We offered free healthcare and medicine, free education at all levels, free housing, food, and clothing. We generally accepted anyone willing to abide by the system. I'd had a great deal of skepticism about some groups. For example, the religious types who could've easily turned to religious persecution. But we allowed religions of all types—as long as they didn't turn destructive, going on any righteous crusades in the name of their god. Employees at Insomnia's HQ worked to prevent these types of issues in the world.

We cracked down on more nefarious issues, too—like blatant propaganda and toxic narratives in the media, at least from the perspective of the average, non-wealthy citizen who strove to be a productive member of society. We kept people safe, leaving people with the freedom to pursue almost anything they wanted. I understood that these regular people just wanted to live their lives. To enjoy time with their families. That ordinary life I still had trouble wrapping my head around. People used Insomnia to pursue the dreams and passions they otherwise couldn't in real life. Whether they were parents and had to work 'real jobs' to take care of their kids, the opportunities had simply passed them by, or the Reaper invasion had cut off access to those resources—everyone had an avenue to change that here.

"Living the American Dream in Insomnia… This place really is a dream. Because no one would be so generous and take care of us like this. Not in real life."

With so many more people flocking to Insomnia lately, we'd had to expand our policies and our reach.

We'd shifted operations from managing my mind to accommodating all of these people as well.

With the rapid expansion, Insomnia's citizens had grown increasingly curious about HQ, wondering who exactly was in charge. They knew and recognized my executives. Yet they didn't know much about me as the captain. They just knew about a captain in charge, speculating if HQ itself was some type of starship.

After we swiped our keycards, Tali and Liara boarded the monorail with me. We would pass through to Insomnia's central transportation hub, transferring to the regular metro line to HQ Plaza.

Even now, I hated taking this monorail with the view of the San Diego Bay. Our version of it, anyway.

Too many reminders. Too many bad memories.

This section of Insomnia seemed like a version of Earth that never was. The world that never was. So different, because we operated on a different system here. That system in real life, the one I hated, had no place within the ever-expounding boundaries of my mind. That wretched system, created and crafted on purpose by the supposed masters of mankind at the time. A system that thrived with a middle class in various states of growth or shrinkage, the wealthy, and the poor. How these masters quashed social movements and fought against progress as often as they possibly could, all while enriching themselves. That enrichment: gathering money, hoarding money. Gathering power, hoarding power. And then abusing both. Gathering and hoarding and abusing to feel important, to feel as gods. To feel better than everyone else. So deathly afraid of being poor, and needing to look down on those suffering in poverty.

The American Dream boiled down to finding a loophole in the system, and creating personal prosperity.

I was lucky enough to have found this for myself. Or the luck had found me. My sheer luck in having been born with my features—unchangeable—letting me escape my old situation. Otherwise…

That otherwise contributed to our endless cycle of destructiveness. The Reapers had created their 'cycle' to purge civilizations every 50,000 years—because they had decided it was best. Because they had seen the futility of our habits, how we seemed destined only to destroy ourselves and the worlds around us.

Sovereign, Lucifer, Belphegor, Beelzebub, and Apollo had joined us in Insomnia. Staring out the window of this monorail, I spotted a few of those Reaper ships floating through the sky. Absurd and peaceful in surrealism. They meant us no harm here. They understood Insomnia's mission of replacing the Reapers' manifesto, of changing this cycle they had observed in all lifeforms across millennia. They remained curious to see if we would succeed or not.

Our experiment so far seemed to work quite well. Our citizens worked and led productive lives, not for the paycheck to survive and keep a roof over their heads, but because they wanted to. If someone didn't want to work, they didn't have to. Those who did work had access to fair working conditions, and unions to advocate for them. People had that right to free association. No job insecurity. No worrying about keeping the lights on or putting food on the table. I had no need to control our citizens by forcing them into a rat race just to keep from starving themselves to death. If everyone wanted to be lazy and stay at home, I would still keep the systems running to ensure everyone's privacy, safety, and security. I didn't need to force them into that damned race, just to keep them worrying for their survival; to keep them from waking up to the gross injustices against them by those in power. Class injustice, wealth inequality.

Insomnia qualified as a dictatorship. No elected officials aside from the most basic of local offices. I existed as the dictator, with my executives at HQ as my council. And yet I had made the conscious choice to not suppress the people who lived here. Well, most people. Anyone who came to Insomnia trying to disrupt our peace, or breaking laws indiscriminately, or attempting to wrangle the system in their favor—or even better, scheming to usurp my power—they didn't last long. They would 'disappear' and no one ever heard from them again. Aside from that, we lived in a perfectly reasonable welfare state.

The titles we had of President and Vice President served as a mockery of the democracy my nation had in real life. The federal government as a corporation, driven by money and profits and taxes and deficits. Insomnia's HQ, also a corporation, had eliminated those drives. My country's founding fathers had slipped in their faults in the system: originally intending for only landowners to vote, creating the Senate as an unelected body of wealthy citizens meant to look out for the interests of the rich and powerful. Protecting the minority of the opulent from the majority of the poor constantly lurked in the cobwebs of our society. The ones in power kept their vile maxim of reducing democracy wherever possible by worsening inequalities. So I had chosen another path: eliminating democracy and social inequalities.

Insomnia had no illusions about representation in government. We didn't pretend to be anything by striving to be a more perfect union. We didn't whitewash our past, or glorify terrible leaders who made the most strides for their fellow terrible people. Our federal government was a corporation. Full-stop.

No bankers, no politicians, no crazy-rich executives. No playing games with money to make millions.

No partisan think tanks, no hedge funds, no lobbying as political bribes, no stock market. No loans, no credit chits, no debt: mortgages, student loans, payday loans. We collected taxes as the government. We offered government contracts to startup companies looking to make a difference. If a company failed, we would not bail them out. They couldn't play shady games with money, rig the system at the taxpayers' expense, inevitably get into trouble, and then come running to the nanny state for taxpayer handouts. None of them were too big to fail.

No data brokers selling my citizens' personal information and extranet histories to the highest bidder.

No polarizing news outlets biased toward hardline centrism, or either end of the political spectrum.

No harmful falsehoods or outright propaganda in the news, in schools or in textbooks, or anywhere else.

No advertising or marketing, no influencers on social media, no regular people paid to shill products.

No poverty. No death penalty. No prisons. No regular police—our AI around the world detected crimes in real-time and sent out immediate responders. No poverty-to-military or poverty-to-prison pipelines.

Understanding the principles of concentration of wealth and power, I could never allow those poisons to exist. I could never let anyone think they had a chance at accumulating any more power than they already had. No one could legally accumulate the necessary wealth and power to challenge my rule. No one could legally change the legality, the rules of the system to create loopholes, or outright change the laws. I suppressed people in that sense. The last thing Insomnia needed was someone abusing their power in my seat. Running the world into the ground just to enrich themselves and their cohorts. No.

With Insomnia's population ballooning to almost one trillion at this point, things seemed well enough.

We always had room for improvement. Hence the focus of the executives' board meeting today.

Either way, the people here believed they lived in a utopia. On a subconscious level, they had already started comparing their lives in Insomnia to the hardships of their real lives. Reaper invasion or not, the people had started reflecting. After the war, they might yearn for deep structural changes in real life.

But in real life, this sort of world seemed impossible. The citizens simply believed in HQ's employees as their overlords, giving us the benefit of the doubt. They trusted us to take care of them. How unfeasible for real life. And a constant reminder that this place was only a dream. A temporary afterlife for the dead until their souls returned to the living in a new body, a new lifeform. Maybe the transience of Insomnia kept this glue around our society. Orderly and agreeable. For everyone else, this place wasn't supposed to last. For me, it was my life, my mind. My ego. The legacy of my principles and my values.

All while ignoring the complete irony that I despised most people.

I despised them, yet I took care of them. My disdain shouldn't have preordained their suffering.

Most people in Insomnia left me alone. They respected my silence, my anonymity. So I respected them in-turn. Only those who outright disobeyed the law—with impunity—suffered the consequences. If they wanted to atone, we would rehabilitate them. We would give them a chance to reenter society and set themselves on a better track. After three strikes, or after abusing the system, their disappearance remained permanent—short of an actual death sentence. Disappeared to another realm entirely. Gone.

I had a responsibility to protect these people, my citizens. I never asked for them to be here. Yet I had no right to abandon them, or to leave them to fend for themselves in some game of survival of the fittest. I took my responsibilities seriously. My reasons differed from Shepard's. Always. A split-brain.

---

After making sure Tali and Liara made it to headquarters safely, I decided to go for a walk.

Blending in with my employees commuting through HQ Plaza, I used a special glamour program. This program disguised my appearance, changing it to something else. Just a regular citizen. Nondescript and utterly uninteresting. Plain and not worth observing. I didn't want anyone recognizing me in this part of the city. Up the stairs from the underground metro station, I made my way to the busy, bustling city center.

Crowds of people walked from place to place, making their own morning commutes to work. The streets only had younger people traveling near the ground on their hoverboards and motorcycles. We didn't allow cars or other outsized vehicles on the road. Everything existed within walkable distance from most homes and metro stations. We had some suburbs for our citizens who wanted that type of community, but even then, they still had shops, shared outdoor spaces, and malls and such within walking distance.

I passed by a few trendy cafés with people in line, ordering their breakfast for the day.

I walked by a large, grand courtyard with endless benches, and a central lake with ducks swimming atop the surface. Groups of teenagers had their to-go cups of coffee and drinks, talking and laughing loudly before they headed to school together down the street. I saw those same kids here every school day.

I crossed paths with a few people in suits and skirts, heading to work at the city council building nearby.

Our network of city councils worked well—as our only exception of democracy in this constantly-growing world. The representatives made their requests known to us at HQ, and then we decided whether or not to give them what they asked for. More funding for community-led projects, more tailored housing styles to foster a certain nostalgia for a specific species in the Milky Way, and more permissions to architect their neighborhood cultures a certain way: tight-knit with more working-class residents, sophisticated with more tech workers, or whatever else they envisioned. I usually didn't mind accommodating their requests. Except for one group of community activists and politicians in particular:

The asari matriarchs in Old Armali had their own city council—one based on Thessia's oldest form of government with the Forum. During my investigations over the summer, I found that the matriarchs were disgruntled about their lack of standing and influence in Insomnia, but they unanimously agreed that they couldn't seek out more power. The easiest way for them to gain power would be by declaring Old Armali an independent nation, and seceding from Insomnia as a whole. Other lands would seek to follow them and do the same, leading to a domino effect everywhere else. But this would open them to certain challenges from HQ, and from me specifically. Fragmenting the lands in Insomnia with traditional divisions would fragment Shepard's unconscious mind. Fragmenting Insomnia meant fragmenting us.

More importantly, all of Insomnia's lands technically belonged to me. If anyone decided to secede, all I had to do was assert my claim to the lands, and I could legally take it back. By force or otherwise.

All the city councils knew this, and so they chose not to tip the scales in their favor. They had decided the risk of messing up Shepard's mind—and my mind—along with the possibility of challenging me directly, just wasn't worth the trouble. I had already drawn this line. No one had tried to step over it.

As I passed by these office skyscrapers, dwarfed by headquarters down the way, I felt this palpable change compared to the commercial zones. In any other big city on Earth, these buildings would be plastered with ads and billboards. Colorful and eye-catching signs displaying each office and corporation. None of those existed here, what with our ban on advertising. People only bought what they need. If they wanted more, then they looked to the local stores in their communities, or traveled to other locales based on word-of-mouth. People in Insomnia tended to avoid consumerism for the most part. They didn't spend their lives here chasing after the next big thing: overpriced home appliances, name-brand fashions, the latest must-have gadgets. The citizens instead enjoyed their dreams, fostering more meaningful experiences, instead of using consumerism as a way to forget the misery and futility of their real lives. They paid more attention to the issues that mattered to them—especially events on the news.

On these larger screens at a busy intersection, they each played the same morning news segments. Different plays of the same content, echoing on every corner of the intersection: Eliza Cassan, the AI news anchor for Picus TV, spoke on in her calming voice with those simulated emotional inflections.

I had asked EDI to create this copy of Eliza Cassan as our own AI. This version reported aggregations of the unbiased news Shepard read about and watched in real life. Not from the Alliance News Network. They had a clear bias in favor of humanity and the military. My executives usually watched the ANN in the break room. But I made sure not to feature that narrative, despite being a human in the Alliance myself. I didn't want to influence Insomnia with only my point of view. We needed neutral, impartial journalism.

The news played an outsized role in shaping public opinion. We'd had some complaints at first about how 'boring' or 'plain' the news was. People had created petitions, wishing for their favorite so-and-so partisan news organization to have a voice in Insomnia, too. No one wanted to have the conversation about my reasons for doing this. No one wanted to accept that the news had the power to indoctrinate them, to influence their beliefs and prejudices. The drama died down as the citizens took a liking to Eliza Cassan's calm demeanor, her conventional attractiveness. She even had her own dedicated fanbse now.

"Surrounding the heated discussion about Sur'Kesh, and Dalatrass Linron's efforts to shield the salarian homeworld from the Reapers, there is a deeper story beneath the surface. One that our Picus reporters had to search high and low to find, due to extraordinary efforts by those in power to keep these truths hidden. In addition to promising the safety of her people, the salarian dalatrass extended her promises to certain outsiders. Top officials within the Salarian Union reached out to prominent CEOs, investors, and other executives, selling the promise of their security on Sur'Kesh. Many big-name corporations began making key business investments across the salarian homeworld—including, but not limited to: Synthetic Insights creating a proprietary AI to aid in the salarians' disappearing act from the Reapers, Eldfell-Ashland Energy increasing productivity and results for Sur'Kesh's mining exploits, and Binary Helix conspiring with the salarian government to ensure a cure for the genophage could never become reality.

"It is safe to say each of those business investments have since gone up in flames. Leading up to the Reaper invasion, several of these executives had made conveniently-timed business trips and vacations to Sur'Kesh. It is increasingly likely the Salarian Union had insider knowledge about the Reaper invasion, leading to troubling questions as to when exactly the Council learned of the enemy's existence. Nevertheless, these investors met a quick end on the salarian homeworld once the Reapers invaded. They had attempted to save themselves by escaping to these so-called sanctuaries on Sur'Kesh, with promising prospects to keep their financial legacies in-tact. Instead, lives were lost, credits disintegrated, and goodwill rapidly burned in the fires of the Reapers' destruction on Sur'Kesh.

"If the Reapers hadn't arrived to her world, then Dalatrass Linron would have secured the salarians' economic dominance across the galaxy. However, not everyone she reached out to believed her lofty promises. One such business executive was Dr. Eva Coré, President and CEO of Tai Yong Medical, the biotechnology corporation we've reported about on numerous occasions. Some viewers may recall our previous reporting of the notorious businesswoman who was once close friends with the Illusive Man. There is reason to believe Dr. Coré knew of these dealings, as she had also taken a well-timed trip to Bekenstein in the weeks leading up to the Reaper invasion. Today, she is still operating out of her branch of Tai Yong Medical on the colony. Any attempts by our Picus reporters to request comments from Dr. Coré have been met with an icy silence.

"What's more, the leaders of Cerberus also seemed to have learned of these treacheries beforehand. We discovered credible rumors that the new head of Cerberus, the Illusive Man's former lieutenant named Solheim, was tipped off about the scheme. Solheim allegedly discovered relevant footage from the Shadow Broker, which was enough to sufficiently incriminate the salarian dalatrass. Solheim doesn't appear to approve of Dr. Eva Coré, having outed her some months ago as a donor for Cerberus' shadowy dealings in the past. Are Solheim and Dr. Coré now rivals? What could their possible conflict mean for the galaxy? We will continue our search for the truth. This is Eliza Cassan, reporting to you live, from Picus."

Making my way to Insomnia's headquarters, I mulled over the implications of that news report.

All those companies had fucked up by trusting the salarian government. With everything out in the open now, C-Sec had no choice but to throw the book at them. Weapons and armor manufacturers, mining companies, AI researchers, biotech corps other than Tai Yong Medical. This house of cards would fall.

The Alliance didn't need to worry about it. We had our own internal manufacturers, keeping our supplies and raw materials steady for the war. Depending on how other governments had organized their supply chains, their productivity might've taken a hit. No more guns, armor, biotic amps. No more machine learning tools for engineers to keep improving their wartime AIs. No more ship parts. Nothing.

Good thing the Great Corporation Crash had arrived after most people had finished their Christmas shopping.

I headed through the front entrance, up the marvel of these steps. A hidden barrier along this boulevard kept any other people from seeing me over here. So I disabled my glamour program, changing back to my original appearance. And I stared up at the current-top of the building, still undergoing these additions, these extra constructions. That wide ring of a halo seemed to keep raising up on its own. The thick, jagged jutting of those shapes of gold. The brightness of that shining light, so heavenly. And the peaceful ringing from that aura. A heavy sense, a meaningful sense. Persistent and consistent it went.

Walking within the foyer, and the lobby, I found them mostly empty. Most of my employees had already made it to their offices, their meeting areas. The workday had already started in earnest. No one noticed me passing through to the elevator, and the hallways, all the way to my own office space.

On the 60th floor, I took a separate escalator up to my secret area.

The shine of these Alliance blue lights lined the fine polish of the black floor. A steel display of Insomnia's growing globe stood off to the side. Confirmation: one trillion citizens and counting.

Insomnia's AI greeted me from the intercom, so smooth: "Welcome to your executive suite, Captain."

And I arrived to the top, stepping along this surface. Surrounded by traditional columns of classical antiquity, I entered the hi-tech door to my office. This exhibit space, or a museum, existed as the same merging of ideas. Classical antiquity: more columns lining the wall. A fine pattern of the marble floor. A permanent sense of calm, stateliness. Indifference. A museum of ideas with me on display for critique.

These displays of statues, of paintings, of artworks depicting my nation's great, unforgettable history. The mass killings and disease against Native Americans brought to the continent by the pilgrims, "No Taxation without Representation," the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Three-Fifths Compromise; Manifest Destiny, the American Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg, the Reconstruction Era, the Daughters of the Confederacy, President Woodrow Wilson signing the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to create a private, decentralized bank—the Federal Reserve—to look out for the interests of private banks; the Prohibition Era, the Great Depression, the Battle of Normandy in France; redlining, segregation, apartheid, President John F. Kennedy and Executive Order 11110, the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Powell Memorandum to the US Chamber of Commerce and the first major report to the Trilateral Commission named The Crisis of Democracy warning about the "general challenge to existing systems of authority"; Operation Freedom Deal in Cambodia, the Vietnam War, the War on Drugs, Watergate, the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine, Trickle Down Economics—"Voodoo Economics", and the unchecked and ignored AIDS epidemic; "Tough on Crime" policies with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Columbine; the Brooks Brothers Riot, the Unitary Executive, September 11th, "Weapons of Mass Destruction" based on knowingly faulty evidence, the use of focus groups to help sell the Iraq War messaging to the nation, the No Bid Contracts for Certain Oil Companies in Iraq, the legal memos on torture and warrantless surveillance, and the perhaps accidental, cascading effect of unintended consequences with the rise of ISIS, following Secretary Powell's speech to the United Nations in favor of invading Iraq on that knowingly faulty evidence; "Hope and Change," the Great Recession, birth certificates and delegitimization, the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street; Wikileaks, Charlottesville, January 6th, the Great Resignation, Christian Nationalism; and every instance of politicians in power begetting power at the expense of the common people, ultimately getting drunk on power and lying and scheming and deceiving the world into tyranny as they destroyed the law in their favor; all the way up to the First Contact War, and the Battle at the Citadel. All in the name of freedom.

I walked past more displays reminding me of the galaxy's ingenuity. The asari's discovery of mass effect technology. Their arrival to the Citadel in centuries past. All these glowing, shining displays behind glass, their lights reflecting along the marble beneath my steps. Darker, and moodier, the Business Division exhibit held these mockups of old warships. The Normandy SR-1 reigned supreme right in the center. My own version of the historical collections in the Citadel Archives. The cyclical history of our worlds, rhyming as the only constant reason in our chaotic landscape as people.

Contrasting shadows with the moodiest blue of the Alliance lighting along the floor:

I reached my office area overlooking the rest of the city. The windows remained tinted, keeping the sunlight from overwhelming the vibes here. Taking my seat in my faux leather chair, I sat at my desk, and turned on my computer. Facing that panoramic cityscape, I checked on my work for the day.

Opening the AI's interface, I reviewed the current state of things. An endless amount of statistics: Insomnia's economy, the crime rate, trade route efficiency, status of supply chains, construction efforts, resources across all sectors, new arrivals, and those whose energies left this world for new mortal forms. I had discovered that Tali's father, and Zaeed, Javik, Anderson, and Thane's energies had already transferred to new mortal forms. Prematurely. Something or someone had sped up the process. I had my suspicions, but I'd yet to confirm them. This gave me the idea to create a database of everyone's past lives. If they wanted to find out who they used to be, we had that information available for them.

I kept track of everything through a video game of managing numbers. When I was younger, I loved playing city builder games, historical board games, and 4X grand strategy games like Hearts of Iron, Civilization, Victoria, Frostpunk, Cities: Skylines, and Crusader Kings. The expansive amount of control over resources and politics and lands had always appealed to me. Having to plan out moves several game-years in advance, and then watching them pay off in the long-run. Once I became an infiltrator in the military, my focus shifted more toward stealth games and tactical shooters, which I'd already enjoyed before. I went back to these games for inspiration once the burden of governing Insomnia came along.

My main focus—tracking all incoming and outgoing sources of income, ensuring the government's sum total created a surplus of credits. I technically could use cheat codes to make money appear from thin air. Credits meant nothing to me. But I avoided outright 'printing' excess credits these days. Our incoming taxes from commerce and payroll were more than enough to fund all of Insomnia's programs, and leave plenty left over in our coffers. This AI also learned my decision patterns, keeping everything running even without my manual input. Tali had created the baseline, while Legion and EDI perfected it.

Our solutions had been oddly effective at limiting problems around the world.

I didn't like people, therefore I had a talent for predicting what terrible things they could have done, and enacting laws to prevent the worst. No loopholes, and no avenues for the criminals—or potential criminals—to bribe anyone to change the laws. Like automatically putting on child locks and other similar contraptions all over a house, just so the kid couldn't crawl around and destroy everything inside the property. Iron-tight and seal-proof. Anything to prevent a similar collapse of the Empire of the United States.

Accessing the surveillance system, I checked on the hallway to the board room. My executives began filing inside for their meeting. Liara, Tali, Kaidan, Garrus, Joker, EDI, Legion, Samara, and Jack. Wrex joined them as well, having his official title now as the Head of Armed Services. Only for internal defense against the Reapers—just in case our new friends floating through the world decided to turn on us. They each passed by Major, who sat right at the entrance to the room. Everyone greeted her warmly, offering pets and well wishes. Major looked happy to see them, tail wagging as she assumed her guard duties. I'd already had a 'conversation' with Major about the incident from before. She seemed to understand the part she'd played in that mess, and she wasn't proud of it. Major had already promised me in her own ways to not repeat the past. And I was glad, because I wanted her to stay here. We all took care of her.

I listened in on the meeting.

My executives remained proactive, even without anyone sitting at the head of the table. While they discussed and debated, I wrote up a few provisions for our executive branch here at HQ. I already knew what they would discuss together, which problems they would bring up. So I wrote down the solutions.

As a matter of national security, Kaidan reported, "We're starting to get more noise for a certain sector. It's the business owners and the fat cats who come here as they dream, or the ones who've died in the war. They're angling for freedoms and fewer regulations for their businesses. It's not happening."

"I have to agree," said Liara, soothing me. "But now I am curious. What is their argument, exactly?"

"Their argument is that news outlets like Picus TV have free speech. Therefore, they want free speech for their corporations. They want their earnings—their money—to be free to go anywhere. They want to be able to spend on whatever they want. The captain created tons of regulations for these kinds of things. Mandatory disclosure laws. Spending limits. The works. They're mostly eyeing unchecked political donations to the city councils. Except political donations aren't even allowed here in the first place…"

Garrus wondered, "You think they'll try to make lobbying a legal thing? There's already plenty of laws against it. 'Political bribes,' as the captain calls them."

"They can try, but they won't get anywhere. Besides, this free speech argument would be the start of an erosion, and the captain knows it. She's put the necessary safeguards in place ahead of time. It's fine."

Joker agreed, "Yeah, it's not happening, like you said. Money isn't speech! When's the last time you heard actual credits start using words in a conversation? I mean yeah, money talks, okay. So the saying goes. Next thing you know, they'll start saying corporations are people! Like those giant skyscraper offices are actual lifeforms."

"Pretty much," replied Kaidan. "Let's not have any repeats of Citizens United. That was a disaster."

Samara reported, "There is a similar group making these arguments. Many more bankers have arrived, and they are upset they cannot do business in Insomnia. All banks are forbidden, after all."

Tali pointed out, "For a reason. They can handle finding another industry to work in, and earning regular wages just like everyone else. The answer is no."

Legion warned, "It is likely the elites of the galaxy will revolt against these measures."

"They are unable to," noted EDI. "With the ongoing crash to corporations in real life, the elites know they have overextended themselves. The populace is aware of their betrayals, and will not accommodate their increasing demands for more luxuries and power. We have the public on our side for this issue."

Wrex knew a thing or two about this. "Gonna have to deal with them eventually. Once certain groups in a clan start making noise, chances are they won't shut up. Not until they get what they want. Unless we just disappear them one at a time. Doesn't seem like the regular people would care if we did that."

Liara knew me best. "The captain would never give in to their demands. The elites have no way of consolidating additional support, as EDI said. If anything, perhaps it would be wise to strengthen our own powers here at HQ. We could do with enhancing our executive branch. Miranda spent far too many resources on expanding Insomnia's populace, without coming up with a plan to manage these disparate peoples. The captain has her AI to handle things, but we also need to make more public-facing actions."

While everyone speculated, I continued on with my provisions.

I decided to add more members to our executive branch here at headquarters. More executives to add to the board. Whoever I chose needed to be loyal to me. No exceptions. Our own house of cards would crumble if we brought in disloyal people—anyone primarily concerned with their own interests, planning to betray us. I could not give these keys of power to anyone who would end up abusing them.

For starters, we needed a Head of Foreign Affairs. Essentially a secretary of state to manage diplomacy abroad. We needed to handle the pile of squabbles coming in from other regions—especially the asari matriarchs operating out of Old Armali. The matriarchs understood the rules, but after Tevos' stunt, I remained wary of them. Liara's mother Benezia had also never warmed up to me. Not officially. So I considered offering an olive branch by asking Tevos herself to take this position. I would never fully trust her, but she had proven her loyalty to the idea of stability. Of never fracturing the commander's mind. I needed to keep the matriarchs under control. Despite the relative risk, this seemed like the best option.

I briefly considered a Head of Finances. Briefly. I already dealt with the economy myself. I didn't want to appoint someone who might've messed things up. Or, again, tried to change the system for their own reasons. We needed to avoid the nightmare scenario of banks popping up all over the place, and then making debts legal, and then implementing fractional reserve banking. The scourge that had nearly toppled the empire of my home country in real life. I didn't want any close-calls with Insomnia.

Samara had her role of protecting the citizens from crime and other injustices. She had full access to our crime-detecting AI, ensuring her team reacted with the appropriate responses. We really only had rehabilitation centers—or outright disappearances when dealing with bad actors. We didn't have a specific Department of Justice filled with attorneys and legal scholars for high-level investigations. I didn't want a possible Head of Attorneys to selectively ignore investigations based on their own priorities, or to spin their own narratives with their reports. I needed to spend more time fool-proofing a potential DoJ, and its chain of command, before moving forward with any serious appointments.

I thought about a Head of the Interior to manage all the different lands in Insomnia—their varying interests and populations. Separate from the more diplomatic Head of Foreign Affairs, this executive would focus more on the logistical issues and allocating resources appropriately. Working more closely with the city councils to handle their concerns. Again, I already did this myself. But I found myself willing to budge on this, considering the unending scale of Insomnia's growth over time. Over the course of this endless time, we would need to work harder to attend to the city councils and their concerns. Ideally to keep their aims away from independence. Or even staging a coup against our headquarters.

After more decisions, more plans to set strong foundations for education, organic and synthetic health services, and protecting the environment, I arrived at the final one. National intelligence. EDI and Legion had this taken care of. But we couldn't keep relying on disappearances and our crime AI to handle dissidents. I considered creating a spy agency for us. Only to realize how much that could've backfired on us. Spies had their uses, but they also had their risks. Double agents could've found their way into our ranks. Undercover agents could've slipped up, getting exposed. So I had to rule this one out. I couldn't risk Insomnia's integrity by bringing in unknowns. They would've found some way to exploit us.

As a concession, I considered appointing a mayor for this inner-city of Insomnia. Not someone to actually do the job. More as a symbolic gesture. Major had quit her job with the hospital. Could we appoint her as the mayor? I could see people enjoying the idea. I would have to ask Major if she was interested.

Consolidating and allocating power like this seemed like the natural reset buttons for the system.

We needed to keep up with these refinements. Never falling into stagnation.

I didn't worry too much about the people suddenly deciding they wanted a democracy.

My citizens seemed to understand the reality of things. That the land and this entire world didn't belong to them. They didn't feel that same sense of entitlement, leading them to those higher ambitions to own everything they laid eyes on. Without that entitlement, Insomnia had remained pure. No one ran things into the ground, exploiting and abusing and taking advantage. All-powerful entities like the Reapers had their experiment to watch in real-time here: seeing that not all lifeforms were the same, destined to repeat the same cycles of destruction, and ultimately destroying themselves and the worlds around them. Changing the peoples' environment, the system, and the rules of society had also changed their behaviors. They allowed the onus of ownership and leadership to fall solely on us at HQ. So we had to keep protecting all of these people under one united government. One United Dictatorship of Insomnia.

---

After the board meeting, my executives returned to their offices. They had come up with their own ideas for securing the executive branch. Now they worked to do the necessary research before presenting their proposals to Liara first as our Vice President. Once she signed off on them, they would make their proposals to me directly. I'd come up with my own ideas, yes, but I did appreciate everyone else's voices and opinions. They might've thought of angles or ideas that had never occurred to me.

Heading to Liara's lab to check up on her, I pondered over her place at HQ these days.

For those proposals: usually the President was the first stop before me. The first person to review the information, before bumping it up the chain for me to evaluate. For broader, non-political projects, like Tali's Millennium Tower initiative, I was the first stop instead. And then the appropriate department Head would go ahead and allocate the necessary funding for the project. But with these political ventures, Liara had taken over that special role. She had taken over nearly everything reserved for the President: making new hires once I made them available to her, overseeing all work by our executives and other high-level employees, directing board meetings, and determining national focuses for HQ.

Liara had in fact determined our current national focus of pivoting toward governance. Taking care of our citizens. I always worked on these things behind-the-scenes. She ensured all of HQ focused on it. She influenced the core, the character of my reasons for doing these things. Tipping the scales for me.

She had very much taken on the assumed role of Acting President.

But I hadn't promoted her. Not officially.

Entering Liara's lab, I found the darkened ambiance her employees operated in. How they worked quietly at their monitors, so small compared to the gargantuan size of this steel lab. I passed by the workers, the white of their lab coats colored by the renegade red and paragon blue lights glowing along the floor. We had made some renovations. So many more functions to the scientific research of this lab space. Not only dedicated to helping me manage my emotions, but also for managing other industries across Insomnia. Separate sections for pharmaceutical research, vaccine research, harm reduction for drug users, safety of new foods for the market—the list went on. Liara's scientists here acted as the final arbiters for the research done around the world. They worked with HQ's managers for each appropriate specialty, federally approving medicines and other biological products for public consumption.

Liara had appointed her own trusted experts to help her oversee the process. She had her specialties to focus on—my emotions, and her unofficial duties as Acting President—keeping her from getting overwhelmed. With these responsibilities, I'd given her a substantial pay raise. She hadn't asked me to.

I would say in the past that Liara was ineligible for any promotions. I had also promised never to demote her. And that I wouldn't outright fire her, either. The one protected position in Insomnia. I repeated this so much that Liara had started to believe it for herself. Maybe it demoralized her sometimes. Or maybe it comforted her, knowing she would always have a place on my executive board, right at my side.

Technically, there was nothing stopping me from promoting her.

In the past, there had always been stipulations. Needing to be my protector. Needing to get married.

I had transcended. I didn't need anyone to protect me anymore. Those stipulations had vanished now.

The only thing standing in the way was my own skepticism, my own hesitations. Lingering uncertainties.

I found Liara in her new office, sectioned off from the greater area of the lab. The same general layout of her office on the Normandy, instead dominated by this balance of paragon and renegade hues. She sat on a reclining chair in a corner, resting as she monitored her many monitors. She lit up once she saw me.

Leaning down, kneeling to her chair, I eased Liara into my arms, insulating her with me.

"Sol," she whispered, the warmth of her breath warming us both. "Thank you for checking up on me."

Holding her hand, I knelt to the floor this time, asking her, "How are you doing?"

"I'm all right. Better, actually, now that I've stopped worrying about the board meeting. Everything's in place now." Coveting my face with her touch, Liara seemed to notice something about me. "There was something I wanted to mention. About this morning. You didn't react badly to being in the shower with me. Tensing up, pushing me away. Those concerns of yours I've sensed—about your body, who you are. Not belonging in your own skin. You've gotten much better about it."

Shepard had repressed a lot of these issues, leaving them for me to deal with.

The problem had never really gone away for either of us. Just twisted into concerns about vulnerability.

"Some of it is about trust," I noted. "I'm comfortable with you. I don't have to think about it as much."

"I can tell. And I'm grateful to have your trust. I've caught myself wondering about this more and more lately. I don't think I'm entirely aware of it in real life. Have you ever thought about transitioning?"

"I've thought about it. I would feel more at ease with myself if I did. But I've already ruled it out."

"Why is that?" asked Liara.

The only truth: "Even if I would feel more comfortable in my body, I wouldn't feel this same comfort in my mind. People would treat me differently. The experience would shape me, change me, no matter how hard I tried to fight it. I don't want to lose my perspective. I don't want to lose my mind as it is."

"Hmm, I understand. Do my curiosities offend you, then?"

"Doesn't bother me, babe. Are you wondering how things would be, anyway? With me as a man."

"Well, yes. From my own perspective, things are different. You know my people don't see ourselves in the same binary with gender. You've made me think about it more."

"Wait… Are you saying you'd still be attracted to me?"

Liara smiled, as if the answer should've been obvious. "Yes, I would. I've never been attracted to men before. But I suppose that is just the initial attraction to blame. I feel we fall in love with the actual person over time. Maybe the rest wouldn't matter anymore. I can't really say. I do get curious, imagining how different you would be. It would be a wonderful experiment."

"You and your experiments," I joked.

"I know," she agreed, just as amused as me. "Though I am not the only one who wonders and daydreams about you. Our citizens want to know more about you. They want to know who you are as their leader."

"Yeah, I've noticed."

"Does it bother you? How they feel they are your followers?"

"Of course it bothers me," I grumbled. "I don't want followers. No hero worship. No parasocial relationships. I don't want anyone to get some idea of me in their heads."

Liara understood, curiosities brimming more. "Why do you feel this way, Captain?"

"Because, if they put me on a pedestal, it's never going to work out. I know I'll end up disappointing someone eventually. Anything I do, they could take it as a personal attack against them. Better to cut out the possibility by staying in the shadows. I'd rather be more of an entity than a person for them."

"Existing as an idea," she echoed.

"Yes, that's what I want. I don't want anyone to worship me. I don't want the so-called status from everyone in the world knowing who I am to them. I'd rather keep them away from me. I don't have the energy to deal with all that. The emotional bandwidth. Whatever you want to call it."

"Then I will let the other executives know. The citizens will always be curious about this. We will do our best to keep their curiosities from getting out of hand."

"I appreciate it, Liara," I told her. She smiled at me more, so adoring. "What else is on your mind?"

Staring into my eyes, Liara seemed deep in thought. As if she found her thoughts mirrored in my stare.

Then she explained, "I have been thinking about people. Mostly because we are more focused on governing now. After everything we have been through…do you feel people are inherently sinful?"

Inherently sinful.

Inherently terrible, selfish, full of hatred.

Inherently full of prejudice and bigotry—invidiousness.

"No, I don't feel that way," I answered. "It's something we learn. Bad lessons, or cycles of abuse. It's a shared psychosis. Normally, when someone's abusive, the only solution is to leave. That's kind of what I've done. Disassociating myself as much as I do. Withdrawing, disappearing. I like to be invisible."

"You can only stay invisible for so long, you know. We cannot just leave society. Not entirely. We must participate in it in some way in order to survive. No one survives alone. Not even you."

"What are you saying?"

"Since this is a deep-rooted, systemic problem, perhaps we should change it. Cleanse this sickness."

"Change the sickness?" I asked her. "You're asking me to cleanse people of their sins? Is that it?"

"Yes, I am. You are the big brother now. You are the parent. You are our protector." Knowing I didn't like this, Liara drew the parallel for me: "Sol, when I was hurting, you helped me. When I needed it most, you made sure I received the help I needed. I am asking you to do the same for everyone else."

"Liara, I can't do that. I'm not Princess Diana. I don't want people to love me. I want to be anonymous."

"Then find another way to achieve this. This is your grand strategy, Captain. Solving the crisis of our broken cycle as a people—as people who will be people, who are meant to be irredeemable. Just defeating the Reapers won't be enough. We need to root out the source of the problem. This lack of basic empathy. This scourge, this evil in peoples' hearts. Only then can we find true prosperity."

I couldn't tell Liara how I really felt about this…deep down.

These darker temptations I had. Destroying everything instead; wiping it clean. Completely deleting everything. We are who we are. People don't change. The Reapers knew the same. They knew all lifeforms were destined to destroy themselves. Repeating these same cycles: in relationships, in sham governments and societies, or whatever else. Meanwhile, Liara implored me to believe in the idea of starting anew. Reshaping society and changing the cycle; believing in the potential people had to be more. To be better than this. To stop falling into their worst habits. Helping them unlearn the abuses they'd learned to perpetuate on others, the corruption they'd sought. Better educating them on their power, and ensuring they had empathy for others, instead of that greed and selfishness. Cleansing this sickness.

I should have told her—"I think people are inherently nothing."

I should have said—"No one belongs in my world. I am the darkness that too many fear. An empty void."

"Sol," breathed Liara, sensing my inner-turmoil. "Please…if you won't do this for them, do it for me. For us. For our future. You have never wanted to have children. You have never wanted to bring a child into this world, this galaxy we live in. You don't want to expose them to this sickness." That had always been the root of my reasons. It…wouldn't have been fair to them. "This is another reason why I'm asking. These effects would no doubt ripple outward. I'm sure there are others who need our help. Countless others across the other galaxies out there, the entire universe. The immeasurable heaven we all live in. Isn't this our responsibility now? To help them?"

I didn't know what to say.

I didn't know what to tell her.

I understood our responsibility. I understood the importance of her solutions, her idealism.

My main concern: finishing the mission. Getting this done. Ending the Reaper threat once and for all.

After that…I already knew how I would feel. That nothing would matter anymore. Not even the future.

I didn't want my cynicisms deciding this for me. I didn't want to give into the nothingness, the void. I didn't want them to win. I also didn't want to ruin or smother or destroy my demonic soul. This demon and this human blended and balanced one—this was me. I felt the creeping dangers of the balance, the scales tipping in either direction. Too much of one or the other: I would lose myself again, destabilized.

'You have a heart of gold, Sol. Don't let them take it from you.'